Thunder of Spring Over Distant Mountains by Robert Morris
CD YGM-06
Published by Yank Gulch Music
Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved.
Introduction.
I composed
Thunder of Spring Over Distant Mountains in the summer of 1973. It
is the first portion of a trilogy of compositions exploring musical acculturation
written from 1971 to 1975. The second part of the trilogy consists of five
incidental pieces:
Varnam (1973) for five melody instruments, finger cymbals,
drums, and drones;
Motet on Doo-Dah (1972) for alto-flute, bass, and piano;
Not Lilacs (1973) for trumpet, alto saxophone, piano, and drum set;
Variations on the
Variations on the Quadran Pavan
and the Quadran Pavan
of Bull and Byrd
(1974) for two pianos; and
Bob's Plain Bobs (1975) for percussion quartet and
tape. The trilogy's third part is an hour-long piece for five wind ensembles called
In Different Voices (1975-6) commissioned by the Yale Band to celebrate the
United States bicentennial. All these pieces concern the way musical styles may
affect each other as they interact, either in the context of political and social
affairs, or within someone's imagination.
Originally composed as a quadraphonic tape piece in the Yale Electronic Music
Studio, which I directed from 1972 to 1977,
Thunder...
is presented here for the
first time in a stereo mixdown on compact disk.
The studio included Scully tape machines—four
two-track and one four-track, a four-in/four-out
matrix mixing panel,
a reverberation plate, a large ARP 2500 synthesizer, and various other sound
modules, such as bandpass filters, a pitch-to-voltage converter, an electronic
switch, and the like.
Program Notes.
Thunder of Spring Over Distant Mountains is forty-five minutes in duration
and is divided into two parts.
Seven pieces of Southeast and East Asian music, taken as
source material for the work, are subjected to varying degrees of electronic
modification.
The title of the work, which might seem to be taken from a Chinese or Japanese
nature poem, is actually borrowed from
The Waste Land of T. S. Elliot. That
poem asserts that Western Culture has decayed and fallen; but in its last pages it
also suggests that ancient non-Western cultures might provide a remedy. At the
time I composed
Thunder... I was becoming aware of the resources of
non-Western religion and philosophy, which was then taking its place as a component
of contemporary American culture.
Part One
Section 1: An opening prelude or overture presents overlapped segments of the
source material in reverse order of their use in the piece, ending with
Eh-fan
Chu (Repeated Melody), a boisterous piece from Taiwan [at 0m 56s].
Section 2: Increasingly complex transformations of
Eh-fan Chu
comprise the
second section of Part One. First the piece is heard over a drone, as if at a
distance, then one of its phrases is repeated over and over subject to various forms
of modulation, only to be revealed once more, loudly, if briefly. The next
portions of Section 2 [starting at 3m 34s] play hide-and-go-seek with fragments
of the Taiwanese composition. As the music goes on, it becomes more unstable
and subtle, glissandi permeate the sonic landscape, and its overall tessitura rises
gradually until the music seems to collapse with parts of
Eh-fan Chu
falling into silence.
Section 3: This section begins [at 8m 47s] with curious glittering sounds that
seem to cycle in rhythm and spatial location. Various gestures immerge from time
to time as the music slowly descends, leading to a more regularly pulsing music
[at about 10m 30s], this punctuated with various bell, chimes, and gong sounds,
some of which are pulsed at different speeds. At this point, those listeners familiar
with Balinese music will recognize the metallic sounds of Indonesian gamelan
music, however still too transfigured to tell what kind. After a brief silence, [at
13m 26s] a downward flourish reveals
Cremation Music from the Balinese
wayang kulit gamelan, at first in canon with itself, then finally presented without
modification. Thus, up to this moment, Section 3 has traced the trajectory of
Section 2 backwards by gradually revealing its source material. Next, the music moves
on to new forms of mutation, involving complex sonic processes controlled by the
source material's amplitude, timbre and pitch contour. A very turbulent and noisy
passage ensues [at 16m 35s] that ends coyly with
Cremation Music nevertheless
winning the day. Section three ends with a transition or bridge section [at 17m
33s] including musical material derived from other musical sources including
western music. This was the first passage I composed for
Thunder... originally
intending to use these other bits of music in the composition. After I abandoned
this idea, I decided to use the passage anyway, suggesting that the complete
composition is both situated within a larger world of music, as well as including
it.
Section 4: The next main section of the piece is based on
Goshoraku,
a piece of
Japanese gagaku court music [starting at 18m 5s]. This section is quiet and
peaceful with the source material in the background. The intervals of the fourth
and fifth dominate the harmonic landscape played by sounds imitating the sho, a
mouth organ that plays diatonic tone-clusters in gagaku. A sort of twiddling
texture that comes and goes is also made of diatonic intervals. The whole effect
ensures that
Goshoraku appears as overheard from a great distance; I imagined
that this would be the only way a Japanese peasant working in the rice fields could
hear gagaku, a music played in the courts for the royalty's entertainment.
Section 5: Sounds resembling machine guns and other weapons of war abruptly
break the mood of section four, almost violently ushering in the fifth section [at
22m 38s]. A quick climax culminates in
Sinrili, a rousing epic ballad from
Celebes (now known as Suluwesi), Indonesia, for male singer and rebab (spike
fiddle). This section is loud and boisterous, full of sonic jokes and jovial
deceptions, as if the singer is embellishing his song with all kinds of exaggerations
and non-sequiturs. While sounds resembling noisy machines and percussive hits
contribute to this hyped-up music, up-front quotes of the gagaku music from the
last section also interrupt the flow. It's as if this sophisticated court music is
vividly evoked by the singer's words, even if none of his audience would ever
have occasion to hear it in person. A short and forceful polyphonic codetta [at
26m 0s] concludes Part One.
Sound Excerpts
Part Two
Section 6: Part Two starts out with thundering sounds,
giving way to references to
the previous
Sinrili and
Goshoraku sections.
But the percussive strokes and
clatter continue. Eventually [at 1m 47s] fragments of the next musical source
appear; this is
Gaku, a piece of dance music (mai) for flute and drums taken
from the Japanese noh play,
Kantan. (The vocal cries are sounds that the
drummers make as part of this music.) I tried to portray the nature of this dance
music—a series of stances, rather than fluid movements—by
the use of ring and
amplitude modulation, making the already percussive music that much more stark
[as at 2m 12s, for instance]. The music [starting at 2m 30s] progresses with
various montages of the noh music with other electronically generated sounds,
producing various types of canons and imitations. The electronic sounds begin to
dominate and culminate in more fluid, less reified, passages [as at 4m, 30s and
5m 4s] but lead back to the Japanese music, building to a climax to end the
section.
Section 7: The hectic climax ends abruptly [at 6m 44s] with
Offering to the Guru Drakmar,
a Tibetan Tantric-Buddhist chant, which begins the seventh
section. This music consists of low chanting, alternating with wild ecstatic music
played on shawms, long trumpet- and trombone-like instruments, accompanied by
cymbals and drums. In this section, filtered chanting comes first, followed by
overlays of the instrumental music [at 7m, 19s]. The chanting resumes [at 7m
36s] forming a long meditative section that gradually builds in intensity leading to
music [at 12m 39s] that presages the Korean music to be heard in the next section
and the instrumental music from before. The seventeen long droning chords that
had subtly guided the previous meditative passage are presented again [at 13m
22s] quickly and in accelerando.
Section 8: In this last major section of the piece
[starting at 13m 34s], portions of
preceding sounds and processes are mixed together under high rushing sounds,
combined with fragments of the seventh source material,
The First Wine Offering—a piece of the Korean court music, ah-ak.
This ritual music is Confucian
in origin so its societal function contrasts with the
meditative purpose of Buddhist chanting.
The music proceeds in phrases under the high texture mixed with
sequences of accelerating and retarding gestures, ending [at 15m 54s] with a
special rhythmic cadence that segues into the coda.
Coda to Part 2: This extended and leisurely coda [starting at 15m 58s] quotes
both the Tibetan chant and the
Wine Offering music, which are eventually
dialectically united as they transform into a woodlike rustling [at about 18m 0s],
meant to suggest the sound of a funeral pyre. At the very end, only the Tibetan
instrumental music remains, first pulsed, then dying away into silence.
Sound Excerpts
About the Composer
Robert Morris has composed over 160 pieces of concert, computer, and outdoor
music. He is presently (2009) Chair of the Composition Department of the
Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester and is a leading theorist of
atonal music. Further biographical data are available
here.
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