We had a rehearsal with the ITB Choir last Sunday the 16th with my piece they commissioned, "Jokpiniana no. 1". It was great fun (except for the bloody traffic jam on the way to the rehearsal) and everybody learned a lot (oh, well, I hope THEY did, because I really did. Every rehearsal of my music is like looking at the mirror & knowing myself better).
The ITB-Choir consists of mostly amateur musicians, but their dedication to music and the way they work surpasses most of the "professional" (classical-) musicians in Indonesia. Its director, Indra Listiyanto is doing a great job in developing the choir, and their contribution to Indonesian classical music is invaluable.
Now, I can spot some weakness in my music. Unfortunately I will have to humbly tell these things to those of you who are playing my music, so that you can make my music better than it really is ! Certainly I am not Mozart whose music can survive in any conditions. So, these are the most "vulnerable" elements in my music (especially the choral ones) :
1. Speed. Remember the film "Top Gun" ? I feel the need, the need ... for speed !! Sometimes I write heart-pounding speeds in my music ; without it, the rhythms and "drive" would become quite sissy and soft. There is this element of "macho"-ness that could be lost when one performs it in lesser velocity than I indicated in the score. So, commander, set to Warp Speed 9 and ... ENERGIZE !!! Let's boldly go where no man has gone before !
2. "Just do it", or "Don't even think about it". Now, those speeds are scary (especially with so many rhythmic problems going on !), but once you set the speed DO NOT SLOW DOWN. Imagine a moving bullet or airplane, you know what happens, right, when it slows down ? One should maintain it ABSO-bloody-LUTELY strict (check it perhaps with a metronome?). Just think that you are Sandra Bullock driving that bus in the film "Speed" : if you slow down, then ... tick, tock, tick, tock .... BOOM !!
3. The highly dangerous silences on down (or strong)-beats. Those syncopes, I mean. This makes any performer enter rather late in hitting the note afterwards, especially in that speed. The trick of doing it is giving oneself an imaginary accent in those silent down-beats, as if a note (and a fortissimo one !) existed in that strong-beat silence. Don't take a breath in those silences, otherwise it is guaranteed that you will sing that next note later than it should be.
Anyway, especially for Jokpiniana no. 1, perhaps the secret of its successful performance can be resumed in two words : FUN and FUNKY.
I write my music in the beginning of the 21th century, and I hope it reflects and expresses our contemporary situation : bitterly ironic, rushing everywhere, highly anxious, agressive, and .... unfortunately still very much macho-dominated (no matter what Hillary Clinton declares to earn votes from as many women as possible). But I am a highly optimistic person (and composer), so no matter how bleak things look like outside, life is still fun and funky for me. Certainly, some 80% of my music (including Jokpiniana no.1) has a male character. No offense to the ladies, it's just how my music turns out after I composed it ... I couldn't help it myself !!
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Jokpiniana. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Jokpiniana. Mostrar todas las entradas
martes, 18 de marzo de 2008
lunes, 4 de febrero de 2008
More on Jokpiniana and its influences
ITB (the commissioner of my last choir piece, see my entry below) has asked me for more details of the work I just made for them. All I can say is that certainly it couldn't have existed without my fascination for cubism, which once in a while "appeared" in my works. What I did was, perhaps, translating the visual creative process of Picasso to music, therefore changing the concept "space" into "time". Living in Spain, I can't help admiring Picasso every day !
In "Jokpiniana", the way I use the motifs is by experimenting with its distortion, just what Picasso did with, e.g., Demoiselles d'Avignon, representing apparently solid objects as radically fragmented. This innovative approach broke down the components of the musical elements (originated from the poetic elements of Joko Pinurbo) into a number of individual facets, presenting several different aspects of one object (it could be a melody, or harmonic progression, or rhythmic pattern) from a variety of angles, simultaneously. I also juxtapose different, most of the time contrasting, moods (again, originating from several poems of contrasting moods) back to back with each other. What I want to repeat again and again, especially to those reporters and critics who always misunderstand my way of creative thinking, is that I am not just reading the poems word by word and make a melody out of it. I concentrate on the mood of the poem as a whole. Once I get the music, the words (or phrases) become (a little bit) less important. Nevertheless, I never use a phonetic element outside the poem : for example, the words "dang" and "dut" do exist IN the poem itself ! I just take it out and establish it as an independent element, treating it purely as sound and not as a word that has a meaning. I always consider a great poet as a great painter : they know how to choose the exact words for the "paint" as a material to create their picture. So, don't get me wrong : individual words are of primary importance for me in the beginning of the creative process, but they become secondary in the RESULT of the musical work. A great painting is not made with only primary colours, right ? Its greatness lies in how the painter mixes the colours, and how the result could express what he would like to communicate with the observer.
As I mentioned in the subtitle, Jokpiniana is an etude. The "real" manifestation of this technique I use in the opera I am writing now. Its duration is 70 minutes (plus break between the two acts), and I must say that this is an exciting experiment (whether it works or not, it's not really exciting ; it's terrifying for me ! That's why I keep on taking breaks from its composition, due to self-doubts, and write other short works). Its results have worked before in my pieces, so I hope it works again now !
In "Jokpiniana", the way I use the motifs is by experimenting with its distortion, just what Picasso did with, e.g., Demoiselles d'Avignon, representing apparently solid objects as radically fragmented. This innovative approach broke down the components of the musical elements (originated from the poetic elements of Joko Pinurbo) into a number of individual facets, presenting several different aspects of one object (it could be a melody, or harmonic progression, or rhythmic pattern) from a variety of angles, simultaneously. I also juxtapose different, most of the time contrasting, moods (again, originating from several poems of contrasting moods) back to back with each other. What I want to repeat again and again, especially to those reporters and critics who always misunderstand my way of creative thinking, is that I am not just reading the poems word by word and make a melody out of it. I concentrate on the mood of the poem as a whole. Once I get the music, the words (or phrases) become (a little bit) less important. Nevertheless, I never use a phonetic element outside the poem : for example, the words "dang" and "dut" do exist IN the poem itself ! I just take it out and establish it as an independent element, treating it purely as sound and not as a word that has a meaning. I always consider a great poet as a great painter : they know how to choose the exact words for the "paint" as a material to create their picture. So, don't get me wrong : individual words are of primary importance for me in the beginning of the creative process, but they become secondary in the RESULT of the musical work. A great painting is not made with only primary colours, right ? Its greatness lies in how the painter mixes the colours, and how the result could express what he would like to communicate with the observer.
As I mentioned in the subtitle, Jokpiniana is an etude. The "real" manifestation of this technique I use in the opera I am writing now. Its duration is 70 minutes (plus break between the two acts), and I must say that this is an exciting experiment (whether it works or not, it's not really exciting ; it's terrifying for me ! That's why I keep on taking breaks from its composition, due to self-doubts, and write other short works). Its results have worked before in my pieces, so I hope it works again now !
lunes, 28 de enero de 2008
Jokpiniana I : A reflection on dangdut
Work on my opera is going quite well. Haven't made up my mind about the dialogues & recitatives, but I have done some arias and choreographical music. I decided a few days ago to take a break from it and compose my short (4-minute) choral piece commissioned by the ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Indonesia) Choir for their tour to Italy.
The piece will be for SSAATTBB choir.For about one year I have been fascinated by the (very) short poems of Joko Pinurbo "Jokpin". You can find them (if you understand Indonesian) in http://celanasenja.blogspot.com/ . I have been toying the idea of putting several poems into one short piece, and writing for the choir has provided me the opportunity to do so. So, Jokpiniana will be a series of choir pieces, or shall we say "choir etudes", and this one for ITB will be the first of I-dunno-how-many-will-there-be etudes for choir. In this piece I concentrate especially on his fantastic poem "Dangdut" which provides me the ostinato, but I will treat it antiphonally. Dangdut is a very popular rhythm that is very close to the heart of most of Indonesians. One always say that it belongs to the low-class people, but hey, all the diplomats at the Indonesian embassies around the world always organize dangdut parties. They even have dangdut artists TO BE FLOWN FROM INDONESIA for their "cultural" events. I must say that they are more representative of Indonesian culture than, let's say, me or my colleagues of "classical music" who are pretentious enough of searching things such as "What is Indonesian classical music ? What is Indonesian opera?" and other useless soul-searching questions. Dangdut IS our identity !
The piece will be for SSAATTBB choir.For about one year I have been fascinated by the (very) short poems of Joko Pinurbo "Jokpin". You can find them (if you understand Indonesian) in http://celanasenja.blogspot.com/ . I have been toying the idea of putting several poems into one short piece, and writing for the choir has provided me the opportunity to do so. So, Jokpiniana will be a series of choir pieces, or shall we say "choir etudes", and this one for ITB will be the first of I-dunno-how-many-will-there-be etudes for choir. In this piece I concentrate especially on his fantastic poem "Dangdut" which provides me the ostinato, but I will treat it antiphonally. Dangdut is a very popular rhythm that is very close to the heart of most of Indonesians. One always say that it belongs to the low-class people, but hey, all the diplomats at the Indonesian embassies around the world always organize dangdut parties. They even have dangdut artists TO BE FLOWN FROM INDONESIA for their "cultural" events. I must say that they are more representative of Indonesian culture than, let's say, me or my colleagues of "classical music" who are pretentious enough of searching things such as "What is Indonesian classical music ? What is Indonesian opera?" and other useless soul-searching questions. Dangdut IS our identity !
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