The sound of .... music?

These last few days am putting finishing touches to my work Stanza Suara for big choir, orchestra and angklung which I mentioned here in March. It's only about 8 minutes long, but it took much more time than usual for me to write, due to many things : my unfamiliarity with the angklung instruments and how to write for them and integrate it into my own language (it will be played by amateur players which always complicate the situation), my travellings and my musical intentions which also complicate my own life. The poem by Hasan Aspahani is a wonderful one but strangely enough it didn't immediately "sound" in my head --which turned out to be a good thing, since this long process matured the music in my head. This angklung business isn't easy stuff either, since it will be part of its presentation to the UNESCO (the UNESCO director is planned to come to its premiere in Bandung during the ITB International Choir Festival who commissioned the piece) to establish it as the Indonesian National Heritage. So I should show the world that it's not just children's toy, it's a musical instrument as serious as a french horn!

I want to emulate the evolution of sound since its creation throughout this 8-minute piece. It was too big an idea, I know ... and in fact I am toying the idea to extend the piece in the future, since there are lots of underdeveloped materials in the piece, although the underlying foundation is simple : from unpitched noise, through the most basic intervals (fifths, thirds to the most "recent" interval of tritone) reaches the triumphal tonality in the end. Basically the interval of perfect fifths appear as the motif throughout the piece. Inevitably the piece goes through a lot of styles, from the baroque polyphony up to ....ehm, Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams type of epic film music and even a touch of Shakira sexy rhythms. All those are served on one tray of "Western" orchestration mixed with bamboo instruments, my usual chords and dotted rhtyhms and even constructed with the fractal geometry principals in mind (by changing the word "space" into "time", and "size" into "duration") so hopefully one can find a unity of musical language throughout the whole piece. I mean, Palestrina, Schumann, John Williams and Javanese gamelan players all exploited the interval of fifths and major/minor thirds, right? Same intervals but different usage and different perceptions by different people & culture. That's the point I wanna say in the piece.
Anyway, I do learn a lot from writing Stanza Suara. One of them is that this is the first time I write music (I mean a structurally complex one, not a 3 minute song or piano piece) really from beginning to end! However, I couldn't break the habit of writing backwards during finishing the orchestration of the piece, so I sent it to the players (ITB Choir) starting from the last section. And for your information, I still read all books (especially fiction stories) jumping to the end after the first pages. And then finish the rest of it, obviously. Oh well, old habits never die. I wonder what psychologists would say about this.

As usual, I work on 2 pieces at the same time, so these days I am also working on my opera Pro Patria to be premiered around the same time of Stanza Suara (and coincidentally both have repeated letters for their initials!). Am gonna write about my opera in my next entry. When Stanza Suara is completely finished (hopefully in a few days), I'll need another piece to write together with my opera, and almost certainly it will be a new Rapsodia Nusantara.Part of it is already written. Its ending, of course, is already complete.

What makes music music ? (A break from composing "Stanza Suara")

That question can be easily answered usually on the first day of your theory class at a music conservatory, but perhaps it's not so clear for the laymen. So, I'll tell you now what we were taught : music is called music because it consists of these 5 elements : pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony and the instrument by which it is produced (which can be applied to human voice as well). Nowadays it is certain (through lots of researches) that music is something that belongs exclusively to human beings : animals, given any regular rhythms, cannot syncronize. And you don't call the singing of the birds or the whales "music", first because they cannot "make music together": synchronize the rhythm or melody of its companion or its human trainer, and second for the reason that I will tell you in the next paragraph. In any case, their "music" is a lower level communication, just like human beings using sign languages or words (yes, words are lower level communication! It is music that is the higher level, since music, as Victor Hugo had said, expresses those that cannot be expressed by words.)
"Good" music (this definition of "good" certainly differs in every humans) acts on the brain in increasing serotonin levels to produce endorphine hormones which gives you the feeling of pleasure. How it works is still a mystery, since music is something intangible. A tangible element that causes the same effect but through chemical process is chocolate. Yes, chocolate. Perhaps that explains those Mozart chocolates from Austria ... you listen to M's music or eat chocolate would make you feel like entering heaven he he ... And perhaps it also explains why Hitler so desperately needs Wagner's music : it must have given him a good feeling after killing all those Jews! So, now you understand why whales and birds don't make music, although you do feel peaceful when you listen to them, but it doesn't trigger your endorphine stuff inside you.
But is it true that music has to consist of those 5 elements above? I think our conservatory professors missed some points. For example, what about African drummings, which only consist of rhythms and instruments, no melodies let alone harmonies? And what about those Sundanese flutists from West Java and also Bali when they are improvising endless melodies without any clear rhythms? So as you can see, music can consist of only a few elements from those 5 mentioned. And this is the point that I wanna make when I am making my music "Stanza Suara", on poems of Hasan Aspahani for the opening of the ITB International Choir Festival next July that I wrote about here last month. I wanna start my music with only sounds, as stated in his poem. No music, just sounds. The problem is, once two singers or two instruments play together, they make a harmony. Once they play two notes consecutively, they make a melody (yes, 2 notes can make a good melody! Just listen to the opening of Beethoven's 5th!). So, how do you make any of those 5 elements inexistent in a piece of "music" ?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in my music. Now you just have to reconsider calling it music.

A beautiful mistake

Time and again, I am inspired by Hasan Aspahani's poem. But this time it's not what he wrote, but what he didn't write. To be precise, what I considered a mistake. A beautiful mistake, that is.

The poem starts with this phrase : "Pada mulanya ialah bunyi .." (In the beginning it was sound). Now ...really ? Yeah perhaps, but in the very beginning ... there was ...silence, right ? Now, how do you compose silence, without copying John Cage's 4'33" ? The answer, my friend, is blowing in Hasan Aspahani's poem. It is a mistake, but it poignantly rectifies itself. And it is the rectification which is so inspiring to me.

So, I have officially started my work on his poem, "Stanza Suara". This poem and my work on it are commissioned (for the third time for me) by the ITB Choir for the festive opening of their big International Choir Festival in Bandung next July (I know, I know, time is running out). Now, the words "festive" and also "monumental" (which they use to describe my yet inexisting piece) are very dangerous to me. My second cantata, LIBERTAS was supposed to be like that too, and see what came out of it ! Slow and brooding loooong melodies. Dead bodies, bones, loss, lamentation everywhere ...
For now, I just paste you Hasan Aspahani's breathtaking poem here. No more comments about it until I finish my music, with God's will. And with the travellings of this and next month, it will be quite some time ...

Stanza Suara

PADA mulanya ialah bunyi
kita memandang pada pecah
cahaya, terang yang seketika
terentang di semesta suara

Pada mulanya ialah bunyi
kita mendengar lagu jiwa
mempercaya pada pesona suara
menyebut diri, mengucap dunia

*

Sunyi melirih, O, sunyi bersih
menepi tangis sampai ke sepi
Sunyi menyisih O sunyi letih

Sunyi merintih, O, sunyi pedih
membawa mimpi sampai ke sepi
sunyi menyerpih, O, Sunyi perih

*

Pada mulanya ialah bunyi
di bumi raga, di angkasa sukma
kita meninggi pada harmoni
terbang di sayap-sayap suara

Para mulanya ialah bunyi
kita mengada karena suara
kita mendunia karena suara
kita mengangkasa karena suara

*

Dengar kata mendengar kita
menyimak bunyi bisik bumi

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
semesta kata, harmoni kita

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
sukma kata, jiwa suara kita

Dengar kata, mendengar kita
Mengepak tinggi sayap suara