- Part of 'A topology of musical encounter' (summary) -
" To handle folk tunes is one of the most difficult tasks; equally difficult, if not more so, than to write a major original composition. If we keep in mind that borrowing a tune means being bound by its individual peculiarity, we shall understand one part of the difficulty. Another is created by the special character of folk tune. We must penetrate it, feel it, and bring out its sharp contours by the appropriate setting... It must be a work of inspiration just as much as any other composition."
- Bela Bartok about composing with folkmusic influences
When a collective starts working with ‘culturally signified material’, the creative attitude of the composer determines how the initial materials take their definite place in the music. What I wish to centralise in developing such a choice is the degree of inherency of the musical material. The one side of this scale tends to fit the musicians inside a concept, while on the other end the composer strives to model his concept after the musicians. The least inherent means the tendency to use materials as abstractions, to translate them into an idea on the conceptual level. The actual music that one hears can be a totally different experience in this case, and the initial musical materials only have an indirect translation to the sounding result of the music. They can be practically inaudible.
The conceptual approach is a wide spread attitude that was the fashion among modernistic-influenced composers during the second half of the twentieth century. I remember once attending a conference on the music of german composer Nicolaus A. Huber, an extreme and convinced executor of musical abstractions. In one composition the lecturer pointed out that the whole structure could be traced back as the reciting of the German hymn, if one would count back how many times and around which tonal centres a certain motive was displaced over several instrumental groups of the orchestra. This was to be taken as a political complaint. The music itself was a most abstract conglomerate of dissonance, where one would never be able to discover such an idea on musical grounds, only as a musicological truth. This is the extreme side, but also a musician like Diego Nicolas translating Colombina folksongs into jazz instrumentation and improvisation has a quite abstract approach. The music that he composes is more accesible and transparent than Huber’s, and therefore the intention is easier to grasp. Still we are dealing with musical ideas that are not primarily expressed on the level of a sounding reality.
On the other end of the scale we find the materialistic tendency that puts the exposition of materials ‘as they are’ centre stage in the musical result. In this case the composer believes in the inherent quality of the materials and searches for the best possible way to highlight them. This compositional approach operates closest to the sounding reality of music. Somehow the tendency towards the materialistic, inherent approach naturally belongs to the creative process I propose to work with in the context of our encounters. It seems most beneficial and appropriate for our musical goals, and I do believe the engagement in our newly imagined musical world is primarily with the musicians and their sounds, and not with abstract notions of music.
In the oeuvre of Bela Bartok himself we find examples of interpreted folksongs ranging over the whole scale of inherency, from very direct harmonization of unaltered melodies, up until dense and complex compositions that somehow carry the folk music influences in their musical genetic structure, but show no concrete materials at all. We can therefore say that his engagement with his topic was total, and also changed his perception of harmony and melody from within. In any case it is interesting and stimulating to be aware of which position on the scale you are working. On different levels of the work different accents can occur as well in this light, and the need for a certain attitude can differ according to the collaborating collective.
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