The transformation and experience from idea to sounding gesture – some thoughts about the process and my meeting with Teo Chew music

by Anders Flodin

Preparations 

Composition is as much about seeking as it is about creating, but then what? Entrances to reality, openings to the world. When I started composing my composition Le foglie verdi di salice piangente sul fiume (My translation: The green leaves of the weeping willow on the river) for the Teo Chew Ensemble, my problems were basically the same as my previous compositions. The form determines what can be played or expressed, but what do you do when the determining form makes it impossible to say what you want to say? Then the form must be broken down, then the form must be destroyed. Only when the form is broken down can a new one arise, which makes room for what previously did not exist, or for which there was previously no place. Then a new entrance to reality has been created. 

Reading as inspiration

By far the best book about music from China in my own mother tongue is written by the Swedish author Cecilia Lindqvist and is exclusively about the instrument qin, which the author had the opportunity to study in Beijing in the early 60s. I got the book from my wife a few years ago as a birthday present and now I just found it again. Despite its size, the large book was a little out of sight, but since I had previously put it away on the bookshelf, I picked it out. It did not have a colorful and eye-pleasing cover of the kind that today’s books often have. An old ink drawing of a man playing the qin with a woman in the background adorned this otherwise entirely sepia-black cover. The book, titled Qin, was written by Cecilia Lindqvist. I had come across her name before but knew nothing, just associating it to something vague about the instrument and the author’s great interest in China. I skimmed the book a bit, figured it couldn’t hurt to read it, and that afternoon I started reading. I read while I was waiting for the food to be ready, I read while I ate, I read on the train to my overnight apartment in Ystad and if it hadn’t been so dark when I walked home in the alleys from the train station, I would have read then too. The eagerness with which I read this book recalled what came over me when I was studying, not musicology but composition, more than thirty years ago. Musicology is writing, it is always conveyed with a language that musicology can channel and explore, but rarely if ever revolutionise. After all, there aren’t that many ways to analyse and write about music. Composition is languageless, the theories are conveyed in a completely different medium, which does not touch the original. The language can be more or less relevant, of course, and be close or at a distance, but the reflections it makes are in any case always something completely different from the experience you have when you listen to music. It goes without saying. The book and lyrics that made me so excited, that made me feel like I was on to something, were often about the foundation of music, the very becoming, the moment when it goes from nothing to becoming something. Lindqvist’s book on the origin of the instrument was such a text, because it was so simple, not easy to understand, but simple in that all its concepts and whole thinking applied to phenomena that were simple and that everyone knows. What this text did, I think, was put into words something I didn’t know I knew. The fact that I read Lindqvist’s book on qin with the same zeal has to do with the fact that it moves towards the creation of music itself with a technical insight that I myself do not have, and that it does so soberly – a piece of music that is in the process of being composed is never great, is not canonized nor mythologised, it is something else and much smaller, something concrete, unfinished and changeable. What Lindqvist does is to put qin in touch with the world again and she does this in two ways: firstly by approaching the situation that the musician was in while they played their instrument, in a distinct way – Lindqvist is herself a trained qin player and when she writes about qin, she does so based on the technical challenges qin musicians faced and the technical means available to them. What did the musician try? What made the musician? Why, why not? The practical point of view sees the image as unfinished, as something that has not yet become anything, and thereby removes all that is finished, that is, exalted and iconic. The other way that Lindqvist puts the music in contact with the world is through theory, philosophical aesthetics, in other words by drawing the music into the general and the general, that which applies to all music. I have never come as close to an understanding of music as when I read this book, precisely because it is not looking for the finished music, i.e. as it is for us, but for the music as it was for them. 

Guidelines for myself

An important starting point in my composing has been the proximity to linguistics and how language is put together. The similarities between composing music and language as communication are striking, but for that reason should not be exaggerated. Most of the time I don’t compose one motif at a time just as I don’t say one word at a time. I want to do something more. The motifs function as components in my composing. But, in order for the motifs to have the intended effect and meaning, they must be sorted and encapsulated according to certain rules, otherwise they cannot be released. In other words: I can’t put music together anyway. The music has to be organized into well-formulated phrases and sections and in order to express myself in a musical language, I have to master its grammar – a grammar I am constantly working on. I believe that composition and artistic activity have very little to do with the art – the science – of investigation. It is possible to use similar tools and it is possible to be inspired by similar things, but the results are and remain of a completely different nature – in many ways I believe that the disciplines are diametrically opposed. From my side, this opinion contains no values whatsoever, but it can be good to have a motto when the interest is directed towards combining art with science and technology. Persistence, accuracy, waiting for the right moment and openness to impulses are, however, some common denominators of the disciplines, as well as curiosity and constant striving. My result, the composition, is laid out for the listener to look at with the ears – there is nothing to see here except what is conjured up by the listener’s own imagination. With this as a background, my curiosity and the desire to apply my knowledge in a musical environment that was new to me were high, but with a humility towards the task.

Rehearsal and outcome

The composition is built up in nine sections that in the first section successively add a new chromatic tone(s) in a so-called all-interval series that becomes complete in section 5. The series is then thinned out by filtering out three adjacent chromatic tones, three in each new section. During my first rehearsals with the ensemble on site in Farmstudio, I quickly realized that the ensemble was so used to playing in unison and following the unison line that it was difficult for the musicians to take the initiative to choose their own line through the composition. If one musician stayed on one note, the other musicians stayed on the same note. Or, if the yangqin musician made a pitch leap in an upward movement, the ensemble did the same shortly after. My idea was that the musicians would play separate lines and not follow each other. I had to change the input value and start conducting the ensemble in a Soundpainting-like gesture where I could mark contributions for the individual musician. The musicians were not used to being led in this way, but it made the composition come closer to my idea. Since Teo Chew music is carried on in an oral tradition and not in a written tradition, there is a lack of understanding in the communication between the written and the performance of what is to be played and what the score represents. I spent a lot of rehearsal time trying to break the habit of playing in unison and to allow the individual musician to gain confidence in playing in the harmony that has arisen and that the harmony may vary during the time the musician is still on his note. In the last two rehearsals I added a few percussion instruments to the piece that is not represented in the score to create orientation points.

Score: https://andersflodin.com/2024/09/27/le-foglie-verdi-di-salice-piangente-sul-fiume/

During the concert, the music flowed more easily than during rehearsals. The musicians listened and looked at each other and at me to see when I would show them their contribution. It occurred several times that the musicians initially, in each new section, played in unison, but that often meandered into a consonance delta. The musicians had greater confidence in the composition when I stood conducting in front of the ensemble and that they began to shape their own part in the whole. 

My analysis shows that the context in which the numbers in the score are found play an important role in performing them. It also shows that the performers are rooted in a traditional way of performing. 

References

Boersen Ronald (2008). Musical expression – exploring a virtual analogy of interactive performance. (Master’s Thesis). Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, The Hague.

Flodin, Anders (2006).  I gränslandet mellan not och ton – notbilden i nykomponerad musik https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:135414/FULLTEXT01.pdf . Higher advanced term paper : Musicology and Artistic Practice Örebro University.

Karkoschka, Erhard (1966). Das Schriftbild der Neuen Musik, Celle: Hermann Moeck Verlag. 

Křenek, Ernst (1952). Zwölfton-Kontrapunkt-Studien, Mainz: Edition Schott 4203, B. Schott’s Söhne. pp. 50-51.

Lindqvist, Cecilia (2006). Qin, Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag AB. pp. 240-252.

Schneerson, Grigori (1955). Die Musikkultur Chinas, VEB Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig.  

Thompson, Walter (2006). Soundpainting – The Art of Live Composition, Workbook 1, SPingBooks, New York.