Festival Works
Phases (detail) (2020)
Across the surface of the elevated glass box in KINDL, Mareike Lee spatializes enlarged elements from James Tenney’s score Phases and creates a room that glows from within with coloured light. This is in response to and an elaboration of Tenney’s sense of form being the result of structure and their relation in space (also on the page). A hybrid installation, the graphic “postal pieces’ scores will be projected via overhead projector onto a window of the glass box.
Aggregates and Processes (2020)
Aggregates and Processes is a series of 13 posters: a tribute to James Tenney’s inclusive, vibrant and inspirational artistic community. This is a pluralistic collection to honour Tenney’s keen visual sense, and his diverse and curious appreciation of and collaboration with a vast array of composers, visual artists, and friends. The poster images (drawings, photos, scores, words), both archival and newly created, are contributed by Tenney’s colleagues and close inspirations. Lee has worked closely with Lauren Pratt (Tenney’s partner) to source these. Lee enlarged and adapted the material as needed, and reproduced them on poster matrices whose colours echo the colours of Tenney’s Postal Pieces scores. Images, work, writings, etc., are heterogenous, and include contributions from Carolee Schneemann, Catherine Lamb, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Marc Sabat, Walter Zimmerman, et al. The posters are hung spatially in a wavy line echoing forms in Tenney’s scores.
Plainsound Study 1 (2015)
The Two Diatonic Divisions of the Major Third Presented in the Dorian Mode, for violin and double bass, op. 61a
The Plainsound Studies are dedicated to Helge Slaatto and Frank Reinecke, as well as to all violinists and bassists with an interest in the sound and the special performance techniques of non-tempered just intonation. I conceived these etudes in the hope to provide some adequate musical material for the study of intonation. It is about working on the harmonic intonation (the endeavour to research, memorize and optimize the specific timbre of the many different interval sonorities) and in particular about refining the melodic intonation. The latter also involves memory: for the pitches occurring and recurring within the musical context, and for the size and the character or melodic feeling of the interval steps between them.
If we want to further sensitize and train the ear’s melodic feeling, I was thinking, then we could perhaps begin with some systematic rehearsals aimed at producing a conscious distinction between the Major Whole Tone and the Minor Whole Tone. The Major whole-tone step is defined as the difference between a perfect fifth and a perfect fourth (the frequency ratio 9:8 or circa 204 cents), whereas the Minor whole-tone step is established by the difference between a perfect fourth and a pure minor third (10:9 or circa 182 cents). These two intervals constitute the basis for the practice of non-tempered just intonation, and they sound as distinct from each other as the sun and the moon, even though their difference in size is but a Syntonic Comma.
During the preparations for the composition of the etude I found, to my surprise, an extremely effective rehearsal method which makes it possible to acquire a feeling for this distinction between the two whole-tone steps within a very short amount of time: the comparison of the two diatonic divisions of the major third. This is as it were the subject of the piece. The melodic progression G–A–B, for example, can be sung or played on the violin in two different ways, simply and solely by following the natural instincts: first according to the frequency ratio 8:9:10 as in the G major sequence G–D–A–G–A–B, and then in the related key of E minor as in the sequence G–E–A–G–A–B, where the note A is understood as the perfect fourth above E and thus tuned a comma lower, so that this time the order of the two consecutive whole-tone steps is reversed.
The melody that comes in at the beginning of the piece almost imperceptibly in the double bass part and is later continued by the violin (all the way up into the highest register at the end of the fingerboard) is in the old syntonon-diatonic Dorian mode, based on the tonic note E, which is tuned to the G string and a comma lower than the pitch of the E string. This mode features both diatonic divisions of the major third between its 3rd scale degree (G) and 5th scale degree (B), as it employs both a major sixth (C#), the so-called Dorian sixth, as well as a minor sixth (C) on its 6th scale degree. It is quite astonishing that these minute comma distinctions can indeed be heard and performed on the violin with great precision and pleasure even in the very highest register, thanks to the drones played by the double bass.
View (2019)
View is a piece for cello in 13-limit just intonation and was written for cellist Émilie Girard-Charest in 2019. The performer of the piece uses a curved bow (Bach-bogen) to produce dyads and triads, melody and counterpoint. The top string of the cello is tuned down to create a neutral third – 11/9 with the lower adjacent string, and this neutral third is a recurring pivot point from which the music bifurcates into denser harmonic fields. The piece was composed using a guitar that could resemble the specific cello set up – namely a 4-string fretless acoustic guitar played with a violin bow. View can be actualized on such an instrument, and in this way it is a part of an ongoing project of extending the prospect of the guitar as an instrument apt for tuning issues and sustained sound.
WENN (2020)
In its original form, WENN is a song based on a poem by Luisa Rüster titled Wenn wir es wiedersehen.
Wenn wir es wiedersehen.
Wenn wir uns wiedersehen.
Wenn wir es anders wiedersehen.
Wenn wir uns anders wiedersehen...
Verabschieden wir uns neu.
Verabschieden wir es neu.
Verabschieden wir uns anders neu.
Verabschieden wir es anders neu.
Und sehen erneut mit anderen Augen.
What draws me most into this small text is how Rüster employs a simple, linear process of transformation as a structural framework on which to explore – briefly, directly – a complex interplay between some of the perhaps most characteristic sounds in the German language: w, v, s, sch, etc. For me, the process of composing in just intonation often forms a rather direct analogue: simple, even non-rhetorical temporal forms and processes form an ideal basis to investigate characteristic interactions of tone deeply linked to auditory perception. In this performance with the Harmonic Space Orchestra, we strip away the surface-most layer of WENN's sound by substituting voice with alto flute. In a sense, what remains is what might have been the voice's tonal resonance, and – as if with magnifying glasses – the performers carry out a particular examination of the piece's harmonic and melodic substance.
Partial Response (2000)
Partial Response was the precursor of the compositional method that came to me in 2003: producing beautiful line drawings as the basis of my work. This was my first (and only!) purely graphic score (from which musicians perform), and I created it using a now-obsolete graphic notation program, called "Notewriter", which enabled me to work with extended lines, and place visual elements however I pleased. This piece was my second exploration of ratio-related intervals. But it was my first scoring of extended sustains, slow glissandi, and intentional beating. It opened up the path for the many compositions that followed, for over a decade, from 2003–2014, all of which first appeared as line drawings.
For this solo acoustic guitar performance, so sensitively and carefully prepared by Fredrik Rasten, the original score for three musicians has been adjusted to accommodate the single timbre of the guitar, and in response to some of the physical challenges the material presents, like playing simultaneous glissandi, or using multiple ebows. The resulting magical music is very close to the heart of my musical aesthetic – i.e., sinewaves – but the interpretation and physicality of Fredrik playing his guitar makes some of my favourite sounds truly alive.
Quick Figure (first steps in harmonic space) (2010)
Quick Figure is one of a series of works I created for a concert of violin duos in 2010 at Berlin's exceptionally resonant Haus19. Its first performers were Daniella Strasfogel and Biliana Voutchkova. The piece began as a very reduced drawing. I decided to interpret the lines in a new manner (new for me, at least), and that was to create some simpler intervals around the difficult-to-tune 13-limit of the harmonic series. Although some of these "simple intervals" are easily recognizable as a pure ninth (9:4), a large major second (8:7), or a pure fifth (3:2), they are extremely difficult to perform, as is playing a glissando while sustaining another string!
The subtitle, first steps in harmonic space, referred to my first conscious use of creating simple intervals around a prime greater than 3, as inspired by Tenney's notion of a "harmonic lattice". I am grateful to Sarah Saviet and Johnny Chang for also being brave enough to take these first steps with me.
Freehand Poitras (2008)
Originally composed for a dance project by Canadian choreographer and dance artist, Robin Poitras, the string trio, Freehand Poitras, explores the space within certain bounding intervals of the D and C harmonic series through a single glissando, and through (often subtle) chordal shifts. Each measure is followed by a breath-like rest, and some measures are repeated several, or many times. I am excited to hear this version performed by HSO members!
Plainsound Glissando Modulation (2006–7)
Raga in just intonation, for violin and double bass, op. 49
Some basic questions for the composition of this piece
How can a viable completely microtonal music be made – and function in a graceful way – in which as many different pitches of the glissando continuum as possible are distinguished and tuned harmonically to each other?
How can this microtonal pitch repertoire be successfully accessed and refined by a rigorous application of non-tempered just intonation, so that a wealth of complex harmonic sounds will emerge: surprising new consonances and new dissonances that will immediately make sense to the ear, even if they may have never been heard before?
How can the ancient performance practice of just intonation be revitalized now through a concerted effort of composers and performers to thoroughly explore and demonstrate its wonderful brilliance and sonority (like it happened in the choral music of the Renaissance, or continually in the classical Indian music), so that it may perhaps find new friends within the realm of western music as well?
How can the instrumental and ensemble playing techniques be developed and practiced that will enable musicians to familiarize themselves with the specific timbres (“periodic signatures”) of the various microtonal just intervals, so that these sounds may indeed become readily retrievable with an astounding degree of precision?
Which aesthetic and structural concepts can be derived directly from these new virtuoso tuning and performance techniques? How can the counterpoint and its instrumentation be optimized in their function to support the intonation in each instance, and how can a continuous musical flow be generated by a polyphonic harmony incorporating natural sevenths, tuned quartertones, and just intervals based on higher partials (13, 17, 19, and 23) in its microtonally modulating sound progressions? – The piece is dedicated to Helge Slaatto and Frank Reinecke.
V1 (2020)
V1 was composed for the Harmonic Space Orchestra in spring 2020, intended as the first in a series of works focused on trichords wherein two pitches are easily tuneable to a third pitch, but not to each other. In V1, these trichords are made larger by adding tuneable first-order sum and/or difference tones, resulting in chords with 4–7 total pitches. The net effect is that each larger chord has two subsets (which share one common tone) that are relatively easy to tune in isolation, but difficult to tune when all pitches are sounding. Entrances are staggered in each large chord in an effort to more easily facilitate the possibility of precise tuning. The chords are linked together by a series of common tone modulations, on a stochastic journey through James Tenney's model of harmonic space. Variations in orchestration and register over the course of the piece provide further dimensions for contemplation.