here is my favourite<\/a> (with two Great Indian Hornbills and some higher pitched unidentified birds in the foreground).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
[10\/16]<\/p>\n
A short one for today:<\/p>\n
I am turning my mind to the percussion instruments, buoyed on by Minxiong’s best capuccino.\u00a0 I’m still in the process of checking with Weiwuying what is available. I’m very happy to hear that they have a steel pan, a wonderful but little-used instrument.<\/p>\n
I’m working on the distribution of the instruments amongst the two percussionists, and making notes regarding viable mallet types for each instrument. Samuel Z. Solomon’s book “How to Write for Percussion” (I’m currently relying on an elicit copy I obtained in Tianjin) is of great assistance in elucidating all things percussive in nature.<\/p>\n
[10\/15]<\/p>\n
I too easily forget just how much I love being in library reading rooms.<\/p>\n
Today is a mildly upsetting date: two months to go before the deadline for the piece. I had originally hoped to have a full hand-written draft of the piece ready by now, but I am terrifyingly far from reaching that milestone.<\/p>\n
I am still plugging away at the opening three “cascades”.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I discovered a funny way of turning seven hours into 30 mins. It goes like this: have seven hours free to compose.\u00a0 Do thirty minutes of composing, in which time I work on correcting a chord, only to find that I prefer it the way it had been before. I realise that I’m actually falling asleep (and even beginning to dream) while still sitting on the piano stool. I am compelled to go and lie down. I get up two hours later with what feels like sunstroke, because the apartment is too hot (I left the window open with the AC on). I remember that there is a document that I had to forward from person X to person Y. I discover that said document needs to be corrected before sending it. I start to get stressed when I realise I only have two hours left to compose. I need to go out to eat something and to buy an Oulong milk tea to calm down. I come back and discover another document that urgently needs to be proof-read and sent to the same person Y before the end of the day.\u00a0 Time’s up.<\/p>\n
I’m sure this sequence of circumstances is not unfamiliar to a lot of creative artists, or indeed to anyone trying to make progress with a task, the scale of which exceeds the scope of our short-term memories and requires sustained effort over a period of months. Particularly familiar must be the sense of panic, anger and despondency as one realises that one has lost, or is in the process of losing such a precious and hard-to-come-by expanse of contiguous work-time. The value of time for a creator does not seem to be proportional to its length. Four hours are worth more than double the value of two hours. Seven hours are probably worth five times’ two hours. It’s all about flow, and having the ability to stuff one’s short-term memory with all manner of imagined, hypothetical, half-attempted and speculative structures, and to keep them suspended and spinning like a mobile in one’s mind’s eye. One somehow has simultaneously to be both the Captain and the Doctor from Woyceck<\/em>: unperturbedly taking things “langsam, langsam” (because only then can one think freely), while striving also to seize every precious unwasteable moment.<\/p>\n[10\/13]<\/p>\n
Some important quotes I’ve found recently:<\/p>\n
“If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.”
“I’ve always defined a composer as someone for whom there is a music that is intolerably absent from the sound world out there, and if that’s the case, and you feel this obligation, kind of obsession, to supply that music, then nothing’s going to stop you.” Chris Dench, “The Labyrinthine Worlds of Chris Dench”, Interview by Samuel Andreyev, July 26 2020<\/p>\n
“What makes art interesting is that it deals with the general in the particular… [A] piece of music is always internally dissonant in the sense that those general aspects should ideally inform our general listening to some extent, but it’s the particularities of the work which lend wings to the retention and reworking of those impressions after the piece is finished.”
***Feral<\/em>, and at the end of it I had about six different versions, none which I felt I could use in the piece.\u00a0 It’s undoubtedly been a valuable clarifying exercise: what am I trying to do?\u00a0 Even: Who am I as a composer?\u00a0 As my much-cited teacher would say, “What is a “George” sort of chord like? What is a “George” sort of rhythm like?” This is why I’ve banned myself from any kind of overly goal-directed listening from now on, as I’m too easily pulled in different directions.\u00a0 I listened to the opening twenty seconds of Ferneyhough’s Contraccolpi<\/em> two days ago, and immediately turned it off, because I was just too enamoured by the invention (this gorgeous soft-sounding ratchet-type percussion instrument here, that gorgeous and elusive microtonal (?) harmony there…).\u00a0\u00a0 I so easily get pulled in a different direction in that instant, without properly assimilating those things I admire into a “George” idiolect. It’s not that one cannot borrow (or steal, or beg for that matter), but rather that it has to be rationally and deliberately integrated into my own independent system of tensions and signifiers.\u00a0 Sounds high-falluting, but that’s how I currently conceive of this process.<\/p>\nMy immediate problem with Feral<\/em> is that the opening sounds (in one or two versions) like a bad imitation of Ad\u00e8s’\u00a0In Seven Days<\/em>–which is for me one of the greatest opening themes ever composed.\u00a0 Perhaps the problem is precisely that I think it’s too great.\u00a0 Can this be rectified with a few tweaks of rhythm, counterpoint or pitch material, or is a thorough re-start necessary?\u00a0 This remains to be seen.<\/p>\nThe opening four and a half minutes of Feral are a succession of three “cascades” that ramify (as our old friend Ignacio Agrimbau would say) through the ensemble.\u00a0 The paths of ramification exactly follow the branching structure of the hyphae of a tricholoma mycelium, as I copied it from a sketch in “Entangled Life”. I’m thinking I’ll actually draw the mycelium into the manuscript before designing each cascade, to get an abstract sense of the proportions of this proliferating process.\u00a0 I would normally calculate all the durations of entries of instruments based on nested proportions of the golden section, and I’ve done that for some aspects of Feral<\/em>‘s structure, but I want to try to use the eye and the inner ear to judge this mycelium-like development. Michael had suggested I find a map of the rivers of Yellowstone park (site of perhaps the most famous instance of a trophic cascade), but I couldn’t find a detailed enough diagram of all the waterways for it to afford me sufficient material with which to work. I tried the estuary of the Teifi too, but that was also somewhat lacking in granularity. If I can make the mycelium idea work, that is actually even more interesting for me at the moment.<\/p>\nReally feeling huge pressure now with this!\u00a0 The psychological aspect of composition is a terrifyingly powerful thing. Composition is also physically exhausting, both because it uses so much mental energy and because one is sitting for a long time without moving.<\/p>\n
Note to self: Try raising up my Ikea adjustable table and do some standing-up composition, for the sake of my pelvic tilt!
[10\/10]<\/p>\n
Addendum: It’s 1am on the 10th. I went back to a sketch from two weeks ago. I find it’s useful to leave things, forget how they sounded, and return to them afresh. It was better than I remembered, and new possibilities for the “trophic cascades” element of the piece opened up to me. Some very, very valuable work over the last three hours, as well as some very ambitious rhythms. This piece may well feature my first ever 21:13 (which I conceive of as three sets of septuplets semiquavers in a pulse slightly slower than the prevailing crotchet pulse).<\/p>\n
[10\/9]<\/p>\n
\u80fd\u5920\u5805\u6301\u81ea\u5df1\u5275\u4f5c\u7684\u4eba\u5f88\u5bf6\u8cb4\uff1aCage, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Carter, Xenakis, Feldman\uff0c\u6f58\u7687\u9f8d\uff0cTarkovsky\uff0cLynch\uff0c\u674e\u767d\uff0cPollock \uff0cBrothers Quay, Yoko Ono \u7b49\u7b49\u90fd\u662f\u9019\u7a2e\u4eba\u4e86\u3002\u91cd\u9ede\u4e0d\u662f\u4ed6\u5011\u7684\u6280\u8853\u597d\uff0c\u6216\u8005\u4ed6\u5011\u505a\u7684\u597d\u4e0d\u597d\uff0c\u800c\u662f\u4ed6\u5011\u6709\u6c92\u6709\u52c7\u6562\u53bb\u5be6\u73fe\u81ea\u5df1\u5167\u5728\u8072\u97f3\u6307\u793a\u7684\u5275\u4f5c\u3002\u7279\u5225\u662f\u6280\u8853\u597d\u4e0d\u597d\u9019\u500b\u554f\u984c\u6c92\u6709\u610f\u7fa9\uff0c\u56e0\u70ba\u70ba\u4e86\u80fd\u5920\u505a\u51fa\u81ea\u5df1\u7684\u5275\u4f5c\u4ed6\u5011\u4e0d\u50c5\u50c5\u9700\u8981\u628a\u63e1\u73fe\u6709\u7684\u6280\u8853\uff0c\u800c\u65b0\u88fd\u9020\u4e00\u5957\u5c08\u7528\u7684\u6280\u8853\u3002<\/p>\n
\u7576\u7136\u6211\u4e0d\u662f\u8aaa\u6211\u6709\u4e00\u500b\u7279\u5225\u7684\u8072\u97f3\uff0c\u6216\u8005\u6211\u5f88\u52c7\u6562\u3002\u4e0d\u904e\u4eba\u5bb6\u81f3\u5c11\u53ef\u4ee5\u628a\u9019\u4e9b\u7576\u4f5c\u5076\u50cf\u3002<\/p>\n
A chat with my dear friend Sam Cave made me rethink yet again what I’m doing, reminding me of the fundamental concept of John Conway’s “Game of Life”: complex patterns emerging out of simple principles. It might have kicked me into examining properly what I’m doing with the entrance of the horn (see my previous diary entry), and how that material could be constituted.\u00a0 Simple principles can generate powerfully effective results.<\/p>\n
I’m still not sure I want the central rondeau da caccia (for that is what it is) to be entirely spectral (or in fact pseudo-spectral, because I’ve decided it’s eminently possible to “cheat” a bit with 12 EDO notes- and I suspect that’s what Grisey and others all do anyway), but I was toying with it this evening. The original plan was, first spectral, then diatonic, but perhaps the diatonic material… and then material ever more infiltrated with (my interpretation of) Ferneyhough’s microtonal “hypertonality” would work to demarcate the sections.<\/p>\n
I tried to sketch some phrases according to Sam’s description of Birtwistle’s approach to hocket-like material in Carmen<\/em>… And it’s funny how something that sounds very clear and effective is actually hard to do well! Then again if it were easy, then everyone (or lots of people) would do it, and it wouldn’t be something distinctive and special about Birtwistle.<\/p>\n
This sort of sketch is so simple it inevitably looks na\u00efve to any of the myriad of people who’ll have had almost identical ideas.<\/p>\n
That twelve note chord that builds up in the last bar of that sketch is the moment when the trumpet begins from offstage. Everything stops and just this distant, muted high C is left lingering from some unexpected place. I slightly had in mind moments like that ten (?) note chord in Mahler Ten, but more importantly and always in the back of my mind when dealing with near-chromatically saturated chords are those dense sonorities at the beginning and end of Colin Matthews Suns Dance<\/em>, a talismanic piece for me as I write Feral<\/em>.\u00a0 That is a piece of such energy and flexibility of invention that it is almost dangerous to think too much about it in comparison to my writing.<\/p>\n[10\/6]<\/p>\n
I’m starting to reify what happens with a crucial moment featuring the French horn. The horn is meant to be the “keystone species” in this musical ecosystem, what the wolf in the Great Glen, or the wild boar in the Forest of Dean, or the mackerel in Cardigan Bay might be. What does it mean to have a musical element, the absence of which causes everything to go out of whack, with other elements over-proliferating and monocultures taking over, that once it is reintroduced makes everything lock back into place, rebalance itself? A very difficult question.
<\/p>\n
[10\/3]<\/p>\n
Today’s listening while copying chords in McDonald’s:<\/p>\n
<\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/button><\/div><\/div>\nWhat I love about this is how unpretentious Ferneyhough comes across when he talks in this sort of context.<\/p>\n
I’m finding it useful to listen to composers talking. It’s helping me with my piece more now than listening to pieces.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
[9\/28] Living Toys<\/em> two weeks back. The way he freely and impressionistically combines triadic harmony and certain gestures that “pretend” to be harmonic series (both 12EDO) with the real harmonics of the solo horn is fantastically inspiring. The implied roots are never the same, so you have moments where, for example, if I recall rightly, the fifth harmonic of an F fundamental is combined with a B major chord in the strings\u2014where it functions as a pseudo seventh harmonic. I was amazed by the elusive pitch combinations he was creating. The 12EDO triadic (but non-tonal) harmony combined freely with pure intervals worked perfectly well. Even the first entry of the horn is so imaginative, which skirts around the G\/C drone in the tubular bells and double bass. I really felt that he was hearing these things very deeply.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
[9\/27]haecceity<\/em>, as John Duns Scotus put it).<\/p>\nI listened to Samuel Andreyev’s interview with Michael Finnissy yesterday and today, and it gave me a lot of impetus. It felt like being in a lesson with him. I made some big steps forward today.<\/p>\n
I’ve also just listened to Stravinsky’s Persephone<\/em>, which I love. This allegory of decline and renewal in natural cycles, a kind of ritual of resurrection, is very poignant. The ending is astoundingly beautiful for me. The production I watched incorporates Cambodian dance which really inspires me too: I want to do something similar with Chinese opera movement in a contemporary music context. (Finnissy mentioned the piece in the Andreyev interview and this prompted me to revisit it).<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
[9\/25]La Terre est un Homme<\/em>\u00a0that there is deliberate expression there, even though it is hard or impossible to grasp or predict. I feel my inner ear is struggling to conceive of the sonic reality of the materials which I feel the Idea compels me to create.<\/p>\nI’m really struggling with Feral<\/em>. I’m conflicted. How do I create “the thing itself” rather than an image of the thing (a wild ecosystem and not merely a postcard of a wild ecosystem), while at the same time having a clear sense of connectedness between participants in that ecosystem? Connection within apparent chaos (and brutality?!).<\/p>\nIt’s hard to define cause and effect when dealing with musical materials. What is the logic behind a particular change wrought by one layer in the ecosystem in relation to the others?<\/p>\n
Chris Dench is such a great composer!! ik(s)land\uff3bs\uff3d<\/em>is really special, and Dench’s music is so well sculpted and replete with clear intention.<\/p>\nI’m still trying to do as much listening as I can, to find my way with Feral<\/em>… But I’m very aware now that it cannot become an excuse to avoid actually writing it.<\/p>\nI’ve just been writing to the festival asking if they have all kinds of percussion instruments (tuned gongs and all kinds of Chinese opera cymbals and a flowerpot drum, as well as a steelpan!).<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
[9\/20]
Richard Barrett talks so well about his intentions. This whole mini-docu is worth watching. In a way, I feel his creative mind was constituted during a blessed era when this level of self-belief and boundless creative ambition were both possible and even socially sanctioned. I find it psychologically very hard to go there myself in the time and circumstances (of course, a talent differential may also be relevant). Still, this is an essential input for me in writing Feral<\/em>, however that manifests in the final piece.<\/p>\n(The section with the violin solo, the soprano singing ancient Greek, and Barrett himself improvising with electronics and then the whole ensemble improvising on his material\/in his style are all incredible!)<\/p>\n
<\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/button><\/div><\/div>\n—<\/p>\n
[9\/19]Feral<\/em>!<\/p>\nThree more months…<\/p>\n
It’s an eleven-minute piece for fourteen musicians after all. And it’s about something highly esoteric, which increases the conceptual load (or not esoteric, in fact, but conceptually complex).<\/p>\n
It’s about cascades in nature, watery ones, yes, but primarily about the signalling cascades in mycelia and trophic cascades in ecosystems (metaphorical royalties payable to the authors of the extraordinary books, Entangled Life<\/em> and Feral<\/em>).<\/p>\nI read yesterday in Monbiot’s Feral<\/em> that the proliferation of jellyfish in the last half century in Cardigan Bay is likely because of overfishing of two keystone species, herring and mackerel.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
[9\/16]<\/p>\n
Warning from the philosopher Vlad Vexler: Distinguish between the thing itself and a depiction of the thing. Am I crafting something truly\u00a0Feral<\/em> (hard to imagine, isn’t it?\u00a0 But one must try somehow), or an image of feralness (an image of an image, a shadow of a vase projected on a cave wall, or a piece of music about a postcard of a storm).<\/p>\nListening to the BBC Sound Effects archive. Field recordings of rainforests.<\/p>\n
[9\/15]Feral<\/em>, and seeking guidance from the Masters, arrived at Ravel’s “Ondine” from Gaspard de la Nuit<\/em>.<\/p>\nAnd island within a lake within an island within a lake within an island: I’ve only just realised that this is such a good image for what that piece is in my current learning journey! (Thanks to David Hawkins for this image.)<\/p>\n
[9\/11]Entangled Life<\/em>, about fungi. It’s very inspiring. I’ve been copying some of the sketches in the book of different fungi’s mycelial structures.<\/p>\n
Imagine a kind of musical polyphony that mimicked mycelia…<\/p>\n
But I find it hard to grasp the constructive principles that differentiate these mycelial types, even after sketching them.<\/p>\n
Today I listened closely to: Smetana Vltava <\/em>(which actually isn’t a rondo, really, or at least it didn’t seem like it today, unless the water theme is hidden in the sections as a cryptic rondo\u2014I must have misremembered), Birtwistle Earth Dances<\/em> and Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum<\/em>, and Finnissy C\u00e2tana<\/em>. Lots of ideas and inspiration from all these.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
[8\/16]Feral<\/em> recently, and I’ve just started reading chapter two, which is about mackerel in Cardigan Bay.<\/p>\nThe descriptions of his visit to the Great Glen are very beautiful.<\/p>\n
I’m dipping in and out, totally out of order.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
[8\/8]Feral<\/em>: How would you convey a musical ecosystem? What sorts of interdependencies and trophic cascades would you create?<\/p>\nIn response to his scepticism about programmatic music: It’s not programmatic. It’s a Schopenhauerian “parallelism”.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
I’ve been commissioned by the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) to compose a new work for fourteen musicians, to be premiered by the festival ensemble, conducted by Brad Lubman, in the Weiwuying International Music Festival on 18th April 2025. In preparation, I’ve been thinking about the piece, collecting material, studying other composers’ scores, making copious notes, and reading books on both music-related and non-related topics, for about six months. I started writing notes and rhythms about six weeks ago. It’s going slowly so far. As I compose Feral <\/em>(which is a title Michael Finnissy reassured me I could “live up to”, and so that is the title), I find I’m having so many thoughts about the cultural, symbolic, kinaesthetic and geometric meanings of music, about the art of composition, and about the art and psychology of listening, and up until now I have mostly shared them with friends only– mainly with composer-performers Tom Green, Sam Cave and Chiu Hsing-Tzu, who tend to me my three most important sounding-boards. I realised sometimes I think of something worth preserving in a more permanent form, and so I’m starting this creative diary. \uff082024\/10\/5\uff09<\/p>\nHere’s my post about the commission:<\/p>\n
\u95dc\u65bc\u4f5c\u54c1\u59d4\u8a17\u7684\u8cbc\u6587\u5728\u9019\u88e1\uff1a<\/p>\n
Weiwuying International Music Festival: 2024 Composition Workshop\/2025 Commission \u885b\u6b66\u71df\u570b\u969b\u97f3\u6a02\u7bc0\uff1a\u9304\u53d62024\u5e74\u4f5c\u66f2\u5de5\u4f5c\u574a\u3001\u63a5\u53d72025\u5e74\u97f3\u6a02\u7bc0\u59d4\u8a17\u5275\u4f5c<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/georgehollowaycomposer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/20241016_172614.jpg?resize=1%2C1&ssl=1\")
(Scroll right to the bottom to find out the background to this creative diary.)<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/fz2rGltKv64\/maxresdefault.jpg?w=810&ssl=1\")