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W@K2M MusicChris's music / Rupert's music - poetic form/plot - WAKTM music - 'world music' Apart from the obvious musical references in the book, I want to encompass Chris' musical interests as well as mine so I asked him to write a little about the history of his love of music; Chris' musical interests "My musical tastes were really rock music & pop music, until I was about 19, and 2 things happened; Firstly, an ex introduced me to the music of Chet Baker I fell in love with both of them, and for the last 10 years they have shifted by musical horizon completely, leading me to discover the history & timeless
beauty of Jazz, further into Blues, Country, and Classical music. I have fallen for [Frank] Sinatra, [Billie] Holliday, [Tony] Bennett, [Miles] Davis, [Charlie] Parker, [Duke] Ellington, Evans, just
as I have fallen for Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Patsy Kline, & k.d lang. Rupert Cheek' musical interests: see here Gesamptskunstwerk For my own puposes I started to draw up a list of 'models' from a musical stand point as well as the libretto, theatrical, operatic, visual senses. MUSICAL / SHOW Queen/Ben Elton
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| Poetic form Opera; past, present, future "As the nineteenth
century progressed...relying on Commonly-agreed sequences of fixed
forms, W@K2M This section compares above to forms of W@K2M. Plot Opera; past, present, future "An indespensible
ingrediant of an effective opera is a libretto that tells an interesting
and easily understandable story of human conflict;... romantic
qualities, especially the love between man and woman, that seem
to the the pre-requisite of an operatic plot." W@K2M Are there any "romantic qualities" in W@K2M?.... |
| Music " “For musicals that come out of ... books, you have to create characters with the same respect and fondness as if it was an original play of yours...I followed its general plot, and we had these characters, but in many ways I looked at this as starting from scratch.” Mr. O’Brien added: “You have to have some inherent musicality in the film’s story or its characters for the nonmusical [film] to make sense as a musical. In ‘Hairspray’ the movie, all that the main character, Tracy Turnblad, wanted to do was dance - so it was a natural in many ways for a musical." PATRICK HEALY, Published: August 26, 2009, www.nytimes.com How have composers imagined music of the future to be? How could/should I imagine the music of C22nd and C23rd to be? Do I need to? I asked Chris if he had any ideas about what the music should be for any of the music theatre / opera / film: "Highway": Philip Glass inspired music - energetic, full of movement, but subtle enough not to drown out everything else... This immediately made me think of "The Grid" from Glass' Koyaanisqatsi although it may not be "subtle" so I started to try to write somnething similar. I started by composing a 'pastiche' of Glass' (title) from Koyaanisqatsi using a 4 chord sequence (B-D-A-E). "Bar": "Jazz, with a hint of Electronica...maybe along the lines of Herbie Hancock?" I had what I thought could be a jazzy chord progression so I used this as the basic theme for Trixie's (the bar). I need to listen to some Herbie Hancock! "Compound": more classical...more traditional "score", full of drama, with an epic feel... This ALSO made me think of "The Grid" but I don't believe that this is what Chris means by classical. At the same time I went about finding 'guide tracks' which I felt might create the atmosphere suitable for the scene, including music from the 'models' listed above, for example.....music from Star Wars®, Star Trek™, Indiana Jones, Back to the future, We Will Rock You... For Naqoyqatsi, Glass chose to use ‘real’ instruments to chronicle the shift to a ‘technological, synthetic, virtual world’. I wondered if it WAKTM might be more successful, at least in my ears, to think along similar lines. The ‘prelude’ of WAKTM is starts roughly at the present day (c2000) and runs through the next 200 years or so. I can not predict what music will be like in 200 years – the Queen/Ben Elton musical We Will Rock You suggests that all music will be the same - created by "Globalsoft" (©/®/™), that music will not be borne from personality, passion or creativity which is why the characters long for music like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. “The powerful & endless stream of information that flows from terminal to terminal in every town & every city on Earth, and every orbiting station, ship, and shuttle that travels to & from the home planet. They say that the Highway began at the end of the C20th, although it is now almost unrecognisable when compared to its humble origins. Back in the day, they called it the Internet, or so I hear. What had started out as simple networking rapidly became an unparalleled source of information sharing & distribution, a revolution in technology with vast influence in the fields of entertainment, news, communication, government, and eventually almost every sphere of Human existence. It came to impact upon our culture in a way that few technological advances had done before or have done since. The Highway is the grandchild of what began over 250 years ago [c1980?] and it has grown & developed in ways that those early pioneers of the ‘web’ may never have dreamed were possible. Today, the Highway has redefined the meaning of the word interactive, stretched the concept of what we call communication. It has advanced the capabilities of our species, and documented our collective experience in a way that some people have described as almost spiritual in scope.” (Eales, WAKTM) Space Music "Human Experience"
music Religious Music: How are religions/GODs portrayed in music? TRINITY When I think of the word "trinity" I think of the Holy Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. One of the first specific ideas I had about the music for WAKTM was to base the music for the Trinity on the number 3 - ("tri" meaning 3) - intervals, time signature, number of instruments. I wanted to be able to illustrate the 'rise and fall' of the Faculty which was achieved/caused by the Trinity.I chose to use 3 in the time signature as well as the harmonic pattern - 3 chords, based on an augmented triad (major 3rds) - C - E - Ab. Each member of the Trinity could be symbolized by one of these chords, e.g. Victoria = C / David = E / Szymek = Ab.
The idea of combining themes of a number of (characters) into a single theme was partly inspired by Glass' opera The Voyage, which is also 'about geographical and scientific discoveries' (Glass), covers the past, present and future. "As each crew member takes one of the ship's pulsating directional crystals, any two of which when brought together will point the way home." (synopsis Act 1, Sc 2) "While hiking in the Andes, one of then heard a low-pitched tone; the other was in digging near the ganges when she heatd a high-pitched tone. As the Earth Twins bring the crystals together, the original three-note chord is recreated, causing the space station's scanner to focus on the "home planet in the mosmos from which the original visitors came" (synopsis Act 3, Sc 1) The Voyage, like "WAKTM", also questions God; From prologue; From Act 2, Sc 2; (Libretto by David Hwang, after story by Glass) When the "WAKTM" refers to The Trinity I can use the 3 note chord, when it pertains to one more of the mebers of the Trinity (e.g. when they are talking/singing), I can use the relevant chords, depending on who is talking/singing. How should the music for the Trinity relate to / be different from the music for Rev Stanton who defends God? At this point I turned to Eales for some guidance; "I think [the music for Stanton] should be “related” in that the music for Stanton & his bad guys should remind the audience of the music for the trinity, but still be separate…Perhaps Stanton/bad guys music should be darker, perhaps with a similar theme to the trinity but in a minor key….Having a similar theme for the Trinity & the Religious fundamentalists also helps to show that they are really 2 sides of the same coin. They all are thinking about the same thing ie: the future of Humanity etc…They just take very different opinions of it. The trinity are all for “progress” whereas Stanton & the boys are afraid of what we might become, and want to hold back any changes or progress." Eales implies in this that Stanton is a bad guy. So the music for 'the bad guys' should be the same music as for Stanton. One possibility is to have the same sequence (C-E-Ab) but using minor chords instead of major ones. Or I could use (major/minor) chords based on a diminished chord - i.e. C-Eb-F# or C-Eb-A. The use of "C" as both Victoria's theme and Stanton's starting chord implies, at least to me, some connection between their characters so this was something I wanted to think about.
I then started to think about the music for Matty and Joe - as they were the first 2 characters to appear, and Matty seems to me to be the main character. So far, "C" seems to be a central key/chord so I wondered about using the same chord for Matty to suggest his centrality in the work but this also meant his chord would be the same as Victoria's; I was not sure I wanted this. |
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'World music' "Mian Li is an Asian lady. Her hands are small, soft, manicured and she is dressed immaculately in a slender white dress-suit. Her voice is lovely, melodious. She chose to call Matty by his surname, but Matty sensed that this formality was her custom, rather than an indication of a desire to keep her distance." So I needed a "slender", lyrical melody for her, and I wanted to suggest that she is Asian. I started to think about asian classical solo/chamber music. Whilst discovering C20th Chinese/Japanese composers, I learnt that some of them have been heavily influenced by Western classical music - often as a result of studying Western music at college/university in China/Japan or travelling to e.g. USA to complete their musical studies. Instruments Australian - Chinese - Mian / Japanese - research centre in Tokyo Fopr Monkey, Journey to the West, Damon Albarn chose to use the "pipa, the gu-zheng and the zhongran" to play Chinese sounds. I started to research these instruments, and to listen to Chinese music; the kind of music that most people would recognise as being from China. Music-In-Progress I've uploaded some of the music-in-progress to sibeliusmusic.com. If you don't already have it, you'll need to download/install Sibelius Scorch. The Composition Once I had composed some themes for the characters/places I started to assemble them into the structure they would appear in, giving myself blank space where I had not composed a theme. Using Sibelius I entered dialogue and narration into the score along side the notes I had composed. For the scenes where themes would re-appear, at first, I simply copied them from their first appearance, allowing myself to make them more scene-appropriate later. I wanted to get a musical thematic / tonal structure down to start with. Durations |
Audience Participation "I love the idea of the audience being able to "text" or "email" things during the play, which would appear on screens and images as part of the set... But, this would need to be monitored/screened to prevent profanity ... Perhaps someone backstage could receive & check the messages, and include the better ones within the screens/imagery.... It does leave open the danger that everyone will be on their phones rather than watching the play, so perhaps this "interactive" function should only be made available to the audience at certain (appropriate) times....?" (Eales @ Facebook Group) |
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Text © Chris Eales & Rupert Cheek 2006 - 2010. Music examples © Rupert Cheek. All rights reserved. 2010