Above and Beyond the Bass: Harmony and Texture in George Benjamin's 'Viola, Viola' PDF

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28 Tempo 5y ail) Z8-38 c 2005 Cambridge University Press DOi: IU.H}17.'S00402982n50flfll36 Printed in the United Kingdom ABOVE AND BEYOND THE BASS! HARMONY AND TEXTURE IN GEORGE BENJAMIN'S 'VIOLA, VIOLA' Philip Rupprecht The bass as harmonic and textural force George Benjamin's r...

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Tempo 5y ail) Z8-38 c 2005 Cambridge University Press DOi: IU.H}17.'S00402982n50flfll36 Printed in the United Kingdom

ABOVE AND BEYOND THE BASS! HARMONY AND TEXTURE IN GEORGE BENJAMIN'S 'VIOLA, VIOLA' Philip Rupprecht The bass as harmonic and textural force George Benjamin's rich harmonic imagination was apparent from his earliest published works. A distinctive chordal sensibility is already evident in the 1978 Piano Sonata, with its glittering streams of five- or six-pitch clusters; in the hollovi' bell-chords punctuating the 1979 orchestral score, Ringed by the Flat Horizon; and in the supreme stasis of the A-minor pedal chord (a six-three triad) unveiled by the icy glissandi lines opening A Mind of Winter f]981). All three pieces share a fascination with degrees of chordal resonance - the interplay of upper partials above a fundamental - and a sensitivity to chords as sound objects. True, Benjamin's style, beginning at least with Antara (1987), has shown signs of a more linear-contrapuntal orientation, and less reliance on what one critic terms 'purely coloristic phenomena'.' Yet one could equally claim some continuity between the refined harmonic world of the early scores and the surprising richness of chordal sonority to be heard in a far more recent arrival, the 1997 duo Viola, Viola. Viola, Viola draws one's attention to a central concern in Benjamin's music: the function of a bass, both in harmonic and textural senses. Harmonically, the traditional or 'classical' bass function evolves from acoustic givens - the generation of upper partials. third, fifth, or seventh, above a fundamental. Considered texturally, the bass is a foundation, a guide for upper voices in a polyphonic texture, Benjamin himself has spoken publicly about what he terms the 'problem' of the bass. He seeks to evade the rigid hierarchy in the texture that results from the 'classical' bass, where, as he anthropomorphically puts it. 'Everything ahove looks down and says. "You are my master, I follow you". That severely limits the freedom of behaviour ahove. harmonically and melodically'." My interest here is in Benjamin's distinctive re-imagining of the role of the bass within a musical texture in two roughly contemporaneous scores: Viola, Viola and in the Third of the Three Inventiom for Chamber Orchestra, completed in 1995. The two works stake out related but in some ways complementary visions of musical texture, tn Viola, Viola, we can hear the composer's conscious and willful desire to 'conjure an almost orchestral depth of sound' from the solo string duo.' The compositional argument at rimes favors a symmetrical polyphony of voices about a central axis pitch, rather than above a bass. As a piece for two alto-register instruments. Viola, Viola necessarily eschews the bass as a harmonic-textural foundation. Invention 3, on the other hand, defines its textural space with the much more expansive resources of a ' Renaud Machart, 'Survey', in George Hcnjamin (Paris: EJititjns Ircani, ]9-^6, Etiglish trans. London: Faber, 1997), p. 50. ^ George Benjamin, 'Interview with Risto Nicniinen', GeoTgf Benjamin, p. Iii. ' Viola, Vii'la. programme note pnnied with the study score (Londiin. Fabcr Music, 1997).

ABOVE AND BEYOND THE BASS: HARMONY AND TEXTURE IN GEORGE BENJAMIN'S 'VIOLA, VIOLA' 29

chamber orchestra, albeit one whose distinctive sound-world includes such exotic interlopers as euphonium and fliigelhorn. Here, the deepbass register can sound, but it is largely devoid of resonant potential. This bass cannot guide upper voices from below; rather, the music unfolds in curiously weightless upper-register layers, driven on by a relentless motivic determination. Such textures challenge traditional concepts of harmony; yet as 1 hope to show, Benjamin's harmonic universe has recognizable laws of its own for determining what should happen above a bass. The Coda of Viola, Viola offers a good vantage-point from which to survey Benjamin's polyphonic textures. It is reached by a climactic plateau, eight minutes into the piece, ruptured suddenly by silence, the start of the Coda itself {see Example 1, third score system). Here begins the "acoustic chorale', a sequence of six- or seven-pitch chords imbued with intervallic allusions to the acoustic overtone series. The first chorale chord, labelled O in Example 2, is a third-based structure derivable from an E fundamental. Chord O can be read upwards in stacked thirds. E - G# - B - D - F# - A#, giving a dominant ninth on E, plus A#, the sharp eleventh. Five of the six pitches in the score are stacked as thirds. The exception here is the E fundamental, which is shifted from the bass to descant. The next chorale chord, P, presents an identical sharp-eleventh structure over an A fundamental. Here, though, the role of the pitch A as theoretic root is more disguised: one must conceive of the uppermost trichord (A,C#,E) as somehow 'belonging' below the lower (G,B.D#), the A itself acring as a Rameauian 'supposed' root for the other five chord tones,' Beyond its registral dislocation, the A pitch's claims as theoretic root or acoustic fundamental are complicated further by Benjamin's actual pitch doublings, which reinforce the lowest sounding pitch, G3, with the only doubling in chord P.'

Example 1: ViiWii, Viola: reaching tbe fitial 'acoustic chorale'

Hi

TEMPO

In conventional terms, then, P's chordal bass note is G. while its theoretic wot. A, is displaced by a process akin to 'chordal inversion'. In both O and P, the sharp-eleventh complex evokes the eleventh degree (a quarter-tone sharp) of an acoustic overtone series. That perception is in our ears here following the build-up preceding the first acoustic chorale chords (Example 1, top system). Listen in particular for the lowest and highest pitches: the open C-string(C3) in Viola 2. and the high F# (F#6) pedal at the upper boundary of the texture. The final goal of the passage (chord A in Examples 1 and 2) brings C and F# into close-position union as (C,E,B[,,F#). Chord A, unlike O and P. lacksfifthand ninth (G and D), but its fundamental, C, is anchored as the lowest-sound pitch. All three chords -O, P and A - have a dominant-seventh-eleventh profile: a registrally compressed representation, as it were, of acoustic partials 1-11. It is in the "acoustic'profile of these chordal sound-objects that one senses both the heritage of Benjamin's early studies with Messiaen and his awareness of the world of French spcctralisme.^ Meanwhile, amid this texture of frantic arpeggiation and isolated chordal verticals, the low-register continuity of a sounding bass - an acoustic 'tundamental'- appears only marginal to polyphonic activity. Much of the aural emphasis has shifted now to a play of upper partials.^ A:

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PaHials

O:

Example 2: Acou-stk"' chords of the eleventh with displaced fundamenlals

P:

c/iiasi A In the acoustic chorale, then, Benjamin's chordal objects evoke natural resonance intervaliically, even while marginalizing traditional lower-register bass functions. Turning now to Benjamin's opening, one is again aware of a texture lacking the traditional 'gravitational' pull of a low-register bass. This is because harmonic activity is controlled now as much from the center of the texture - by mirror-symmetric itiversion about a central pitch axis - as from the bass upwards. " Parallels betwtm ihe acoustic elements of Benjamins style and those in the works of Criscy, Murail, c-i at. are easiily overstated. Rir a judidou.s comment, see Graham Lack, 'Objects of contemplation and artiticf of design: sonic structures in the music of George Benjjmm'. Tnnpc 215 (January 2001), pp. 10-14, As Uuk observes of Viola, ViiiJii. 'the voidng of the chords as well as sinjile motifs produces and stren^hens certain upper partials, helpinj; the listener to "home in" on sum and difference tone.s ansing out of the interlocking harmony' ('Objects of contemplation', p. 13i, Such acoustical L-rtects are maximized also by sheer volume: cf the .^^attacks delineating the descending [••#-E-D#-C# figure that iiiterv/eaves the sonore verticals ot the chorale proper (after bar 162),

ABOVE AND BEYOND THE BASS: HARMONY AND TEXTURE IN GEORGE BENJAMIN'S 'VIOLA, VIOLA' 31

Example i: Tuning A, triads, scurrying, and drone events at the opening

Mirror symmetry and guiding tritones Four events at the opening of Viola, Viola (Example 3) collide with one another in dizzying succession: a soft 'tuning' A played on three different strings;*^ C-major triads, triple stopped and suddenly fortissimo; a ponticello scurrying motive, still prolonging the A pedal; and, last, a harrowing drone, 'rooted' (so to speak) on a low Ep, with a high C#6 above. Four ideas, ten pitch classes (the missing B and G# wiil arrive soon), but one is hard put to ascribe mucb functionality to a 'classical' bass, wbetber considering the initial tuning A, or the low El, drone. Is tbis a case of Benjamin's expressed intent to 'get away from tbe quasi-functionality of the bass line' to a greater 'freedom of behaviour above','' and if so, wbat are tbe laws governing such bebaviour? Benjamin s opening controls harmonic and polyphonic progression not from below, but instead by reference to a central pitcb axis. Pitcb symmetries govern all four events of the opening. The scurrying shapes, for instance, trace pitches in mirror-like symmetry about a D4 pitcb axis (Example 4(l). Tbese glittering cascades twist back and forth between tbe two players, but always tbe patb is from tbe inital A down a fifth to tbe axial D, and then down a mirroring fifth to G.'" The otber events of tbe opening - the tuning A, triad, and drone - reveal comparable pitch-symmetries (Example 4b). Tbe C major triad, added to tbe tuning A, pairs two fiftbs (C-G) and (A-E) about an absent G#4 axis. Tbe same axis bisects tbe force field tbat keeps tbe drone pitches E\, and G# in magnetic opposition. In context, then, the music moves from the C-major triad to the drone pitches by simple outward expansion (arrows mark tbis on the example): up from E5 to C#6 in tbe descant, down from C4 to E|,3 below. These opening symmetries always involve tbe same two axes, [!)4 and G#4. Every motion in the passage result.s from tbe same pairing of pitches about one or otber axis of inversion."

I DRONE I " Viola I alternates two M pitihi^s, th jt...