Transcript - S3 Ep3: Piano +1

Jun 6

Intro:

This is Mission: Commission [intro]

Melissa Smey:

This is Mission: Commission, a podcast where we demystify the process of how classical music gets made.

I’m your host, Melissa Smey, and I’m the Artistic Director of Miller Theatre at Columbia University in New York City.

On this show, I’ve commissioned three composers to write new works of classical music - and to do it in just 6 weeks.

This is week 3 - the halfway point in our journey. For this commission, the composers are writing a piece for piano and one other instrument. And in this episode, we’ll go – sometimes literally – inside the piano.

Let’s start with Ann Cleare and hear an excerpt from her audio diary.

Ann Cleare:

Hi, everyone. Ann here. And I am back at my desk after a busy few days of grading papers and compositions. The time away from working on the piece did give me a bit of space to think about how to proceed this week and over the next weeks. It also gave me a chance, just in the small pockets of time I had, to look into some sources that have been inspiring to me. So some of the sources are kind of more scientific, some are anthropological, some are more artistic.

Melissa Smey:

Well, hello there, Ann.

Ann Cleare:

Hi, Melissa.

Melissa Smey:

So, interesting in something that we heard in your audio diary this week about how scientific you might want to be – is that something that you find yourself asking a lot?

Ann Cleare:

I think I do because I think when I describe to a lot of people that I'm doing that, that this is the kind of process that I'm undertaking to make a piece, a lot of people think it must be kind of scientific then – that it must be some kind of translation of the science of the place. The starting point where I'm trying to find inspiration, I like to think about, kind of different ways of looking at a place I should say.

So if it is maybe more the way a scientist would look at it and look for how a place behaves in terms of maybe a scientific perspective. And then to think about it in different ways, maybe the way an engineer would look at it. The way it's built, maybe like a building if it was something like that, or a tool of some kind. Generally, we all have very different connections with different places, with different forces of nature. So there’s a whole kind of perceptual realm as well and what we feel as humans. And then of course there's the whole idea of what the place might feel itself. So I suppose at this stage, I'm kind of trying to look at it from all those different perspectives so that I hopefully end up making something that maybe doesn't completely depend on one angle, one of those angles, but kind of borrows from them all. That would be, I think, the ideal for me.

So I'm back by the tree and I'm going to record for a second time, and this time, I'm going to try two different ways of recording. The first one is kind of a static way of recording in that I'm going to place the mics as well as I can. And I'm also going to try a different microphone as well as the one I had last week. And then I'm going to record in a very different way.

When I replace the mic in the first way of recording, I'm going to be as quiet as I can be – just try and let the microphone absorb as much of the sound as possible. And then in the second way of recording, I'm going to move around with the microphone, almost like an instrument that's performing the space. So I'll have two very different recordings and see how these come out. But I do think the recordings this week are going to be quite different, not just because of these different techniques, but also just being here now. The weather is so different today. I mean, it's mild and warmer, a brighter day, whereas last week it was snowing. I'm also thinking, you know, this process over the next weeks when I write the piece, it's also really going to mark winter moving into spring. That could possibly relate to how material transforms throughout the piece because I really do love processes of change, very incremental change and feeling that in music.

Melissa Smey:

Listening this week, you can hear that it was more active. You can hear there are a lot of birds. And so, then you were talking about the idea of the progression of nature, and the idea that that’s something that you might put into the piece, this idea of a process of incremental change.

And so, I love the idea that a listener could take that, have that same experience with music. And so, if you could talk to us a bit about how you think about a process of incremental change, I’d love to hear about that.

Ann Cleare:

Yeah, it was amazing how different it was there. Not just even… very different to my ears there. And then listening to the recordings, they're actually so much more difficult to analyze in a way because there's a lot more activity.

So I'm back in my studio reviewing some of the material that I recorded today. Like if I compare maybe even just a sound from the earth between the two weeks – so this would be last week's, [sound]

and then this week's. [other sounds]

Yeah, this week's is so much fuller, as you can hear. Now, I will say I've filtered out some of the microphone sound, and I guess there's a focus on the tones that are in there. So yeah, this would be a kind of active use of the microphone. And it sounds something like this at the moment. [sound]

I don’t know if you could hear that oscillating… You know, I'm moving the microphone as gently as I can so that the cable doesn't cause too much interference. And basically, it's almost like a vibrato in a way, but with the microphone moving through the air.

One of the earth, but this would be kind of moving the microphone or the geophone very, um, gently when it's in the ground. [sound]

Wow, there's a lovely high tone. So that would be some movement. I don't know if you can hear that fluctuation. It's like “wah wah wah wah wah wah.” So that's just with a rubber percussion mallet that I have, and I place that on the geophone, and I really gently, slowly move it.

Melissa Smey:

Ok, well, so you've got your second set of field recordings by the trees. And in terms of the progress of our time together, we're just about at halfway through our six-week progress, which is really hard to imagine, no pressure.

Ann Cleare:

Oh wow. I’m not having a panic attack. [laughs]

Melissa Smey:

Nope, no panic attack. So it seems that soon you'll probably start linking this to piano material. And so, there's another technical topic I wanted to talk about with you, with the goal of kind of demystifying things for listeners, which is the idea of prepared piano. And to help people kind of understand what even is prepared piano. And so, I'd love for you to talk a bit about that, either what it means broadly, but maybe more relevant, what it means for you and your work.

Ann Cleare:

Yeah, I guess it is a funny term, isn't it? Prepared. I would say, in general, there is either prepared piano or playing on the inside strings of the piano.

[piano strings strummed harmonically]

There is a lot of that in my work with writing for piano. And I think a lot of that relates to working with this, kind of environmental material that doesn't really fit into tonality very well. And the piano is such a tonal instrument, you know, it's really all about the diatonic chromatic harmony –

[scale slowly played on the piano]

– because traditionally, it's played on the keys. And then, you know, when I go out and record the tree or the earth or whatever, it just doesn't map onto those keys very well at all, maybe in a few slight instances.

So for me it's, I suppose, about the material that becomes of interest to me in the beginning of a piece. Then I have to find a way to translate that onto an instrument. And because the piano is so chromatic and not really microtonal at all, I can't really get to the frequencies between the chromaticism, which is where I need to get to really, and say with a string instrument, you know, it's much easier to get there because you're sliding along the strings and all those frequencies are there.

[string instrument plays glissandi]

It's not always easy to find them, but they're far more accessible than on the piano.

I mean, when you think of a piano, as you say, it's such a huge instrument, but it's made of all kinds of materials too. Like I think, when you look into it and you see all the inside strings, you just can't help but wanting to play them, I think. [laughs]

[piano string plucked and sustained]

I often think, you know, for the audience, it's a shame they don't get to see the inside of the piano more because I think they might understand why it's, it's actually so hard to resist going in there. [laughs]

It also, it's just such a different sound world in there. I mean, they're almost really like two different instruments, the keys,

[chromatic scale descending on the piano]

and then the inside strings.

[piano strings strummed up and down the full range]

And what I'm really feeling with the piano is that, you know, it's so hard to create a sustain on a piano, like a true sustain, because it's like the minute you strike a key, it immediately starts to decay.

You know, you can't actually really hold a sustain on the piano acoustically, whereas I think preparation can help you a bit with that as well, or at least a combination of playing on the keys and inside the piano. So that's often, I think, a reason that it comes into play for me as well, is trying to keep the piano sound for a little bit longer; sustain it for a little bit longer.

[theme]

Melissa Smey:

Good. Well, this seems like a nice place for us to pause. Thanks again, Ann.

Ann Cleare:

Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Smey:

Our next composer is Wang Lu.

Well, hello there, Lu. How are you?

Wang Lu:

Good, how are you, Melissa?

Melissa Smey:

I'm good. I'm delighted to chat with you. What's so interesting is that you've had a remarkably busy week. I want to talk first about those diaries and then talk about, you know, big picture, where the piece is. So we kind of unpack those audio diaries, and so you’ve got four of them. And, the first two are piano improvisations –

[AUDIO DIARY – PIANO IMPROV]

– and that's on the piano in your office. Is that right?

Wang Lu:

That's right. It's a bit out of tune. Yeah.

Melissa Smey:

Yeah. And it's funny, I feel like you can almost hear that the keys are a little bit old. You can tell that it is not a youthful instrument there. And you had said that it was from 1913. [laughs]

Wang Lu:

Yeah. I'm just thinking, maybe the quality of that you just heard, the oldness of the piano, becomes part of my imagination. If one day it’s played on a beautiful new Steinway, and we go, “Oh, that's not the piece.” [laughs] So, I don’t know.