Trees That Sing

Posted on December 2, 2011 by composerinthegarden

Never did pine trees seem so dear. How sweet was their breath and their song, and how grandly they winnowed the sky! naturalist John Muir, from “Steep Trail”

It seems fitting at this time of year, when we bring pine and holly into our homes to celebrate the holidays, to give some thought to trees. I have been in love with trees my entire life, spending hours in the woods as a child, walking among them, climbing them, reading beneath them. Not surprisingly, I was married in a grove of plum trees on my parents’ farm; the night before the wedding, the trees on the farm came to me in a dream and promised me that they would be there as witnesses. Then they sang the most beautiful song, with voices deeper than the deepest Russian men’s choir. That song, untranslatable into earthly song, has always stayed with me.

Trees figure large in the human imagination, in myth and archetype, in holy writ. The notion of the sacred tree is present in most cultures. The idea of towering giants whose roots are as deep as their heads are high is profound and symbolic, even as they feed us, shelter us, transport us and hold us in their arms. After reading Julie Moir Messervy’s “The Inward Garden” which uses an archetypal approach to garden design, I created my lower garden around the idea of a cosmic tree at its center. It is a small weeping cherry surrounded by a tall hardwood forest, a still point in the center of the swirl of trees and flowers and birds.

Surrounded by these same trees as I was sitting on my deck (and perhaps remembering my wedding eve dream,) I was inspired to write Trees of Righteousness, a three movement choral work commissioned to celebrate the 125th anniversary of our university.

Here’s a brief clip from the first movement: (Text: They shall be called trees of righteousness, planted by the Lord)

Many musical instruments, including guitars, cellos, pianos, and wooden flutes, are constructed from the wood of trees, perhaps extending the voice of the tree in another way. It is conjectured that Antonio Stradivari used the wood of very slow growing trees (see the Maunder Minimum hypothesis) that ultimately became his celebrated violins.

And finally, here is a link to an unusual video of a man, Diego Stucco, who chose to make music with a living tree. Enjoy.

At the speed of light

Posted on November 7, 2011 by composerinthegarden

The speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds. Einstein

Tonight the air is crisp and cold and the sky is bright with winter stars and a growing half moon. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper float over the roof of the house and Orion the Hunter is rising in the southern sky.

The “more than half” moon is bright enough to cast shadows across the dark tangle of the garden and thread between the almost leafless trees. The four seasons seem an inadequate description for the ongoing flow of changes that I notice in the garden; it morphs from moment to moment each time I step outside. As I set up my camera for a long exposure, I think of a card that a friend sent describing the thirteen moons of the native American tribes. What is this moon tonight? Harvest is over and winter will arrive soon; perhaps this is a liminal moon, a threshold between the season that has ended and the one yet to arrive.

The lyrics and melody to “Light” (See blog post Fire and Light) run through my head and keep me out in the cold night gazing up at the sky. “Gathered on the waters, reflected by the moon, even once removed, its power streams into the night. Light . . .” The piece is being premiered in ten days and I am preparing the visual media that is part of the performance. Solar flares, clouds across the moon and the water, light sifting through trees and clouds – the images and the music are inextricably intertwined and indeed, this piece was born from nights spent just like this, in the quiet of the garden filled with light.

Here is a sneak preview of part of the piece, with a MIDI soundtrack sans sung lyrics. The lyrics to the clip shown above:

Light, Light, Light. . .
Gathered on the waters,
reflected by the moon.
Even once removed, its power
streams into the night,
Light, Light, Light . . .

Turbulent Transitions

Posted on October 31, 2011 by composerinthegarden

I stood on a hill in Dunoon, Scotland, in the middle of March many years ago. Powerful winds brought a succession of rain, sleet, snow, hail, and sunshine over and over again in the course of an hour – a microcosm of the turbulent transition from one season to another. The change of seasons this week in Western Pennsylvania was less compressed – spread over days rather than minutes – but otherwise not so different. The week began with a warm evening on the deck, listening to what surely would be the final cicada and frog chorus of the season. Gusty winds brought cold temperatures and days of rain, followed by an enchantingly beautiful misty morning immediately followed by a snowy morning, all in less than a week.

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Though I’m reluctant to acknowledge the end of the gardening season and the coming of winter, I must admit that I love the turbulent changes that the seasons’ transitions bring. There is a certain security in knowing that one season will follow another, an overarching stability of structure. But the passage from one state to another is filled with chaos, unpredictability and extreme fluctuations. It is this push pull of change and stability that fascinates me, and it seems to be at the heart of my artistic endeavors as well. Achieving a balance between the familiar and the novel, the security of what has been done and the adventure of exploring new ideas, is an ongoing dynamic in my work, and perhaps in my life as well.

A video celebration of nature’s transitions in my garden, set to the music of “Falling” from “Three States of Being.”

Here’s another take on the idea of transitions as passages, courtesy of Margie Strosser.

Sketches of America

Posted on October 9, 2011 by composerinthegarden

Last night, the Washington Symphony Orchestra performed “Sketches of America” as part of their “Picture This” concert. Under the creative and enthusiastic guidance of Music Director Yugo Ikach, the WSO is a community orchestra, which means that the majority of the musicians are volunteers and participate for the love of performing music. “Sketches” was originally written for and performed by the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra featuring professional soloists, including reknowned jazz trumpeter Sean Jones. I wanted to hear how the WSO would perform the piece, with very little input from me other than the written score. Would it work?

The title “Sketches of America” was a play on Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” which itself was a jazz interpretation of Rodriguez’s Adagio movement of the “Concierto de Aranjuez.” I was commissioned to create an orchestral piece that would include a section for jazz improvisation by the soloists, a somewhat daunting task in orchestral writing. My own goals were more complex – I wanted to draw on American musical traditions as well as musically reflect on my love of the American landscape. The strains of “America the Beautiful” kept running through my head as I was composing, and a few fragments of the melody crept into the piece as well.

The first section of the piece, “the painted desert” draws on minimalism, a uniquely American approach to “concert music” typified by composers like Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Inspired by a long November drive through the deserts of Arizona, a panorama of grey skies, yellow flowering shrubs, and tumbleweed, I remember a vast quiet world marked by the rhythmic turn of the car wheels. (The full version of “The Painted Desert” was used in my “Autumn Minimalism” post, in the video soundtrack)

That repeating rhythm segues into the syncopation of “a joyful blues” – another American musical tradition in the form of jazz and blues. Not content to write the traditional twelve bar blues in 4/4, I constructed a thirteen bar blues in 5/8 meter over which the solo trumpet and trombone improvise to the fast rhythms of the pizzicato strings. Those seemingly odd numbers are part of the Fibonacci number sequence, something that occurs throughout the natural world in the form of flowers, seashells, and trees.

“Sketches” closes with a chorale style section based on “Clay”, a song that I wrote in response to my efforts to dig and amend the clay in my garden. One of the lyrics, “. . . the solid ground beneath our feet” became a metaphor for the natural beauty of our vast country and the challenge of keeping it “America the beautiful.”

The WSO performance? Wonderful. The piece worked, the orchestra sounded great, the soloists rose to the challenge, and the effect was just as I had intended. That moment of hushed silence in the hall at the close of the piece, the sign that the audience was listening and involved, seemed more important than the applause that followed. Those of you who are composers know that this does not always happen! As my husband and colleague remarked later, “the piece played itself.” It was an unexpectedly moving experience and I was touched to the heart, and at that moment, I was very glad indeed to be a composer.

(The recordings above were taken from the premier of “Sketches of America” performed by Sean Jones, trumpet, and Ed Kocher, trombone, with the Duquesne University Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sidney Harth.)

Anatomy of a thunderstorm

Posted on September 12, 2011 by composerinthegarden

I hear the thunder, long rumbles moving through the hills but no rain – perfect for recording. I dash inside to grab my Zoom recorder, ask my husband to turn down the guitar parts he is practicing in the basement, and put the dog in her “safe” space in the house.

For the first few minutes, I record the thunder – deep booms rather than sharp cracks – but the echoes roll on and on. It is quickly approaching, each boom louder than the last and I’m getting a great signal on the recorder. Suddenly I realize that sound in nature is complex with nothing isolated; although my goal is to record some great thunder sounds without the added sound of rain, I cannot capture it as I had planned – a murmur of cicadas fills the aural space, punctuated by bird song and a hum of distant traffic. I’ve been in the recording studio too long, where every instrument and sound source is isolated and remixed, each thread separated and reassembled. This is a different space altogether, with layers of sound rising and falling underneath the drama of a weather event, a gestalt of sound.

It’s not long before the rain comes – I grab the Zoom and head for the protection of the covered deck but decide to leave the record button on and capture the entire event. At first, the rain is a gentle swishing curtain of sound but it soon builds to a pounding roar slicing through the trees, hammering the roof. A hummingbird still trying to feed gives up and flits into the woods for cover. There is a complex rhythm to it all, an aural story of sounds intertwined in a bigger than life tableau. I wonder how long it has been since I’ve sat outside and really listened to an entire thunderstorm from beginning to end, resisting the urge to refill my coffee cup or check my e-mail. Years, probably. Yet, because I wanted to capture the entire event, I relax and listen and surrender to the moment. I become aware of the progression of the storm as if I were in a concert hall, the quiet passages, the crescendos, the bold dramatic punctuations, and the unexpected layers of birds and insects that remained a part of the aural tapestry.

Finally the rain trickles to a few drops, the cicada buzz rises to the fore again, a car passes by splashing through the puddles, and a crow caws in the distance. Cardinals and woodpeckers chime in and the hummingbird reappears. Water quietly drips from the trees, the woods around me take on a golden glow as the clouds drift away. A soft murmur of thunder leaves a trail of sound in the distance.

Here is an abbreviated version of the thunderstorm that I recorded (reduced from 20 minutes to less than 2 – kudos to Bill Purse, audio editor.)

To see what others are doing with environmental sound as art, visit Ear to the Earth.

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