Catalog of Composer Denis Smalley

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Annotated Catalogue of Denis Smalley's Opusby John Young, 2010

Introduction

This list of Smalley’s works includes his own notes on the works. Given that these vary in approach and scope (in general for earlier works, the notes give a more detailed account of the technical bases of pieces), I have attempted here to highlight what I hear as some of the consistent threads and longer-term lines of development of his musical ideas to date.

Smalley’s strong advocacy for acousmatic music and the fact that at the present time he has not composed for instruments since Piano Nets (almost twenty years ago) should not detract from the fact that much of his early output engaged with instrumental and vocal resources. These were all set within electroacoustic contexts, such as pieces for instrument and acousmatic sounds and the creative use of amplification to allow him to work with spectromorphological detail in ways that would otherwise not be possible. The instrumental and especially the vocal pieces of the 1970s and early 80s show rigorous engagement with defining the salient procedural qualities in sound production, allowing him to blend improvisatory features of performance practice with precise articulation of desired sound colours and shapes.

Across all of Smalley’s works a fundamental feature is the interplay between sound’s referential attributes and the possibility of non-referential ‘abstract’ discourse. At one level, this is reflected in titles: breath in Pneuma, water behaviour in Tides, an eponymous specific sounding object in Wind Chimes, garden pots in Empty Vessels, sweeping vistas in Valley Flow. The identity of musical instruments are signalled as agents-subjects themselves in Cornucopia, Piano Nets and Clarinet Threads and to some extent in the acousmatic Base Metals derived from sounds made from metal sculptures by Derek Shiel. In some cases the works embody source recognisable ‘theme’ sounds, and in others a more programmatic stance is taken by presenting us with environmental analogies. But within the music is found also the subversion of source identities into more elaborate play with timbre, gesture and the structural attributes of sound. It does not seem too fanciful to detect in Smalley’s pieces the composer’s inherent fascination with the simple sound phenomenon of the attack-resonance morphology: an object is struck and produces a range of pitches. This could be seen to engender two further features of his work. Firstly, the use of drones as a means of focusing attention on pitch, both as tonal ‘horizons’ and as resources for play within a spectrum—providing, crucially, the time in which to engage in that play. Secondly, the idea of pulse or recurrent articulation of sound, articulated over short and longer-range time scales, which can be heard in both the initiation of sound and in the modulation of the resonant ‘interior’ of sounds. These two fundamental musical features are employed by Smalley to allow

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inner detail of sound to be explored, while retaining a very directed approach to the manipulation of time. It is a strong feature of the early vocal works and in The Pulses of Time which have an inevitable, ritualistic quality as a result. It is developed through pieces such as Vortex and Piano Nets and informs the most recent trilogy of pieces Base Metals, Ringing Down the Sun and Resounding, in which very extended play of seemingly malleable resonance are sparsely punctuated with attacks and metre-inducing rhythmic constructs. But it must be remembered that Smalleys’ works demonstrate that the very idea of composing with timbre has a tendency to draw the composer into the tug-of-war between the referential and the abstract, since timbre concerns both identity (what caused the sound?) and the shaping of the frequency content of sound over time (the perception of pitch, resonance, attack, modulation, etc). Thus, as a listener, it not difficult to find oneself questioning the relationship between the resonances and sparsely places attacks in Base Metals—longing for the grounding force/realism of the attack—and it is not difficult also to feel the deep rhythmic pulses in the middle section of Resounding as larger-than-life objects whose clanging together may make us feel dwarfed in their presence.

Successive development of the same sound materials and constructs can be detected over several works. This emphasises a key point in the Schaefferian roots of much of Smalley’s thinking about the electroacoustic medium. For example the horn sound initially used the basis for materials in Gradual and Pentes is so thoroughly transformed as to produce a uniquely electroacoustic element, which is not redolent of the horn itself. In Pentes, perhaps paradoxically, the clear instrumental identity of Northumbrian pipes is introduced into the work toward the end. Although the melody itself as played on the pipes is relatively understated and plaintive, it forms the climactic moment in the work bringing us back as it does into an image of human performance and gestural scale. It also functions as a moment of revelation since the work has otherwise developed out of much more abstract sound types—especially explosive granular formations and drones (derived from the sound of the pipes). This has also allowed his music to follow broader lines of enquiry into the development of particular kinds of sound identities to be followed across different works, for example the environmental imagery that surfaces in Clarinet Theads sharing as it does materials derived from Tides.

At the concert given to mark his retirement from City University (13 October 2009), Smalley presented three works which could be seen to summarise strands of his acousmatic music to date: Wind Chimes, Empty Vessels and Resounding. These presented a kind of journey from the framing of a specific source object (sounds drawn from the ceramic Wind Chimes) to the intensified presence of a sound often not obvious in daily life (the natural resonance inside garden pots) offered in its natural environmental context, to a world of more abstract resonance and metrical rhythmic constructs. It is worth noting that in some of his programme notes, Smalley characterises the structure of works as ‘journeys’.

Smalley’s work is a true example of a composer with seemingly effortless control of materials—so much so that his transition from the analogue works of the 1970s to the digitally realised works of the 1980 and 1990s shows no excessively

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Annotated Catalogue of Denis Smalley's Opus

abrupt change in the composer’s sound world, which is characterised by textural richness, vivid spectral colour and gestural assertiveness. In fact, a work such as Pentes foreshadows the kinds of sizzling sound surfaces that later became commonplace through digital granular synthesis methods. In short, though the works are based on immense technical accomplishment, the core musical issues around the nature of sound are consistently maintained. (JY)

Denis Smalley: List of works in chronological order

1973, rev. 1980

Cornucopia for amplified horn and electroacoustic sounds on fixed mediumDuration: 15’30"

Studio realisation: Electronic Music Studio, University of York.

Premiere: University of York, November 22, 1973, Martin Mayes (horn).

Performance resources: Horn in F and electroacoustic sounds on fixed medium.

Technical resources: 5 microphones, 7-in 2-out mixer for stereo sound projection

Composer’s notes: The sound world in Cornucopia was developed in collaboration with Martin Mayes, who gave the first performance in 1973, and provided the source sounds which formed the basis for the tape. In Cornucopia I was attempting to create maximum richness from a single source, and create a language for the instrument which would be compatible with the electroacoustic medium. However, the sound world is fairly constrained in that the tape stays close to the horn’s character despite the many types of transformation applied to the source sounds, including some electronic modulation; the electroacoustic element is pulled more towards the instrument than vice versa. The

tape is ‘instrumental’ in other ways, sometimes apparent, sometimes less so—for example, chamber canons for two, three and four voices, and in one section a canon for forty to fifty voices in a continuous polyphonic web. There are also recurring motives and snatches of tunes. The horn has its solo moments, it orchestrates the tape (and vice versa), comments on it, mocks it, chatters along with it. It is amplified by strategically-placed microphones – two at the bell, one at the mouthpiece, and two at the outlet of a small petrol filter which replaces one of the horn’s crooks, all five microphones allowing the player to create various kinds of stereo image. There are three basic timbres—double-tonguing, mute turning in the bell, and the sounds directed via a petrol filter which has a similar effect to a trumpet ‘wah wah’ [harmon] mute, and also permits a certain dipping of pitches; the player’s right hand is able vary the timbre, and direct the sound towards either of the filter’s microphones. (DS)

Commentary: The horn utilises two special muting devices: a small petrol filter replacing one crook as a hand-controlled mute, and another placed over the bell to isolate the 5th harmonic (in the first performance a hollow round lampshade was used). The original length of the work was 26’40” and drastically reduced in the 1980 revision. (JY)

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multiphonics, which progress towards the normal clarinet sounds with which we are familiar.The player performs strictly notated material, passages of controlled improvisation (set within boundaries of rhythmic groupings, tempi ranges and pitch regions), and interprets graphically notated sounds (the trombaphone in the third movement). Source material for the electroacoustic sounds came from four instrumental sounds which have been highly transformed by both traditional tape techniques and electronic means. (DS)

Commentary: Some of the sound sources in this work were developed originally for Cornucopia, and the final section is recognisably used in Pentes. The title reflects the growth of a musical discourse out of sparse initial sounds, complex impulses which cluster, group and become more iterative in exchanges with the live instrument. This develops in distinct phases projecting a co-active relationship between the performer and electroacoutsic sounds. In the first movement (with the bass clarinet) complex short sounds are extended toward more iterative continuity. In the second movement (with clarinet) the performer also vocalises, while the textures again become more sparse. More extended pitched envelopes emerge from the instrument, and the final movement (with trombaphone) introduces the explosive gestures used in the first section of Pentes. These gestures also express a Gradual textural development from short explosive articulations out of which continuous energy forms. The strength of the electroacoustic sounds in this final section dominates the discourse. The trombaphone elicits

1974

Gradual for amplified clarinettist and electroacoustic sounds on fixed mediumIn three movements

Duration: 11’05”.Studio realisation: Electronic Music Studio, University of York.

Premiere: University of York, 1974, Richard Ingham (clarinettist).

Performance resources: Clarinet in B-flat, bass-clarinet and trombaphone (tenor or bass trombone with played with clarinet or saxophone mouthpiece). electroacoustic sounds on fixed medium. The player is also required to perform vocal sounds which are amplified.Technical resources: 5 microphones, 7-in 2-out mixer with panning controls for stereo sound projection.Awarded: Fylkingen Prize 1975 (Stockholm).Recording: On Fylkingen Electronic Music Competition 1975, Fylkingen FYLP 1012, 1977. Composer’s notes: The title has a double reference, to the mass, and to various types of musical progressions in the piece. Listeners will find some materials in common between the three “verses” of the structure. Gradual explores a limited world of short sounds—impulsions, attacks with and without resonance, and iterations. The clarinettist’s language, for example, uses a scale of short sounds: unvoiced vocal sounds, the reed used as a percussion sound, key sounds, air pushed into the open holes by the fingers, impulsions of air which hardly articulate, and


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Olivier Messaien], Maison de Radio France, Paris, 20 March 1975.Recordings: On Sources/Scènes, Empreintes Digitales, Montréal, IMED 0054, 2000; On 50 ans de musique électroacoustique au Groupe de recherches musicales, Teatro Massimo, FTM 002, 2001, On Tides, Ode Records, CD MANU 1433, New Zealand 1993; On The Pulses of Time, UEA Recordings, UEA 81063, 1981.Audio format: Stereo.

Composer’s notes: The French title (the same in Latin)—slopes, inclines, ascents—was suggested by the outlines of the broad stretches of the piece, which evoke spacious landscapes. Most of the music was created by transforming instrumental sounds. However, the only recognisable sound source is the Northumbrian pipes, whose drone is responsible for the slowly evolving harmonies out of which a haunting traditional melody appears. (DS)Commentary: This work is widely regarded as one of the landmarks of electroacoustic music, since it exemplifies a virtuoso analogue studio technique in a compelling musical discourse. The sound world of Pentes is marked by powerful and engaging development of gestural energies, and rich, transparent spectra—innately satisfying qualities of sound that must have contributed to the sense of freshness that work still projects. The work is broadly in four sections: the first—sourced directly from the final (third) movement of Gradual—is based on a developing interplay between individual and grouped attacks, progressively extended through explosive gestures, and more continuous pulsing sounds which rise in response to the strong attack profiles; the second

an unusually extended range of pitch, from rich pedal tones to rather metallic sounding high notes. The instrumental part is scored graphically, employing a range of extended instrumental techniques (for example, reed flicking with the right hand while fingering one the bass clarinet, air attacks, multiphonics, key action sounds, fingering resonances and sub tones, as well as vocalising and the use of the trombaphone). The improvisatory nature of the performer’s part is structured through the use of a tempo series and a rhythmicity series. In the tempo series a specified value “… indicates the number of sounds which can be played per second”, while the rhythmicity series “… shows the number of sounds which may occur before a silence intervenes, or the equivalent value in silence which may occur before a sound intervenes.” [extracted from the preface to the score]. Smalley illustrates their combination with the following example R1-6 T1-8, which means using the sounds specified (given separately graphic notation) “play groups of 1 to 6 sounds (or their equivalent in silence) at the rate of 1-8 sound/silence units per second.” (JY)

1974

Pentes acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 12’51”.Commissioned: Ina-GRM, Paris.

Studio realisation: GRM studios, Paris.

Premiere: Auditorium 104 [now Salle

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1975

Ouroboros acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 11’10”.

Studio realisation: Electronic Music Studio, University of York.

Premiere: University of York, 1975.

Audio format: Stereo.

Composer’s notes: “The creature as conceived in the divine mind is simple, unchanging and eternal, but in itself it is multiple, changing, transitory.”Honorius of Autun, 12th century, Liber Duodecim QuaestionumThe ouroboros, the dragon or serpent which bites its tail is an ancient symbol of time and the continuity of life—the cyclical nature of matter in a process of perpetual renewal. It expresses the counterbalancing of the opposing constructive and destructive forces. My Ouroboros reflects these ideas in the use of source material, the larger shape of the piece, and in the shapes of smaller segments and individual sound objects. Some sounds are new to the piece, but others are drawn from previous pieces but are now developed or transformed further, undergoing a process of renewal. The Northumbrian pipes from Pentes make an appearance; other sources, some evident, some transformed to destruction, include a Chinese flute, a Ghanan talking drum, a kaen (bamboo mouth organ), a gong, two French horn pitches, one piano string attack, a very few pure electronic sounds. (DS)Commentary: Ouroboros develops the drifting, ambiguously pitched textures that were a feature of the

introduces more clearly pitched sustained sounds which move in Gradual glissandi; the third section offers a simple canonically-treated melody on Northumbrian pipes over a drone established out of the previous section; the final section reintroduces pulsed explosive morpholgies of the first section, with high pitched inharmonic resonances supplanting the high pitched granular texture previously associated with the drones. A key source used in the work is a single note played on the horn and materials from this form the basis of the first section. Original sound shapes were created from this note by manually ‘scrubbing’ it on an open reel tape recorder, producing rhythmically complex, unstable sliding tones. These were then edited to form structured phrases which were taken through various stages of transformation (the sound is used to trigger voltage-controlled oscillators, mixed in multiple delays, edited and transposed, and pulsing textures were created by editing small sections of blank tape at regular intervals into more elongated sound streams). This kind of cumulative process demonstrates an aspect of Smalley’s analogue technique wherein the innate qualities of a source sound are reshaped through the imposition of direct gestural manipulation and intervention, producing new sound objects whose characteristics are then further extended. The organic nature of the work can be attributed at least in part to the way in which morphological identities and details are formed out of a source sound which then has salient morphological characteristics adapted and carried through each stage in the compositional process. (JY)


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cardioid microphones, 12-in 2-out mixer with panning and equalization, amplification to 2 loudspeakers (4 for larger venues).Recording: On Mouth Music, Hyperion A66060, 1982.Composer’s notes: The title refers to the concept of ‘pneuma’ (breath), current from the time of Aristotle to St Augustine. ‘Pneuma’ was a means of explaining the nature of change—a material and mobile phenomenon producing motion, growth, and continuity. Its shades of meaning varied from the literal to the metaphorical and symbolic—soul, spirit, and inspiration. These connotations seemed appropriate reflections of the literal, symbolic and ritualistic associations of the sound world created in my Pneuma.Pneuma explores the origins and nature of vocal sound outside and beyond melody, the result of continued vocal experiment, awareness of vocal practice of other cultures, and influences from electroacoustic music. There is an emphasis on delicate timbral distinctions, on moving contours and sound masses moulded out of air sounds, and on polyrthythmic textures. The vocal language grows from the basic articulations of vocal sound—attack-consonants and vowel-continuants, initially heard as percussion-like sounds and coloured air noise. Vocal sound is developed and extended through relationships with instrumental sounds—revolving tam-tam, two revolving Chinese gongs, metal bars, tuning forks, and most important, talking drums, whose variable pitches and liquid glissandi expand the character of the consonants and vowels. Further noise bands are created by blowing

second section of Pentes though they are more complex, with a wider array of gestural material infused within the often very slowly moving textures. The granular quality of textures in the second section of Pentes is evident, as are timbral and melodic traces of the Northumbrian pipes melody from that work. Ouroboros relies little on clear attack profiles for its structural morphology, building more on slow evolutions of rich sound masses, which are notable for their superbly ‘orchestrated’ registral layers. There are strongly foregrounded gestural strings in the middle of the piece, but these are broadly static in that there is no consistent directed motion within pitch space or overt transformational goals, making them function more as a highly contoured elaboration of this inherently texture-driven ‘trame’ piece. (JY)

1976, rev. 1981

Pneuma for five amplified vocalist-players Duration: 14’45”.Commissioned: York University Chamber Choir.

Premiere: York Festival, 1976, York University Chamber Choir, Keith Williams (director).

Performance resources: 5 vocalists (3 male, 2 female) 2 large and 2 small talking drums, 5 tuning forks (2 A440, 1 E 659, 1 C 523.3, 1 E 329.6) 5 resonant metal bars of different timbre (obtainable from the composer), 2 Chinese Gongs, large tam-tam), conductor (necessary).Minimum Technical resources: 12

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not damped; there is a slit along the centre of each bar, either side of the hole—so that the distance between a stereo pair placed on the bar could be varied—and this probably aids the resonant properties. (DS)

1976

Darkness After Time’s Colours acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 13’59”.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia.

Premiere: Music Centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich, 1976.Awarded: Second prize in the Bourges Electroacoustic awards in 1977 and a Euphonie d’Or at the 20th Bourges Competition 1992.Recording: On Impacts intérieurs, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0409, 2004.Audio format: Stereo.

Composer’s notes: The sound material for Darkness After Time's Colours grew out of Pneuma, a live work composed in the same year for five vocalists who also play percussion instruments, all amplified to bring out soft details. Many of these sounds formed the starting-point for the piece—gong strokes, vocal sounds, air blown on to the skins of talking drums, finger rotations around the drumskins, unvoiced consonants, and tuning fork pulsations. New electroacoustic sounds (including synthesized sounds created with

on the drums’ skins as the tension of the skin is varied, and by scraping the fingernail around the skin. The metallic sound sources provide a variety of pitched material, from the simple, almost pure tuning forks (made to resonate by striking them on stones), to the haunting, inharmonic intervals of the metal bar resonances, and to the more complex gongs and tam tams. A curious fluctuating, vowel-like sound is created by using the drums as variable resonators for the tuning forks. Amplification makes audible the otherwise inaudible, and the distribution and motion of sound across the stereo image is composed into the piece. Commentary: The work was revised in 1981 in preparation for a series of performances by the group Singcircle (conductor: Gregory Rose) on an Arts Council Contemporary Music Network tour in February 1982. It was performed alongside Trevor Wishart’s Anticredos. In the Singcircle version two female voices replaced two of the five original male voices; three of the original five tuning forks were replaced by forks of different pitches; five metal bars were added; and improvements were made to the vocal and drum parts. The metal bars were specially made in the Physics Department at the University of East Anglia. They are copies (but in different sizes) of bars sound engineer Tryggvi Tryggvason used for positioning stereo pairs of microphones for instrumental recordings; they have rich and interesting inharmonic resonances; there is a useful central hole (where the bar was screwed to the end of the microphone stand) where one can hold the bar between thumb and forefinger so that the resonance is


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1978

Chanson de Geste for amplified soprano-player and amplified clavichordist-vocalistDuration: 18’15”.

Premiere: Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam, April 22, 1978, Carol Plantamura (voice), Denis Smalley (clavichord).

Performance resources: There are three possible distributions of perfor-ming roles in this work:1.The ‘standard’ version—there are two performers: a soprano vocalist also performing on 2 stones, an A440 tuning fork and gong (which must be made to rotate rapidly at the end of the work), and a clavichordist who also vocalises2.An additional performer takes over playing the stones and tuning fork from the soprano after 7’49”, and 3.As above, but the additional per-former also takes the clavichordists vocal part.All the sound sources in the work are amplified and the use of the additional performer increases the technical requirements.Minimum technical requirements: 5 cardioid microphones (6 for the version with additional performer), 6-in 2-out mixer with panning and equalization, amplification to 2 loudspeakers.Recording: On The Pulses of Time, UEA Recordings, UEA 81063, 1981.Composer’s notes: Chanson de Geste arose out of vocal researches and experimentation which have periodically occupied me since 1975,

the EMS Synthi100) extend, imitate, and intermingle with these sources, elaborating an ambiguous journey which can be looked on as a vocal voyage passing through various 'ordeals' and encounters. The title (taken from Dante) alludes to the descent into the Classical underworld. (DS)Commentary: Pitched resonance and noise are announced as sonic protagonists in the opening gesture of this work, which accrues energy in a sequence of envelopes which present arrangements of coexistent complementary sound forms—noise bands of contrasting spectral colour and articulation and sounds with more focused gestural articulation. The penultimate section settles on a deep E fundamental with wide ranging play of harmonic content above it (this pitch had emerged earlier in the work from an inharmonic sound initiated at 6’45”). The final section collapses this harmonic quality with noisy, crudely vowel-like articulations, panning noise bands and a pulsing drone (with fundamental at approximately 32Hz) closing with a musically ambiguous gritty noise band and profoundly low pulsation. As such, Darkness After Time’s Colours might be broadly characterised as having a structure that progresses from layers of complex noise spectra and unstable pitch to spectral/harmonic clarity, though with a poignant question mark raised at the end as the harmonic grounding is dissipated. (JY)

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two types of production for sustained air – palatal, and throat.2. Unvoiced/voiced simultaneous production of pitch and air with or without harmonics.3. Voice production with harmonics.4. Fully-voiced production without audible harmonics.Several of these modes can be produced with closed mouth. Vibrato/trills/portamento, or more broadly, variations in the steady state of pitch, were developed as an elaborate system of ornamentation.A pair of stones, a tuning fork, and a detailed clavichord sound language complement and extend the voice. The clavichord, in its capacity to bend notes and provide a rich reservoir of percussion-like sounds, in fact its ability of act in m a vocal manner, proved an ideal companion.I would like to think that in a good performance Chanson de Geste gives the impression of a long tradition of a performance style which might have been— comparable perhaps to music traditions outside Europe. The title, though, refers to the epic poems of the European medieval period, although my ‘gestes’, being mainly textless, are musical and visual (hand movements are often notated) rather than the narrative account of human deeds.The general governing features of Chanson de Geste were based sometimes specifically, sometimes vaguely on symbolic attributes associated with the planets, in the following sequence:Saturn reserve, endurance, silenceJupiter constructive order Mars active principle, destruction (in this case, of melody)

and more directly as a result of Pneuma (1976) for five amplified vocalists equipped with talking drums, tuning forks, three Chinese gongs and tam tam. These vocal researches led me to create a vocal language from scratch out of the basics of vocal articulation—the consonant-attacks and vowel-continuants of speech and song abstracted from their normal context of words and meanings. I regarded this as a move fairly much in opposition to the increasingly popular use of vocal sounds strongly associated with non-musical human behaviour, often attached to the individual virtuosity of a particular performer. I was equally disenchanted with the use of vocal ‘effects’—one-off sounds which were rarely capable of being integrated into a musical argument. It was important that my vocal language be universal, in the sense that anyone is potentially capable of producing the sound repertory, that the vocal techniques benefit and not harm the voice and control of the ‘classical’ singer, and that such a language be detailed in its control of inflexions and articulations. Such details, which are usually understood as part of the fashions of performance style and are taught orally rather than through notation, would need to be created in sufficient microcosm if the new language were to possess an expressive interior.The ‘classical’ Western norm of fairly full voice with almost continuous vibrato came to be regarded very much as an extreme, and was therefore used as only one type of production. The production modes are:1. Unvoiced production – consonants and sustained air contours; there are


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regarded as a collection of sound-sources based on the consonants and vowels of speech and song … two types of air production, vocal harmonics, air and harmonics sounding simultaneously, and conventional production with or without vibrato.” There are virtually no directly presented words used by the singer, but rather these more elemental sound sources. But despite being conceived as a “collection of sound-sources” the vocal writing imparts a sense of celebration in the richness of the sound repertory used and their human origin. The very precise graphic notation and improvisatory phrases (expressed in tempo and rhythm series akin to those of Gradual) require responsive listening rather than automatic sound production. Structurally, the work has sense of a broad spiral moving between planes of articulated noise bands and pitch, through such polar oppositions as breath and sung tones, plucked strings and soundboard resonance of the clavichord and struck stones and tuning forks. The morphological phenomenon of the attack is explored in this work through groups of attack and attack-resonance events from different sources. Strong attacks impart an impression of quasi-periodic temporal articulation, and there are also suggestions of call and response interaction between voice and instruments, though these are exploited in ever more complex ways as the work progresses. This process is powerfully end-accented by the strong closing gesture of the soprano’s fully voiced high note, which should be pitched above the treble clef on a tone to match the gong’s timbre (on the recording it is an A-flat) giving an impression of

Venus relationships (exchanges with clavichordist’s voice) Mercury the spoken word, neutrality, capacity for transformation Moon world of forms, arbitrary fantasy, imagination, intuitionSun the heroic principle A basic outline of the main musical signposts is as follows:0’00” establishing of a slow time-base, 10” plus3’27” the appearance of pitch and melodic fragments; development ion the clavichord and voice4’55 expansion and contraction of the time-base; quickening of time base8’04” regular, pulses cells and patterns8’37” pacing doubled; disintegration of the time-base and the return of melody and pitch; development of internal pulses, trills and vibrato10’23” freer rhythmic interaction – relationships and exchanges with the second voice11’24” introduction of the spoken word – the words ‘sound’ and ‘word’ in slow motion12’35” increasing harmonic emphasis; increasing ‘orchestration’ of events and sound objects, drones, continuity15’19” the word ‘armonia’ (harmony) in slow motion air and harmonics16’12” orchestration of attacks17’05” gong attack with decorated, pulsed resonance; breath(DS)Commentary: In the notes accompanying the original LP recording of Chanson de Geste, Smalley states that: “The voice is

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the West Square Electronic Music Association, London, with funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.


Premiere: St John's, Smith Square, London, 1979.Recording: On The Pulses of Time, UEA Recordings, UEA 81063, 1981.Audio format: Stereo.

Composer’s notes: In The Pulses of Time various approaches are taken to the idea of pulses: the regular pulses of metre, the much slower pulses underlying the pacing of sections of music, the pulses which form the interior identity of sounds, the accelerating pulses of a bouncing sound, and the fast pulses which create the grain of textures. The work comprises a series of sections the character of each being directly related to the main sound sources—the synthesized bounced sound, metallic harmonies which expand the resonances of dramatic gong-like attacks, noise contours, drums and percussion both real and synthesized, and the clavichord, which provides a rich reservoir of sounds—deep clusters, sighing pitches, soundboard resonances, strings plucked and stroked. The primary contrast is between the clavichord (untransformed, apart from some slight corrective transpositions), and the synthesized material (EMS Synthi 100 voltage-controlled synthesizer). (DS)Commentary: The basic attack-resonance morphology from several instrumental and electronic sound sources forms the main substance of this work. The work develops a perceptible polarity between sounds

emerging from a single loud gong stroke, which in itself unifies the basic opposing sonic states of pitch and noise.Early in the work the clavichord’s oscillation across resonant attacks projecting a minor third interval provides a basic foundation of essentially stable pitch, underscoring and participating in the interplay of attacks, resonances and noise bands. While the work must inevitably evoke an image of ritual in performance, a recording perhaps even more powerfully presents the richness of sonic interplay. Detailed use of microphones is crucial to the work. Not only are small details of sound production made more vivid through amplification, but dynamic shaping of sound is also employed. For instance, the tuning fork is used by the soprano in conjunction with the microphone, where bringing it into the microphone’s field makes it able to emulate the Gradual onset of sound of the voice, and rotating it in close proximity to the microphone introduces a pulsing morphology. Similarly the suspended gong is made to rotate rapidly in front of a microphone in the final loud gesture of the work with the singer standing behind the gong and delivering her sound ‘through’ it. (JY)

1978

The Pulses of Time acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 19’45”.Commissioned: Barry Anderson and


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Performance resources: Two voca-lists also performing on stones (a pair for each performer), 6 tuning forks (each has A440 and C523.3, in addition performer 1 has E329.6 and performer 2 has E 659) and 2 chromatic pitch pipes.Minimum technical requirements: 4 cardioid microphones (2 for each performer), 4-in 2-out mixer with panning and equalization, amplification to 2 loudspeakers.Composer’s notes: Work on Word Within began originally in response to a request from Five Centuries Ensemble singers Carol Plantamura and John Patrick Thomas for a piece for two voices. My attention had been drawn to a Petrarcan poem set by the Italian Marco da Gagliano in the early 17th century. The love poem makes extensive use of imagery drawn from music and the sounds and movement of nature. I chose four words from the poem as the basis for a three-movement piece: words which, in their sound and sentiments, suggested musical ideas. Each word, analysed into its phonemic shapes and timbres, acts as a motive, a source of ideas. Word Within is not a setting or comprehensive interpretation of the poem, although its atmosphere is often reflected both in the details of word contours and in the general musical ethos.The first movement is based entirely on the word ‘sospirando’ (sighing) – “…And I have heard sighing words which make the mountains turn and the rivers stand still…”. Besides appropriately possessing a sighing contour, the word ‘sospirando’ also spans the extremes of the vowel spectrum, from the dark ‘o’ to the higher, brighter ‘i’. If the word is pronounced in very slow motion

which evoke tactile origins, such as the interaction of hand and string and the struck resonant interior of the clavichord, and sounds devoid of any direct material origin, all of which participate in a development of the impulse as a morphological identity and its clustering into phrases and textures. The form is driven by the accumulation of pulses toward continuous sound energy, exploiting the relationship between the sonic phenomenon of the attack and the consequent resonance of the sounding body. This provides the basic developmental energy in the music, for example where a resonance is extended to develop its own self-sustaining morphological identity as something formed independently of the impulses which may have generated them. Rhythmic clarity is maintained in moments of extreme textural density through fine control of registral balance. (JY)

1981

Word Within for two amplified vocalist-playersIn three movements: 1. Sospirando (4’30”) 2. Dolce Concento (4’01”) 3. Armonia (4’30”).

Text taken from Petrarca’s Canzone CLVI I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi. Duration: 13’.

Commissioned: Bath Festival with funds provided by South West Arts.

Premiere: Bath Festival, Concert Room of the Royal Baths, Bath, May 25, 1981, Gregory Rose and Penelope Walmsley-Clark (vocalist-players).

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stones and tuning forks as well as pitch pipes, as cognates for the consonant and vowel components of vocal sound. The microphone is an integral performance tool, allowing subtle sounds such as vocal harmonics to be given greater impact and role in the discourse, and the natural decay of tuning forks to be counteracted by altering proximity to it. (JY)

1982

Vortex acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 15’42”.

Commissioned: Electronic Music Now/Tim Souster for the Arts Council’s Contemporary Music Network Tour with funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, incorporating material developed at University of Toronto Computer Systems Research Group’s (the Structured Sound Synthesis Project System)

Premiere: The Round House, London, February 27, 1983.

Recording: On Tides, Ode Records, CD MANU 1433, New Zealand 1993.

Awarded: First prize in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition; Special Prize of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music, 1983.


Composer’s notes: The title reflects a concern with motion, not necessarily

its detailed contours and vowel transitions are revealed. The word is most clearly present when the majority of its features are retained, or it may be only vaguely present if split up or stretched out in time, when it becomes more ‘musical’. Apart from the final phrase the movement has no voiced sounds.The second movement is based on the words ‘dolce concento’ (sweet harmony) “…Love, good sense, valour, pity and pain crying together made the sweetest harmony ever heard on earth…”. Two ideas are explored – ‘dolce’, in sustained contours, and ‘concento’, in rhythmic groups of consonants. The two ideas are finally brought together in canonic rhythmic exchanges. The notion of harmony is developed by vocal harmonics and sustained and pulsing tuning forks, and the consonant ‘k’ finds an extension in the percussive use of stones.The third movement is based on ‘harmonia’ (harmony), taken from the poem’s final lines “…And heaven was so intent on hearing their harmony in the wind that not a leaf moved, so sweetly was the air filled with their sound.” This movement is less specifically related to the phonetic content of the word involved, although the contours of ‘harmonia’ are audible among the superimpositions of vocal harmonics. Through the use of pitch pipes harmony is extended into new timbres, firstly by extracting harmonics from the pitch pipes, and secondly by singing through the pitch pipes. (DS)Commentary: The work represents a culmination of the very detailed approach to vocal writing found in Pneuma and Chanson de Geste and again uses percussive sources,


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of decisively signalling the start of the work with a clear onset, but also presents a complex spectrum that initially implies an E-flat fundamental and both a natural harmonic (major) and minor modality. By the end of this first opening sustained section (at 2’03”) the spectral pitch has drifted toward an E fundamental. The twisting of harmonic implications in new directions (in the case of the opening through the meshing of complex inharmonic glissandi and dense, almost noise-like sound masses) is a feature of the work, along with clearly directed phrase structures through devices such as rhythmic spatial rotations, pulsing modulation of resonance (such as the comparatively still section from 5’15”) and scattered clusters of attacks which sometimes take the form of extended groups of transients which settle into more continuous states of resonance and sometimes become moments of relative stability as self-propelling textures in themselves. Glissandi are often employed to complete the general image of vortical sound motion, including some spectral constructs resembling Shepard tones, such (for example at 11’20”), such that the vortex image is partly literal but primarily metaphorical in the spiralling motion of pitch. Vortex is a pivotal work in the evolution of Smalley’s sound world, building on his well established capacity to generate sounds that are inherently demanding of aural attention and are confidently directed in time, but also opening up new levels of complexity in the handling of pitch and implied tonal/spectral centres within morphologically complex sound shapes. (JY)

literal spatial movement, but sound objects, textures, contours, and particles whose shapes and behaviour suggest analogies with motion both real and imaginary. Such relationships can be striking in acousmatic music, where the listener may often perceive sounds as physical entities moving in space – a kind of invisible kinetic sculpture. One almost sees the points and textures, the broad sweeps and curves, the dimensions and shapes of the sound structures. Large, rich, resonant attacking sound events provide the structural pillars of Vortex. Their impact and radiating energy signal climaxes, initiate changes of direction, and propel the music forwards.Materials for Vortex were composed at the Computer Systems Research Group, University of Toronto (Structured Sound Synthesis Project), the Finnish Radio Experimental Studio, and the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of East Anglia. The Toronto material resulted from two months’ synthesis work in Toronto in 1981, working with graphics-based computer programmes. The Finnish Radio material created in the space of a few days’ work in September 1981, used several standard Synclavier 2 sounds treated by vocoding and digital delays/harmonizer (Publison). At the University of East Anglia further sounds (in particular, metallic resonances) were developed for inclusion. The full range of ‘classical’ tape techniques was used to shape further the material, and the assembly process took place over about four months in 1982. (DS)Commentary: The highly energetic rush of sound that opens this work is characteristic of Smalley’s device

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Tides is the first of my works to use computer transformations. Materials were created at the University of Toronto Computer Systems Research Group (Structured Sound Synthesis Project), the Experimental Studio of Finnish Radio, and the Digital Studio of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. These elements were expanded and mixed in the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of East Anglia. Tides was commissioned by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. (DS)Commentary: The first movement is episodic in form, though the emphasis on a basic textural model of bubbling water gives cohesion to the movement. An organic quality is also suggested in the opening series of low frequency surges, which generate small ripples of additional sound energy, suggesting seeds of musical growth, which recur through the movement. Each episode or ‘pool’ is marked by a particular spectromorphological character, structurally building on the extended ‘water’ presence from 1’05” to 3’39”. Contextualising water sound-images are carefully placed to perceptibly maintain the water-sound analogy, often where extreme forms of transformation and resonant play develop. One of the features of the transformations of the bubbling water sounds is the creation of images of unusually viscous or quasi-solid forms of liquid, such is the effectiveness with which the underlying water imagery is maintained. The wave sound which emerges at the end of the movement (even with a hint of birdsong) projects an image of transition from a submerged state to a view of water motion from its surface. ‘Sea Flight’ builds on the

1984

Tides acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 30’17”.In two movements: ‘Pools and Currents’ (17'30") and ‘Sea Flight’ (12'47").Commissioned: Ina-GRM, Paris.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, incorporating material developed at University of Toronto Computer Systems Research Group’s (the Structured Sound Synthesis Project System), the Experimental Studio of Finnish Radio, and in the Digital Studio (123) of the GRM.

Premiere: Maison de Radio France, Paris, April 30, 1984.Recordings: On Sources/scènes, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0054, 2000; On Tides, Ode Records, CD MANU 1433, New Zealand 1993.Awarded: Second prize in the Newcomp Award, USA, 1984.Audio format: Stereo.

Composer’s notes: The sonic images of Tides are based on analogies between water and sound—textures, images of turbulence, strength and tranquility, the play of colours and light, and the intimacy and immensity of space. The first movement – ‘Pools and Currents’—is constructed around a series of interlocking ‘pools’, each of which has a different character. The pool idea suggests textural play, while the idea of ‘currents’ stresses the more linear motion that propels the movement forward. The pools come to rest in a broad seascape out of which the wave-like gestures of the second movement, ‘Sea Flight’, emerge.


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Experimental Studio of Finnish Radio, the Digital Studio (123) of the GRM, and the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of Birmingham.

Premiere: Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, 15 October 1985, Roger Heaton (clarinet).

Performance resources: Clarinet in B-flat, electroacoustic sounds on fixed medium.Minimum technical requirements: 4 microphones, multi-loudspeaker diffusion system for projection of sound around and behind audience.Awarded: Golden Nica in the Prix Ars Electronica of the Austrian Radio, 1988.Recordings: On Impacts intérieurs, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0409, 2004; On Computer Music Currents, vol. 6, Wergo WER 2026-2, Mainz, 1990.Composer’s notes: The clarinet can produce a variety of sound-types—key noises, air sounds, degrees of sound production producing less definite pitches, very high notes produced by biting the reed, multiphonics. The electroacoustic medium provides an opportunity for integrating this sound repertory into an expanded sonic environment. Thus the clarinet is threaded through the electroacoustic fabric, sometimes merged with it, sometimes surfacing in a more soloistic role. Besides passages which use the clarinet in a traditional manner there are stylized environments drawn from outside music—the calls and cries of nature, the movement of wind and water, and textural motion suggesting floating and drifting. Most of the electroacoustic sounds were created during visits to a variety of studios in the early 1980s—the

apparent parabolic motion of wave energy that was announced at the end of the previous movement. The first part of the movement creates an intriguing spatial anomaly as the finely defined arc motion of the sounds, as though heard from a great distance, are also texturally alive with close-up turbulent water splashes, making them feel exaggeratedly realistic, yet they recede into and re-emerge from a completely neutral and unnatural silence. They are the set against an emergent world of turbulent resonance, similar to those of the first movement, but generally slower paced. Toward the end of ‘Sea Flight’ the parabolic motion of the movement’s opening sounds are reintroduced but moving at a faster rate, producing a more visceral stringendo effect, which relaxes into a state of more detached calm at the close. This is the first of Smalley’s works to use the computer as a transformation tool for natural sounds (as opposed to digital synthesis which was used in Vortex). (JY)

1985

Clarinet Threads for amplified clarinet and electroacoustic sounds on fixed mediumDuration: 13’23”.Commissioned Roger Heaton with funding from Eastern Arts.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, with elements realised at the Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto, the

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1986

O Vos Omnes motet for 3 soloists, 8-part choir and electroacoustic sounds on fixed mediumDuration: 6’17”.Commissioned: Michael Nicholas and the Norwich Cathedral Choir.


Premiere: Contemporary Church Music Festival, Norwich Cathedral, Evensong, July 6, 1986, Norwich Cathedral Choir, Michael Nicholas, conductor).Uses material later developed in Wind Chimes, and some material from Tides.

Composer’s notes: The text takes selected words and phrases from the Vulgate version of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, with one clause translated into English:

O vos omnes qui transitis,Videte, attendite, audite dolorum meum;Populi universi, attendite;O you who pass by; sperabo(O all you who pass by, look, consider, hear my sorrow; all people, consider; I shall hope)

Jeremiah was imprisoned for suggesting a seemingly unpalatable solution to a racial problem, and is appealing to passers-by to consider his plight. His appeal was not headed, and disastrous, longer-term consequences followed. This is an eternal cycle of a human predicament which can occur at a personal or national level whether in a political or psychological context. My setting is

Computer Systems Research Institute at the University of Toronto (Structured Sound Synthesis Project), the Finnish Radio Experimental Studio, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales Digital Studio, and the University of Birmingham Electroacoustic Music Studio (Fairlight CMI). Mixing was carried out at the University of East Anglia. Commentary: The clarinet provides a fixed instrumental identity—but one that is also rendered more malleable through non-standard performance techniques (such as multiphonics, teeth tones, very wide glissandi and bending of pitch). This is interesting in that the clarinet has something of a protagonist role as a stable sound agent, but it is also based on an extended notion of what clarinet timbre-identity actually is. Fine balance of electroacoustic and clarinet sounds is crucial to successful performance, for example where the instrument executes rapid sotto voce arabesques of subtones that fuse with fleeting electroacoustic flourishes. The many static pitches required of the clarinet often impart a kind of tonal perspective to electroacoustic material, for instance providing a timbral reference with which harmonic content of more complex electroacoustic sounds may intersect. These are often articulated with fades and glides so that they do not sound patently instrumental, a feature which is often enhanced by the use of extremely high clarinet tones. In the electroacoustic sounds, material from Tides, and some that hints at Wind Chimes can be heard. (JY)


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and other details pass the listener by. But the general ideas of invocation, transience, time and space should break through in the music and the electroacoustic sounds. DSCommentary: This short work utitlises electroacoustic materials later utilised more fully in Wind Chimes. The harmonic language of the vocal writing is straightforward and emphasises the resonant qualities of the electroacoustic sounds with which they blend in the acoustic space for which they were intended. (JY)

1987

Wind Chimes acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 15’10”.

Commissioned: South Bank Centre, London.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, with sounds developed in the Digital Studio (123) at the GRM.

Premiere: Electric Weekend, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 11 September 1987.

Recording: On Impacts intérieurs, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0409, 2004, On Computer Music Currents, vol. 5, Wergo WER 2025-2, Mainz, 1990; On Archives GRM, ‘Le Son en nombres’ (excerpt), Ina-GRM, INA_C 1033, 2006.


Composer’s notes: The main sound source for Wind Chimes is a set of ceramic chimes found in a pottery during a visit to New Zealand in 1985

designed to highlight this universality. Firstly there is the idea of transition or transience-recurrence down through the centuries. Thus “qui transitis” (who pass by, cross over) trudges its faltering, syllabic way in simple, recycled chord progressions. Thus also the interlocking of older and newer techniques – the imitative motive engendered by a word or phrase, as opposed to more modern procedures. The passage between old and new is also reflected in the two languages and in the traditional nature of human, choral sound placed in electroacoustic surroundings, which in itself has a new-old content—bell- and gong-like sounds take on both an ancient and a modern guise. And there are other electroacoustic sounds which stress continuity through time—a spinning/cycling sound which occurs near the opening, and the static character of the drone into which the end of the motet sinks. Not least of all, these electroacoustic sounds, particularly the resonant ones, enhance the sense of space. The voices, too, have a spatial role in spreading out to the extremes of vocal range achieved in the closing stages.The second idea taken from the text is that of invocation and supplication expressed in the plural and singular imperatives—videte, audite, attendite; vide, audi—appealing to the visual and aural senses, and to reason and intellect. These are mainly composed into a variety of rising and falling gestures of differing strengths and character, allocated to varying vocal combinations – both collective and individual appeals. In a motet only 6 minutes long where it is inevitably difficult to hear the sung text it is not surprising if many of these

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pitched resonances. The pitch of B is emphasised in the first of these two phrases with a rhythmically simple D-B (octave displaced) motion. In terms of form this is one of Smalley’s most complex pieces as its materials and their overall design rest on a mixture of highly detailed textural states, strong rhythmic articulations and shifting pitch foci. There is also no decisive climax point in the work, but rather a sequence of moments of intensification of spectral richness and gestural energy. (JY)

1990-91

Piano Nets for piano and electroacoustic sounds on fixed mediumDuration: 17’52”, in three movements.

Commissioned: Sonic Arts Network with funds from the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Studio realisation: Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, incorporating sounds developed at IRCAM.

Premiere: Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Music Centre Concert Room, University of East Anglia, 13 October 1990, Philip Mead (piano), to whom the work is dedicated. The third movement was revised following the Premiere.

Performance resources: Piano, elec-troacoustic sounds on fixed medium.

Minimum technical requirements: 3 microphones, 2 pairs of loudspeakers (piano and electroacoustic sounds are projected on separate pairs), with additional pairs of loudspeakers, as available, to expand the width and

[not 1984 as in some literature]. It was not so much the ringing pitches which were attractive but rather the bright, gritty, rich, almost metallic qualities of a single struck pipe or a pair of scraped pipes. These qualities proved a very fruitful basis for many transformations, which prised apart and reconstituted their interior spectral design. Not that the listener is supposed to or can always recognise the source, but in this case it is audible in its natural state near the beginning of the piece, and the ceramic quality is never far away throughout. Complementary materials were gathered to expand the piece's sound-families, among them very high metallic Japanese Wind Chimes, resonant metal bars, interior piano sounds, and some digital synthesis. The piece is centred on strong attacking gestures, types of real and imaginary physical motion (spinning, rotating objects, resonances which sound as if scraped or bowed, for example), contrasted with layered, more spacious, sustained textures whose poignant dips hint at a certain melancholy.Commentary: The single inharmonic attack of the opening, framed by silence, offers a spectral seed for the work, presenting deliciously ambiguous pitch (though resonating finally near the note B, at approximately 1930Hz). The next 70 seconds presents two phrases (the second twice the length of the first) which herald the character of the work’s development. Strong attacks initiate each of these, the first marked by a decisive accelerando gesture—whose behaviour recurs as a feature of other elements in the work— along with splashes of Wind Chimes textures and more focally


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Commentary: In contrast to the very malleable, even ‘smeared’ approach to instrumental sound in Clarinet Threads, Piano Nets limits the piano almost exclusively to chordal articulation, with an extremely detailed approach to pedalling. Particularly in the first movement this echoes the ritualistic quasi-cyclic approach to structure in earlier works such as Chanson de Geste, and is emphasised by the presence of recurrent fixed register harmonic constructs and the often declamatory nature of synchronised sound events between piano and electroacoustic sounds. Some of the gestural and timbral qualities of the electroacoustic element in the first movement also reflect sound types from earlier works that utilised the clavichord—The Pulses of Time, Chanson de Geste—drawing the listener closer to sounds that might be drawn directly from the instrument’s interior (sound board, knocking the frame). The second movement begins in the manner of a scherzo, with alternating fast and slow tempi, where the piano engages in tightly coordinated dialogue with rapidly articulated inharmonic electroacoustic resonances, while in the slower sections are found some delicately exposed beating between frequency components in piano and electroacoustic sounds. The work can provide an extraordinary spectacle in performance, since the fixed electroacoustic part requires the performer to have an exceptional ability to anticipate and synchronise with all sound events, such as the dramatic fusions of piano chords and sharply articulated noisy sound masses in the outer movements. (JY)

depth of the electroacoustic sound image.Recording: On Impacts intérieurs, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0409, 2004.Composer’s notes: Piano Nets (1991-2) is in three movements which have common piano material but are different in style, mainly due to the influence of the changing electroacoustic environment. The piano writing revolves around a variety of chord-flavours and sonorities which can be heard across all movements—chords of thirds, of fourths, whole-tone chords, for example. Certain harmonies provide home bases which are constantly returned to, and the "nets" in the title expresses the idea of these networks of chords and a certain feeling of confinement created by them. Also net-like is the fact that the piano is trapped almost entirely in a chordal style. Such a restriction enables a concentrated exploration of subtle blendings of piano and electroacoustic sounds. The relations between piano and electroacoustic sounds vary - they can be mutually decorating or supporting; they can act in a cause and effect manner; they collaborate in attacking events and resonance colourings; the electroacoustic sounds can sound as if emanating from inside the piano's sound, or conversely (towards the end) they can surround the piano whose chords swing around in a clangorous interior. Most of the electro-acoustic material was created during a research period at IRCAM funded by an Arts Council bursary, but there are also sounds borrowed from previous pieces. The final mixing was carried out in the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of East Anglia.

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the bulk of land masses, and at yet another swamped by the magnified details of organic activity. Landscape qualities are pervasive: water, fire and wood; the gritty, granular fracturing of stony noise-textures; and the wintry, glacial thinness of sustained lines. The force and volatility of nature are reflected in abrupt changes and tur-bulent textures.The mixing of the piece was started during a Creative Residency in the Media Arts Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts situated in the Bow Valley. Sounds created at IRCAM during a previous research period were incorporated, and further materials were subsequently developed at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The piece was completed in the composer's studio in Norwich. (DS)Commentary: This work is one of Smalley’s most successful integrations of shimmering granular textures (that were already a feature of his earliest works) with complex forms of morphological articulation. For instance in the middle of the work (from 5’45”) simple intervallic patterns are projected in a loosely cyclic way through overlapping high pitched grainy sounds, in themselves clearly a growth from the opening shimmering unstable pitches. This is established as a distinct stratum defined by register, timbre and melodic profile, making a kind of unified gesture/texture identity. A pause at 8’05” is followed by a section in which this now established identity is overlaid with a wider range of sound constructs: clusters of complex attacks, fracturing and rattling morphologies and rain-like granular textures. Formally this imbues Valley Flow with a cyclic quality as the

1992

Valley Flow acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 16’50”.

Commissioned: Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), funded by West Midland Arts.

Studio realisation: Banff Centre for the Arts; Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, incor-porating sounds created earlier at IRCAM and Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

Premiere: BBC Pebble Mill Studios, Birmingham, simultaneously broad-cast live on BBC Radio 3, February 27, 1992.

Recording: On Impacts intérieurs, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0409, 2004, On A Storm of Drones (excerpt), Asphodel, ASP 0966, San Francisco, 1995.


Composer’s notes: The formal shaping and sounding content of Valley Flow were influenced by the dramatic vistas of the Bow Valley in the Canadian Rockies. The work is founded on a basic flowing gesture. This motion is stretched to create airy, floating and flying contours or broad panoramic sweeps, and contracted to create stronger physical motions, for example the flinging out of tex-tural materials. Spatial perspectives are important in an environmentally inspired work. The listener, gazing through the stereo window, can adopt changing vantage- points, at one moment looking out to the distant horizon, at another looking down from a height, at another dwarfed by


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glacier and whose compaction initiates glacial flow. The surface expanses of smooth material conceal organic processes and pressures beneath.A corrie (from the Gaelic "coire" - a cauldron) is an armchair-shaped hollow with steep sides and back wall, formed as a result of glacial erosion on a high mountainside. This form is often reminiscent of a mortar in which one grinds spices and grains, and it is sounds derived from recording the frictional motions of a large, Indian mortar and pestle which provide the basis for the movement. Since the névé material is also featured, an analogy linking the domestic and the environmental is suggested. A sandar (from Icelandic) is an open, coastal plain of sand and gravel with streams of meltwater flowing across it, stretching out from the mouth of a glacier. To begin with this movement concentrates on fragmented, pressurised debris and outwash activity, but soon spreads into larger harmonic vistas. (DS)Commentary: The first movement is characterised by a continuous undulating and complex drone, whose core is very low frequency, but appears to draws around itself more grainy high frequency spectral energy in Gradual surges. Two key climaxes are reached as a result of this spectral ‘intensification’, a very rich noisy one from 2’53” and a further more clearly pitched spectrum at 3’54” emphasizing an F fundamental—this movement towards greater clarity of pitch implying a point of arrival, and heralding the movement’s closure. In the second movement the texture is stratified into distinct spectromorphological layers, defined not only by the frequency centre

gesture/texture identity is projected through the work, submerging and re-emerging and rising and falling in its general registral space, drawing around it new and contrasting sound shapes. (JY)

1994

Névé acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumThe work is in 3 sections: ‘Névé’, ‘Corrie’ and ‘Sandar’.Duration: 17’08”.

Commissioned: Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Marseille with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Studio realisation: Composer’s per-sonal studio, with material developed on the Syter system at the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Marseille

Premiere: Premiere: La Criée, Théâtre National de Marseille, January 13, 1995.

Recording: On Névé, Effects Input EI 03, Marseille, 1994.


Composer’s notes: Névé was inspired by a walk on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand, and takes structures and imagery related to glaciers as its starting-point. However, the sound materials also suggest their own developments, relations and diversions. The work is a continuation of Valley Flow, composed in 1992, which was also influenced by environmental images and materials.The Névé is the mass of hardened snow which feeds the source of a

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immensity. In the second movement, the low pitch of the initial sound along with its gritty noise and bounce-like contour suggest fricative physical interaction on an exaggerated scale. This is offset by the presence of lighter, more fragile high pitched sound materials, which are more akin to sound production on a human scale—foliage, movement of gravel, observation of water. This is only one way of reading this work, which is delicately poised between abstraction and referentiality. The potential to interpret contrasts in apparent scale of sounds through an imaginary interpretation of the physical dimensions of whatever physical cognates we find for them allows the listener to place themselves into a vicarious relationship with the musical imagery—a process which is not confined to, but greatly enhanced by, multi-loudspeaker diffusion of this work. (JY)

1997

Empty Vessels acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 14’51”.

Commission: French State (Music Office), Ina-GRM.

Studio realisation: Composer’s per-sonal studio.

Premiere: Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio-France, Paris, 31 May 1997.

Recording: On Sources/Scènes, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0054, 2000.


of sounds, but by morphological behaviour, principally: ‘bouncing’ abrasive sounds which are initially of very low pitch, but subsequently appear to be part of a family of similar sounds at different transpositions; the undulating drone for the first movement; brittle high frequency sounds suggesting of dry foliage or other fragile organic material, and an almost nasal vowel-like tremolo. Even more than in the first movement the structural design presents an image of layered coexistence between the sounds, supporting the composer’s concept of environmental analogy. Specific environmental sources are more strongly evidenced in the final movement, with overt suggestions of water, stones/gravel and foliage sound-imagery as well as very direct bell-like sounds in the middle of the movement (naturalistic wave sounds are especially telling from 4’46”). In the broadest sense this gives ‘Sandar’ a powerful sense of emergence into a soundscape more denotative than the first two. As in the first and second movements the tendency is for the musical texture to move in continuous sound masses, but the greater variety of sound types, along with the presence of more gesturally distinctive sounds (both in terms of spectro- and spatio- morphology) allows the musical to have a more complex structural design. And because sounds from the previous movements are recalled, a summative, end-accented formal statement is made. More broadly, this work may engage the listener in imaginative play with the scale of sounds. While there are not always specific sounding objects implied, an emphasis on rich low frequency clusters of sound implies depth and


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2000

Base Metals acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 13’42”.

Commissioned: Swedish Radio, Malmö.


Premiere: L’Espace du son Festival, Brussels, October 15, 2000.

Recording: On Sources/Scènes, Empreintes Digitales, IMED 0054, 2000.


Composer’s notes: Base Metals was commissioned by Swedish Radio in Malmö. The title refers to the metal sounds that provided the central material for the piece, and it also evokes the creative process of trans-muting these raw sources to a higher musical and expressive plane. All the metal sources derive from sound sculptures constructed by the artist Derek Shiel from metal objects col-lected over a period of time. From the wide range of objects I selected those whose internal resonant properties would provide me with variegated spectral families. Some possessed intervallic and tonal properties, others were inharmonic or noisier, and some sounded more synthetic than truly metallic. Although there is a number of striking orchestrated impacts and resonances in the piece, I was less interested in the clatter and clash of metal than in more sustained mor-phologies. Thus there is a focus on varied pushes, surges, swirls and sweeps of spectral energy, balanced with calmer drifts, undulations and

Composer’s notes: The Empty vessels of the title are some large garden pots from Crete and an olive jar from Turkey. Recordings of the air resonating in these vessels provided the starting-point for the piece. Since these recordings were done in a garden (my garden in North London), sounds from the environment were also captured by the microphones inside the pots, and changes in the timbre of these sounds resulted from interaction with the filtering effect of the resonant vessels. These "natural" transformations were extended through computer treatments of the sources, and they also suggested relations with very different types of resonant sounds. The garden palette was expanded by recordings made in the same environment without the benefit of the vessels' transformations. The resulting work may be regarded as a journey which passes through the highly charged and more restful events, textures and spaces inspired by the Empty Vessels. (DS)Commentary: This is Smalley’s most straightforwardly environmental sounding work. His interest in resonance and a use of the microphone to capture and expand natural sonic detail is present, but within an overtly ‘soundscape’ context. The close up and exaggerated perspective offered on the Helmholtz resonances of the garden pots lends an almost sinister presence to the work, as the natural sound world is heard simultaneously from the two perspectives of the pots’ interior resonances and the external daily sounds of overhead birdsong and aircraft. (JY)

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given different forms of injections of energy. The sparse placement of attacks gives them a long term formal role as we direct listening toward the slow-motion shaping of the spectral fields unfolding out of them. Yet the varying nature of the attacks implies a transformative function, which is heightened by their relatively sparse placement. This is also underlined by the way in which injections of energy through attacks can be shaped into resonance, such as the pulsed decays at 4’20”, 7’25’ and 9’42”, encouraging for the listener a sense that the phenomenon of the attack and its attendant release of energy is something fluid, but integral to the way pitched resonances form. The separation of attack and resonance over extended periods with hints of emergent attacks through careful dynamic shaping becomes a mechanism for exploiting musical expectation—from the opening we expect attacks to be part of the musical discourse, helping to drive spectral change—and listeners may find themselves anticipating their arrival and gaining a sense of long range structure from them. (JY)

2002

Ringing Down the Sun acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 14’48”.

Commissioned: Danish Institute for Electroacoustic Music.

Studio realisation: The composer’s personal studio, incorporating mate-

dips, all of which move in and out of more clearly pulsed moments. These motions are also spatial so there are approaches, emergences, dispersals and distant disappearances, some-times leaving behind the residues of spectral trails. The metal-based fami-lies, which are hardly ever absent, are brought into relations with a few other sound-types, and those who know my other pieces might spot the occasional refugee-sound from the past, recontextualised. (DS)Commentary: The sound world of Base Metals is one of rich, largely inharmonic spectra that present the listener with an engaging journey through a world of unfolding resonance. The work’s opening presents a sharply articulated attack-resonance morphology, which heralds a core structural motivation of the work—attacks initiating inharmonic resonances. The work presents shifting perspectives on this basic model. Attacks initiate resonance which then ‘find’ their own energy, drifting and merging. Within the nearly 14 minutes duration of Base Metals attacks are concentrated in the first and last thirds of the piece. Their structural function is linked to instigation of resonance, and therefore the initiation of spectral fields. But there are varying qualities and emphases in the attacks. The opening, for instance, is an extremely sharp, seemingly edited-in attack, with no apparent ‘klang’ tone, and a feature of the way the work unfolds in the first four minutes is also the way energy is also injected into the spectral continuity with delta-shaped attacks and surges rather than abrupt onsets. This sets up a kind of sound initiation continuum, with slowly shifting continuous spectra


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using, as in Resounding, a six-channel format comprising a central front pair of loudspeakers, a wider pair and a rear pair. The sound field created in the work is a powerfully immersive one—the surround field is constantly maintained, with specifically localised sound events helping to articulate points of change and emphasis in the space. In concert presentations, the two rear channels may be projected via four loudspeakers, using an additional pair of loudspeakers placed between the rear and wide pairs in order to create a fully contiguous spatial image. The work recalls the spirit of Vortex’s rising and falling motion of pitch, but with less inherently complex morphological constructs. There is however, a similar sense of drifting tonal implications, inviting the listener to anticipate moments of tonal fusion and arrival, which are generally fleeting. The first clear attack is withheld until 2’43” into the piece and, as with Base Metals, these are generally reserved for moments of emphasis to re-inject energy when a spectral plane has been reached, or to make decisive injection of new spectral colour as an enrichment of an established texture, such as at 8’04”. The middle part of the work is given a greater sense of urgency through its relative richness of attacks.

rial developed in the studio of DIEM, Aarhus, Denmark.

Premiere: MIX.02 Festival, Aarhus, Denmark, Auktionsscenen, June 13 2002.

Audio format: Six channels.

Composer’s notes: It was while working on the commission at DIEM in Aarhus that I came across the Danish tradition of “ringing down the sun”—the tolling of church bells, which signals the end of the working day and the descent of the sun through dusk and on into night. The tolling signal, and all it represents, remains part of Danish culture, even if it is now more “abstract”, in that it no longer necessarily has a real function in daily life. This idea seemed metaphorically to coincide with my attitudes towards the sounds, contours and spaces I was emerged in at the time, and thereafter it steered the direction and preoccupations of my composition.There is a number of tolling, resonant sounds which, although they may be set off with striking attacks, draw us inwards, in contemplation. There are circling, pulsed garlands which travel and radiate energy. There is a prevalence of descending contours—drifting, floating, falling—and sometimes descents into sombre hues. But the sun also has to be “rung up”, and so the form of the piece is governed by the progress of wave-like, cyclical contours. Lastly, there is the spatial dimension itself, designed to evoke both the open spaces of the outdoors – sky, landscape, and even coastline but also the more intimate, surround feeling embodied inside resonances. (DS)Commentary: This is Smalley’s first multi-channel acousmatic work

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(the first of the trilogy) are taken up and given new lives. Thanks to Derek Shiel, whose sound sculptures have provided a never-ending richness of resonant sounds. (DS)Commentary: Resounding employs the same six channel format as Ringing Down the Sun, and gives the listener a similar sense of continual envelopment in sound. The work is broadly in three sections of roughly equal length: the first characterised by sequences of metallic attacks and resonances, the second by metrically organised low frequency metallic pulsing and the third by gliding chordal organ-like sounds (which were hinted at the first section) with a notable brief reference back to the middle section’s rhythmic figure at 12’31”. As with many of Smalley’s works, rhythm is projected in short and medium term time frames through the spacing of attacks, the pulsing of resonances and the flow of attack into resonance, which are variably paced and shaped. In the first 1’30”, for instance, an oscillating vowel-like resonance without defining attack is initially presented, establishing a focal point for pitch and rhythm through rocking fluctuations of dynamic level. Over the next 45” a series of attacks of increasing abruptness inject additional spectral content, forcing a drift way from the focal pitch of the opening, leading to a more dramatic attack at 1’30”. Rhythmic figures are also constructed in the central section which emulate something of the pace of earlier pulsing resonances, but carry more visceral impact and momentum. The final section is triggered from the coalesence of the spectrum around the pitch B-flat and continues, through gliding pitch, to impart a sense of

2004

Resounding acousmatic electroacoustic on fixed mediumDuration: 14’23”.

Commissioned: Sonorities, Belfast, for the opening of the Sonic Arts Research Centre; commission sup-ported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.


Premiere: 2004 Sonorities Festival, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast, 28 April, 2004.

Audio format: Six channels.

Composer’s notes: Resounding is the third in a series of pieces which use resonant metallic sounds as the point of departure. It was composed as a companion piece for the second of the trilogy, Ringing Down the Sun, commissioned by the Danish Institute for Electroacoustic Music in 2002. The title refers to the ringing of resonant sounds, the filling of space with sound, and to the notion of sounding again – as heard, for example, in the cyclic rhythms of resonances, prolonged, decaying, or sent travelling through the “orchestrated” listening space. Spatially, two ideas are prevalent – resonance heard as if from the interior of objects of varying dimensions, and the external resonance of spaces as experienced, for instance, in a large cathedral. The idea of sounding again is also at the heart of the formal progress of the piece, which focuses on the return of materials in changed surroundings. Furthermore, sounds previously encountered in Ringing Down the Sun, and in Base Metals

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almost continual ascent, dissolving finally into a stratified spectrum of profoundly low and relatively high frequency content. Even in the final fading sonority, there is significant fine detail: partials pulsing at different rates, and strands of pitch that are tonally ambiguous until the very end—a pitch around E is prominent, but is most likely to be heard as the third harmonic of a spectrum rooted on A, and marking a relatively stable spectral/tonal resolution. (JY)

Catalog of Composer Denis Smalley

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Transcript of Catalog of Composer Denis Smalley