Introduction:

This presentation resides in 2 overlapping spaces. One consists of 8 slides which explore the ground on which I compose. The other is this script which will present one aspect of my compositional interests. Through this simultaneous presentation, I hope to present a truer representation of myself as a composer.

Slide 1

The Script:

Although time has always been an important aspect of music, in my recent works, I am more concerned with space. I am interested in the spatial qualities – both physical and acoustic –  of performance venues, the dynamics of positioning and movements of sound in a given space. I am also interested in how the qualities of space can affect the shaping and perception of time in music.

I will illustrate some of my explorations of space using extracts from 3 works.

The first work, Re-veiling Variations was written for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for the occasion of New Music Forum 2004.

This work is based on an early work of mine simply called ‘Variations’ which was written to fulfill a request to write a set of 5 variations based on a Chinese tune for mixed ensemble of 7 instruments.

‘Re-veiling Variations’ is a reviewing of ‘Variations’, the earlier work. Borrowing from the tradition of Medieval troping, I added a layer of new music for a double string quartet as elaboration, commentary and clarification on the earlier work and through this process, I was trying to understand a work which has grown unfamiliar and remote in its intentions and expressions. While this new layer of music serves to illuminate the original, it also at the same time obscures and confuses, both aurally and visually, especially due to the spatial arrangement and lighting on stage. The title is therefore a pun referring to both the meanings of veiling, i.e. obscuring, and revealing. The special seating arrangement for the performance is given as Figure 1. The stage is lit progressively dim from front to back. A simple version would be for the front string quartet to be fully lit, the back-facing string quartet to be half lit and the mixed ensemble with the conductor to be without stage lighting but only playing with stand lights like in a theatre orchestra pit.

In effect, the subject-object relationship between the two musics – that of the double string quartet and that of the mixed ensemble – and the perspectives of foreground and background are made ambiguous. The double string quartet plays extremely quiet and sometimes hardly audible music but is more brightly lit up and visible to the audience, while the mixed ensemble sits in the dark and at the back of the stage although for most part, we hear their music as the foreground.

To extend this ambiguity, the audience is constantly confounded by sounds and actions that do not correspond especially with regards to the string quartets, as most of the techniques employed produce little sound but require lots of action to execute. While composing this layer of music, I quickly realized that, much like Jasper Johns’ ‘etchings’ of numbers and Gerhard Richter’s blurring of photo images, this veiling procedure becomes the main object of concern. It becomes the ‘theme’ of this new work.

Figure 2 shows the opening music for the double string quartet. (Notice the points of sounds expressed in the score.) And you will now hear Extract 1, the beginning of the work where the opening music for the double string quartet, with their very soft points of sound coming from their various positions, reveal progressively acoustic definitions of the performing space. When the flute from the mixed ensemble enters at the end of the extract, you will hear that we have ‘entered’ another space, and another stage of development in the work. The flute entry is the beginning of the first variation.

Extract 1 : 40sec

Slide 2

Slide 2 shows photos of a performance of my choral work, Birth and Death: 5 Songs for Thich Nhat Hanh, where members of the Singapore Youth Choir tap stones across the stage in a variety of pulses producing a sea of pointillistic sounds.

Back to Reveiling Variations:

It is clear the double string quartet and the mixed ensemble have separate layers of music; the conductor directs the mixed ensemble performing the 5 variations, while the double string quartet consists of 8 independent parts veiling the mixed ensemble.

Next we will hear another extract from the middle of this work. It starts where variation 3 ends leading into a new section in the double string quartet music as shown in Figure 3 andit ends with the beginning part of variation 4. In this extract you can hear more clearly how the veil and the variations gradually merge as the texture of the veil becomes richer with more movements and the variation texture becomes sparser and more transparent.

Extract 2 : 1min 30sec

Slide 3

Composition is about making music. Music-making is a process involving listening, composing and performing. Through composition I seek to create musical environments which will condition and allow the performers to explore his or her physical and musical space through performance. In Dragon Singing . Autumnal Water for flute and computer (2002), which was recently presented at the 2005 International Computer Music Conference in Barcelona, the music is generated in performance on 2 levels: one through the interaction between the bodily space of the performer (involving his or her physiology and anatomy), and the mechanical-acoustic space of the instrument; and another through the interaction between the musical space and the physical space of the entire performance venue.

Slide 4

Dragon Singing . Autumnal Water consists 35 parts that are distributed around the entire performance area in 7 groups of varying sizes. The flutist moves around the space according to the directions given which allow for certain freedom to explore the acoustic properties of various locations.

In addition to the various types and levels of interactions among spaces mentioned above, there is also another more direct interaction between the flute’s music in the real space and that of the computer in the virtual space. For this work, I have used computer and audio technologies to create virtual spaces extending that of the performing venue. In this work, nothing is pre-recorded. The computer does ‘live’ processing throughout, that is the computer records what the flute plays in performance and processed it in real-time. In this way, the flute and the computer are constantly interacting with each other as the performance is going on.

Listen to (Extract 3) an extract from this work.

Extract 3 : 1min 50sec

Lastly, I would like to introduce a more recent work, Singing Forgetting for orchestra (2005). With the opportunity to write for an orchestra I decided to use the orchestra seating plan itself as a physical space in which the music is distributed and its drama played out within the stage limits of left and right, and front and back. Figure 4 shows the seating plan for the orchestra.

Prelude to Act One of Wagner’s Lohengrin provided the initial inspiration for this work. Listen first to Extract 4, Wagner’s Prelude where a single sound is passed between the solo strings, tutti strings and the woodwinds. You can hear the sound moves forward and backwards as the sound moves from group to group seated at various depths of the stage.

Extract 4 : 30 sec

Now listen to Singing Forgetting as performed by the Slee Sinfonietta in Buffalo last April. I hope you enjoy as much as I do the morphing movement of the sound masses.

Extract 5 : 3min 13sec