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Colgrass
Journal
Conclusion
Thursday,
8 December (one hour)
We
read through Loren's Tune. She was excited
and Louis was pleased. Then Loren and I
went to the staff room and I showed her all the
possibilities for playing these variations in
any order, including the chords I had written.
She immediately made a scenario she liked
for the five choices available, having a clear
idea of just what order she wanted all the musical
events to happen in.
Out
of the blue, John came to me with a theme he had
written in D minor and then I met with Laura on
her drum piece, suggesting the percussion section
could play on drums and the comp team could beat
out accompanying rhythms on a table top as they
had the first day she presented the idea.
I also suggested ways the different sections of
the band could accompany the drummers with “drum
chords” or clusters that sound percussive.
She liked that idea very much and went home to
work on it.
E-mail
to Krystal Banfield about progress: The kids are
starting to write themes together and, with my
guidance, are starting to shape these into pieces.
We will probably combine indeterminacy
to some extent, as in Loren's piece, where several
variations of the theme are playable simultaneously
or at any time during the piece (ala chance techniques).
But basically they seem to want to have
“something solid” at the basis of their pieces—either
a story as in Jill's “Brother Sister” or a theme
that is recognizable and to which the ear can
return. John came in with a theme today
that impressed me because it was generative—that
is, it seems to have a life of its own.
I'm showing him how to “listen to what the theme
wants to do” and just follow it. I try
to make myself the auditory “alter ego” for these
budding composers, as well as the fingers at the
piano to open the doors of their ears to the harmonic
and orchestrational possibilities. In this
way I'm kind of an extension of their brain, like
a computer program they can plug into, in which
they get me to write what they are hearing because
they don't know how to do it or sometimes even
what to write.
Today
we went through Loren's piece with the band.
It can be reorchestrated by the band director
at will because it's written out in numbered steps
instead of the usual score. You just choose
which of the pieces of musical material you want
and when, and cue each step and each instrumental
section as you go. So you automatically
get a different orchestration each time, and of
course a different musical scenario.
For
Monday, Loren, Louis, and I will each bring in
our own version of Loren's piece and hear them
with the band at 10:10.
Monday,
12 December
Never
got to do it. Christmas madness set in,
with preparation for the Xmas band concert.
Loren was mad, but I told her this was usual stuff
for a composer and not to worry about it.
We'll get to her piece after the holiday.
(These kids are getting the real experience of
being composers, the good and the bad.)
CHRISTMAS
BREAK
Tuesday,
11 January 2000 (2 hours)
Met
with John today and showed him what I'd come up
with on the them he gave me. Together we
carried it to the next step. He told me
what he wanted, indicated character and mood,
“corrected” me if I suggested something that took
it in the wrong direction. He likes clusters.
At one point when the melody was rising to a climax
point I expressed concern that we had only the
flutes and the oboes on the high notes and that
that wouldn't be strong enough, so he suggested
that we change the music at that point, making
it softer to accommodate the weaker orchestration.
It was a great idea and not one I would
normally have thought of. It changed the
shape of what came after that, in fact dictated
it.
Since
I suggested the initial rhythms and melodic development,
I am very concerned about “taking over” and dictating
the outcome of the music. So I watch his
face for responses when I play a passage, to see
if I'm matching his fantasy. I try my best
to be non-dictatorial or “the authoritative adult”
because any remark or even a subtle sign from
me can influence a musically inexperienced 13-year-old
and get him easily to say, “Yeah, let's do that”
when he's not truly convinced. I want him
to feel some real estate with the music, a sense
of ownership of what we're doing, that it could
not have been the way it is if not for him.
Then
I looked at Laura's piece. She had written
an entire graphic piece with drumming as the central
solo. Together we met with the drummers
for the piece—Geoff, Logan and another boy, plus
two less experienced kids. They all have
limited skill development at this point so I showed
them a few drumming techniques and we played together
a little bit to get them going. They agreed
to meet every day at lunchtime for 15-20 minutes
and improvise in this fashion. (But they
didn't do it. They need someone there to
prod them into it until they get the routine).
Laura will play with bass drum beaters
on a tabletop and be the “speaker” for the other
two boys who will also play on tables.
The drums and tables will be the alternating solo
body while the band plays interjections on designated
rhythms with undesignated pitches—high, medium,
and low, loud, or soft, sustained or rhythmic.
Laura is the only one who has made her
own piece almost all by herself. I got
her started when she showed me her basic idea,
suggesting she have the band play like percussion
instruments in blocks of sound, and demonstrated
at the piano how it might sound. But then
she took over from there and made a piece, which
I edited and expanded, but it was still basically
hers.
Wednesday,
12-27 January.
From
here on my notes are spotty, because it was just
a flurry of activity trying to get the kids' pieces
ready for the 28 January videotaping. And
I suddenly realized I had not written my own!
But
where were we? Whatever happened to our
Winona Drive Suite? With four graphic notation
movements? Where had I gone wrong?
Or did I go right? What might I have done
differently? I felt I should follow the
needs of the kids and that took us in another
direction toward more conventional musical notation.
Our
finished pieces, each about 2 and a half minutes
long, were:
”March of the Devil” (straight notation—based
on a melodic gesture by John and realized together
by John and me).
“Drum
War” (solo drum trio punctuated with rhythmic
tone-clusters in the band. Written largely
by Laura with coaching and editing from me.)
“Rain
Shower” (6 melodic and harmonic lines to be played
in any order or manner desired. A three-bar
theme written by Loren and expanded by me, with
variations suggested by me.)
“Old
Churches” (A conventionally notated piece utilizing
some improvisation and graphic techniques).
On
reflection, I see a key point that I had overlooked
when deciding to create a graphic piece with kids,
namely: children don't have enough control of
their instruments to improvise, which is what
graphic notation really is. Even professionals
can be stilted in this way. But professionals
will still give you something very interesting
in spite of their comparative inexperience at
improvising, because they have a broad command
of their instruments and can respond to the dots
and squiggles of the graphics with some instrumental
agility. In fact, if my kids could have
had professionals play some of the graphic pieces
they had written they would be astounded at how
imaginative their writing was. The whole
project—start to finish—would have lasted less
than a month.
Question:
seeing that the children are inexperienced at
reading graphics on their instruments, could I
not have written out the basic graphic exercises
for them to practice? Answer: yes, I probably
should have. Question: how long would they
have had to practice such exercises to become
agile at ad libbing? Answer: not long,
if coached closely and graded on their progresss.
(Kids both hate and love to be graded.
And they respond well to pressure—they
crave a tangible measurement of their progress,
which grading gives.)
More
pressing question: Let's assume I had followed
this individual graphic notation exercise plan
to prepare kids on each instrument for playing
graphic pieces, and then supplied school band
directors with these exercises along with the
graphic pieces, how many band directors in the
future could I expect to drill their kids individually
in graphics? Would they have the time?
Or even with sufficient time, might they
not see this notation and say, “Oh, my kids can't
play that. And the hell is it anyway?”
This
was composer Sid Hodkinson's experience in publishing
his three books of graded graphic notation pieces
for high school band called “A Contemporary Primer
for Band—a collection of musical studies for any
number of wind and percussion players.”
(Published by the St. Paul, Minnesota public school
system, and highly recommended as a primer of
graphic techniques for band.) According
to Hodkinson, hardly anyone plays them.
Even at the high school level. Maybe Hodkinson's
problem is similar to the one I was having—that
finished graphic pieces are intimidating to both
band directors and inexperienced children.
Perhaps kids need to gain confidence practicing
individually before coming together as a group
and making “all those weird sounds.” The
age range of 12-15 is extremely self-conscious
about looking foolish to their peers. Breaking
them in individually might be the answer.
Another
solution is to combine some graphic effects with
notation, because the kids feel confident mixing
more experimental ideas with what they have already
been trained to do. This begs the question:
why not train kids from the beginning to play
not only scales and rhythms, but also graphics?
This would give them a broader experience
of their instrument. Also, graphic notation
allows kids to learn their instrument in a manner
that is “goof-proof,” because you can't make a
mistake. Reading conventional notation
is all about right and wrong, so kids learn to
be terrified of making a mistake. Since
playing graphic notation is a form of ad libbing,
a kid can learn to have fun and play at music
making—like enjoying splashing around in the water
before learning to swim: if you splash around
long enough you'll be halfway to teaching yourself
how to swim.
I
don't pretend to have any ready answers.
I think the question is something to be investigated
together with composers and elementary school
band directors. Though we criticize music
educators and the system they operate in, we do
very little to help them. The pressures
on Louis Papachristos at Winona Drive Senior School
with three bands and 170 kids, and teaching general
music classes plus coaching boys and girls basketball
(!), are almost overwhelming to start with.
The school band director has responsibilities
to put on concerts for school occasions and holidays,
plus teaching them how to play their instruments.
(Some in the 7 th grade band never played
an instrument before and are playing a concert
within a few months. You have to have an
organized system of instrumental training to make
that happen, which doesn't allow a lot of time
for experimentation.) And Louis gave up
a lot of his band rehearsal time to indulge my
experiments with his kids. Not everyone
would be willing to do that.
What
did I learn from all this?
Well,
one thing—I learned how to write for eighth grade
band—maybe. My piece, “Old Churches,” is
full of compromises—like doubling instruments
in the orchestration for security, like writing
no solos, like guessing about a generic band size
(and instrumental ranges) that will suit most
bands across the continent.
Keeping
the music simple was a challenge in itself, since
we composers are used to writing in a virtuosic
manner for professionals (including college bands
as professionals). But it struck me as
I went along in this project that Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven wrote a lot of simple music for
amateurs without “dumbing down.” Question:
am I a good enough composer to write a simple
theme (largely diatonic) that can be genuinely
exciting or moving, the way the great masters
did? I think that's the reason the American
Composers Forum asked “professional composers”
to write for kids, because we're supposed to be
able to do that. Well, this project was
the most humbling in this regard of any I've had
as a composer.
For
this reason, I think writing kids' band should
be a required project in our university composition
programs. Not just to provide music for
kids but to provide training for the composers.
Writing for eighth grade band is like walking
for a while in four-pound shoes: if you can move
gracefully with that weight on your feet, you'll
fly when you put on the four-ounce runners.
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