Orchestral colour
in the 21st century - fashion
in new sounds
by Arthur Butterworth
In the mid-1950s one
of the sensations of the time, especially
among young women, or indeed anyone
of any degree of sophistication - nowadays
we might say those who are "cool" -
was the so-called "new look". This was
one of the more memorable fashion dictates
concerning how women dressed. It arose,
at least partly, from the more relaxed
ideas about the length of skirt after
the strictures of war-time, when on
account of a real shortage of material
for clothing - when everyone had a book
of clothing coupons much in the same
way that they had a ration book for
food - the tight restrictions on how
many new clothes an individual might
be allowed to buy in a year, were suddenly,
or almost suddenly withdrawn. It has
long been known that skirt length is,
or at least was, supposed to be an indicator
of a country's economic status. So the
"New Look" "invented" - if that is the
right word - by Dior, became all the
rage and every woman who had even the
slightest pretension to self-esteem
just had to discard all her frumpy old
wartime wear and get "with it" as the
saying had it.
It strikes me that
there could be parallels in music. Of
course there have been obvious purely
musical evolutions: melody, harmony,
notions of form and structure, all challenging
an earlier sense of a musically correct
language - the sonata or symphony, or
other long-established fundamental ideas
as to what music should say.
One of the more obvious
developments in orchestral sound, though
perhaps not of course in chamber music
or other small and intimate forms, is
the present-day interest in percussion,
which might be said to represent a kind
of "new look" in the fashion of the
art of orchestration. Five years ago
- October 2001 - one of the articles
in this series examined the situation
of percussion in present-day brass band
music. It pointed out that at one time
percussion in brass band scoring was
virtually non-existent. Ironically the
very earliest brass bands, or indeed
wind bands of any kind used for outdoor
purposes: royal or religious ceremonial,
military pageantry and such depended
to a large extent on the exhilaration
of drums exciting the most basic of
all human responses: a rhythmic beat
which stimulated and encouraged the
natural human pulse. This of course
has ever been a characteristic of popular
music; hardly needing comment today
with its obsessive cult of pop music.
The very earliest instrumental music
must have been for some crude kind of
percussion instrument, and all young
babies are given a rattle or other crude
rhythmic device to play with before
any other sound-producing toy.
However, as ensemble
music evolved it was instruments capable
of producing melodic rather than rhythmic
sounds that became more significant
and meaningful to the human mind. Mere
rhythmic signals were thought to be
inexpressive; the mind yearned to be
stimulated with melody and harmony.
The evolving art of music was paralleled
by a growing intellectual nature, no
longer satisfied with crude, inexpressive
rhythms where subtleties of pitch were
non-existent.
The great age of the
baroque, followed by early classical
and then romantic music almost ignored
the element of percussive rhythm for
its own sake; it was thought fit only
for people of lesser intellectual development,
so that apart from a very few instances
such as Mozart's overture to "The Seraglio"
where so-called "Turkish" music is called
upon for local colour, the percussion
was just not considered to be musical
at all. It is not without significance
that at one time bands were said to
comprise musicians and "drummers" implying
that the latter could hardly be considered
as musicians since they did not contribute
to melody or harmony, but merely added
a dash of extra rhythmic emphasis …
and that could just as well be ignored
since the melodic and harmonic elements
of music contributed their own inherent
pulse or rhythm without any real need
for artificially bolstering up by mere
drums or other percussive devices -
hence the term "harmonic rhythm". That
phrase implies that subtle quality that
the sense of the "right" harmonic sequence
possesses, and which many students of
harmony find difficult to manipulate.
Only the timpani section was regarded
as a musically-percussive requirement.
Thus it has ever been admitted as a
basic part of the orchestral palette,
equally as important as string or wind
sound.
In baroque and classical
times it was string sound - that most
subtle and satisfying of all tone-colours
- that was of prime, and at times the
only importance. The heroic, often arrogantly
aggressive sound of the trumpet (such
as in Bach) fell out of fashion when
the more easy-going rococo age succeeded
the flamboyance of the baroque. Haydn
and Mozart were far less assertive.
Of course things progressed: Beethoven
and the later age of a new heroic romanticism
witnessed new ways of expressing things
in music just as in all other aspects
of human endeavour. It was soon the
turn of woodwind instruments to challenge
the supremacy of the strings. Although
woodwind began to make their mark more
effectively in the orchestra, their
acceptance in chamber music was probably
a little less marked, although there
are some notable examples of wind chamber
music from classical times. However,
the more theatrical and dramatic demands
of opera persuaded composers to seek
more colourful sounds from an otherwise
perhaps staid though reliable string
sound. The nineteenth century saw some
of the most imaginative developments
in the field of woodwind, and especially
brass instruments, but percussion remained
- relatively - somewhat beyond the pale.
To the fundamental timpani, the bass
drum and cymbals were the mainstay of
extra rhythmic emphasis, mostly as little
more than noise-makers, adding to the
dramatic excitement in opera. It is
worth remembering that in the more staid
concert hall - the realm of symphony
and concerto - the percussion, even
the ubiquitous bass drum and cymbals,
hardly ever entered; they were not considered
to be 'musical' instruments at all.
It might surprise many listeners to
the present day orchestra to know how
very little even the great masters of
the late nineteenth century resorted
to percussion. Berlioz, Wagner, Richard
Strauss, for all their colourful, and
at times, awe-inspiring imaginative
orchestration only used the percussion
sparingly; remembering the old adage:
"percussion is effective in inverse
ratio to the amount it is used" which
perhaps also recalls, not only concerning
percussion, but orchestration in general,
a pertinent remark by Hans Richter,
Wagner's distinguished apprentice and
one of the great conductors of all time:
"The greater the number of staves in
the score, the fewer the number of ideas".
In the twentieth century,
probably largely the result of the influence
of other cultures impinging upon that
of the age-old one of western Europe,
there has been a veritable explosion
of interest - one might even say an
"invasion" - of percussion in all fields
of instrumental music except perhaps
chamber music, although even that rarefied
field has not remained absolutely untouched.
This of course, has admittedly brought
a huge and colourful new asset to orchestral
sounds, but it is a matter of taste
as to whether this has been of universal
advantage, or whether a new, even insidious
element has become too assertive. So
many scores by present-day composers
("contemporary" in the jargon sense
of the word) appear to be obsessed by
percussion; it has become an end in
itself.
What might the objections
be?
This is where many
readers will probably disagree most
forcefully: it will be argued that any
additional source of new colour - "timbre"
- must be a good thing; why should we
be restricted, as in the past to string
and wind tone, with just limited incursions
of percussive sounds? Fundamentally
it could be put this way: String and
wind instruments, and indeed that most
percussive of instruments, the piano
are capable of a subtlety of expression
that, basically, no percussion instrument
can match. While it is true that the
vast number of new instruments from
every culture in the world is now available,
few possess that indescribable expressive
ability that string or wind instruments
can command. The very word "percussion"
implies that these are sound-producing
means that have to be struck in some
way, and once the sound is "struck"
there is no means of expressively moulding
it otherwise. Certainly several of the
tuned percussion can simulate an artificial
expressiveness: marimba, xylophone,
for example: but their otherwise cold
inexpressiveness sets them apart from
wind instruments that can become part
of the player's very human and physical
self, or the intimacy of the string
player's caressing attachment to the
strings and the bow. But percussion
is here to stay.
What might all this
suggest?
If the great classical
age of the strings - often called "The
Age of Enlightenment" - represented
a truly human quest for self-expression,
and the romantic age which saw such
development of wind instruments expressed
an even more scientific evolution of
all things, perhaps the later twentieth
century and even more so this twenty-first
century is being expressed through percussion.
But what might be, psychologically,
the unconscious reason for our present-day
obsession with such "inexpressive" sounds?
They are functional and to the point.
Might they not be yet another facet
of our reliance, if not indeed growing
subservience to the robots in our lives?
- the computer, the now awe-inspiring
new means of communication: the mobile
phone, the internet, text messaging,
space exploration and all manner of
"de-humanised" phenomena which we have
become slaves to? Might the music of
the not-too-distant future become solely
a thing for robots to manipulate? This
has already happened in many senses:
the almost
unbelievable means
to create music, seemingly without recourse
to human inspiration at all. The equipment
to create and reproduce musical sounds
has become almost absurdly too easy
to manipulate; so much so that many
so-called "composers" cannot be looked
upon as creative artists in the way
we once assumed all artists functioned:
a manifestation of something uniquely
personal to them, for now so much so-called
inspiration or unique invention of the
individual human mind has been handed
over to the computer to initiate; it
can become all too easy to abdicate
one's inspiration. This might hotly
be denied, but this writer has already
seen this happen in some students, who
genuinely believe that they have 'composed'
something when in fact they have merely
relied on a machine not only to take
the age-old drudgery out of the process
- a necessary and salutary burden making
one realise the profundity of what one
is about in the act of creation - but
to go a stage further and even begin
to do the thinking, the true creative
process, for them. It is this present-day
unconsciously psychological process
that percussion instruments - so overwhelming
in a vast number of contemporary scores
- seem so balefully to symbolise.
Arthur Butterworth
