Pre-existing material: main text, passing references

The main text of this piece is the opening from The Wanderer, preserved in the Exeter Book, an anonymous manuscript dating from the late 10th century. The choice of an old English poem was for me an opportunity for me to explore my late father's heritage as he had studied Old and Middle English at Oxford with Christopher Tolkien (son of J.R.R.). This choice was both a chance to discover something of my personal heritage as well as a more universal understanding of the origins of English as lingua franca.

The piece Dir - In Dir, for vocal sextet and string sextet, by Stefano Gervasoni, my former teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, was performed and recorded by EXAUDI (Gervasoni, 2013). This work was a model and the initial source of inspiration for The Wanderer. My piece is not stylistically similar to Dir - in Dir, though its instrumentation is. A slow triad sequence appears several times in Dir

- In Dir, and is quoted in my piece in bars 343-360 in the lower strings. This

chord sequence, in bars (343-360), can be heard as an accompaniment of a violin solo, after a few seconds in the musical examples (CD, track 12) corresponding to bars 338-360.

This triad sequence is used as an accompaniment of a violin solo in The

Wanderer (bars 324-360), which is also based on the transcription of borrowed

material. It uses as a source a pre-existing recording of a piece by Tazul Tajuddin (2006), as a source, played by David Alberman. Tajuddin’s piece uses a tablature-type notation, of which the outcome is unforeseeable pitch-wise because of its speed, its large intervals, and its scordatura. The resulting pitches are not notated.

Figure 70: Tazul Tajuddin, Selindung Warna, for solo violin, score extract

(With the kind permission of BabelScore, his publisher)

The interpretation by David Alberman is exceptionally energetic and was my point of departure. I completely reassembled some of the most difficult samples of this recording, linking them one after another without a break, in order to create the impression of something almost unplayable by a human performer. I then transcribed the resulting sound file in standard notation (playing the recording in slow motion for more precision). This violin solo, since it is based on recording transcriptions, closely relates with my Etude de Synchronisation, and to the notion of found object. This external reference provokes a sudden contrast in energy as the piece unfolds, and then quickly disappears. This found object therefore evokes a sort a window, eliciting a brief glance at the outside world.

The form of the piece reveals itself through its use of the text. The dead language, often perceived as meaningless sound material, corresponds to the dominant monochrome ‘surface’ of the piece, fleetingly interrupted throughout by extracts in English, Italian, or French. Harmonically, the Old English corresponds to an F spectrum (or F sharp), while other languages adhere to completely different rules.

Two passages, bars 124-139 and 311-323, find their inspiration in the Ars Nova, for example in Machaut’s isorhythmic motets, because they superimpose different speeds of elocution: the singing voices perform a very slow loop of four bars in each case, referring to the talea of the Tenor part in the medieval form. At the same time, the speaking voices dialogue as fast as possible, in a different language in the second example, which is reminiscent of the Duplum or Triplum parts of a medieval motet.

A very short quotation from Meditation on Haydn’s Name, for piano, by George Benjamin appears in the tape, bars 428-429 and 434-435. The quotation is itself a reference, since the notes H, A and D, in German, refer to the name of the Viennese classical composer.

The French words ‘Vienne la nuit (…)’, first used in bars 165-176, are extracted from Sous le Pont Mirabeau by Apollinaire. They are reminiscent of a song by Léo Ferré which uses the same poem, however the melodic material I used is completely different to Ferré’s. The same words appear again towards the end of the piece, bars 456-477, this time paraphrasing the very famous opening melody from The Lamb by Sir John Tavener.

The last section of the piece, bars 436-490, owes its few pizzicati to the influence of two pieces by British composers: Inscription (2011), by James Weeks, and

Shadow Cast (2001), by Christopher Fox. Both of these pieces contain slow

sustained microtonal material played on strings, on the top of which one isolated pizzicato appears at irregular and long intervals of time, giving the impression of a clock marking every minute (particularly in the case of Inscription).

8.3 Representation

With The Wanderer, I was able for the first time to manipulate spectral chords with different simultaneous timbres (voices, strings and piano), assigning a specific pitch to each track. In the passage below, the representation on Logic displays the register of each instrumental group. The sequencer window displays the whole spectrum as one single big stave, covering the entire register. Each track is tuned to one partial of the harmonic series of a low F: from partial No 7 at

the bottom (E flat low) to partial N0 36 at the top (G). Each track automatically transposes the sample it plays to a single pitch, independent of the timbre used.

Figure 71-72: The Wanderer, visualisation in Logic, notation in Finale

Each instrumental group is assigned a specific colour (green for voices, purple for strings, blue for piano). For example, this representation shows clearly shows that the piano (displayed in blue) is situated in a higher register than the voices (in green). The same passage is represented both on Logic and Finale, in order to bring out the similarities and differences of the visualisations. It highlights that tracks of partial No.18 and No. 21 first play a piano sound, then a string sound,

which is why G and B flat low in bars 313-314 are then repeated in bars 317-318 in the strings.