Gracia Maxima: a Stravinskian and Aristothelic overview

Gracia Maxima by Juan Jos Rezzuto. Analysis, points in common and main concepts.

The study of the creative process is an extremely delicate one. In truth, it is impossible to observe the inner workings of this process from the outside. It is futile to try and follow its successive phases in someone else's work. It is likewise very difficult to observe one's self. Yet it is only by enlisting the aid of introspection that I may have any chance at all of guiding you in this essentially fluctuating matter. Igor Stravinsky Poetics of music, Oxford University press, p.49. According to Stravinsky the composition process implies the organization of the sounds in a way we can increase the joy of being exposed to their merely existence. By this ordering of sounds, we are adding to nature the benefits of artifice (POM, p. 23 and 24). Some of the concepts developed by Stravinsky in his booki describe the main elements and the fundamental steps involved in the, universally conceived, musical composition process. First of all the contrast Innovation Revolution; these concepts should be in the very heart of every composer`s community concerns. It is a matter of fact that musical creation is defined by concepts like those. Taking Revolution into account, Stravinsky describes it like a destructive process that could attempt to perturb nature itself (POM p.13). Sometimes, in the last decades, we have been forced to suffer the product of the continuous efforts to avoid musical tradition, which, in some cases, were built out of not very creative paradigms. What is amazing is that many years after Poetics of music was published, this statement is still defining some snob audiences of the world: Our vanguard elite, sworn perpetually to outdo itself, expects and requires that music should satisfy the taste for absurd cacophony (POM p.12) These creation schemes resulted in pieces of work that were so alienated from the public that they put in doubt their very identity as artistic work. The main purpose of my music is integration; instead of having each twentieth century composing technique as an independent objective by itself, I try using different kinds of them mixed and conveniently combined. In this way, I am trying to be audacious instead of revolutionary.

E.g. 1, Pitch-class set: 3-3B Major-minor trichord

The first section of Gracia Maxima`s first movement uses pitch-class sets. Despite the fact that some musicians claim that those relationships are not even heard and are just intellectual abstractions, I use this method relying on what David Copes said: Pitch-class sets serve as a useful resource, as valid as any other compositional tool. This technique is used together with free melodic atonalism, in the first half of the introduction, and also mixed with tonal phrases at the end of it. From the first bar up to the eleventh, 3-3B is used as an intervallic conceptual ostinato, while the short motives of the cello and clarinet are built according to free atonalism. Bar 12 to 14 is a transition to the first tonal section. The structure of the first theme collaborates with unity, integrating melodic pregnancy with solid methodology. In the master`s words, the contrasts are evident while the similarities, the main components of great work, are hidden, ruling from behind and leading everything towards unity (POM p. 32). In my work I try to follow this statement to its last implications, taking a musical cell, exposed in the first section quasi introduzione and developing every material directly from it. E.g. 2: Extract from the beginning of second section.

This fragment is the beginning of a polyphonic passage that involves every instrument. It starts as a recall of the 3-3B, then it develops to free atonalism and finally it becomes tonal with the entrance of the soprano. All the transitions keep in common the use of that successive triplet configuration that characterizes the first ostinato. When referring to one of his most remarkable colleagues, Arnold Shoemberg, Strawinsky highlights the inner coherence that legitimates his work and gives its authenticity (POM p. 12 and 13). This is the heart of a perdurable artistic piece that back ups its existence with a strong and coherent anatomy and not hiring help from outsider exegetic concepts. In this way, all the studies and realizations Schoemberg did in the dodecaphonic field guaranteed him with the strongest consistency when dealing with his own intellectual system. Personally, I choose to look for this inner coherence mixing different techniques and trying to build continuity in the incoming and fusion of different methods. For that purpose I pay a lot of attention to both the

fade in and fade out of materials coming from different theories, because those crosses are not just links between musical phrases but also between different compositional visions. At the end of the introduction I enter the first exposition which is absolutely tonal in opposition to the pitch-class sets and free atonalism firstly used. This new section has its own expositions, development and reexpositions, freely used as concepts and not as fixed morphology. Just leaving this section, we find the fading out of the last musical idea imbricated with the configuration of what is going to be treated next, processed according to the free atonalism methods. Just after this, we return to a more tonal language with some touches of polytonalism. In spite of the fact that I am dealing with variety, similarity takes its part when presenting new materials and connecting sections. Stravinsky: When variety tempts me, I am uneasy about the facile solutions it offers me. Similarity, on the other hand, poses more difficult problems but also offers results that are more solid and hence more valuable to me. All the polytonal passages are used ornamentally, this means that they are just secondary interventions, mainly by the clarinet and cello and they last just a few bars. By this, I try to introduce a valuable compositional technique but trying to avoid installing a whole new material to develop; on the contrary, I try to make a polytonal enrichment of the same musical speech. E.g. 3: Ornamental use of poly-tonality

Stravinsky claimed that a musical piece has not to be considered cacophonic merely because it does not have good reception by popular audiences (POP p.13) and that consonances are not necessarily means of order in music anymore (POP p.34). This concepts where largely confirmed through experimentations held during the last century. Composers as Bartok, Prokofiev and Scriabin, were some of the first musicians who tried and showed that dissonance is not exactly a synonym of anti-aesthetic. In spite of the

fact that the masters were influenced by functional tonal paradigm, new composers came and brought this concept up to a more radical state. In my piece both sound qualities are sporadically used simultaneously and thematically linked. The faculty of observation and of making something out of what is observed belongs only to the person who at least possesses, in his particular field of endeavour, an acquired culture and an innate taste (POM p.56). We could infer, from Stravinskys words, that our behaviour in these actions is directly influenced by the interaction of two elements that are some of the main components of our civilization. Considering the latter as a group scheme, culture, as a product of social relationships and achievements, is the most ontological concept in relation to our humanity quality of existence and it certainly defines what it has to be considered as good or bad tastes. That is why, in my personal opinion, all the fast cultural changes that took place in the last century produced a mirror effect in the number of new different artistic movements and aesthetic rules, which used to be far less numerous up to the end of the nineteenth century. Nowadays, our different culture types of observation and creation generate an infinite number of artistic movements which exist simultaneously and last for short to long successive periods. This profusion of tendencies is a radical cultural change in contrast with the more atomized dynamics that characterized traditional periods. Another dilemma is the dichotomy emotion-intellectualism, a clear point of discussion in a brain storm of tendencies. Despite being potentially complementary elements, musical works are often, due to purisms, more concerned about one of the two aspects. Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky, in his Potique musicale, defines two types of music: one that evolves according to the ontological time, producing euphoria or dynamic peacefulness in the audience, and the other irregular one, which avoids the traditional gravitational centers and locate itself in the instability, more confident attitude with composer`s own impulses. The first type of music is the one related with the concept of similarity. In my music I try to work taking both sights into account. I enjoy very much to challenge audience`s expectations by stimulating them through predictable and unpredictable materials. I love this metamorphic attitude which leads the music to live in both the ontological time, with its strong similarity content; and the irregular one, full of ideas and different proportions. All the derived materials and the processes applied to them are sometimes so far away from the simple former cell that we fell, sporadically, full of uncertainty as if were driving trough a mist which prevents us from clearly seeing the shapes around us. This is perhaps, the utmost expressive characteristic of the piece: the joy of variety governed by similarity.

Spiritus ubi vult spirat (St. John, 3: 8). The Spirit is thus endowed with the capacity of willing. The principle of speculative volition is a fact (POM p.48). This choice of structures and resources is what configures the speculative conscience in music composition. It is a matter of fact that Art implies order of some kind. No matters how disordered a composer claims to be, the moment he chooses to write in a specific way, he also agrees to join a methodological scheme. This implies to follow a group of his own expectations, which means that is the manifestation of his conscience what is leading every note and rest from behind. In this point is where we can try to unfold the creative imagination and see it as an organic entity. The convictions and the internal order of the artist build the creative impulse: the irresistible need to invent and turn into reality what exists just in abstraction. According to Stravinsky, creative imagination is what performs the change in piece`s state from conception to realization. Working together with these concepts are the expressive and the declamatory impetus of each composer. Personally, the main objective of my work is to transmit emotions, to build a universe of feelings induced by a particular order of the sounds, which, according to Stravinsky, is the aim of composition itself. The choice of both the text, extracted from the old Roman Pagan liturgy, and the musical design were held to achieve a programmatic realization. I borrow a concept from Aristotle` s Poetry and I claim that all the proportions and materials of the piece are a mimetic intend with nature. In other words, I follow an Aristotelian philosophy of existence combined with a free use of the proportions. The tension design of the piece is inspired in the preparation for a particularly somber dawn, the ascension to the zenith, the dissension and the glorious brilliant new sunrise. This is particularly evident in the misty beginning and also in the vocalize near the end, which works as an evocation to the first situation that prepares the audience for the reception of the last sunrise. A contrasting rhythmic configuration at the end helps to enhance the bravery renewing feeling of the overcoming sunlight. E.g. 4: Irruption of new bar time at the CODA.

Following the idea that the Aristotelian scheme of beginning, development and end varies according to the emotional needs of the piece, the search of beauty in this work is back up by the use of non-traditional

but particular proportions defined to materialize its emotional objectives. The spirit of my work tries to obey the Aristotelian principle that says: nature is the energy of poetics (in this case music) and poetics the ability to imitate it. Summarizing, the three discussed points of view: the Aristotelian, the Stravinskian and mine in this piece, have, at least, one point in common; they try to find the clues that define the ontological functional idea of artistic existence. Every artistic work has to resemble the living organisms by having the characteristics needed to be alive in its environment. Other ways it has no destiny but the fatal ending of being food, not for the critics, but for the categorical conscience that lives deep in our souls, the common sense: the sense of being human.

Bibliography

Poetics of music by Stravinsky. Oxford University Press Poetics by Aristotle, translated by S. H. Butcher Techniques of the contemporary composer by David Cope. Schirmer Potique musicale by Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky