By: Margaret Foley, Rebecca Kreps, & Taylor N. Smith
I. Introduction and Biography:
Brian Robison is a talented professor at Northeastern University and musician who composes atonal pieces for a wide variety of instruments. Some of Brian’s recent accolades include commissions from the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund (2008) and Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble (2008), and composer residencies at Aaron Copland House (2006), the MacDowell Colony (2006), and Norton Island (2005) (Brian Robison, DMA). Robison also has many of his completed scores and diagrams at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA as part of the Contemporary Music Research Collection in the Diehn Composers Room (Brian Robison, DMA).
II. Interview:
1. What genre of music would you classify your music as being?
BR: “Uh, that’s a really good question. Uh, I always, I wind up saying Avant-Garde for simplicity, although, in terms of, uh, of really experimental music it’s not that strange. It’s fairly conservative. So I mean mainly there is a label that I learned from a colleague years ago, where he always just described what he does as ‘contemporary music for classically trained’ players, which is accurate. It doesn’t really tell you much about what it sounds like; it just kinda tells you what sounds might go into it…”
2. Would you describe the melodies of your works as primarily atonal or tonal? Why?
BR: “Um, primarily atonal. Yeah, I, uh, I tend not to write anything tonal unless it’s like for teaching purposes. Or, about around the time of that, six years ago, I had a friend who was writing a musical and I was the composer for the musical so I ended up writing tonal show tunes for that. But uh, yeah usually I’m much more interested in things that are atonal, or especially things which are, you know, kind of ‘on the border.’ So there are moments in this, in Broadcast, that sound almost tonal or in Vermontsalvat...then there are moments…a lot of the themes that I’m taking, Wagner’s original themes, are tonal melodies, but I’m just warping them slightly.”
RK: “To make it atonal?”
BR: “To make [it] atonal. The apes and monkeys’ piece is pretty thoroughly atonal. It’s, uh, I want to revise that piece in some ways to make it easier to, partly to make some of the ape and monkey sounds/sound more like apes and monkeys. Uh, but then also to help the players keep track of where they are. And yeah, a lot of how I wrote that piece involved literally randomizing or slightly randomizing some of the pitched material and so it’s, that is the kind of really the, probably the most nastily atonal piece I’ve written in ages. Uh, it’s a little weird for me when I listen to it, like it turned out stranger than I planned. ”
3. When writing your compositions, were you inspired by something to give your work(s) a specific rhythmic pattern? Do these patterns set a tone of excitement, gloom, etc.?
BR: “Hmm, good question. And again this is kinda going to be different for each piece. For Broadcast, a lot of it comes out of the poem that I’m trying to put across and setting the mood and, which it’s not just putting across the meaning of the words of the poem from start to finish of the poem. But then also trying to create a sense of atmosphere that goes with this kind of background story where it’s this connection to the poet, Hart Crane, who killed himself by jumping off of an ocean liner and drowning and where the poet had figured out that Crane probably heard his, that the poet’s grandmother singing on the radio at some point. And then, come to think of it, everyone/each one of these pieces has some kind of musical borrowing and in this case, the poem mentions Ave Maria. So at the end of the piece, there’s a fairly clear paraphrase of the Schubert Ave Maria, but then some of that material does appear earlier in the piece or that shapes some of those rhythms.”
BR: “Yeah, in the ape and monkey piece, a lot of rhythms come out of trying to recreate the rhythms of these ape sounds. So for the chimpanzees, it’s this kind of zigzag, syncopated [*monkey sound*] where they, in a really long vocalization what they do is start fast and low and quiet and then they kind of build to a peak, which is really loud and slow and long and then reverse that to go back to low and slow [*monkey sounds*]. Whereas, there are others like the, especially the Siamang, especially for the big finish, because the Siamangs that’s probably the longest mp3, reference mp3 that I have. And the cool thing about them is that they start off kind of [*monkey sounds*] and then they sort of answer each other and then they start to sync up and they speed up [*monkey sounds*]. Yeah, I can’t do it by myself because it’s really a polyphonic thing, but that shaped the approach to, again, a lot of those rhythms come at the very least they come out of individual ape or monkey sounds, and in some cases, they come out of trying to recreate the relationships that I could hear among a group of apes and monkeys."
BR: And then in [Vermontsalvat], yeah a lot of the rhythms come out of Wagner’s rhythms. And I’m just, again maybe ‘bent’ something to make it a little atonal, or take one of his themes which he treats as a sequence and…So for example, the prelude to Act 1 [*plays piano*]. So there is a sequence where it’s not actually being passed around. But at some point, when I was playing with it, I realized ‘well wait a minute, instead of having the same voice do it, why not have it trade it around and then you can play with having it overlap.’”
4. Are there any specific elements, like dynamics or instrumentation that you used to give your compositions a unique sonority?
BR: “That’s a really good question. Yeah, well, again the instrumentation in these is fairly standard. In Broadcast, it has the unusual sound of the Theremin and there is also this collage of radio static and radio sounds that comes in every now and then. So that’s, I can’t think of any other piece that has those four sounds going into it alone with the vibraphone, the Soprano. In [Simiaminimae], it’s a string quartet, which has a wealth of literature, yeah, but I don’t know of any other pieces that try to make the instruments sound like apes and monkeys. So that leads to some distinctive sounds, but again they are not sounds in the other pieces. So maybe [Vermontsalvat] of the three, would be the most useful test case. And in terms of distinctive sonorities, I think that it would ultimately come down to texture. And especially that it’s very rarely that I write a single line and then have several instruments do the same thing. It’s always distributed somehow. So that’s what I think might be the most distinctive thing about it. I know that’s not much to go on.”
5. How did you decide on which form to use in your works (or a specific work)?
BR: “[*laughter*]. Again, this mainly comes out of the poem and then some of what I was playing with. I don’t know if I have good diagram to share with [Rebecca] for [Broadcast]. I have fabulous diagrams for [Simiaminimae and Vermontsalvat]. Often it amounts to kind of working through almost systematically through certain possibilities. So for example, [Vermontsalvat] moves back and forth between sections that are based on octatonic pitch collections and eight note scales and hexatonic pitch collections, which is a six note collection; it’s not a whole tone, but it’s kind of an alternation of minor thirds and minor seconds [*plays piano*]. So you make some nice almost pop music kind of chords out of it. And so, for example, there are three different octatonic collections, there are four different hexatonic collections so that’s part of mapping out the form of [Vermontsalvat] is making sure that I use each one.
BR: "Similarly, in [Simiaminimae], it’s partly a matter of just playing with the possibilities that I decided that there will be four species that I would really use as the main material because I didn’t want it to be just a ‘wash’ of crazy animal sounds. So it’s mainly chimpanzees, gibbons, siamangs…and black colobus. Yeah, they’re kind of a frame: they’re more of a pillar. Yeah, so it’s mainly siamangs, gibbons, and chimpanzees and so part of the idea for those featured specie, there would be one section that kind of exploited them as a group and another section that would be more ‘soloistic.’ And then in between those, there are kind of dialogues, where it would be like two instruments are playing chimp sounds, but two are playing siamang sounds. And similarly with [Vermontsalvat] certain possibilities of what pitches are being used to base things on or what intervals that are being kind of cycled through in some kind of systematic way to try to give each section a different harmonic character."
BR: "And then likewise [Broadcast], there is a very elaborate form diagram, which is probably prettier than the music in terms of mapping out different pitch collections, different combinations. Because there are some sections of this piece where harmonies are built to say ‘ok there is going to be a six note chord here and the bottom three notes will come out of Ab Major, but the top three notes will come out of B Minor or something and that helps to shape that.”
6. Are there any specific themes/thematic events that you want your listener to find and interpret when listening to your music?
BR: "You mean musical themes?"
RK: "Yes."
BR: "Yes, and whatever they are, they’re marked louder in the score and it’s usually pretty straightforward about what they ought to be. That’s one danger, of course, with music is that if you have a lot going on, then things can get lost, so that’s one thing that I have to be careful about as a composer to make clear. If I’m not around to explain to the conductor, to the performers like ‘hey, this needs to be in the foreground, all this other stuff is background support.’”
III. Brief Analyses:
A. Vermontsalvat:
Even though Robison notes that Vermontsalvat utilizes some motives from Wagner, it is still primarily atonal throughout its entirety. Robison utilizes mixed meter, for example in mm. 1-7, 30-36, and 138 that spans from 5/4, 3/4, and 23/16. Sonically, Robison uses a quintet comprised of woodwinds and stringed instruments to provide a balance between each instrument and their respective range (such as the violin, bassoon, etc). Because there aren't any tonal melodies or motives, the composition primarily uses chromatic notes as opposed to chords since each individual note does not spell out a specific chord; therefore, due to the lack of chords, there aren't any specific harmonic functions (tonic, sub-dominant, dominant) present. As Robison mentioned in the interview, he could use a few notes from a B Major chord in the bass, for example, and then use some notes from an F Major chord in the upper voices or parts.
B. Broadcast:
Robison uses a variety of different techniques in Broadcast to build tension throughout the piece. His use of instrumentation shows this, because the Theremin is used with the vibraphone and a pre-recorded collage of radio static in order to give the feeling of hearing the soprano on the radio. The use of polyphony also builds the tension, by having the lines move in all different directions. Mixed meter plays a huge role in this as well, as the meter changes 86 times, using 12 different time signatures. Along with this, the tempo changes 20 times, which makes certain parts seem more dramatic. Robison does not use many chords, but when he does they are arpeggiated and tend to be 7sus4 chords. The form of this piece switches pitch collections with each section and uses all 3 octatonic scales and all 4 hexatonic scales. His use of atonality is heard throughout Broadcast, which ultimately helps to build tension.
C. Simiaminimae:
Simiaminimae is a piece written by Brian Robison with the goal of capturing the sounds of various apes and monkeys. This piece is entirely atonal with a strong use of mixed meter. Robison felt that a string quartet had the best energy to capture the essence of the for species of primates he decided to focus on. The lack of harmonic progression is supplemented by movement between certain intervals and pitch classes. Robison mentioned that he was unsatisfied with the final result of the piece and would like to make edits to improve the monkey sounds and timings to make it easier for players to follow.
IV. Closing Remarks:
While working on this project, we learned that composing music is not an easy task, especially if the music is atonal. As Robison described his form diagrams for his compositions to us, it literally baffled us because it was so elaborate and heavily detailed. Going into the project, we had no idea that Robison's music was atonal. When we interviewed him and listened to his pieces, we were a bit nervous as to how to approach each composition and analyze it. His music is definitely very different, especially since he utilized radio static and ape sounds, but his passion for music is more prevalent than what is heard.
Brief Musical Excerpts from Robison's Website: Vermontsalvat, Broadcast, Simiaminimae
