Robin Hoffmann

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Composition Diary - Sebastian Katzer

Added 2022-03-01 09:06:22 +0000 UTC

In this part we take a look at Sebastian Katzer's piece CAELI which we recorded with woodwind quintet in our first Orchestra Discovery Session in September 2021. I attached the different stages of the piece at the bottom of the post as well as the recording from Prague.

Here's what he wrote about the piece:

In the beginning, I decided to make the piece a bit dissonant and to work with rhythmic fuzziness. In addition, I wanted to try different compositional techniques to get insights from recording with real instruments.

A one-bar flute melody served as the nucleus.

The melody was harmonized on the piano using the melody's notes. At the end of the phrase, a “B” is added in the accompaniment, which — as a leading tone to “C” — prepares the repetition.

Working on the piece later, I broke away from this conceptual scheme. Out of convenience, I must admit. But proceeding strategically is something that I consider worth doing in the future. All further work was done directly in the score; I rarely use the piano to figure out chords, etc.

The two-bar passage was orchestrated for wind quintet and served as source material for the piece. This initial phrase is followed by a brief conclusion in measures 3 and 4, which leads into a lyrical passage.

This intermediate section is only three measures long in the piece’s first draft, which brought (once again) the justified critique of introducing too many ideas in a very short time.

From measures 12 to 17, the motif is taken up and processed. I distributed the flute melody in the bars and built the accompaniment around it.

In the following part, passages were added that work with chromaticism. In order to better introduce this new color, the theme’s oboe/clarinet accompaniment has already a more chromatic approach in measure 17.

The staccato passage beginning in measure 22 was meant to be somewhat grotesque, like a cackle, which works quite well.
I particularly like bars 31 to 37 in the playback with Noteperformer. Unfortunately, the recording rattles here, considerably, and there are not enough takes to cut together something more usable. Since we recorded without click, the tempo got too slow and the passage clearly lacks drive as a result. Recording is a complex situation that requires a lot of experience.

Measures 39/40 pick up the short ending in measure 3/4.

The piece fades away, harmonically following the first two measures, with quiet chords.

After editing the recording, the stereo mix was editedin Melodyne. This worked well, thanks to the small instrumentation. Slight intonation problems, protruding notes, rhythmic inaccuracies (for example common chord beginnings) can be corrected there as along as the music is not getting too complex.

We went through a few versions of that piece before it reached its final stage which you can all download at the bottom of the post. Here's the exchange that I had with him about the different versions:

VERSION 1

Sebastian:

Hey Robin,

Here are a few bars for the upcoming ODS session in Praha.

I’m currently thinking about how to develop the ideas and motifs for the second half of the piece.

I didn’t spend much time yet layouting since I’m still developing.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Best, Sebastian

Robin:

Hi Sebastian,

there are some really nice ideas in there, I like that you're going into a more contemporary and modern approach. Here are a few things to think about:

1. I feel that you are throwing out too much too quickly. The piece feels extremely dense and it feels like there's just constantly something new to digest. It feels to me like this is more than enough material to fill these two minutes crammed into one minute. So I would recommend trying to thin it out a bit to give some chance to digest it.

2. This one kinda adds to the point above: I feel that most of the piece so far is quite high in tension but remains relatively static there. This applies to harmonic tension but also to rhythmic tension. Harmonically, it feels like it plateus pretty much on a quite dissonant sound world but doesn't feel that much like it's creating a lot of tension or release within this world. I would like to see more ebbs and flows of harmonic tension to give it a larger structure. Rhythmically, there is a similar issue that is adding to point 1 which is a constant quite high density 16th pulse. This in itself wouldn't be much of a problem but additionally almost all figures feel like foreground material. There is hardly anything which I would consider a background texture. All this adds to this overwhelming feeling mentioned in point 1 where I feel that it needs to give the audience more chance to process ideas.

3. I think some of the piece feels a bit too blocky. Like bars 1-7 which seem to just switch textures in chunks of 2 or 1 bar (bar 5). I can understand where you are coming from with this and can appreciate this as a stylistic device but I'm not entirely sure whether this is actually intentional so I'm bringing it up here.

4. You need to write more conservative for the Horn. Even in a woodwind quintet, the horn is technically not equal to the other. These slurred 16ths in 6-7 will become most likely become problematic and while 8-11 should be technically possible, it will be audible that this is considerably more challenging for the horn player than for instance the Bassoon line above that. So don't expect the same agility from the horn than from the other players.

Regarding your question of what to do in the second half, I think if you switch into a lower gear with this it will become pretty easy to make it fill the two minutes.

From the points mentioned above, I would only consider the 4th to be critical regarding the recording, getting this Horn line recorded would take a lot of time and takes even with very good players. The other three points are food for thought.

Hope that helps. Looking forward to the next version!

VERSION 2:

Sebastian:

Hey Robin,

thanks for your input and thoughts.

I have a result now that I'm quite happy with.

I threw a few things out, and processed the existing material more.

Sure, it's still sometimes dense, but for absolute music it's ok, I think. 

As for the horn part... I've shown this to a few horn players, and they were pretty confident that it's quite doable.

So I would "risk" it, and throw in a few extra slurs during rehearsals if need be. Are you ok with that?

Before I go over the layout again: I'm thinking about how best to notate the accidentals.

Should they be per note only, or per measure?  In the chromatic passages, "per bar" might be a bit confusing.

Then perhaps rather per note, although that is then also somewhat over-notated in the diatonic parts? What do you think?

Best,

Sebastian

Robin:

Hi Sebastian,

very nice piece, I think it has improved quite a bit since the last version. I really like that you broke it up with some more calm passages, that really helps to shape the dramaturgy. I think this piece will sound great.

Regarding the horn part, I'm pretty sure it's doable (with enough takes), it just doesn't feel very idiomatic, especially b31 onwards. I expect nothing more than a more or less yodely effect there. If you insist, we can leave those in, I would advise not to, but you're the composer :)

There are a few things regarding notations to fix:

- Horn staff between clarinet and Bassoon, all five instruments in one bracket.

- as we're recording to click, don't use fermatas but rather notate their lengths as you want them

- bar 14 at the end: Oboe earlier than the others intended?

- accidentals: please on a per bar basis, in order to clarify, use bracketed cautionary accidentals when necessary, try to stick to one type of accidental per bar, I would notate your main motif with a gb rather than a f#, prefer theoretically "wrong" accidentals that are more readable over "correct" notation, even if that means to have contradicting accidentals in the same bar in different instruments, highest priority needs to be sight readability. In chromatic passages, try to avoid naturals as much as possible (in this case do use mixed accidentals in order to show the motion of the figure, e.g. 22 oboe: a, ab, g, f#, g, f#...), try to avoid as much as possible these accidental/natural back and forths that you currently have in these bars.

- e.g. Flute bar 33: grace notes as quarter intended? in order to request them to be played longer? if so, notate them as "normal" notes at the length that you want before the bar line, otherwise, shorten to eighth note.