1
Q
Context of composer
A
- Kaija Saariaho is a leading Finnish composer, born in Helsinki in 1952
- She has produced a significant body of work in which electronics play an important role e.g. Only the Sound remains (2015)
2
Q
Context of Petals
A
- The cello is combined with ongoing live electronics as opposed to pre-recorded electronic sounds
- Petals was written for Anssi Karttunen, who performed the work at a festival of contemporary music in Bremen 1988
- The title of the work refers to the petal of the waterlily, and is an off-shoot of Nymphea (Waterlilly) dating from 1987, scored for string quartet and electronics
- According to the composer, Petals is concerned with the opposition of ‘fragile colouristic passages’ to ‘more energetic events with clear rhythmic and melodic character
3
Q
Notation
A
- There are no bars or bar numbers but instead each of the 30 lines in the piece is numbered and are referred to as staves
- Indications for use of reverb and harmoniser are placed under each stave
- The notation is indeterminate i.e aleatoric with regard to melodic and rhythmic elements
4
Q
Describe the acoustic sonority
A
- Traditional cello playing (bowed, pitched sound) can be heard in the music of staves 10-13
- Articulation includes slurs (e.g. stave 5) and staccato (e.g. stave 4)
Extended techniques include:
- Long trills and tremolos for colouristic effect
- Harmonics (usually artificial), often combined with ordinary notes (see stave 14) are more strikingly with another harmonic (stave 15)
- Glissandos (with varying degrees of vibrato and/or with harmonics)
- Micro-intervals
- Scratchy tone (noise) produced by use of more bow pressure than usual
5
Q
Describe the Electronic sonority
A
Live electronics most importantly involve:
- Digital reverb with variable reverb
- Harmoniser
- Reverb time is set to 2.5 seconds, increasing to 15 seconds in stave 21 and finally 30 seconds at the close
- The introductory remarks in the Anthology state that the reverb should result in a ‘clear and bright’ sound and if there is any doubt as to how much to apply, ‘too little rather than too much’ is preferable
- In any event, the degree of reverb varies between 20% and 50%
- The harmoniser shifts pitches by a quarter-tone and then combines this transposed sound with the original, typically used during scratchy bowing sections to maximise colouristic distortion effects.
6
Q
Describe the dynamics
A
- Extreme range
- sounds pulled out from silence
- through pppp to FFFF
- Saariaho requires a ‘clear and rich, close sound’ and expresses that the microphones should be placed as close as possible to the instrument and that the general level be set rather loud but ‘not painfully so’
7
Q
Describe the texture
A
- In the more conventionally played passages, the cello line could be described as monophonic (e.g. stave 10)
- Double stopping occurs in stave 11 and is used to create harmonics in staves 14-16
- Effective use is made of two-part writing in stave 17, where the lowest string on the instrument (C) is left ringing while material is played on higher strings
- Colouristic block sounds result in the scratchy bowing passages with harmoniser, but these are far removed from the homophony of traditional textures.
8
Q
Describe the Tempo, metre and rhythm
A
- Tempo moves between lento sections and faster moving passages
- Lento passages, as at the start, should move so slowly that staves in these sections should always last at least 20 seconds. The final section of the work is extremely slow, with the last stave taking at least 55 seconds to perform
- There is NO METRE in terms of time signature and bars
- Written note-lengths in the lento sections employ semibreves but are to be regarded as pulseless sounds of indeterminate length
- The passage beginning at stave 10 seems to be more precisely notated regarding rhythms, but pulse cannot be detected because of the irregularity of groupings, ornaments, ties, glissando and fermata (pauses)
9
Q
Describe the melody
A
- Melodic content is typically found in the faster moving sections (lento passages tend to be colouristic rather than melodic)
- In the energico section beginning at stave 4, a scurrying line can be heard, made up of microtones and glissandos
- The second section at stave 10, is more conventionally melodic with clearly defined intervallic content, often of an angular nature (intervals of major 7th (stave 10) and augmented 4th (stave 12)
- Repeated note figuration (stave 11)
- Short descending figures (beginning on stave 11). The starting note of each descent rises, with the high-point occurring in in stave 13
- Ornamentation
- Poco impetuoso at stave 17 is characterised by agitated figures, initially semitonal
- From stave 23, striking use of glissandos rising alternately to C# and F# are supported by ‘pedal’ low on (open string) Cs
- The section culminates with a glissando to the highest pitch available (stave 27)
10
Q
Describe the Harmony
A
- There is no sense of harmonic progression, though there are very brief moments when distinguishable pitches are heard e.g. stave 15
- It could be said that one traditional harmonic device is the lengthy pedal C at staves 15-28
- Notice the prominent high F#s which appear at stave 23, seemingly forming a tritonal dominant with the pedal C
11
Q
Describe the Tonality
A
- Tonality (in terms of hierarchy of pitches) is scarcely relevant in Petals, partly because of the absence of functional harmomic progressions
- However the persistent use of the pedal C from stave 15 could be regarded as a tonal anchor, even though the work is primarily colouristic
12
Q
Describe the Structure
A
- Petals is one continuous movement
- There are elements of short-term repetition of motifs. For example, the treatment of the glissando figures from stave 23
- The work depends on the alternation of what the composer describes as ‘fragile colouristic passages’ with ‘more energetic events with clear rhythmic and melodic character’
Music
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