HereThere Music Feature - Matthew Welch

Upon moving to New York, I had to start my solution-seeking over again, as my orchestral resources were slim to none. I was bored with the idea of only doing solo concerts, so I moved into the realm of the electronic, and produced work straight to a CD product, which solved integration problems through a utopia of recording techniques. My somewhat scarce record, Hag at the Churn, documents this approach. Though this approach cured the ailments having to do with volume and color, I was frustrated with the total lack of the performance element I had initially hoped to explore.

It seemed there was nothing ahead of me but frustration. I was an unknown composer. How was I to continue with a serious lack of commissions? In addition, the problems associated with adhering to the time-frames involved with commissions, and the very likely lack of repeat performances of compositions by both ad hoc and organized ensembles, and dealing with possibly less than ideal instrumentation, discouraged me. Composing a piece in order to submit to a competition (many competitions require new works), only to not have it win some cash, recognition, or at least a premiere, was a waste of time. I was desperately unable to produce the work I wanted to make. Although the peculiarities of my instrument may have been particularly complicated, the general difficulties I encountered were similar to those of many composers, and had to do with forming a regular ensemble for which I would compose and with which I could perform.

In North America, especially, the example of the composer-performer cultivating a group for their own music has been fairly widespread. The jazz lineage perhaps forged this procedure first. Philip Glass and Stephen Reich have formed ensembles that persist, arguably because of their own performing abilities: winds, keys, and percussion, respectively. John Cage performed his own works. Harry Partch and Harrison-Colvig had their own instrumental ensembles made. Morton Feldman had a group called, "Morton Feldman and Soloists," with which he toured. A consistent membership of players and instrumentation was a vehicle for some of his most significant late works. Anthony Braxton extended the jazz model with his Ghost Trance Music ensembles, recruiting specialized musicians that he helped cultivate. John Zorn's Naked City brought his modular genre-mixing around the globe. The list goes on. The basic idea is to find an instrumentation and community for which you can be happy writing over an extended period of time, and that will help expose and shape your future compositional directions. Though this model could be somewhat limiting for those composers who prefer exploring completely unique instrumentation on a piece-by-piece basis, but to those excited about the concept, the benefits are manifold.

I was lured by the appeal of perpetually new instrumentation, so, in forming my ensemble, Blarvuster, a little over five years ago, settling on an instrumentation was rather complicated. I had to look into what I considered my entire musical influence, which, like that of many modern composers, performers, and listeners, is fairly vast in scope. My heavy involvement in Celtic music and Gamelan had to be considered equally with my Western art music interests. I needed something that would reflect the purposefulness and versatility found in many world music ensembles, inspired by the inexhaustible use of particular types of ensembles that cover large amounts of repertoire. I felt that these groups functioned much like a Western orchestra, even though they are often constructed to serve different musical and social priorities.

Originally, my desire was to find an ensemble make-up that could solve my previous problems with integrating the bagpipe itself into a group, and feature me as a performer. This meant that the group, to be of manageable size, had to be amplified. Another cautionary wish was to not create a group akin to a spectacle, offsetting the strangeness of the bagpipe by concocting a somewhat opaque collection of exotic instruments; the pipes had to seem "normal" in the mix, which in turn meant that it's nature had to nearly dominate the language of the writing.

Turning to a community of friends who were all composer-performer improvisers themselves, I formulated the lineup with instruments that had a powerful set of references, and paradoxically, the flexibility to make those references relatively ambiguous enough to suit the dialectic of differing music languages within my writing. The flute and piccolo (amplified through a mic), beyond their classical uses, helped point to Irish flute music and the ubiquitous suling of Indonesia. An amplified viola evoked the darkness of the usual Celtic fiddle register and the rebab of many different Gamelan ensembles. The electric guitar and bass guitar, besides having the obvious rock and jazz references, could also represent the zithers of Java and harps of Burma and the British Isles. The drum kit is, depending upon its usage, able to chart the globe of rhythms available. Use of the glockenspiel and the vibraphone helped bring in some of the lovely metallic sonorities of South East Asia. My reeds (pipes and saxophones) and vocals filled in the gaps, like Indian and Sumatran shawms. This collection of potent instruments still intrigues me; I never run short of ideas for them while still working within my style. Important also was that the personnel I chose could read notation really well (notation procedures can help extend the formal structures of oral music beyond extant memory forms), and could comfortably improvise as well.

There are several benefits to having a group of your own. As music director, a composer can now, perhaps, have as much control over conducting the works as composing the works. Important for me, was being able to guide the learning and expression of the music in ways that incorporated oral methods from my traditional backgrounds of piping and Gamelan. Getting to know a certain group of musicians and performing consistently with them also brings a level of predictability to the performance and rehearsal particulars. As performers work time and time again in the group, they get to know your style, which improves the execution of your existing repertoire, and facilitates the addition of new repertoire that builds upon the ideas in earlier work.

Having a group of your own still presents plenty of challenges. The benefits of writing for other existing groups often come in the form of the composer being able to detach from the piece after it is composed. In other words, production headaches like rehearsals, concert venue procuring, conducting, etc., are effectively eliminated. However, in a group of your own, you are often composer and manager. Learning the music is enough of a challenge, especially if the music is very idiosyncratic. Keeping the group rehearsed can be a challenge as well. A well-executed performance can be followed by a mediocre one a few months later if the rehearsal schedule is less than ideal the second time around, though more often than not, the accumulation of experience will yield better and better results.

The integration of improvisation within an identifiable writing style became another obstacle. In the beginning days of Blarvuster, in order to fill up a decent set length, I had to flesh out the written material with structured improvisation. This often left me unsatisfied, mainly because I had hoped for the improvisations to mesh stylistically with the fixed notation. Being continually dissatisfied with the lack of concept articulation within group improvisation, I put those ideas aside until I could figure out a better approach, and rewrote the repertoire, including fixed drum parts, putting the focus on extending the written forms and solidifying a style. After some time, the players had covered enough notation to be saturated in that style. I then introduced new repertoire that included clearer concepts of improvisation, allowing the players to extrapolate from the written style.

The delicate balance required to maintain personnel versed in my music who could perform often was another challenge. These great musicians were busy with their own projects and those of others. When substitutions were needed, they had quite a steep learning curve ahead of them. I slowly worked on cultivating and expanding a larger family of musicians that were all equally comfortable with my music. I added more repertoire to expand what I was capable of creating as a composer, and the kind of audience to which Blarvuster could appeal, all while intending to stay within a similar sound concept. This helped the ensemble find itself at home in many varieties of venues. This, I found, coupled with a predictably polished presentation of my work, was extremely valuable in terms of finding an audience. I kept the name Blarvuster for each incarnation, because to me, that name means a particular species of sound, from which there are a few subspecies. What has come out of this approach is a hard-edged power trio, a quintet with soft and hard textures, a sextet of contrapuntal complexity and a wide range of color, and, most recently, an opera company that churns out some of my most original, integrated and dynamic work to date.

Blarvuster has been indispensable for testing a style that I have since brought into other compositions for more conventional instrumentation. I have found, through Blarvuster, a more personal and consistent method to composing in general. My record, Dream Tigers, exhibits pieces composed for other instrumentation in this newfound method. A composer's evolving a language or way of finding a voice can often depend upon the rate of composition to performance feedback. One must find things that don't work quickly, and focus on creating a product that can be critiqued and mastered in order to correct or extend that voice. Every scientist needs a laboratory to test ideas hypothesized.

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