# La Mort des Artistes



## Ian Moore

Here is another offering which I hope you will enjoy. Inspired by the French symbolist poet, Charles Baudelaire, "La Mort des Artistes" is an attempt to create an intrinsic bond between poetry and music. It is sung by the alto voice, Rachel Fisher. You may notice that I use the low end of the voice a lot. I love its murky timbre.

A few pointers...it is a live recording in a church and the quiet passages are almost silent.


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## Torkelburger

(tsk tsk--those accidentals--but I digress)

Awesome. Look forward to more in depth listenings of it (and maybe more comments). Crumb would love this.


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## Vasks

It does look like a Crumb score.


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## Torkelburger

Hearing this again, yes, the music is very capable as well as very enjoyable to listen to. I see your style seems very "etude-like" in that I've now noticed you like to limit yourself to exploiting and exploring a very small number of musical resources (and which tend to be timbral in nature, something Crumb is known for). I see Crumb is extremely influential on your music (I believe he also puts accidentals on every note). You could almost call it "minimalism", really, if you look at it from a broad definition of simply using minimal materials. Your writing overall, including the instrumental, is heavily influenced by Crumb, although I think your music seems a tad bit more lyrical, which I like.

With all of that said, there are some issues. As stated previously in another thread, a minor detail would be to post a legend with your scores, even though many people will probably already know what most of the markings mean, some will not, and it will also clean up the score a bit (although this one does not pose as much danger as the other one for making you go blind).

Getting on to the bigger issue, it would really suit you best to consider "killing your darlings" as they say and really try and rethink the composing for complexity's sake angle. Or at least you could maybe keep it complex but make some changes. In my opinion, you are approaching composition with trying to make things as complex as possible and so you write things that don't fit what the composition requires and needs, and even write things that are incorrect--all because you are wanting it to look complex.

It looks like you try and make the dynamics very complicated (way more complicated than I've seen in Boulez, Babbitt, and Crumb scores), although I have seen some scores out there by composers who write similar dynamics. But your music doesn't warrant it. You had similar problems with the flute piece. Like the flute piece, the performer is simply ignoring at least 90% of your dynamic markings entirely because they are not even playable as written.

In this piece, just look at the first ten bars alone. An alto cannot really sing louder than f below the staff, and you have fff to begin going to ffff immediately. Really listen to the first line. She is not doing what the dynamics are saying at all. The first bar alone the notes are static and the mf sounds just as loud as the ffff. The **subito piano** in bar 3 was the loudest note of the whole piece to that point. Why? It's marked the softest, right? Because you are not paying attention to the voice (and human) capabilities. The low f# in bar 5 is marked ff but is sung very softly. The Bb in the next bar now becomes the loudest note so far but it is only marked with a single f (and we've already had *four* f's previously!).

The low f#'s in bars seven and nine are sung pppp even though you've marked them fff!! Tomorrow (or the day after) when I have more time I would like to go into more detail into why I believe this happens in your performances and why this practice should be dropped immediately.

The type of music you are writing in my opinion does not warrant a different dynamic marking on every note. It is not pointillism. These are lyrical phrases at their core. Sure, not every note in a phrase is going to be the same volume, and sure we want a two beat crescendo here sometimes and a one beat decrescendo there another time, but that is something that becomes way too tedious and even unnatural when in constant use every measure over a whole piece. With these types of phrases you have, at their core are traditional, dynamics should indicate the OVERALL changes in volume--the broader ideas.

Anyway, good piece,...more later (perhaps).


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## Torkelburger

...also I had forgotten to mention a very important notational point: in vocal and choral music dynamics are always, always, always notated above the staff, never below the staff as instruments are. Even in the modern era. So as not to be cluttered with the text.


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## Vasks

Torkelburger said:


> in vocal and choral music dynamics are always, always, always notated above the staff,


Yep! Absolutely


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## Guest

Torkelburger said:


> ...also I had forgotten to mention a very important notational point: in vocal and choral music dynamics are *always, always, always notated above the staff*, *never below* the staff as instruments are. *Even in the modern era*. So as not to be cluttered with the text.


Think again.

View attachment Berio extract.pdf


[Berio extract for study purposes only.]


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## Torkelburger

Someone breaking the rule doesn't make the rule obsolete. It's still customary to always notate dynamics in choral music above the staff, despite pleading special cases to the contrary.


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## Vasks

TalkingHead said:


> Think again.


Some composers choose to ignore notational rules for whatever reason and we all will have to just deal with it.

Meanwhile I went to my scores of Boulez's "Marteau" and Crumb's "Ancient Voices" and lo and behold dynamics are above the staff of the vocalists.


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## Vasks

TalkingHead said:


> [Berio extract for study purposes only.]


LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## kikko

the begging reminds me a lot arabic music...


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## Ian Moore

Why does it sound like Arabic music? (I love Arabic music).


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## Ian Moore

Coincidentally, this work uses a method of rhythmic notation that I was preoccupied with at the time. E.g. Instead of three eight notes joining together as a triplet to make a crotchet value, I used three semi-quavers and placed the unused semiquaver above the number '3' of the triplet which indicated that it should be divided into three. Therefore each note would be a semi-quaver and a third long. I thought this was a more accurate means of notating triplets/tuplets.


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## Ian Moore

This is what I mean. The one on the left is the conventional notation. The one on the right was my interpretation.


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## Ian Moore

The one on the right does make more sense; it is closer to the actual duration in terms of time. But I abandoned it because it became too confusing for the performers. It was too close to conventional notation.


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## Ian Moore

Also when the ratio was greater than the simple division of the note values the tuple became unnecessarily complex.


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## Celloissimo

I love the one-sided conversation going on in this thread


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## Ian Moore

It does seem like I'm talking to myself. But I haven't had the time to sit down and write one long statement so whenever I get the time I add to the last thing I was saying. Bit weird isn't it? Maybe I should stop doing it.


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## EternalStudent

humanity is duality. when listening to this piece it confronts oneself with the realisation that there is no standard of beauty, no objective good or evil. While we could make the argument what this piece does _not_, like we humans are so inclinded to do, I rather appreciate what it _is_ doing to me as a listener; conforming and calming me.

I could analyze that this is mainly due to the recording's white noise but that would do injustice to the soothing melodic line you composed. All in all I think you did a good job Ian.


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