The second song in the cycle is Three Riddles – effectively three art songs in one. As each section has its own riddle attached, I felt it necessary to consider a separate musical riddle to attach to each section too.

As it happens, my musical past happens to include a few oddities that don’t crop up in your standard composer’s biography. One of those is that from 2010 to 2014 I did quite a bit of church bell ringing. This all came about because my husband is a ringer (and a good one at that!), and his tower needed learners for their trainee teachers to practice on. I was never particularly good, especially as I couldn’t attend practices regularly after my daughter was born, but I’ve always found method books fascinating. For those who are unaware of these, they are books full of lots of numbers and squiggly lines, such as this: 

A while ago while perusing ringing methods (as you do!) I stumbled across Royston Delight Major. Ringing methods have quite strict nomenclature – Royston is the name of the method, while Delight specifies the way the method is called and Major means eight bells are used. Eight bells you say? In a major scale? That seems like a perfect opportunity…

Keep your ears peeled for this appearing in a clarinet part sometime in March 2018! There’ll also be another bizarre reference in the third of the Three Riddles..

From ringing methods to some music theory (less odd). I’m a fan of theory, and I love going a bit mad over it with my students (though they don’t often share my enthusiasm!). To be brief: A fifth is the interval between a C and a G on the piano, and is the most consonant and pure interval other than an octave. The most common modulation (key change) is that of a fifth. If you move around the scale through fifths, it creates a closed circle and you arrive back where you started:

D – A – E  – B  – F# – C# – G#(Ab) – Eb – Bb – F – C – G – D

Often a piece will use a section of the circle of fifths, or modulate one way or the other. In my organ piece Circular Musings I modulated through the whole circle in one piece, in four/eight bar chunks. For the riddle, I wanted some accompaniment to juxtapose a section of text talking about footing being sound, trembling foundations and rebuilding. When you only take one or two steps along the circle of fifths, it can sound very strong, but to continue moving round it continuously can feel a little unsettling until the music pauses and grows some roots.

Here’s the bass line of the piano for this section of the piece, which starts on D and cycles round the fifths (well, in this case, inverted fifths!) until it arrives back at D:

As to what the right hand and baritone are up to at the time.. you’ll have to wait and see!

Computer programmes and video games often include Easter eggs – little intentional secrets, inside messages or secrets to be found by the users and players. I’ve always thought of word painting (in the musical sense!) somewhat in the same way.

When related to text, word painting is all about the use of highly descriptive words to invoke images into the reader’s mind. Musical word painting is the equivalent using notes – Grove Music defines it as “The use of musical gesture(s) in a work with an actual or implied text to reflect, often pictorially, the literal or figurative meaning of a word or phrase”. It can be found across the musical spectrum, though commonly in Renaissance and Baroque music, art songs (aha!) and folk music such as madrigals. Sometimes a motif representing a mood – e.g. grief – may be the basis a whole piece revolves around, and in others it can be a fleeting gesture supporting the text.

Some musicians, composers and musicologists shy away from word painting, thinking of it as a bit childish and simplistic. However, I personally think of it more as human nature. Think of a sentence with the word “falling” in it. Say it out loud a few times. Does your intonation rise or fall on that word? It seems to me it falls the majority of the time when I say it – or am I just word painting with my speech too? (I’ve always waxed lyrical about how musical speech is!).

I like adding in moments of word painting. I particularly like a phrase where you have a melody established (and potentially expected), and then it varies just slightly because of some decorative word painting. Sometimes listeners pick up on it and sometimes not, but performers (and musicologists!) do. I adore musical analysis, and that side of me loves finding a bit of surreptitious word painting in a piece – so it’s only natural I include some in my own music!

Here are a handful of word painting moments from Cracked Voices art songs (so far!). It’s only a brief selection of four – how many more will there be by the time the cycle is complete? All snippets below are taken from the vocal lines.

From The devil and the draper – a bit of hopping to begin the chorus! The melody hops up a third then another third, with bouncy staccatos in a rather quirky, bouncy time signature (7 8 being a personal favourite).

From Three riddles (no.2) – A falling tree.

From Those who wait – shards are spiky staccatos (may turn into staccatissimos, or accented staccatos in the final version) to demonstrate their sharpness. The intervals between the words -voke, you, with and shards are all diminished fourths – a dissonant interval, uncomfortable to sing and commonly referred to as the devil’s interval.

The final excerpt is also from Three riddles (no.2) – an earthquake rocking the baritone’s line. Rock this place begins the rocking motion in triplets, followed a couple of bars later by a continuation of the rocking (yet downwards) motion. 

Musical Easter eggs anyone?

As a follow-up to my post on naming things, I thought it might be fun to have a brief look at three intriguing place-names from the area that provides the backdrop to our Cracked Voices project…especially as they are a bit of a riddle and involve chiefs, gods and a very slight whiff of controversy.

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Therfield (home to an unwelcome Viking)

The name Therfield has developed over time from ðereuelde to Thyrefeld to Tharfield and can be interpreted in at least three different ways.

At the time of the Domesday Book it was known as ðereuelde / Furreuuelde, which can mean ‘village of the furrowed fields’, hinting at the tantalising possibility that the strip lynchets (terraces) cut into the chalk scarp of Fordham’s Wood (at Scald Hill East and West) and also to the west at Scald Bank predate the Norman invasion and may go far much further back to the time of the builders of the prehistoric barrows which litter Therfield Heath.

Scald Bank
Image © Graham Palmer 2017

The second interpretation is…well, a bit boring! It is a very dry place (the only water came from the village’s ancient man-made ponds) and it is the highest point for miles (and used to host one of the county’s three beacons). This is the ‘village of the dry (or high) field’.

The third is based on the fact that Norman scribes often changed the Old English y into e when they were writing things down. ðereuelde might really be Thyreuelde, meaning Thyra’s Field. Now Thyra is a Viking name and the feminine form of Thor, whose Anglo-Saxon equivalent was the god Thunor. Given that flint (which abounds in the local fields) was intimately associated with the god of thunder (a subject I will return to in a later post), this may not be so far-fetched…especially as more than one thunderbolt (flint axe) has been found locally.

Thriplow (home to a Bronze Age chief)

It is thought that that the name of Thriplow (more correctly pronounced Triplow) has much simpler origins.

Thriplow Village Sign

In the Domesday Book it is Trepeslai (or, substituting y for e, Trypeslai). The lai (or low) came from Old English hlaew meaning barrow or round mound. Like Therfield Heath, the area was rich in prehistoric barrows (at least fourteen, now all ploughed out) including the nearby Chronicle Hills and Tryppa’s barrow which stood to the south east of the Parish Church. Tryppa is believed to have been the name of an ancient chieftain who at one time lay buried in the barrow. In the 1780s Dr Bernard ‘attacked this tumulus…with ten men’ and apparently found nothing. In the 1840s Richard Cornwallis Neville (the man behind Saffron Walden Museum) reported that there were still persistent rumours that two Bronze Age swords had in fact been discovered but, sad to say, they have never been heard of since.

Royston (home to a rather peculiar stone)

Royston, where a trackway (now the dual carriageways of the A505) crossed the Roman Ermine Street (the A10), is unusual in that it was not recorded in the Domesday Book. The question is, did it exist? At the time it did not have its own parish or manor so, for tax-raising purposes, it is just possible that any settlement at Royston was considered irrelevant by the Domesday information-gatherers. Certainly, both Baldock and Therfield were far more significant, but the important crossroads must surely have been marked in some way.

The enigmatic Roysia Stone at the heart of Royston

In other place-names ton often just denotes a settlement (from the Middle English toun). Here the Roys may refer to a wealthy woman named Roysia who was believed to have erected a cross, on top of the large boulder known as the Roysia Stone. That was certainly the belief of the historians writing in Elizabeth I’s time but it is questionable whether the indentation on the top of the stone is deep enough to hold a cross steady. Similarly, though the first known reference to the place (1184) is as Crux Roaisie, the Crux may simply refer to the crossroads which is still known as the Cross.

The work of a seventeenth century Danish antiquary (with the wonderful name of Olaus Wormius) may throw some light on the town’s name. He described an ancient tradition of cremations (or roiser) and how the ashes were buried in an earth mound (or roise). Given the number of prehistoric burial mounds on the nearby Heath, some historians have questioned if the Roysia Stone (in Middle English stone is stōn) may have once stood on its own mound at the crossroads.

Moving the Roysia Stone (Photo courtesy of Royston Museum)

The stone is strange in itself. As there is no other rock of its size for miles around, it would have held special significance for early man, and it is no accident that it became a waymarker on the Icknield Way. It started off somewhere in the Pennines and was carried to Royston by a glacier during one of the Ice Ages but there is no evidence as to where it initially came to rest. Wherever it was, in June 1786 we hear of it being moved from the crossroads to Market Hill and since then it has been moved three further times. It currently sits on a plinth to the south side of the crossroads, surrounded by benches and remains the enigmatic heart of the town.

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With such ancient riddles to build on, it is not surprising that the area has thrown up a whole mound of stories…just a few particles of which are going to form the basis for Cracked Voices.

“Here’s some words. Set them to music”.

A very simple instruction that has been issued to many a composition student over the years. I remember this being said, and the mixed response from my peers. Some had a song writing background and instinctively leapt in that direction, others took a more analytical approach and began looking at strong and weak beats, stresses and accents – annotating the text with a variety of symbols.

The art of writing an art song, however, is to remember that it isn’t just about setting a text. It’s about crafting a story. It’s forging the right mood and atmosphere, somewhat akin to the work of the impressionists, while still allowing the text room to be expressive in its own right. The role of the piano (and any additional instruments) is just as key as that of the vocalist, and that must be reflected in the music.

Speaking of the impressionists, we also have the whole world of techniques that previous composers have explored open to us. When we learnt about musical history in school, the vast majority of it is categorised. Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, modern/contemporary. You then get those in each period of music who are pushing the boundaries- increasing dynamic ranges, augmenting musical languages and exploring techniques dismissed previously. We’re now at a point where so much exploration has happened that there are now a wealth of techniques available to us to experiment with in our music – yet another element to consider when evaluating the atmosphere of an art song (or of any piece!).

Different composers have different working processes. When Graham sends over a new Cracked Voices text, my first response (after reading it through a few times, naturally!) is to write or type it – normally both. I then start jotting ideas around it linking to specific moments in the text, whilst also creating a huge thought diagram around everything to do with the text – the story, the history, what’s said and what remains unsaid, imagery and atmosphere. Sometimes I’ll find that I know precisely what I’ll be writing (even to the point of hearing it in my head) after internalising the text, and the notes and diagrams serve as a method of consolidating and confirming everything in my head. Other times I’ll need to spend some time playing with these thoughts and expanding them until I hit upon the right thing.

Text, ideas and sketches at the piano. Includes a sneak peak at some Cracked Voices sketches!

The piece I’m currently working on is the opening song of the cycle – Those Who Wait, about the goddess Senuna.  I wanted the atmosphere to be quite ambiguous tonally in the opening, while simultaneously relating to Senuna’s roots. When I realised that she was a Celtic goddness, the music snapped into place-  open fifth chords (chords that aren’t either major (happy) or minor (sad) in quality, just ambiguous) combined with both them and the melody moving in a fashion similar to traditional Celtic music formed the perfect basis to begin the piece.

The accused witches have a piece that currently reflects their characters and their story. A slightly jazzy ballad scored in an unusual five crochets in a bar, the piece reflects a slightly relaxed tango, hinting at the merry dance they trod. The melody line features a few rather unusual leaps, and time changes make the piece feel a little unsettled, as Alice and her mother head towards their fate.

Both these pieces are still being fleshed out, but their musical foundations are already firmly rooted. The scenes have been set – it’s time to sing.