CANONIC
OFFERINGS
Yong
Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall
Saturday
(14 February 2014 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 February 2015 with the title "Having fun with mathematics and music".
Canonic Offerings was a concert and part
of Mathemusical Conversations, an international workshop on music and
mathematics organised by the National University of Singapore's Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory. For centuries, mankind has pondered on and celebrated the
intimate relationship between the two subjects, and this concert provided a
brief glimpse of what happens when both are united in harmony and time.
Music is essentially a sequence of notes,
frequencies and silences conducted over the passage of time. It is the
variables of these parameters which give music its meaning, making it
interesting for listeners, the end-users of seemingly complex formulae. The
canon, with notes played over a repeated rhythmic pattern of fixed durations,
is one of the foundations of musical form. Anyone who has sung Three Blind Mice or Row Your Boat will understand how it works.
American composer Clifton Callender's Canonic Offerings presented a series of
ten short canons each of different time signatures for string quartet, which
was an ideal medium as the four voices could operate in unison or independently
while staying perfectly in time.
Being fiendishly difficult to coordinate
was part of the equation, and the members of T'ang Quartet were aided with ear
pieces which provided the beats which sometimes accelerated wildly or slowed
down to stasis as called for in the score. Although mathematical in conception,
the tonal idiom and skilful employment of counterpoint made it a quite pleasant
listen.
The quartet was joined by Australian
pianist Jacob Abela for the World Premiere of American Dmitri Tymoczko's S Sensation Something which took on a
more visceral approach to the subject. The slow opening with two violins
gradually joined by other voices was canonic, almost resembled Pachelbel's
ubiquitous Canon but soon took on a
life of its own by shifting and playing around with the rules.
Its fast central section ambled from
lively to violent but the underlying pulse was never lost in the process,
before winding down for a fairy-tale world of glimmering textures and a quiet
close. Was there a programme or story to the music's fantastical imagery? This
was where mathematics could be made to resound with palpably human
emotions.
Johann Sebastian Bach might be considered
as the grandfather of mathematics in music. His Goldberg Variations, originally composed for one keyboard,
comprised an Aria, 30 variations (on
the left hand sequence of the theme rather than its melody) and bookended by a
reprise of the Aria. Every third
variation is a canon based on different intervals.
Australian don Stephen Emmerson's transcription
of the variations spreads the work between two performers on two pianos in a
neat division of labour. With each pianist having less to play, there is scope
for enhancing the harmonies and discreetly adding counter-melodies. The basic
architecture being kept intact, there was little fear of blowing the work out
of proportion in this fun experiment.
Pianists Emmerson and Bernard Lanskey,
Head of the Conservatory, clearly enjoyed their tasks at hand, and there was
much humour in their interplay and exchanges in leading the melodies. Even if
some of the variations did not go neatly as planned, it was the keen
musicianship that won the day. By Variation
No.30, a cheeky Quodlibet that
mashes up trite Teutonic tunes of the day, and the Aria's return, a breezy voyage of harmonic exploration had
transpired. Cerebral or otherwise, it was not a bad way to spend an evening
with a loved one on Valentine's
Day.
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