Preparation

Two discussion points that I had with lecturers and the harpist that are worth mentioning:

• I am fully aware of the various extended techniques that are unique to a harp. Glissandos, nail pizzicato, harmonics and thunder effect to name a few. I've been advised by various lecturers that in order to write for harp, these techniques need to be evident otherwise it could have been played on the piano instead. Whilst I agree that extended techniques do lead towards a piece of music becoming idiomatic for the instrument, too much of anything can lead to a clichéd composition. There is only one piece of music that I know of that has successfully worked with clichés and I plan not to add to that field anytime soon! Instead, I plan to only use these techniques if it's for musical purpose, and not for assessment ticking or showing off my knowledge of the harp to listeners or the harpist. 
• Once I sent the initial drafts of the works to Anwen (the harpist), she was thankful that I was not one of the composers who tries to cram in every single extended technique into their pieces. She had a lot of recent experiences at RAM where masters level composers would be trying to 'push the boundaries' of the instrument. Whilst I appreciate that we are in the age of experimentation - pushing the boundaries can result in 'pushing' high-level performers away and at the early stages of my musical career, it's better to form strong relationships with players than put people off working with you in the future. In conclusion, I felt it was best to leave the avant-garde works to the future, once trust is built. Besides, simplicity can lead to the most beautiful of works [2,3,5].

Flow:

Receiving feedback from my 'a little boat on a calm sea' from 2020 - the general consensus was that there was a lot of little ideas that when put together, didn't quite produce a convincing cohesive piece. The opening, with its disruptive symmetry, 9 beat phrases and cyclic note sets [6], was challenging for a pianist to perform but when I shared the work with Anwen, she was able to perform the opening excerpts with ease. 

Initially, I wanted the piece to go on for 5 minutes or more but going back to the concept of miniatures [2], I realised that a smaller work that is entirely based on the concepts I described above would lead to a cohesive composition. Listening to one of the film excerpts from 'The Crown' gave me the confidence that it's perfectly acceptable to write smaller pieces of music and that it is in fact encouraged to provide contrast for an EP (just like blog posts!)[1].

The additions I made to my original work included:

• Adding in pedal notation for the harpist - there were a few challenging changes due to the PLR harmonic moves.
• Extending the opening to just harp and then introducing the violin artificial harmonics later on.
• Adding an 'erasured' ending, where the dotted rhythms are removed and just leaves running semiquavers leading the piece to morendo.
• Removing some dynamic markings and instructions to give the harpist more freedom with the work and to add expression where necessary.

Highland Holiday:

Some context behind this piece. In August 2021, I was driving around Scotland in my brand new first car. It was the first holiday that was after the pandemic and I was calling up various campsites to potentially pitch my tent. There were so many campers in the area that there was no space at the inn - apart from one campsite. After my initial enquiries, I received a very sketchy email from someone named John who said I could individually camp for a couple of nights, even though they wouldn't allow the public onto the site due to COVID restrictions. 

I arrived at 11pm at the campsite, in front of the mountains of Ben Nevis where I met John. He owned and lived in one of the caravans on the campsite. I noticed that he had a violin case in the caravan and we got speaking about how he lives in the highlands whilst studying for a Music degree via the Open University. A massive coincidence that two music students met in the most unusual circumstances! 

He shared with me some of his music essays he was writing for his coursework submission and I noticed how eloquently he wrote. We spoke further and I found out that he was an aspiring poet and he showed me his works. One stuck out to me... Highland Holiday. And that was the sampling [2] I used to form the basis of my composition.

A staple Grade 1 ABRSM piece I've been teaching to my violin students, Skye Boat Song has been ringing in my head over the past few months. Sampling the melody of this piece and transferring to harp was an excellent strategy to capture the Scottish qualities of the poem and the Celtic-like qualities of the instrument. It also meant very little pedal changes for the harpist too.

At this point, I was teetering on making this composition a pastiche of Scottish music - so to add my own contemporary vision, I changed the time signature from 3/4 to a quicker 3/8 and added in 2/8 bars at the end of phrases to keep the listeners on their toes. This was inspired by Richter's and Yoshimatsu's works that implement similar techniques to well-known classical melodies. [2]

The poem has excellent word painting and this was matched in the composition's form [3]. 

• The 'rain' matches perfectly with the dripping of the natural harmonics on the harp mentioned at the beginning and the end. 
• The alternating major/minor tonalities matches well with the alternating moods in each stanza (eg. going from 'brief shaft of light' to 'darkness is confounded'). 
• 'I want to be there, again and again!' when spoken, matches the dotted rhythm in the harp halfway through and at the end of the piece. 
• The poem starts intimately and gradually grows into 'madness' and 'happiness'. This is reflected in the repeated melody that grows harmonically by simply adding 3rds and 5ths on top of the fundamental melody, inspired by composers such as Debussy and Ravel.

On the last point, the harpist did comment that adding the 5th did make it more challenging for her to keep the tempo due to the fingerings of the chords. I decided that this 'difficulty' allowed the piece to go into so called 'madness' and created the exact character I wanted. Anwen commented that this was her favourite piece out of the four composed, due to the simplicity of the composition, married with the harp's acoustic qualities. I was equally surprised that after listening back, this became my favourite work out of the album too!

Oscillation:

At this point in the EP, I wanted to start exploring space in my works. As explored in Arvo Pärt's music - producing space and silence in a work can have a very powerful effect on a listener [3]. As Pärt states (2020),

I imagine the conductor having an upbeat, when the whole thing starts. [This] actually contains the formula of the entire work. Its character, dynamics, tempo, and plenty of other things....I guess the composer is in a similar position before he starts writing.

This concept of space, married with the teachings of erasure, produced an excellent backdrop for Oscillation. It allowed musical ideas to connect with ease and produced a reflective element to the music, a concept that I have not been able to achieve in my previous works. [2,6]

Another aspect of my compositional practice that I wanted to develop was producing works from little material. Using cyclic note sets (specifically with coprime beat settings eg. 7 and 12) meant that I could generate long passages of music that were both rhythmically interesting and had cohesiveness. All of the above techniques contributed towards my longest work in the EP - one that has long musical lines and a clear trajectory.

Effervescent:

As a violinist, I was aware of the difficulties of the violin part, due to the jumps in tessitura and repetitive bow stroke - but I had full faith in my violinist to produce the goods in the recording. Accents utterly clear and the harp accompanying beautifully, it was a small risk that paid off in the recording and rounds off the EP in an explosive manner.

References:

Bouteneff, P., Engelhardt, J. and Saler, R., (2020) Arvo Pärt- Sounding the Sacred P117