A rather insightful view into the world of commission based scoring, Alexandra Hamilton Ayres touched on many areas of interest that stood out to me a great deal. Her early orchestral experiences echoed a similar spoon-fed, linear and numerical take on music that I had underwent playing in orchestra’s growing up. However her summary of the advantages that playing in an ensemble can offer has given me a newfound faith in its ability to better my ear, composition and reactivity as a musician and sound artist. All of which reinforces a coincidental decision I’d made over lockdown to join the Aeolian Orchestra.
Her choice of instrumentation to contextualise a plot was also interesting. Particularly in the soundtrack to Douglas King’s ‘Do No Harm’ based around a woman with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Alexandra’s use of the ‘Sousaphone’ to create brassy cyclical tracks, ignites the protagonists inner voice whilst her repetition of motif’s and use of effects (delays/ granular filters) bring this idea of perfectionism/ attention to detail and overwhelming routine thats associated with OCD to the forefront of the image. The importance she seems to place on textures to create moods and (in ‘Do No Harm’s Case) build climactic tension is a thought process that will definitely stay with me.
Digressions
Leading on from my research into Alexandra’s work I discovered an artist she had worked with called John Taverner. What stood out the most to me was his use of The Tibetan bowl, accompanied by a string quartet, in his piece ‘Towards silence’. This example of incorporating traditionally non musical components/ instruments into a song-like sound piece pushes my own preconceived idea on the the boundary between music and meditation. The four part score, based around a school of hinduism called Vedanta (“a waking state, a dream state, a condition of deep sleep, and “that which is beyond”) [http://5against4.com/2012/04/07/john-tavener-towards-silence-european-premiere/] is told through emotive violins, seamlessly weaving around the ethereal textures brought about by the Tibetan bowls reverberations.
For symbolic reasons the bowl is struck every nineteen beats, yet as the fourth movement begins it increasingly becomes an omnipresent force, occasionally engulfing the quartet’s delicate textures, and as a result reinforcing its mood, at times eerie, and at others up-lifting. This marriage between melody, harmony and hypnotic reverie takes one out of their head and into a body high, introduces momentum and movement, but most of all gives us the incomprehensible sense of continuity, as if the piece carries on, past the bowl’s final note, into eternity.