Suzanne Ciani - Penderecki - Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima

I was listening to a podcast this morning ... The Source of Uncertanity... episode 2
(It's a great series BTW and I highly recommend you subscribe).

Kyle & Robert were interviewing Suzanne Ciani and the question came up about how electronic instruments interact with live traditional orchestras. She mentioned a classical piece by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and (if my interpertation is correct) ...how his methods could be used to score electronic music.

 It's titled: "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima"
The piece is 8 and a half minutes long (it was originally titled 8'37") and belongs to what was in the 1960s  a new approach to music composition. The name "Sonorism" was coined. This non traditional type of composition  focuses very much on timbre, texture, motion, articulation & dynamics. We all know how these characteristics are fundamental to electronic musicians. The piece uses 52 string instruments (mostly violins) but I can easily see how these could be swapped.

"Sonorism emphasizes discovering new types of sounds from traditional instruments, as well as the creation of textures by combining different, often unconventional instrumental sounds in unusual and unique ways. The term sonoristics is used to describe this novel approach, which went beyond merely injecting individual color, quirks, and experimentation. It aimed to establish new structural functions in a composition, such as employing non-functional chords for sonorous effects, and emphasizing the sonic aspect of texts in vocal music" (Granat 2008). 


Suzanne's interperation was facinating.

"Don B was adamant about the danger of associating a keyboard with the Buchla instrument as it short circuited the whole concept of the instrument". (Suzanne Ciani)

Listen to this piece by Suzanne {Seven waves). She is a classically trained pianist, and this is one of her solutions to (in her own words) "fuse her classical melodic roots with her electronic vocabulary.........
This was a composition with a score".


 Getting back to Penderecki.
"It has an electronic sensibility but it is done with acoustic instruments.   (but) the language is electronic.
...... The score is graphic..... and the conductor is the key to getting it all to gel." (Suzanne C)

So what did Suzanne mean by "a graphic score"?
The problem with sonorist music is that it's difficult to score using traditional notation.
How do you write a score recording changes in timbre? So Penderecki constructed a road map of sound.
Here there are no conventional bar lines or time signatures. Rather, the music is divided into intervals of real time (seconds).  Notes are often assigned to individual players. Players, are often assigned to groups to create "sound clusters".

-------------------------------------------------------
Citations:
Adrian Thomas. “Penderecki, Krzysztof.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 5, 2015, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/21246.
Jan Topolski. “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.” Culture.pl. Accessed April 5, 2015, http://culture.pl/en/work/threnody-to-the-victims-of-hiroshima-krzysztof-penderecki
---------------------------------------
Listen to Robert’s music at:
https://mutierend.bandcamp.com/releases
Listen to Kyle’s music at:
https://darksparkler.bandcamp.com/

For more information on Suzanne Ciani visit her website:https://www.sevwave.com/