09: Finding a Tonal Design

Well, I had forgotten, when I wrote the last post, that in fact I worked on the concerto from roughly 14 June to 2 September 2008. This was after being on the set of Mao’s Last Dancer and before starting to compose the score. During those two and a half months I regularly returned to the film for viewings of rough edits which meant I was often thinking about how to approach the music of Mao’s Last Dancer rather than the concerto. Perhaps that is why this period merged in my mind with the post-December writing. But most of my sketches are dated so the truth is revealed.

During that period I was focused on finding the tonal parameters for the work. Having written a number of pieces on the octatonic scale I thought it would be interesting to see what other octatonic scales I could create. I arbitrarily chose to use pairs of tones and semitones and eventually came up with a large number of possible modes. For example:

TTSS TTSS,

TSST TSST,

SSTT TTSS, and so on.

With a few additional scales, such as the usual octatonic scale, I made a chart that also indicated the possible major and minor triads that could be found within each given scale. Here it is: Modes 16 June 08

Source: Hubblesite.org

11 (13) Modes
Then I made a chart that gradually changed from one mode to the next by modifying the upper pentachord, then the lower pentachord. Just as I thought the horn would travel through different regions of the orchestra, so it could travel through ever-changing modal colours. At this point the chart had 11 or 13 modes.

In addition to the common chords and triadic scales, I laid out all the possible occurrences of the overtone series in each mode. I will talk about the horn and its relationship to the overtone series in a future post. I found that each mode had two almost complete series (eg. F and B in the first mode on the chart), a number of incomplete but still implied series and some very weak, unformed series. The plan was to integrate the series into the fabric of the work, different tonalities being available as the work progressed through the modes.

Here it is, with possible common triads, triadic scales and overtone possibilities: 13 Modes 29 June 08

It was my intention to have an overall tonal centre of F, often with the strength of a pedal note. This would create pull and tension with whatever tonality was implied by the common chords and overtone series available in each mode.

Source: Hubblesite.org

6 Modes
It quickly became apparent that there were too many modes here for a 25-minute piece, at least as I imagining it. So I drew up a new chart where both the upper and lower pentachords changed at the same time. I was now planning to overlap the modes: as one group of instruments hung on to the old mode and slowly disappeared a new group would be fading in with the new mode. This was still consistent with the concept of slow traversing through different places. Six of the original choice of modes survived in this new chart. Here it is: 6 Modes 26 July 08

Source: Hubblesite.org

4 Modes
After quite a bit of deliberation I dropped the two central modes (the third and fourth) and made a chart with just four modes: 4 Modes 20 August 08. This seemed more manageable as it gave me time to explore each mode without having to hurry on to the next. It is worth remembering that all of the 25-minute Freefall is written on one mode, as is Free Dance and large chunks of Daybreakers and that the 15-minute You Dead Kings Rising is a single slow transition from the single mode to A major. So to work with four modes was, in a way, new territory (and 13 modes was rather ambitious) if I was to maintain a consistent approach to my composition.