From musical pastiche to saxophone quartet
A gentle reminder that not only is imitation the highest compliment (and one of the best ways to learn) - it’s also impossible to create a 100% facsimile of anything else; a part of yourself will always slip into your attempt to copy what you admire.
Multimedia artist and writer Austin Kleon has a characteristically evocative way of putting this in his book Steal Like An Artist:
I’ve always admired the arcing first movements in the symphonies of Bruckner (Nos. 7, 8), Mahler (Nos. 1, 3, 7, 9, 10), and Shostakovich (Nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) - arcs that pick you up one place and set you down somewhere else after 20+ minutes of perfectly paced music with plenty of time for reflection - provided the conductor is attentive.
As far as imitation goes, these three composers are part of a well-documented musical lineage: Shostakovich’s frequent blending of tragedy and comedy to achieve pathos borrows heavily from Mahler’s precedent. And Mahler conducted and admired Bruckner’s music, incorporating Bruckner’s harmonic and expressive innovations into his own symphonies.
A recipe
Picking and choosing my favorite bits from this extended family of music, I wrote out a rough dramatic template for a Bruckner/Mahler/Shostakovich musical arc so I could make one of my own:
Opening: Spare, sometimes stern motto theme simply stated
A responding idea that is often warm and enveloping (though with Shostakovich, this response is usually chillier than the opening)
These two moods alternate off and on, developing and varying as they do (especially characteristic of a Bruckner Adagio)
Central drama: A long and unremitting build to a climax, which can be shocking/traumatic. The climax often coincides with the return of the spare motto theme
A calm (though not always happy) and reflective stretch of music that very much exists in the shadow of the traumatic climax
An ending that melts away
There are many exceptions to this recipe within the Bruckner/Mahler/Shostakovich extended family, but this sequence seems the most convincing scaffolding that synthesizes their collective approach. For those more familiar, if I had to choose two pieces that were the clearest models for my arc, they would be the first movements of Mahler’s 10th and Shostakovich’s 8th symphonies.
With recipe in hand, the remaining question was what kind of ensemble to write for? Though getting the music performed wasn’t strictly the purpose of the exercise, as I was putting this recipe together, a colleague expressed interest in my catalogue of rep for saxophone quartet. I asked for a week to get ready to share what I had to offer.
I had a recipe, an ensemble type, and a deadline. Would something worth sharing emerge from the exercise in imitation?
Filling the template
Opening
First we need an opening that evocatively sets the scene.
Rule No. 1 of great symphony writers is economy of material—that is generating entire sections, movements, or symphonies from the smallest amount of musical material. This has the effect of tying everything in the piece together in ways the listener can’t always put their finger on but that they experience as a sense of cohesion and inevitability. To get that done, you need an initial melody or idea that is chocked full of bits and pieces that you can transform and extend to strike a balance between interesting diversity and musical continuity.
Transposed score of the opening bars showing the “motto” theme
The melodic leaps in the first two bars give it an open and distinctive character; the motives/rhythms in bars 1 and 3 have the potential for many variations that will still feel related; the implied harmonies in each of the first four bars are also distinctive and compelling; the tremolos rustling in the background are also memorable and will prove to be the key at the climactic moment.
A warm contrast
We need something that provides a good contrast with the somewhat stark opening, but has at least a tenuous relationship to it. Looking to the Bruckner and Mahler precedents, at these moments of contrast, they often altered their orchestral textures—from thin to thick and rich. No need to reinvent this wheel:
Transposed score showing the warmer contrasting idea
Moving from one melodic line quietly played to the full group in a chordal and lightly polyphonic texture brings that welcome contrast. To connect the two ideas, the contour of soprano line in this warm chordal music inverts the original idea, paying tribute to it.
A bit more character development
Leaning on the Mahlerian model, before the drama in his 9th and 10th symphonies really gets going, he lets listeners get a bit more familiar with the musical characters by repeating the ideas a few more times, bringing in subtle variation to maintain momentum and interest, but keeping the overall meaning and message of the characters the same.
For example, here is part of the restatement of the opening idea, this time given to the baritone saxophone and incorporating a few new ideas:
And here is a restatement of the warm idea that begins in the same way as the first time through but soon goes elsewhere, slightly expanding the emotional range and meaning of the musical:
The central drama
At this point in the scaffolding we leave Mahler-land for Shostakovich-land, who had a penchant for slowly cranking up the tension to a dramatic crisis (see: the first movements of Symphonies 5, 7, 8, 10). To achieve this, we need to carefully control the energy and intensity of the music so that moment to moment it is always growing. We can achieve this by
Starting at a lower volume and gradually increasing;
Starting with just one or two things happening in the music and gradually increase that number;
Starting at a slower speed or tempo and moving to gradually faster ones, increasing the number of notes happening in a given unit of time;
Starting with items 1-3 changing slowly and predictably and increase that rate—changing the rate at which change occurs
Rather than sign-post every moment, I’ll just drop the mock-up of this central section. Notice how things begin gradually and predictably and then the pace of change picks up.
Also note how at the climax, the beginning’s foreboding tremolos rustling in the background return in a fearsome way.
Reflection and melting away
Following a climax like this in the oeuvre of Bruckner, Mahler, and Shostakovich, the music is shocked and never really picks itself back up for the rest of the movement/piece. The tempo, volume, and rate of change slow way down. Often a solo instrument slowly mulls over musical fragments of the main ideas, helping listeners process what has happened. In this case I chose to use the soprano saxophone in its mid-range, which can have a very human and plaintive quality, which suits the moment:
After this reflecting, where perhaps some kind of acceptance has happened, a reminder creeps back in: there may be no peace to be made.
The piece spins out for a minute more with a final reminder of the warmth from the beginning. At the finish, there is resolution but little comfort.
Well?
Though this scaffolding is very much synthesized from the works of three well-known composers and some of the musical ideas I used resemble theirs, the resultant music still says something unique and personal to me; the dramatic arc here clearly traces the story of something cherished slipping away and a traumatic loss which you may learn to live with but from which there is no forgetting.
Even when we try to make a copy, you can’t keep yourself from slipping in, from making the thing your own.
Saxophonists (or other chamber groups who are interested that I could arrange this for): if this music compels you and you’d like to see a score and/or consider performing it, please get in touch. I’d love to work with you to bring this music to life.
How has emulating the work of others (in any respect) led you to discover things of your own that have surprised you?