By Sofia Rabaté
This madrigal was difficult to write because my own compositional experience is grounded in later styles, which most likely made reproducing a true Renaissance madrigal difficult. I am used to observing voice leading practices that I was taught in my music theory courses, but in hindsight Renaissance style tends to rely on open fifths more heavily that I have represented here.
To emulate the style, I tried to use the method of word painting that is notable in Weelkes' As Vesta Was From Latmos Hill Descending (descending is incidentally a descending scalar line, and the word "alone" is sung by only one singer, etc). That is why I tried to include a running line of "Up," that ascends and is passed between the voices. This piece ended up sounding a little more solemn than I had intended. I suspect this is the influence of Palestrina whose Gloria from the Pope Marcellus Mass I listened to as a reference point for a Renaissance style. The predictable cadential 6/4 also contributes to this feeling, but I ended up appreciating the effect. This music both blurs the phrase "U.P. up" beyond recognition and also mocks it with its strange seriousness.
(The last two measures are meant to modulate between the key of U.P. Up and that of Little Harry Hughes Concerto, the following fragment of my song. The way I chose to modulate was a little simple: I did it by holding on to note that is in common between G major and B minor, which is D, and then making D the third of the new chord. This is a little "cheap" in terms of modulation, but I did not want to waste time making a bombastic affair of the modulation, but rather making the next fragment seem less jarring. In Joyce's original, the transitions between each style are much more seamless. I made the choice to have different self-contained pieces that each had a conclusive cadence at the end, which made the issue of continuity a problem. But I also believe that self contained pieces allowed me to fully show off the style that I was imitating.)
This piece I did not compose, but instead arranged. The melody of Little Harry Hughes is reproduced in the book in Joyce's hand. This song clearly has an anti-semitic background, so I made the choice to set it in minor. Instead of the original D major, my version is in the relative minor, B minor. I wanted the piece to sound mournful, almost like a funeral dirge lamenting the fact that Stephen would sign such a song to someone of Jewish ancestry, especially after being invited into Bloom's home. This is also reflected in the slower tempo.
My mind immediately went to a Baroque concerto for this fragment. I have experience playing these as a cellist who has both been section member and soloist, and the genre of the concerto is representative of the Baroque era because it emerges in that period. The slower movements of concerti (the ones I had in mind were Vivaldi's Winter and Corelli's Christmas Concerto. My arrangement could be the slow second movement of an imaginary violin concerto.
To make it sound Baroque, I made sure to give the celli arpeggiated chords. From playing the lower string part in similar pieces, I know that the continuo is often an active line outlining the chords in arpeggiated form. I also changed the straight eighteenth notes to dotted ones. This is more idiomatic for the genre, and additionally, the solo line would have something more active than just eighth notes. After filling in the inner parts, I was surprised to find that it was a good imitation of the style, at least to my ear. This is probably due to my own familiarity with the genre through orchestra, and because cellists are often trained using Bach's Unaccompanied Suites, making the genre more accessible to me.
This piece, affectionately dubbed "Low Budget Mozart" as its working title, was one that I struggled with. The melody line's previous incarnation was totally different before I changed my mind and rewrote it. For this piece, I was imitating Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. I don't think I need to defend my choice of Mozart as representative of the Classical era; he is ubiquitous. I pulled from my memory of playing Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 2 in D Major (as an orchestra member, not the soloist!), and my experience in string quartet (I now know Eine Kleine Nachtmusik all too well).
The Flute Concerto contributed to the prominence of the flute, and the static cello line playing the root of the chord contributed to that aspect of the piece. I cannot place where I got the idea of the offbeats, but it sounded Mozartian enough, and was somehow associated with the composer in my mind. Most importantly, it was "fluffy," the best adjective I can think of to describe Mozart's music.
The struggles came with the melody line. It had to be operatic, but, as evinced by the unusual voice I designated (what's a mezzo-soprano when you can write either for soprano or alto?), this was written for me to perform. I am not a singer nor was I ever trained as one, but due to the limitations of this project, I could not hire or ask someone to do it, and had to rely on my own voice. Though I used computer-generated instruments for other fragments, the vocals from my music notation software can't express syllables and words. Therefore, this piece isn't very "operatic," as in it certainly wouldn't be a show-stopping aria, but I can see this being part of an opera. I did make efforts to imitate the genre, and this could be a minor character with a minor song to sing.
In my previous compositions, I was content to simply identify aspects of the style I was imitating and insert them into my work (word painting, arpeggiating lower strings, "fluffiness"), but for this one my specific example took over.
I thought for a long time about what to choose for this. An earlier idea was to imitate Verdi's Va Pensiero chorus. The nationalism and emotion of this opera epitomize the Romantic era, but it was impossible to imitate. The melody is so powerful and distinctive that it almost became the Italian national anthem. Any imitation I tried to compose either sounded like plagiarism or like something that had no relation to the original.
My second choice was to imitate lieder, another form that flourished in the Romantic era. Schubert was a clear choice for this, and I happened to be studying his works in my Music Theory class. Just as I had examples to inspire me while composing the other fragments, I chose the Erlking as my example for Schubert. But soon, this example took over.
The story of the Erlking, where the evil spirit is chasing the father and son, had the same eerie qualities as MacIntosh's appearance. Even someone with no knowledge of Schubert's piece would understand the meaning of the menacing, rhythmic piano part. For the melody, I chose an easy, singable line that was pitched for my group members' lower range. I briefly modulate to D minor in measures 16-17 because Schubert himself would have undertaken fearless, unexpected modulations in a composition of his own. Despite heavily quoting the Erlking, I felt I needed to change the key, meter, and make slight alterations to the part so that the compositional process was still authentic. Overall, I feel that this piece has some innovation mixed in with the imitation, and my quotations serve the overall purpose of the piece.
Hatikva, a fast tempo, firmly, tonally in D minor, and Satie's dreamy, slow, major-seventh chord piece seem to have nothing in common. This was much my problem in composing this. I had the idea set that Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 had just the ambiguity and confusion needed to express the mystery of Bloom's attitude towards his own Jewishness.
However, I found that I had to change Hatikva into major and greatly slow down the tempo to fit the framework of Satie's piece. I attempted to change Satie's chord to fit a minor-key Hatikva, but this sounded wrong. It was either making one or the other unrecognizable. I chose Hatikva because this blurring of the piece reflects the blurring of Bloom's identity throughout the book. I ended up with an uncanny valley version of Hatikva that I am actually quite happy with. I tried to "harmonize" measure 13 with a B major seventh chord where I would usually have placed a B chord (Bb in the original, a nice, tonal VI in the original D minor). This "harmonization" following Satie's pattern also created an unsettling effect, but, in my opinion, it adds to the symbolic meaning of the confusion and ambiguity wrapped up in Bloom's sense of self.
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