Solos and Tuttis (a vestige of an unheard season) - for chamber orchestra [2020]

Full Score in C

MATTHEW GROUSE

Solos and Tuttis (a vestige of an unheard season) for orchestra

(2020)

Commissioned by the Cumnock Tryst with funds from the PRS Foundation Written for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Solos and Tuttis

(a vestige of an unheard season)

for orchestra (2020)

(Orchestra) Instrumentation: 2 flutes 2 oboes 2 clarinets in Bb 2 bassoons 2 trumpets in Bb (+ plunger mute) 2 horns in F Timpani - range C2-A3 (middle C is C4) 8 violin I – doubling voice 6 violin II – doubling voice 4 violas – doubling voice 4 violoncelli – doubling voice 3 contrabasses * – doubling voice * Contrabasses with low C extensions if possible. If these aren’t available, basses should play any notes below the open E an octave higher.

Composer's Note: Solos and Tuttis was commissioned for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with a premiere originally set for October 2020. It was to be part of a programme which would open a new concert hall in Cumnock, a town in East Ayrshire.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this concert was postponed until 2021. The orchestra predictably suffered cancellations of a large proportion of the concerts in their 20/21 season.

When starting to work on the piece, I regularly found myself thinking about a strange kind of residue or shadow that would likely accompany the return of live orchestral music after its forced and prolonged absence. My way into the piece was to imagine the cancelled repertoire of the SCO’s season filtered through the unusual times we’ve been living through. A major component of this was to consider the abundance of split-screened, multi-tracked audiovisual recordings that many orchestras shared to social media, in an attempt to fill the void in their performance activities during lockdown.

There are of course some facets of this kind of music-making that are largely considered inferior to the real-time orchestral situation, whether that’s the absence of that ambiguous but very special ‘live’ energy that comes from amassed bodies in a performance space; a lack of temporal expressivity as a result of recording classical repertoire to a click track; the reduction in audio fidelity and dynamic compression when these recordings are encoded through social media’s audio codecs; or even the presence of unwanted artefacts like distortion, room noise or buffering glitches during online streaming.

I started to compose with some of these realities of recording, editing and streaming this hyper-individualised, digital presentation of classical music. When re-appropriating them back into a composition for a live orchestral setting, I became particularly interested in how this could further magnify the dualism involved in witnessing the voice and personality of each individual member of the orchestra, as well as that of the collective.

Duration: ca. 8’ The full score is in C

(double basses sound an octave lower than written)

Solos and Tuttis was commissioned by the Cumnock Tryst for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with funding from the PRS Foundation.

© 2020 Matthew Grouse. All rights reserved.

Featured repertoire in order of appearance: Robert Schumann - Symphony No.1 – (mvt. IV) Louise Farrenc - Overture No.2 in Eb major Felix Mendelssohn - Symphony No.3 (Scottish Symphony) – (mvt. I) Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade – (mvt. II) Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No.7 – (mvt. IV) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.5 – (mvt. II) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte – Overture Johann Strauss II - Die Fledermaus – Overture Franz Joseph Haydn - Symphony No.104 (London Symphony) - (mvt. I) Clara Schumann - Piano Concerto in Am - (mvt. I) Georges Bizet - Carmen Suite No.1 – (II. Aragonaise) Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No.8 - (mvt. I) Gabriel Fauré – Pavane Franz Schubert - Symphony No.5 - (mvt. III) Maurice Ravel - Mother Goose (Pavane) Edward Elgar - Serenade for strings - (mvt. II) George Frideric Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks (Bourrée) Louise Farrenc – Nonet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony No.31 (Paris) - (mvt. I) Antonín Dvořák - 8 Slavonic Dances - (mvt. I) Franz Schubert - Symphony No.8 - (mvt. I) Maurice Ravel - Le Tombeau de Couperin - (I. Prelude) Antonio Vivaldi - Juditha triumphans - (Agitata infidu flatu) Max Bruch - Violin Concerto - (mvt. I) Georges Bizet - L'Arlésienne Suite No.1 Richard Strauss - Der Bürger als Edelmann (Overture) Johann Strauss II - An der schönen blauen Donau Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Variations on a Rococo Theme - (mvt. I) Johann Sebastian Bach - BWV 174 – (I. Sinfonia) Felix Mendelssohn - The Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave) Francesco Barsanti - Concerto Grosso op.3 - (No.10) Johannes Brahms - Ein Deutsches Requiem (Overture) George Butterworth - A Shropshire Lad Franz von Suppé - Light Cavalry Overture Richard Strauss – Metamorphosen George Frideric Handel - Water Music No.2 – (mvt. I) Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No.3 (Eroica) - (mvt. I) Johann Sebastian Bach - Brandenburg concerto I - (mvt. I)

Accidentals An accidental holds good for the duration of a bar.

An accidental preceding a note only applies to the octave in which it is written. A further accidental is required for a note of the same pitch class in a different octave.

This accidental is used to denote the sounding pitch of the 31 cents flat septimal string harmonic.

Technique abbreviations Where necessary to save space / avoid collisions, the following terms may be abbreviated: Sul pont. >> s.p.

Possibile >> poss.

Ordinario >> ord. (a directive to return to the ‘usual’ way of playing after a passage that uses special technique[s]).

Position normale >> pos.norm. (used instead of ord. exclusively in the case where a return to a normal bow position [after a passage of sul pont. or sul tasto] is accompanied by a different non-standard technique, thus not fully returning to ordinario)

Solo indications for strings The piece features quickly alternating solo entries. “solo 3.” indicates that only player number 3 of the respective string section should play the passage. This indication is cancelled and the rest of the section re-join with the use of “tutti”. On rare occasions, “soli 1-4” is used to indicate that players 1-4 of a section should play whilst the remaining players of the section rest. In the full score only, where a soloist and the rest of the section have different material simultaneously, but share a stave, the term ‘gli altri’ (with any additional divisi indications) is added either above or below the stave, attached to the voice played by the rest of the section (this is not necessary in the parts as there is an individual part each desk). Consecutive, separate solos within a section occasionally appear such as in the contrabasses in bar 219. The latter of the two solo markings (“solo 2.”) also acts an indication for the previous soloist to stop (only one soloist plays at a time).

Non-standard notation / symbols (any other non-standard notation will be explained in the body of the score via technique text or footnotes)

Technique arrow

Arrows indicates to gradually and smoothly move from one technique indication to another, for example, from sul tasto to sul pont.,from muted to unmuted or hand-stopped to open.

Freeze!

This symbol directs the performer to abruptly freeze like a statue, as if part of a paused video. Don't move a muscle until the next entry! When 're-animating' momentarily before the next entry, make this as inconspicuous as possible. The addition of a damp symbol for strings and timpani denotes stopping and leaving the bow on the string or muting the timpani skin with the hands / mallets.

Dashed barlines

Dashed barlines are used for passages where a player is playing an independent tempo from the rest of the orchestra. In this case the dashed barline shows the metre for the rest of the orchestra.

They are also used for free time sections, coupled with an ‘x’ time signature, to show where the barlines for the notated material would ordinarily be.

Staccatissimo

Regardless of the note value that a staccatissimo marking is attached to, they should always be played as short and punchy as possible.

‘X’ time signatures

An ‘X’ may replace a time signature. If coupled with the instruction ‘senza misura’, this simply denotes to play in free time, independently from the rest of the ensemble. It is also used to indicate an independent tempo separate from the rest of the orchestra OR a bar of rest with an unspecified duration.

Vibrato larghi

A very slow, alien-like vibrato. This should emulate the sound of an electronically time / pitch stretched audio recording. The breadth of the vibrato should be approximately a 1/4 tone. For winds and brass this can be achieved in any way whether lip bending, subtle legato fingering changes or for horns, hand-stopping.

Timpanist uses subtle pedal glissandi. The first usage sees the graphic accompanied by “vib. larghi”. Subsequent uses omit the text instruction.

Sounding pitch ottava

In the case of string harmonics, small ottava symbols (8va and 15ma) in parenthesis, only apply to the sounding pitch which is shown as a small, stemless, bracketed notehead above the fingered diamond notehead. Always play the fingered pitch in the notated octave.

Air interference

This notehead denotes a fast, pitchless air sound akin to white noise / interference. For clarinets, oboes and bassoons this should always be performed away from your instruments / mouthpieces / reeds (but it shouldn’t be visually obvious). For brass this should be performed where possible through your mouthpiece / instrument and for flutes, the airstream should go directly over the blowhole. Each instance is coupled with a phonetic sound to sustain e.g “sh” or a direction such as “inhale”. Notehead above the stave denotes high frequency, pitchless air and a notehead below the staves denotes low frequency, pitchless air.

Asynchronous feathered beams

For strings between rehearsal mark G and I the pizzicato gesture with a feathered beam indicates a gradual ritardando or accelerando. These should start together but the exact speed of the re-articulations of the chord should not be synchronised. The desired effect is a pointillistic smattering of the chord.

Heavy pressure / overblowing

This notehead denotes a raucous, almost distorted and ugly sound. For strings this means rough, heavy bow pressure and for winds and brass this means overblowing (with optional flutter or growl). The pitch should still be clearly detectable but occasional deviations in intonation and other usually undesirable artefacts are expected and encouraged. The effect is a disfigured rendering of the quotations.

Singing / humming

This notehead denotes singing or humming, and will be coupled with a text instruction such as “hum” or “oo”.

Sung notes should be executed in the closest comfortable octave to the notated pitch (there's no need to strain!)

The voice catches the pitch of the preceding played note, giving the effect that the vocalised sound is a ghostly, frozen decay of the played staccatissimo note.

Asynchronous excerpts

This symbol indicates that the player should play and loop the excerpt written in their part completely independently from the rest of orchestra.