29 July 2010
ASQ National Composers' Forum: Composer Blog - Melody Eötvös
[Update 14 September 2010 - links added]
When I decided to write Olber's Dance, as always, it was
fundamental to the task that I knew what this piece of music was
going to be about. A good friend of mine had recently pointed out
how significant a change in the night sky was when you were in a
different hemisphere and that once you noticed this it could
actually have quite a strong effect on you. While abroad in the
US I thought about this often (usually walking home late at night
from a recital or class). So it seemed appropriate to explore
this thought some more and I discovered Olber's Paradox in a
familiar 'physics facts' book that I often refer to out of
curiosity.
The paradox goes something like this: at night, step outside and,
weather permitting, take a look at the brightly lit backbone in
the sky. On a clear night your observations made of the night sky
can be every bit as profound as Einstein's or Kepler's. The fact
that the night sky is dark, and not as bright as the burning star
at the centre of our solar system, tells us the most fundamental
thing about our universe. This is what Olber's paradox
illuminates for us. The catch in Olber's paradox is that it is
impossible for the universe to be infinitely large because, if it
were, there would not be a dark sky at night, due to every point
in our line of sight being taken up by the forever existing light
of a star, whether near or far, similar to the way you are not
able to catch sight of the landscape which sits just beyond a
dense forest of trees stretching out for miles and miles. The
most remarkable thing about this paradox is that is reveals so
much about the physical universe in such a simple way.
Capturing and expressing this sentiment in music involved lining
up both the obvious and some more abstract (i.e. completely
invented) parallels between the components of the paradox (the
stars, the notion of expansion and also the impossible part of
the paradox in all points of light existing at the same time) and
the sound world. Some of these include sound smudging like light,
intrusive or blending pointed pizzicato, all motion directed
toward an edge which continues to expand outward, and a flux
between rich walls of sound and spaces constructed with a more
silent, bright environment in mind.
Capturing and expressing this with a string quartet required a
different and more markedly attentive compositional approach to
what I had ever attempted before. I was well aware of the
technique involved in writing a string quartet, courtesy of my
deep obsession with Bartok and the Debussy/Ravel masterpieces,
and was determined to pay close attention to how I constructed
the layers around my Olber-concept. One of the most beautiful
things I love about the string quartet is its ability to sound
several times larger than the obvious four instruments that it
is. So part of my concern was also exploring this aspect of the
ensemble and structuring the expansion of sound and texture
around the overall outlay of the piece.
While I dearly hoped that Olber's Dance would be
performed by the ASQ with their
experienced, professional and outstanding players, I put a great
deal of effort into not letting the technical difficulty of what
I was demanding of each player get out of hand.
Further links
Melody Eötvös - website
Melody Eötvös -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog, part 2
Thomas Green -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog, part 1
Thomas
Green -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog, part 2
Adam
Starr -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog part 2
Adam Starr -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog, part 1
Mark
Holdsworth -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog, part 1
Ross Carey -
ASQ National Composers' Forum, composer blog
© Australian Music Centre (2010) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
Subjects discussed by this article:
Melody Eötvös is currently studying in the Phd Composition program at Indiana University.
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