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Composer
Round Table discussion with Scott Robinson Welcome to you both, and thanks for being with us. As you look at (or listen to) your pieces, what do you hope that people take away from a performance of "A Stuff will Not Endure” and “So Hallow’d and so Gracious is the Time?” Scott Robinson: Permission to seize the day--because nothing lasts
forever! GP: And as you two write for voices in general, what idiomatic concerns do you keep in mind? PA: I've worked with many amateur choirs of all shapes and sizes, so I hope that I understand what they can and can't do, in terms of range & complexity. The challenge for every composer is to work within these limits, yet to come up with new phrases and sonorities. SR: Most important to me is that the music should serve the text, by growing organically out of its rhythms, sounds and meanings. GP: So when you think about your own compositional voice, what about it is evident in this piece? What about this piece makes it Scott Robinson's? SR: I am deeply suspicious of "art for art's sake;" I'm much more interested in "art for peoples' sake." This piece, allied as it is to text and, by extension, to theater (I originally wrote these for actual productions of the plays) is very much in keeping with that attitude. I hope to entertain people rather than giving them an aesthetic object to contemplate. Moreover, like the medievals, I like to bring forth "new grain from the old fields"--new music rooted in tradition. GP: Paul, what about you? How do you view your compositional voice? GP: You mentioned an expansive piano part. For an accompanied choral piece, how does the piano’s role fit into all of that? PA: I like to use the full range of the piano where possible. Sometimes the piano helps the vocal parts, playing with them, but I rarely have the piano doubling the choir exactly note-for-note. There are much more interesting ways of doing it! And I like to swap the roles around: sometimes the piano accompanies the vocal melody, sometimes the choir and piano 'bounce' off each other antiphonally, and sometimes the piano comes to the fore, the chorus becoming the accompanying level. GP: Scott, your piano parts are generally simpler, but still create an appropriate mood for each piece in the cycle. What are your thoughts on the role of the piano? SR: The piano is there to first support the singers, and secondly to evoke atmosphere. Being only a fair-to-middling pianist myself, I have always written accompaniments that I could play myself in a pinch, so an accomplished player should have no problem with them. GP: What sorts of things do you ask of a choir in your writing? What sound do you hear in your head as you compose? SR: I like a light, natural feel--pre-bel canto, unforced and transparent. Professionals should try to sing like amateurs. GP: Paul, what do you ask for from a choir, especially when you’re conducting or giving a clinic on your own work? PA: I like to concentrate on rhythm a lot. In our Western choral tradition, we place great emphasis on intonation - and of course that's important! - but sometimes we worry so much about tuning, tone, vowel production and so on, we don't think much about exactly WHEN we do these things. On one level, it's simple counting, but it's illuminating to experiment with different approaches: are all beats within the measure really equal? Can we place the beats in slightly different places? For example, in a waltz, beat 2 comes fractionally earlier than the metronome would suggest, to achieve the lilting effect; whereas in a slow pop ballad perhaps we might want to place beats 2 and 4 a millisecond late, to get a laid-back feel. The other element I like to work on is the compositional & improvisatory one. So I will encourage the choir to sing the work with some changes to the notated pitches, rhythms, harmony, texture, underlay or whatever - letting the singers discover how the music's put together "from the inside". By understanding the reason "this is why Mozart used THIS harmony" or "this is why Gershwin put THIS syllable on THAT blue note", musicians are much better able to perform convincingly. GP: Well thanks again to you both, and I think we all appreciate the deeper look into your compositional process for these two pieces, “A Stuff Will Note Endure” and “So Hallow’d and So Gracious is the Time.” Keep writing! SR: Thank you. |
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 Paul AyresPaul Ayres was born in London, studied music at Oxford University, and now works freelance as a composer & arranger, choral conductor & musical director, and organist & accompanist. His music usually involves... So Hallow'd and so Gracious is the Time   Preview the score |
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