Wednesday, October 28, 2015

ORGANUM SELECTIVUM


One of the reasons Elektra inevitably makes such an impact, even on the novice or first time hearer, is the almost pummeling auditory effect of the huge, brass-heavy orchestral forces. Combine that with the hurtling pace and harmonic richness of the score, and Elektra is inherently designed to pack a wallop to the solar plexus.

I've been pondering the loss of this gut impact created by the massive sonic weight of Strauss’s orchestra in my edition for lighter forces.  Does Elektra lose some of its effect without some kind of background sonic reinforcement or emphasis?

Then there’s the issue of my reduced instrumental palette, compared to the breadth of instrumental color Strauss has at his disposal. Our smaller group will have a much more limited aural spectrum and range of color. Some sort of compensation for that seems called for.

The issue has bothered me to the extent that I began contemplating following the musical theater route of utilizing one or two electronic keyboards programmed to provide wind, brass, and string reinforcement in block chords.  Not an ideal solution given the otherwise entirely acoustic nature of the orchestra.

But in one of those happy instances of cosmic serendipity, just as I was beginning to do some tests pages along these lines, Chris Fecteauout of the blue and completely unsolicitedsuggested the inclusion of a harmonium in the instrumental list.  Strauss himself initiates this very idea in his Ariadne auf Naxos, indicating in a preface note in the opera’s harmonium part - though oddly not in the full scorethat he expects the instrument to cover for the smaller wind and horn sections than were his norm.

Good acoustic harmoniums are a rarity, and my own (admittedly) limited experience with the instrument has so far left me unimpressed: I find them generally thin and wheezy.  Still, following Strauss’s own example, why not add an organ component to the orchestra? Not a real organthough depending on the performing space I wouldn’t necessarily rule this out, if coordination with the conductor and the rest of the orchestra in this particularly intricate work could be reliably worked out.  My intention is an electronic realization of an limited spectrum, pitch-defined organ role: no doublings, no extra registrations, no octave couplings, just the written, concert pitches.

DAW tests along these lines have been very successful.  The organ can provide not just the aforementioned extra sonic heft but also some of the lost palette diversity, especially standing in for the Wagner tubas who, when played by top players on quality instruments, provide an almost organ sound anyway.  And given the gruesome, macabre nature of Elektra, there’s a nightmare quality to this timbre that seems to suit many parts of this operaas long as it isn’t over-indulged. Otherwise one risks the soundscape devolving into camp.

So with the addition of this organ component, the instrumentation of this reduced orchestra version of Elektra is complete. Now the real work begins.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

STRING THEORY


With the rest of the orchestra determined, the last piece of the puzzle is the string section, which in the case of Elektra is both the most fascinating and the most challenging.

14 winds, brass and others leaves me 13 - 15 players for strings.... theoretically.  Which in almost any other opera reduction would be more than enough (and for musical theater would be huge). The challenge with Elektra is not just the numerical strength, but how Strauss uses them.

A traditional orchestral string section is broken down in to:

Violin 1
Violin 2
Viola
Cello
Double bass

This group is typically deployed as four parts, with the basses doubling the cellos at the octave.  A good deal of the classical era repertoire deploys them in three parts, with the violas doubling the cellos either in unison or an octave higher -- so basically Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola/Cello/Bass.  The amount of players per section would vary according to both the needs of the individual piece and the resources of the performing organization.

Even the habit of the French school towards the end of the nineteenth century to split each of these sections continuously in two doesn't alter the essentially four-fold division of the section. Strauss himself utilizes this layout in certain parts of Salome, and it may well have inspired his expanded division for Elektra, which regardless of its antecedents remains no less remarkable in requesting the following:

Violins 1, 2 and 3: 8 players each
Violas 1, 2 and 3: 6 players each
Cellis 1 and 2: 6 players each
Basses 1 and 2: 4 players each
Total: 62

Aside from Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto (which is written for solo strings), I know of no precedent for a tripartite division of an orchestral string section in this manner. Strauss surely had his prospective harmonic approach for the opera in mind when devising it.

Defining his orchestra was typically one of the earliest steps Strauss took in the compositional process -- his copy of Hofmannsthal’s play contains quantities of marginalia indicating instrumental thoughts from the outset.  And in mapping out this unique string section, Strauss was surely preparing to continue his exploration of polytonality taken to its then furthest extreme in Salome, devising an orchestral layout that would facilitate the juxtaposing of foreign triads against each other. Arguably the most representative example of this approach is the so-called “Elektra chord”: effectively a Db major chord contrasted against an E major chord:

Thus, he could expect to ground these harmonic explorations in the string section - always the foundation of his orchestra - by writing the three notes of one triad in his violins and juxtapose its counterpart in the violas. The cellos then add emphasis where necessary and the basses a complimentary or contrasting fundamental tone.

The resulting expanded number of violas plays up the opera's overall heavy, dark atmosphere, though it's interesting to find Strauss reverting to a lighter, treble-prominant sound in two sections in the second half of the opera - the Recognition scene and the final triumphal scene - by asking the First Violas to take up violins as the Fourth Violin section. This restores the traditional four-part division of the strings, though it poses a practical hazard involving as it does cold instruments that, having lain unused for well over an hour, are likely to be out of tune with the rest of the section, much less the rest of the orchestra.  Anecdotally, a cursory survey of a handful of the world’s leading opera houses indicates that this directive is rarely adhered to.

Ironically, the section Strauss outlines gives him one desk less of string players than that for Wagner’s Ring of 16 firsts, 16 seconds, 12 violas, 12 cellos and 8 basses, an interesting anomaly considering the much larger wind and brass sections against which the Elektra string section has to contend.

The breadth of timbral variety that Strauss extracts from his group ranges from an essentially three-fold division (all violins, all violas, all cellos/basses) to a division of nine independent parts and beyond, including frequent solo turns by the principle players of each section.

So how to translate this complex group for a reduced orchestra? In order to keep the numbers low and make the edition practical for as wide a spectrum of performers as possible while still maintaining some fidelity to Strauss’s originality, my first thought was to keep things small:

3 violins
2 violas
2 cellos
1 bass

But for all the intimate possibilities this group offers, it’s become quickly clear that without some sort of amplification it would be easily overwhelmed by the rest of the orchestra.  Amplification is a tricky road to take in the traditional opera arena and would at any rate require the use of a sound mixer, something for which the smaller opera companies interesting in undertaking this reduced version are likely to have little capacity.

My ideal would be:

Violins 1, 2 and 3: minimum 3 each
Violas 1, 2 and 3: minimum 2 each
Cellos 1 and 2: minimum 2 each
Minimum 2 doublebasses

For a total of 20.  This is the section for which the edition will be tailored, even though it exceeds the boundaries of the commissioning organization.  The split of the section can still work with slightly smaller numbers, such as those suggested by Chris Fecteau:

6 violins
3 violas
2 cellos
1 bass

My only thought is to retain two basses, even with these smaller numbers.  A reduced orchestra version of Elektra still needs the added depth and heft of a second bass. There are also several sections where two basses will permit what I feel is a necessary fidelity to the original score.

Which leaves a lot to recommend in Chris' proposal: Divide your section in to the first two desks of violins, third desk of violins and first viola, and the remaining two violas, and you have a viable 3-section division not including the cellos and bass that can cover a fair amount of the disposition of the original.

Where this smaller section becomes tricky are passages where the six violins are required to be divided as individual desks, or two players to a line, a notorious challenge in terms of intonation, and one that string players typically regard with unease.  Two violins playing unison poses noticeable intonation issues: add a third, and better yet a fourth, and the combined sound almost immediately solves those issues.  The fact that Strauss himself poses this challenge in the final scene of his Ariadne auf Naxos doesn’t mitigate the issue, though it does perhaps grant a bit of authorial permission.

What are your thoughts?  What would you suggest?

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

SIZE MATTERS

Obviously the first task with this project is to figure out what the makeup of the reduced orchestra will be.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first such attempt at a version of Elektra for forces substantially smaller than the original.  Strauss himself created a version for slightly less winds and brass but maintaining the full string section, taking the total down to 95.

Issues of both budget and performance space for the commissioning organization means that the maximum number of players for this edition will top at 28-30.  And in keeping with opera’s adherence to natural acoustics, there will be no electronic component… with possibly one exception.

There are myriad ways one could approach this project (Elektra for wind and brass orchestra, anyone?)  My own, traditional view is to use a fully mixed orchestra, with the balance between the strings - typically the foundation of Strauss’s orchestra - and the rest of the ensemble maintained. So with the strings making up approximately 53% of the original orchestra (in terms of numbers of players), and wanting to leave myself sufficient strings to maintain that balance,  the first job is to define the minimum number of winds and brass needed, to see what would be left over.

Traditional opera reductions use a wind section of 2 flutes, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets and 1 bassoon, and that’s what I probably would have gravitated to. Strauss’s 20-piece wind section in Elektra covers such a fantastic breadth of range and color (particularly the massive clarinet section) that attempting to mimic it in any fashion is a moot point from the get-go.  But Chris Fecteau, artistic director of dell’Arte Opera in New York City and himself the author of an array of fine reduced opera editions, pointed out that, for all its kaleidoscopic brilliance, Elektra is not a particularly flute-prominent opera, and recommended an emphasis on the oboes in lieu of the flutes, which I agree with.  The result is the following wind section: 1 flute (also piccolo)
2 oboes (2nd also English Horn)
2 clarinets in A (2nd also Bb bass clarinet)
1 bassoon (also contrabassoon, or wherever possible contraforte)

It’s amusing to observe that the entirety of my proposed wind section is two players less than Strauss’s clarinet section alone. The same philosophy applies to the brass section.  Strauss imports his wholesale from Wagner’s Ring, to which he adds an extra trio of trumpets in the opera’s final pages (a demand he maintains in his smaller version mentioned above).  I’ve always viewed this particular extravagance with misgivings, especially in concert performances where etiquette forces the poor extra players to sit through the first 90 minutes of the opera glaring glumly at their stands waiting for their brief participation to commence without the benefit of crossword puzzles, reading material or other diversions. My brass delegation is pretty straightforward: 2 horns
2 trumpets in C
1 tenor trombone
1 bass trombone Strauss uses an almost identical complement in his 1923 opera Intermezzo, with the addition of a third horn, and from which he gets marvelous results. Probably the biggest hurdle with this section is expecting two horns to cover the role of eight, especially in a work from an era and this composer in particular where the horns are almost constantly providing a harmonic background against which the other sections can desport contrapuntally.  That’s in addition to their frequent solo turns.  The inevitable result is that my two horns are going to have little down time during the opera’s two hour course.  Nor will the bassoon. Add one harp and one percussionist covering timpani, bass drum and cymbals, kick drum, suspended cymbal, triangle, snare drum, tam tam, one pair of castagnettes, rute and glockenspiel.  Which makes 14 players, leaving me potentially another 14 for the string section, which I’ll explore in my next post.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG: Which comes first, style or size?


Most reduced-orchestra editions of operas, mine included, try as much as possible to respect and maintain the original work’s tone color and instrumental allocations. I.e., a wind solo remains allocated to that instrument, brass passages remain in the brass (however much you have to rejigger things given the forces to hand); string passages remain in the strings, etc.

This isn’t too hard with much of the standard opera repertoire - and certainly those works  considered prime candidates for reduced forces - which uses a fairly straightforward orchestral palette and reasonably sized forces.

The operas of Richard Strauss however, and particularly Elektra, present a real challenge in this regard.  Strauss's use of the orchestra is based on an inherently traditional conception: it's just that it's so much bigger and used so much more complexly.

A typical opera orchestra consists of two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two to three trumpets, three trombones, a bass brass instrument (tuba or cimbasso); timpani and possibly some other percussion, a harp and around 26 strings. So a total of around fifty players. Up to the early nineteenth century the brass section would probably have been four players total and a harp would have been rare. By the mid nineteenth century it becomes more common to find the winds expanded to threes with doublings in each family, the harp is ubiquitous and the percussion section has evolved, taking the total orchestra up to around sixty. With Wagner's Ring orchestra as his template, Strauss blows the above standard out of the water by stipulating the following:


4 flutes (3rd and 4th also piccolos)
3 oboes (3rd also English Horn)
1 Heckelphone
1 Eb clarinet
4 Bb clarinets, 3rd and 4th also A clarinets
2 basset horns
1 bass clarinet
3 bassoons
1 contrabassoon
Total winds: 20

8 horns (5th and 7th also tenor Wagner tubas in Bb, 6th and 8th also bass Wagner tubas in F)
6 trumpets
1 bass trumpet
3 trombones
1 contrabass trombone
1 contrabass tuba
Total brass: 20

2 timpanists covering 8 drums

4 percussionists playing bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, tam tam, 2 pairs of castagnettes, rute, glockenspiel

2 harps (the composer blithely requests that, if possible, these be doubled at the very end of the opera, beginning with Elektra’s dance.  Regrettably I have yet to see this request fulfilled.)

Celesta (optional)

Violins 1, 2 and 3: 8 players each
Violas 1, 2 and 3: 6 players each (1st violas double as 4th violins)
Cellis 1 and 2: 6 players each
Basses 1 and 2: 4 players each
Total: 62

Total: 110


This affords Strauss a hitherto unprecedented panoply of colors, both soloistically and in combinations within individual instrumental families, instrumental sections and across those sections. And the complexity and subtetly with which he deploys it is astounding, particularly in a piece so monumental that fine shading might seem wasted, particularly with the ear principally focussed on the vocal parts.  Yet solo strings tendril their way through already complex, heavy passages.  Here and there a clutch of flutes or double reeds or brass will fleetingly shade a chord.  Clarinets, basset horns and bassoons add a uniquely oleaginous dimension to harmonies already defined by other sections.  Wagner tubas embody the ominous, massive atmosphere of the drama. Then there’s the way Strauss uses his orchestra, expecting a level of individual and ensemble virtuosity that makes Elektra essentially a concerto for orchestra with voices added.  The combination of myriad contrapuntal lines in passages both fast and slow with minute inner details results in the soaring, seething, hyper excitement that are a hallmark of his work. And the increase in size of his orchestras from work to work allows him to give many of those contrasting lines equal weight through doubling and tripling across sections while offering increased opportunitt for filigree and embellishment. Some of those inner lines are the complex web of leitmotifs that are the architecture of Strauss’s scores, and in almost all cases are fundamental to the dramatic-symphonic structure of the composition, particularly in the operas. Meaning these need to be respected and retained. Add to that the complexity of much of Elektra’s harmonic structure, Strauss’s farthest foray in this area, where there’s potentially the question of finding enough instruments to cover all the notes. All of which is to say that the practical question for this project remains: with an orchestra 30 percent the size of the original, how much of Strauss’s ocean of inner detail do you attempt to keep, and what?  How much of his original instrumental coloring - particular with regards to doubling across sections - do you attempt to respect? To what extent does that affect the choice of instrumentation for a reduced-forces version?  If you omit some of that inner detail - if only because of the lack of instruments - is this landmark work inherently depleted, not just in terms of respecting the integrity of the fundental composition but in terms of a work whose effectiveness is generally assumed to be dependent on its orchestral component? The interesting flip side of the question being: might not some of that inner filigree be more apprehensible in a version where it isn't buried under the enormous sonic mass of the 110-piece, brass heavy original? Consideration of this issue inevitably affects the choice of instruments in my edition, particularly regarding the makeup of the string section, which I’ll be exploring in the upcoming posts.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

AN ACT OF INSANITY

There is a long-standing tradition of creating versions of operas from the standard repertoire for orchestral forces smaller than the original.  Such efforts range from works originally scored for modest forces (Mozart, Rossini, the baroque) to larger fare, such as Carmen and la Bohème.  I myself am the author of reduced-force editions of Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan Tutte, and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

These editions play to the strengths of opera companies lacking the means, the space, or both to produce the full orchestra version of a work.  The productions typically utilize sparer sets and costumes, often in nontraditional, intimate performance spaces, spotlighting the kinetic and acting abilities of their performers and elevating the dramatic importance of the performance to the level usually reserved for the music.

The recent proliferation of such companies has seen a concomitant increase in interest for access to parts of the repertoire previously considered out of their reach.  An attempt was even made at Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen with a version of Das Rheingold for eighteen instruments (a project that it would have been interesting to see continued). Yet there remains a part of the canon considered not only so large-scale but technically demanding as to remain the province of only the larger opera houses, amongst which many would no doubt classify most of the operas of Richard Strauss.

So it was no small surprise to me when I was recently approached by one such opera company in New York City about creating a version for severely reduced orchestra - thirty players or less - of Richard Strauss's titanic one act 1909 opera Elektra, based on Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play.  

If you know Elektra, you are probably having exactly the same reaction that I did: insanity. Cant be done, and probably shouldn't be attempted. For many of its partisans, Elektra is all about its colossal proportions: situations so epic and emotions so heightened that they can only be depicted by extremes of vocal writing  and an enormous orchestra. Strauss calls for a minimum of 110 instrumentalists instructed to play much of the time  at high volume and and at a level of technical demand that to this day makes the most talented instrumentalist quail. (In comparison, a full strength performance of Mozart’s Figaro would use approximately 40 players, Carmen 55, Aida 60, Boheme 63, not counting offstage instruments.)

The sheer size of Elektra’s orchestra has frequently necessitated the casting of the principal roles with performers whose main responsibility is simply to make themselves heard above it.  Such singers are typically possessed of a physical makeup that mitigates against sustained or heightened physical motion.  The result is that concert performances of the opera have become almost as numerous as stagings, and that stagings have all but devolved into concert performances as the singers able to tackle the score’s demands limit their diegetic involvement and therefore erode the opera’s drama.

But Elektra is first and foremost a drama: arguably one of the most visceral, dynamic dramas ever conceived for the operatic stage. For all the virtuosic brilliance of the instrumental writing and the heroic vocal demands, the manic, kinetic fervor of Strauss' score cries out for physical reflection by the singers.  The composer himself always placed prime importance on the dramatic demands of this role, as witnessed by his stressing to conductor Felix Mottl in preparation for the Munich premiere of the opera that the title role “requires a tragic actress of the first rank.”  Note that his emphasis isn’t on the loudest voice possible, or a singer with a penetrating high C (more on that in a later post), but on the need for an actress.

So is the the full orchestra version then the only way to perform Elektra? In addition to the extreme dramatic situations and Strauss’s interpretation of them via arguably his most complex score, is a huge battalion of instrumentalists mandatory to effectively convey this gruesome yet exhilarating piece?

It’s to explore these questions that I was persuaded to tackle this just slightly daunting project. Why not create an alternative version for smaller orchestral forces that would permit this incomparable work to be performed not only by organizations able to afford the behemoth orchestra, but just as importantly by stage performers of physical makeup and propensity to do more than stand in place and compete with the pit? To physically match the dynamic volatility so rife in the music?

This blog will follow my progress on the score, slated to have its premiere in the summer of 2016 in New York City, with contemplations, questions, observations, challenges, frustrations and achievements, all open for comment.