Lawrence Singer
During my relatively brief career as an oboist, composer, and lecturer, I've had the enormous pleasure of being associated with some of the finest performers and composers of our time.* And in most cases, I've found them to be very philosophical about their art. Their minds always seem so alert, so open, so fascinated toward new ideas, new technical concepts, new methods of performance, etc., whether it be an accent, a bowing, a particular timbre for a note, a woodwind multiphonic, or whatever. Within such a spirit then I would like to share a few thoughts with you. Some will be philosophical. Some will be technical. But all will be based on personal experience - an experience not just as an oboist or as a composer, but as an observer.
New, but now fully bona fide, the oboe's latest measure of achievement is the multiphonic - a multiplicity of sounds produced with an individual instrument. The multiphonic is in part a measure of the changing times - the changing demands of the composer of which tradition plays so vast a part. While a single, solitary multiphonic usually contains anywhere from three to six audible sounds, such sounds observed individually are different from one another in terms of timbre and intensity. In some cases an intense differential tone may dominate the multiphonic. This sometimes lends an extraordinary depth to the multiphonic as differential sounds have been observed at more than one full octave below the instruments lowest fundamental! Some woodwind multiphonics are unrelenting in nature, others can be gentle and quiet. Extreme domination of high and low intensities is characteristic of the former whereas dominating medium frequencies tend to reflect the latter. However, we might remember too that an aesthetic descriptive analysis of any sound or multiphonic is sorely lacking if it is not within a context of some sort. As more music employing multiphonics is composed so will our knowledge of what the diverse facets of multiphonics actually are, how they relate, etc., increase. We'll then be able to experience - to understand - to learn more about how they react in a string context, a brass context, a percussion context, a woodwind context, or in combination with any or all of the aforementioned.
In a sense, to understand the directions of woodwind performance is to understand the directions of today's avant-garde composers. We can do this, perhaps, from a more objective point of view by comparing the attitudes of traditional European music toward timbre of individual instruments and today's attitude regarding the same. While traditional European music considered timbre like noise - 'a non-essential' - today's avant-garde composer recognizes and uses timbre as basic necessities for composition. Such a recognition of timbre from a structural sense came about only since the eighteenth century. Composers of romantic and impressionistic music sought timbre more and more till eventually they gained an independent significance from traditional music. Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, and other composers began to recognize that pitch was, in fact, simply tone-color measured in one direction, and that the same could be done with timbre and intensity. In the Harmonielehre of 1911 Schoenberg even imagined a time when music could be constructed from 'timbre-melodies' (Klangfarbenmelodien). He observes that the relation of one timbre to another would reflect a logic comparable to the succession of different pitches comprising a melody.
Webern's Ruckkehr (Orchestra Piece, Op. 10) demonstrates how a music of Klangfarben may be organized using specific instrumental timbres. (But whatever one writes about in such regard, a debt is owed to the new concept of timbre usage indicated by Schoenberg's Opus 16.) Schoenberg's two most celebrated and influential pupils, Berg (1885-1936) and Webern (1883-1945) both used Schoenberg's ideas of timbre extensively. The former within a traditional framework and the latter in a new framework of his own creation. The above tracings then tend to indicate that some of the more prominent European musical minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were gradually discovering new meanings of musical expression - founded not on melody - but rather on the timbres of the orchestral instrument. Proceeding from that point then, it was only a question of time before the variegation of woodwind multiphonics would come to the fore, if indeed they existed. And indeed they did! So much so, in fact, that methods have been published, books and articles as well, and even music on disc. We have, in a word, a kind of revolution involving the nature of performance of woodwind instruments.
So much for the composer. How about the wind player? What problems do we foresee for her or him? Are the conservatories of music, music departments, etc., offering courses of study involving woodwind multiphonics? Can the wind player be expected to be fully prepared to meet the challenges comprising the avant-garde music of today? The answer should be in the affirmative. Of course there will be traditionalists that will assert their point of view. And as much as this author enjoys performing and listening to traditional music as much as the next traditionalist, he is beginning to realize that the multiphonic sonorities of the woodwind are really valid expressions of the instrument; not some sort of strange trick where peculiar types of noises are elicited from the instrument.
The delicacy of some of the woodwind multiphonics such as this one can find its place even with the most delicate of instruments - the classical guitar.
Such delicate multiphonics are probably the consequence of some sort of resistance against increased air pressure occurring between the vibrating reed and the vibrating air columns within the instrument itself. To the instrumentalist this means that even if he were to increase air pressure greatly, only a mezzoforte would result as opposed to the expected forte or fortissimo. (The explanation of such an acoustical phenomenon could be of considerable involvement, and would perhaps be best discussed in a scientific journal. While this author does not have a ready explanation in terms of an acoustical viewpoint, the subject would certainly seem to warrant scientific investigation under clean laboratory conditions, etc.)
While remarks concerning types of reeds most effective for multiphonics are indeed suspect to this author, there are, nevertheless, three general points that may be worth a grain of salt. Firstly, there might be some merit to the idea that a stiffer reed has a tendency to inhibit the normally audible high frequencies and very low differential sounds of many multiphonics; especially if one has actually experienced such a situation. Secondly, there seems to be a consistently slower attack response for many multiphonics with stiff reeds as opposed to fairly soft reeds. (While the different degrees of stiffness and softness of reeds may vary considerably from player to player in terms of what he considers to be stiff or soft, within each one's opinion there would still seem to remain the plain truth that within his particular frame of reference some multiphonics would respond better with fairly soft reeds as opposed to stiff reeds.) And thirdly, reeds with almost closed tips seem to inhibit the vibration patterns associated with differential sounds below the lowest fundamental tone of the instrument.
Associated with multiphonics is the subject of fingerings. Fingerings create the mathematical measurements within the framework of the instrument. There was a time when this author knew only two fingerings for third line B natural on the pentagram. Some years later he discovered ninety-eight fingerings for that note B natural. Such a result for one note resulted in further investigations of other notes. Gradually, hundreds of fingerings were discovered - some multiphonic and others monophonic. Sifting through the results a definite concept gradually came to light which today has resulted in the publication of an oboe method (METHOD FOR OBOE, Lawrence Singer, Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, Corso Europa 5-7, Milan, Italy) and a book (NEW SOUNDS FOR WOODWIND, Bruno Bartolozzi, Oxford University Press). Those two publications, while perhaps introductory in nature due to the newness and vastness of the material they dealt with, have perhaps served to indicate that woodwind instruments have a duo sound capacity: namely the monophonic capacity and the multiphonic capacity.
In the musical world today, woodwind multiphonics are so conservative they're radical. There are a heck of a lot of composers using synthesizers in their works and they wouldn't dream of thinking of an oboe. Oddly enough, I don't find that disturbing. I believe the oboe has enough character potential to survive all of that kind of ignoring. The instrument will come back fresher than ever.
We might think that a lot of people get to understand multiphonics through the back door. They're attracted by the realism, then begin to feel the abstractions. There's a lot of multiphonics in the oboe an average person wouldn't hear. But it's all there to be felt.
Multiphonics is merely a medium for expression with the composer, just as egg tempera is a medium for expression with the artist. While we cannot speak of multiphonics as a portable medium just as tempera is not a portable medium (as of course watercolor would be), still it can have a function in music just as tempera does in painting (a slow, patient, detailed technique). Some multiphonics have a slow attack response which relates to the slow, patient, detailed technique of tempera. This slow attack response has a truth all its own - it projects, it's fresh - and of course a composer should only use it intuitively. Other multiphonics are watercolor - fast - their attack response is incredibly fast. Here too, the composer has to feel the need for such a moment. The oboist has the role of executant - bringing to life that which the composer has sought to define. It is a dialogue between spontaneity and discipline that the executant must come to grips with - but always with the idea of serving the music. The composer and the oboist - in a sense - almost become one and the same.
One can go on and on about the intricate monophonic and multiphonic patterns an oboe can weave. But it remains for the oboist to learn and to apply the techniques which permit those possibilities. As with anything that is difficult self application, self-sacrifice, a great deal of time, hard work, etc., are all needed to meet any difficult challenge. As more and more composers use monophonic and multiphonic concepts in their compositions, oboists will find an increasing demand for their talents in those areas. They will be fulfilling a role that the composer requires. Musicians such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Bartolozzi, Robert Erickson, Heinz Holliger, Richard R. Bennett, Reginald S. Brindle, Lukas Foss, and others have written or are writing pieces using woodwind multiphonics. Oboists that ignore the reality that multiphonics exist, that they have gained recognition as an important facet of woodwind performance, are burying their heads in the sand. They are ignoring reality. Certainly, any new idea that is worth its salt will meet with a great deal of resistance. But if the concept is really valid, really contributes positively to the whole, it will survive and grow. Multiphonics have demonstrated this via the interest indicated by composers in their music, published instrumental methods featuring multiphonics, published books and articles in different languages as well as in English, and so forth. Major music festivals, of course, contribute greatly as show cases, too. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, (Venice, Italy) etc., are typical of the calibre of festivals that program every type of avant-garde music imaginable. Outstanding musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Janet Craxton, William O. Smith, Sergio Penazzi, Severino Gazzelloni, Evert van Tright, and many others have all been extensively involved in performances - both live and recorded - of music involving woodwind multiphonics.
Alas, I could go on and on about the facets of the glissandi, flutter-tongue, the unison, the flutter-tongued glissandi, etc., but this article is supposed to be brief. I've tried to give some kind of idea as to how and why instruments such as the oboe have entered into a new era of woodwind performance - to give a kind of penciled tracing of an immense new area of woodwind techniques which hopefully will help preserve the very existence of the woodwind as an integral part of contemporary compositional development.
As one reviews the vast amount of woodwind literature that has been written thus far, it seems that the oboe goes on and on - its facets restlessly shifting, revealing new sub-worlds of oboistic sonorities which seem to make our complete informations incomplete. We gain one perspective only to discover that that which we just perceived is about to be changed - about to be lost. And then we begin again. This change, it seems, is part of the Universe . . . as it loves to change things and to make new things like them. (It's a trend towards rediscovering discovery. And it seems that it will always be.)
*Luigi Dallapiccola, Lukas Foss, Gregor Piatigorsky, Lothar Faber, Severino Gazzelloni, Robert Sprenkle, Harold Gomberg, and so forth. [return]