Description: Amymarie K. Bartholomew – amymarie.bartholomew@yale.edu
I plan to construct my final project as a concept piece based on the song “Rosette” as performed by the Québécois folk group Le Vent du Nord. Rather than meaning that the actual song will appear heavily in the work, I simply mean that the song will be used as the central source of inspiration and concepts for the piece. In this work I want to draw on several of the techniques we have been exploring in the class so far, particularly expanding on the idea of using a single source for many structuring purposes, of course without that structure being necessarily communicated to the audience. I would really like to push the idea of this further and attempt to think of my work as really drawing on this one piece of source material for concepts and structures in every way possible and for every aspect of the piece. I have found that such restrictions are both freeing and limiting, in a way that can lead to outcomes otherwise unpredicted or expected, which I find invigorating as an artist. Particularly when dealing with so many complex and wonderful interacting elements as dance, text, and sound, I believe the structuring focus of a concept piece of this sort can facilitate fascinating and truly collaborative work with all three of those elements, and I would love to work with a composer who finds this to be an intriguing proposal!
There are several features of the song which are most important in understanding the areas of investigation of the project, so I will begin with some explanation of the material itself. As a song from the traditional cultural music of Québec and other eastern provinces of Canada, the sound of the song itself is fascinating because it is clearly heavily influenced by celtic musical traditions, but the song is sung in French. As a piece of traditional music, call-and-response also plays an important role in the song’s structure. The lyrical content of the song is particularly interesting, and is in fact what led me to the desire to create such a final project in the first place. An upbeat song with breaks for fiddle-heavy instrumental sections, the sound of Rosette contrasts strongly with its meaning. Although only sung by one voice (aside from the group call-and-response lines throughout), the song is in fact an argument between a man and a woman, an argument that becomes understood by the listener as the song progresses. Each verse represents an assertion or reply by one of the characters, alternating each verse. Below is my own personal translation of the lyrics into English. Surprising and at times very harsh, the lyrics fascinated me with what they don’t tell you – namely the name of the man involved, the circumstances under which the two were involved to begin with, and, most importantly, how it works out in the end! For the text of my piece I would like to focus on exploring different possibilities for the overall story of Rosette and her mystery man, of which this song only represents the middle section. I have already written several such possible stories and look forward to writing more. In this way there will be to some extent a storytelling element, though I intend to present enough possibilities to tell a story without telling a single, certain story.
Ah Rosette, my little Rosette
I haven’t seen you in a good long time.
Ah Rosette, my little Rosette
I haven’t seen you in a good long time.
I have heard some news, some news from the country.
That you weren’t well-behaved
As you had promised to be.
That you weren’t well-behaved
As you had promised to be.
Oh my love, don’t listen to that.
I have always loved you.
Oh my love, don’t listen to that.
I have always loved you.
Plenty of others came who were to my taste.
Dearest lover just to please you
I refused them all.
Dearest lover just to please you
I refused them all.
Why, Beauty, did you refuse them?
Didn’t you know that I’d stopped loving you?
Why, Beauty, did you refuse them?
Didn’t you know that I’d stopped loving you?
You didn’t get letters from me anymore or my official documents.
Didn’t you know, Rosette, that I’d forgotten you?
Didn’t you know, Rosette, that I’d forgotten you?
Come everyone, come and hear
The jealousy that caused him to leave.
Come everyone, come and hear
The jealousy that caused him to leave.
He didn’t have a fortune, or even enough money
To buy the rings
Exchanged at weddings
To buy the rings
Exchanged at weddings
Beauty, the rings that I won’t give you
will never hurt your fingers.
Beauty, the rings that I won’t give you
will never hurt your fingers.
I’ll give them to another, one who is to my taste.
And you, little Rosette, you will be forgotten.
And you, little Rosette, you will be forgotten.
In addition to working with the lyrics to some extent for the storytelling aspects of my text, I would like to explore the idea of conversation in general, as reflected in the piece, and I think setting that exploration up while also exploring the idea of call-and-response could lead to many interesting combinations and contrasts, since the two concepts are at once similar in their alternation and quite different in their content (and both including in the source material!). I am also interested in exploring translation, since it has been relevant to me already in my translation of the lyrics and is also relevant to the translation of these lyrics into a full story as I intend to do in my text.
For my movement I plan to use some improvisational techniques (such as a simple sequential phrase-building technique used by Bill T. Jones in his “Floating the Tongue” exercises which I have become really fond of lately for movement generation purposes) to generate phrases. Even in these phrases however, I plan on having my movement exploration focus on the dialogue between Irish step-dancing and ballet (my two original forms of training), which is both interesting to me personal and directly relevant to the source material as, like the musical style, it is a combination of French and Celtic cultural influences.
For structuring purposes I am hoping to draw on the song’s five-verse structure and use of periodic repetition, as well as its breaks from text. These elements can be combined with any of the other items being explored in the project, from text to dance to music and back again, and also spliced in with the general concepts of conversation and call-and-response I am interested in investigating.
Although this is a lot of ideas to read about and sift through, they are truly all directly generated by the information contained (and missing from, in some cases) a song of just under four minutes in length, which I think is itself a strong argument for the generative capacity of such a limiting/liberating investigation of a single source item.
Response: Hari Ganesan – hari.ganesan@yale.edu
Amymarie:
What strikes me most about your proposal are the lyrics to the song. I really like the sense of misdirection, from the first two stanzas, which seems to be heading into an old-fashioned love story, where the (guy) would be relieved that his supposed lover was faithful to him. And yet, in the third stanza, you realize what’s really going on. I’m a big fan of misdirection and deception in music, and I always have found extremely alternative harmonies enticing in music that I listen to (while not necessarily atonal). I also like interplay, as in counterpoint, and this would be very apparent in this piece, with the call-and-response idea you mentioned.
I like a wide variety of music – I’m a pianist at heart; however, my favorite genre of music probably lies somewhere between progressive rock and metal (I also play guitar). I would say I’m mostly driven by complex harmonies and interesting chord progressions rather than rhythmic detail and unique timbres. I think for your piece I would try to have some exchange between fast, peppy music (like a jig) and smooth, waltz-like music. I would obviously take some time to extract thematic material from the particular French and Celtic repertoire that you have discussed.
Hari Ganesan
Response: Andy Alden – anderson.alden@yale.edu – and Jacob Reske – jacob.reske@yale.edu – (duo)
Jacob: Hi Amymarie! We took a look at your idea and really like the direction it’s heading in. Andy Alden and I will be working as a team on this project, and we think that some of the concepts you mention (storytelling and conversation, improvisation and interpolation of existing material) lend itself well to a group environment.
Andy: From doing this a few times, we know that musical collaborations are often difficult to navigate, as different styles and creative impulses can clash. In light of your proposal, however, we see this as an opportunity. Compositionally, we could assume the roles of Rosette and her mystery man, and our contrasting musical instincts would give the two characters distinct voices. We would base our musical forms on the five-verse grouping, and, inspired by the repetition of lines between the two characters, we would repeat, vary, and comment on each other’s music.
Jacob: I’ll give you a bit of background on us as composers, so you know the kinds of ideas that we’re interested in exploring ourselves and the kinds of music we tend to write. I’m a composer who works primarily with electronic media, sample-based manipulation, and quotation. I’ve been writing a lot of sample-based soundscapes, mashups, etc. Right now, my two biggest interests are working with vocal manipulation, changing the sounds of the human voice into some unique/unusual textures, and interpretation of music by computers. Andy’s music tends to asymmetrical/syncopated rhythms, using harmony coloristically, and using modules that evolve as the piece progresses. Both of us are pretty flexible as composers, and we’re interested in incorporating some of the phrases/structure of “Rosette,” as well as the instruments, into our own music.
Andy: By the way, I love celtic rhythms and have had some experience playing the Bodhran! It would be fun to incorporate some of the rhythms and improvisatory forms I’ve learned.
Andy and Jacob
Response: I’noli Hall – inoli.hall@yale.edu – and Ben Kwok – benjamin.kwok@yale.edu – (duo)
Amymarie:
We are interested in your closing statement about the “generative capacity of such a limiting investigation of a single source item.” This seems to us to be very true and the unique aspects of the song that you have identified and used to draw ideas for your performance also lend themselves to interesting applications to music. For example, your observation about what the piece doesn’t tell you could be conveyed musically through a uncertain or only alluded to pitch center, a lack of conclusive harmonic resolutions, and chords combined from two contrasting keys. All these can lend to a feeling of harmonic
ambiguity, tension, and unrest due to unresolved dissonance and an inability to ground the music in any one key.
Conversation too can be translated to music in many ways. Conversation can take place between different musical voices either as call-and-response as you mentioned or even simultaneously through voices that differ in dynamic contour, timbre, and rhythmic character. There can also be macro-level conversation where one section of the music answers or converses with another section, and more interestingly, where an idea implanted in the beginning is answered in a much later section.
We can see a musically suggestive setting of your text being created by deconstructing the lines into the individual words or groups of words that most strongly encapsulate various affects within the poem, such as, “forgotten you” and “come and hear”. We plan to apply audio effects to recordings of these words in order to create contrasting voices or “characters” that can be played as an instrument. In this way, we plan to transform the text into a flexible musical element of which we can easily manipulate the rhythm and pitch according to the music while keeping the central concepts of the lyrics.
We plan to embed the Celtic rhythms found in “Rosette” into the base of the music. As the tempo and overall rhythmic pattern of the song is quite invariant, we also plan to create forward motion in the piece by deviating from or deforming these quickly familiar rhythmic patterns or by superimposing conflicting rhythmic patterns.
I’noli and Ben