Multiple Time-Scales in Adès's Rings

Abstract

MULTIPLE TIME-SCALES IN ADÈS’S RINGS DANIEL FOX INTRODUCTION HOMAS ADÈS OFTEN SPEAKS about his music in scientific or physical terms, be it “the magnetic forces of notes” or the importance of “responding to temperature.”1 He claims that “Berlioz has brought us into the Modern world of relativity and uncertainty.”2 Adès’s music often conveys the sense of a natural process unfolding. Simple, identical processes unfolding at varying rates create expansions and contractions of harmonies in pitch space. Despite a sometimes overwhelming level of detail, one feels the physical causality behind the movement of notes. The aim of this paper is to argue that a scientific understanding of an extended physical metaphor unifies the processes at work in Rings, the first movement of Adès’s violin concerto Concentric Paths (2005).3 The metaphor of celestial motion is offered to us on the cover of the score and in the composer’s program notes. T Multiple Time-Scales in Adès’s Rings 29 COLOR, INSTRUMENT, AND PROCESS Adès has spoken of Kurtag and Ligeti as “inventors of colour and instruments—not in the sense of actual musical instruments, but an ‘instrument’ being a complex of timbre and interval and harmony and rhythm, which could be an implement that you could use. . . .”4 Dominic Wells points us to the “relationship between the opening of Arcadiana (Adès’s first string quartet, 1994) and that of Ligeti’s Violin Concerto, which also begins with open fifths. . . .”5 Adès’s violin concerto also opens with an ostinato of open fifths (see Examples 1A and 1B). However, Ligeti’s piano Etude No. 6 Automne à Varsovie offers a more extensive model for the musical processes in Rings. Example 2 shows the opening bars (re-notated for analytical purposes) of Automne à Varsovie. The octave Ebs form a perfect crystal. The Fb in m. 2 introduces an impurity into the crystal, and the rest of the piece details the reaction of the crystal to this impurity: the disturbance propagates through the crystal, deforming it into a quasi-crystal.6 The final bars of Automne à Varsovie present the final collapse of the crystal structure. All that is left is the chromatic descent that was initiated by the impurity. We will find in Rings an elaboration on this process. Rings opens with energetically alternating D6s and G4s in the solo violin, supported thinly in the orchestra (see Example 3).7 In the second measure, when Flute 2 tries to leap down a perfect fifth from D6 to G5, instead of a perfect twelfth to G4, there is too much energy in the system, and it overshoots slightly to F#5. Flute 1 leaps from D6 EXAMPLE 1A: THE OPENING MEASURES OF LIGETI’S VIOLIN CONCERTO LIGETI KONZERT FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA COPYRIGHT © 1990, 1992 BY SCHOTT MUSIC GMBH & CO. KG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION OF EUROPEAN AMERICAN MUSIC DISTRIBUTORS COMPANY, SOLE U.S. AND CANADIAN AGENT FOR SCHOTT MUSIC GMBH & CO. KG. EXAMPLE 1B: THE OPENING MEASURES OF RINGS 30 Perspectives of New Music to B4 and thus the tetrachord [67E2] 4-20(0158) is introduced. At m. 3 the soloist begins a rapid arpeggiation of this [67E2] chord within the span of G4 to D6 (see Example 4).8 This pitch set, a GMaj7 chord, remains stable for mm. 4 and 5. Similar to the introduction of the Fb in m. 2 of Ligeti’s Automne à Varsovie, when Flute 2 introduces the F#5 in m. 2 of Rings, it creates instability in the pitch-class G; G develops a tendency to decay to F#. In m. 6 the instability in G–F# spreads: the D6 in the solo part slips to C#6 (this is reinforced in the orchestra). None of the pitches in [67E2] EXAMPLE 2: THE OPENING MEASURES OF LIGETI’S AUTOMNE À VARSOVIE LIGETI ETUDES POUR PIANO, BOOK 1 COPYRIGHT © 1985 BY SCHOTT MUSIC GMBH & CO. KG. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION OF EUROPEAN AMERICAN MUSIC DISTRIBUTORS COMPANY, SOLE U.S. AND CANADIAN AGENT FOR SCHOTT MUSIC GMBH & CO. KG. EXAMPLE 3: THE OPENING MEASURES OF RINGS INTRODUCE THE TETRACHORD [67E2] Multiple Time-Scales in Adès...