Notes to Graham Hair's Three Microtonal Songs
Three songs for soprano and harmonium (keyboard sampler) with clarinet or WX7 obbligato
Texts by Yunus Emre, translated into English by Süha Faiz
- Wine
- Ash
- Dance
These three songs employ the 19-tone equal-tempered (19-ET) scale. They were composed as part of an AHRC-funded "pilot" project to study the capacity of musicians (especially singers) to perceive and perform music based on this scale.
However, merely exemplifying "19-tone-ness" would hardly constitute much of a compositional objective. The microtonal characteristics were simply special means through which particular creative, aesthetic and expressive objectives could be realised. In most respects these objectives have much in common with my other songs.
Nevertheless, in one respect these songs represent a seconda prattica in the context of the relatively complex prima prattica of many of my other compositions: they aim to achieve as radical, transparent and melifluous a simplicity as possible. I felt that getting to grips with the 19-ET scale required that complexities of other sorts be stripped away. Compositional points of departure included other examples of "radical simplicity": Harry Partch’s Seventeen Lyrics of Li-Po, Satie's Socrate and Cage's Cheap Imitation (also based on Socrate, of course), and, more recently, and the experimental music of British Berlin-resident inter-disciplinary artist (painter, video- artist, poet) Chris Newman.
From the Islamic texts, it can be inferred that this project is part of something larger and quite different: a series of performances and recordings of works based on texts drawn from Jewish, Islamic and Christian sources by composers with backgrounds in those "Abrahamic" traditions. Each song sets a couplet from renowned 14th-century Turkish sufi poet Yunus Emre, translated by Süha Faiz.
1. Wine
Of that cup-bearer’s wine we drank Whose tavern is the Throne of Heaven;
We were made drunk by Him Whose beaker is the souls of humankind.
2. Ash
Upon the Road to the Beloved, you burn until you are but ash.
Though in a day I burn a thousand times, I will not turn away.
3. Dance
I stood upon the globe of Atlas, joined with the planets in their dance;
Though here my eyes but darkly see, I saw Mohammed's radiance there.
The musical structure of each song cycles through all 19 tones at least twice. However, while working toward such 19-tone "aggregates", smaller units of 5-8 tones pop up prominently, giving an impression perhaps of "evolving modes". This approach was suggested me by Cage's description of Cheap Imitation as exemplifying "chromatic modality".