Tortoiseshell Music Home of composer Nathan Curtis

Score: 

Morningsong.pdf

Recording: 

Moanin' Low.mp3

You may have noticed that I play a number of very different instruments. Today, my main instruments are trombone, flute, piano, and clarinet, in rough order of proficiency, and in days past I have played several other instruments, including trumpet, tuba, and tenor recorder. I have been playing the tenor trombone since 6th grade, and the bass trombone since 9th grade, but not long after that, I decided I wanted to learn another instrument on the side. My father had played the flute for a few years in middle school, and he still had his instrument, unplayed but still in good shape after 35 years, so I decided to give it a shot. The basic rudiments of flute-playing came fairly easy to me, and by my senior year of high school I felt I was reaching the limits of my flute proficiency without taking lessons -- which I was determined not do to for any instrument except trombone -- so I branched out even further and started in on clarinet as well. My bass trombone, flute, and clarinet all accompanied when I left for college in 1997, and the great musical triumph of my first semester came when I covered four and a half books (trombone 1 and 2, horn, woodwind 2, and the bits of woodwind 1 that the other flutist couldn't transpose) on three different instruments as part of a 7-person pit "orchestra" for a production of Pippin.

Now, bass trombone and flute is not such an unusual combination for one player as you might think. Both instruments require a large lung capacity, and embouchures for the two instruments are actually rather similar. Unfortunately, the embouchures were similar enough, without being identical, that playing the flute for extended periods of time actually started to interfere with my ability to play the bass trombone. The clarinet embouchure, on the other hand, was sufficiently dissimilar to the trombone embouchure that it did not adversely affect my trombone playing, and as a result, my extracurricular woodwind activities were almost exclusively restricted to the clarinet.

In the summer of 2001, my friend Rebecca Sadun learned that my flute-playing had fallen by the wayside, and encouraged me to give it another try. I did, and I found that my trombone embouchure was now sufficiently well-developed that playing the flute did not have a detrimental effect. I was very glad to have the opportunity to rediscover such a beautiful instrument, and I was determined to write something for the flute, as a thank-you to Rebecca. Additionally, her birthday was November 1, which gave me a good deadline to work towards. I started experimenting to see what material would work well for me on the flute, and discarded many ideas, including a feeble imitation of a raga. Quite by chance, I discovered that I could produce multiphonics on the flute by singing into the aperture while playing -- I was familiar with this technique on the trombone, but unaware that it would work on flute as well. This yielded a wonderfully smoky sound, with octaves and major sevenths shining through the haze. Clearly, I would have to make use of that sound.

September came, and October was right on its heels. With the semester going in full force, I had a limited amount of time to devote to composing. To save time, I decided to work in a form I was already familiar with: the 12-bar blues. My new multiphonic technique would really bring out the blue notes to great effect, and I could probably whip up another one or two movements for a more standard flute technique. The multiphonic movement came first, and from the haunting sound of the instrumental technique, speaking best at a quiet dynamic, came the title, "Moanin' Low". I followed that up with a repurposing of one of my previously rejected ideas. I started with a six-note chord, which I had originally wanted to use as a piano accompaniment figure in a reharmonization of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood". This chord already had blue notes built right in -- G against G# in the key of E -- so I started by arpeggiating the chord, and followed its contours in a multitude of directions. Echoes of the opening chord kept popping up unexpectedly, so I figured I was onto something, but I didn't know what to call it. I played a draft of the movement for my friend Faith Drickamer, and she said that the rising lines of the flute reminded her of morning. I was heavily into alliteration at the time, so "Morningsong" seemed like a good title to go with "Moanin' Low". By this point, it was the last week of October, and I while I had two movements I was really happy with, they were both slow and somewhat melancholy. While there is nothing wrong with slow and melancholy, especially for the blues, I wanted to have something more upbeat as well. With little time remaining, I thought it might be easiest to write a tune and "improvised" choruses in the style of a jazz master I admired. Also, a name starting with "M" would help preserve the alliteration. My first thought was Miles Davis, but I had already alluded to "All Blues" in a few measures of "Moanin' Low". My next thought, Thelonious Monk, turned out to be a winner. I was familiar with many aspects of Monk's music -- his angular melodic lines, his paradoxical ability to swing with straight eighth notes, his tendency to paraphrase the main melody in his solos -- and all of these aspects found their way into the score. The translation from piano to flute was smoother than I had thought, and "Mr. Monk" was finished with a couple days to spare. I wouldn't have the time to record the pieces, but I printed out the movements along with a dedication page, and mailed it all to Rebecca, who was then a senior at Brown University.

Rebecca was pleasantly surprised by my gift, and I continue to be surprised at how well Three Blues Moods turned out. They are the first of many blues-inspired pieces I have written, including Midnight Blue, "Serenade" from my Bass Trombone Sonata, Blues in Natural Time, and Blues With a Drone. In fact, at one point in my compositional development, I considered putting a cap on my blues output, by allowing myself to write only one blues piece in each key -- a restriction which I have not followed, as "Moanin' Low", Blues in Natural Time, and Blues With a Drone are all in G. Of all these pieces, the three Moods are by far the most conventional in their treatment of the blues -- they are all built in 12-bar choruses, with almost no deviation from the traditional harmonic rhythm of the blues. Within those confines, however, each movement carves out its own niche quite effectively. Morningsong and Moanin' Low complement each other in interesting ways. Both of them are heavily concerned with the implications of the "blue" notes; Morningsong explores the melodic aspects of the blue notes, as the opening chord unfolds over three choruses, while Moanin' Low, with its unusual technique, treats the blue notes vertically, creating simultaneities out of the major and minor third scale degree, or the fourth and flat fifth degrees. These two Moods are also opposed in mood: Morningsong is sunlight tinged with sadness, while Moanin' Low has dark clouds tempered with the gritty optimism that is so often at the heart of the blues. "Mr. Monk" is, for its own part, a nice little romp in homage to one of jazz's greatest pianists and composers. The flutist gets to play the part of the whole band, almost, as foot stomps and key clicks recall the contributions of drummers like Max Roach and Frankie Dunlop. Although "Mr. Monk" is in 4/4 time throughout, it is hardly constrained, as Monk-like rhythms and accents cut across the grain of the beat.

Although the Three Blues Moods are not intended to be technically demanding -- they were written with my own intermediate flute-playing ability in mind -- they do offer many interesting challenges to the flutist. "Morningsong" requires a good deal of lyrical expressivity, and the ability to find what is suggested but not stated ouright by the notes on the page. The multiphonic technique of "Moanin' Low", while having precedent in works such as Vox Balaenae by George Crumb, is still unfamiliar to many flutists, and the many "blue note" dissonances in the piece demand that the flutist have a steady ear for singing. This movement was originally written for my own bass-baritone voice, and though I wrote in some alternate pitches so that tenor-voiced flutists could also play it, it remained inaccessible to altos and sopranos. It was suggested that I simply transpose the voice part up an octave, but I felt that many of the dissonant intervals simply had to be sevenths and ninths, and turning them into seconds would not have the desired effect, so I would simply have to write a completely different movement for higher-voiced flutists. I never got around to writing an alternate movement, and when I actually ventured to try playing "Moanin' Low" while singing in falsetto an octave higher, I was pleased with the results: clearly reminiscent of the original, but a different set of characteristic intervals gave the version its own profile. So now, flutists of any vocal range can try to replicate the eerie multiphonic effects which caught my ear so long ago. And in "Mr. Monk", the typical classically-trained flutist faces an unusual challenge: they must not only swing convincingly, but also "unswing" convincingly. Thelonious Monk's idiosyncratic rhythmic phrasings are difficult for even seasoned jazz musicians to master, and none of the other flutists to whom I presented Three Blues Moods were able to get the feeling right. Unfortunately, a handful of measures in "Mr. Monk" have remained beyond the reach of my feeble fingers, so I feel that this last movement has not yet been given an authoritative performance. Who wants to be the first?