(English version) Construction with Guitar Player - Sir Harrison Birtwistle

"Music. The breathing of statues. Perhaps:

The quiet of images (...)"

The initial verses from To Music, by Rilke.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle (1934), renowned British composer, has a large and varied production - instrumental solos, chamber music, vocal works and symphonic concerts, with marks of an innovative poetic. His experimental and refined "grammar" is linked to a docility, melancholy, as in Construction with Guitar Player for classical guitar solo. The motivations that led him to compose for the instrument, the premiere and interesting information, such as the title of the work, can be obtained in some points of the Internet (see in More at the end of this post). Here I shall limit myself to this music via listening to the classical guitarist Andrey Lebedev’s interpretation.

Construction... is a complex work, rich in an inherent polyphony. Its speech apparently short, cellular, is engendered in order to deepen, from a "theme" that doesn’t leave and that deepens itself, culminating at a certain point, making the way back, gradually, with gestures that recall the "theme", to provide an outcome.

The exquisite interpretation of Lebedev allows to perceive phrases, dynamics (I didn’t want to have access to the score, for this listening) in breaths and a discourse of very contrasting sections; in the essence, I’ve observed that the ratio of intervals combines the pp with the end of the phrases in descending line, which promotes, for me, a mood of resolution in each block.

This narrative in blocks – more than 20 certainly, during about 15 minutes of Lebedev's performance – is like transitions in which cells, sometimes diluted sometimes extended, remembering the intervals relation of the “subject”. All with a degree of lyricism, "soul-states" and, as I say, a rest.

The guitar sound resources are there: harmonics, tamboras, pizzicato and pizz. a bartok, privileging the timbre, giving a "third dimension" to the work, for those who delivering up in the listening.

Listening path: hearing images – Construction's generating cell is presented in sound plans that intersect, giving a stereophonic effect. The discourse of the initial cell is recovering from low and high registers, specific dynamics of ff and pauses, so the silence is a conquest in this field.

Almost at the end of this kind of "theme" reiteration, with a cross of hands, Lebedev executes an extended technique for the sound sustain, mixture of sonorities/plans, realizing the desire of the composer, from a musical instrument that has difficulties to maintain the sound, as the guitar; the duration of the chord is observed, while the right hand goes to the guitar fretboard to execute the requested bass (at 1:35 of the video).

Suddenly a cell attacks now in agitated path, but briefly returns to the idea of ​​slow, discursive one. This cells alternation will deepen. The thematic idea never disappears, is transfigured, worked, varied; the intersecting planes reappear, covered, not explicitly. Another block of greater agitation arises and little by little it grows in dynamics. The slow, discursive path is resumed, and the subject-cell arises in harmonics.

In the middle of the piece, the timbre takes on importance - ideas with percussion effects and alternation with more moved phrases and others by pizzicatos - and briefly the composer reminds us of the "theme", which intersperses with agitated cells and follows the phrase in tamboras and others, slow, expressive, in harmonics.

A hit on the bridge (a motif) starts a hectic speech, the most of all, and with volume intensity, ending (at 8:20) with a chord. Following more alternation with tamboras and a moving speech that has its culmination (at 8:45) and then attacks another idea that moves towards high pitches (until 09:09), this is the point of greatest intensity in height (at 09:21); this excerpt seems to me like a "golden section" of the work, due to the climactic character (timbre, intensity, height, rhythm).

Then, it softens suddenly with an atmosphere in pp and harmonics. The speech alternates between strong and soft pp and with an obstinately chord in ff (a motive). Again, it rests. Another idea begins – stronger and more agitated, with pizz. a bartok, and a rougher sounds of staccato notes (motives); and it continues to deepen, rhythm and dynamics.

Retaking some of the soft speech; behind the polyphony, sounds already known are expanded, dialoguing in ff (chords) and piano (melodies), are the interplanes in relief; it’s evident that a modified return is occurring. A brief transition leads to the "theme" revisited little by little. Finally, it’s clear that the sonorous event that begins Construction... reappears and going to an end, nuances, chords are recapitulated, sweetly, ending in piano and by a final harmonic.

Synthesis - From Construction ..., by Sir Harrison Birtwistle (sonority even in his name), I wanted to know how it emerges (its initial sounds seem to stand in the air, like gongs inside a temple), how it continues, the way it moves, crosses and as it ends. It seems to continuously expand the cell that generated it, displacing identifiable motifs in the same block, in parallel plan, and, even from one block to another, it sometimes looks like a canon, metamorphosed. For me, the stability of the work lies in the persistence of a "theme" and in its intelligible motifs.

Construction... was created by a subjective perspective, untranslatable, and any notes of mimicry, compliance for references, pictorial approaches with the title, emotive representations... are mere essays, tenuous; however, such level of abstraction comes from a conquered autonomy, in an opening on both sides, by who created it and who received it.

More:

Guitarcoop video – Andrey Lebedev plays Birtwistle

https://guitarcoop.com.br/en/construction-with-guitar/

Fabio Zanon (Guitarcoop video) presents New Music for Guitar, talking about the work

https://guitarcoop.com.br/en/construction-with-guitar/

Andrey Lebedev's page, talking about the work

http://andreylebedev.com/news/picasso-and-harrison-birtwistle/

Julian Bream Trust, commissioned works
http://www.julianbreamtrust.org/scholars-and-commissions