Timor et tremor by Sigismondo d'India
Is anyone else experiencing a feeling of impending doom? The fires, the smoke, the hurricane, the Supreme Court, the Delta virus, Afghanistan, recalls, climate change, challenges to voting rights: The list goes on and on.
All this seems like a recipe for a continuous feeling of dread, even of despair. Add in for us the grave challenges to returning safely to our beloved and therapeutic music-making--a key activity that helps in good times and bad to keep the mongering wolf at bay--and it starts to feel inescapable.
Let's imagine that you were a composer and wanted to write a piece of music reflecting this feeling. How would you go about it? What words would you use? How would you adapt your musical style and techniques to heighten the impact of the words, so that your listeners should receive and absorb the full brunt of this disturbing state?
You might use dark, disturbing harmonies. You might disallow higher notes in the scale. You might cram voices bitterly together in a low range. You might create harsh chromatic lines and layer them over each other, bumping and vying in a crabbed succession of dissonances. You might constrain your use of active rhythms, favoring a plodding, resistant forward motion which is occasionally broken by outcries of quick notes. You might allow brief glimpses of light and hope, only to dash these in an abrupt return to the dark side.
Now the question might arise: Why would you do all this? Why not write something happy and fun?
There are lots of possible answers. Perhaps the liturgical calendar has spun around to a penitential point, and it's your job to produce such a piece. Perhaps you are yourself experiencing dread and need to delve into the feeling to fully acknowledge it. Perhaps you have just been through a terrible break-up and feel that you can exorcise the misery by stating it in musical terms. Perhaps you want to hone your skills as a composer of expressive music, and are cycling through the various states of human existence as you explore how music can work on this level. Or perhaps you are simply one of those people who need to walk in the darkness to fully appreciate the light.
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Too abstract? OK, let's look at a real piece by a real composer and see what happened. The Sicilian Sigismondo d'India (c1582-c1629) spent the first decade of the 17th-century moving about Italy at a great pace, so it's unclear where or for exactly what purpose he penned today's motet, 'Timor et tremor', published in 1610. During this period, d'India was writing for the church as well as for the chamber, so it's possible that the piece was written for Ash Wednesday. (Psalm 54, from which the short text of 'Timor et tremor' is drawn, was used in the offices for that somber occasion.)
Here's Psalm 54:6-7: "Fear and trembling come over me, and I am overwhelmed by darkness. And I say, 'O that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away, and be at rest.' " And here's how d'India parses out the phrases, along with thumbnail characterizations of how he treats each phrase:
1. Fear and trembling (14 bars): A troubled motif on 'fear' incorporating two rising half steps joined by a descending diminished fourth; introduction of 'quavering motif' on 'trembling'.
2. Come over me (7 bars): sudden change to quick, urgent leaping motive in all voices; dense texture.
3. Fear and trembling (21 bars): Similar to 1 but more dense, longer, more intense
4. Come over me (10 bars): Similar to 2 but even more driving and active.
5. And I am overwhelmed by darkness (5 bars): Sudden slowing; first real homophony and lowest chord in piece on 'darkness'.
6. And I say (1 bar): Simple declarative statement; neutral, introductory function.
7. Oh that I had the wings of a dove (13 1/2 bars): Long, passionate, very dense, lots of motion in all voices, pressing, urgent.
8. I would fly away (3 bars): Four-note 'flying motif' introduced and developed in all voices.
9. And be at rest (25 bars): Longest section; much slower motion; downward leaping motif; 'valedictory feel'.
These are some of the things I see and hear; if you take a close look and listen, you will come up with your own impressions. The main point in this kind of analysis is to recognize what's going on musically and to discern how the various musical passages are inspired by and vividly express their text. The music is essentially a vehicle to carry and heighten the meaning of the words, intensifying their impact upon us as we receive them clothed from head to foot in song.
In vocal music, I like to say that the music is a sort of gloss on the text: Like marginal notes written by a super-perceptive person whom we trust and value, the composer guides us through the text and helps to bring its emotional and spiritual implications to life in our heads and in our hearts.
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And finally, back to the feeling of dread with which I began: Truly recognizing and acknowledging such a feeling is the first step in finding a path through and beyond it. It's not a matter of wallowing; it's a matter of bringing the feeling to intense consciousness, naming it, and then finding a path forward, step by step. That is our task, difficult as it may seem.
The good news is that music can serve as our spirit guide throughout, not only helping us to acknowledge the darkness, but inspiring us to look to the light.
Is anyone else experiencing a feeling of impending doom? The fires, the smoke, the hurricane, the Supreme Court, the Delta virus, Afghanistan, recalls, climate change, challenges to voting rights: The list goes on and on.
All this seems like a recipe for a continuous feeling of dread, even of despair. Add in for us the grave challenges to returning safely to our beloved and therapeutic music-making--a key activity that helps in good times and bad to keep the mongering wolf at bay--and it starts to feel inescapable.
Let's imagine that you were a composer and wanted to write a piece of music reflecting this feeling. How would you go about it? What words would you use? How would you adapt your musical style and techniques to heighten the impact of the words, so that your listeners should receive and absorb the full brunt of this disturbing state?
You might use dark, disturbing harmonies. You might disallow higher notes in the scale. You might cram voices bitterly together in a low range. You might create harsh chromatic lines and layer them over each other, bumping and vying in a crabbed succession of dissonances. You might constrain your use of active rhythms, favoring a plodding, resistant forward motion which is occasionally broken by outcries of quick notes. You might allow brief glimpses of light and hope, only to dash these in an abrupt return to the dark side.
Now the question might arise: Why would you do all this? Why not write something happy and fun?
There are lots of possible answers. Perhaps the liturgical calendar has spun around to a penitential point, and it's your job to produce such a piece. Perhaps you are yourself experiencing dread and need to delve into the feeling to fully acknowledge it. Perhaps you have just been through a terrible break-up and feel that you can exorcise the misery by stating it in musical terms. Perhaps you want to hone your skills as a composer of expressive music, and are cycling through the various states of human existence as you explore how music can work on this level. Or perhaps you are simply one of those people who need to walk in the darkness to fully appreciate the light.
-----
Too abstract? OK, let's look at a real piece by a real composer and see what happened. The Sicilian Sigismondo d'India (c1582-c1629) spent the first decade of the 17th-century moving about Italy at a great pace, so it's unclear where or for exactly what purpose he penned today's motet, 'Timor et tremor', published in 1610. During this period, d'India was writing for the church as well as for the chamber, so it's possible that the piece was written for Ash Wednesday. (Psalm 54, from which the short text of 'Timor et tremor' is drawn, was used in the offices for that somber occasion.)
Here's Psalm 54:6-7: "Fear and trembling come over me, and I am overwhelmed by darkness. And I say, 'O that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away, and be at rest.' " And here's how d'India parses out the phrases, along with thumbnail characterizations of how he treats each phrase:
1. Fear and trembling (14 bars): A troubled motif on 'fear' incorporating two rising half steps joined by a descending diminished fourth; introduction of 'quavering motif' on 'trembling'.
2. Come over me (7 bars): sudden change to quick, urgent leaping motive in all voices; dense texture.
3. Fear and trembling (21 bars): Similar to 1 but more dense, longer, more intense
4. Come over me (10 bars): Similar to 2 but even more driving and active.
5. And I am overwhelmed by darkness (5 bars): Sudden slowing; first real homophony and lowest chord in piece on 'darkness'.
6. And I say (1 bar): Simple declarative statement; neutral, introductory function.
7. Oh that I had the wings of a dove (13 1/2 bars): Long, passionate, very dense, lots of motion in all voices, pressing, urgent.
8. I would fly away (3 bars): Four-note 'flying motif' introduced and developed in all voices.
9. And be at rest (25 bars): Longest section; much slower motion; downward leaping motif; 'valedictory feel'.
These are some of the things I see and hear; if you take a close look and listen, you will come up with your own impressions. The main point in this kind of analysis is to recognize what's going on musically and to discern how the various musical passages are inspired by and vividly express their text. The music is essentially a vehicle to carry and heighten the meaning of the words, intensifying their impact upon us as we receive them clothed from head to foot in song.
In vocal music, I like to say that the music is a sort of gloss on the text: Like marginal notes written by a super-perceptive person whom we trust and value, the composer guides us through the text and helps to bring its emotional and spiritual implications to life in our heads and in our hearts.
-----
And finally, back to the feeling of dread with which I began: Truly recognizing and acknowledging such a feeling is the first step in finding a path through and beyond it. It's not a matter of wallowing; it's a matter of bringing the feeling to intense consciousness, naming it, and then finding a path forward, step by step. That is our task, difficult as it may seem.
The good news is that music can serve as our spirit guide throughout, not only helping us to acknowledge the darkness, but inspiring us to look to the light.