by Dan Sennfor soprano, marimba, and string trio (BMI)
This song cycle was written in the Spring of 2009 in the countryside near Prague, in Libušín, and then in Prague itself, in my Břevnov flat. They are based on my own texts and presented as four musical vignettes which are meant to be humorous, and both socially and personally reflective. The duration, with breaks, is about 13 minutes. (see Micro-Dramatic Songs from Prague II.)
Except for The Chubby Little Czech, which is more fictitious, the songs report on things I observed while in the Czech Republic the Spring of 2009. The Gathering is about an experience I had with artist friends at a villa just outside Prague. For hours we discussed politics and art with great intensity and suddenly a cell phone rang and everyone was out of there in a minute. Really very comical. One minute, we were ready to march on Parliament and the next, buzz, and everyone left. The Chubby Little Czech is about an experience while riding the bus for groceries. Most of it is true, some of it invented. On one of these trips, I observed a man who seemed to want the attention of all the sour faced Czech mums surrounding him. But the man could have stripped naked and they could not have cared less, and this indifference seemed to disturb him. He had something to say! And so I invented a character with symbolic ties to nationalism and, perhaps, a WW2 consciousness. To me, this piece too is humorous but there are some serious political-social inferences. The Lonely Child is not intended to be humorous. It evolved from watching a mother and her three children interact in a public park, with the emotional dynamic between them as presented. It was not a happy family... and then I interpreted these relationships through those of my own upbringing. The piece remains a little mysterious to me now. Perhaps a little dark. The Belle from Brno is about a student of mine who kept backing out of a project she had proposed. A light ending to the four songs.
The sound files that accompany the scores below are generated by the Sibelius notation software. See note below on the use of compound time.
Click title to see and hear.The Gathering, 3:27 (text)
The Lonely Child, 3:25 (text)
The Chubby Little Czech*, 3:39 (text)
The Belle from Brno, 1:45 (text)
* uses the Czech National anthem
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The Use of Compound Time
When working with speech and music, I am uncomfortable with simple time which inevitably necissitates the use of tuplets to accurately represent the natural flow of language. Also, for me there is a martial undercurrent to 2/4 which does not befit natural speech. My heart does not beat in simple time. My brain does not flex itself and amble along as such. The anatomic base of human speech is grouped in 6 or 12 beats to the count and never 4 or 8 or 16. In these songs simple time appears on top of a compound sub-pulse. To notate it otherwise is inefficient and feels contrary to the natural flow of human speech.
The process I used to compose these songs begins with writing the texts, all based on real life experiences, collecting many of them, and then going over and over each until the natural speech rhythms are clear to me. These arise in threes and not as often in groupings of four. Simple time feels often simplistic and untrue. Awkward. Like a metrical lie where compound time feels precise, flowing and correct. From here I intone the line using a similar process... with the resulting text acting as a kind of tonal DNA which drives the surrounding accompaniment. Everything is connected, a unity which is important to all of my work, both visual and aural.
And then there's a more modern and technical reason. With midi versions of new music being common now, a piece can be learned, in part, by rote, and even online. Using myself as a guinea pig, I have adapted to my own use of compound time. It is not difficult to read. If the "dots" are too small, a larger score can be made from the pdf.