Speed and Slowness in the Music of Gerald Barry

Abstract

How music engenders a sense of speed remains notoriously elusive, with theories of musical time sometimes putting forward the idea of an ongoing motion which underlies perceived processes of change. Drawing upon the suggestion that a number of such processes can be understood without reference to this sense of movement, the current discussion proposes that the concept of ‘quickness’, as formulated by Italo Calvino, forms a useful interpretative lever through which to approach a number of compositions by Irish composer, Gerald Barry. Examinations of Bob, 1998 and In the Asylum suggest ways in which Barry's approach to musical material plays with perceptions of speed and slowness, and how his work represents a number of different solutions to the problem of creating convincing musical forms.

Keywords:

• Barry
• Speed
• Slowness
• Motion
• Form
• Quickness

Notes

1 For this anecdote and the composer's own discussion of the piece see Andriessen (2002, pp. 175–186).

2 Further discussion of both works can be found in Andriessen (2002), Trochimczyk (2002) and Everett (2006); De Tijd is also considered in detail by Adlington (2001).

3 Typical examples of the language used in discussing Barry's music can be found in Higgins (2005); it is noteworthy that the only comment from the conductor of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant actually cited there refers to how the tempo changes between ‘fast and very very fast’, which tells us little about his understanding of the work.

4 Bye (1993) also discusses possible reasons for the sometimes hostile reaction to Barry's music.

5 This suggestion that it is the music that ‘moves’, is, of course, only one way of characterising this process. In his discussion, Clarke considers the extent to which a perception of musical motion is in fact a sense of self-motion, a distinction bound up with questions of subject-position (2005, p. 75). However, as Clarke acknowledges in relation to Adlington's discussion, whilst motion requires changes through time, not all processes of change need be heard as motion.

6 The composer's own notes on a broadly contemporary work, the first Piano Quartet, also provide useful insight (‘Gerald Barry—Piano Quartet No.1, study notes’, n.d.); for further discussion of both that work and those notes see Cox (1998).

7 Fitzgerald (2014) discusses Barry's transformation and use of this Mando material in the orchestral Chevaux-de-frise (1988), also commenting that Bob in some ways acts as the earlier work's ‘shadow-image’: in Bob ‘exuberance burns out to a coolly dark close’ (pp. 313–4).

8 However, listeners who know Barry's broader output may well recognise material from other works, either directly—a conspicuous example being the Mando-derived melody used here (Jack, 1988; Fitzgerald, 2014)—or through the distinctive soundworld of music derived from a shared source.

9 This is not to suggest that the ending of the work is arbitrary—the final section of music does act as an effective conclusion, winding the piece down to finish with a feeling of lament—but rather that it lacks a clear and predictable sense of direction; as a result, a perception of ‘completion’ may only come in retrospect.

10 Barry discusses the new direction that he feels that he is developing in these works in his interview with Martin (2000).

11 This is particularly the case with the piano and violin version of the work, where the different tonal qualities of the instruments emphasise the changes in scoring that necessarily occur with this combination of the two melodic strands.

12 The relationship between Barry's music and visual art, in particular the works of the Abstract Expressionists, has not yet been the subject of detailed examination; for some initial discussion see Deane (1981), Jack (1988) and McAlpine (1999).

13 Whilst the repetition in the second part is direct, the first phrase appears in a number of different reorchestrations, a technique which Barry adopts extensively; for discussion of this process in a more recent composition see March (2013).

14 This opening section comes from Trumpeter, for solo trumpet (1998, pub.2003). There is a superficial resemblance here to some of Morton Feldman's ‘late’ music, which has been the subject of detailed analysis by Sebastian Claren amongst others (Claren, 2000)—for some discussion of Feldman's influence on Barry see Fox (2007) and Fitzgerald (2009). In the current context it is worth noting that in his very long works, Feldman was concerned to move away from ‘form’ to working with ‘scale’ and an approach to the structuring of the music over the long-term which aimed to be something other than ‘a paraphrase of memory’ (Feldman, 2000, p. 137).

15 These are all distortions: of The Ring (by Barry) and two phrases misheard or misread: ‘Pass the salt’, and ‘Wings of Flanders’ (Martin, 2000).

16 The effect is akin to ‘comic timing’. Examples abound in Barry's music: a recent conspicuous instance is the ‘plate-smashing’ scene of The Importance of Being Earnest (2009–2010), with the interpolation of an extra beat at ‘forty-two’.

17 The dramaturgy of the ending of this work is very different to that of Barry's God Save the Queen. There the traditional second verse, ‘Confound their politics/Frustrate their knavish tricks’, is interrupted, before a fourfold fortissimo repetition of ‘Save us!’; here, those final two beats are played only once, piano, and without a break, creating a sense of withdrawal.