The Urge to Compose . . . a Traffic Jam Fugue
In the spring of 2014, composer/educator Danny Clay faced a dilemma. He had asked his elementary school music classes in grades 1 through 5 to create their own sound key/music notation systems comprised solely of sound-making objects they could find around the classroom. Each class constructed their own systems and began to compose and play music employing them.
Composer and music educator Danny Clay
Danny was quite impressed with the results, but the kids had reservations. "This is not real music," some of them complained. "Why is that?" Danny asked. "If this was real music, real composers would be using our notation to write music" was a common reply. So Danny set out to recruit his real composer friends to write real music using his young students' notation systems. The resulting activity recently spurred Danny to launch Project Object - Netlabel on SoundCloud and on Facebook.
When Danny posted Facebook and Twitter appeals to composers to help his kid musicians believe in what they were doing, we got pulled into the vortex. We commented on Danny's posts how much we loved what he and his students were doing. He responded "Why don't you try it too?" The next thing we know, we had the 2nd-graders' sound key in hand and instructions form Danny to "let our imaginations run wild!"
Danny Clay's 2nd-graders' sound key/notation system
Being industrious sorts, we set about trying to figure out how we could compose music from these elements. Fortunately, our old friend John Cage, whose 100th birthday anniversary inspired this blog in the first place, instigated the thinking that got us going: chance procedures. And before too long, voila! We had created Did you catch the license plate on that fugue?
The title page from our composition score
Our process notes from the score tell the tale pretty well:
The Journey from Sounds to Music
Composer and elementary school music teacher Danny Clay asked us to compose a piece of music using a sound/notation system invented by his students, for them to play. He sent us his 2nd-graders’ sound key.
There are 12 musicians in Danny’s 2nd-grade class, organized into four groups of three. We decided to write a fugue, because it would be fun to play and to hear, a four-part invention, where each part is performed by a group of 3 players. We think of each musician like a percussionist, in that each player has the full battery of all six instruments available to him/her. Everyone in the group plays each sound in each cell as directed by the score.
Inspired by our art-hero John Cage, we used chance procedures to develop the fugue. We thought of music needing to deal with sounds (a given, from the 2nd grade sound key), time (by stringing sounds together in a defined order), rhythm, and volume or dynamics So we rolled the dice to:
assign each sound (or note) in the key a sequence number
assign and order groups of three notes into four sound “cells” which gave us an ordered progression 12 notes/sounds long, arranged in four cells (or measures) of three notes each
determine the dynamics of each sound to be played, either loud or soft.
determine for each of the notes, how many times it would be played within the cell, 1, 2, or 4 times (resulting in each cell containing 12 beats).
We then determined the flow of the first line would consist of playing the four cells in the determined order, then playing the four cells again with the order of notes in each cell reversed, then playing the four cells again in the original order.
To create the fugue effect, we offset line 2 from line one by shifting one cell to the right and wrapping the last cell of line 1 around to the beginning of line 2. We continued the shifting and wrapping one cell each time to create lines 3 and 4.
These four lines of music looked like four lanes of traffic, making us think of the cells as cars. That gave rise to the title Did you catch the license plate on that fugue . . . a Traffic Jam Fugue. As we prepared the individual performance scores for each part, we realized that the fugal structure of the work is not readily apparent. So we decided to portray the full score, all four lines together, using the four toy cars of different colors (assigned by chance) to represent the cells. This enables the performers to visualize the shifting and wrapping structure of the whole piece.
We hope this composition brings the 2nd Grade Musicians of Zion Lutheran School much fun and enjoyment as they learn to play a piece written in the sound/notation system they themselves invented.
Arlene and Larry Dunn
Oberlin, Oho
April 8, 2014
Here, are the other key elements of the score, the matching of car colors to the music cells and the four parts of the fugue, A, B, C, and D.
All that remained was to hear our work come alive in the hands of the 2nd-grade musicians. And that happened this week when Danny created the Project Object sites and posted our piece for all to hear.
Danny asked us for our reaction upon hearing the work played for the first time. Here's what we told him:
Composing Did you catch the license plate on that fugue? - A Traffic Jam Fugue was a thrill ride every step of the way. But nothing could have prepared us for the rush of first hearing it realized in sound by the very 2nd-graders who invented the sound key/notation system we used. The version they have recorded so far is a two-part invention; the four-part invention is yet to come as they continue to work on the score. Nonetheless, their performance somehow subtly soothes with its relatively quiet dynamics, yet almost overwhelms with its complex textures. They play with a free, manic energy and a diligent seriousness of purpose. Perhaps only 2nd-graders could bring such a deep commitment to realizing the possibilities in this score. We can’t wait to hear more.
And apparently Danny and the kid musicians are enjoying playing this piece as much as we enjoyed making it.
Thank you notes from Danny and the 2nd-graders
So, without further ado, go listen to the piece on SoundCloud. Enjoy!