JMAA Pivicafrique Article

© 2012 NISC (Pty) Ltd ISSN: 1812-1004/ EISSN 2027-626X

JOURNAL OF THE MUSICAL ARTS IN AFRICA VOLUME 9 2012, 39–61

http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/18121004.2012.736145

Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Twenty-first-century African classicism: illustrations from the piano trio Pivicafrique on the theme of Jack Berry’s ‘Sasabonsam’s Match’

Cosmas Mereku

Music Department, University of Education, PO Box 25, Winneba, Ghanae-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This article provides an insight into the thought processes of a composer, offering a guide for listeners to think creatively through the music. It presents a panoramic view and an analysis of the piano trio based on ‘Sasabonsam’s Match’ composed by the author. The 18-minute work called Pivicafrique for piano, violin and cello exemplifies Nketia’s syncretic approach to contemporary African composition and Euba’s theory of African pianism.

Introduction

The act of composing entails bringing something into being that did not exist before. According to Arnold Whittall (2011), ‘composition is both the process and the product.’ Whittall explains further that ‘it is not an exclusively musical term – applications to prose, poetry, painting, architecture, and a variety of other media are common – and in all cases it describes a process of construction, a creative putting together, a working out and carrying through of an initial conception or inspiration.’ The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group organised a workshop in January 2009 to define a pedagogical approach that would assist young people to understand the thought processes of a composer through the process of composing music themselves <Axtell 2009>. A key component of composing is problem solving, ‘where composing is described as knowledge-rich, complex, multiple and creative problem solving, requiring the development of skills of hypothesis and verification in students’ composing problems’ (Berkley 2004:257). Even though Ian Axtell and Rebecca Berkley wrote their articles almost 15 years after the completion of the composition under discussion, in this article their ideas on creativity and problem solving corroborate the ways I outlined my compositional journey.

40 COSMAS MEREKU

This article describes the compositional process of the piano trio Pivicafrique (Sasabonsam’s Match),1 a work that I composed for the Manchester-based Taurean Piano Trio2 in 1994 as part of my doctoral studies at the University of Leeds under the guidance of the renowned English composer Philip Wilby. The nickname Pivicafrique is an acronym formed from the instruments of the piano trio, namely, piano, violin and cello, with the suffix -afrique. Pivicafrique’s debut took place on 23 November 1994 at the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds University (Mereku 1997:126). A recording of this debut performance appears on Track 1 of the appended CD.

The process that I followed in 1994 matches Axtell’s descriptive outline of the composition process <2009>: it uses inventive approaches to making meaning, plays with African traditional musical idioms to create new effects, explores and experiments with Western twentieth-century contemporary musical ideas, materials, tools and techniques, takes risks and learns from mistakes. All of that finally culminated in original ideas and – by generating different approaches – brought into being Pivicafrique. It also confirms what Kofi Agawu (2011:51) describes as ‘probing the music compositionally, engaging it through creative violation […], a task that has been left to African scholar-composers like Akin Euba and his followers to accomplish.’

Art music composition in Ghana

Pivicafrique embodies JH Kwabena Nketia’s (1982) syncretic approach to contemporary African composition and Euba’s (1992) theory of African pianism; they advocate turning to indigenous music or to music in oral or partly oral traditions for creative ideas, sources of sound, themes and procedures. These influences may be used for expanding a composer’s mode of expression and could be blended with Western contemporary compositional practices. According to the theories by Nketia and Euba, composers of African contemporary compositions can use African rhythmic resources to generate unconventional harmonies and maintain dance lilts. Furthermore, cross-cultural musical synthesis could lead to African classical pieces that would use Western resources to ‘spice’ contemporary African compositions with traditional melodic models that could generate and invoke their traditional tendencies so that the composition will not only sound rhythmically traditionally African, but also be melodically traditional in character (Herbst et al. 2003:159; Ansah 2009:15).

Some contemporary African composers have found it difficult to create music with the intensely sharp dissonant harmonies that became the standard during the twentieth century, ‘when all the good old order of the 18th and 19th centuries had left home or migrated in all spheres of life – social, political and artistic’ (Rattle 2005:1). Commenting on the seemingly

1 The nickname Pivicafrique will be used throughout the article to refer to the composition, which has two names: Pivicafrique (Sasabonsam’s Match).

2 The performers were Clare Dixon (Violinist, BBC Symphony), Peter Dixon (Cellist, Royal Academy of Music with the BBC Symphony) and Darius Battiwalla (School of Music, Leeds University).

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AFRICAN CLASSICISM: PIVICAFRIQUE BY COSMAS MEREKU 41

low productivity of African composers, Akin Euba (1992) observed that, even though internationally known as a scholar, outside Ghana Kwabena Nketia is not that well known as a composer. Euba noted that dissonance is almost completely absent in his music, which is based on pre-twentieth-century Western practices. What could have been labelled as ‘low productivity’ could in effect be a dismissal by some Western composers and critics ‘who regard tonal harmony as decadent’ (Euba 1992:12). These critics failed to recognise that ‘Nketia’s style was characterised by his deepening love for languages and his linguistic training background that made him sensitive to generate new sonorities with both speech-contours and speech-rhythms’ (Agawu 2011:56); as Euba has observed:

Nketia’s use of harmony is not a carbon copy of the Western. It would appear that tonal styles deriving from the infl uence of African tone-language texts on melodic constructions have begun to characterize the harmonic idiom of modern African composers. (Euba 1992:12)

Agawu (2011:60) as well as Anri Herbst, Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph and Christian Onyeji (Herbst et al. 2003:153) imply that, contrary to Western criticism of some African compositions, African composers were faced with the challenge of finding ways to satisfy their audiences who were not used to the acutely harsh dissonant sounds and would not have been exposed to it, since traditionally Africans are aurally tonal beings who are naturally comfortable with ‘we-centred’ dance lilt musical encounters rather than ‘I-centred’ activity where the community is made simply to sit up and listen. Herbst et al. suggest that African composers were also faced with the problem of balancing ‘the synergy between Western and African sound worlds that called for conceptualization of intonation aesthetics’ in our rare concert performances (2003:154). Successful ‘Western “written”-oriented contemporary African composers’ (Herbst et al. 2003:148), in my opinion, are those who tried to innovatively create a balance between the two scenarios in their works (i.e. evoking a dance impulse that would make a passive listener wish to rise and dance).

Ghana has produced very prominent art composers who have contributed immensely towards the tonal tradition. This list, which is not exhaustive, includes Alfred Entsua-Mensah, Augustus Adu-Safo, Charles Benjamin Wilson, Charles Emmanuel Graves, Ephraim Amu, George Worlanyo Kɔsi Dor, Herbert Sam, James A Yankey, Joseph Henry Kwabena Nketia, James Martey T Dosoo, Jeremaih T Tsemafo-Arthur, Kenn Kafui, Kras Arthur, Kwesi Baiden, Michael Kwesi Amissah, Newlove Annan, Otto Boateng, Philip Gbeho, Robert George Kɔmla Ndɔ, Sam Asare-Bediako, Walter Blege and Yaw Sekyi-Baidoo. The fact that Ghanaian composers did not have any impact outside their country on the African continent or in the diaspora with the contemporary dissonant tradition that was on-going in art music during the twentieth century does not mean they did not dare to do so. In addition to Nketia’s pioneering efforts, I wish to acknowledge Adulfus Anthony Turkson, Atta Anna Mensah, Nicholas Zinzendorf Nayo, Gyimah Labi, Willie Anku, Vitor Nii Sowah Manieson, Towoemenye Kofi Ansah and possibly myself as composers who have made significant contributions to instrumental contemporary African classicism.

42 COSMAS MEREKU

Nketia did not only use traditional African idioms from his Asante tradition, which he devoted quality time to studying, but he also studied other Ghanaian, Nigerian and Ugandan cultures extensively. Nketia’s piano works that use various idioms belonging to different ethnic traditions include ‘Playtime’, Owora, ‘Volta Fantasy’, ‘Contemplation’, D’agomba, ‘At the Cross Roads’, ‘Rays of Hope’, ‘Libation’, ‘Meditation’, ‘Dagarti Work Song’ and ‘Builsa Work Song’ (Omojola 1995:156). His chamber works include ‘Bolga Sonata’ for violin and piano, ‘Cow Lane Sextet’ for wind and percussion, ‘Dance of the Forest No. 1’, ‘Mmoatia Sankuo No. 2’ a trio for strings and ‘Ewe-Fon Trilogy No.3’. He also wrote the ‘Dance of Joy’ and the ‘Dance of the Maidens Nos. 1, 2, and 3’, as well as lighter works like ‘Prelude for Atεntεbεn and Piano’ and an ‘Atεntεbεn Quartet’ (Aduonum 1981:64).

Nayo followed the footsteps of the two leading composers in Ghana, Amu and Nketia. Nayo, who also wrote several choral works in the Ewe language, contributed significantly in compositions that used African idioms embodied in dance genres. Works of his later career employed the symphonic medium. They include ‘Fɔntɔmfrɔm Prelude’, ‘Volta Symphony’ and ‘Accra Symphony’, premiered by the Ghana National Symphony Orchestra, and are based on Ashanti, Ewe and Ga dance genres respectively. Mensah wrote several character pieces for the piano, solo voice and pianoforte, and composed several signature tunes for broadcasting such as for Hausa News on Radio Ghana, Ghana Muntie for Radio Ghana News in English and for Ghana TV News (Mensah 1975).

Anku (1997, 2004) is arguably the first Ghanaian composer to have successfully integrated African traditional dance idioms into art music instrumental compositions. Anku, who conducted a series of computer-assisted analyses on African rhythms, was able to translate, into compositional terms, his findings, paying particular attention to the generative processes inherent in these dance idioms (Euba 1993:11; Nketia 1993:4). In his composition Ognolapk, Anku (2000) experiments with a retrograde version of the Kpalongo genre in a fascinating and completely absorbing way. His approach without a doubt opens other possibilities in treatment of form and expansion in contemporary usage of African traditional idioms. As pointed out earlier, Ghanaian composers whose works can be adjudged as completely belonging to the harsh dissonant twentieth-century tradition include Adulfus Anthony Turkson, Gyimah Labi, Victor Nii Sowah Manieson and probably myself.

Gyimah Labi’s output includes five orchestral works, four duos for violin and piano, a string quartet, trio for flute, bass clarinet and piano and a set of pieces for piano solo entitled Dialects (Euba 1993). Manieson composed three piano pieces in African pianistic styles: ‘Anatomy of Dondology’, ‘Senorita’ and ‘Voices of our Ancestors’ (British Council Library, Ghana 2008). Amongst Mereku’s works are ‘Sasabonsam’s Match’ (Pivicafrique), ‘Royal Requiem’, ‘Afro-Drumnietta’, ‘African Coronation Collage’, ‘Orkney Quartet’, ‘Ghana Rap-Ody’ and Akpini Electroacoustics.

These names notwithstanding, I would like to put on record the several student compositions written between 1971–1973 in the twentieth-century atonal styles at the


erstwhile National Academy of Music (NAM), Winneba, under the guidance of NZ Nayo, that have ever since remained on library shelves after their premiere performances for assessment at the Academy (Nyedige 1974). From 1978 NAM’s main objective in training competent professional art musicians in all fields changed exclusively to the training of music teachers. Curriculum content demands in music education led to the cutting down of vital courses not really functional and beneficial to school teaching in African schools, hence the disappearance of courses such as ‘Twentieth-Century Harmony’, ‘Twelve-Tone Composition’ etc. from the curriculum. Since the 1980s the situation had been like that until the 1990s, when the country’s tertiary institutions offering music started with Master’s programmes in musical composition. This is the main reason why there is the need to acknowledge a Master’s student of Cape Coast University, Torwomenye Kofi Ansah, who was inspired by Pivicafrique to compose a chamber work, Aziza danz (Ansah 2009), scored for flute, oboe, bassoon, violin, cello and piano.

Creating Pivicafrique

The composition Pivicafrique was initiated by literary and/or visual stimuli or abstract briefs from my vast reference library of African musical ideas and inspired by the 15th story in Jack Berry’s West African Folk Tales (1993:28–29). At the time I started to work on Pivicafrique, I was in the middle of my second piece, ‘Afro-Drumnietta’ (Yaa Asantewaa). Several ideas came to mind as I thought about the subject matter of the new work to be composed. It took two months to settle on a folktale from Berry’s collection through a methodical process of elimination. Finding the most appropriate story as an urbanised Ghanaian proved to be quite challenging. After having decided to draw on Berry’s 123 stories, choosing one proved to be difficult. I narrowed the list down to four: ‘The Wise Child’ (Berry 1993:46–47), ‘Spider and the Calabash of Knowledge’ (Berry 1993:165–166), ‘Sasabonsam’s Match’ (Berry 1993:28–29) and ‘The Noble Adowa’ (Berry 1993:116–117). After critical consideration of the sequences in the story plots, the degree of musical-idea-emanation embedded in them, and how their integral programmatic ideas lend themselves to narration musically, I decided on ‘Sasabonsam’s Match’ as the subject had connections with all my intended musical ideas. The story is given verbatim below (Berry 1993:28–29).

The story: Sasabonsam’s Match

A hunter went hunting. He wandered all day without fi ring a shot. He decided to give it up, but just as he was turning for home he saw an antelope that he then shot and killed. He found some vines and was starting to tie the carcass up when he heard a voice behind him.

‘Hunter, cut off the animal’s legs.’ ‘Hunter, cut off the animal’s legs.’The hunter turned around and was horrifi ed to see a man as tall as a silk cotton tree. His

limbs were thin, and his hair reached down to his knees. His eyes were huge balls of fi re, and his teeth were like red-hot spears. The hunter was so terrifi ed that he could neither move nor

44 COSMAS MEREKU

speak. Once more he was ordered to cut off the animal’s legs. He managed to do as he was told. The monster picked up the rest of the carcass, swallowed it whole, and without another word, vanished. The hunter went home with what was left of the antelope.

On the following day he went to another part of the forest, and the same thing happened. And again the next day, too. And the day after that. And so it went on for several weeks until the hunter’s wife, who was pregnant, decided to fi nd out why her husband only brought home legs, and what he did with the rest of the meat.

She made a tiny hole in her husband’s powder box and fi lled the box with ashes. Early the next morning when the hunter set off from his village he left a trail of ashes. His wife followed him to his usual hunting grounds. She hid behind a tree. Presently, along came a black duiker. The hunter lifted his gun. Bam! The duiker fell dead.

‘Hunter, cut off the animal’s legs.’The hunter, by now, had no will of his own left, and he did what he was told. Sasabonsam

swallowed the animal and shouted again, ‘Hunter, cut off the animal’s legs,’ this time pointing to the tree behind which the wife was hiding. Thinking that a stray bullet had killed some other animal, the hunter went to do as Sasabonsam ordered. What do you think he found there? Of course, his wife. She had fainted from fright. Sasabonsam stood there, his eyes fl ash-ing – his mouth pouring smoke. ‘Cut off the animal’s legs!’ he ordered. The hunter couldn’t move. Sasabonsam became angry and picked up the woman to swallow her. But as soon as he got hold of her, her belly opened and out jumped a baby that grew at tremendous speed. It was soon as big as Sasabonsam himself, and only then did it stop growing. The child blew fi re and smoke from its mouth and nostrils.

These two giants now began to fi ght over the woman’s body. They howled and roared. They tore up tall trees by the roots and used them to club each other. The dust from their feet, as they stamped, rose high into the sky. All the animals in the forest ran away. The fi ght was fi erce and lasted a long time and neither seemed to be winning. They were so evenly matched the fi ght could not go on much longer. They both lay down on the ground gasping for breath. But as the wonder child lay watching Sasabonsam he saw a little hammer hanging from his belt. Quick as lightening, he grabbed it and hit Sasabonsam on the head with it three times. Sasabonsam reared up and stretched high into heaven to tell the Sky God Nana Nyame Kwame that one of his children had wounded him. But he couldn’t reach the Sky God. He fell full-length on the ground and turned into a great river. His arms and legs became the streams that fl ow into the river. As for Akokoaa Kwasi Gyinamoa – for that was the child’s name – he went back into his mother’s womb and lay there waiting to be born.

The compositional process

Having gone to Leeds as an African composer with a well-developed ability to audiate, i.e., ‘the ability to hear and to give meaning to music when no sound is physically present or may never have been physically present’ (Gordon 2005:11, emphasis in original), my capacity to think imaginatively in African sounds was not an obstacle. From the ‘composer’s reservoir of musical impressions, a notepad of musical ideas’ (Webster 1996:90) was created from the ‘composer’s psyche’ (Agawu 2011:55). Forest sounds,


storytelling and hunters’ songs, war songs, Ghanaian dance genre patterns and funeral dirges were jotted down as key ideas. I would say the musical transcription of these ideas from memory began the constructional process on 26 August 1994 and was completed by 10 October 1994. In all, eight bird songs, six folk songs and two newly created melodies emerged, as will be seen in the discussion.

As I pondered the story, a framework started to emerge. I could perceive the following subsections: a forest, hunter fantasising, secret investigations, a wife fainting, a wonder-child emerging and finally, death and reminiscence. My mentor, Philip Wilby, asked me on one Friday to sketch the topography of my impressions employing the golden rectangle as utilised by Bela Bartók (Kramer 1973:118; Bachmann et al. 1979:72; Howat 1983:70; Hall 1996:131–133). I was always encouraged to perceive the time-space of the music in a visual-space using the golden ratio theory, because Wilby believes a composition must grow organically, and the climax of a piece, to be aesthetically fulfilling, should coincide with the golden section <Livio 2002>. On the following Monday I showed him a sketch, a unique architectural design that is not immediately obvious to the listener. This imaginary ‘genre painting’ in a golden rectangle based on the proportion (ratio) and theory of perspectives appears in Figure 1 (Mereku 1997:111). In terms of this theory, ‘objects appear to grow smaller as they recede, and that lines which in reality are parallel, appear when extended to meet at a point on the horizon – the vanishing point [VP]’ (Smith 1993:43). My sketch proceeded through the following steps: 1. Marking the ‘horizon’; in this case a horizon at mezzo forte (mf ) on the x-axis;2. Marking the time-space of each event or movement on the musical line (on the

y-axis);3. Choosing the viewpoint(s); normal view in this case, looking straight ahead;4. Fixing the vanishing point(s); two in this case (end of ‘Forest Scene’ and ‘The Fight’);5. Sketching curves that trace the general contour of perspective in the vision.According to Rattle (2005:3), the contour curves become the basis of dynamic trends in the composition. He explains that ‘the curves in the sketch predispose the dynamic nuances of notes, phrases and sentences, and in fact, the entire composition. Although actual notes are important, how they are dressed, the shape they make, the shadows they cast becomes as important as the sheer fact of the notes themselves.’

The graph in Figure 1 implies that Pivicafrique has two low pressure points in terms of dynamics. Organically, the piece grows from a very soft (pp), tender and light atonal opening and moves steadily to a secondary climax (ff) taking just under two thirds of the total time-space (ratio 0.618) to reach the golden section at bar 274, i.e. at 10:27 time point ‘The Fight’ (Howat 1983:70; Bachmann & Bachmann 1979:72; Kramer 1973:118). The work then gathers momentum (ppp) and moves rapidly in a relatively short time-space to the highest point – the final climax (fff). The skeleton preview of every section, using the six labels – sectional titles, metrical modulations, rehearsal letters, modal modulations, general dynamic trend and tempo modulations – appears in Figure 2.

46 COSMAS MEREKU

Analysis

The analysis presents brief sectional descriptions that give a panoramic view of the entire piece. The order of events in the ensuing discussion follows the framework that emerged as I perceived Berry’s story. These subsections, mentioned earlier in the discussion, can also be seen in the middle row of Figure 1 as well as in the column headings of Figure 2 as sectional titles.

The ‘Forest Scene’ (bars 1, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f and 3) is conceived in two broad sections. The first part opens in free music style utilising bird songs to depict a moonlit night in an African forest. The notational challenge of creating a forest scene (Stone 1980:236–238) is solved by the employment of Graingerian gliding intervallic effects

Figure 1: Composition sketching process in the golden rectangle (VP = Vanishing point)

fff

ff f

mf

mp

p

pp

ppp Time -space (Base of the visual space in golden rectangle)

Golden Section

Bar Nos. 1 – 51 52 – 195 196 – 261

262 – 273 274 – 389 390 –

441 442 – 525

Sub-sections

Fore

st S

cene

Hun

ter’s

Fa

ntas

y

Secr

et

Inve

stig

atio

ns &

W

ife F

aint

s

Won

der-c

hild

The

Figh

t

Dea

th

Rem

inis

cenc

e

Running Time

00: 01 –

02:29 02:33 – 07:35 07:40

– 10:12

10:13 – 10:26

10:27 –

14:11 14:12

– 17:10 17:12 – 10:10

VP VP

Time space

Horizon

Contour of perspectives

Eyelevels from normal

viewpoint


Figu

re 2

: Ske

leto

n pr

evie

w o

f Sas

abon

sam

’s M

atch

(Pi

vica

friqu

e)

Bars

1–3

4–33

34–5

152

–195

196–

213

214–

261

262–

273

374–

389

390–

441

442–

525

Sect

iona

l Titl

esFo

rest

Scen

eH

unte

r’s F

anta

sySe

cret

Inve

stiga

tion

The

Wife

’s

Fain

ting

The

Won

der-

Chi

ld

Emer

ges

The

Figh

tD

eath

Rem

inis

cenc

e

Met

rical

Mod

ulat

ion

Alte

rnat

ive

even

ts in

spa

tial n

otat

ion

by in

dete

rmin

ate

repe

ats

Met

red

in 2

/4M

ultim

etre

d5/

4, 3

/4, 2

/4,

1/4

& 5

/4

Regu

lar

met

re

12/8

Them

atic

mat

eria

l (i)

and

(ii)

The

Sasa

bons

am’s

Leitm

otif

anno

unce

s th

e m

onste

r’s

pres

ence

: the

mat

ic

mat

eria

l (v)

Irreg

ular

met

re

5/4

Fore

st sc

ene

recu

rs b

ut v

arie

d (o

nly

Vio

lin a

nd

Cel

lo)

12/8

and

6/8

Sa

sabo

nsam

’s Le

itmot

if is

hea

rd

agai

n: m

ater

ial

(v).

Plai

ntiv

e m

elod

ies

are

anno

unce

d (ii

i); b

imet

re

(6/8

aga

inst

2/4)

2/4

sixt

eent

h-no

te

scal

ic fi

gure

s in

a

rum

blin

g as

cend

ing

sequ

ence

link

an

asym

met

rical

th

eme

in 7

/4

7/4

asym

met

ric

them

e go

es in

to

dece

ptiv

e co

nclu

sion

s

crea

ted

with

a

4/4,

3/4

, 2/4

po

lyrh

ythm

ic

phra

se (v

i)

Begi

ns w

ith s

patia

l in

dete

rmin

ate

even

ts an

d en

ds

with

a d

irge

in

6/8

(vii)

Regu

lar

met

re

12/8

The

Hun

ter’s

sce

ne

is r

eplic

ated

Rehe

arsa

l L.

AB

C

HI

KL

ST

Mod

al

Mod

ulat

ions

P0 P

6 P5

P0

P11

P5 P

11 P

0 P0

= D♭

Hem

itoni

c **

*

P0 E♭ m

ajor

___

____

____

_P6

P8

P7 P

11E

Maj

orSa

me

as C

Dyn

amic

Tre

ndp →

mf

mf →

mp

mf →

pf →

mp →

f →

m

f → f →

p f

fpp

→ m

p →

mf

→ f

mf →

mp →

f→

ff →

fff →

fm

p →

mf

Sam

e as

C

Tem

po

Mod

ulat

ions

Senz

a m

isur

a =

120

= 1

00♪. =

144

= 8

0♪

= 12

0♪.

= 96

♪ =

132

Senz

a m

isur

a♪

= 14

0♪

= 14

4

Runn

ing

Tim

e00

:01–

01:2

301

:24–

01:5

701

:58–

02:2

92:

33–7

:35

07:4

0–08

:49

08:5

0–10

:26

10:1

3–10

:26

10:2

7–14

:11

14:1

2–17

:10

17:1

2–20

:10

***

Them

es e

mpl

oy tw

o ty

pes

of th

e pe

ntat

onic

sca

les

(five

pitc

h cl

asse

s pe

r oc

tave

). Th

e he

mito

nic

(with

hal

f ste

ps) a

nd a

nhem

itoni

c (w

ithou

t hal

f ste

p). T

he a

rran

gem

ent u

sed

in th

e pi

ece

has

D♭

as it

s to

nal c

entre

.

Ther

e ar

e m

odal

tran

spos

ition

s –

P6, P

5, P

0 &

P11

. If D♭

is P

rime

Orig

inal

(P0)

its

diat

onic

pitc

h-se

ts be

com

e N

os. 1

, 5, 6

, 10,

(11)

& 1

2 in

a tw

elve

-tone

env

ironm

ent.

N

ote:

‘B’,

No.

11

is e

nclo

sed

in p

aren

thes

is b

ecau

se it

is th

e op

tion

used

whe

n de

scen

ding

the

scal

e.

Pitc

h N

os.

12

34

56

78

910

1112

Pitc

h N

ames

D♭

DE♭

EF

G♭

GA♭

AB♭

(B)

C

Mod

al C

entre

sP0

P1P2

P3P4

P5P6

P7P8

P9P1

0P1

1

48 COSMAS MEREKU

that employed freer rhythms, gliding intervals (micro-tonal devices), greater dissonance (Goldman 1980:8) and Lutoslawskian aleatoric spatial notation (Stone 1980:152; Kaczyński 1984:7) as illustrated in Example 1, which shows the opening in indetermination (aleatory), where written instructions are given to the performers.

Example 1: Opening of Pivicafrique, bars 1 and 2a

The eight bird songs transcribed from the ‘composer’s psyche’ (Agawu 2011:55) for performers carry the instruction that they can be selected aleatorically (see Example 2). Bird songs are selected in sets of twos and threes for performers at specific points in the music for execution in either free or controlled rhythm. The places where the transcribed bird songs are used in the composition are shown in Figure 3 with bar numbers for the instruments in the trio.

Figure 3: Bird song appearances in instruments indicated by bar numbers

Bird Songs Violin Cello Pianoa 1, 2a, 3, 18, 20, 22, 28, 30, 390 & 391 199, 201, 210 & 390 –b 38 & 45 – 41–44c 2a – 4–40, 45–51d 1 201 & 209 –e – 14–33, 202–203 & 211–212 –f 22 & 391 109 –g 48–51 – –h 2a, 3, 4–15, 31–33 & 391 203–207 –

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Example 2: Bird songs transcribed for use in composition

The opening chance event (bars 1–3) is immediately followed at bar 4 by a moderately fast, simple duple-metred phrase using semiquaver notes in the piano that is based on bird song motive ‘c’, while still maintaining the other bird song motives now treated in fragmentation in violin and cello. See the distribution in Figure 3. The phrase progresses rapidly into multi-metred sentences of crotchet beats utilising the Fibonacci series – 5, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 5 (see Example 3) as all three instruments of the trio play with the bird songs (Kramer 1973:118; Bachmann et al. 1979:72; Howat 1983:70; Hall 1996:131–133). There is soon a culmination in a duodecad (a vertical sonority consisting of twelve different pitches) in bars 52 and 53 as shown in Example 4 to introduce the main part of the work (Fink & Ricci 1975:24).

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50 COSMAS MEREKU

Example 3: Fibonacci series passage [01:58–2:29]

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Example 4: Duodecad sonority

The ‘Hunter’s Fantasy’ is introduced in the strings with a hemitonic pentatonic scale-like passage from bars 53–60 [02:37–02:43], presented in Example 5.

Example 5: Hemitonic pentatonic scale passage, bars 53–60

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52 COSMAS MEREKU

At the ‘Hunter’s Fantasy’ the main theme, a D flat hemitonic pentatonic tune designated the ‘Game Melody’, is first heard in the cello from bars 64–79 [02:44–03:31] (see Example 6).

Example 6: The Game Melody: the first theme

Immediately after the cello exposition, a counter-statement is made in the violin from bar 80, two octaves higher, sounding now in G hemitonic pentatonic mode to bar 95 [03:32–04:03]. The piano continues with a bridge punctuated by a ‘call-and-response dialogue’ played by the violin and cello from bars 96–111. The main theme, in its final re-statement, is played by the piano (bars 112–127) with the modal centre now shifting to F sharp hemitonic pentatonic, a move rather to a subdominant relationship from the original (i.e. in cello) as well as a diminished second below the violin key. The piano then takes the theme [04:40–05:09] and drives it into closing material that utilises the agbadza bell pattern played on the highest key on the piano as the violin and cello imitate the kagan and kidi patterns respectively of the agbadza ensemble (bars 128–135 [05:10–05:25]).

The hunter’s hope to get an animal continues, and from bars 136–167 [05:27–06:33] the section goes through motivic developments. Against cross-rhythms in the piano, violin and cello paraphrase the theme playing a fourth apart. The second theme emerges at bar 168, where a rapid ascending melody in regular quavers is in invertible counterpoint with a syncopated, recitative-like, chordal disposition (see Example 7). This is the ‘Sasabonsam Leitmotiv’ [06:34–06:59].

Example 7: Sasabonsam Leitmotiv

Acting as a close to Section A, a reiteration of the ‘Game Melody’ occurs more pronounced at this point in parallel fourths in the violin using double-stopping techniques [07:00–07:35]. The ‘Secret Investigation’ [07:40–08:49] opens with a painting of high notes in

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the violin with a sul ponticello and artificial harmonics effect (Example 8) and supported beneath with the aleatoric bird songs style in the cello from bars 196–213.

Example 8: The Secret Investigation

The serenity of this opening is interrupted at bar 214 by the recurrence of the ‘Sasabonsam’s Leitmotiv,’ depicting the ‘Wife’s Fainting’ from the fright of the Sasabonsam monster. It is taken alternatively by the violin and then the cello [08:50–09:14]. As the strings take the leitmotiv, the piano takes the countermelody intensifying the executioner’s dance. The two plaintive tunes, a storytelling song, (Example 9) and a lullaby (Example 10) are in invertible counterpoint. This compositional technique was employed assuming that the ‘Wonder Child’ was emerging with a folktale song by a grandparent who intermittently sings a lullaby also to soothe the child at the fire side [09:15–10:12].

Example 9: Storytelling song

Example 10: Lullaby

When the cello plays first the storytelling tune at bar 226, the violin maintains a drone on the open G string until the phrase ends. When the piano takes it the second time (bar 244), the lullaby is played by the two string instruments with the violin keeping the tune, while the cello plucks the tonal harmonised bass line on the beat. This plaintive episodical material

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54 COSMAS MEREKU

ends the ‘Secret Investigation’ section with three-bar closing material constructed upon a typical tonal cliché progression (II7-V7-I7♭ in E♭ major) at bars 259–261. Immediately, an ascending semiquaver decorative figures in G hemitonic pentatonic mode at bars 262–273 [10:13–10:20] is employed to link with ‘The Fight’.

‘The Fight’ [10:27–14:11] is represented by an intense asymmetrical rhythmic theme (Example 11), constructed on an A hemitonic pentatonic (bar 274) sounded first in the piano. The violin echoes the asymmetric theme in C hemitonic pentatonic (bars 280–282) and later in the cello in E♭ hemitonic pentatonic (bars 283–285).

Example 11: Asymmetrical rhythmic theme

A two-bar link utilising the theme against a chromatic descending scale explodes into the most intense zone of the piece. The intensity is heightened in bars 302–305, where the dynamics, tessitura and density for strings are stretched to the extremes as in Example 12, marking the golden section of the composition [12:11–12:16]. As part of the dramatic effect elicited in the fight, the figure starting at bars 302–305 (the Golden Section) is repeated twice, turning into a ‘golden’ moment [13:09–16:16]. The repeats are sandwiched between an Asafo (warrior dance) theme (Example 13) (bars 305–350) utilising a Gabada rhythmic motive that works its way to the consolidation of the climax.

Example 12: The Golden Section

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Example 13: Asafo (warrior dance) theme

Finally, the episode closes with a restatement of the first group of themes in the piano subjected to tonal shifting in G minor hemitonic pentatonic and rhythmic transformation with the Gabada dance genre motives (bars 356–389 [13:17–13:48]). The cello plays a typical African teaser from the Fantes of Ghana (Example 14) to embellish the restatement.

Example 14: Kɔ po mu – African teaser from the Fantes of Ghana

The final section [14:12–20:10], which deals with ‘Death and Reminiscing’, is captured as a reiteration of the first section in free rhythm (bars 390–525). Contrary to the ‘Forest Scene,’ a metred melancholic theme from a funeral dirge Ephraim Amu composed for the Atɛntɛbɛn (bamboo flute) entitled AkwasiFori (Aduomum 1981) is heard in the cello (Example 15 [15:03–17:10]). This piece has become a popular funeral dirge in Ghana which reminds listeners of the Akan message of condolence ‘Dammrifa due’ (May your soul rest in peace). This is placed in juxtaposition with the other instruments (violin and piano) in the free aleatoric style. An abridged version of the Hunter’s fantasy theme is finally stated in liquidation to seal off the work from bars 442–525 [17:12–20:10].

Example 15: Amu’s Akwasi Fori dirge

It is quite obvious that the work is largely rooted in a minimalistic style of composing. The writer listened repeatedly to composers such as Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and John Adams, and most of all, Steve Reich’s ‘Drumming’ (1971), ‘Clapping Music for two performers’ (1973), ‘Music for Pieces of Wood’ (1973), his counterpoint series, especially ‘New York Counterpoint’ (1985) for multiple clarinets as well as ‘Different Trains’ (1988) and ‘The Cave’ (1993). I attended the UK premiere series of Reich’s ‘City Life’ at the Leeds Civic Theatre (11th May 1995) and met the composer. Reich manipulates modern technology to imitate and develop recorded sounds, contrary to what he did in ‘Different Trains’ and ‘The Cave’, which were just for voices. Through the use of samplers on the synthesiser keyboard, fragments of recorded speech are controlled by the keys of the synthesiser in

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56 COSMAS MEREKU

‘City Life’. Phrasing and tempo of words are altered, ‘chords’ of words and bits of words are all possible. One could hear and feel clearly the agbadza timeline (Example 16, also known as the Yoruba TL) in all these works cited if one could internalise the timeline (Temperley 2000:70; Anku 2009:60).

Example 16: Agbadza time line

The minimalistic compositional process was achieved probably because of the drum-phonic pitch assignment I invented employing the melorhythmic resources of the atsimevu master drum in the kpegisu genre (Locke 1992:123) as shown in Example 17.

Example 17: Drum-phonic pitch assignment

The significant difference between my approach and that of Nana Danso Abiam’s Pan African Orchestra compositions (Abiam 1995) is that my scores are written down, while he fixes his through improvisation of ideas (Bennett 1976; Herbst et al. 2003), using his instrumental experts who play on idiophones, membranophoes, chordophone and aerophones. Scores are not developed, work is played from memory. On his Opus 1 CD (1995) tracks that could be described as following the tenets of minimalism include ‘Explorations – Hi-life Structures,’ ‘Explorations – Ewe Rhythms,’ ‘Box Dream’ and ‘AdawuraKasa’ (Danso Abiam 1995).

Makeshift and surrogate instruments

It is not only the piano that uses the drum-phonic as surrogate. A critical analysis of the score from bar 54 reveals how the kpegisu genre is serving as the rhythmic bedrock of the composition. The piano begins with the handclapping rhythm. A few bars later, the right hand (RH) in the piano introduces kagan patterns. When the main theme reappears on the piano, the RH changes to axatse patterns. The kagan and axatse patterns alternate several times while the violin performs a passage following the gakokoe rhythm. At Section D the piano RH changes to kidi patterns (Anku 2009:57). Against the RH on the piano, the LH throughout the entire piece is always doing something that is a master drum (atsimevu) pattern: e.g. he re be dzi de dzi den dzikpa, to to, to to, to to, a drum-phonic that will translate on the piano as illustrated in Example 18.

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Example 18: Left-hand passage in piano

Tonal organisation, chordal structure and timbre

For the listeners to appreciate fully the composer’s creative efforts and be able to think creatively through the piece as they listen, a brief description of the constructional processes involved in relation to rhythm, tonality, timbre and form is also necessary. The sensational flow of the music in time, in the aural space, was organised eclectically using free rhythm such as bird songs, symmetrical rhythm such as dance genres, rare asymmetrical rhythm-multimetred phrases and original composed melodies. The tonal organisation in Pivicafrique can be categorised as follows: (a) dodecaphonic democratic order (DDO)3 used to create a free twelve-tone environment; (b) free tonal harmonisation where Austro-Germanic common harmonic practice idioms were exploited on more liberalised terms; (c) strict tonal harmonisation such as strict adherence to common practice rule, which was rarely utilised; (d) indeterminate resulting harmonies; (e) resultant vertical sonorities from bird songs; (f) traditional melorhythmic resources; and (g) drum-phonic pitch assignments.

I also incorporated special chords from a ‘chords palette’, bearing in mind that the choice of instruments in a trio has its own timbral limitations (see Figure 4). These selections reflect the composer’s sense of colour principle with sounds in music – what has been referred to as ‘colour-hearing synaesthesia’, which composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Scriabin possessed (Hall 1996:107).

The chords have great significance in the music’s general flow. They are introduced at dramatic points of the piece. They range from what the composer describes as ‘cool consonance’ to ‘warm consonance’ and from ‘harsh dissonance’ to ‘warm dissonance’ as shown in Figure 4 (Persichetti 1961; Fink & Ricci 1975).

3 Term coined by the author in his doctoral thesis (Mereku 1997).

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Tertial Harmony

Cool consonance < > Warm consonance

TriadsV

Seventh ChordsV7

Ninth ChordsV9

Eleventh ChordsV11

Thirteenth ChordsV13

Fifteenth ChordsV15

Non-tertial HarmonyWarm dissonance < > Harsh dissonance

Hexad Mystic Whole-tone Dominant

Nonad Decad Duodecad

58 COSMAS MEREKU

In relation to timbre, the composer exploited several devices on the string instruments as well as the piano: bowing the cello on the tailpiece, bowing behind the bridge, bowing on top of bridge, snap pizzicato, crush-in a note with ricochet, tapping violin using finger tips, playing inside the piano using wire brush, dropping screwdriver on bass strings in piano, slapping cello strings with hand and open glissando on strings. A glossary of symbols (both conventional and invented) was attached to each part score given to the performers (Stone 1980).

To appreciate form in Pivicafrique, its unique embedded architectural design should be perceptible to the listener. In other words, the sectional components – the diachronic tableau with the golden section climax – should be obvious to every listener, if they take the trouble to listen over and over again. Witold Lutoslawski made a similar plea when he was interviewed by Tadeusz Kaczyński (1984). Commenting on his Second Symphony (1965–1967), a 30-minute work, Lutoslawski observed that:

Insofar as a long piece of music has some form, the general outline of that form should be eas-ily grasped […]. We should be able to recognize a major musical form even at the fi rst encoun-ter with a piece of music, in the same way that we can make out the composition of a large painting from a distance. To carry the analogy further, one could say that as we get to know a piece of music better we notice smaller and smaller elements in its form, just as we perceive increasingly smaller details in a large picture the closer we get to it. (Kaczyński 1984:35)

Considering the audible sequence of events in Pivicafrique, four criteria are recognised: key scheme, metrical modulation, genre organisation and moods intended. With the key scheme, the piece began in aleatory, went on to twelve-tone environment that gave way to hemitonic pentatonic scale and the Austro-Germanic minor scale that also collapsed finally into a twelve-tone environment. Ghanaian traditional dance genres that featured in its course are agbadza, adeʋu and gabada. Moods also progressed from fantasy, joy, stress, tension, fear, sorrow and joy.

The discussion of Pivicafrique would be incomplete if the special use of bird songs as an African resource material in the composition were ignored. At the premiere one challenging question I could not satisfactorily answer was why I thought the bird songs were African in origin. This was the question that the musician, composer, author and philosopher-ecologist, David Rothenberg, answered eight years after. He describes how Françoise Dowsett-Lemaire followed ‘one bird that picks up African bird songs on its migratory route, and sings them plain at day in the marshes of Europe’ (Rothenberg 2005:95). In fact, to him ‘bird songs have their own music-like regularities and rules which are different from the regularities and rules of human music, yet similar enough that there can be interaction between bird and human’ (Rothenberg 2005:10). It is this interaction between bird and human songs that the writer (composer) exploited, and to achieve the desired effect, an aleatoric (montage) technique was utilised as it was used by composers such as Messiaen and Bartók (Hall 1996:108, 130).


Summary and conclusion

The article looked at the relevant and meaningful literary and/or visual stimuli that initiated and brought into being the composition, reviewed the few Ghanaian contemporary composers who had contributed to the twentieth-century practice of harsh dissonance, took a panoramic view of the entire piece through a brief sectional analysis and briefly described the constructional processes involved.

Euba (1992) emphasised that ‘certainly several lines of musical development can coexist within the same culture and it is not unnatural for people to be multimusical in the same way that they can be multilingual.’ Pivicafrique as a musical piece speaks for itself and contributed to new knowledge in ways which words alone could not have done. Creating a musical artwork is always accompanied by the experience of letting go as the work quite suddenly belongs to the public domain (Goldhahn 2009). Accordingly, an important lesson that musical art teaches is that creative works, because of the interest of the composer, get several of their facets (melody, bass line, text, dance, etc.), when compared to the indigenous aspects that informed the original ideas, ‘corrupted’.

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Anku, Willie (1997). ‘Principles of rhythm integration in African drumming.’ Black Music Research Journal, 17(2):211–238.

——— (2000). ‘Circles and time: a theory of structural organisation of rhythm in African music.’ Music Theory Online 6. <www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.00.6.1/mto.00.6.1.anku_frames.html> accessed 31 October 2011.

——— (2004). ‘Musical transcription and virtual-scape: reconstructing collective memory.’ International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Achieves IASA Journal, 23(2004):38–56.

______ (2009). ‘Drumming among the Akan and Anlɔ Ewe of Ghana: an introduction.’ Journal of the International Library of African Music, 8(3):38–64.

Ansah, Kofi Torwomenye (2009). Aziza danz: exploring rhythmic resources of agbekor drum music in contemporary composition. Cape Coast: University of Cape Coast, Ghana, unpublished Master’s dissertation.

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Bachmann, Tibor & Peter Bachmann (1979). ‘An analysis of Béla Bartók’s music through Fibonaccian numbers and the golden mean.’ The Musical Quarterly, 65(1):72–82.

Bennett, Stan (1976). ‘The process of musical creation: interview with eight composers.’ Journal of Research in Music Education, 24(1):3–13.

Berkley, Rebecca (2004). ‘Teaching composing as creative problem solving: conceptualising composing pedagogy.’ British Journal of Music Education, 21(3):239–263.

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Discography / Filmography

Abiam, Nana Danso (1995). The Pan-African Orchestra Opus 1. CD Recording. CDR W48. London: Realworld Recording.

Rattle, Simon (2005). Leaving Home: A Conducted Tour of Twentieth-Century Music with Simon Rattle. Television Series, Nos 1 and 3. City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. London: An LWT Programme for Channel 4. DVD, Leipzig: Arthaus Musik.

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