Thursday, January 21, 2010

Various Variations

Music is fierce inspiring... You only have to look at Colm Mac Con Iomaire's performance at Nighthawks to see that - click here

Anyway - I've been reading about pianos and music lately, and this guy who was stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a thing called Beethovens' Diabelli Variations being played. What it was, was this guy Diabelli sent a waltz around to a ton of composers in 1821, and got them all to rewrite it and release their own version, apparently Beethovens' was great, him being handy with an aul tune, and he did a big long version parodying alot of other writers at the time, sounds like an old style Bill Bailey. So I was wondering whether we could do the same with a poem, ie get a load of writers to rewrite their own version/ variation on a good poem - and if so what kind of poem could be used as the basis, and who would you want to take part?! I thought it would be possibly rather interesting...

Another thing that occured to me is why can't music take something from poetry - and the thing I've wondered about is whether a musician could take the idea of an extra short form with maximum impact, and make a success of it - somewhat like a very short poem, could any artist release an album of 20 second songs, would it be worth doing? Mr VC pointed out to me in the midst of my wonderings that the pop song is already the shortened equivalent of classical tunes/ operas, but I wonder if there could be a further compression - maybe it's already done - and I just don't know about it - let me know if there is something like that out there...

Are there any other ways of working creatively that should or could be applied into new disciplines? What are they?

16 comments:

Domestic Oub said...

What fascinating musings Niamh... I am going to think about doing that to a poem!

Totalfeckineejit said...

I nrewrote John Betjamin's 'Nightmail'.Twasa work of total genius (mine not his) but I lost it,If anyone sees it or me anywhere let me know so I can find us.I'm listening to the grass and it's whispering 'Chlorphyl' and 'Tupperware' Why is that?

Niamh B said...

Oub - what poem should it be done on tho? Hmmm - think we might return to this sometime
Tks for that TFE - glad to see you back to "Normal"

Domestic Oub said...

It would have to be something ubiquitous, 'Daffodils' or er.. ah feck it, its Friday night and I can't think of a single other poem! But, hey, run with this, think its a grreat idea, would love to see the results.

Niamh B said...

So ... not the goldfish poem then?

Domestic Oub said...

Great and all as that is... maybe just not that well know.. of course..

Niamh B said...

Aha - but how is it going to GET well known if I keep passing it over in favour of Wordsworth?!

Domestic Oub said...

hmmm... sure, good point, good point... but y'know sometimes, its best to let others champion your genius, like, in a viral sorta way, so that it makes a more amazing impact...

Niamh B said...

Oub - you should work for the UN or something... But it would be called the Wordsworth Variations instead of the Various Variations, if I used his poem,,, and I just think Various Variations sounds better.

Domestic Oub said...

Ah, but this is a new idea, so you've got to popularise the concept, before your wonderful fish poem can become the poster child for this astonishing new medium..

Titus said...

I'm in, I'm in! As usual.

Dominic Rivron said...

Have you come across Anton Webern? Classical and said to be "difficult", but many, many of pieces are around a minute long or less.

Dominic Rivron said...

As for a poetic equivalent of Diabelli Variations, you've got me thinking, what is the verbal equivalent of variations? I'm not sure. It could almost be done with nonsense words/sounds... (Like Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate).

Niamh B said...

hi dominic, hadn't come across him, thanks for the link.
Re variations - I don't know about nonsense - ie the diabelli ones weren't morphing the thing into a different or nonsensical type of music? from what I gather... but maybe you're best placed to answer it for us? Was the idea a total rewriting of the original or just using it as a launch pad, ala TFE's Poetry bus - the Ted Hughes one? or trying to get the exact same sense across with a totally different approach? If you could let us know, twould be a help!

Dominic Rivron said...

In a sense, all music is -upto a point- nonsensical, as it doesn't mean anything specific. (Hence the challenge I've set this week - it will be interesting to see what different people make of the same music). I wasn't suggesting that the Diabelli variations are any more or less nonsensical than any other music, just that they represented the organisation of something that lacked specific meaning.

Music possibly resorts to forms like variations precisely because it lack specific meanings. The structure gives the mind something to hold onto, to interest it.

I was suggesting that it was easier to make a "musical structure" out of nonsense words than sensible sentences, perhaps.

So (rough example):

Theme =

pim pom pim pom pim pom

Variation =

tiddlepim tiddlepom tiddlepim tiddle pom tiddle pim tiddlepom



Variation form is a bit like what jazz musicians do. Take a tune. Stick chords under it. Take away tune. Stick a new "top line" to the sequence of chords that's left. (As in the nonsense word example above, the new "top line" can elaborate the old one). Keep on thinking of new top lines until you run out of ideas or hit audience's boredom threshold!

Niamh B said...

Thanks Dominic for that, also my friendly wikipedia tells me that

"In music, variation is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition: reiteration with changes. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre or orchestration."

I think it would interesting to try and preserve the sense of a poem, while playing around with the rest of it.
I don't know about the senseless/ sound poetry angle. I heard somewhere once that a poem is a song that brings it's own tune, so it has to have a sense in addition to the musical bit, a specific meaning of some kind... well that'd be my preference, I guess. Am tempted to just jump in and try it with a favourite poem, and then see where it goes...