Turn

for clavikord, harpsichord or piano (1973)

By Erling Kullberg


    Composed 1973

    First performance 19.4.1974 at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, with Elisabeth Klein

    Length: 15 min.


Turn belongs to a group of works composed by Per Nørgård after the opera Gilgamesh (1972), and while working on his large Symphony No. 3 (1975). In this period he was working intensely, attempting to achieve some sort of intellectual clarity regarding the so-called hierarchical music which he was in the process of developing. 

Apart from Turn, this group of works comprises:

    Lila (1972) for chamber ensemble;
    Spell (1973) - a companion work to Turn for clarinet, cello and piano, in which Turn constitutes the piano part;
    Libra (1973) for tenor, guitar and choir; and,
    Singe die Gärten, mein Herz (1974) for choir and 8 instruments.

IIn these works - and in several others that came after the symphony - he selected one or several aspects of composition technique for special attention, aspects which had surfaced while he was working on the hierarchies.

In Turn, the project is in the main concerned with two techniques::

    'The broken chord technique'

    and

    'The Waves-technique'   




The broken chord
technique

This technique is about the rules governing the linking of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic infinity series.

When a section of the melodic infinity series is developed with its attendant overtone and undertone spectra, the tones in the various partial layers do not change at the same time, which would lead to a trivial performance of the infinity series as parallel seventh or ninth chords. Instead, the tones in the various partial layers change according to a number of rhythmic principles that are described in the article about the linking of the 3 hierarchical systems.

In Turn - and in other works - this development from one tone of the infinity series with its attendant harmonics to the next takes place very slowly, but because of the relatively short resonance of the piano or the harpsichord, the chord being played is repeated as a reiterated arpeggio until all the individual notes have been replaced by the notes of the next chord. This is done either by crescendo or diminuendo in the individual parts, often indicated by the size of the notes.




Waves technique

The 'Waves technique', so called because it was first used in the percussion work Waves (1969), is all about shifting stress.

In Waves, 4 congas were struck in the same repeated order, but with a gradual displacement of the stress from one beat to another, so that the listener experienced a multivalent pulse where the 'first beat' was constantly changing.

In Turn, it is a question of the 4 notes in a seventh chord.

The Waves technique also includes what one could call the 'collect and divide technique', in that the repeating arpeggio figures are 'tightened up' now and then, and accelerate towards a stressed note, sometimes moreover in overlapping constellations of sound.



The title

Turn is a very gentle, almost romantic-sounding work, which in the main is due to the fact that the fundamental harmonic material is the seventh chord and later the ninth chord, developed according to the principles we have described.

It begins with an almost inaudible repeated F, which gradually grows in strength and is accompanied by a staggered, repeated B. An analysis of the music reveals that these notes must be understood as a seventh and a third in a G major seventh chord which will gradually transform itself into an A major seventh chord, as described earlier. In the beginning, however, the other notes are merely hinted at, and we only hear the notes that are about to shift or have just shifted. These notes grow large and juicy, like fruit that ripens before it falls off the tree.


As time goes on, all 4 notes are heard in the chords, and using the 'broken chord technique' as a map, the music moves through shifting harmonic landscapes, conveying a sense of now rising and now falling tension. Tension rises in sections displaying a high degree of dissonance; tension falls in places where there is harmonic stability. In these stable sections there is as a rule a balance between the notes in terms of stress, whereas the 'collect and divide technique' is used especially in the dissonant passages.

The register of the movement is gradually extended, and the music takes on a more and more virtuoso character as the whole keyboard is brought into use. The 4 notes of the seventh chord are extended to the 5 notes of the ninth chord, and with the help of stress emphasis, the composer elucidates different patterns and gestalts within the repetitions.

An especially melodious example is to be heard in a very romantic passage towards the end, a passage that reminds one of the theme in the 2nd movement of Tchaikovsky's string quartet op. 11.

For a long time, the left and right hands have been playing a mirror image in relation to each other, and have at this point reached an harmoniously stable phase - a sort of C major universe with the note G sharp as the only foreign element.

Now precisely this note is the point of rotation of the mirror images of the right and left hands, so it literally plays a very central role. In general, G sharp and A flat occupy a controversial position in Per Nørgård's tonal universe (see the section about Tuning systems in music), and in the composer's own recording of Turn (heard here), the point of rotation is tuned both as a G sharp and as an A flat, so it sounds like a falsely-tuned 'honky-tonk' piano. Admittedly, though, this tuning is not a condition for the performance of the work.

In this passage, Per Nørgård illuminates different 'fixer vignettes' in turn.

The dramatic culmination of the piece comes at a point when the mirror harmonics have become locked in a diminished seventh chord on either side of the notorious G sharp/A flat. This deadlock is broken when the outermost notes (B and F respectively) 'break their bounds' and become B flat and F sharp, resulting in the quintessentially romantic alterated dominant.

After this, the music returns to the mood of the introduction, in that the mirror figures of the two hands meet on an E which gradually fades away into inaudibility.


Nodeeksempler © Edition WH