Dream Songs
Description
Dream Songs is
not just a choral work with percussion accompaniment. The percussion is an integrated and
in structural terms equally valid part of the work - indeed, the the percussion rhythms
are the axis around which the whole work revolves. For this reason, the percussion has to
be audibly far more prominent than one would normally expect of an
‘accompaniment’.
The two-tone series
Dream Songs is one of the many works from the end
of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s based on the two-tone infinity series. As an
abstract principle, this structure is a projection of the opposition between light and
dark - from the smallest unit to the largest:
A light tone is answered by a dark tone (light-dark-dark-light); a light two-tone group
(light-dark) is answered by a dark (dark-light); a light four-tone group is answered by a
dark (dark-light-light-dark)
The example below shows that the same structure - light-dark-dark-light - is to be found
at all levels of the hierarchy. In other words, the same pattern appears, no matter
whether one plays all the notes or just every second, every fourth, every eighth, every
sixteenth, and so on.
This way of working with
light and dark rows is of course especially suited to percussion instruments without fixed
pitch, though of course instruments with fixed pitch can be used, or, as in this case, a
choir. At the same time, these structures are also well suited to fully or partially
improvised ensemble playing, in which those involved keep to a continuously repeated
section of the infinity series - typically a period of 64 notes - in the same way as jazz
musicians improvise around a set of fixed harmonies. Throughout the years, Per Nørgård
and a number of percussion musicians connected with him have organised large numbers of
these play-along improvisation sessions for amateurs and professionals, for musicians,
singers and dancers.
The melodies that appear in Dream Songs belong unmistakably to the Danish tradition
of popular song, which can be traced way back to the age of the ballads, with their Dorian
tones and tunes that have become familiar in later times. Here we see an example of how
the melody is adapted to the hierarchical structure of the drum part, which being
organised in powers of 2 is very mechanical and ‘rhythmic’, i.e., very 4/4 time.
However, in the idyllic version, the music adapts itself gracefully to a 6/8 rhythm, partially obscuring the 2-4-8-16 nature of the rhythm.
Score sample © Edition WH