Whitacre, Eric (b 1970)

[Richard Barrett]

RB, Arvo Pärt sounds nothing like Eric Whitacre.

Surely not even his most fervent admirers can't seriously claim that Whitacre sounds nothing like Arvo Pärt. Of course their techniques are different (ie. Pärt has a technique, evolved systematically over many years, whereas EW by his own admission just takes what he likes - "If I hear something and find it to be true, I have no hesitation in using it in my music"), but without Pärt and the other "holy minimalists", not to mention all those other composers who painstakingly explored the "extended techniques" he picks off the shelf, Whitacre would have no starting point. EW's work clearly fulfils a need in the choral music "market" (for which it's tailor-made) and his work is obviously a source of pleasure for many participants and listeners, but it doesn't follow from this that there's anything original, unique or profound about what he's doing. Many listeners prefer music to be more challenging and thought-provoking, with more complexity in its implications (whether or not the music itself is superficially "complex"), which encourages and rewards active engagement and reveals further levels of expression and structure with repeated acquaintance, and EW's music does none of these things. Nor is it intended to. It does what it does with well-oiled efficiency, but let's not make exaggerated claims for it.

[ahinton]

Oh, only as pretentious as taking listeners on a "journey" (length of which TBC).

That's "pretentious", is it? So no music embraces - or is capable of embracing - any narrative, then? Back to the drawing board for me, then - or, better still, back to the beginning altogether, since clearly my understanding of those things of which music is capable has been deeply flawed from the outset,,,

[Richard Barrett]

Well that puts me in my place!

I fully admit to not having been entirely clear - I'm remembering something I read a long time ago whose significance for me probably now has more to do with my turning it over in my mind so many times in the intervening years than with what KP originally said, whatever exactly that was! I think it has something to do with the obvious fact that we're hearing human voices, which are in general more identifiable as individual strands than instruments might be, because our listening apparatus is fine-tuned to recognising and understanding voices, their individualities and articulations, even with many other sounds going on simultaneously (there's a relationship here to what psychologists call the "cocktail party effect" no doubt). Hence polyphonic structures might be more readily followed in vocal form than in others. I don't know whether this has been investigated scientifically but I feel it to be the case.

[Alison]

What if Mr Whitacre posted dismissive comments on a public forum about our (much admired by me) forum composers?

Wouldn't we think that was rather bad form?

[french frank]

What if Mr Whitacre posted dismissive comments on a public forum about our (much admired by me) forum composers?

Wouldn't we think that was rather bad form?

Bad form or not, he would be expected to explain the failings he found in their work. I'm sure they'd be grateful …

[Richard Barrett]

What if Mr Whitacre posted dismissive comments on a public forum about our (much admired by me) forum composers?

Wouldn't we think that was rather bad form?

I don't know whether EW himself has posted such comments, but plenty of others have - that's life on the internet, isn't it? If you think what's being said here is dismissive, have a look at the comments on almost any Youtube clip - "this sounds like utter horsesh*t" is a particularly eloquent description there of one of my compositions.

[Ian]

I fully admit to not having been entirely clear - I'm remembering something I read a long time ago whose significance for me probably now has more to do with my turning it over in my mind so many times in the intervening years than with what KP originally said, whatever exactly that was! I think it has something to do with the obvious fact that we're hearing human voices, which are in general more identifiable as individual strands than instruments might be, because our listening apparatus is fine-tuned to recognising and understanding voices, their individualities and articulations, even with many other sounds going on simultaneously (there's a relationship here to what psychologists call the "cocktail party effect" no doubt). Hence polyphonic structures might be more readily followed in vocal form than in others. I don't know whether this has been investigated scientifically but I feel it to be the case.

The explanation could be as simple as choral music usually having words. For example, it must be easier to hear a connection between two non-simultaneous but similar melodic shapes if the text is the same - which often it will be.

[Richard Barrett]

The explanation could be as simple as choral music usually having words. For example, it must be easier to hear a connection between two non-simultaneous but similar melodic shapes if the text is the same - which often it will be.

For sure, but my point was more to do with hearing the lines as discrete strands rather than just with the connections between them.

[jean]

The explanation could be as simple as choral music usually having words. For example, it must be easier to hear a connection between two non-simultaneous but similar melodic shapes if the text is the same - which often it will be.

But in fact, a 'tune' in the top part with judicious underpinnings of chords with every new syllable (typical of later choral music) is easiest of all to 'hear', whether the music choral or instrumental, surely?

In fact when listening to polyphonic choral music, the words aren't much help at all - which is why I get really annoyed when they're not printed in the programme.

Richard's post above is interresting - I'm going to think about it a bit more before replying.

[Ian]

For sure, but my point was more to do with hearing the lines as discrete strands rather than just with the connections between them.

Isn’t that, sort of, the same thing? Surely you can make out the discrete strands of, say, a fugue if the entries also have the same words?

And talking about words, one the big differences between EW and AP is their approach to word setting. EW’s output seems to largely consist of choral ‘songs’ - where the words are crucially important. They are much more settings of particular words/poems than you tend to get in AP where, as lovely as his music can be, the texts used (often conventional Latin texts) are pretty interchangeable.

I think that when you are setting a text as a ‘song’ there is much less room for ‘compositional processes’ - it all comes down to creating a memorable feel and mood that works with the text.

[Ian]

But in fact, a 'tune' in the top part with judicious underpinnings of chords with every new syllable (typical of later choral music) is easiest of all to 'hear', whether the music choral or instrumental, surely?

That might be true, but if you're going to have some counterpoint a composer can still use the text in a way to make the lines clearer.

[MrGongGong]

The choirs sounding the same is interesting... I can see how that could create difficulty when listening, particularly if the same approach is taken for each composer.

There is (and this is NOT necessarily a bad thing at all) and remarkable homogeneity in the sound of the folks performing this music.
This is not to say that it IS all "the same" (the first time I played in a Balinese Gamelan it all sounded the same and I couldn't distinguish between one piece and another, I think Cage said something like this about Shakuhachi music and why he enjoyed listening to it ?).
I do think if one is used to listening to 'sound based' (as opposed to 'note based') music this is maybe more apparent?

But this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rak_rJLG49k

this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsi4xWhbCe8

this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewa80YN7CLE

and so on


(they might not be the best examples ?)

I do find something a bit superficial in the way that EW feels it's fine to "borrow" anything he likes which is a bit much IMV

[Richard Barrett]

Isn’t that, sort of, the same thing? Surely you can make out the discrete strands of, say, a fugue if the entries also have the same words?

What I'm saying is that you could also (possibly more precisely) make out those discrete strands if the entries had different words. Especially in a fugue, where imitation between voices is going to emphasise their interrelatedness rather strongly. An extreme example of discrete voices might be the polytextual motets of the middle ages, whose voices often sound almost as if they belong to different pieces that just happened to land together in this interwoven state. But my point (or Penderecki's, rather) was to do with polyphony being idiomatic to vocal-ensemble music - where, indeed, it seems to have its European historical origins. Other traditions of vocal ensemble music have of course also independently "discovered" polyphony (the Aka people of central Africa for example).

[Ian]

What I'm saying is that you could also (possibly more precisely) make out those discrete strands if the entries had different words. Especially in a fugue, where imitation between voices is going to emphasise their interrelatedness rather strongly. An extreme example of discrete voices might be the polytextual motets of the middle ages, whose voices often sound almost as if they belong to different pieces that just happened to land together in this interwoven state.

I agree with that as well.

[ahinton]

What if Mr Whitacre posted dismissive comments on a public forum about our (much admired by me) forum composers?

Wouldn't we think that was rather bad form?

But there's been precious little of that here, for starters, furthermore, I imagine that some of the kinds of thing that certain forum members might seek and hope for in a work would be the kinds of thing that Mr Whitacre would not be wanting to produce anyway, so there's little if any harm done, I imagine.