Strumming, Harmonics, and a Motif

Last week I mentioned how Peter Bay has crafted a fabulous journey for Arizona Philharmonic’s upcoming concert on Sunday, October 16, 3pm at Yavapai College Performing Arts Center. I touched on the works in the first half and promised to talk of the second half in this email.

The first piece after intermission is Jessie Montgomery’s Strum for string orchestra. This is the piece I’m most excited about. In Strum, I am taken on a path of increasing energy that organically grows from the first few measures of the work. Maria puts it more succinctly: the piece has a “forward tilt.”

Montgomery is a master violinist. In Strum, she has applied her intimate knowledge of what is possible with the stringed instrument to create an aurally and visually engaging work. At the very beginning, you’ll notice that the viola and violin 2 principal players are holding their instruments in guitar position, strumming out chords and a repeating melody. The title Strum is highly relevant, for throughout the rest of the piece, you’ll see and hear a lot of pizzicato (plucking) and strumming on the strings. There are even Bartok pizzicatos (pulling the string and letting it snap against the fingerboard).

Harmonics are also fun to watch. In the beginning, after the cello enters with its beautiful melody, the principal violin plays a long, single-note harmonic. By lightly touching the string with a finger in a specified location, the bowed string vibrates on a very high, glassy note. It sounds completely different from a normally bowed note. You’ll hear more harmonics about 2/3 of the way through the work, where the orchestra drops to a single cello playing pizzicato. Above this quiet ostinato, the violins play a brief, rhythmic melody only with harmonics.

Advanced string techniques are engaging, but only if they serve the music. We enjoy this added character and color, because Strum shines within the actual music (i.e. notes) that Montgomery composed. Every time I listen to the work, I hear something new that adds to the musical journey.

For example, I invite you to pay attention to the first three notes of the cello. This musical skip followed by a step becomes a motif (an idea that is repeatedly used) with the work. Many of the phrases start with a rising skip plus a step, or a rising step plus a skip, or even a descending variation of these.

Using motifs is one way a composer helps a work sound cohesive. I liken it to an interior designer choosing colors or themes to repeat within the design of a room. Once you start recognizing a motif, you’ll find a familiarity each time it occurs. It is that repeated familiarity that helps tie a work, or a room, together.

And if you are not confident you can identify the motif – no worries! Our brains are so programmed to search for patterns that even subconsciously the listener will recognize that the music is connected together. We instinctively find joy in that.

Although from New York, Jessie Montgomery has a connection to Arizona. I met her on a flight to Phoenix in 2013, before I had come across her name as a composer. I had noticed her editing a composition on her laptop, and I struck up a conversation. What I remember most from our encounter is that her string quartet visited the Hopi and Navajo nations every year for a residency to work with youth composers.

Below is a video of Strum. I hope you enjoy listening to and watching the guitar position, the plucking and strumming, and the harmonics. Remember to listen for the motif in the first three notes of the cello. And then come to our concert on Sunday to hear it live.

– Henry Flurry, Executive Director