no
Following Daniel Fawcett (3rd Prize winner), and Chris Fisher-Lochhead (2nd Prize winner), this week, we spotlight Omer Barash, the first-prize winner of the 2024 Martirano Award. His winning work, Te’ena, is scored for flute/bass flute, clarinet/contrabass clarinet, bassoon/contraforte, trumpet, trombone, percussion, piano, strings, and live 8-channel electronics. This is the final conversation in the series featuring the 2024 Martirano Award winners, led by Victor Zheng, Coordinator of the Martirano Award and an alum of the School of Music (DMA ’23).
Victor: First of all, can you tell me about the title of your work, Te’ena?
Omer: It’s taken from a poem in Hebrew, on which the piece is based. It’s a poem by a poet named Omri Livnat. I already composed a song cycle based on his poetry, so this was, in a way, the continuation of that. Te’ena means fig in Hebrew. This the poem goes something like: men of song, all of their hours look for ever more red, even in a fig. I was really interested in this metaphor of an artist, a man of song, in this kind of incessant quest after something, which is always more something – there is this aspiration to the unachievable which I was interested in. And then, when preparing myself to compose the piece, I also researched about figs, and I didn’t know that the way they pollinate is in a symbiotic relationship with a tiny wasp, the fig wasp. The wasp would go into the fig, and then it would lose its wings when it enters the fig – which is also very poetic – and then it would lay the eggs inside the fig, and it would die inside. When the when the eggs hatch, the new wasps go out covered with pollen and then they would go into another fig and do the same thing and that’s how the fig would pollinate.
Victor: You reference the poem that talks about the “men of song” – as in music? Did you feel any personal inspiration behind that being one of the aforementioned “men of song?”
Omer: Yeah, I felt this kind of relatability to the way that I work. There is always something that I try to achieve which is unachievable. It’s kind of a romantic idea, right, like this aspiration to something which is transcendent?
Victor: I guess that kind of just bleeds into my next question, about the inspiration for the piece. I want to circle back – you said you already composed a song cycle about this. Did it relate to this resulting work at all?
Omer: In a way, yes. The song cycle was of different poems by the same poet; it wasn’t that particular poem. There is one technical aspect which is kind of related – in that song cycle, which was my thesis piece for when I did my masters at McGill, it was kind of based on this idea of the large scale form: slow interpolation between a chord that symbolizes heaven and a chord that symbolizes Earth. In fact, these chords were created by analysis that I did on the poet’s voice when he recited these words in Hebrew: shamayim, which is heaven, and aretz, which is Earth. I analyzed his voice reciting these words, extracted different partials from that, and the way the piece was constructed, each poem was based on a chord that was kind of a snapshot of this interpolation, like one point along this very long transformation. In that song cycle, the song that was in the middle – there are eleven songs, so the sixth song – was based on this middle chord which was the precise center of this long process between Heaven and Earth. And this chord I used in the piece Te’ena.
There is this moment when I tried to emulate this feeling of getting into the fig like the wasp. In the music, it’s very static, so there is a huge friction, you know, with the strings playing scratch tones and a lot of noise which is supposed to emulate the penetration into the fig. After that, you enter this space which is very static – the harmony of that space in which you are is just one chord. Sounds are moving around in the electronics, so there is some kind of movement, but in terms of harmony it’s completely still. So, in Te’ena, you have this moment in which you enter into the fig, and this idea of being inside something, or in the middle of something, for that I used that chord from the song cycle, that represents the middle. That was a way for me to bind together these two pieces compositionally.
Victor: I think I remember that moment in the work. It was really distinctive, where I kind of like – I felt that whole thing spinning around me, as if like of the moment of immersion.
Omer: Yes, exactly.
Victor: I did want to ask you about how you treat electronics. First of all, the instrumental parts of this work, you integrate everything so well into this uniform texture. It’s very difficult – I mean this in the best way possible – to pick out individual instruments sometimes, because everything is just so unified, playing with timbre really well, and sometimes the electronics very subtly blends into it. And to me, that moment we were referring to is the first time I heard the electronics really pop out and it was a really effective moment. I guess I want to ask more about electronics and how you approach them, what your philosophy is. What kind of role do you want them to play within the rest of the ensemble?
Omer: It’s a good question. So, this was my first piece that I did for more than one instrument and electronics. I was kind of ambitious – in some cases in the piece maybe unnecessarily complicated. But it was a great lesson. I would say the electronics play two main roles. There are a lot of field recordings in the electronics that I took back in my village, my hometown in Israel. There are a lot of fig trees there where I grew up, and I just took a recording device and went to an open an open area in the countryside where you had a couple of fig trees, and I just recorded what was happening around. So, you hear a lot of birds and some leaves rustling. One role of the electronics would be really to give this kind of a space – it’s both these concrete spaces, like the actual surrounding of the fig trees, but also in that moment when the electronics are surrounding you, so it also gives you a space which is a bit more abstract. And then, there would also be more particular processing of the instrumental sounds in real time, which are kind of basic – some ring modulations and microtonal inflections of some pitches. And I think you are right when you when you identify this as an enrichment of the timbre of the orchestration; so, in these places, the electronics is more of an orchestrational device, I would say, but then you have also these more compositionally important roles like being the space in which you are placed.
Victor: It’s always that age old question, right? It’s how you take something as distinctive as electronics and how do you integrate that with the rest of an ensemble. And the role you took seems to be is to integrate it as one of the members, have it synergized as much as you can with the rest of the ensemble. Is that accurate?
Omer: Yes, I think so. I mean, even when I treat the electronics as kind of providing the space. So you have, for example, when you hear the birds in the electronics, the instruments are also participating; they’re mimicking these birds. So yes – there is this idea of blending, which I find also quite romantic, actually.
Victor: I also noticed throughout the work, you have some spoken word – is it mainly in the flute?
Omer: So, the flute has some spoken passages, you’re right. In this piece, I kind of gave some instruments an almost dramaturgical role. For example, the bassoon is serving as the wasp.
Victor: You even tell [the bassoonist] to dismantle the bassoon at some point, right?
Omer: Exactly, so that was in fact just the way to a way to describe this process of the wasp losing its wings. It loses some part of its body. And when [the bassoon] was still fully connected, I asked the bassoonist to put some aluminum foil so it buzzes a bit, like the wings of an insect. So, in a similar manner, also the flute gets this role, kind of alluring the wasp into the fig, being this voice that calls the wasp, or by analogy, a muse calling the artist into the space of their creation.
This is the text in the flute. It’s a text that I wrote, but it’s not really meant to be very intelligible. The words are something like: “Yes, go inside, more red.” And most of it I was interested in how this kind of speech-like sound, and the electronics also amplifying this, how it can create this alluring sensation, even if it’s not really intelligible.
Victor: Yeah, you’re right – it is subtle. If you’re not listening for it, it might just pass you by and I think that was also really effective. It plays into your theme about electronics and just the general integration of everything. On a personal note, I will say I think that was one of the most well-done parts of the work. Being able to integrate this kind of spoken text and a theme to it without it somehow taking over to be the main character, because you really don’t want it to be, right? It’s not a vocal work – you have it somehow serve a timbral function while being text, and that was actually quite remarkable in my opinion. Was that your intention?
Omer: I would say so, yeah. I think it’s true, when you have a text, when you have the human voice in music, to me [it] always draws the attention, like a huge focus. Sometimes you have these pieces that you could see that the aim is to integrate the voice like a singer within the texture of the ensemble, but to me, this never works unfortunately. I’m always drawn too much to the voice to perceive it as something equal to the other things, so yeah, in this case I was taking one of the of the musicians from the ensemble, so it’s a bit more subdued somehow.
Victor: Balancing the roles with their instrumental duties. I also noticed in the strings – not words, but are those phonemes?
Omer: Oh yeah, that’s true, I asked the string players to growl. And when I was working on this piece with Ensemble Modern, some of them were quite annoyed, because you know, well, growling is difficult. It can also harm your vocal cords. Some of them did it amazingly well, and you have to overcome the instrumental sound which is amplified. Also, there was never the intention that, “oh now we hear someone singing or growling,” it was always within the intention to kind of augment the timbre of the instrument, so always when they growl, or have this – I think I also ask for vocal fry – it’s always when they play quite similar gestures in the instruments, so when they have this in the voice, it’s always with this kind of grainy overpressure with a bow.
Victor: It’s so subtle that I didn’t realize it until I looked at the score! Like, “wait a minute, did I just hear that or was it something outside? Is someone telling me to ‘come in?’” In the context of the piece, everything seems just well balanced and nothing like overblown or out of place, and if that really was your aim, then bravo. I really think it was impressive.
Last question. Do you think you can talk about your experience working with the IME?
Omer: Yes, it was a wonderful experience. And I must admit I was very anxious before coming. You know, a student ensemble, some of them it’s their first time playing this kind of music, some of them it was their first time playing the instruments that I wrote. For example, there is a contrabass clarinet in this, and the clarinetist [Chandler Cleric] was amazingly open and willing to do it. It’s a heavy part for the contrabass clarinet, and he did it wonderfully. And you know, so many of the musicians were so open and eager. It was a wonderful experience – all of my concerns completely disappeared when I met the people. And of course, Steve [Taylor] was so engaged and so professional. And also, lastly, I have to acknowledge the help of Graham [Duncan] and Karen [Blackall]. They were amazing, you know, because it’s a very heavy setup of electronics – we have 12 instruments, and each one of them is amplified separately, and we have eight speakers around the audience which has to be perfectly calibrated, so you hear all of the movement around the audience. And we just took the entire day on the day of the concert; Graham and Karen were just there very patiently helping me, and I couldn’t have asked for a better support for this. It was really wonderful. And of course, meeting Chris [Fisher-Lochhead] and Daniel [Fawcett], the other two prize winners, it was very lovely and enriching and I learned a lot from them, too. It was a very enjoyable couple of days.
Te’ena and Omer’s other works can be found on his personal website.
Photo credit to Laura Mykolaitytė.