Musical Analysis: Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Charles Dodge
(prepared by Scott Douglass, a senior Music Major at Dartmouth College)
These four études were written in between 1992 and 1993 when the composer’s son Baird, a violist and violinist with the Chicago Symphony, asked his father to compose a piece for him. The story goes that, way back when Baird was just entering college, his father got stuck for a violist. He’d written a piece for viola and tape in the late ‘80s and was preparing for its performance, but no violist could be found. Charles thought to ask his son, and was extremely impressed with the results. When the time came in the early ‘90s to finally record the piece, Baird got that job, too. Charles said, “And boy, he just did an amazing…he came to that recording session so well prepared. He played it so well in tune with such understanding. It was really impressive.” Then, after those first few years of apprenticeship, Baird asked his father to write him some violin pieces, just like he would do occasionally when he son was child. These four études were the result, and as Charles says, “I’m ready to write some more.” Look for them in the distant future on a CD entitled, “Dodge Plays Dodge.”
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The first Étude for Violin and Tape (for Baird) is a microcosm of Charles Dodge’s style and technique as a composer, not to mention a window into his personality and attitudes about music and living. It is straightforward, not at all flashy. Consider the classic Kreutzer études for violin as the complete foil to this piece. The kind of virtuosity-in-training on display here is a subdued and deeply spiritual connection with sound, intonation, resonance, and space. This piece isn’t about learning your notes, scales, and arpeggios. It’s about learning how to make music. Charles himself described the process of teaching his son about performing:
He would be playing his piece and he and I would talk about the pieces. And then when he started playing live, he was in college. And then we could really talk about how…because I knew how that was achieved. We could really talk about how to make his violin playing more effective…He was a little stiff and I could show him how if he moved he could make the music speak a little more naturally. Stuff like that. You know, nothing profound.
Yes, Charles, perhaps nothing profound to you. He takes certain attitudes for granted. Like toiling one’s whole life on a labor of love and never feeling entitled to fame and fortune, never allowing oneself to become bitter about the odds stacked against creating music that is truly personal, like our own voice.
Which brings up my last point, the voice. Every instrument is a substitution for the human voice. And in the larger part of Charles’s work his passion for synthesizing and musically manipulating the sounds of the human voice is the driving force. I think that same passion shines through his Études for Violin and Tape; namely, to bridge the gap between man and machine, and then, in the process, to speak through a voice that is wholly new. Playing through these études, one learns to sing through an instrument, a machine, and to speak softly but powerfully, with warmth and human dignity, over the industrious noise-making that almost always surrounds us.
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A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The blissful journey through Charles Dodge’s Études begins with a single note. In fact, it begins with one of the lowest notes on a violin capable of being vibrated (articulated with vibrato, that is)—an A natural below middle C. The note is one whole step from the lowest open string of the violin. It is also the foundation of our system of equal temperament. The famed A 440, a specified frequency that regulates our whole musical apparatus. Or does it? Dodge’s études are written using just intonation, an ancient system of tuning intervals by the harmonic series that pre-dates our most widely used system of equal temperament. Equal temperament was still a new idea in the time of J.S. Bach.
So Dodge begins logically with this important note, commonly used to tune all the instruments in equal temperament, but here stated as a foundation for a new kind of harmonic excursion. Even this one note speaks deeply and musically in Dodge’s capable hands. It is held a full eight beats, vibrated, caressed. It has life. It begins as a whisper, and grows to an audible speech, and dies away again. Then it is time for the dance.
After the opening A in the violin, the tape begins on the same note an octave higher. The parts begin with this gulf between them, both an intervalic and a timbral gulf as wide as you can get in music. But even within these first few lines of music we are given the entire meaning of the étude. First, the violin alone exists and is perfect. Then enters the computer and the two voices are divided. Then, within the first two lines of the duet, the two voices come together harmonically and timbrally. The violin climbs by leaps from the low A to F to Eb and finally comes to rest on Eb an octave higher. Simultaneously the computer glissandos from its beginning A up to high F (paired with the violin’s Eb) and comes to rest on exactly the same note at phrase’s end, high high Eb. The note both players reach here is symbolic—a tritone, one of the most powerful, beguiling, misused and misunderstood intervals in music. It divides the octave in half and it defines the unique shape of our Major scale. And here it provides a high point of agreement between two very different voices at the opening of our piece.
(page 1, opening lines, from Charles Dodge’s Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Number 1
Another Dodgian technique is in evidence here, in the way he paints the same pitch with different strokes. Just as we had at first a single A, then that same A doubled by the computer at the octave for a totally different sound; then we have the high Eb doubled, then the violin plays it as an octave double stop, then at a fourth double stop, always with Eb on top, always with Eb sustained in the computer voice. It feels like a huge change, a tempo or meter shift, or a modulation even, but he does it so subtly. And then the violin fades away dynamically while the computer falls back down again by glissando to a new lower level of stability.
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The next phrase of the étude, markedly longer, explores the low range of the violin, almost in inversion to the first phrase. The violin begins a half step lower than it began the piece, now on low G#. The computer tone is still falling, not yet stable, but on its way to the same pitch an octave higher. But now it is delayed slightly, not matching the violin in unison, as in a canon or a round. The violin has a beguiling melody, low and mournful, constructed with a rising minor third and descending half step. The melody is imitated in the computer, except it is one note behind. The pushing and pulling between the two, the deep and rich vibrato of the violin, and the soft and slow glissandos of the computer’s pitch endow this short, simple phrase with profound meaning (despite the author’s claims against such grandeur!)
The middle of this section comes to rest, in both parts, on B. The violin explores both its low and mid-range incarnations of the note, as well as coloring it with octave double stops, artificial harmonics (doubling the note thus at an interval of two octaves), a diminuendo and crescendo, and alternation of vibrated and vibratoless tone. B has never been so alive in our ears, or in a violinist’s hands—which is exactly the point of the étude.
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After a transitional passage of glissandos from low B to mid-range G# and up to B an octave higher, we slide in pitch up to the next section of our piece. We shall take an excursion that leads us to the highest reaches from where we started, and then takes us right back home again—to A, or point A, as we may well call it.
This third segment extends even longer than the first two. It begins at the bottom of page 2 of the piece, where the violin makes a distinct move from exploring the lower and low-mid range to exploring the middle and high ranges. The pitches that will be of interest to us in this section are chosen by Dodge to suggest our return home, and to artfully elude it for as long as possible. A being our home, it is led up to, in the upper range this time, by step from E#, F#, G, and G#. The computer and violin are in unison here, as we move onto the third page. A climax is reached, or initiated, rather, when our pair finally do make it to high A, but swiftly and instantly glissando up to a dizzyingly high Bb. The twist is torturously suggestive of being so close and yet so far. And the violin doubles the Bb at an octave lower, as if reaching for the A that had just been reached but had slipped away.
(page 3, climactic phrase approaching high A, from Charles Dodge’s Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Number 1
The climax dies away with a pained diminuendo as if hope of returning home has been lost. The computer takes it over from the silent violin, descending first one small, tentative step at a time. As if inspired by his companion, the violin reenters the fray and delicated climbs downward alongside the computer. By the bottom of the third page, the two have gotten bold again and leap downward at wide intervals. They settle on G#, an octave apart, just as they began the phrase, and also seductively close to home—an interval of a major seventh, the inverted half-step, and as deeply significant as the tritone. It is no mistake, either, no tease. We are given the resolution we had hoped for. Our cybernetic pair gliss in octaves to our desired goal, sink away in volume, and then it is given to the violin to fall back an octave to our original low A—the beginning of time, as far as this étude is concerned.
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Once home has been reached, the computer takes a short solo excursion, perhaps walking through the old stomping grounds again, while the violin sleeps peacefully satisfied.
With slow and steady breathing, and a deep sense of belonging and rightness, the computer’s high A softly slips down a step and a third, never rushing, just going exactly where it intends to go. After E, the dominant note in A’s panoply, is settled upon, the computer seems happy to return slowly back to where the violin is sleeping and begin another phase together.
(page 4, computer solo, from Charles Dodge’s Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Number 1
At this point it seems both parties are ready to find adventure enough in point A, where everything begins. They begin to explore its different meanings. When the violin reenters on low A, it is given a sharp and bitter note by the computers accompanying G#. Then the pair do a pas de deux and exchange places, the violin singing of G# while the computer hums A an octave and a step above. Having had enough of this play, the violin leaps that wide interval to join the computer on high A, two octaves from our beginning low point. Then the violin treats our A to various permutations while the computer meanders beneath it all. We are given octave doubling, low A with the fourth double-stopped above, high A with a fifth below, a tritone below, and a minor third below. The computer mounts from A to high E a fifth above to high high A in the stratosphere. By the time F# is surrounding A in both the violin and computer, the violin drops out with the double-stops and the closing section is begun.
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The closing phrases of the étude seem to suggest a new direction for our two parties. We have ventured abroad, sought adventure, and found it. And we have returned home again happy. But the closing phrases are neither home nor adventure. They are, rather, a sort of transformation, a change to something entirely new. Of course, in the work of Charles Dodge, one comes to expect such natural progressions through the life of his sounds. We follow them like a parent would; like the parent Charles is, one who has written music for his son Baird since his son was just a boy. And now perhaps he sees him in a new light, on the verge of growth and transformation. On the verge of maturity.
The change occurs, as I have pointed out, at the bottom of page 5. We have not left home, but our home suddenly changes meaning, even at fundamental levels like in its color and pitch. The violin stops its exploration of A and drops to a mezzoforte G in the mellow mid-range. Soon F#’s are predominating in both parts and we see that things will never be the same again. As the computer rises to a super high G, the violin leaps a seventh and then a step, and finally by a great octave to join it. Now when Eb enters in the computer’s tone, as it did at the beginning, the dissonant tritone is not produced. We are at a new level of agreement and understanding, a new level of musical maturity. As the computer fades out, the violin voices its accord with the couple’s new status, descending first to a mellower, softer G, and then voicing G and Eb as a beautiful major third, double-stopped.
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(page 5, beginning of the end, from Charles Dodge’s Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Number 1
(page 6, conclusion, from Charles Dodge’s Études for Violin and Tape (for Baird)—Number 1