The Colour “Fresh”: Timbre in Intermezzo no. 1 — Yinam Leef
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The Colour “Fresh”: Timbre in Intermezzo no. 1 — Yinam Leef
Amazing Moments in Timbre | Timbre and Orchestration Writings
by Omer Barash
Published: February 20th, 202o
Let us listen to the first of six Intermezzi for ensemble by Israeli composer Yinam Leef:
No doubt, a stirring sense of vitality captures you from the very first moment of this miniature. But what is it that is so captivating about this Intermezzo? Clearly, the composer focuses our attention on a very particular technique of orchestration that he uses throughout. Nevertheless, we don’t get tired of it: it stays fresh long after we recognize this particular orchestration as a main expressive element.
Seemingly, the piano’s timbre stands in the foreground of the texture, while the other instruments’ lines serve as its augmentation – that is, the combination of lines sounds primarily like a piano, but with an added quality.[1] The accumulation of these lines into a chord causes the unfolding of what Leef calls a “sound fan”, in which the melodic content is also the harmonic one, gradually revealed as the melody evolves.
Figure 1 (below) shows the first three “fans” of the piece. Each augmented pitch is highlighted with a different colour, and pitch-colour couples remain throughout (e.g., D is dark-blue in m. 1 as well as in m. 7).
We can see that most of the time, each piano note is augmented by at least two, emergent timbres – that is, by instruments that their blend creates a new timbre altogether.[2] We can also see that Leef assigns at least one wind instrument and one string instrument to each augmentation. Thus, the emergent timbre is always appealing: it is never just “stringy” nor “windy”. Notice also, that recurring pitches are never orchestrated twice the same. This makes the pitches sound fresh on every appearance.
Another timbral contribution to the piece’s general freshness is the fact that the augmentation of the piano develops in ways impossible for the piano alone, featuring crescendi on single notes and glissandi. Thus, the overall timbre sounds like that of a new instrument: it has the attack of a piano, with an impossible sound envelope and bending of pitch. The emergence of augmenting instruments enhances the ambiguous identity of this “impossible piano”: no single note is a separable combination of the “head” of a piano and the “tail” of a clarinet; but rather, each note is an organic “phoneme” of a sound fan.
In some cases, individual phonemes change their timbre, as some of the augmenting lines take off to other pitches, while other lines take their place. Let’s examine the tone of G-sharp that is continuously present in mm. 3-5. It starts on the fourth eighth-note of m. 3 with the piano, clarinet, and viola. Then, on the last eighth-note of the bar, the viola takes off (notice that the piano sound is still present due to the use of pedal). While the piano sound naturally decays, the clarinet sound rises, until, at the end of m. 4, the piano strikes again – this time augmented by the viola and the cello – and soon the viola takes off once again. Thus, the G-sharp is continuously revived, making the sound fans “shimmer” with different shades and creating a Klangfarbenmelodie.
Another interesting thing occurs in this part of the piece, in the middle of m. 4: for the first time, there is an ornamental deviation from the strict “unfolding of the fan”, and an independent melodic line appears in the flute. It is a fleeting yet significant moment. Probably, the most noticeable part of it is the A in the last triplet of the second beat, since it is the only note of this ornament that is not already being played by another instrument. However, the alert listener will notice that this ornament is heard as a whole – not quite on the surface, though, but rather like a thickening, or embossment, of the already-present sounds. To phrase it more technically, the flute augments the already-emergent tones. Looked upon from a different perspective, this ornament is also an expression of heterophony, a kind of texture that Leef explores in a considerable share of his oeuvre.[3]
In this game of tone-colours, where pitches are passed around the group in a kind of ball game, each player gives a unique, not easily deciphered timbre to the pitches they "catch". The game is fast-moving but never frantic, allowing us listeners to indulge in the anticipation and surprise of every “pass of the ball”.
Figure 1 – First three “sound fans” of Intermezzo no. 1. Each pitch is assigned a different colour (used with the kind permission of the composer)
Yinam Leef (b. 1953) is an Israeli composer and the president of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He studied with Mark Kopytman at the Jerusalem Academy, with Luciano Berio at Tanglewood and with George Crumb, Richard Wernick, and George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania. His style may be described as integrating Jewish and middle-eastern elements into post-serial expressionism. His works reflect high awareness and careful treatment of the interrelationships between the expressivity of melodic lines, timbre, harmonic infrastructure, and overall form. The author of this article was a student of Prof. Leef between 2015 and 2017.
[1]Sandell, Gregory J., “Roles for Spectral Centroid and Other Factors in Determining ‘Blended’ Instrument Pairings in Orchestration,” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13, no. 2 (1995): 209-46, accessed February 5, 2020, doi:10.2307/40285694.
[2] Ibid.
[3] For more explicit examples, see: Intermezzo no. 4 from this collection, T’fila for three violins.
By Omer Barash