Collaborative creativity through analysis and experimentation: bringing the serpent into the twenty-first century
The concept of new music for old instruments is not, in itself, new. Since the expressionist and modernist eras, composers have been experimenting with instruments from previous generations from Leoš Janáček with the viola d’amore to Iannis Xenakis with the harpsichord. However, such explorations have rarely encountered the brass family of instruments, in any case commonly the last instrumental grouping encountered during a composer’s training. The tuba family, as the youngest member of this grouping, is both under-explored and ill-defined, placing it in a particularly extreme position. Nevertheless, the historical predecessors to the tuba, the serpent and bass horn, present sonic resources which cannot be recreated by any modern instrument. This lecture recital explores how acoustic analysis and codification can provide both composers and performers with a means of creative engagement with historical low-brass instruments.
The serpent is a medieval instrument, one which pre-dates mechanical pitch change mechanisms, therefore only utilising finger-covered tone holes. Tone holes act as high-pass filters, the effectiveness of which depend broadly upon the ratio of tone-hole diameter to corresponding bore size of the tube. They are therefore effective when used with narrower bore instruments such as the cornetto or recorder, yet the serpent arose following discovery that in order to create powerful lower resonances, an aerophone’s tube needs to be not only long but also wide. The serpent therefore has a wide, conical bore, but must be controlled by tone holes which have to be reached by groups of fingers, and covered by the finger tips. Mitigation of this situation arrived around the turn of the nineteenth century when instruments were arranged in an upright form and utilised proportionally larger tone holes covered by keys, creating instruments known today as bass horns. However, this development was driven primarily by attempts to improve stability of intonation, ergonomics, and volume, often with limited consideration of the unique timbral resources presented by the serpent.
What might these instruments offer composers and performers today, given, for example, that their idiosyncrasies traditionally seen as detrimental to production of stable equally-tempered pitch material could potentially be exploited as creative impulses for particular aesthetic directions? Such explorations require a degree of organological separation from historical contexts in order to provide a means of external analysis that can build upon a performer’s haptic feedback. Consideration of a musical instrument as an air-containing body able for manipulation can allow for nuance and experimentation with sound production, encouraging composers inclined to write for a performer rather than an instrument to allow their sonic resources to be defined by acoustic components rather than the abilities of one particular musician. This paper will present resources that I have produced which utilise acoustic analysis and quantitative organology alongside experimental data, demonstrating a sustainable practice method which promotes an experimental approach to historicism, respecting cultural heritage by using it as a lens through which one can view the present and future. These will be illustrated through performance of a recently commissioned composition for serpent from Lisbon-based composer Athena Corcoran-Tadd.
Keywords: new music, historical performance, composition, organology, analysis
Biography
Jack Adler-McKean is a performer-researcher promoting the tuba family through collaborations with ensembles, composers, and academic institutions. Recent artistic projects include ensemble performances with Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, music theatre productions on stage at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Luzerner Theater, chamber music performances at the Pierre Boulez Saal and Elbphilharmonie, collaborations on new solo works with Sarah Nemstov and George Lewis, premières at the BBC Proms and Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and recitals in Rome and Buenos Aires. His first book The Playing Techniques of the Tuba was published by Bärenreiter in 2020, while other writings have been featured in the Historic Brass Society Journal and Oxford Handbook of Wind Instruments, as well as the journals TEMPO and Music and Letters. He was awarded his PhD in 2023 from the Royal Northern College of Music, and in February 2024 was appointed post-doctorate researcher at Lunds Universitet / Musikhögskolan i Malmö.
Lund University, Sweden – jackamck@hotmail.com