During the pandemic, the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound has commissioned a series of online works called Video Chat Variations that take advantage of the medium’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. John Fitz Rogers’s Respiration is a recent commission that will be available on Alarm Will Sound’s YouTube channel on March 30th at 11am EDT. The work was premiered on February 19, 2021 as part of a livestream broadcast on the University of South Carolina’s Southern Exposure New Music Series, directed by Michael Harley, who teaches at UofSC and is also Alarm Will Sound’s bassoonist. The work was performed and recorded in real time by the ensemble, conducted by the group’s artistic director Alan Pierson, using Jamulus (a software program that reduces latency) for audio and Zoom for video.

Of Respiration, Rogers writes, “In reflecting on the turbulence of this past year, I was struck by how breath seems like a unifying theme for so many of our urgent challenges: from a global respiratory pandemic to the ways in which individuals, democracy, and our entire planet struggle to breathe. In addition to the common meaning of respiration, older meanings of respire include ‘to oppose or object to,’ ‘to recover hope, courage, or strength,’ and to ‘rest from toil or exertion.’ All these meanings seem appropriate to the time and find echoes in the piece.”

Alarm Will Sound’s entire series of Video Chat Variations, including works by Meredith Monk and Tyshawn Sorey, are available on their YouTube channel.

Michael Harley: John, talk about the highly unusual obstacles you faced writing Respiration and how they affected your thought process as a composer.

John Fitz Rogers: I start any piece by asking questions: What is this idea? What is the medium? How do the sounds fit together? But composing Respiration presented entirely new challenges and questions: How will the players coordinate if they’re located thousands of miles apart and can’t see or hear each other predictably? What’s possible when rehearsing and recording together in real time over the internet? After talking with you and Alan [Alan Pierson, Alarm Will Sound Artistic Director], I just sketched ideas for a long time trying to find my way and trying to figure out how the notation might work. I also faced unfamiliar creative limits. Any creative endeavor involves limits of some kind—artists need to figure what they won’t do as much as what they will do. Those limits are sometimes driven by technology, whether composing for the 18th century technology of a piano or the modern technology of the internet. But I’ve never written a piece in which rhythmic coordination was impossible and even listening was problematic. That certainly put me in an unusual creative box.

MH: Speaking of rhythm, you are known, at least in part, for writing intricately coordinated music – readers might check out, for example, your much-played percussion duo Once Removed or your bassoon quartet Come Closer. Because of the confines of this internet medium, you simply could not write fast, interlocking, rhythmic music, at least not in the traditional sense. Yet Respiration does not always feel slow or ambient; at times it bustles with energy and drama. How were you able to achieve so much motion, energy, and speed in the work’s climactic moments?

JFR: I knew I wanted to have a long dramatic arc to the piece—something that feels like a few large breaths. But I also wanted movement and direction within smaller sections. One thing I realized was that performers could hear each other better than they could see each other. So, if an instrument like the piano plays fast regular rhythms, other instruments can react to it and also play fast music even if they’re not precisely coordinated. Another strategy was to include written directions in the music; sometimes those directions specify lots of activity. In Respiration, a measure of music usually indicates a span of time—say, 8-15 seconds—rather than a traditional bar with a time signature. The conductor indicates when to move to the next measure, but a key to coordinating the move is an audible cue for players to latch on to. For example, the conductor might signal the oboe to play three steady notes before landing on the downbeat of the next measure. Those three notes act as a sonic heads up for the other performers. Finally, I ask the conductor to use conduction—a kind of guided improvisation in which a conductor uses physical gestures to shape musical gestures—to help create waves of sound in certain spots. These strategies give the conductor some creative control over energy, pacing, and flow.

MH: I remember you telling me that this would not be a piece I’d have to practice in a traditional way, but it would be music I’d need to study and internalize. I found that advice to be 100% accurate: I had to spend some quality time thinking about and imaging how to realize the detailed text that accompanied nearly every gesture in the piece. Did the players’ interpretations of these ideas generally match what you had in mind?

JFR: Absolutely! Because of the open nature of Respiration, it was impossible for me to improvise on my piano exactly how everything would sound together; I simply had to imagine the sounds and combinations. So, I was elated when everything I wrote worked nearly as imagined after we discussed things in rehearsal.

MH: Respiration relies on all of the players to improvise, but within very controlled harmonic and melodic constraints – everyone clearly knows their role (soloist, duo partners, harmonic accompaniment, drone, etc.) and what pitch collections to choose from at any given moment. Can you talk about the role improv plays in the piece? Did you feel comfortable trusting a bunch of classical musicians to improvise?

JFR: To be creative, we have to make choices, and to make choices, we have to have a framework. When jazz musicians improvise using a lead sheet, the chords help frame their melodic and harmonic choices. Likewise, all the harmonies in Respiration are specified, but rather than using chord symbols, I put pitches in rectangular boxes and say, “use these notes in this way.” Also, I don’t really buy into a distinction between “composers” and “performers.” All humans are profoundly creative, but unfortunately, in classical music we often get slotted into narrow roles of composer, performer, improviser, etc. Nevertheless, if you ask a classical musician who’s not used to improvising to improvise, that person might have a hard time without some guidance. In writing for Alarm Will Sound, though, I knew that you’re all amazing musicians who are comfortable improvising and trying new things. I simply needed to find the right creative framework. It’s easy to trust musicians when they’re sensitive artists who care about the process.

MH: Did any specific pieces provide artistic inspiration? Alan Pierson mentioned a connection he feels between your piece and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, in part perhaps because of the breath-long swells in the voices and woodwinds that pervade Music for 18 and the way your music similarly ebbs and flows and breathes.

JFR: I wasn’t inspired by any particular piece, although I did consider the breath-like phrases of Music for 18 Musicians and its use of the Vibraphone as a way to cue performers to move to new sections. But that piece is completely centered on pulse and interlocking rhythms—something not possible in this context. Alan did make an interesting connection between both works in that my piece feels a little like it’s in an oral tradition of music-making in the way Music for 18 Musicians existed as an oral piece without a fixed score for its first twenty years. The written directions in Respiration help describe what’s happening, but the improvisations and pacing need to be heard, discussed, and worked out in rehearsal. I did think a lot about jazz and the idea of conversation and communication, and also thought about Duke Ellington and how he composed for specific musicians in his orchestra. I’ve always loved composing that way and tried to write with the many strengths of Alarm Will Sound and its musicians in mind.

MH: My sense as a player—and I think this is something listeners can sense as well—was that in the midst of performing Respiration, it felt at times like the group was a giant organism, breathing together, swelling and receding in a beautiful, organic way. How does the music manage to achieve this?

JFR: I’m glad you felt this way because that’s what I was going for. One of my goals was to create a work that fosters a sense of community among the players and the audience—that we’re breathing together, in a sense. We’ve all endured so much isolation this past year that it was important to me to try to use this medium to create connection, and nothing is more fundamental than breath. The piece reflects various ideas of “respiration” at many levels, from individual notes to long sections. 

MH: What are some things you learned about yourself as a composer from the process of writing Respiration?

JFR: For a long time, I’ve focused on pulse and rhythm. As you know, having performed my bassoon quartet Come Closer, I’ve written a few pieces that use multiple click-tracks to create tapestries of rhythms that would be impossible to perform if not for the technology. To successfully play these pieces, performers must focus on aligning with a metronome in their headphones and not listen to the other players. For me, that’s a particular kind of ensemble as well as a commentary on technology. The click-tracks create new ensemble possibilities yet isolate players from one another. With Respiration, I also used technology to create new ensemble possibilities, but in this case, sought to create a work that encourages performers to try to listen intensely to one another without pulse as a common reference. What I realized in composing the piece is that I’m less concerned with rhythm than with community. Although pulse can bring people together, it is only one way. And music is ultimately about all kinds of connections, even if the only way we can connect right now is at a distance.

JOHN FITZ ROGERS

Composer John Fitz Rogers's music has been performed by ensembles, festivals, and venues such as Bang on a Can Marathon, Third Coast Percussion, Louisville Symphony, American Modern Ensemble, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Cortona New Music Sessions, Musiqa, Composers, Inc., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the World Saxophone Congress, the Capitol Quartet, and many more. He has received commissions, fellowships, and awards from ASCAP, the New York Youth Symphony, Eastman Wind Ensemble, South Carolina Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, New Music USA, American Composers Forum, MATA and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, National Flute Association, MacDowell Colony, South Carolina Arts Commission, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Heckscher Foundation Composition Prize. Rogers is a Professor of Composition at the University of South Carolina and faculty in the music composition program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. 

MICHAEL HARLEY

Michael Harley teaches bassoon and chamber music and directs the award-winning Southern Exposure New Music Series at the University of South Carolina. He is a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, called “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” (New York Times), as well as the all-bassoon groups Dark in the Song and the Rushes Ensemble. Harley has worked with and helped premiere pieces by some of today’s most accomplished composers, including John Adams, John Luther Adams, Derek Bermel, Donnacha Dennehy, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, and Augusta Read Thomas. He gave the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Reliable Sources, a concerto for bassoon and winds. His students have gone on to study at some of the world’s top conservatories and have found jobs in orchestras, colleges and universities, and the music industry.

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