This is an interview with William Moersch about the commissioning, practicing and performing of Reflections on the Nature of Water.
Review of the composition.
Review of the composition.
The article is his preparation for a master class at a percussion conference. The documents provides mostly errata from the first edition of the score.
MacDonald provides an insight in his personal discoveries when he practiced and performed the composition. These are interesting remarks, but are not intended as an in-depth analysis of the piece. MacDonald combines his interpretation and ideas with set theory and jazz harmony, but he doesn’t link them to Debussy’s repertoire.
MacDonald applies set theory analysis to the composition. This is interesting from a musicological perspective, but the difficulty of set theory risks to complicate the comprehension of the music in function of a performance. Using a more accessible and intuitive analysis method might facilitate a faster learning process and a deeper comprehension of the structure of the score for the performer.
However, MacDonald’s text does point out that the composition of some of the chords are build up in a similar way, so a combination of this insight with our own insights can be beneficial for the comprehension of the text. But the use of set theory could be avoided, since most of the harmony is based on stacked fifth chords in a four-note chord form, referring to Debussy’s harmony. The assembling of all accentuated notes into one octave following set theory is interesting, but it’s practical purpose remains unclear. Nevertheless, his musical interpretation can be inspiring for students that are practicing the piece.
Interesting document, especially since it documents well the initiation of the ‘1986 National Endowment for the Arts Solo Marimba Commissioning Project,' a project initiated by pioneer percussionists William Moersch, Gordon Stout and Leigh Howard Stevens. The resulting pieces were: Reflections on the Nature of Water by Jacob Druckman, Velocities by Joseph Schwantner, and Islands from Archipelago: Autumn Island by Roger Reynolds.
It also provides a clear emancipatory history of the marimba as a solo instrument, with interesting insights on the instrumental development and manufacturing towards a 5-octave instrument, based on personal wishes of performers, more than composers.
We personally find it extremely interesting how the repertoire for the marimba evolved from serious commissioning in the 70s and 80s with pioneers as Keiko Abe and William Moersch (still with mostly largely unknown composers, with some exceptions), towards a self-sustaining instrumental bubble that largely functions on ‘marimbists-for-marimbists’ repertoire that is to our opinion artistically uninteresting and non-defendable. This must have its roots in the inherent inertia of the instrument and the very limited possibilities it has to offer to serious composers.
The bibliography at the end of the dissertation is very complete and interesting research material.Interesting document, especially since the author Daniel Druckman is the son of Jacob Druckman, and evidently collaborated closely with the composer on the piece. Next to this fact, being head of faculty at The Juillard School, he is probably the teacher that taught the most teaching sessions on this piece in the world, so his input is extremely valuable. Daniel Druckman’s approach is twofold in this book: on the one hand he gives valuable technical insights, provides personal stickings for some difficult passages, has a lot of attention for rhythmic, dynamic, articulation and tempo precision and discipline in the execution of the piece, and provides corrections for printing mistakes (both personal and factual). On the other hand this ‘master class’ book provides personal musical insights and interpretative solutions.
Of course the content is valuable, since it is a quasi-direct source to the composer. However, sometimes the author’s approach seems to be problematic, since he often uses the words ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘imperative’, etc., when describing how to practice and how to interpret the different parts of the piece. It seems there is very little place for personal interpretation for the student that uses this book, and, at the same time a lot of the interpretative comments seem evident and unnecessary. Another issue in this master class is the preface by Daniel Druckman, stating the title ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ refers to ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ by Claude Debussy. Etymologically, the use of ‘Reflets’ in the context of Debussy and ‘Reflections’ in the context of Druckman, have two different roots: ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ in French means physical reflections one can perceive looking into the surface of water. Of course this can lead to more philosophical reflections depending on what one sees, but the expression as used means the physical phenomenon of a reflection seen in water. ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ expresses a reflection ON something, so it evokes thoughts that one might have when reflecting upon the different natures water can take as a natural element. Of course, the compositional language of ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ by Claude Debussy is very similar to his ‘Preludes’, so there is a compositional influence. But we strongly believe that ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ is based on the ‘Preludes’, also because William Moersch states in his articles and interviews that Druckman intended to initially compose 12 parts for ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’.
We think this book is a valuable asset for students that already practiced the composition in detail and want to check their interpretation with one of the pioneers of percussion repertoire and a direct source to the composer of this work.
This thesis provides a more general ‘percussion-history’, highlighting specific compositions from the repertoire, with some interesting quoting by performers and composers. The choice of the researched repertoire clearly is the eclectic performed program of an academic percussion recital. It dedicates a brief chapter to a personal player’s analysis of Reflections on the Nature of Water, but this chapter doesn’t provide any new insights or analytic progression for this research project.