Worldes Blis and its satellites

Whatever else one may question about the developing aesthetic of Davies’s now considerable œuvre – its modernistic or anti-modernistic tendencies, or the composer’s ‘aspiration to classicism’ ¹ – there is no doubt as to the fluency by which it has consistently been characterized. Stephen Pruslin, writing in 1977, already noted ‘a virtuoso compositional technique … capable of producing From Stone to Thom, directly into full score without prior sketches, in three days’, ² and it is clear that Davies himself valued the acquisition of such a technique from the earliest stages of his artistic formation:

It would be a travesty to say that Bach, Mozart or Beethoven did not ‘know’ … what they were about when they penned those flights of inspiration which thrill us so much … each note is governed by an inner logic which makes it just right, and once heard, it appears to be, of course, the only entirely satisfactory choice in that position.

It is glib to ask a young contemporary composer to achieve just that. Before he could, he would have to amass a tremendous technique of composition at his finger-tips – a ‘contemporary’ technique, for it would be useless to repeat outworn formulae. Only then could he subconsciously order his material to suit the expression, and do those ‘unpredictable’ things, which are, however, always ultimately justifiable from every point of view, and not least from the ‘analytical’ or ‘scientific’. ³

Pruslin’s ‘pragmatic definition’ of Davies’s success at such technical mastery should, however, be qualified: although the whereabouts of sketches relating to From Stone to Thom may not be documented, ⁴ the work could not have been 24written without ‘precompositional charts’ as I and other writers would understand them. ⁵ Ex. 2.3 offers a reconstruction of the single matrix of pitch-class material from which the work is realized, itself the result of typical generative processes: ⁶

N_A (Ex. 2.3, line 1: α-ζ) is produced by segmenting phrases from the plainsong Victimae Paschali Laudes (see Ex. 2.18), verse 1, ‘Victimae … oves’ producing segments α-ζ, ⁷ and verse 4, ‘Scimus Christum surrexisse … Amen’ producing segments γ-ζ. With the identical γ segments overlapped, each is subjected to ‘first-only sieving’ ⁸ (preserving only the first occurrence of each pitch) and transposition by −5, −4, −3, −2, −1 and 0 semitones respectively.

P_C is produced from the Dies Irae plainsong whose three-phrase incipit (‘Dies … Sibylla’) gives segments α-γ by first-only sieving. Segments δ-ζ invert segments α-γ respectively, the initial transpositional levels (δ on c′, ε on d′, ζ on f′) being fixed so that the tessitura of each inversion remains identical to that of its prime. All six segments of the set are subsequently transposed by +7, +6, +5, +4, +3 and +2 semitones respectively to give P_C as shown at the foot of Ex. 2.3.

N_A is transformed into P_C in ten subunits, mapping the segments of one set to those of the other ([N_A ⇒ P_C], the prototype for Ex. 2.3 which in its ‘un-modified’ form does not feature in the work). Only for segment β is there a corresponding one-to-one mapping of individual elements. Though segments ε and ζ of both sets likewise have five elements each, these are mapped so as to preserve maximum invariance, thus: Ex. 2.1 <italic>From Stone to Thorn</italic> = N_Aε, P_Cε mapping https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315089850/c28dd493-955e-4ec6-917c-ed350d91caf5/content/ex2_1.tif"/> 25The mappings of N_Aγ: 2 to P_Cy: 4 (a′ to a′) and N_Aδ: 3 to P_Cδ: 2 (f′ to f′) similarly give rise to invariance throughout all ten subunits for the transformation of these elements. The melodic contours of the subunits are otherwise determined by registral ‘expansion’ of the terminal sets, ⁹ so that N_Aα: 1 falls to P_Cα: 1 (a″ to c″) in ten semitone steps; N_Aα: 3 rises to P_Cα: 3 (c″ to a″) in ten semitone steps; N_Aβ: 1 falls to P_Cβ: 1 (f′″ to b′) in ten wholetone steps, etc. (These registral locations are not explicit in Ex. 2.3, ¹⁰ where pitch classes are shown ‘in close position’ and to avoid leger lines.)

A self-transposed variant is created, z[N_A ⇒ P_B], by transposing successive subunits of [N_A ⇒ P_C] to begin on a sieving of N_Aα-γ (the stemmed notes of Ex. 2.3).

Realizations of subunits in the transformation process of Ex. 2.3 are relatively easy to trace in the outer sections of From Stone to Thom (the opening to rehearsal letter K; O to the end), for example, subunit 1 on clarinet, opening to A; subunit 2 followed by 3R, voice, A-B; 4, voice, C-D, 5R, 6, harpsichord, D-E; 7ζ, clarinet, F-G; 8, clarinet, G-G ⁺⁷; 9, voice, I-J; 10, voice, J-K; then on glockenspiel: 1, O-P; 2, P-Q; 3R, Q-R; 4, R-S; 5R, S-T; 6R, 7R, T-U; 8, U-V; 9R, V-W; 10, on harpsichord, Y-end. P_C, independent of z[N_A ⇒ P_B], is also to be found, for example, in retrograde on harpsichord (right hand) from the opening to rehearsal letter A (with a left-hand accompaniment deriving from its prime form).