Jordan Kerr

Current Trends in Orchestra Composition

Allen Levines

Hans Abrahamsen – Let Me Tell You

Part 1: Let me tell you how it was
 Light, subtle orchestration, focused in high registers
- Two piccolos are the main focus in the beginning, two oboes take over their role,
then they alternate
- 2nd violins split up (8, 4) playing sustained artificial harmonics and medium high
notes coming in and out (F5-F6) (extremely soft)
- 1st violins take over doing the same thing (they’re set up in the old way—on either
side of the stage—to play with space)
- Celeste, harp and mallet percussion take turns with an ostinato (F4-F5, alternating
with F5-F6) that is present throughout
- Harp lightly accents first two notes of each vocal phrase
- Multiple parts are marked ‘as softly as possible’
 F is the pitch center, made clear by the ever-present ostinato
 Whole song alternating one measure of 9/8 and one measure of 2/2
- Time is played with through the use of tuplets and nested tuplets
- 9:8 is used in the 2/2 measures to create a slightly faster 9/8 (contracting,
expanding), both measures even having 3:5 in the second half (in the 2/2, the 3:5
is nested within the 9:8)

Part 1: O but memory is not one but many

 Faster and more active than first song
 Fuller orchestration than first song
- 1st violins echo 1st violins, 2nd violins echo 2nd violins, violas echo violas, cellos
echo cellos—one part of the split section plays a figure, immediately followed by
the rest of the section playing the same figure note-for-note (All strings are quiet,
and this effect just creates a background). The string sections are split up the same
way as the first movement.
- Like the harp in the first movement, brass, piccolo and percussion accent
important points of vocal phrases
Jordan Kerr
Current Trends in Orchestra Composition
Allen Levines
- Pitch range remains quite high
 Repeated notes a prominent motif, carrying on from the ostinato and vocal line of
the first song
 Repeated note ‘pulsing’ in vocal line (heard throughout the entire cycle)
 Still quite soft, but seems loud and explosive after the first song
Part 1: There was a time, I remember
 A dramatic departure from the last two songs, the lowest voice in the orchestra,
the bass drum, begins the piece and rumbles for more than half of the song
 F remains the pitch center, being the first and most emphasized note in the bass
 This song plays on the idea of time
- Tempo instruction “In Limping Time”
- The divisi pizzicato basses (and later, celli) emphasize this by avoiding a pulse,
almost never playing on beat 1, and often in the middle of a tuplet
- Sounds almost like a slowed down version of material from the first song (noting
that if you slow something down electronically, it also drops in pitch)
- Alternating measures of 3/4 and 4/4, like the first song’s 9/8 and 2/2
Part 2: Let me tell you how it is
 Like a louder, fuller reiteration of the first song
- Alternates measures of 9/8 and 2/2 throughout
- Harp, mallet percussion and celeste carry the same eighth note octave ostinato
throughout, this time on Gb (low Gb is also droned throughout most of the piece)
- Vocal phrases are basically the same material
Part 2: Now I do not mind

Part 3: I know you are there

Part 3: I will go out now
