Braving the icy chill from Edmonton's abrupt onset of Winter composer, Jason Noble, shakes off the bite of the windchill as he
enters the warm surroundings of Remedy Café.
He sits down to discuss the premiere of his newest choral work, Missa
Remissionem Peccatorum. Pro Coro Canada sings the debut of the piece at their
concert on Sunday. In addition to his work as a choral composer, Noble is a
musician and PhD researcher at McGill's Music Perception and Cognition Lab.
Noble sings with voces boreales, a professional choral ensemble founded by Pro
Coro's Artistic Director, Michael Zaugg. Missa Remissionem Peccatorum is
Noble's largest choral work to date. Drawing upon his previous history with
Zaugg as a singer, Noble states that it gave him a better perspective when
writing a piece for one of Zaugg's choirs. "Zaugg has a compositional
approach to conducting. He looks at scores so analytically. There might be
sixteen independent lines going on at one time and he helps choirs see harmonic
underpinnings, understand global textural effects, and how each note functions
in terms of the overall sonority. As a composer, that is how we would
look at a score too,'" Noble says with a tone of deep appreciation.
"He's also very passionate about contemporary music," Noble
continues, "to have somebody gifted at bringing out inner intentions
and the compositional structure of a piece... it was a real gift," Noble states
as he reminisces about his time when Zaugg conducting voces boreales in
Montreal before moving to Edmonton.
This Sunday will not be the first time in which Pro
Coro has premiered one of Noble’s works. "The first piece that I wrote for
Michael was The Shadows Flee Away
which Pro Coro did over a year ago. I think everybody would agree it was a
difficult piece. It was 16 parts throughout with polytonal layering, lots of
textures, and [Pro Coro] did a great job," he states. "As much
as I was happy with that piece, it helped me grow as a composer," he says.
Taking what he learned from that experience, Noble
kept what worked and applied it to the Missa Remissionem Peccatorum. As a
result, there is some continuity between the two works. "In the beginning
of the Gloria, for example, there are just four notes sustained but every
singer is articulating the text at their own free pace. Later the Sopranos and
Altos have this canon where there is a floating texture above and in the tenors
and basses there is more of a homophonic chorale," he says before
apologizing and continuing with a burst of explanatory excitement.
"Basically, you've got two textures going on at the same time. One is the
sparkly texture over top and the bottom appears as a unified statement of familiar
chords. Also, the crossfades where you have one choir decrescendo as the
other choir does exactly the opposite with a crescendo," he explains.
There is intent behind every aspect of Noble's musical construction:
"There may be a straightforward D flat major chord but one of the voices
on the third may make it major or minor. Other voices may move in microtonal
intervals that are not major or minor but more like a band in pitch space. It
is this destabilizing thing that takes you out of familiar harmony. It is
that moment of trepidation and instability which the audience will feel as much
as the singers." There is also a section where singers are instructed to
sing their lowest comfortable note. The pitch descends into a “black cloud of undefined sound,” ridding the section of any harmonic identity.
These are all techniques that Noble uses to highlight the textual meaning in
the piece.
There are challenges associated with setting sacred
text for secular audiences and still making it relevant. Noble casts a
contemplative look downwards while he formulates his loci of thought into
words: "Liturgical composers in earlier eras could just accept the text as
something the audiences both know and believe. We live in a multicultural age
now. Where we have people from all different backgrounds of faith and no faith.
It would very naive to assume modern audiences will receive these texts as
universal truths or as affirmations of unifying faith as audiences from
previous eras might have. I think a lot of composers in the 20th and 21st
centuries cut themselves off from tradition, whether that is musical or
religious. The idea of complete renovation. Something radically new and
different. I believe that we still have a lot to learn from the wisdom that has
been handed down to us through the ages. The emphasis on the now and the new
may be the sources of problems we face in the world today. Maybe those previous
generations knew a few things that we would do well to learn from, including
the teachings of faith. I try to find values in those teachings that are
morally legitimate, even in the world today, without alienating people from any
background. For me, the concept of forgiveness is one of the most
powerful ones. I don't want us to live in a world that loses the ability to
forgive. As opposed to radical individualism, where you're only thinking
about yourself and your own needs. We all make mistakes and I want to believe
that we can still forgive others and ourselves even in a secular world.”
The concept of forgiveness is poignant in Noble’s Kyrie section. "The movement
is about the confrontation with sin. Sin is the recognition of having done
wrong in whatever moral sense that means to you. That sense of shame and
self-reproach that is familiar to most people. The Kyrie is not a prayer to some sort of deity or God, although it can
be interpreted that way if you wish, it's more of a hope that wrong can be set
right. And wrong, once done, doesn't have to define you forever or be
irreparable. Mercy is essentially a hope this can heal. Not a literal request
for somebody to set things right for you. Just a hope and faith in the universe
and in other people that forgiveness and reconciliation is still possible even
wrong has been done," Noble summarizes with a philosophical fluency.
There is a sense of balance while Noble outlines how
his personal upbringing has shaped his worldview: “I wasn’t brought up in a
church-going family. My parents wanted me to grow up and make up my own mind.
Now I sing in a Cathedral Choir, so I have more exposure to the teachings of
Christianity than I did as a child. I think I take it in the same way I take
philosophy books or other works of Art whether secular or sacred. All of them
have something to teach me. All of them have something meaningful and beautiful
that I can make meaningful in my own life. It’s not about which one is right or
wrong. It’s about finding the value and meaning in all of them that come
together in my own personal worldview. I'm hoping to convey something through
the selection of text and through the music that I write.”
Art communicates through the transmission of meaning
from one mind to another. This concept ties in with Noble’s research at McGill
where he investigates the processes of thinking and interpreting that are
common between people. Even though there are breakdowns in the message between his
compositional intent and audiences, he notes that the process is a leap of
faith. “As a composer, I know that meaning is always interpreted against a
subjective context that is constantly evolving for everybody. By definition, it
is impossible that the meaning that I have in my mind while writing is going to
be the same for any one member of the audience let alone all of them,” he says
while laughing at this lofty goal.
Noble views himself as a top down composer: “I don’t
start with motives and materials and build something up out of them. I start
with global intuition and feeling I am trying to work with. From that
intuition, I get a sense of form. And then down from there into selecting materials
that are appropriate to the concepts I am working with. Form and material and
concept are all very interwoven with one another. There are still lots of
choices to make, if I ever get it right!” he says while laughing before
continuing. “What I want the work to be is clear from the beginning. If it is
not clear, then I spend lot of time meditating on what I am trying to achieve. In
the pieces I am most proud of, the musical choices follow almost as a matter of
course once that concept is worked out.
I try to restrain myself from moving on until the concept is very clear.
To the point where it’s almost self-propelling and the process unfolds where I
feel like an observer and not an agent. That doesn't happen every single time
but it happens at the best times,” he states in describing his compositional
process.
There is an importance in how new music can document contemporary cultural identity: “We live in an age where identify is
very plural and divided. In a big way, one of the reasons why I want to be a composer
and write works like this is to draw attention to values that stand apart from
the general cultural and moral currents around me. It would be far easier to produce
music in a popular domain, using techniques, which are known to be popular. I
don't want Art to be a commodity. I don’t want it to be something that’s just there
to give people what they ask for because they ask for it. If you do that, then
you just reinforcing people in what they already know. Which means Art will
never move forward. Art will just become the perpetual recycling of things that
are already known to be pleasant, and that’s not how new meanings are
discovered. Our age deserves to have a unique voice. Our age deserves to have
an expression through Art that documents and expresses what is unique about
being alive today. How our age is not the same as ages past. What are the
challenges we face? What are the feelings that we deal with? I don’t believe
the best way to achieve that is by using the materials earlier musical ages
have generated. But, at the same time, Art loses its power altogether if it’s
written in a way that too esoteric or arcane that people can’t relate to. I don’t
want to be a strictly academic composer that is only writing for my colleagues
in the University while the rest of the world is unaware. I want to write thing that have the potential to
reach out to people but challenge them. Open their eyes to things that
might not familiar or comfortable. I hope, by my leap of faith, that they find
meaning in,” he summates, highlighting many of the themes from
the conversation.
There is an overwhelming sense of gratitude when a
Noble professes how honoured he is when a choir gives his music a voice. He
clenches his fist in front of his chest, "it lives in here for
months," he says before noting the sense of release he feels when he hears
it live for the first time. “I really admire Pro Coro. I think it’s great you
have a performing ensemble of this caliber here in Edmonton and that you do
take on these challenging projects and master them to the degree that you do,”
he says with affection. Thus, it was fitting that Noble’s opening statement to
the choir at rehearsal on Friday night was just simply: “I love you.”
