Techno, Trance and the Modern Chamber Choir: Intellectual Game or Music to Groove to?

Is there really a difference between the ways in which we enjoy classical and popular music? Some elements at least would appear to be the same. Compare, for example, a build on a dance track in a nightclub [1] where the beat and volume steadily increase until the main tune kicks in, with the start of Wagner's Rheingold, where the quiet, low notes gradually build to the climactic vocal entrance of the Rhinemaidens. The underlying compositional technique of raising and releasing expectations is the same.

There can, however, be fundamental differences in the context of the performance that affect the listener's response to the music.

On the dance floor in a club, the listener is an active participant who can physically join in with the music, matching the climax at the end of the drum build with a change of movement or by joining in with the tune. The same temptation may be there with Wagner, but standing up on a seat at the opera house and singing "Wallalla weiala weia" will only result in the offender being thrown out of the auditorium. The music itself may provoke a physical reaction to the emotional response, but the performance context, in this case the opera house, proscribes this reaction. It is not the music that is repressed, but the performance context that inflicts certain behavioral expectations upon its audience.

Classical Trance and the Chance to Dance

Since leaving the ivory towers of university (in 1995) I had begun wondering what use my traditional compositional skills were. It was as if I had learnt how to use all the complex tools for mining coal, but there was no coal left in the mine. A commission for a chamber choir [2] and an acquaintance with trance composer Chris Armitage presented me with the chance to compose for choir using techniques more generally associated with dance music (of the nightclub variety) and to present the work in concert and church venues. I was to arrange one version for unaccompanied choir and another for choir and computer drum programming.

Initial thoughts about the composition concerned the participation of the listener (hence the comparison above between the opera-house audience and the nightclubbers). Does placing the music in a concert hall or a church deprive the techno style of one of its main reasons for being, that is, the listener's ability to physically participate? The music would be enjoyed purely on a listening basis, and other elements such as dancing and social interaction would be lost. Could I be accused of moving the style "from the zone of the body towards those of the intellect and 'art'"? [3] Or could this still be music to dance to?

Whereas the concertgoer may be described as a "listener" of music, who uses the music for intellectual stimulation and pleasure, the clubber might alternatively be described as a "user" of music, as, to some extent, the enjoyment comes from the physical act of dancing rather than purely from the music itself. That is not to say that composing for club dance is easier than composing for the concert hall, as the body can be as demanding as the brain when it comes to music. So what then happens when the chance to dance is removed?

Taking the basic musical elements from Armitage's Non Zero Sum [4], I added some material and reworked it for two four-part choirs (soprano [S], alto [A], tenor [T], bass [B]), separating the choirs left and right as one might place speakers at a gig, and mirroring them so that the sopranos were on either end:

S A T B — B T A S

It is more effective to split higher frequencies across the stereo perspective than bass frequencies. The basses were therefore given more sustained lines, while the higher parts have shorter, quicker patterns. The music consists of repeated short melodic lines, generally three- or four-note motifs (see Fig. 4), which accumulate, working contrapuntally within a short, repeated harmonic progression over a walking bass.

The three-note pattern thrown from right...