Music Instrument Design for Edward II. Our wonderfully talented Director of Music, BillBarclay has b

Music Instrument Design for Edward II. Our wonderfully talented Director of Music, BillBarclay has built some unique instruments for our production of Edward II. Inthis blog he tells us about these instruments and the three different worlds ofsound he has created for the production.ChristopherMarlowe’s dark history of Edward II still reverberates loudly today both in itspowerfully modern assertion that love is love, and in the incompatibilitybetween vulnerability and the corridors of power. To help tell the story ofthese contrasts that ripple through time, I’ve built two new musicalinstruments that provide natural reverberation in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which hasa warm yet dry acoustic. These devices play alongside a raft of ethnic and periodinstruments to create three contrasting palates of sound.The first world of sound: war, rebellion, dissidents, and political pressureThefirst sound world describes the sounds of war, rebellion, dissidents, and politicalpressure. This is achieved through the creation of a steel cello, whichis an instrument I first encountered in Boston built by musician Matt Samolis,also known by his stage name Uncle Shoe. I was infatuated with his creationsand had used them in theatre before, but this is this instrument’s debut in theUnited Kingdom. With Matt’s guidance I’ve constructed a new kind of steel cellobespoke to the Sam Wanamaker. This is how it works: several large deep ridecymbals and metal rods are bolted to a large stainless steel resonating sheet,which amplifies the metal objects as they are bowed and struck. The instrumentis capable of a wide range of sounds which are almost entirely below thefrequencies of consonants in speech, making words intelligible over a rash ofhaunting textures. Amazingly, the instrument often sounds synthesised –digital, even – metallic, industrial, dark, and yet shimmering. Matt and I usedto play it for sound meditations in long beautiful drone concerts, and yet itcan also distort to provide an incredible lexicon of theatrical punctuation.The whole band takes a turn on it, but it is chiefly played by Music DirectorRob Millett, and it is played throughout the production.Thesteel cello is complemented by a bass drum, field drum, and Sarah Homer’s contraalto clarinet – a rare instrument lower than the bass clarinet whichgurgles at the low end of the hearing spectrum under the steel cello’sreverberant strokes.The second world of sound: love Thesecond sound world was meant to contrast with the first as much as possible in orderto depict the love between Edward and Gaveston as incompatible with itsoppressive cultural antipathy to homosexuality. For this world we lean on Tunde Jegede’s kora – the West African harp, chiefly from the griot storytelling tradition of Mali.(A griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, or musician).The kora melds with a swarmandal, a Hindu harp the characteristic buzzing from its sympathetic strings. To fill out this pan-ethnic texture, we use a hammered dulcimer and a bass dulcimer, instruments that are from all over the world, though perhaps most prominent in music from the Middle East. These three harp-like instruments from around the world emphasise the beauty, the universalism, and perhaps the exotic presence that define love so unabashedly in this play. The textures these strings make with each other seems to chime perfectly with the candlelight, and lend an extraordinary atmosphere to the Playhouse.The third world of sound: the churchThethird sound world is of the church. Here the tubular bells, accordion(mimicking an organ), cello, and contra alto clarinet form aleague of ominously low, yet sinuously melodic instruments that collect likevines around the ankles of the play’s characters – powerful yet beautiful. Alsoin this world is the singers, who at various moments intone the Latin prayersof the Requiem Mass, as if the death of Edward I (Longshanks, Edward II’sfather), still looms over the cracked glass of our protagonist’s troubledreign.Thesecond original instrument is the spring machine. Two long helicalsprings are attached to the theatre’s back wall, and connect directly to theheads of two frame drums bolted to the face of the music gallery. When thesprings are rubbed and struck, we discovered that the sounds that pour out ofthe drums are unearthly, unsettling, and hard to mentally place. For weeks Ihad been seeking sounds for the play’s horrible final scenes that were trulyoriginal – sounds that could only mean this peculiar horror. We triedattaching a double bass to the springs, and had 4 springs start on each string,going into four drums. The sound was amazing but I could still hear the doublebass, and the sound was too familiar.Whenwe took the bass away and hung the springs to a hook instead, it focused thesound much more on the strange sounds of the springs themselves, which we thentightened to amplify the signal. This revealed the coups de grace: when thedrum heads are struck with a mallet in a heartbeat pattern, the heartbeat flowsto the back wall and out the drums again, creating an analogue looping system.The intention is to recreate the sound of hearing your own heartbeat thuddingin your ears, as you imagine the worst. The secondary intention is to allow thetruly horrible parts of the story be truly horrible, by preparing oursubconscious with unsettling sounds that have no preconceived identity. Wedon’t want you to be listening to the ‘music’ here – we want the sounds tounsettle the psychological anticipation of Edward’s grisly demise.Oncethe act occur, there is no need, or room, for any more music in its finalpages. The stage stays mostly in darkness, the characters have theircomeuppance, and silence seems the only appropriate ending. We are stillprocessing the horror, and the tragedy, and after two hours of steady buildingto this moment, it feels right to go out with these solo odd springs.Otherinstruments used in the show include the tagleharpa, a medieval bowedthree-string harp made for the Globe by a Russian instrument maker in Karelia.This undergirds the ancient character of Old Spencer and provides a bit of thedark ages as an important colour for the older generation of this world. PaulJohnson also plays several ethnic flutes: Kaval -  a Bulgarianwooden fluteTambin -  thenational instrument of the West African FulaBansuri -  a commonNorth Indian fluteBombard -  a louddouble-reed member of the shawm family used to play Breton musicPortugueseand English bagpipesOccasionallyPaul plays the bagpipes against Sarah Homer’s soprano saxophone – anentirely modern instrument but ones whose timbre, when mixed with the pipes,creates the sensation of two fanfaring trumpets.Finally,the Nyatiti, the lyre from Kenya, makes a few important soloappearances. This instrument means ‘daughter-in-law’, and it is the femalecounterpart to the maleness of the West African kora. The two harps providecontrasting emotional colours – the kora in act 1 when love is free, and theNyatiti in the second half when it is not.Theambitious nature of this score is testament to the dozens of shows played atthe Globe by these four incredible musicians; indeed, the score has beencomposed for their unique multi-instrumentalism. There is no other person inLondon who could double on kora and cello than Tunde Jegede, nor any otherplayer than Music Director Rob Millett who plays the dulcimer at an expertlevel, yet can learn how to work magic from something so new as a steel cello.Paul Johnson and Sarah Homer each in turn provide similarly originalcontributions that speak to their true uniqueness as players.Theoverarching goal here was for the Globe to do what it does best – be inventive,embrace the parameters of acoustic music, and lean heavily on the uniqueexperience of its core artists. I remain a student of period music at theGlobe, but only in service of bringing period sounds together withimprovisation, new instruments, living composers, and surprisingorchestrations.Incollaborating in this way, we attempt to fabricate an entirely unique sound worldthat can only define the world of this play, here, right now.Edward II is in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 20 April. Musical instrument photography by Hannah Yates Edward II production photography by Marc Brenner  -- source link

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