Drawing texture with the toy piano

This paper discusses the influence of hand drawing techniques in my work for toy piano. It is known that composers often respond expressively to ideas and draw compositional strategies from other domains of life, for example, the mathematical proportions of architecture on some compositions of Guillame DuFay, Peter Maxwell Davies and Eve Duncan. For me, a chance comment from an artist friend, Deanna Petherbridge’s book, The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice (2010) and Elizabeth Cooper’s botanical watercolours of the Australian rainforest tree Stenocarpus sinuatus (Firewheel Tree) offered ideas and techniques for several works for toy piano, and piano and toy piano (one player). While my musical response to hand drawing techniques is largely an expressive response, there is an element of trying to adapt the drawing techniques in a way similar to how artists use them, but in sound.

Messiaen links his principle of nonretrogradation (palindrome) to architecture saying -"…thus, in ancient art, Gothic and Romanesque cathedrals, and even modern art, the decorative figures are… symmetrically inverse figures…" (p. 12 SAMUEL, 1986, English trans. by E. T. Glasow, 1994. Here, architectural principles and concepts are adopted rather than precise measurements.
And composers often draw on the musical strategies of another culture and adapt them to create a rich sound system within which to play and compose -I'm thinking of Olivier Messiaen and Philip Glass's interest in Indian rhythmic patterns. The message is that the systems and principles of other domains and other cultures can be a rich source of compositional ideas and strategies.
For me, it was a passing comment made several years ago by a friend who paints, that reminded me artists have as many processes and techniques as music composers. She saw a painting of people on Sumner Beach, New Zealand, by Derek Margetts, a New Zealand painter, on my wall (see Image 2) and commented on it using an illustrator's style because of a black line around the figures. IMAGE 2 -Sumner Beach scene, Derek Margetts (1984) This comment stayed with me and re-emerged when I read Deanna Petherbridge's book, The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice (2010). Petherbridge explains and illustrates many technical drawing terms -'Drawing Strategies' (p. 152) she calls them, although sometimes she refers to 'drawing systems ' (p.88). In discussing line in drawing, Petherbridge relates to my painter friend's passing comment about an illustrator's style when noting how "the ability of drawing to unfold in time at both micro and macro levels means that it readily serves time-based disciplines, from book illustration to comic books, graphic novels or animation" (p. 96). She writes of how 'the basic units of lines, marks and traces and the way that they relate to each other and to the support materials on which they are deployed constitute the primary aspect of the linear economy (p.88)'.
The Blue Ice Cave (2016) for piano and toy piano (one player), composed in 2013, is the first work in which I deliberately drew on the idea of line. It was written for Antonietta Loffredo to play in our collaborative project, Antarctica, new music for piano and/or toy piano by composers from five countries, with the southern continent's landscapes and atmospheres in mind 1 . The Blue Ice Cave was influenced by a photograph of such a cave taken in Antarctica by Geoff Paul (Image 3), and while the photograph was certainly an influence, the work deliberately explores Petherbridge's idea of line, and in particular the illustrator's line. The piano plays the dominant role but the toy piano, when it appears, is, with one exception, always providing a sharp, 'icy' line around the piano's figure -like an illustrator's line sometimes together, measure 32 (Image 4), sometimes in counterpoint, measure 37 (Image 5). This clear, defining timbral quality of the toy piano complements the softer, more diffuse timbre of the piano and together forms a rich, wider keyboard palette for one player.

Petherbridge describes how
Lines can be organised into coded systems to approximate the spatial and descriptive aspects of colour or to simulate textures, but unadorned line escapes the inherently sensory/evocative aspects of paint, except in its apparent ability to suggest movement: what the seventeenth-century theorist Franciscus Junuis had referred to as a 'deceitfull similitude of Life and Motion.' (PETHERBRIDGE, 2010, p. 88).
One example of this suggested movement is seen in Henry Moore's (1898-1986) Women Winding Wool (1949) 2 which explores "the volume and surface complexities" (Petherbridge, 2010, p. 98) of the figures being drawn. The drawing is described as a modern and expressionist version of this linear code for defining volume and movement… although its potential motion has been knitted into monumental stasis. The curved lines that capture and enmesh the simplified forms of the headless female figures establish a homological relationship with the subject matter of winding' (PETHERBRIDGE, 2010, p. 101).
For the viewer, the lines offer an experience of almost being in the wool winding process itself, an immersive experience as a winder and also the conviviality of the paired task. Drawing on this close connection between viewer/listener and the activity, I wrote Through Shadows (2020), a work for toy piano in 2018 for the toy piano festival Music as Play -the toy piano takes the stage 3 , held in Como, Italy in 2019. The piece was influenced by driving through an avenue of 100+ year old plane trees in northern Poland, knowing that the Polish government had been told to cut the trees down by the EU as they are considered a hazard to motorists. Leaving politics aside, the moving sensation of the changing volume of shadow, sometimes flickering, sometime very immersive -like Moore's busy wool winders portraying volume and movement -is something the two sections of the work try to capture.
Firstly, the flickering (Image 6) where the two hands are in contrary movement interspersed with a lighter figure; and later the immersive quality (Image 7) where the alternating hand blocks seek to capture darker, denser shadow interspersed with light. In both these examples, there is a link to Petherbridge's comments on Kandinsky and Klee, both artist/theorists, and their discussions on "lines and shape within a taxonomy of dynamic and passive lines. Line as a dynamic time-trace subsumes a complex layering of signification in the making of drawing and its reception, where it is not easy to unravel actuality and illusion, inherent movement and implied motion and emotion" (p. 90). Driving through shadows experiences this blurring between actuality and illusion, inherent movement and implied motion.
Pentimenti are second thoughts, evidence of traces of previous work where the artist has changed their mind. Petherbridge reminds us that the origin of the word is a 'stroke of repentance [regret]' (p. 31). She writes, It is a condition of linearity that unless lines and pentimenti have been deliberately erased, drawing asserts, or has the potential to assert, the fully extended history and processes of its own making…. In this sense, drawing constructs its own narrative of making, distinct but inseparable from its subject matter (PETHERBRIDGE, 2010, p. 92 And the work uses hocket, measure 18-25, that is, broken line between the toy piano and the three toy percussion instruments which together sketch a whole shape, a musical device which I argue is a type of faux pentimenti (Image 10).

My second interpretation of pentimenti is akin to the compositional process Steve Reich used in his
work Drumming (1971). He talks of "the process of gradually substituting beats for rests (or rests for beats) within a constantly repeating rhythmic cycle" (REICH, 1974, p. 58). Kirzinger calls this 'reduction, that is, changing sounded notes to rests; saturation (replacing rests with notes)' (Robert KIRZINGER, 2015). Through Shadows (2020) for toy piano begins with a four-measure pattern in the 'reduction' stage -more rests than notes -adding notes (and gradually repeating each measure of the original four-measure pattern) (Image 12) until the full pattern is revealed then reduced again.
This is coupled with repetition of each measure of the four-measure pattern, first twice each, then three times, and so on. Elizabeth Cooper's 4 watercolour of the Australian rainforest tree Stenocarpus sinuatus (Firewheel Tree) depicts its wheel-like inflorescences and developing fruits. To record the details of the plant subject, Cooper (2020) does a series of sketches in graphite and creates a composition she is happy with. After carefully tracing and transferring the image to her final watercolour paper, she begins the process of applying colour. She sets down an initial, quite pale wash of watercolour which she leaves to dry before applying the next, slightly darker shade. Working from light to dark, she builds up multiple layers of watercolour, leaving highlights as she goes and creating an appropriate intensity and transparency of colour. To create the fine botanical detail of the subject, and to build up form and texture, she applies her dry brush technique, using a small brush with pigment but very little water. She describes this technique as "rather like drawing with paint". Petherbridge (2010)   A series of runs between the two instruments leads to a truncated return of the opening texture with the toy piano again tracing and highlighting the line of the piano figure's pivot notes. It might be drawing a long bow but the idea of the stages of the Firewheel's development from fruit to flower and return to fruit again, which underpins the structure of the work, is a faux pentimento technique, not necessarily heard but very present.
I'm not a drawer or painter but have written an improvisation frame for toy piano and manualwind music box, Biffo in the toy box, in 2012 (Image 18). And I'm now aware that graphic scores such as this require similar thinking when performed -that is, my primitive images require careful consideration of texture line in the score and then in interpretation by the performers. My musical response to hand drawing techniques is largely an 'expressive response', to use Duncan's (2017) term, yet there is an element of, not non-musical mathematical parallels, but trying to use the drawing techniques in a way similar to how artists use them, but in sound. Whether the architectural proportions represented in the Dufay, Duncan and Maxwell Davies works are accurately represented in the music doesn't matter musically (it would architecturally), and whether my musical outcomes bear any overt relationship to drawing, doesn't matter either. But these drawing techniques foster ideas for me. Petherbridge discusses other techniques such as chiaroscuro, grisaille, parerga, reverso, ébauche among others and looking on the web there are many other drawing and painting strategies or techniques waiting to be discovered. All potentially offer ideas which I can draw into sound but the few I have worked with and discussed above have taken my compositional thinking into different directions and encouraged rethinking and new thinking in sound for the toy piano and other sound sources.