Constellations I

Composer: Maximilian Wolfgang Schwarz

Instrument: Marimba

Level: Advanced

Published: 2021

• Description

When composing “Constellations I”, I first started to search for interesting new sounds to create on any marimba’s corpus, regardless of its design of construction. While experimenting with different mallets, I also came across a new concept of mallet arrangement. By using a high contrast in hardness in only one pair and mirroring it to the other hand, I could now play both the percussive sounds (which require a very transparent attack) and the marimba plates with both hands, or simultaneously in one hand.   

The piece consists of multiple parts, exploring possibilities of incorporating a “set-up approach” to the instrument. Each part emerges out of a different composing technique, including free atonality, bitonality, serial music or classical harmony, forged together by a pressing atmosphere as well as “rhythmical cadenzas”, guiding to new polyrhythms or rhythm shifts. In the end, the piece resolves in a reharmonized reprise of the intro, using lighter sound effects generated by hands and body to create an echo-like character. 

After playing the finished composition to my girlfriend, she visualised the piece as an image of a “technical drawing”, which eventually inspired me to come up with the name “Constellations”. The roman letter I foreshadows the possibility of a potential “answer” to this work.

• Percussive Notes, February 2022

This unaccompanied four-mallet marimba solo also employs the marimba frame as part of its sound and timbral resource. This solo is quite avant-garde in its presentation, and a set of detailed performance notes provides a good interpretive outline of this 12-section structure.

Additionally, there is a “no-clef” staff for the special sound effects of the marimba frame. (This reviewer recalls an era in the 1980s when such percussionists as Michael Udow utilized a specially equipped, or modified, vibraphone known as a timbrack to achieve similar contrasting timbres.) Marimbists will need to acquaint themselves with special notations of striking everything from the resonators to the marimba frame in order to render a smooth, satisfying performance. Structurally, the piece moves from a pointillistic (or sparse) effect to a very demanding arpeggiated effect about two-thirds through the composition, ending with sparse sounds, similar to the opening section.

Receiving 2nd prize in the 2021 Stellar Composer Competition, this solo would be appropriate for a graduate-level solo recital.

—Jim Lambert