"House of Shards and Shadows" is a fantastic piece written by Australian composer Kate Moore. Moore composed this work for 9 bass recorders in 2013 for Susanna Borsch, a talent recorder player. Borsch used electronics in conjunction with her recorder to perform the work.
The first step to creating the resources for the Music 2 Unit of Study that focuses on "House of Shards and Shadows" was to analyse the work myself. This involved many hours of going through the work, finding the themes that make their way throughout and understanding their relationships and their changes.
In the image you can see my two sets of working scores. The one of the left is my first one, with more my initial scribbles and highlighting as I try to understand how the piece works. On the right is a neater one which I did when I had a better understanding of how the piece works. The main reason I printed a second copy of the score was because the ink was coming off on the first one so I could not see half the notes!
Having an analysed score is useful as a teacher as not only does it help your own understanding, but you can use it as a resource to help the students understand the work as well. I created a code as part of my analysis of the work. Each voice is given a designation in this code that is made of three parts. For example, one voice might be labelled Aa-X. The first capital letter (A) is the same for all lines which have the same melodic idea being used at the same time. The lower case letter (a) is used to distinguish between the different derivatives in the heterophonic structure. The longer the note value, the later in the alphabet the letter given. The last letter shows which voices are the identical offsets that create the echo effect; the line with the full code begins first, with the matching line with only the last letter of the code following. By using this code, and combining it with the highlights of the different themes as they appear, understanding the work becomes a lot easier.
The next resources I created were the resources that broke down the different techniques being used in the work, as well as accompanying templates for students to practice using these compositional devices. The templates were specifically designed so that students would only have to use the device own its own without composing any new material so that students who lack confidence or who are put off by a blank screen can jump straight into the experiential learning. Once students have practised using the technique, they can be more confident in their ability to compose, as well as their ability to incorporate these techniques into their work.
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