Tous les hommes etaient Retransformés en argile;

Justify or be damned

2011-10-14T22:38:00.010+01:00

Eduard Hanslick

An essay: a few things that have been milling around my head for a while.

There are few things that are unique about music composition in relation to other art forms. The major one, it seems to me, is composers’ continued fascination with systems. Why are composers so fascinated by regulatory systems or structures that determine their work? How many painters, for example, use procedural techniques in order to determine which marks will be made where?

Of course, the argument about systematic composition is old hat, but the underlying problems in music composition that lead to the blind alley—and it is pretty much a consensus that it was a blind alley—of total serialism, are very much still around. Total serialism is perhaps the logical consequence of a series of aesthetic assumptions adopted, and to a significant extent not abandoned by the musicological establishment.

The first of these assumptions is really about what music is. The ethnomusicological position—that music is defined variously (or even not defined at all) in different cultures, and that its definitions vary wildly according to use—has generally not been adopted by others in the musicological discipline. The main reason for this is that for music theorists, composers and historical musicologists, it’s fairly obvious what music is—that is, it is what happens when instrumentalists translate notes on the page into sounds in the air. This basic condition of music, that its basic existence is in some way set-down-able by its ability to be notated, is so thorough as even to have infiltrated the discipline of ethnomusicology, a discipline which itself has noted that a definition of music based on musical notation is in fact cultural and contingent. Despite this, ethnomusicologists continue to use musical notation to help illustrate their articles and to publish in journals which do not come with ‘sounding’ material (CDs, mp3s or what have you).

The Hanslickian notion of music existing purely for itself, ‘forms moving in time’—with social, emotional, or biographical things being in some sense ‘outside’ the fundamental musical ontology—has been so dominant in musicological thinking that even after all of the reforms of the 1990s, the discipline will not and cannot abandon this model. Music is generally understood, basically, as a kind of ‘text’, that text consisting of that which is written down. We believe we are safe that music is preserved if it is written down and contained in libraries. Of course, the musical ‘Work’ itself is not limited to the text, but a true Work without a text is difficult to conceive.

The second of these assumptions comes with an understanding of musical value. Musical value is really quite plain when observed cross-culturally. Music is used as a cultural and memorial identifier, something that defines one group relative to another, and which that group uses to solidify self-definitions. Music has a powerful memorial quality, that it is associated readily with events or happenings occurring around it. Music thus has enormous personal value for groups and individuals—if one examines the reasons for records chosen on Desert Island Discs, one finds that music has value to individuals because of powerful memorial, emotional, or social resonances. Because we listen to music together and also individually, music can often act as the social glue that allows us to make sense of social occasions as individuals; or, conversely, to recognise social groups as being made up of individuals whom we understand as being similar to ourselves.

However, the need to differentiate ‘art music’ from the rest of the musical sphere—remembering, of course, that ‘art music’ usually equates to, or did historically, to ‘notated music’—a new kind of asocial reading of musical value had to be determined. The music of the concert hall couldn’t just be another kind of group/individual identifier, its emotional resonance coming from things as various as intrinsic qualities of the music (melodies, durational balance, harmonic pace and structure), but also from outside, social values and norms. That a piece of music might be recognised as having value to a group, not just because of intrinsic musical features, but also because of contingent things such as who was playing it where and when, in whichever social situation, had to be, in some sense, discounted. Artistic value, if it were to be established proper, must be decoupled from normative social value (the latter often being random and kitsch as well as occasionally ‘correct’).

The need for a rational theory of aesthetics stems from the fear that ‘good taste’ might be just as contingent (or arbitrary) as ‘vulgar taste’. Vulgar aesthetics were vulgar precisely because they were irrational. And thus, if good taste were to be rationalised, it would prove its natural ‘correctness’, and hence its worth in the normative social hierarchy.

Hanslick’s contention, that the basic aesthetic constituent of music was that which could be detected on the page, the ‘arabesque’, the abstract patterns inherent in musical form, was in an important sense a socio-political proposal as much as it was an artistic one. Those (educated) initiates who were able to understand music on a formal level—those who could fully understand harmonic structures and the patterns of notes—were the only ones who had the keys to musical ‘beauty’. The emotional resonance of music was undeniably pertinent, obviously visible, but not the essentially aesthetic component of musical experience.

Of course, now that we have working definitions of music and beauty, all sorts of things begin to follow. Music (art music) is that which can be written in and played from musical notation. Beauty (aesthetic value, musical value) is bounded in those notes and rhythms, the internal workings of musical form. Thus from refining the arrangement of the patterns of notes (tonal or atonal), one might create beautiful, exquisite structures, and musical value. Delicately rational, well-defined compositions can be produced, and their musical worth might be insured thanks to the rational procedures in place that determine them. Compositions will be shown to be unified (Schenker fits in well with these proposals), that their structures will be shown to be well-defined at all levels, and that these structural characteristics of music are what denote beauty, and hence, value. One can see how serialism, and later, total serialism, are logical extensions of inherent assumptions here.

All the while music appreciation and music criticism has to toe a delicate path. The musicological consensus held is that musical beauty lies ‘in the notes’, often to such an extent that performances are considered an unfortunate burden. ‘The performer, for all his intolerable arrogance, is totally unnecessary except as his interpretations make the music understandable to an audience unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.’ This statement attributed to Schoenberg might not have actually been uttered by him, but the fact that he was perceived to have held its position suggests the extent to which a textual (or in-the-notes) understanding of musical beauty held sway. In concert programme notes, suggestions as to the underlying structures (and hence the basic aesthetic component of) the music about to be heard are aired, but assurances have to be made to those who do not understand music theory that music’s value is not limited to the notes on the page, and that there are values (considered lesser values) of music that those untrained in music theory can understand too.

However artificial this account is (and much of it also known and stated), it nevertheless expresses some of the problems that the composer of art music encounters today. These issues about where musical value is (on the page, or elsewhere) have not gone away. For how should a composer—a student composer, or one hoping to receive commissions or win a competition—proceed? Now that complete systemisation is finished as an aesthetic principle (serialism dead), and now that, with art -music trends like post-minimalism, great concession is given to socially defined theories of value, how can a composer produce a piece that will be received well?

Of course, one only has to talk to other artists—painters, sculptors, writers, conceptual artists—to understand that these people have all had to contend with these problems (the problem of how to account for taste and ideas of aesthetic value), and have all understood the definitions of artistic value to be social, generally. After all, when the Mona Lisa itself is certainly not kitsch, but a good framed reproduction in the home is kitsch, one knows that artistic value is not just about the intrinsic (ie. visual) quality of the artwork. That composers need to constantly ‘justify’ themselves, via the means of musical structure, is a way of hiding from the fact that musical taste and musical value is fundamentally a socially defined variable and not really based on rational characteristics inherent in the music.

This is not to say that music might not be appreciated on rational terms. Far from it, I can (and do) do it myself, and I glory in exquisitely structured, formal music. My claim is that this thinking, far from being the naturally correct interpretation of musical beauty, is engendered socially, like all other kinds of musical value. That this kind of musical understanding and appreciation allows art music to define a group (in this case, of initiates), a group who use music for self-definition.

I would not count myself a systematic composer, but I wouldn’t count myself an anti-modernist either. Modernist music is regularly stunning, and much ‘postmodern’ music isn’t. However I think rather, composers, music theorists, aestheticians and other figures in the musical establishment ought to be honest with themselves, begin to see themselves as components of social structures just as ethnomusicologists see those they observe in other cultures. The rate at which musicology has reformed itself has been painfully slow; the post-1968 political and theoretical reforms enjoyed by social anthropology, literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, history and even law were very slow to be taken up by the musicological establishment. Even today, much of the discipline is quite behind the times.

We also ought to realise that the need for the composer to ‘justify’ the notes she is writing is, in some sense, a hangover from older theories of musical value. Abstract painters rarely have to justify their marks; instead their work is judged according to individual taste, the balance of forms, colours, the overall impression given by the work, changes in fashion, and a myriad other things. That a composer might need to find ways to justify herself denies the fact that music (even art music) is not judged ‘rationally’, but according to individual taste and socially defined ideas of value.

Oxford: Koboku Senju / Farmer, Hughes, Cornford

2011-05-31T02:43:00.018+01:00

Stephen Cornford with Toshimaru Nakamura listening (photo: Richard Pinnell)

Talking to David Grundy after this one (blogger and writer for web magazine Eartrip), we discussed whether its really possible to write a concert review at all. David used to take notes—I’m not sure I could. I did a bit of student paper work recently (hence lack of content here), all pretty mediocre stuff, to be expected, but one thing I did notice was a tendency for the reviewer (me) to construct narratives in the gallery or concert space itself. One is too preoccupied (or, at least, I was) with constructing some terrifically ‘apt’ remarks that one can distract oneself from addressing the work at hand with full attention. David’s position was the opposite—that the looming prospect of the review required one to listen harder, and that note-taking solidifies deep listening. I’m not sure.

Nevertheless, these misgivings about writing don’t detract from the fact that this concert was excellent and had some unusual dimensions. Art Jericho, which is fairly near to where I live, is not a particularly great art gallery. Actually, I’m sure the art gallery itself is fine, it’s just the work the directors insist on putting in it. Mostly local fair, its nothing to write home about—as far as I can remember my favourite bit of visual detritus was the ceiling. Improvised music of this calibre is pretty rare in Oxford, despite its being home to the well-regarded programme at Oxford Brookes; only recently has a swathe of festivals and concerts, including some music by Wandelweiser composers at Holywell Music Room in February, appeared on the scene (most of which I sadly couldn’t attend). [Edit: actually, this isn't true. Oxford Improvisers have run many great concerts in the past, and continue to do so. There's more good improvisation in Oxford than I let on here.]

Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes (of Compost and Height) are, amongst other people, behind this. This concert was put on by them in coalition with blogger and critic Richard Pinnell. Patrick and Sarah are themselves great improvisers—their set with Stephen Cornford (whose own output with Samuel Rodgers is worth a listen) was dextrous and quite varied. The style of predominantly close-miked acoustic sounds owes much to other British sound artists and improvisers (like Lee Patterson and Adam Bohlman). Though the sonic material is amplified, its texture differs in quality from sounds derived from electric or electronic instruments. Having this set paired with Toshi Nakamura—who played with Kobuku Senju in the second set of the evening—showed perhaps how these musical textures have developed as electroacoustic improvisation has flourished.

Nakamura is of course a pioneer, and there are many prevalent points of comparison with newer British improvisation and the established international style; nevertheless it was the differences which marked themselves out more to me. Patrick, Sarah and Stephen’s work had a kind of benign localism, there is something almost rural about it. Their work is much more akin to close-miking field recorders—Patterson, Peter Cusack perhaps also. Maybe this is because of the use of natural materials (Patrick deposited a pile of dead leaves on his turntable to conclude the set); more I think it is to do with the depiction of natural textures, textures that ‘sound’ natural. Of course this is just another kind of artifice (as Jonathan Meades has put it, ‘there’s nothing natural about nature’); but I think what I’m trying to get at is that Patrick’s turntable playing for example is not so much as ‘urban’ as other experimental turntablists (Marclay, Yoshihide). Anyway, maybe I’m grasping at straws.

Something else noticeable in Patrick, Sarah and Stephen’s set was the section where Sarah’s chorded zither was used to pluck out a decidedly modal collection of pitches. Much of this music does not reference pitch collections of such conventionality; this was an intriguing and perhaps adventurous thing to invoke in the midst of such abstractly textural music. This tendency towards modality, or even diatonicism, was something prevalent in Koboku Senju’s set that followed, and as Richard has pointed out, this is often a welcome relief. I don’t want that to sound like I don’t want to listen to abstract reductionist improvisation—I do, and when its done well it can be spectacularly rewarding. Nevertheless, an over-reliance on such gestures can lead to a slightly authoritarian aesthetic; like the minimalist trend in modernism, it can seem oddly stifling despite its tranquility (enforced tranquility, even subconsciously enforced tranquility, is hardly genuine). The majority of Koboku Senju’s playing was deliciously textural, with fascinating sounds produced by all of the brass instruments. Tetuzi Akiyama was, as one probably should expect, decidedly himself throughout—floppy hat (surely now something of a cliché), disjunctly melodious journeying. Akiyama offered some more ‘textural’ contributions towards the end, with a variety of metal and wooden implements used to rub the strings.

Nakamura’s offering was as well-honed as one would expect, it is a pleasure to watch him perform (not something I’ve been able to do before). Oddly though, there is something increasingly and bizarrely historic about his music. He hasn’t been around for long, but he has had such influence that his textures seem as much prototypical as archetypical. That doesn’t detract from their beauty—far from it, at one moment about one third of the way in, the rest of the musicians dropped out seamlessly leaving Toshi to explore an awesomely delicate texture, something almost lyrical.

There were weak moments in Koboku Senju’s performance no doubt. I’ve never been much a fan of embouchure percussion on the saxophone, those sounds seem rather old hat and uninteresting; but the saxophonist Espen Reinertsen also offered some wonderfully gossamer multiphonics as well, quite unlike anything I’ve heard from the instrument. Eivind Lønning produced some marvellously unusual sounds on the trumpet, and Martin Taxt’s tuba was also a resource for many fascinating sonorities. The unification of their playing resulted in musical textures that were difficult to aurally divide, despite the familiar instruments; their mutual responsivity was also such that, about two-thirds of the way in to the set, a spontaneously modal section was arrived at, something that referenced free jazz quite explicitly. Up until now electroacoustic improv has generally shunned reference to jazz—this isn’t a criticism, but it is interesting that the origin of the free improvisation movement, of which current electroacoustic improv is an offshoot, was jazz (and not, as it happens, experimental or avant-garde music). I personally can understand the loss of taste for jazz, but I also don’t think that its worth ignoring a piece of history for the sake of it.

In sum, this concert displayed a range of mellifluous and at times eclectic music; a measured eclecticism which, as much as that word is a bad cliché these days, is I think welcome. There were plenty of people in attendance who, as far as I could tell, did not walk out; I hope more improvised music in Oxford will happen, there seems to be an appetite.

Rie Nakajima - I can hear it

2011-01-02T18:46:00.009Z

Soundfjord is a pretty striking place. As I stumbled through seven sisters I wasn't prepared for its utmost spareness - a small white room and two speakers. It seemed as if Nellie (who showed me in) was inviting me into her flat.

The piece on show there needed nothing else really. Rie Nakajima exhibits a recording of blind piano tuner Ken Bodden feeling and hearing his way around the inside of a piano. The absolute tactility of the sound belies any need for visual impulse. We hear the rattle and clicks of his tuning ratchet as it attacks and caresses the pegs; the muffled sound of children outside (unclear whether recorded or real); occasional breaths and sighs and the movement of fabric; and all the while this incessantly dry but peculiarly gentle striking of notes.

I've heard pianos being tuned before (I usually listen to the tuner when he does mine in my room in college), but there was something different at work here. Obviously, through recording and exhibition, the nature of the activity is changed somewhat. If, for example, my own piano is being tuned, there is a definite sense of social relation. The piano tuner is undertaking a task on my behalf, and with me listening is perhaps interested in getting it done quickly; conversely he maintains a certain amount of power, having the monopoly of skill in the situation. Nakajima's work, on the other hand, attempts to remove whatever social obligation might be otherwise present. It's not clear who Bodden is tuning 'for' - either for the purposes of Nakajima's recording; or else to just exercise his own skill. In many ways, Bodden's skill, and his pleasure in exercising it (and our pleasure in his pleasure, as it were) is the central aesthetic aspect of the piece.

Beyond that, from the point of view of Nakajima, the piece is almost a 'readymade' - something like a field recording of a human being. The functional nature of the piano tuning removes it initially from artistic climes, it is a 'craft' activity. It achieves the quantity of art through recording and exhibition. Nakajima exhibits a function (or a process-as-function) as object. The ending point of the process (its 'purpose') is redefined. Where the piano tuner is originally attempting to produce an 'in-tune-piano' (as I'm sure Bodden is doing in this case), Nakajima undermines this skill-function. The 'in-tune-piano' is the MacGuffin - it drives the process but is vacant from the object as-it-is when exhibited.

All of this is pretty illuminating when generalised, I think - because it shows what an enormous effect (aesthetically-contextually) the simple act of recording can have. It can redistribute the weight of an action - whatever that action was directed 'towards'; the action can find itself directed towards something quite different. In this sense recording can undermine as much as it can document; the status of the recorded activity is permanently changed ('cooked', even, to invoke Levi-Strauss). Though Nakajima's work is undoubtedly beautiful in depicting Bodden's tactile activity, there is a definite sense of unintentional betrayal. What does Bodden hear when he hears his process-as-function depicted as object? Does it, or might it lose its integrity? Like Kleist's youth in On the Marionette Theatre, who, when informed of the beauty of an action, might Bodden fail to reproduce his piano-tuning in its original, innocent virtuosity?

Like all good pieces, apart from being rather beautiful aesthetically, this one raises a good few questions. It's running until the 29th Jan.

EDIT: There's also a podcast documenting this exhibition here: http://www.frameworkradio.net/2010/12/310-2010-12-19/

Ernesto Neto/the 'New Decor' (Hayward Gallery)

2010-07-07T18:43:00.008+01:00

Lee Bul's chandelier Sternbau no. 3. Pretty, but perhaps a little inconsequential.

I hoped that after its hiatus the Hayward would open with a new exhibition that would be interesting. Brazilian installation sculptor Ernesto Neto was not someone who I was particularly familiar with - this was his first solo exhibition in the UK so I can probably be forgiven for this - though I had seen images and so forth. I didn't really know anything about the other exhibition.

I'd like to think it would take quite a lot for me to leave an art gallery (voluntarily) without at least attempting to look at everything. This time, however, I simply had to go - Ernesto Neto's exhibition made me feel like pieces of my brain were being systematically removed and replaced with squishy multi-coloured slime.

But first, the 'New Decor'. This was, to me, a fairly inconsequential arrangement of objects - connected by the rather obvious theme of artists' responses to the everyday objects that surround us (furniture mostly). I didn't really get the sense that the curator (Ralph Rugoff, the gallery's director) saw this theme as a subject for critique. Though individual artists did offer 'takes' on furniture through re-interpretation or re-contextualisation, there seemed to be no overarching 'point' to the exhibition; not at least in the sense that I was expecting - a critical rethinking of the objects that we surround ourselves with. Nevertheless, there were some nice pieces. Elmgreen and Dragset's mirrored bunk beds (Boy Scout) had a anxious and nervous tranquility, and were a little worrying for it. It was also nice to see some work by Doris Salcedo, which often has great expressive poignancy. Roman Signer's fantastic Floating Table (one of those 'does what it says on the tin' pieces) had a bizarre innocence but (like other works in the show) was worrying.

The standout work for me was Jin Shi's haunting installation 1/2 Life, a portrait of Chinese migrant workers seen through their possessions. Here, their life was depicted by showing a 1/2 size mock-up of a typical hovel - so that we 'look down' on these people's lives as the Chinese population does. The piece lacked the worker her/himself - and this conspicuous lacking contributed to a haunting state of instability, as we waited for the worker to (never) return.

Many of the pieces, however, had not much to say (at least as far as I could see), and some reminded me of exhibits in the Millenium Dome - a kind of semi-ironic celebration of western bourgeois banality.

Up the stairs, I moved into Neto's big work The Edges of the World. A touchy-feely, childlike environment, one is immediately confronted with squashy fabricy textures one is encouraged to 'be gentle with'. Sacks of stones hang in loose, ladies' tights-like stalagmites, dripping and oozing with 'playful' organicism. Bright colours are everywhere. One is invited to hit a drum and watch plastic grains bounce all over its surface and onto the floor; to turn (with an oversize mitten) the pages cardboard 'children's' books contained in a see-through stretch-fabric globule; and to take one's shoes off and wander through what feels like a play pen that should be attached to a Heston Blumenthal gastropub. There was also a swimming pool.

I didn't get that far, I was tiring of it all. Neto's uncompromisingly joyful aesthetic combined smell of Southbank saturday afternoons, children's feet and socks, and the noise and clatter of said children's intensive running around of the exhibit was too much for me. Maybe I'm a miserable bastard, but it was all too much fucking fun for me. I mean, there's nothing worse than being forced to smile and be happy and be content with the world. Neto's art is not only shallow, it's positively malicious - invading and pervasively joyous to such an extent as to destroy whatever curiosity I might have had.

If you do go to this exhibition, and if you come away happy and smiling and pleased with the multicoloured vibrancy of the Southbank and all of its minions and minstrels, I assure you, you have been hoodwinked.

John Cage: Indeterminacy at Shoreditch Church

2010-07-05T01:41:00.009+01:00

A third concert review, and I hope to do a couple more next week if I get the chance. This concert was a nice one, and picked up on strands of musical thinking exhibited in the previous two in an interesting and slightly unexpected way.

After a slightly blustered journey from Old Street (had to break out the A-Z as my knowledge of this area is shamefully poor), arrived at the truly beautiful church and greeted with a nice glass of red. The concert began a little late (seems in the hot weather, people rock up late for concerts, something I don't really ever do); nevertheless it began with some bravura. Richard Thomas's startling and inspired performance of 57:30 for a String Player (1953) was a real treat. You can see his cello accompanied by the heavily branded edition peters landscape part (I always think it's rather stupid to have landscape parts; though it did allow for some theatrical page turns). There was a certain intense hilarity inherent in this opening string music, something that became a theme for the rest of the concert.

The music from Suite for Toy Piano (1948) that followed felt very much like filler to me, though it had its charm. I do understand Cage's motion towards chance as a determinant for his compositional output - some of his earlier, semi-improvised compositions (as I feel sure this one was) are quite weak. These pieces also had some of the elements of structured silliness or charm shown in the earlier work, though the music for toy pianos is (of course) more evocative of innocence.

Next came the well-known Solo for Sliding Trombone (1957-8). This is performed quite a bit and there isn't much I need say about it save for the interesting 'functionality' this particular performance had. Alan Tomlinson's meticulous setting up of the table for his mutes, the music stand, the part, and his chair spilled over into the musical performance (despite his spoken disclaimer that the preceding activities were not written in the score; they probably are implied on some level). Cage's music seemed to have the same 'functional' quality that his setting up of his apparatus had - but a mysterious functionality understandable only to some higher authority. I got the feeling that if he didn't parp his mouthpiece into the harmon mute at the particular point that he did, something else might have been adversely affected, and (like an employee) the play would have to 'compensate' somehow. Again, the silliness invoked by this piece had a distinctly structural feel to it - like someone being instructed to play. This was in marked contrast to the A band's performance the previous night - it seemed that no one was instructing them to play, not even the concert organisers.

After a protracted period of (perhaps improvised) silence, Richard Thomas played a further cello piece. Though maybe a little weaker this time, it was nevertheless fascinating to hear this music in combination with the sounds from outside - notably the usual friday-night spats between men and women on the street. This was followed by a performance of 0'0" (1962), realised by the iPhone ensemble (I wonder whether they do other performances, and what they perform). This, again, picked up on the structured silliness of earlier pieces. This time, I felt it was a bit forced and perhaps a little embarrassing. Tania Chen's lunatic tap dancing combined with snippets of radio and the sounds of the world cup (I think), as well as another ensemble member's brushing and straightening of her hair, seemed a bit much for me. It looked to me rather like undergraduate performance art, somewhat unconvincing.

After the interval, we returned to a ten-minute realisation of Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (1960), a very beautiful work, and a little short (I felt) at the length that it was. An extra 5 or 6 minutes would have been perfect to fully articulate the atmospheres generated, but in a long programme like this it might have been unsuitable. This performance also lacked some of the silliness present in previous works - instead it was purely tranquil, articulating well Cage's mantra that music should 'sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences'.

But lastly we came to the moment most audience members had probably been waiting for. Comedian Stewart Lee has been a supporter of experimental music over the years, and his sense of comic timing and understanding of the domain was a obviously an advantage in tackling Cage's Indeterminacy (1959). Lee's somewhat clinical approach - sitting at a desk, with each story on a card - had a poignancy to it. There was something of the archivist about Lee's performance (and a tangible absence of Cage himself); but Lee was not cold, he had great warmth and humility. Though often Tania Chen and Steve Beresford's interruptions didn't perhaps interrupt as much as they might have done (and occasionally one got a sense of the awkwardness apparent, with Lee waiting for interruptions that didn't materialise), the performance had a charm and polish to it. I especially liked the Richard Buhlig story (including Cage waiting for 12 hours outside his house), one of the particularly wordy stories taking quite an effort to read in one minute. Thirty minutes was also a good length of time for the work, as enough variety was introduced without lapsing into indulgence.

A good evening overall, though the concert did have its low points. The humour inherent in Cage's work was emphasised - which seems to make sense, seeing as Indeterminacy is one of Cage's most humorous and accessible works. It's interesting to me that because Cage himself was such a warm person (and that his writings and interviews became so widely disseminated), his more austere works often found difficulty amongst even learned auditors - it's easy to understand why. Maybe Stockhausen and Boulez understood that, if one desires to work as a serious modernist, one probably ought to be a bit humourless. Though the public persona might suffer, people might be inclined to take as read the seriousness of the work without any dissonance in understanding.

The A Band / Sogabe Hidekazu @ Cafe Oto

2010-07-02T18:07:00.009+01:00

Another day, another gig. This one promised to be a fascinating trip, the newly reformed improvisation troupe do not perform all that often.

Dalston on a sunny afternoon is perhaps not a place to sit indoors, and Oto's slightly muggy interior (and abundance of tea lights) was maybe anti-seasonal. Still, all this hot weather makes my skin itch, and I was happy to retreat into some darkness.

The concert started at 9 with an opening set by Sogabe Hidekazu, a young Japanese improviser who (as far as I can tell from his website) is primarily a visual artist (there are some works of his on the Saatchi gallery webpage). Playing an electric bass and a effects pedal, Hidekazu's opening ocean waves of no-input feedback noise - and the baseball cap - seemed like a nod to Toshi Nakamura; the ringing tones generated by the body of the bass suggested something more melodious however. On the whole, however, his playing did not sit easily with me - portions of the performance were spent tediously repeating cells of material (generated by the 'infinite delay' of the effects pedal) while Hidekazu toyed with his controls. This, plus the fizzing buzz of the Cafe Oto PA as it rattled on its assembly, the bedroomy feeling of the musical structure and the sonic content, and the enforced recapitulation at the end to the opening waves of noise, reinforced Hidekazu's admirable, but ultimately crude set.

It seemed at this point (when there was a short interval) many audience members decided they couldn't stand the heat (or, indeed, the noise), and made a break for it. A shame, because when the A band came on - tonight performing as " 'Allo Aloe" - we that remained witnessed a truly remarkable set of improvised music. I say this without exaggeration - I watched the whole of the Freedom of the City festival, and while much of the music played at the Conway Hall was well thought out and nuanced, nothing was intoxicating as this performance of the A band's.

The group was constituted of around 9 members, who all (as far as I could tell) played together at the opening - a blaze of 4/4 toms, cymbals, and wailing, call-to-prayer-like vocal layering. The opening had something of conventional 'indie' about it - but after maybe a minute and a half, the anarchic tendency the A band are known for came into the foreground. Members began to leave, jettison their roles as musicians and adopt honorary positions as audience members. The music disintegrated from its metered opening to an expanse of beautiful and evolving textures. The musicians let each other 'solo' - almost like jazz - but also conversed with each other and the sound technician, moved around the space, contributed when they felt it was necessary, and added absurdism to the situation by (for example) laying out duplo bricks on a table in front of the performers, and subsequently throwing them everywhere.

What was intriguing to me was that as a unified performance, so much of the music had such stability and expressive integrity - ideas were allowed to last for enough time to become established, but not too long as to become boring. Transitions were usually seamless, and without the moments of awkwardness present in the support set, and yet all the musicians seemed to perform 'haphazardly'. Even one player's failing instrument - a toy piano made on a roll of cloth, producing a beautifully mundane MIDI piano sound - contributed in an absurdist way by failing to work.

The A band's fluidity when it came to performing also helped solidify for me the usually edifying nature of performance; of an 'us and them' relationship between performers and audience. This was dismantled, casually, by the A band - instead, as an audience member, one felt a combination of involvement, inclusion, and voyeurism. One was watching a group at play (gaming, scheming, forming nexuses of activity and falling away again) - but a group at play with itself. The performance lacked the bourgeois ritual that made it necessary to clap at the end - so that the final applause (of the few audience members that remained after their hour or so of playing) seemed inappropriate and tokenistic.

And yet, in purely musical terms, the A band's performance was familiar - the music was 'sectional', it contained references (echoes) of other musics (a suitably postmodern stance), the delay pedals of the violin/theremin players created commonplace repetitive figures, there was a piano and a drum kit (both conspicuously 'non-unusual'). Perhaps these commonplace instruments were necessary - for if a music is to be truly democratic (as the A band's performance surely was), it cannot be formed on a principle of exclusion. A good thing indeed; for me, the A band's performance is certain proof that a nuanced and subtle music can exist without being rarified or exclusive.

Music We'd Like to Hear I

2010-07-01T20:51:00.004+01:00

If I am honest, I can’t say I am particularly enamoured of the violin as a musical instrument. High, shrill, usually played with such ego, it’s not an instrument that I find enjoyable to behold. Still, the first concert of Music We’d Like To Hear, a full concert of music for solo violin, was not something I was going to turn down. It turned out to be a sublime evening which (to an extent) renewed my faith in the instrument and in string instruments in general.

Clemens Merkel (of Montreal’s Bozzini Quartet) played four pieces, beginning with Christian Wolff, and continuing with three works by the concerts organisers: Marcus Trunk, Tim Parkinson and John Lely. Trunk appeared before the concert began and tried to persuade us that this was not an egotistical affair, that Clemens had chosen the pieces of his own bat, and that, besides, it was a 5-year anniversary for the concert series. The music’s quality, however, dispelled any qualms I may have had.

Beginning with Christian Wolff’s piece, The Death of Mother Jones (1977), it became clear that Merkel’s violin tone and the ambience of the Church of St Anne and St Agnes were perfect partners. The violin was warm, resonant, clear, but also evocative and not particularly ‘pretty’. Merkel’s idiosyncratic playing style also came to the fore, and from the very start, this seemed (to me) as everything solo violin music should be. Contemplative, microtonally rich, variously gestured, with excellent weight of expressive idea, willingness to crumble, with some degree of innocence (and a thankful absence of decadent vibrato). Wolff's piece had a conceptual edge linked to folk music; its harmonies showed this directionality, but much of the music was angular and not ‘homely’ at all. Merkel’s playing breathed with absolute integrity, relaxation and concentration.

Next came Markus Trunk’s austere Four Stills (2002/10). Dominated by dwellings on singular tones, this form of composition was suggestive of Scelsi. But beyond that, Merkel’s playing added a distinctly contemplative or reflective element that, while present in Scelsi’s music, is often clothed in mysticism. I was beginning to think that the expression that lay behind this material was humanistic (perhaps the Lutheran church principles were infecting my senses); but nevertheless, I was struck by the wisdom and humility present in Merkel’s playing. The final section of Trunk’s piece was a particular highlight – the bow drawn across the strings half col legno, in tiny, almost inaudible motions. The sound of the violin seemed to melt into the soundscape of St Paul’s – the distant coloured noise of traffic, the occasional ‘crack’ of a sat on pew, the drop of a pencil. The musical sounds contained, and were contained by, the environmental surroundings.

Tim Parkinson’s piece that followed was just as gorgeous, if not more so. Small melodic ideas are given to us, passing us (as Parkinson notes) ‘like slabs on a pavement’. The perfect weight given to these ideas allowed the piece to be contemplative and not drag, yet not speed and ignore the integrity of each idea. Again, Merkel’s beautiful playing carried the musical model to heights.

Finally, John Lely’s piece. Up until this moment, Merkel had played from music stands, organised first on the right, then left, then back. For this piece, he came to the forward and played from memory. This was easy enough, as the piece - The Harmonics of Real Strings (2002) – was made up of a very slow glissando up the A string. A beautifully elegant idea, executed almost perfectly; Merkel allowed the natural fluctuations of the violin to speak, and ignored the Classical mantra of ‘evenness’ (which would have destroyed the work). Using the bridge, Merkel brought out the higher harmonies present in the string (as Lely no doubt indicated to do). At times the shift in pitch was almost imperceptible, but towards the bridge, the pitch had to shift pretty quickly (the distance of the same interval reduces in real terms as one moves up the string). Particularly spectacular was the extremely high tone at the end, and its seamless transition into noise, and that noise’s subsequent fading into environmental sound, the perfect end to a concert of great contemplation, elegance and force. I look forward to the next two!

Field recordings

2010-06-30T01:43:00.004+01:00

Went to a talk today between LCC sonic art lecturer Salomé Voegelin and artists Jennie Savage and Peter Cusack. Cusack showed his Favourite London Sound project (which has now expanded to many other cities around the world), and got me pondering field recording practice and how it can be understood to correlate with other forms of sonic art.

It seems to me that field recording is much like photography - some of it is artistic, and some isn't (journalistic). The line between the two is often blurred severely. Similarly, field recordings are used functionally, as well as being archival material. What I find particularly interesting is the new(ish) kind of artistic field recording exemplified by labels like and/OAR. This kind of practice seemed worlds away from the documentary style of Cusack; figuring out why this is is a bit of an issue.

The first reason seems to me to be to do with the recording's position relative to its source location. Artistic field recording on CD is necessarily removed from its source; Cusacks sounds were directly linked to their sources by the means of a map. Voegelin suggested this added a temporal element to what was essentially a static visual image; and beyond that the location is 'evoked' through a combination of the sound and the view from above.

The second reason seems to be the motivation lying behind the work. I assume that most of the work on and/OAR exists because it sounds interesting (or at least, the sound is judged on an aesthetic plane somewhat removed from its source context) - the idea being here that when the sounds of an environment are appropriated into an aesthetic structure they obtain a further reality, separate from the 'actual' reality they depict. This 'imaginary' structural reality of the work may or may not incorporate aspects of the 'actual' context; needless to say, aesthetic judgement usually operates on a different plane to socio-political assessment of a situation (the latter occasionally being incorporated into the former). Cusack, on the other hand, is not particularly interested in the aesthetic worth (from his point of view) of the recordings - at least, not as long as this aesthetic worth can be considered any different from the information present in the recordings of the source they depict. Cusack's aesthetic then is, literally, documentary - the 'beauty' of 'beautiful' information given to the listener through sound about a surrounding. This beautiful information is also conveyed through interview on several occasions - with participants describing unrealised sounds in their memory.

Though Cusack showed a devotion to sound (and has done his entire career), what was evident from this project was its larger social implications. It is rather inappropriate to call the Favourite London Sound project an 'artwork' - at least, it seems to me to be so. Cusack would say that this probably was unimportant to him - indeed, he seemed indifferent to whether he was actually an artist at all.

I do sympathise with Cusack's position (particularly when it aligns with my own sonic taste, as in his recording of a Nightingale by a electricity substation, or recordings of Old Jerusalem), but I came away from the talk wondering whether my own, largely removed aesthetic sense (which I use to measure and judge sounds I hear, things I look at, or for that matter any sensory experience) was inadequate because of its isolationism. My tendency to divide experience into aesthetic and non-aesthetic was artificial... (but I mean, let's face it, you can't judge everything all of the time, there's too much experienced by the human brain, you have to take a break!).

Improvisations

2010-06-06T23:55:00.004+01:00

Have made a slightly more elegant page for some recent improvisations:

http://ldunn.tumblr.com/

Hope it's interesting. Maybe will continue updating this blog but who knows. I've not been particularly good at doing it anyway!

Ablinger

2010-03-29T03:46:00.007+01:00

Haven't written in a while; thought I didn't really have much to say, as well as my computer dying recently. Fortunately a new mac is at hand. But, did get a chance to hear some CDs, of which I will write a bit about.

Peter Ablinger - Voices and Piano

Kairos 0013082KAI

From when I came across him last year or so, I've always liked Ablinger. There is something about his approach - a conceptual approach - which is unusual among Composers (with a C). Despite what Composers have done to musical form, the concert form itself remains particularly rigid; even after fifty years of post-Cagean Experimental music, even after Punk, Merzbow, East German Concert Installations of the eighties. I sort of hope that Sound Art, as well as the recent trends in relational art (Carsten Hoeller, Rirkrit Tiravanija) will help to break down those barriers. They may be exactly the barriers that alienate New (classically oriented) Music from those outside the inner circle. (Alex Ross has various gripes about concert ritual, some of which are related to these ideas.)

In his concert works (i.e. those other than his installations) Ablinger seems to do something elusive; to provide an objectified aesthetic sense that's like a conceptual art installation. It's a bit like the pieces are surrounded by the white space that permeates art galleries. Voices and Piano is no exception, though I think the nature of Kairos' CD may contribute (maybe negatively) to this effect. Nevertheless, I think it's unclear whether Ablinger's work is music or sound art, or whether there is a difference. I think what most people would be happy to say is that 'someone talking - just talking - isn't really music'. For all practical purposes, when you listen to the news on radio 4, it's not music. But it's all a question of contextualisation as far as I can see - presumably the news could be presented as music (in a concert environment with a programme note), or conceptualised as music in an individual way (listening for pitch/rhythmic/timbric quality as opposed to meaning). Similarly, through the addition of piano accompaniments, which are 'expansions' of the voices, Ablinger is 'recontextualising' voices by juxtaposition. Maybe its this that contributes to my perceived gallery-like 'white space'.

The CD is by no means aesthetically perfect to my ear - portions drag - but I think there are enough moments to satisfy (more than most new composition I hear, incidentally). These moments are, for example, where some important word is obscured by the piano, and the sense of a sentence lost (or even refuted); or when there is a nice juxtaposition of one texture leading into another; or the organisation of speakers themselves. There are some gorgeous compositions in there, Apollinaire for example, or Mother Theresa. Sartre is also particularly great.

Although, the other thing that is questioned is the presence of 'composition' in the pieces. As with his works Quadraturen ('Squarings'), there is the presence of quantisation in these pieces, as well as music as a form of analysis of sound. There is an algorithmic element which also suggests a 'hands off' compositional approach - as in truly Experimental music. Quadraturen were often composed with assistants, who programmed the Max/MSP patch(es) or realised the mechanical display, and in some cases produced the score. Ablinger says of Quadraturen V: 'Music': 'I have not written a single note (- and I am proud of that)' (this piece happens to be, in my opinion, terribly beautiful; and a cogent argument for algorithmic composition). Hence the presence of conceptual art/sound art - the Quadraturen pieces, even the ensemble/orchestral ones, are processes, not texts (or processes as texts if the traditional work-concept is retained). They turn the human beings into machines for reproduction of a process. They are part of the 'little factory'. One gets the sense that Hodges (piano on the Kairos recording) is in a similar position - and yet all of these pieces seem 'composed'. I suspect that Ablinger set up machines which would produce notes for him, but still decided which he thought 'worked', and which didn't. Or, at least, he was participant (or overseer) of a process.

Though I don't think it is Ablinger's most exciting work, I think this disc is great, and raises a ton of interesting questions, and provides some great moments.

Bach fugue in F#min

2010-01-15T17:53:00.006Z

How about this for an elegant visualisation of pitch sets - a tetrahelix of trichords!

From here: http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.07.13.4/mto.07.13.4.reed_bain.html

Summary: First term at Cambridge

2010-01-02T03:01:00.007Z

Seeing as, bizarrely, anyone who Googles my name can get at this blog, I thought I should summarize my doings up until this point. Also it's 2010, and (supposedly) this could mark a juncture in things. Additionally, I rarely post anything here; so here goes.

Oxbridge can be an intimidating place to anyone outside of it. I know this because I live in Oxford and now go to Cambridge university. This ever-so-slightly awkward situation allows me to see Oxbridge (as the differences between the universities are really negligible) are from both the point of view of both a Townie and a Student.

Both universities are increasingly interested in 'outreach', as can be seen from their prospectuses which emphasise the 'cosmopolitan' and apparently multicultural nature of their constituent colleges. Actually, most students at both places are white and middle/upper-class. In my year at Corpus there is one black student. Additionally there are people from abroad (who have to pay a lot of money to come here, so some of them are on exchange which can ease the monetary load); lots of people (at Corpus) from Northern Ireland, but conspicuously only one student from Scotland.

As far as I can tell, in my year at Corpus very few people come from true comprehensives (I did). Most come from independent, grammar or public schools. One intriguing thing I noticed when asking people was that some students who came from a big public school (like Eton) would pause very slightly before saying this, suggesting there is a certain amount of guilt (either real or unconscious) associated with attending such a school. Who could blame them, with the amount of goading public schools get in the mainstream media. Considering our next government will be most likely made up of old Etonians (pretending not to be, of course) the state of affairs will soon become much stranger.

I try not to judge people on what kind of upbringing they have, but in reality it's very difficult not to. There is good reason to believe that there is less social mobility in this country than there was in the years just after the war.

So far, so obvious. But my experience of the first Michealmas term has been generally speaking very positive. I don't think I've humiliated myself too much, I have a nice room, and there always seems to be something to do. Food is generally okay. I've started acting in plays (the Cambridge drama scene is vibrant and littered with productions of big, difficult, canonical classics of the twentieth century, and Shakespeare), and recently landed the part of Macbeth. Extraordinary, I know, and I can't quite come to grips with it myself. Still. There is also good comedy, and the Footlights' pantomime sold out all of its dates within hours.

I also have come right in the middle of the apparent reform of the Music Faculty, which is facing difficulties like many of the institutions that make up the conglomerate university. The course, redesigned in the 70s by Sandy Goehr, is showing it's age. The somewhat tentative links between the lectures and their supervisions is sometimes fraught, and often we are asked to write essays about things we haven't yet been lectured about. Consequently I don't go to many lectures, even though (unlike other humanities subjects) they are apparently compulsory. Even more annoying, this year there are so many undergrads that if they do all turn up to a lecture, lecture room 2 isn't big enough to fit them all in. The inevitable latecomers have to find a spare chair, and, if they're lucky, a music stand to write on.

My fellow corpus student, Maria Helmling, has been campaigning for some time for change in the Music Faculty and has achieved a great deal. The first is the opening of a coffee bar used by students and staff before and in between lectures, a very welcome sight. The other, and sadder tale, is the newly opened Music Faculty common room, which never has anybody in it. It replaces the 'Ethnomusicology Room', which was apparently so useless the management seemed happy to replace it with a room with nothing in it apart from squashy bean bags and unread copies of Varsity. I hope it does get used, as often after lectures I find myself lonely in my room in College (as I suspect other music students do also).

2009 also saw the establishment of the AHRC Research Centre for Music Performance as Creative Practice, and the installation of 'New Musicology' mainstays Nicholas Cook and John Rink at the faculty. The programme has a couple of million to plow its way through nothing less than our current understanding of music performance. Quite what the results will be (other than written up observations and interpretations of how musicians work and perform) I don't know. I think part of the object might be to try and resolve the rather embarrassing situation that everybody in day-to-day life knows what music looks and sounds like, but Academia still hasn't quite decided what it is. Not unsurprisingly, the wider your remit becomes, the weaker the definition of what music is. (I was tempted, rather shamefully, to put inverted commas around the last word in that sentence.)

Perhaps in a Faculty so dedicated to funding new research into performance, one might assume the teaching would lean so too. Not so, as so far, genuinely enlightening lecturing has been hard to come by. Martin Ennis' entertaining teaching of Counterpoint (yes, you did read that right) is probably the best highlight. Nicholas Marston's well-intentioned yet misguided attempts at providing the 'friendly face of analysis' don't do too well. His non-Shenkerian motivic voice-leading analyses (conspicuously featuring Mr. Schoenberg at the centre) are pretty confusing, which showed up prominently in my essays. Analysis is presented as a series of 'coulds' and 'maybes'; very little appears falsifiable, and I am under a suspicion that when I get to it, Shenkerism will smell of circularity. But since nobody will actually teach it to me I guess I'll have to remain ignorant.

Like many of the other university bodies and faculties, the Music Faculty is in debt. It has taken to hiring out the concert hall to an evangelical church, much to the horror of music students and members of CUMS; but the fact is the Faculty has to look for spare cash wherever it can. The University Library recently announced that it might take a sponsor for extra cash. Similar outbursts of horror: 'The Tesco Cambridge University Library' etc. The best one I read was the foot-in-mouth 'Oxford University Press Cambridge University Library'.

But so much for this grumbling (one term is not justification for the level of grumbling I seem to have reached). I think there definitely are good things about the faculty - one of them being a collection of stellar musicologists. It's conservative collection, but bizarrely, revisionist at the same time. Many of them are approachable and cheerfully engaging people who, while they obviously have more important things to do, don't seem too put out by the prospect of delivering a lecture to a roomfull of undergrads.

2009-10-08T16:45:00.002+01:00

Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008) - MM51 (1980)

More on Oy

2009-10-07T18:09:00.003+01:00

Have been away for a while doing the BBC competition, which has been, er, big.

Oy was performed by the Aurora Orchestra, pretty well considering that only one hour of rehearsal was provided. In the end, the detuning was done by pulling the clarinets' mouthpieces out, rather than using shoelaces (which had been the method developed by my uncle, Tony Pay), as these muted the sound, and in the circumstances I felt that volume was more important than preciseness of pitch. In the future it would be good to achieve a more precise performance, but in many ways I enjoy the imprecision of this one.

Recording below:

Oy by lawrencedunn

2009-07-07T23:56:00.003+01:00

Hella - Biblical Violence
(Album: Hold Your Horse Is)

More on the BBC competition

2009-07-07T16:09:00.004+01:00

Peter Kingston has written an article (in the guardian today), with online mirror here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/07/young-composers-competition

It is indeed me at the top, staring intently at my set of headphones for no apparent reason.

This is the first time I've been put in a paper - and it's pretty exciting (although I didn't expect the piece to go through, as wild as it is; I'm not sure I was prepared to answer the question "is it playable?"). Also, to clarify, I'm not a composer in association with the NYO, as Kingston suggests. Peter has also paraphrased my comments - I don't think I ever said I would try "to do my own thing" or "use my voice", statements that are clichés. I seem to remember talking more about being influenced by the kind of radical thought processes that lie behind avant-garde music, rather than (particularly), the music itself. I am not conscious of a piece of music that might be seen as "model" for Oy, but technically, there are things that are similar to other pieces. But I do have to thank Peter and the Guardian for letting my face grace their pages; I hope some people will read it.

This is a massive project for all of us, with this joint "Fanfares" composition for the Last Night of the Proms. Essentially, we're picking up where Anna Meredith left off last year, utilising all of the ensembles around the country, hooked up using technology. I am not proud of the Last Night, the forced patriotism and joviality is not a comfortable environment, as far as I'm concerned; nevertheless this is a mind-bogglingly huge audience to have one's music presented to. Literally, millions of people. The biggest audience I will ever have.

Oy, for six clarinets and almglocken

2009-06-26T00:04:00.006+01:00

My piece, "Oy", for six clarinets and almglocken, has been chosen as one of the winners of the BBC Proms Young Composers' Competition. Although I don't win any money, I get a few good commissions: there's a short fanfare piece being done at the Last Night, which will be written as a team by the winners of the competition (I'm a bit anxious about this, but more details will follow).

But more generally, its seems a really great opportunity for me to meet people, attempt to spread some of my hair-brained ideas, and maybe learn some things. I think this piece has probably the most radical instrumentation the competition has yet encountered, which is exciting.

For anyone who's interested in the piece, there a score, below.

Ben Lewis - Gursky Documentary and others

2009-06-22T00:35:00.007+01:00

Directed by Ben Lewis (2002)

Subsequent to this film, a Gursky print was bought for US$3.34 million (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Cent_II_Diptychon).

Last year, Ben made a film about how the contemporary art bubble has blown up and burst over the last few years. That film isn't on the web (although it was on BBC4/iPlayer for a while, if anyone saw it), but there's a little thing he did in November 2008 in which he discusses it.

He mentions a story published in the Independent about a stockpile of about 200 Damien Hirsts at the White Cube, worth about £100million, which he hadn't (at that time) sold. There was a document that showed this list of work, and it was leaked to the media. In fact, during the making of the film, Ben got hold of the document and leaked it to the media himself.

The Lighthouse - and Other Webcasts

2009-04-19T00:21:00.010+01:00

Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse (1979) has been staged in a new production in conjunction with the Lancaster Concert Series. They are broadcasting the show on the web:

http://www.lancasterconcerts.co.uk/webcasts09/showwm2.asp

James Oxley - tenor: Sandy
Damian Thantrey - baritone: Blazes
Jonathan Best - bass-baritone: Arthur

Etienne Siebens - conductor

Elaine Tyler-Hall director
Aaron Marsden designer
Marc Rosette lighting designer

Psappha Ensemble

Brief Synopsis:

Part ghost story, part psychological drama, this opera is based on the true story of three lighthouse keepers who disappeared mysteriously from a remote Scottish lighthouse in 1900. In the prologue, three officers from a lighthouse ship report to a Court of Enquiry how they arrived to relieve the three keepers and found the place deserted. The main act flashbacks to the keepers, working the lighthouse far longer than usual. They are nervous and pass the time by singing characteristic ‘set piece’ songs – which express their individual guilt. Out of the fog, their past emerges to taunt them. They see the arrival of a blinding light as Antichrist, in which they are replaced by the relief officers: the mystery is unresolved.

(from Chester Novello) This opera seems very much in the Britten tradition - it could seem a bit out of date now. But the production looks good quality and the audio/video is rather incredible.

Also there are a few other webcasts (of varying quality of performance) - one interesting one is an entire programme of Claude Vivier:

http://www.lancasterconcerts.co.uk/webcasts/showwm2.asp

The Vivier concert includes Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, which I believe was unfinished on Vivier's death. Either they perform a completion, or they perform only the completed movements (there is no programme note unfortunately, and no libretto - there is a 404 not found error). As for the rest of the programme - I feel its pretty variable. Vivier has written some inspired music - but in this programme there were some things that I found, frankly, a bit boring.

As much as the quality of performance goes - considering most musicians would be unhappy with cameras pointing at them unless in a very controlled environment, the Psappha Ensemble do remarkably well. This is not easy music. The BBC Singers in the Vivier perform excellently.

Besides which, I think its a good thing that programming of this kind is happening - and certainly, this sort of distribution, on the web, seems like an excellent idea. I'd like to see a programme by InterContemporain or Klangforum Wien broadcast in this way (EIC actually have started doing titbits on YouTube, but nothing like the quality of the Lancaster Uni stuff).

Quatre Chants pour Franchir le Seuil

2009-04-16T14:03:00.003+01:00

Gérard Grisey died in 1998 - at 52 years of age. His final work is a dark piece (Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold), coincidentally, about death and transformation.*

(To read this analysis, it would probably be useful to have heard a recording - there is one available from the Austrian label Kairos [http://www.kairos-music.com/R/Grisey1.html], or a free radio transcription from Inconstant Sol [http://inconstantsol.blogspot.com/2008/11/grard-grisey-quatre-chants-pour.html])

Grisey's most well known works were in the cycle Les Espaces Acoustiques - a cycle that in a full performance lasts an hour and a half. Indeed, Grisey didn't write many pieces that are shorter than about twenty minutes, his shortest pieces being earlier works from the 60s. Many of his compositions deal with extended time - processes that evolve gradually, transforming themselves from one thing into something new.

While this piece (Quatre Chants) is nothing like Les Espaces, these considerations, of processes, and transformations, are still very much in existance.

The ensemble of 16 instrumentalists (including soprano) is split into four groups of four, one 'high' group and three 'low' groups. The three 'low' groups, at the back, each consist consist of two similar-timbre single-line instruments, and a string instrument, and percussion.

Instrumentation
[click to enlarge; applies to all images]

The front group is similar, but the instrument tessituras are higher, and the soprano replaces the percussion. The Flute and Trumpet timbres also differ.

Evidently, symmetry seems to be an important consideration for Grisey in this piece. It is confirmed on the first page of the first movement - we are confronted by an intricate tempo canon, where the saxophone group have phrases that are echoed, more slowly and lower, in the clarinet group and the tuba group.

First page of first mvt., lines added at every new phrase
to show canonic form.

The drawn lines aren't really adequate to convey the shape of the canon. The clarinet-group material is multiplied by 4/5 to reach the sax-group speed, and 4/3 to reach the tuba-group speed. This canon continues for some time, but it is gradually corrupted and distorted.

The 'process' of this movement is a gradual winding up of tempo. The tempo of the soprano/flute/trumpet interjections increases until it is almost frenetic. The form of the piece leads up to a remarkable piece of 'instrumental synthesis', where the ensemble collectively imitates the sound of the singer's voice.

The sonogram here represents the soprano high C6, on 'Mort!', and then the instrumental version of it afterwards.

Sonogram of first movement bars 150 and 151, first beat of each. Brackets added
From Kairos recording (0012252KAI).

Notice the bracketed sections, where the fluctuation of the soprano's vibrato (in this case Catherine Dubosc) is predicted and acurately mapped by the top violin note and piccolo, whose notes are B6 and C#7, the higher partials of the wavering soprano note. The trumpet spectrum (the most visible spectrum here) is also very close in character to the soprano; doubtless, this is one of the reasons why the instrument was chosen by Grisey.

What I actually wanted to do, however, is to examine how this particular portion of Grisey's text - that I have used for my blog title - is important to the work. To do this, we need to understand Grisey's intricate motivic writing.

Grisey's piece follows a model not unlike other great romantic song cycles (Strauss' Four Last Songs being the prime example; but also Das Lied von der Erde) - where each movement is separate, on a separate text, but there are subtle musical links between each of them. Indeed this is really a kind of symphonic form - where the listener thinks s/he is listening to something new, but it is indebted to what has come before.

Indeed, Grisey's work could be seen as a kind of skewed symphonic form - with a first movement that builds tension, releasing it into a coda (which is actually a simplified recapitulation); a second, slow, simple movement; a third, short, fairly bright coloured movement; which leads attacca on into a long fourth movement of several distinct sections.

So to begin examining Grisey's motivic development, we could begin with the most simple - a two note falling motive, descending stepwise, where both notes are long, and there is a crescendo to the note change.

Third mvt., bb. 57-60

This is the first sonorous cross-ensemble sounding of this theme, but the soprano and parts of the ensemble have previously been sounding less obvious versions. Of course, a two note theme is probably the shortest theme possible (although I think a one note theme might be possible, it has to be combined with timbre**), so it has to be extended and repeated for it to sink in.

In the next example, Grisey extends the theme by prolonging its resolution from one note to the next, throughout the ensemble.

Fourth mvt., bb. 15-18

In the next example, Grisey writes the theme for congas - note how the lower note is characterised not only by a change in pitch, but also a change in speed - for really, those two things are one and the same, pitch = periodicity.

Fourth mvt., bb. 17-20

In the next example, Grisey builds a scale out of two iterations of the theme. It appears in the tubas, and is harmonised/decorated by the rest of the ensemble.

Fourth mvt., bb. 100-3

The four note product is then given to the soprano, and it now becomes a part of what is probably the emotional heart of the work.

Fourth mvt., bb. 124-7, treble clef.

This text is set [bracketed sections not included]:

Je regardai, alentour:
[Le silence régnait!]
Tous les hommes etaient
Retransformés en Argile

The text is set poignantly, just with cello and violin, with the contrabass on a low F. It is worth quoting in its entirety.

Fourth mvt., bb. 137-72

Notice how each of the phrases is built out of the two note theme - either through addition, retrograding, or intervallic expansion. The final phrase of this section is made out of the intervallic expansion of the previous, like the 'alentour' phrase, and it is abruptly cut off.

The triadic shape of the ending phrase also mirrors the coda to the end of the first movement. Indeed the melody quoted above, beginning on 'Je regardai' bears a striking resemblance to the melodic material of the very opening (see the image of the first page above). Internal musical reference is important in this work - and as I said earlier, such motivic use suggests a kind of symphonic thinking. Themes and motives we think are new actually get transformed into things we have heard before. We dont need to realise that we are hearing something we have heard previous; but it (arguably) makes for a more unified musical experience.

As old fashioned as it is, this kind of motivic development - of such a simple idea - is something that I value greatly. In my own compositional efforts, motivic development of this kind is key.

But not only that; it is that such a simple theme can have such emotional potency. It is really this section - and the section that follows it, the remarkable Berceuse - that carries home Grisey's intentions for this piece.

As he describes it:

Musique de l’aube d’une humanité enfin débarassée du cauchemar. J’ose espérer que cette berceuse ne sera pas de celles que nous chanterons demain aux premiers clônes humains lorsqu’il faudra leur révéler l’insoutenable violence génétique et psychologique qui leur a été faite par une humanité désespérément en quête de tabous fondateurs.

Music for the dawn of a humanity finally disencumbered of the nightmare, I dare hope that this lullaby will not be among those we shall sing tomorrow to the first human clones as we perforce reveal to them the indefensible genetic and psychological violence committed against them by a humanity desperately seeking new taboos upon which to ground itself.

____________________
*Many composers seem to have last works that fit in with early deaths - Claude Vivier's last work was Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele [Do You Believe in the Immortality of the Soul], unfinished before he was stabbed to death; Maderna's Satyricon ends with a funeral dirge; and of course, the Mozart Requiem.

**Beat Furrer uses the same one note theme in many of his works - a very high pizzicato string note, which appears in FAMA, the Piano Concerto, and a few other works. Of course, this is more of a sonorism, but it is such a prevalent sound that I feel it is thematic. Furrer is a composer that can write an awful lot of notes down, and yet not have any motives there. One ends up with a kind of multi-pitched noise - which can be combined with motives, or left alone.

NB: Many thanks to Coptuscantus for providing me with a digital version of the score.