I posted these reviews on the local public library website: CD’s (albums) of Pulitzer Prize-winning music, whether or not the artist/composer saw it as an “album” or a stand-alone piece.
Elliott Carter: String Quartets – Pulitzer 1960 (for no. 2) and 1973 (for no. 3)
Juliard String Quartet
It begins with a loud, angular declamation from the cello (with a single viola note) and proceeds from there. Unlike some composers who clothe their modernism in lush orchestration (Boulez) or tranquility derived from silence (Cage) or architectural aggression (Xenakis), this is the unvarnished stuff. It’s stark. It’s austere. It is recorded without a whiff of reverb. It is not music of angst, as some would have such “modern” music to be; rather, maybe it expresses little emotion at all. It’s pure mathematics. As a listener, unraveling the complicated formulae that govern the melodic lines and the rhythms is exhausting, maybe impossible – and ultimately extremely rewarding; an intellectual exercise that leads finally to understanding. With that understanding comes the realization that much of what I have just said (stark, austere, non-emotional) is actually not true at all…! There are richly contrasting moments, such as the slow quiet music in the First Quartet that keeps getting overlaid with louder, faster variations on the same sequences. There’s that final quasi-resolve of the Pulitzer-Prize winning Third Quartet (so complex that the liner notes list what’s happening in which speaker on your stereo!) where everything comes together in dissonant but final triple-stops. There are the occasional excursions into pizzicato textures. And above all, there are the rhythms – incomprehensible at first hearing, later resolving into obvious meters – some of them actually groove as they morph and mutate and crosshatch one another. Yes, it’s complicated. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it’s far more beautiful than you’d think at first. Give this a listen, and once you’re past the initial trepidation, don’t complain to me that you’re hooked.
John Luther Adams: Become Ocean – Pulitzer 2014
Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot
Listen to it as backgroung sound: it's a pretty soundscape. Listen to it closely: it's a complex layering of wave upon wave of contrapuntal detail. Wagnerian in scope but intimate in detail, this is satisfying music that stands up to repeated listening.
A sad story: I had a chance to hear the world premiere of this piece, played by the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot, but for some (forgotten) reason I decided to go to some other concert instead (I don’t even remember what that other concert was). Later I found out that this piece had not only won a Pulitzer but also a Grammy (for the recording). It’s kind of like the time I had a chance to personally witness a comet crash into Jupiter (Astronomy club, Berkeley, CA.) I missed that one too because I simply forgot about it until after they’d carted off all of the telescopes.
Julia Wolff: Anthracite Fields – Pulitzer 2015
This large-scale contemporary classical composition (Pulitzer Prize winner 2015) chronicles the world of coal mining. Beginning with a "horror movie soundtrack" and litany of names of people who've died in mines, it proceeds through a number of moods and styles -- from despair to hope for a better life, though there is some doubt to the validity of this hope because the words are drawn from an advertisement. Throughout, the vocal lines become progressively complex and interwoven as the words become more minimalist. This is a very emotional work, good for active listening. Do not attempt to listen to it while doing something else.
Henry Threadgill and Zooid: In for a penny, in for a pound – Pulitzer 2016
This is charmingly disorienting music. It’s jazz-fusion, certainly, but not jazz fused with rock or funk; it’s jazz fused with, …what…?. It’s modernist (or even serialist) classical chamber music. It’s improvised. It’s thoroughly carefully composed. Each of the two CD’s feature one short piece followed by two longer ones. In all, notes scatter in a whimsical manner, seemingly without logic, and yet the notes all go together in the most logical of ways. In some sections, it’s difficult to distinguish who’s playing the melody and who’s playing the rhythm – or is there really a difference? The longer pieces consist of strings of shorter sections; careful listening reveals that some of these sections repeat with different instruments or in different meters or with different parts interposed. The titles sound “classical” in the manner of contemporary chamber music, stating the title and the instrumentation (for example, “Dosepic, for cello”) but these designations are only a general guideline. The eponymous instrument does more improvising than the others, and usually has one unaccompanied solo, but the others are present in the piece. All in all, this is more Elliot Carter than Miles Davis. That is neither a positive nor negative statement; it merely indicates the style of the music. I could also describe it as a kaleidoscope of notes. I’ve had fun listening to it, but it may take several listens to comprehend it fully. Again, that's neither a positive nor negative statement; the music is captivating even as I’m waiting.
Kendrick Lamar: Damn – Pulitzer 2018
“I was takin’ a walk the other day…” And so this begins. As expected from the title, (and in contrast to that innocent opening), this musical "walk the other day" isn't nice. Nobody has ever gotten a Pulitzer in music for writing inoffensive little songs. (Think I'm wrong here? Consider these from previous awards: Julia Wolff’s “Anthracite Fields” is about deaths of coal miners; Winton Marsalis’ “Blood on the Fields” is about slavery; and George Crumb’s startling anti-symphony “Echoes of Time and the River” – which caused a near riot in Seattle in the 1960’s – is about mortality in general. Even the purely instrumental works, such as those by Henry Threadgill or Elliot Carter, are edgy even though they aren't "about" anything.) In the case of “Damn”, the music itself is not shocking in any way; it’s well-composed hip-hop numbers with tunes and chord progressions straight out of jazz standards (and, oddly, few samples or beat-boxes). There are beautiful backup vocals in tight harmony. In fact, much of the album (over the deep subwoofing, obligatory in hip-hop) is understated and often quite pretty – I can’t really imagine this music booming full-blast from a souped-up car cruising the avenue on a Friday evening. It’s the lyrics that are startling. At first listen the words may seem like nothing but a collection of F-bombs and N-bombs. One is tempted to turn it off and comment that it’s no different from all of those other records where the swearing is merely passed from one rapper to another without anyone in the middle thinking about what’s actually being said. That is not the case here. First of all, not every song has the “swears”, and those that do have them for a reason: this is about the despair of the urban poor in the US, and the anger of one constantly exposed to bigotry and racism in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As stated in “Yah” (the third song), even the Bible is (mis)quoted to support continued oppression (this along with the refrain “ain’t nobody prayin’ for me” which occurs in several of the songs). Most of the songs are narratives. In many, the “characters” in the stories care for one another even as they admit appalling situations and, sometimes, shortcomings. The song “loyalty” is about this. In a linguistic slight-of-hand, “loyalty” is often pronounced so it sounds like “laity” – the “regular” people in this case – or “larity”, maybe a coined word that could mean "the quality of being a lariat” and hence a trap (even loyalty could be a trap!). In the end, this “takin’ a walk the other day” comes full circle. The blind woman in that first tale loses her life at the hands of someone trying to “help” her – and we (listeners) are left feeling guilty for being entertained by the nasty surprise. By the end of the record, we realize that it may have been us (or our political institutions) who supplied that nasty surprise.
Okay, I’m at the end of this, and since the Pulitzer isn’t entirely classical anymore, I’d like to retroactively nominate two non-classical works that should have won some kind of award.
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (one of the best jazz albums ever, in my opinion)
Simon and Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (the album, not just the song; a high point for creativity in “pop” music even if it is nearly 60 years old now.)
Also, at the end of this, a self-promo: Check out my author website. You'll find links to all my books there, including the "Tond" novels and a book derived from this very blog.
Saturday, November 12, 2022
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Ten More Albums: Silk Road Journeys and Social Music
These are reviews I posted on the website of the local public library.
Hans Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You
(Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Andris Nelsons, conductor)
Shimmering, silvery tones from the half-light of dreams: this is opera of the imagination.
John Luther Adams: Become Desert
(Seattle Symphony; Ludovic Morlot, conductor)
This sequel to the Pulitzer-winning "Become Ocean" is the essence of symphonic ambience; with complicated (written) delay effects and extended techniques on the instruments, much of it sounds more electronic than orchestral. At any rate, it's gorgeous, and despite its title that suggests drying up or becoming a wasteland, it's also positive and triumphant. Worth as many listens as you can find time for.
Jon Batiste: Social Music
A fun album of virtuoso performances of original jazz compositions and some standards (including the Star-Spangled Banner!) in a number of styles (New Orleans, ragtime, Gospel, blues-jazz, free jazz, tango-infused Latin jazz, swing, Rhythm and Blues, 70's fusion, and a fusion of stride piano and Franz Liszt at the end), brought to you by the band (and its leader) from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There are hints of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Hiromi, and the blues number is loud and forceful enough to remind me of Led Zeppelin despite its completely different instrumentation. But, despite the catalogue of different styles, it all holds together.
Ella (Fitzgerald) at Zardi’s
There must be some criminal conspiracy that kept these incredible recordings hidden away in the vault. These performances (by arguably the greatest jazz vocalist of the twentieth century) sizzle, and showcase Ms. Fitzgerald's smooth voice and skill at improvising. "Bernie's Tune" is the pure essence of vocal improvisation; her scat singing is both tightly disciplined and out of control ecstatic.
Heinz Holliger and György Kurtág: Zweigesprache
The solo oboe (with occasional other instruments) presents a strange, stark, and beguiling sound-world, light-years removed from the more familiar chamber music sound of the string quartet or violin and piano. Although all "contemporary", the pieces vary from strident or mysterious atonality to lilting folk tunes. The artistry is, of course, spectacular.
I’m with Her: See You Around
(Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, Sara Watkins)
The recording is beautiful and the performances are top-notch, as is to be expected from the line-up of this band. However, there isn't much variety in the "sound" of the band. The harmony singing is overused and sometimes a little insistent, reminding me at times of those 1970's rock records where every member of the band played during every second of every song (I'm looking at you, Boston). That said, there's quite a lot of variety between the songs themselves; instrumentation changes subtly, there are unexpected chord progressions ("See You Around" cycles between three keys, all in major but giving the effect of minor; "Ryland" is almost chromatic). Though obviously bluegrass, hints of other genres occasionally surface: more than once I'm reminded of vintage jazz/swing and the Andrews Sisters. The lyrics are deep expressions of the human experience, related metaphorically from everyday occurrences and little "slices of life", though few of them are particularly memorable. Supergroup, yes, but I think I prefer the individual members as solo artists: this is certainly not bad, but at the same time it could be better.
Isata Kenneh-Mason: Romance
These are great, nuanced performances of works by the great composer Clara Schumann. As often with music from the early Romantic period (i.e. Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Clara's husband Robert Schumann), these are friendly on the surface but full of complex compositional techniques that can be analyzed for hours. Not that it matters; listening is probably enough and this is a gorgeous recording.
The Knights: The Ground Beneath our Feet
This is one of those "new school" classical records that takes a clue from the pop world: the musicians form a "band" that produces "albums". This is a live recording that makes a beautiful and eclectic sonic experience, though there is a little trouble with volume consistency. There are two pieces that are familiar from the classical repertoire, from the 18th and 20th centuries respectively (Bach and Stravinsky), and three new pieces. The Bach C-minor Concerto (for oboe, violin and ensemble) sounds a little lackluster, though the Stravinsky "Dumbarton Oaks" concerto, which is made of jazzy syncopated riffs off of a style that would otherwise be close to Bach, is performed with such enthusiasm that I found myself dancing. The two new pieces frame these familiar works: Reich's "Duet" is a dreamy introduction, while the Concerto for Santur, Violin and Orchestra (co-composed by Siamak Aghaei and The Knights' Collin Jacobsen) is a larger work that sometimes uses unexpected sounds (such as what appears to be strumming, guitar-style, on the santur — a kind of hammered dulcimer). The last track is something completely unexpected: the song "Fade Away" is treated to a tour of worldwide musical styles. This will either be a plus or a minus depending on the listener. Each listener will probably bring away something different from this entire CD as well.
Radiohead: A Moon-Shaped Pool
This is a little different from some of the others by Radiohead that I've heard. This is Indie-Rock at its most dreamlike. Etherial and hypnotically ambient, with lush orchestrations beneath (it begins with a 'cello solo), this appears to be a meeting between Radiohead and Sigur Rós. It's also a blending of expectations: some of the string arrangements use note-bending and even microtones, the way a guitar solo might. Interesting and mysteriously beautiful.
Silk Road Journeys—When Strangers Meet
(Silk Road Ensemble, led by Yo-Yo Ma)
Epic music from the vastness of an ancient continental landmass. Though most of the music is "fusion" to some degree, there is a general movement of east to west (with a couple of pieces from the far northwest added for variety).
Hans Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You
(Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Andris Nelsons, conductor)
Shimmering, silvery tones from the half-light of dreams: this is opera of the imagination.
John Luther Adams: Become Desert
(Seattle Symphony; Ludovic Morlot, conductor)
This sequel to the Pulitzer-winning "Become Ocean" is the essence of symphonic ambience; with complicated (written) delay effects and extended techniques on the instruments, much of it sounds more electronic than orchestral. At any rate, it's gorgeous, and despite its title that suggests drying up or becoming a wasteland, it's also positive and triumphant. Worth as many listens as you can find time for.
Jon Batiste: Social Music
A fun album of virtuoso performances of original jazz compositions and some standards (including the Star-Spangled Banner!) in a number of styles (New Orleans, ragtime, Gospel, blues-jazz, free jazz, tango-infused Latin jazz, swing, Rhythm and Blues, 70's fusion, and a fusion of stride piano and Franz Liszt at the end), brought to you by the band (and its leader) from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. There are hints of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Hiromi, and the blues number is loud and forceful enough to remind me of Led Zeppelin despite its completely different instrumentation. But, despite the catalogue of different styles, it all holds together.
Ella (Fitzgerald) at Zardi’s
There must be some criminal conspiracy that kept these incredible recordings hidden away in the vault. These performances (by arguably the greatest jazz vocalist of the twentieth century) sizzle, and showcase Ms. Fitzgerald's smooth voice and skill at improvising. "Bernie's Tune" is the pure essence of vocal improvisation; her scat singing is both tightly disciplined and out of control ecstatic.
Heinz Holliger and György Kurtág: Zweigesprache
The solo oboe (with occasional other instruments) presents a strange, stark, and beguiling sound-world, light-years removed from the more familiar chamber music sound of the string quartet or violin and piano. Although all "contemporary", the pieces vary from strident or mysterious atonality to lilting folk tunes. The artistry is, of course, spectacular.
I’m with Her: See You Around
(Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O'Donovan, Sara Watkins)
The recording is beautiful and the performances are top-notch, as is to be expected from the line-up of this band. However, there isn't much variety in the "sound" of the band. The harmony singing is overused and sometimes a little insistent, reminding me at times of those 1970's rock records where every member of the band played during every second of every song (I'm looking at you, Boston). That said, there's quite a lot of variety between the songs themselves; instrumentation changes subtly, there are unexpected chord progressions ("See You Around" cycles between three keys, all in major but giving the effect of minor; "Ryland" is almost chromatic). Though obviously bluegrass, hints of other genres occasionally surface: more than once I'm reminded of vintage jazz/swing and the Andrews Sisters. The lyrics are deep expressions of the human experience, related metaphorically from everyday occurrences and little "slices of life", though few of them are particularly memorable. Supergroup, yes, but I think I prefer the individual members as solo artists: this is certainly not bad, but at the same time it could be better.
Isata Kenneh-Mason: Romance
These are great, nuanced performances of works by the great composer Clara Schumann. As often with music from the early Romantic period (i.e. Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Clara's husband Robert Schumann), these are friendly on the surface but full of complex compositional techniques that can be analyzed for hours. Not that it matters; listening is probably enough and this is a gorgeous recording.
The Knights: The Ground Beneath our Feet
This is one of those "new school" classical records that takes a clue from the pop world: the musicians form a "band" that produces "albums". This is a live recording that makes a beautiful and eclectic sonic experience, though there is a little trouble with volume consistency. There are two pieces that are familiar from the classical repertoire, from the 18th and 20th centuries respectively (Bach and Stravinsky), and three new pieces. The Bach C-minor Concerto (for oboe, violin and ensemble) sounds a little lackluster, though the Stravinsky "Dumbarton Oaks" concerto, which is made of jazzy syncopated riffs off of a style that would otherwise be close to Bach, is performed with such enthusiasm that I found myself dancing. The two new pieces frame these familiar works: Reich's "Duet" is a dreamy introduction, while the Concerto for Santur, Violin and Orchestra (co-composed by Siamak Aghaei and The Knights' Collin Jacobsen) is a larger work that sometimes uses unexpected sounds (such as what appears to be strumming, guitar-style, on the santur — a kind of hammered dulcimer). The last track is something completely unexpected: the song "Fade Away" is treated to a tour of worldwide musical styles. This will either be a plus or a minus depending on the listener. Each listener will probably bring away something different from this entire CD as well.
Radiohead: A Moon-Shaped Pool
This is a little different from some of the others by Radiohead that I've heard. This is Indie-Rock at its most dreamlike. Etherial and hypnotically ambient, with lush orchestrations beneath (it begins with a 'cello solo), this appears to be a meeting between Radiohead and Sigur Rós. It's also a blending of expectations: some of the string arrangements use note-bending and even microtones, the way a guitar solo might. Interesting and mysteriously beautiful.
Silk Road Journeys—When Strangers Meet
(Silk Road Ensemble, led by Yo-Yo Ma)
Epic music from the vastness of an ancient continental landmass. Though most of the music is "fusion" to some degree, there is a general movement of east to west (with a couple of pieces from the far northwest added for variety).
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Stockhausen's Piano Pieces Seen from Within, but First: A Little Discussion on Serialism
There was a discussion about serialism on Facebook last week; I found it interesting and asked the participants if I could post it on this blog. They all said yes, so I’ll post it below (names changed except for “me”). It was inspired by a cartoon (by Kim Krans) of a rabbit undergoing various musical effects. And, in turn, it (the discussion) inspired me to take a look at a set of prose-poems that I had written some years ago; I had originally intended to do one of these for each of all of the Stockhausen piano pieces but the longer later ones didn’t seem to work as well in linguistic form.
ME: (Incidentally, "dissonance", as depicted there, is actually "serialism".)
LF: "Serialism?" I always thought of "serial" music as just being any music considered in terms of temporal order, not ever a style or movement or any other kind of ism.
ME: I meant the style like Boulez, early Stockhausen, etc., where pitches, durations, volume, timbre, etc., are all "serialized" or treated as blocks seperate from others, and subject to mathematical permutations. Like the rabbit parts in the picture.
LF: It seems a shame to waste such a useful word on a mere style name.
BH: Babbitt beat Boulez and Stockhausen to it, by several years, and saw things through to deeper depths. Odd how Americans are still conditioned to defer to Europeans in matters of “classical” music.
LF: But (per the rumors) Boulez and Stockhausen had CIA money behind them to combat what the USSR was spending on culture-propaganda.
ME: At last! A conspiracy theory that makes sense!
BH: A world in which countries’ spy agencies focused on covertly promoting new music would be a better world than this one.
ME: Concerning Babbitt: Boulez and Stockhausen were the first that came to mind; maybe because they have better-known pieces, to me, anyway.
BH: That’s my point. You’re hardly unusual there. The derivative Europeans get better PR than the American originator.
BH: Concerning the conspiracy theory: it reminds me of the Thai government quietly subsidizing Thai restaurants. Competing via deliciousness, not bombs.
LF: The "Babbitt" strand of American serialism is really a different animal than anything I have heard coming out of Europe, in that it is far more interested in the exploring the ramifications of the "math" involved.
ME: I have a similar take on it. It seems more "intellectual" and less "emotional"; that's neither a negative nor a positive statement. ...Then again, it that's true, then Elliott Carter's serial compositions are European...?!
LF: Elliott Carter is a whole other thingy than either of them.
BH: I’ve never thought of Boulez as emotional. Nor really Stockhausen, unless “space alien” is an emotion. I hear far more emotion in Philomel, and more wit in many other Babbitt pieces, than I hear in most of the European strand.…
ME: Stockhausen could very well be a space alien... lol
ME: Stockhausen's Piano Pieces IX and X are clearly emotional, at least to me.
BH: Well, the thesis of The Composer as Specialist is that “advanced” composers are engaged in cutting-edge research. Babbitt saw himself very much heading a musical vanguard. A difference is that he sought financial support from university…
ME: This "serial" discussion is getting interesting. Do any of you mind if I post it on my blog about music?
BH and LF: I’m OK with you including this in your blog, I suppose, if it is clear that my comment about CIA funding is rumor only.
ME: IF I'd known this discussion was going to take place, I would have labelled the bunny in the cartoon a "Babbitt Rabbitt".
Listen: Stockhausen's Piano Pieces I - IV
Stockhausen's PIano Pieces I - IV: From the Inside
I
Soft, loud, upward cascade of splintersounds, impressions come into focus. Hazes, blue-green, red cuts into opacity, shatters clearness.
I emerge into consciousness. I remember little from that time before times. Maybe there was something blue. Maybe it was yellow-orange. Was it shapeless? Or did it have a form, coalesced from the void, or from other forms? Maybe there was a bridge. Or a tree or a stone. Or was it a tunnel, or it was a floor, upside-down and sideways.
Sounds. Dark resonances. Bright bells peal. Gongs. Clusters of clangs and clip-clops, shadows of echoes.
Lights. Flickers. All colors. Turn off and on, bright, dim, inverted noises, vibrations are sounds are frequencies of hue. I hear and see only a little. Senses are not differentiated. I know nothing yet. I wait.
II
Learning. Hesitant. Reverberations come together. Jangles. One note here, two there.
One of those notes is me. Maybe I am a high C-sharp, brilliant and shining against the others. Or I am a low E-flat, dark and shadowy, deep in the dreamworld of protosound. It does not matter now, which note I am. Just know that I am one of the notes in these pieces.
The sounds are random. Or not random. These pieces are complex, mathematical beyond the perceptions of the ear. It is for that reason that I am learning. Comprehension grows as clang-clusters disentangle.
III
I become aware of other notes in a zigzag stream. I join them stepping upwards, sideways, turned around, downwards, louder, quieter. Then I retrace my steps.
IV
Remembrances. Hesitant. Resonances grow apart. Jingling. Two tones here, one there.
Others of those notes are not me, but I don’t know them yet. Maybe one is a high E-flat, glittering and glaring against the others. Or it is a low C-sharp, but bright and luminous, shallow in the waking world of aftersound. It does not matter now, what notes they are.
The sounds are not random, or they are random. These pieces are complicated, algebraic or geometrical beyond the sensing of the ear. It is for that reason that I am still learning. Understanding grows as cluster-clangs entangle.
Some business:
Check out this blog's sister, The BookWords Blogg. It's about books (i.e. book reviews) and about words. Or is that obvious?
ME: (Incidentally, "dissonance", as depicted there, is actually "serialism".)
LF: "Serialism?" I always thought of "serial" music as just being any music considered in terms of temporal order, not ever a style or movement or any other kind of ism.
ME: I meant the style like Boulez, early Stockhausen, etc., where pitches, durations, volume, timbre, etc., are all "serialized" or treated as blocks seperate from others, and subject to mathematical permutations. Like the rabbit parts in the picture.
LF: It seems a shame to waste such a useful word on a mere style name.
BH: Babbitt beat Boulez and Stockhausen to it, by several years, and saw things through to deeper depths. Odd how Americans are still conditioned to defer to Europeans in matters of “classical” music.
LF: But (per the rumors) Boulez and Stockhausen had CIA money behind them to combat what the USSR was spending on culture-propaganda.
ME: At last! A conspiracy theory that makes sense!
BH: A world in which countries’ spy agencies focused on covertly promoting new music would be a better world than this one.
ME: Concerning Babbitt: Boulez and Stockhausen were the first that came to mind; maybe because they have better-known pieces, to me, anyway.
BH: That’s my point. You’re hardly unusual there. The derivative Europeans get better PR than the American originator.
BH: Concerning the conspiracy theory: it reminds me of the Thai government quietly subsidizing Thai restaurants. Competing via deliciousness, not bombs.
LF: The "Babbitt" strand of American serialism is really a different animal than anything I have heard coming out of Europe, in that it is far more interested in the exploring the ramifications of the "math" involved.
ME: I have a similar take on it. It seems more "intellectual" and less "emotional"; that's neither a negative nor a positive statement. ...Then again, it that's true, then Elliott Carter's serial compositions are European...?!
LF: Elliott Carter is a whole other thingy than either of them.
BH: I’ve never thought of Boulez as emotional. Nor really Stockhausen, unless “space alien” is an emotion. I hear far more emotion in Philomel, and more wit in many other Babbitt pieces, than I hear in most of the European strand.…
ME: Stockhausen could very well be a space alien... lol
ME: Stockhausen's Piano Pieces IX and X are clearly emotional, at least to me.
BH: Well, the thesis of The Composer as Specialist is that “advanced” composers are engaged in cutting-edge research. Babbitt saw himself very much heading a musical vanguard. A difference is that he sought financial support from university…
ME: This "serial" discussion is getting interesting. Do any of you mind if I post it on my blog about music?
BH and LF: I’m OK with you including this in your blog, I suppose, if it is clear that my comment about CIA funding is rumor only.
ME: IF I'd known this discussion was going to take place, I would have labelled the bunny in the cartoon a "Babbitt Rabbitt".
Listen: Stockhausen's Piano Pieces I - IV
Stockhausen's PIano Pieces I - IV: From the Inside
I
Soft, loud, upward cascade of splintersounds, impressions come into focus. Hazes, blue-green, red cuts into opacity, shatters clearness.
I emerge into consciousness. I remember little from that time before times. Maybe there was something blue. Maybe it was yellow-orange. Was it shapeless? Or did it have a form, coalesced from the void, or from other forms? Maybe there was a bridge. Or a tree or a stone. Or was it a tunnel, or it was a floor, upside-down and sideways.
Sounds. Dark resonances. Bright bells peal. Gongs. Clusters of clangs and clip-clops, shadows of echoes.
Lights. Flickers. All colors. Turn off and on, bright, dim, inverted noises, vibrations are sounds are frequencies of hue. I hear and see only a little. Senses are not differentiated. I know nothing yet. I wait.
II
Learning. Hesitant. Reverberations come together. Jangles. One note here, two there.
One of those notes is me. Maybe I am a high C-sharp, brilliant and shining against the others. Or I am a low E-flat, dark and shadowy, deep in the dreamworld of protosound. It does not matter now, which note I am. Just know that I am one of the notes in these pieces.
The sounds are random. Or not random. These pieces are complex, mathematical beyond the perceptions of the ear. It is for that reason that I am learning. Comprehension grows as clang-clusters disentangle.
III
I become aware of other notes in a zigzag stream. I join them stepping upwards, sideways, turned around, downwards, louder, quieter. Then I retrace my steps.
IV
Remembrances. Hesitant. Resonances grow apart. Jingling. Two tones here, one there.
Others of those notes are not me, but I don’t know them yet. Maybe one is a high E-flat, glittering and glaring against the others. Or it is a low C-sharp, but bright and luminous, shallow in the waking world of aftersound. It does not matter now, what notes they are.
The sounds are not random, or they are random. These pieces are complicated, algebraic or geometrical beyond the sensing of the ear. It is for that reason that I am still learning. Understanding grows as cluster-clangs entangle.
Some business:
Check out this blog's sister, The BookWords Blogg. It's about books (i.e. book reviews) and about words. Or is that obvious?
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Ten more albums: Wind, Beauty, and Blues in a Kaleidoscope Superior
Well, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve posted anything here, and circumstances are still such that I can’t really go out an hear live music, let alone review it. So here are ten more albums I’ve heard in the last couple of weeks.
Count Basie: Good Morning Blues
Ancestral to a lot of today’s music (both “classical” and “popular”), and extremely creative. The title track features piano and trumpet solos that stretch the expressiveness of the instruments. The curators of this two-record (vinyl) set also set it up in a way seldom seen in anthologies of short pieces: the album as a whole has a “shape”. The songs are not only arranged chronologically (though partially), but: side one has big band numbers, side two has piano with bass and drums, side three starts to bring in other instruments in small combos, and side four (strangely labelled “Record Two Side Two”, a different system than the other three) begins with small combos but gradually brings back the big band. The last two pieces are for a very big (and loud) orchestra; a grand finale. It’s as if the Count himself planned this out as a multi-movement evening-long work, which he may have. Throughout, nearly everything is based on the familiar blues riffs, but everything keeps going in unexpected and often beautiful ways.
Miles Davis: Pangaea
Miles Davis and other jazz greats created this electric band that is a rarity: a jam band that doesn’t meander. Or maybe it meanders in the best possible way. The two 45-minute pieces are partially composed and probably conducted; pauses and shifts are coordinated and each improvised solo knows exactly when to stop. The result is a journey through a multifaceted soundscape (it’s fitting that the two tracks and the album are named after landscapes): driving rock-funk leads to magical skeins of African balafon; a flute floats over a web of hushed percussion and evolves into metal guitar. Listen several times: at first it’s like an adventure without a compass; by the second or third you’ll have an overall map but the moment-by-moment details are still surprising.
Toumani Diabate: Mande Variations
The delicate sounds of the kora: auditory dewdrops on an early morning spiderweb. If one listens closely, there are two koras and two styles of music: one, traditional pieces with long non-strophic melodies over ostinato accompaniments; two, freeform neo-impressionist improvisations played on a metal-stringed kora that resonates like a Celtic harp. Both are delicate, transparent, and beautiful.
Earthsuit: Kaleidoscope Superior
This little-known album of (Christian) reggae-rock (from 2000) is worth a revisit: it’s more than the boy band that it appears. Lyrics are often obscure but full of references; rhythms are off-meters as often as not (linking this to older “prog rock”); chord structures are derived from jazz standards. Snippets of Steve Reich minimalism complete the stylistic fusion. Somehow it all holds together and has a recognizable “sound”: a kaleidoscope superior with all the same hues.
Ensemble Organum (conducted by Marcel Pérés): Carmina Burana (The Passion Play)
The Carmina Burana manuscript doesn’t consist entirely of bawdy drinking songs; this “Gregorian” retelling of the crucifixion of Jesus is also there (though one bawdy song does manage to appear, as sung by Mary Magdalene pre-conversion). As always, Ensemble Organum’s interpretation is likely to be controversial: there is of course no particular evidence exactly when Gregorian chant evolved into the way it sounds presently, and no particular evidence how it sounded before then — so thirteenth-century chant (which was already a thousand-year tradition by that time) is open to interpretation. Here it’s given an “Eastern Orthodox” makeover with what’s been termed “Middle Easter warbling”: improvisational melismas overlaying the melodies and syllables of the chant. Recorded in a cathedral, a cavernous resonant space and the “authentic” location for this music, it results in lovely and evocative (and sometimes quite forceful!) echoes from a bygone century. This is especially true in the rare passages where the single melodic lines merge into harmony. The “storyline” cuts off before the Resurrection, emphasizing the sacrifice, leading into the possibility of later music in the same manner.
Morton Feldman: Why Patterns? Crippled Symmetry (Eberhard Blum, Nils Vigeland and Jan Williams)
Tiny gestures expand into giant canvasses of sound. Resonances emerge from, rail against, contain, and return to silence. Rhythms overlay in complex patterns. Overall, very quiet — yet very loud in context. This atonal minimalist music creates its own atmosphere and its own aesthetic. At the end, all reduces to a single note, lingering in a light-filled void, trailing into nothing and everything.
Haydn: Prussian Quartets (Tokyo Quartet)
At first listening: merely charming. The second or third time through: there’s extreme expression and complexity lurking beneath that “simple” exterior. The more you listen, the more you hear; the more you hear, the more you get drawn in. Two of my favorites are the very first track in the set (the first movement of Quartet no. 36), with its unexpected syncopations, and the very last track in the set (the fourth movement of Quartet no. 41); that quick repeated note on one of the violins anchors the piece through a series of episodes (some say it imitates the calling of a frog; I’m more inclined to hear it as a birdcall mixed with the buzzing of bees). Elsewhere there are charming melodies (often only a single, unfolding melody containing its own key-changes; a variation on the usually bi-melodic sonata form) and delicate nuances, played perfectly.
Photon Swim Break: Hazard II: Wind
Not particularly “hazardous”, this is dark ambient music derived from field recordings and phonography. The opening is particularly striking, where wave and wind sounds are processed to release their overtones (I am Not Sitting in a Room; Release the Kraken!) in a gradual accumulation of resonance.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Beauty
There are plenty of examples of mixing (American or British Isles) folk music with rock and pop; here is another possibility. Japanese min’yo (a traditional style closely related to taiko drumming) mixes just as well with “pop” as other folk musics. Always surprising and often beautiful, and a proof (if you need another) that heterophony combines with chord-changes without a problem. The shamisen seems, here, to have been created to be a background rhythm instrument under keyboards and vocals. (There are also a couple of Afropop-fusion tracks in the middle, for which I have the same comments minus the shamisen.) Those positive statements aside, though, several of the songs have inane, pointless lyrics; and the “Chinese” version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (played on the er-hu) sounds forced, particularly since they didn’t bother to re-tune the two instruments to match.
Word of Mouth Chorus: Rivers of Delight
One of only a handful of professional recordings of the American tradition of shape-note hymn singing, a loud, enthusiastic style of church music not particularly related to the more familiar Gospel music. The chorus sounds a little too polished at times (this is, in its original form, rough music), but delicate (!) beauty is often the result. The occasional solo passages are particularly exquisite.
Count Basie: Good Morning Blues
Ancestral to a lot of today’s music (both “classical” and “popular”), and extremely creative. The title track features piano and trumpet solos that stretch the expressiveness of the instruments. The curators of this two-record (vinyl) set also set it up in a way seldom seen in anthologies of short pieces: the album as a whole has a “shape”. The songs are not only arranged chronologically (though partially), but: side one has big band numbers, side two has piano with bass and drums, side three starts to bring in other instruments in small combos, and side four (strangely labelled “Record Two Side Two”, a different system than the other three) begins with small combos but gradually brings back the big band. The last two pieces are for a very big (and loud) orchestra; a grand finale. It’s as if the Count himself planned this out as a multi-movement evening-long work, which he may have. Throughout, nearly everything is based on the familiar blues riffs, but everything keeps going in unexpected and often beautiful ways.
Miles Davis: Pangaea
Miles Davis and other jazz greats created this electric band that is a rarity: a jam band that doesn’t meander. Or maybe it meanders in the best possible way. The two 45-minute pieces are partially composed and probably conducted; pauses and shifts are coordinated and each improvised solo knows exactly when to stop. The result is a journey through a multifaceted soundscape (it’s fitting that the two tracks and the album are named after landscapes): driving rock-funk leads to magical skeins of African balafon; a flute floats over a web of hushed percussion and evolves into metal guitar. Listen several times: at first it’s like an adventure without a compass; by the second or third you’ll have an overall map but the moment-by-moment details are still surprising.
Toumani Diabate: Mande Variations
The delicate sounds of the kora: auditory dewdrops on an early morning spiderweb. If one listens closely, there are two koras and two styles of music: one, traditional pieces with long non-strophic melodies over ostinato accompaniments; two, freeform neo-impressionist improvisations played on a metal-stringed kora that resonates like a Celtic harp. Both are delicate, transparent, and beautiful.
Earthsuit: Kaleidoscope Superior
This little-known album of (Christian) reggae-rock (from 2000) is worth a revisit: it’s more than the boy band that it appears. Lyrics are often obscure but full of references; rhythms are off-meters as often as not (linking this to older “prog rock”); chord structures are derived from jazz standards. Snippets of Steve Reich minimalism complete the stylistic fusion. Somehow it all holds together and has a recognizable “sound”: a kaleidoscope superior with all the same hues.
Ensemble Organum (conducted by Marcel Pérés): Carmina Burana (The Passion Play)
The Carmina Burana manuscript doesn’t consist entirely of bawdy drinking songs; this “Gregorian” retelling of the crucifixion of Jesus is also there (though one bawdy song does manage to appear, as sung by Mary Magdalene pre-conversion). As always, Ensemble Organum’s interpretation is likely to be controversial: there is of course no particular evidence exactly when Gregorian chant evolved into the way it sounds presently, and no particular evidence how it sounded before then — so thirteenth-century chant (which was already a thousand-year tradition by that time) is open to interpretation. Here it’s given an “Eastern Orthodox” makeover with what’s been termed “Middle Easter warbling”: improvisational melismas overlaying the melodies and syllables of the chant. Recorded in a cathedral, a cavernous resonant space and the “authentic” location for this music, it results in lovely and evocative (and sometimes quite forceful!) echoes from a bygone century. This is especially true in the rare passages where the single melodic lines merge into harmony. The “storyline” cuts off before the Resurrection, emphasizing the sacrifice, leading into the possibility of later music in the same manner.
Morton Feldman: Why Patterns? Crippled Symmetry (Eberhard Blum, Nils Vigeland and Jan Williams)
Tiny gestures expand into giant canvasses of sound. Resonances emerge from, rail against, contain, and return to silence. Rhythms overlay in complex patterns. Overall, very quiet — yet very loud in context. This atonal minimalist music creates its own atmosphere and its own aesthetic. At the end, all reduces to a single note, lingering in a light-filled void, trailing into nothing and everything.
Haydn: Prussian Quartets (Tokyo Quartet)
At first listening: merely charming. The second or third time through: there’s extreme expression and complexity lurking beneath that “simple” exterior. The more you listen, the more you hear; the more you hear, the more you get drawn in. Two of my favorites are the very first track in the set (the first movement of Quartet no. 36), with its unexpected syncopations, and the very last track in the set (the fourth movement of Quartet no. 41); that quick repeated note on one of the violins anchors the piece through a series of episodes (some say it imitates the calling of a frog; I’m more inclined to hear it as a birdcall mixed with the buzzing of bees). Elsewhere there are charming melodies (often only a single, unfolding melody containing its own key-changes; a variation on the usually bi-melodic sonata form) and delicate nuances, played perfectly.
Photon Swim Break: Hazard II: Wind
Not particularly “hazardous”, this is dark ambient music derived from field recordings and phonography. The opening is particularly striking, where wave and wind sounds are processed to release their overtones (I am Not Sitting in a Room; Release the Kraken!) in a gradual accumulation of resonance.
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Beauty
There are plenty of examples of mixing (American or British Isles) folk music with rock and pop; here is another possibility. Japanese min’yo (a traditional style closely related to taiko drumming) mixes just as well with “pop” as other folk musics. Always surprising and often beautiful, and a proof (if you need another) that heterophony combines with chord-changes without a problem. The shamisen seems, here, to have been created to be a background rhythm instrument under keyboards and vocals. (There are also a couple of Afropop-fusion tracks in the middle, for which I have the same comments minus the shamisen.) Those positive statements aside, though, several of the songs have inane, pointless lyrics; and the “Chinese” version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (played on the er-hu) sounds forced, particularly since they didn’t bother to re-tune the two instruments to match.
Word of Mouth Chorus: Rivers of Delight
One of only a handful of professional recordings of the American tradition of shape-note hymn singing, a loud, enthusiastic style of church music not particularly related to the more familiar Gospel music. The chorus sounds a little too polished at times (this is, in its original form, rough music), but delicate (!) beauty is often the result. The occasional solo passages are particularly exquisite.
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Reviews of Two Books on Music: "Music After the Fall" by Tim Rutherford-Johnson, and "From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate" by Nathaniel Mackey
I found these two books in the public library and had a lot of time to read them during the coronavirus pandemic. They are both on the topic of experimental music, though experimental in different ways, and the books themselves are quite different. (I also left both of these reviews on the library website.)
"Music After the Fall" by Tim Rutherford-Johnson
There has been a change in the zeitgeist of popular music recently. When I was in high school in the 1970’s any music older than the Beatles was taboo (and any newer music that wasn’t rock was equally taboo). All that has changed. With the advent of hip-hop and its sampling and use of the turntable as an instrument, older music is available (and often re-purposed), and kids today are as likely to listen to Led Zeppelin and even Glen Miller as they are to Drake. (My parents’ or grandparents’ music – unthinkable to my generation!) What Mr. Rutherford-Johnson has done in this book is chronicle that same change of culture in the (previously academic) world of contemporary classical music since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once secluded in the proverbial ivory tower with mostly atonal compositions that could be understood on their own (as music) but seldom were given a chance to be so, “modern” classical has entered (or perhaps infiltrated) the commercial music scene. The borders are porous now. What began with various forms of “tonal” minimalism and ECM’s groundbreaking Arvo Pärt recordings in the 1980’s has continued to the present. The author presents all of the music’s multiple facets (and there are many!) without any preconceptions about what is “commercial” or “academic”. Likewise, he withholds judgement about the integrity of such a blurring (given the hostility of the classical establishment to “pop” music through much of the 20th century). All major movements and trends are covered, including some that were probably invented by the author to classify or at least investigate works that previously seemed orphaned in their own world. Included are Steve Reich’s “Different Trains”, George Rochberg’s Third String Quartet (one of my favorites!), Turnage’s operas, the Wandelweiser Collective (new to me but I’m finding it fascinating), Luigi Nono’s “La Lontonana…” (another one of my favorites), Pamela Z’s “Gaijin”, Ali-Zadeh’s “Mugam Sayagi”, Merzbow, crossovers with electronica, ultra-long pieces like “Longplayer”, “classical” deconstructions of other material such as Isabel Mundry’s “Dufay Bearbeitungen” and Michael Finnissy’s “English Country Tunes”, experimental pieces with videos (music/cinema mashups?) and too many more to list here. The playlist at the end is long enough to keep one listening for months, and (since I haven’t heard ¾ of this material) I’m going to be doing just that.
"From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate" by Nathaniel Mackey
This collection of fictional letters forms not so much a novel as a vast discussion on the subtleties and usage of language. Concepts are bandied about, words (and even characters' names) become puns (i.e. Penguin, a character, becomes Pen, then Penny, then E Po Pen, then King Pen, with lengthy discussions on the ramifications of each). Likewise, the characters themselves morph and mutate into new forms. Penguin and Penny are originally different people; the narrator "N." may also be Jared Bottle (the "broken bottle" of the title), who may also be Djbot Baghostus, who may also be (again) E Po Pen. All of this is tied together by the occasional third-person narration in the "Creaking of the Word" sections. Ostensibly the "story", what there is of it, is about musicians playing in a free-jazz band, the sessions of which cause surrealism (or at least "magic realism") to break into reality; but the more one reads, the more one realizes that this "story" may all be fragments of a dream (and a dream about language as much as about music). The surrealism may be the setting. As if to emphasize this, two characters remain in the dreams of the others -- at the same time. Perhaps the author is saying that reality and dream-states are indistinguishable while someone is experiencing them. At any rate, it's fascinating stuff; and Mr. Mackey's knowledge of jazz (and other music) is encyclopedic. Not an easy read by any means, but fun to explore.
Monday, August 24, 2020
Review of the Album "Air Drop" by Darryl Blood
This dropped into my inbox on day, and I decided to give it a listen. The title
“Air Drop” conjures images of supplies descending by parachute, or propaganda
leaflets scattered from a helicopter during wartime. This music has slight
references to both (some pieces could be the gratefulness for food and equipment
dropped into a remote location; others could be the flapping of papers in the
wind, against a background of danger). Or it could be that the music has
“dropped” through the air onto your computer or device (as it did with mine). The image of birds sitting on a wire suggests another, ickier image — but this is not reflected in the music.
There’s a lot of Pink Floyd, a lot of Brian Eno, and a lot of John Cage in this
beautifully-produced suite of ambient keyboard pieces. That is not to say that
it’s entirely derivative of other artists and composers (it’s not), but that
inspiration comes from many sources which are amalgamated into a new whole. All
in all, it’s quite beautiful.
The first three tracks lay down the trajectory (or drop?) of the album. “Abernathy” begins with what could be the start of Philip
Glass minimalism, but is then overlaid with a melody in what sounds like the
Japanese pentatonic scale (in a different key so it’s actually not pentatonic)
and the result is somehow reminiscent of the keyboard work in the “Dark Side of
the Moon” album. The first “Air Drop” tune (#2; they’re out of order) is a
prepared piano interlude that at first sounds microtonal; ambient drones sneak
in underneath. The third, “Ardentia”, is straight from Eno’s “Ambient” series,
though the melody slowly threads itself through what could be chord changes for
a jazz standard. Again, very pretty, if in a slightly bittersweet mood.
After these first three, the styles mix and merge. Scattered drumming splatters itself
Jackson Pollock style across the prepared piano of the second “Air Drop” (#4),
then settles into a steady, slow rock beat underlying the synthesizers in
“Novella”. The third “Air Drop” (#5) features a very interesting compositional
technique, sometimes heard in the Javanese gamelan: the steady pulse is
relegated to the higher notes, while the lower pitches mark off time as deep
gong-strokes. The relationship of “beat” to “chords” is inverted. (Miles Davis
used the same technique in a slow bebop number, “Nefertiti”, though with a very
different end result – it was laid back and infinitely “cool”, whereas Mr.
Blood’s piece seems to be a series of nervous glances at a relentlessly ticking
clock.) “Voyeur” is another ambient synth piece; then in the last “Air Drop”
(#1) the synth and the prepared piano have become one: we’re not sure which
we’re listening to at any given moment. Finally, “Stille” (which could mean
either “Silent” in German or “Quietly” in Danish) resolves everything with a set
of majestic chords that seem to sound from a great distance.
The last “Air Drop” piece (#3) is not on the album. I’ll resist the pun about the piece being
dropped and assume instead that it did not fit into the overall shape of the
album. If the present pieces are any indication of what it’s like, I’d like to
hear it by itself sometime.
In general what we hear plays on the aspect of “air”: much of the music floats, is blown by wind, or becomes wind itself. In
the end, it disappears from the air altogether, slowly departing into infinite
space. We listeners are left earthbound, of course, but we are glad to have
heard it.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
CD Review: Ball of Wax volume 60 (60 x 60 = 60)
I received this CD compilation in the mail after contributing a song (the way music has to be heard now, during the covid pandemic). I popped it in the CD player. More than once. Good stuff! One could describe it as a journey through a wide landscape of music, all in tiny steps (60 one-minute songs; no cut-offs or shortened versions), or perhaps it’s a huge chandelier made of tiny, perfectly-cut gems. Whatever. Just listen to it!
https://ballofwax.org/
There’s too much here to do much more than list a few things that particularly caught my interest, so here goes. It begins with scattered voices over ambient-rock chords (“Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski” by Hart Slights) and a Beatles-ish song (“Rmembering Six” by the Ex-Optimists). These two form a perfect intro for almost any indie rock album. From there, it proceeds into widely varying territory. My own piece (“Fragments / Figments”) is something of an outlier, a “contemporary classical” piece of musique-concrète (while a lot of the others are various types of homemade indie-rock); but also there is a minimalist ode to Philip Glass (which does not sound like Philip Glass!) (“The Glass Cowell” by Tom Dwyer), a mysterious electronica soundtrack (“Warren Quarentino” by the Great Unwashed Luminaries – great band name!) followed by Biblical law handed down through foggy ambience (“The Lighthouse” by Red Weather Tigers). Doom metal makes an appearance (“Theme to Winterrose” by Hauras), followed immediately by a (Beatle-ish, again) happy pop tune (“Timothy” by Jose Bold) and several other 1960’s sound pallets. Then something that could be either Pink Floyd or Radiohead (!), “Turnstyle” by Greenhorn) and something else that could be Jethro Tull or Simon and Garfunkel (!!), “What we don’t know” by Bluehorn (green, blue, are they the same artist?). Phoebe Tsang uses a violin in a “Cat Remix” that really sounds like a cat. There are some beautiful, quiet ballads (including “No Matter How Long” by Levi Fuller). As hinted by the several pairs of tunes mentioned above, part of the genius of this compilation is the curating. Here’s another example: children singing with an old upright piano (“untitled” by ‘lectrified spit) is immediately followed by a memories of a school bell (“Gengen” by Small Life Form). Slightly later, these kids grow up (a little) and go through their teenage rebellious years with some 80’s punk (by Vic Bondi, Sonic Graffiti, and others). Then there are expletive-laden samples that become beats (‘ohshtmthrfkrwefkdnw” by The Pica Beats) and a horror soundtrack (“hearbleeps” by riceburger). There’s a classic villain song from a twisted musical (“The House is on Fire” by The Axis of Descent et al.) and classic soulful vocals (“The Slide Show” by Sam Russell) and even a subdued free-jazz number (“Too Smart by a Quarter” by The Vardaman Ensemble). All in all it’s a wild collection, a journey through many small towns that somehow are all part of the same vast empire. It’s worth hearing many times, and savoring. I know I’ll be listening several times more, and enjoying the journey.
https://ballofwax.org/
There’s too much here to do much more than list a few things that particularly caught my interest, so here goes. It begins with scattered voices over ambient-rock chords (“Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski” by Hart Slights) and a Beatles-ish song (“Rmembering Six” by the Ex-Optimists). These two form a perfect intro for almost any indie rock album. From there, it proceeds into widely varying territory. My own piece (“Fragments / Figments”) is something of an outlier, a “contemporary classical” piece of musique-concrète (while a lot of the others are various types of homemade indie-rock); but also there is a minimalist ode to Philip Glass (which does not sound like Philip Glass!) (“The Glass Cowell” by Tom Dwyer), a mysterious electronica soundtrack (“Warren Quarentino” by the Great Unwashed Luminaries – great band name!) followed by Biblical law handed down through foggy ambience (“The Lighthouse” by Red Weather Tigers). Doom metal makes an appearance (“Theme to Winterrose” by Hauras), followed immediately by a (Beatle-ish, again) happy pop tune (“Timothy” by Jose Bold) and several other 1960’s sound pallets. Then something that could be either Pink Floyd or Radiohead (!), “Turnstyle” by Greenhorn) and something else that could be Jethro Tull or Simon and Garfunkel (!!), “What we don’t know” by Bluehorn (green, blue, are they the same artist?). Phoebe Tsang uses a violin in a “Cat Remix” that really sounds like a cat. There are some beautiful, quiet ballads (including “No Matter How Long” by Levi Fuller). As hinted by the several pairs of tunes mentioned above, part of the genius of this compilation is the curating. Here’s another example: children singing with an old upright piano (“untitled” by ‘lectrified spit) is immediately followed by a memories of a school bell (“Gengen” by Small Life Form). Slightly later, these kids grow up (a little) and go through their teenage rebellious years with some 80’s punk (by Vic Bondi, Sonic Graffiti, and others). Then there are expletive-laden samples that become beats (‘ohshtmthrfkrwefkdnw” by The Pica Beats) and a horror soundtrack (“hearbleeps” by riceburger). There’s a classic villain song from a twisted musical (“The House is on Fire” by The Axis of Descent et al.) and classic soulful vocals (“The Slide Show” by Sam Russell) and even a subdued free-jazz number (“Too Smart by a Quarter” by The Vardaman Ensemble). All in all it’s a wild collection, a journey through many small towns that somehow are all part of the same vast empire. It’s worth hearing many times, and savoring. I know I’ll be listening several times more, and enjoying the journey.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Ten More Albums (Jazz; Also Beatles, Battles, and Two Guys Named Chris)
Continuing the mini-reviews of ten albums from my collections of CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums during the corona virus lockdown. There was an unusual amount of jazz and improvised music this time, but I didn't plan that: Coltrane, Corea, and Coleman all begin with C. (Also, in the rest of the B's: Chris Brown, Chris Burke, Beatles, Battles. Anyone for "Fox in Sox" and the Tweetle Beetles?) As always, comments and questions are welcome.
Duets (Chris Brown et al.)
Here electro-acoustic source material makes a leap from prerecorded musique-concrète to improvisations on electric instruments. By turns mysterious, strident, sci-fi-ish, ethereal, danceable (for the very nimble) and dark, this provides resonances quite unknown until this album came out.
An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea In Concert
These two still do things on pianos that can’t be done on pianos. And, unlike several other musicians I can name whose technique is impeccable, the result is more than just a lot of fast notes. I especially like how the “riffs” bounce from one player to the other, both in standards and in improvisations, and the occasional use of extended techniques on the instrument.
Free Jazz (Ornette Coleman)
The father of a sub-genre, not entirely free improvisation. At times the music coalesces into obvious themes; at other everyone stops and starts at the same time. The bass solo and the series of drum solos are interesting in themselves. Whatever – it’s still fascinating: a lot of noise and a lot of music at the same time, full of colors, always changing, always the same, turning upon itself like a jazz homage to giant gothic stained-glass windows.
Gloss Drop (Battles)
Hocketting is a sort of metrical ping-pong game used in Balinese gamelan, the Medieval European "Ars Nova", certain genres of African music, and experimental pieces by Jo Kondo and others. Here, it makes a rare appearance in indie rock (along with, on other albums, a track or two by Dirty Projectors) and electronica. The result is a hyperactive, experimental, rhythmically precise chaos, and it's a lot of fun. It's also exhausting. The rhythms and the melodies seem to be one in the same, and both jump from instrument to instrument (and sometimes to vocals) and side to side and back to front. It's impossible to describe; one has to hear it, and then hear it again, to make sure that what you heard was really what was there. And please, hear it with the volume up.
Idioglossia (Chris Burke)
1989 post-punk beat-driven electronica with samples and wry commentary on culture, TV, and politics. “Get ready to give in to evil! Sounds neat! Extremely attracted to – evil!” Little did we know that this satire (probably on heavy metal music) would actually describe how American society would go in another quarter century. Also one of Max Ernst’s well-known supposed hallucinations, here rendered as a Devo-esque (or Warhol-esque?) glorification of style over substance: “The hat makes the man, a man made of Hat, replace the dinosaur…”
A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)
This 1964 masterpiece is one of the classic jazz albums. It’s also a fine introduction to Coltrane’s work, situated as it is between his “standard” style and his more interesting (and therefore less popular) experimental period. “Heads” and solos flow into one another freely in a jazz stream-of-consciousness; in fact, many of the jazz “solos” are more like classical “development sections”, where Trane takes fragments from the main theme and repeats them in various keys (that may or may not be related to the accompaniment). Then there are those timbral innovations, such as the chanting of “a love supreme” in multiple overdubs, and the timpani solo by the drummer, Elvin Jones. The whole album is a sound experience that is still as fresh now as when it was recorded.
The Number Pieces I (John Cage)
Music from the intense edge of silence; some of it is even more intense than silence and yet silence is a major part of it. The piece with rainsticks is perhaps the most beautifully held-back aleatory music ever conceived.
Raga Mian Ki Malhar (Hariprasad Chaurasia)
The light and easy sound of the last third of this flute and drum music fools the listener. Like Mozart or Chopin, it’s only simple on the surface. The extended introduction provides clues: the flute (here and there sounding very close to the Japanese shakuhachi) enumerates the notes of the raga slowly, one at a time, gradually increasing in complexity (but seemingly decreasing in volume) until all possibilities are exhausted. Only then does the tabla appear, in a second “movement”. For the listener unfamiliar with Indian classical music, this would be a good (and beautiful!) introduction. (When I published this, "tabla" had been changed to "table". Bleepin' spell-check.)
Right of Violet (Alex Cline, Jeff Gauthier, G. E. Stinson)
Free-improv jazz on electric instruments becomes a rock-based symphony. The entire album strikes me as being slightly too long, but the string of “compositions” has an interesting shape centering on the gorgeous “Sophia” for electric violin (with multiple delays) and gamelan gongs. “Metal” music preceded this, having built up slowly ex nihilo and then scattering into fossilized fragments; “Sophia” itself (herself?) then trails off in a similar manner, but the beauty remains even as the metal rebuilds itself and then subsides a second time. A hint of Vaughan-Williams lingers as the music concludes.
The White Album (Beatles)
Probably doesn't need an introduction. With this, mainstream pop stared across the abyss into experimental music (there’s even a tape collage!) but never quite made the leap. Maybe that doesn’t matter: some of this is a little dated now (and there’s a lot of awful baggage) but there’s still great melodic songwriting and some interesting ideas that pop artists are still coming to terms with. Worth several listens, even if only because (for better or worse) it’s part of our history.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
Duets (Chris Brown et al.)
Here electro-acoustic source material makes a leap from prerecorded musique-concrète to improvisations on electric instruments. By turns mysterious, strident, sci-fi-ish, ethereal, danceable (for the very nimble) and dark, this provides resonances quite unknown until this album came out.
An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea In Concert
These two still do things on pianos that can’t be done on pianos. And, unlike several other musicians I can name whose technique is impeccable, the result is more than just a lot of fast notes. I especially like how the “riffs” bounce from one player to the other, both in standards and in improvisations, and the occasional use of extended techniques on the instrument.
Free Jazz (Ornette Coleman)
The father of a sub-genre, not entirely free improvisation. At times the music coalesces into obvious themes; at other everyone stops and starts at the same time. The bass solo and the series of drum solos are interesting in themselves. Whatever – it’s still fascinating: a lot of noise and a lot of music at the same time, full of colors, always changing, always the same, turning upon itself like a jazz homage to giant gothic stained-glass windows.
Gloss Drop (Battles)
Hocketting is a sort of metrical ping-pong game used in Balinese gamelan, the Medieval European "Ars Nova", certain genres of African music, and experimental pieces by Jo Kondo and others. Here, it makes a rare appearance in indie rock (along with, on other albums, a track or two by Dirty Projectors) and electronica. The result is a hyperactive, experimental, rhythmically precise chaos, and it's a lot of fun. It's also exhausting. The rhythms and the melodies seem to be one in the same, and both jump from instrument to instrument (and sometimes to vocals) and side to side and back to front. It's impossible to describe; one has to hear it, and then hear it again, to make sure that what you heard was really what was there. And please, hear it with the volume up.
Idioglossia (Chris Burke)
1989 post-punk beat-driven electronica with samples and wry commentary on culture, TV, and politics. “Get ready to give in to evil! Sounds neat! Extremely attracted to – evil!” Little did we know that this satire (probably on heavy metal music) would actually describe how American society would go in another quarter century. Also one of Max Ernst’s well-known supposed hallucinations, here rendered as a Devo-esque (or Warhol-esque?) glorification of style over substance: “The hat makes the man, a man made of Hat, replace the dinosaur…”
A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)
This 1964 masterpiece is one of the classic jazz albums. It’s also a fine introduction to Coltrane’s work, situated as it is between his “standard” style and his more interesting (and therefore less popular) experimental period. “Heads” and solos flow into one another freely in a jazz stream-of-consciousness; in fact, many of the jazz “solos” are more like classical “development sections”, where Trane takes fragments from the main theme and repeats them in various keys (that may or may not be related to the accompaniment). Then there are those timbral innovations, such as the chanting of “a love supreme” in multiple overdubs, and the timpani solo by the drummer, Elvin Jones. The whole album is a sound experience that is still as fresh now as when it was recorded.
The Number Pieces I (John Cage)
Music from the intense edge of silence; some of it is even more intense than silence and yet silence is a major part of it. The piece with rainsticks is perhaps the most beautifully held-back aleatory music ever conceived.
Raga Mian Ki Malhar (Hariprasad Chaurasia)
The light and easy sound of the last third of this flute and drum music fools the listener. Like Mozart or Chopin, it’s only simple on the surface. The extended introduction provides clues: the flute (here and there sounding very close to the Japanese shakuhachi) enumerates the notes of the raga slowly, one at a time, gradually increasing in complexity (but seemingly decreasing in volume) until all possibilities are exhausted. Only then does the tabla appear, in a second “movement”. For the listener unfamiliar with Indian classical music, this would be a good (and beautiful!) introduction. (When I published this, "tabla" had been changed to "table". Bleepin' spell-check.)
Right of Violet (Alex Cline, Jeff Gauthier, G. E. Stinson)
Free-improv jazz on electric instruments becomes a rock-based symphony. The entire album strikes me as being slightly too long, but the string of “compositions” has an interesting shape centering on the gorgeous “Sophia” for electric violin (with multiple delays) and gamelan gongs. “Metal” music preceded this, having built up slowly ex nihilo and then scattering into fossilized fragments; “Sophia” itself (herself?) then trails off in a similar manner, but the beauty remains even as the metal rebuilds itself and then subsides a second time. A hint of Vaughan-Williams lingers as the music concludes.
The White Album (Beatles)
Probably doesn't need an introduction. With this, mainstream pop stared across the abyss into experimental music (there’s even a tape collage!) but never quite made the leap. Maybe that doesn’t matter: some of this is a little dated now (and there’s a lot of awful baggage) but there’s still great melodic songwriting and some interesting ideas that pop artists are still coming to terms with. Worth several listens, even if only because (for better or worse) it’s part of our history.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
Monday, May 11, 2020
Ten More Albums
Continuing the mini-reviews of ten albums from my collections of CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums. One needs something to do during the orona virus lockdown. As always, comments are welcome, and of course I'll post other topics about music (and art) as they come up.
Banish Misfortune (Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen)
A classic of hammer dulcimer recordings, this collection of folk songs reflects a tenderness and directness of expression often buried under layers of erudition in other genres – yet it is no less complex or effective. As always, a pleasure to listen.
Batak of North Sumatra
Earworms lurk just beneath the surface in this collection of aggressive traditional Indonesian music that has nothing to do with the more familiar gamelan. The melody is as often carried by percussion as by the vocals and the omnipresent double reeds. This stuff rocked for centuries before the invention of electric instruments.
Carmina Burana (The Boston Camerata conducted by Joel Cohen)
Carl Orff fans: this ain’t that. These are songs from the original manuscript, in the Medieval tunes that have been used since the 1960’s (the manuscript itself has very little actual musical notation). These performances use innovations like rainsticks or the re-use of the “Dies Irae” melody – so these are not “authentic” versions – however, Medieval musicians would probably have innovated with what was at hand. These were bawdy drinking songs, after all…
Field Recordings (Bang on a Can All-Stars)
Exploring the noisy demilitarized zone between “new music” and indie-rock. Individual pieces vary from catchy minimalism to guitar-heavy drone metal to happy/comical circus music, almost all based on field recordings of some type. A musical experience, to be sure.
Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995 (Anthony Braxton)
One would expect this manic perpetual-motion machine to wind down at some point, but it keeps morphing and mutating, sprouting variations on its single running line of notes. It is both exhilarating and maddening music – and needs to be heard at least once to either relax you or put you farther over the edge.
Ordo Virtutum (Hildegard von Bingen, played by Sequentia)
This may be the recording that brought Hildegard’s music back into the spotlight after almost a millennium, yet this is a flawed record. The performances are pretty but often seem hesitant, there is at least one easily-audible flubbed tape-splice, and the celestial chorus of the finale is lackluster. The music of this proto-opera itself, though, is fascinating: melodies proceed in directions quite unlike any others (and also quite unlike the Gregorian chant upon which they are based). The instrumental parts provide drones and heterophonic accompaniments that would grow centuries later into the many types of harmony that we know today.
Piano Concertos (Béla Bartók, played by András Schiff and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer)
A grand explosion of rhythm from the first attack of modernism; Bartók is saying that the piano is definitely a percussion instrument, not the modified harp that the Romantic composers had made it. Concerto #1 is intense, dissonant and modernly “barbaric” in the manner of Stravinsky; #2 is an exciting ride; and #3 is unexpectedly lyrical and expressive – yet taken together, they almost form one large piece.
String Quartets Op. 18 #4, Op. 74 ‘Harp’, and Op. 130-133 (Beethoven, played by the Elias String Quartet)
What more can I say? Nearly flawless performances of some of the most profound music ever written. The “Harp” Quartet seems to have that instrument present; but it is not these “special effects” that fascinate us. It is the sheer range of expression. The slow movements are as serene as a starry night in paradise; the Grosse Fuge (Op. 133) rages against the existential abyss as effectively as much more obviously dissonant modernist music.
Sur Incises, Messagesquisse, Anthèmes 2 (Pierre Boulez)
The grand scintillating apotheosis of all that is post-serialist complexity. It curls around the listener like a diamond rainbow of notes, always changing, yet with no safe places. The three pieces (for 3 pianos, 3 harps, and 3 percussionists; for 7 cellos; for violin with electronics) provide the maximum differences in timbre.
Well-Adjusted (Beanbag)
Grunge rock at its loudest, full of fuzz guitars, fearsome (sometimes metal or rap) vocals, and an occasional microtone. A look at the lyrics shows that this is a socially-aware Christian band full of criticism of the “American dream” and the resulting suffering in other parts of the world: that uncompromising message is very effective when conveyed with this music. Musical innovations include changes of tempi against steady drumming and strident quarter-tones in feedback. The only cover tune is “Army of Me” (originally by Björk), here given a heavy bass-and-drums treatment that really conjures images of invading armies.
Banish Misfortune (Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen)
A classic of hammer dulcimer recordings, this collection of folk songs reflects a tenderness and directness of expression often buried under layers of erudition in other genres – yet it is no less complex or effective. As always, a pleasure to listen.
Batak of North Sumatra
Earworms lurk just beneath the surface in this collection of aggressive traditional Indonesian music that has nothing to do with the more familiar gamelan. The melody is as often carried by percussion as by the vocals and the omnipresent double reeds. This stuff rocked for centuries before the invention of electric instruments.
Carmina Burana (The Boston Camerata conducted by Joel Cohen)
Carl Orff fans: this ain’t that. These are songs from the original manuscript, in the Medieval tunes that have been used since the 1960’s (the manuscript itself has very little actual musical notation). These performances use innovations like rainsticks or the re-use of the “Dies Irae” melody – so these are not “authentic” versions – however, Medieval musicians would probably have innovated with what was at hand. These were bawdy drinking songs, after all…
Field Recordings (Bang on a Can All-Stars)
Exploring the noisy demilitarized zone between “new music” and indie-rock. Individual pieces vary from catchy minimalism to guitar-heavy drone metal to happy/comical circus music, almost all based on field recordings of some type. A musical experience, to be sure.
Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995 (Anthony Braxton)
One would expect this manic perpetual-motion machine to wind down at some point, but it keeps morphing and mutating, sprouting variations on its single running line of notes. It is both exhilarating and maddening music – and needs to be heard at least once to either relax you or put you farther over the edge.
Ordo Virtutum (Hildegard von Bingen, played by Sequentia)
This may be the recording that brought Hildegard’s music back into the spotlight after almost a millennium, yet this is a flawed record. The performances are pretty but often seem hesitant, there is at least one easily-audible flubbed tape-splice, and the celestial chorus of the finale is lackluster. The music of this proto-opera itself, though, is fascinating: melodies proceed in directions quite unlike any others (and also quite unlike the Gregorian chant upon which they are based). The instrumental parts provide drones and heterophonic accompaniments that would grow centuries later into the many types of harmony that we know today.
Piano Concertos (Béla Bartók, played by András Schiff and the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer)
A grand explosion of rhythm from the first attack of modernism; Bartók is saying that the piano is definitely a percussion instrument, not the modified harp that the Romantic composers had made it. Concerto #1 is intense, dissonant and modernly “barbaric” in the manner of Stravinsky; #2 is an exciting ride; and #3 is unexpectedly lyrical and expressive – yet taken together, they almost form one large piece.
String Quartets Op. 18 #4, Op. 74 ‘Harp’, and Op. 130-133 (Beethoven, played by the Elias String Quartet)
What more can I say? Nearly flawless performances of some of the most profound music ever written. The “Harp” Quartet seems to have that instrument present; but it is not these “special effects” that fascinate us. It is the sheer range of expression. The slow movements are as serene as a starry night in paradise; the Grosse Fuge (Op. 133) rages against the existential abyss as effectively as much more obviously dissonant modernist music.
Sur Incises, Messagesquisse, Anthèmes 2 (Pierre Boulez)
The grand scintillating apotheosis of all that is post-serialist complexity. It curls around the listener like a diamond rainbow of notes, always changing, yet with no safe places. The three pieces (for 3 pianos, 3 harps, and 3 percussionists; for 7 cellos; for violin with electronics) provide the maximum differences in timbre.
Well-Adjusted (Beanbag)
Grunge rock at its loudest, full of fuzz guitars, fearsome (sometimes metal or rap) vocals, and an occasional microtone. A look at the lyrics shows that this is a socially-aware Christian band full of criticism of the “American dream” and the resulting suffering in other parts of the world: that uncompromising message is very effective when conveyed with this music. Musical innovations include changes of tempi against steady drumming and strident quarter-tones in feedback. The only cover tune is “Army of Me” (originally by Björk), here given a heavy bass-and-drums treatment that really conjures images of invading armies.
Monday, May 4, 2020
Ten More Albums
Continuing the mini-reviews of ten albums from my collections of CDs, cassettes and vinyl albums. One needs something to do during the orona virus lockdown. As always, comments are welcome, and of course I'll post other topics about music (and art) as they come up.
Along These Lines (Steve Barsotti)
Musique-Concrete along several lines: microsounds and granular synthesis, ambient soundscapes of field recordings, and a culmination in a distorto-Merzbow noise-blast. At the North Seattle Listening Club (2013), the latter piece led to a discussion about how music of this type is put together compositionally, given its obvious (intentional) lack of melody, harmony, or rhythm. My own take on this is that density can be the prime mover for this kind of piece; another club member argued (based on a previously heard, unidentified piece) for the importance of timbre.
Aromates (Abed Azrié)
The throaty vocals (sung in Arabic) sometimes seem harsh in contrast to the understated accompaniment of qanun (zither), nay (flute), ambient synthesizers and whispered rhythms on percussion. A closer listen reveals that that may be the point: a listener more familiar with the genre would probably know that the words are the most important part: it’s poetry, after all, and this recording is (no matter how different an aesthetic experience) more akin to rap than to the ambient music that it seems to be at first. Listening to the accompaniment is a pleasant experience: it winds around itself in heterophonic textures, complementing the up-front vocals, and is scented with occasional quarter-tones that do not create dissonance in this context. The total experience of this is both easy and difficult at first, and it’s quite unlike anything else.
The B-52’s
In which rock music (or 80’s “new wave”) sits back, drinks a beer, and has a good long laugh at itself. Why do we always take music so !@#&!! seriously?! As always, “Planet Claire” and “Rock Lobster” are hilarious, and I still don’t know what to say about that intentionally bad rendition of the pop standard “Downtown”… Pop meets dada. Some wild vocal pyrotechnics too.
Brandenburg Concertos (J. S. Bach, played by Musica Amphion conducted by Pieter-Jan Beldar)
There are several reasons that these 18th-century works are still considered some of the greatest masterworks of music: dizzying complexity, aesthetic balance and harmony, mathematical perfection, the sheer enthusiastic beauty of it all. Each piece is different, adding variety; yet each is similar, adding continuity if they’re all played together. (I don’t know if anyone has ever commented on the overarching formal structure that appears when they’re all played in order: reduction of instruments from large to small ensemble to strings alone, then repeat beginning with a different ensemble; the two pieces for strings alone begin with the same theme.) Some listeners have commented that this music can be exhausting because there’s no “punctuation” – true, each unfolds in a relentless stream of notes, but to me at least it’s that bubbling perpetual motion that forms much of the joy in these pieces. Played on 18th-century instruments, these sparkle in the way they would have to Mr. Bach and his audience.
Look What I Found (Tom Baker Quartet)
Compositions and improvisations (is there always a difference?); jazz from the shadows of classical music, understated, sharply delineated, mysterious, impressionist, anti-ambient. Many moments jump-cut to others, leaving the piece to unfold in fragments – which always connect up at the end, and the extreme ranges and timbres of the instruments are explored. The closer you listen, the more you understand.
The Lost Sonatas (George Antheil, performed by Guy Livingston)
Back then, the earlier sonatas were the most shocking modernism; nihilist punk-rock for the dada age. The later sonatas (numbers 4 and 5) were tamer and more classical, as if backing up and apologizing for the earlier indiscretion. Listening now: there’s not that much difference. They’re all rhythmically interesting, often lyrical, often catchy, sometimes dissonant but not in a surprising way. Hints of Gershwin and Prokofiev drift in and out with boogie-woogie. And, after all, it’s just piano music. Not that that’s a bad thing: Sonata no. 5 in particular is an epic masterpiece that should be admitted to the canon of great piano works.
Mister Heartbreak (Laurie Anderson)
Pop music that isn’t pop music. Absurdist tragicomic poetry. Beautiful voice, but often without melody. We still don’t know quite what this is all about, forty years later, and that’s still the fun of it.
On the Banks of Helicon: Early Music of Scotland (Baltimore Consort)
Exploring the intersection between folk music and the nascent European “classical” tradition. Catchy dance rhythms, achingly beautiful pentatonic melodies, and an occasional raucous bagpipe all bespeak of centuries of musical custom; contrapuntal details and refined vocals indicate a more academic approach; and intimate performances bring to mind chamber music from later centuries. Some of the musical numbers are reminiscent of the songs in Shakespeare’s plays, in their Elizabethan settings. This is a gorgeous recording, to be savored more than once.
Soliloquy (Phillip Arnautoff)
An extended solo for harmonic canon: the grand uber-zither of Harry Partch invention. Here it produces a meditation of tones, played in folk-like melodies and sweeping glissandi, never quite resolving into the familiar major or minor scales but always lingering somewhere near. Seemingly both intimate and infinite. Quite beautiful.
Symphony no. 4 / Chinese Songs (Kalevi Aho, performed by Tiina Vahevaara, soprano, and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä)
The Symphony: Sardonic dark carnival meets tragedy, in the manner of Shostakovich; with brooding strings, a hilariously sinister tuba solo in the sherzo, and subtle counterpoint and interplay of rhythms throughout.
The Songs: Atmospheric neo-impressionism, subtler (and more effective) than standard cutesy chinoiserie. Some of these appear to begin as folk songs, but then the melodies wander into unexpected directions. The whole piece stands in lovely contrast to the much darker Symphony.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
Along These Lines (Steve Barsotti)
Musique-Concrete along several lines: microsounds and granular synthesis, ambient soundscapes of field recordings, and a culmination in a distorto-Merzbow noise-blast. At the North Seattle Listening Club (2013), the latter piece led to a discussion about how music of this type is put together compositionally, given its obvious (intentional) lack of melody, harmony, or rhythm. My own take on this is that density can be the prime mover for this kind of piece; another club member argued (based on a previously heard, unidentified piece) for the importance of timbre.
Aromates (Abed Azrié)
The throaty vocals (sung in Arabic) sometimes seem harsh in contrast to the understated accompaniment of qanun (zither), nay (flute), ambient synthesizers and whispered rhythms on percussion. A closer listen reveals that that may be the point: a listener more familiar with the genre would probably know that the words are the most important part: it’s poetry, after all, and this recording is (no matter how different an aesthetic experience) more akin to rap than to the ambient music that it seems to be at first. Listening to the accompaniment is a pleasant experience: it winds around itself in heterophonic textures, complementing the up-front vocals, and is scented with occasional quarter-tones that do not create dissonance in this context. The total experience of this is both easy and difficult at first, and it’s quite unlike anything else.
The B-52’s
In which rock music (or 80’s “new wave”) sits back, drinks a beer, and has a good long laugh at itself. Why do we always take music so !@#&!! seriously?! As always, “Planet Claire” and “Rock Lobster” are hilarious, and I still don’t know what to say about that intentionally bad rendition of the pop standard “Downtown”… Pop meets dada. Some wild vocal pyrotechnics too.
Brandenburg Concertos (J. S. Bach, played by Musica Amphion conducted by Pieter-Jan Beldar)
There are several reasons that these 18th-century works are still considered some of the greatest masterworks of music: dizzying complexity, aesthetic balance and harmony, mathematical perfection, the sheer enthusiastic beauty of it all. Each piece is different, adding variety; yet each is similar, adding continuity if they’re all played together. (I don’t know if anyone has ever commented on the overarching formal structure that appears when they’re all played in order: reduction of instruments from large to small ensemble to strings alone, then repeat beginning with a different ensemble; the two pieces for strings alone begin with the same theme.) Some listeners have commented that this music can be exhausting because there’s no “punctuation” – true, each unfolds in a relentless stream of notes, but to me at least it’s that bubbling perpetual motion that forms much of the joy in these pieces. Played on 18th-century instruments, these sparkle in the way they would have to Mr. Bach and his audience.
Look What I Found (Tom Baker Quartet)
Compositions and improvisations (is there always a difference?); jazz from the shadows of classical music, understated, sharply delineated, mysterious, impressionist, anti-ambient. Many moments jump-cut to others, leaving the piece to unfold in fragments – which always connect up at the end, and the extreme ranges and timbres of the instruments are explored. The closer you listen, the more you understand.
The Lost Sonatas (George Antheil, performed by Guy Livingston)
Back then, the earlier sonatas were the most shocking modernism; nihilist punk-rock for the dada age. The later sonatas (numbers 4 and 5) were tamer and more classical, as if backing up and apologizing for the earlier indiscretion. Listening now: there’s not that much difference. They’re all rhythmically interesting, often lyrical, often catchy, sometimes dissonant but not in a surprising way. Hints of Gershwin and Prokofiev drift in and out with boogie-woogie. And, after all, it’s just piano music. Not that that’s a bad thing: Sonata no. 5 in particular is an epic masterpiece that should be admitted to the canon of great piano works.
Mister Heartbreak (Laurie Anderson)
Pop music that isn’t pop music. Absurdist tragicomic poetry. Beautiful voice, but often without melody. We still don’t know quite what this is all about, forty years later, and that’s still the fun of it.
On the Banks of Helicon: Early Music of Scotland (Baltimore Consort)
Exploring the intersection between folk music and the nascent European “classical” tradition. Catchy dance rhythms, achingly beautiful pentatonic melodies, and an occasional raucous bagpipe all bespeak of centuries of musical custom; contrapuntal details and refined vocals indicate a more academic approach; and intimate performances bring to mind chamber music from later centuries. Some of the musical numbers are reminiscent of the songs in Shakespeare’s plays, in their Elizabethan settings. This is a gorgeous recording, to be savored more than once.
Soliloquy (Phillip Arnautoff)
An extended solo for harmonic canon: the grand uber-zither of Harry Partch invention. Here it produces a meditation of tones, played in folk-like melodies and sweeping glissandi, never quite resolving into the familiar major or minor scales but always lingering somewhere near. Seemingly both intimate and infinite. Quite beautiful.
Symphony no. 4 / Chinese Songs (Kalevi Aho, performed by Tiina Vahevaara, soprano, and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä)
The Symphony: Sardonic dark carnival meets tragedy, in the manner of Shostakovich; with brooding strings, a hilariously sinister tuba solo in the sherzo, and subtle counterpoint and interplay of rhythms throughout.
The Songs: Atmospheric neo-impressionism, subtler (and more effective) than standard cutesy chinoiserie. Some of these appear to begin as folk songs, but then the melodies wander into unexpected directions. The whole piece stands in lovely contrast to the much darker Symphony.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
Friday, May 1, 2020
Ten Albums
Well, I've decided to unshelf and dust off this blog during the corona virus lockdown, though with somewhat of a different focus. Obviously I'm not going to be attending many concerts to review: but while I'm stuck at home I have time to go through my entire collection of CD's, cassettes, and vinyl albums and give them all a fresh listen. I'm going to give mini-reviews for ten each time I post something here. As always, comments are welcome, and of course I'll post other topics about music (and art) as they come up.
As Is (Christine Abdelnour, Bonnie Jones, Andrea Neumann)
Shadows and hints from the border between silence, music, and noise. Once can almost grasp the first piece as a musical composition, but later even the form of the sounds is subverted into the ether. Ambience and cacophony are freely mixed, and in the end we wonder if there is a difference.
Aster (Aster Aweke)
The band is 1960’s R&B with a lot of brass – but those vocals (sung in Amharic) are something else entirely. Ms. Aweke’s singing has all of the melodic “turns” and expressivity of that style – but the quality is different in an indefinable way. There are also those two pieces of “chamber music” (songs accompanied by a single instrument): both of these are completely unexpected as she winds through improvisations on what are more akin to ragas (or “the blues”) than to “songs” or “musical numbers”. Another thing: it would appear that listeners to “popular” music in some countries have longer attention spans than in the US.
Lexical Music (Charles Amirkhanian)
The choice is yours: rhythm rendered as nonsense or nonsense rendered as rhythm. Either way it’s both hilarious and profoundly serious at the same time.
Messe des Jesuites de Pekin (Joseph-Marie Amiot, performed by XVIII-21, Ensemble Meihua Fleur de Prunus, Choeur du Centre Catholique Chinois de Paris, and Musique des Lumières)
Beautiful resonances mark this 18th-century fusion, though fusion is never actually achieved. The two styles (Chinese and European) stand out in sharp contrast to one another; they alternate but never intertwine. Both are rendered beautifully and with nuanced singing and playing (the music for communion is particularly striking, with its apparently anguished outcries resolving into peace) but in the end this seems to be a patchwork. One wonders if that would still be the case if the records of this rare music were more complete.
Nice Guys (Art Ensemble of Chicago)
A tour of “free” jazz through roots reggae turning impressionist, atonal walking blues, mad klaxons, an alien gongscape, African drumming, hints of “mainstream” jazz, pointillism over silence, something approaching rock and roll, and finally, an ecstatic trumpet and sax kaleidoscope. Fun!
Sequencia (Susan Alexjander)
Vibrations of a hypothetical DNA molecule suspended in space, rendered as pretty music with shimmering microtones and fragments of many styles. The tuning is derived from the structure of the molecule itself, though this is not audible in the listening; the sound of this occupies the mostly blank space between free jazz and ambient music.
Set of Five (Abel Steinberg Winant Trio)
Violin, piano and percussion: beautiful echoes from the beginning or our era, and from the middle of all eras.
Strange and Sacred Noise (John Luther Adams)
Vast sound booms out into the still Arctic air; a thunderously subtle instability of rhythm in a steady state of timbre. The sounds of nature expressed as abstract volumes.
To Venus and Back (Tori Amos)
None of these numerous songs are particularly interesting from a compositional viewpoint (though they’re not really uninteresting either) and the lyrics intentionally aren’t clearly audible – so at first it appears that there’s not that much to be said about this album. However, her voice is versatile and often beautiful, the band makes some interesting walls of sound on the second (live) CD, and some of the piano parts are oddly reminiscent of Hovhaness’ jhala-inspired piano stylings. Those things alone make it worth a listen.
Wings over Water (Stefan Micus)
A souvenir from the 1980’s when “New Age Music” was something other than just generic prettiness. Tuned flower pots create a gamelan of the imagination; zithers and the sarangi (the latter played as a percussion instrument!) form resonant accompaniments to the filigrees and arabesques of the Egyptian flute, and the voice – singing in an unknown language that “has no known meaning, therefore…” Beautiful stuff, and to me at least it’s still the same after many years.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
As Is (Christine Abdelnour, Bonnie Jones, Andrea Neumann)
Shadows and hints from the border between silence, music, and noise. Once can almost grasp the first piece as a musical composition, but later even the form of the sounds is subverted into the ether. Ambience and cacophony are freely mixed, and in the end we wonder if there is a difference.
Aster (Aster Aweke)
The band is 1960’s R&B with a lot of brass – but those vocals (sung in Amharic) are something else entirely. Ms. Aweke’s singing has all of the melodic “turns” and expressivity of that style – but the quality is different in an indefinable way. There are also those two pieces of “chamber music” (songs accompanied by a single instrument): both of these are completely unexpected as she winds through improvisations on what are more akin to ragas (or “the blues”) than to “songs” or “musical numbers”. Another thing: it would appear that listeners to “popular” music in some countries have longer attention spans than in the US.
Lexical Music (Charles Amirkhanian)
The choice is yours: rhythm rendered as nonsense or nonsense rendered as rhythm. Either way it’s both hilarious and profoundly serious at the same time.
Messe des Jesuites de Pekin (Joseph-Marie Amiot, performed by XVIII-21, Ensemble Meihua Fleur de Prunus, Choeur du Centre Catholique Chinois de Paris, and Musique des Lumières)
Beautiful resonances mark this 18th-century fusion, though fusion is never actually achieved. The two styles (Chinese and European) stand out in sharp contrast to one another; they alternate but never intertwine. Both are rendered beautifully and with nuanced singing and playing (the music for communion is particularly striking, with its apparently anguished outcries resolving into peace) but in the end this seems to be a patchwork. One wonders if that would still be the case if the records of this rare music were more complete.
Nice Guys (Art Ensemble of Chicago)
A tour of “free” jazz through roots reggae turning impressionist, atonal walking blues, mad klaxons, an alien gongscape, African drumming, hints of “mainstream” jazz, pointillism over silence, something approaching rock and roll, and finally, an ecstatic trumpet and sax kaleidoscope. Fun!
Sequencia (Susan Alexjander)
Vibrations of a hypothetical DNA molecule suspended in space, rendered as pretty music with shimmering microtones and fragments of many styles. The tuning is derived from the structure of the molecule itself, though this is not audible in the listening; the sound of this occupies the mostly blank space between free jazz and ambient music.
Set of Five (Abel Steinberg Winant Trio)
Violin, piano and percussion: beautiful echoes from the beginning or our era, and from the middle of all eras.
Strange and Sacred Noise (John Luther Adams)
Vast sound booms out into the still Arctic air; a thunderously subtle instability of rhythm in a steady state of timbre. The sounds of nature expressed as abstract volumes.
To Venus and Back (Tori Amos)
None of these numerous songs are particularly interesting from a compositional viewpoint (though they’re not really uninteresting either) and the lyrics intentionally aren’t clearly audible – so at first it appears that there’s not that much to be said about this album. However, her voice is versatile and often beautiful, the band makes some interesting walls of sound on the second (live) CD, and some of the piano parts are oddly reminiscent of Hovhaness’ jhala-inspired piano stylings. Those things alone make it worth a listen.
Wings over Water (Stefan Micus)
A souvenir from the 1980’s when “New Age Music” was something other than just generic prettiness. Tuned flower pots create a gamelan of the imagination; zithers and the sarangi (the latter played as a percussion instrument!) form resonant accompaniments to the filigrees and arabesques of the Egyptian flute, and the voice – singing in an unknown language that “has no known meaning, therefore…” Beautiful stuff, and to me at least it’s still the same after many years.
So that's it for the music, for now. For another type of discussion altogether, check out the new sister blog of this one (it's about books, words, and random stuff about linguistics) and my new website about my books (yes, there's a book of this blog!).
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Concert (and CD) Review: "An ear alone is not a being" - Bonnie Whiting plays John Cage, 4/29/2017
"Bonnie Whiting, head of the UW's Percussion Studies program, performs music from her newly released Mode Records debut, 51'15.657" for a speaking percussionist, by composer John Cage. ...(This is her) realization of a solo simultaneous performance of John Cage's 45' for a speaker and 27'10.554" for a percussionist. These are vintage pieces, music from the mid-50's and part of a series of timed works that Cage enjoyed mixing together and referred to in notes and letters as "the ten thousand things." -- from the University of Washington School of Music website
Ms. Whiting played three pieces.
A Flower
Quietly the music begins. Tapping on the closed piano – using it as a percussion instrument – reminds us that this music is “experimental”, but what we’re hearing is indigenous music from another culture. Wordless chanting suggests a lullaby, fading into silence. Near the end, the voice becomes muddied with a couple of “special effects”; thinner, spectral – but this is merely to remind us that it is music from somewhere else. It is quite beautiful.
51'15.657”
Chatty voice and a loud drumroll startled us into awareness that the music is going in a different direction now, and announced what is by far the longest piece on the concert: “51'15.657" (Realization Of 45' For A Speaker & 27'10.554" For A Percussionist)”. This is actually two of Cage’s pieces performed at the same time. Playing two (more or less unrelated) pieces at the same time is, of course, a feat of technical virtuosity for a single performer; but that is not why we are listening. Bonnie gave a short speech before playing, reminding us that both pieces were drawn from random matrices of possibilities: the speaking part was written (about several topics) and then cut up and pasted together in a new configuration; the percussion part was drawn from imperfections in the paper which Cage was using to compose. There is also leeway as to which percussion instruments are played. Bonnie’s “realization” of the work used a rack of suspended pot lids (Harry Partch, revisited), a gong, two drums, a kalimba, bamboo wind chimes, several noisemakers including a turkey call, and brief (less than a second) samples activated with a foot pedal. The result is a collage of sound. Ricochet-clusters of clangs and bongs bounce around ambiguous words: fragments of observations about silence, sound, composition, Zen, the music of Bach and Debussy, and personal anecdotes. There are momentary breaks in the commentary for throat-clearing (she mentioned beforehand that she actually had a cold, so the audience could guess which throat-clearings were in the piece and which weren't), drinking from a water bottle, striking a match (which failed to flame up) and brushing her hair. The manner of composing and playing, of course, prevents anything continuous or “logical” from emerging; but that of course is the point. Letting go of expectations, we listen in expectation of any sound. Though sometimes strident, sometimes even comical, the overall effect is that of tranquility. Thus it is not all that different from the quiet “indigenous” music at the beginning.
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
The concert concluded with another melodic miniature for singing voice and closed piano (a memorable recorded version of this piece is by Joey Ramone). Here, the harmonic language is rarified to the point of near nonexistence: the voice sings only three notes, variously rhythmed. Cage did a miraculous job of pulling an earworm from these three notes, however; one goes away humming the tune. “Cagean” ambiguity is found in the piano-tapping part and the words: the former suggests but never quite establishes a meter, and the latter are derived from James Joyce’s great experiment in letters, the stream of (un)consciousness novel “Finnegans Wake”. It is one of the most mellifluous passages in the book, describing the character Issy in botanical terms (“wildwoods eyes and primarose hair, ...in mauves of moss and dahne dews / how all so still she lay 'neath of the white thorn / child of tree / like some lost happy leaf”) – but again, the readers are never sure if Issy and her two siblings actually “exist” or are merely fragments of the sleeping narrator’s psyche, and in this passage, Issy may actually be dead. Thus, although the music seems straightforward enough, there is still Cage’s aesthetic of holding back and waiting to experience anything.
The CD
After the concert, I bought one of the CDs (it’s also going to be available on blue-ray) and had Ms. Whiting autograph it after seeking a pen for several minutes.
There are two more pieces on the CD. The first is “Music For Two (By One) [Realization Of Music For...]”, another mashup of a speaking piece and a percussion piece; this continues the soundscape of 51'15.657” but uses some different percussion and links the shorter melodic pieces with fragments of singing. The second is “Connecting Egypt To Madison Through Columbus Ohio, Cage, And The History Of The American Labor Movement (Incorporating Music For Marcel Duchamp & Variations 2)”, a third mix, performed by Allen Otte. Here, the two worlds are mixed even more as gamelan-like “prepared piano” undulates under Mr. Otte’s political speeches. The result, however, as often in Cage’s work, is (non-)chaos which leads to extreme refinement to tranquility.
Ms. Whiting played three pieces.
A Flower
Quietly the music begins. Tapping on the closed piano – using it as a percussion instrument – reminds us that this music is “experimental”, but what we’re hearing is indigenous music from another culture. Wordless chanting suggests a lullaby, fading into silence. Near the end, the voice becomes muddied with a couple of “special effects”; thinner, spectral – but this is merely to remind us that it is music from somewhere else. It is quite beautiful.
51'15.657”
The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
The concert concluded with another melodic miniature for singing voice and closed piano (a memorable recorded version of this piece is by Joey Ramone). Here, the harmonic language is rarified to the point of near nonexistence: the voice sings only three notes, variously rhythmed. Cage did a miraculous job of pulling an earworm from these three notes, however; one goes away humming the tune. “Cagean” ambiguity is found in the piano-tapping part and the words: the former suggests but never quite establishes a meter, and the latter are derived from James Joyce’s great experiment in letters, the stream of (un)consciousness novel “Finnegans Wake”. It is one of the most mellifluous passages in the book, describing the character Issy in botanical terms (“wildwoods eyes and primarose hair, ...in mauves of moss and dahne dews / how all so still she lay 'neath of the white thorn / child of tree / like some lost happy leaf”) – but again, the readers are never sure if Issy and her two siblings actually “exist” or are merely fragments of the sleeping narrator’s psyche, and in this passage, Issy may actually be dead. Thus, although the music seems straightforward enough, there is still Cage’s aesthetic of holding back and waiting to experience anything.
The CD
After the concert, I bought one of the CDs (it’s also going to be available on blue-ray) and had Ms. Whiting autograph it after seeking a pen for several minutes.
There are two more pieces on the CD. The first is “Music For Two (By One) [Realization Of Music For...]”, another mashup of a speaking piece and a percussion piece; this continues the soundscape of 51'15.657” but uses some different percussion and links the shorter melodic pieces with fragments of singing. The second is “Connecting Egypt To Madison Through Columbus Ohio, Cage, And The History Of The American Labor Movement (Incorporating Music For Marcel Duchamp & Variations 2)”, a third mix, performed by Allen Otte. Here, the two worlds are mixed even more as gamelan-like “prepared piano” undulates under Mr. Otte’s political speeches. The result, however, as often in Cage’s work, is (non-)chaos which leads to extreme refinement to tranquility.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Concert Review: Seattle Composers Salon, 3/3/2017
"The Seattle Composers’ Salon fosters the development, performance and appreciation of new music by regional composers and performers. At bi-monthly, informal presentations, the Salon features finished works, previews, and works in progress. Composers, performers, and audience members gather in a casual setting that allows for experimentation and discussion. Everyone is welcome!" from the Seattle Composers Salon website
Sheila Bristow: Two Songs
Mystical lyrics, translated from Medieval texts by Sheila herself – she commented that it was good to be able to take the same meanings but tweak the rhymes to work in a song setting. The music was beautiful, deliberately simplified (melodies over ostinati, though both were often elaborated upon to flow with the text), modal (I recognized one of the modes from Hildegard’s chants – H. was the author of the first text) and very classical (in a Hovhaness mood) with soprano, ‘cello, and piano. A contemplative introduction to the evening’s concert.
S. Eric Scribner: Tree and Stone, performed with The Sherványa Nocturnal Music
Carol Levin, Keith and Karen Eisenbreys, and I performed two of my aleatory pieces at the same time. Or rather, we played one while the audience played the other. “Tree and Stone” (the audience piece) was the “artificial remix” of the piece that we played last summer at Volunteer Park; shaking pieces of partially shredded paper substituted for shaking tree branches, and knocking on the chairs substituted for hitting stones together. The result “sounded more treelike than the original” according to one participant. The other piece goes with my novel “Tond”, and is a form of indigenous classical music of the (imaginary) Sherványa civilization. Bug guitar (“baby kora”) and detuned ukulele formed a microtonal background for quiet modal shifting of melodic fragments. There will be a much longer version of this piece played (at the same venue) next September, hopefully corresponding to the release of Book Three of Tond (in which a performance of this music is part of the plot).
Ivan Arteaga’s band ComManD: Thaumaturgy
Interactive digital music at its finest. Sax, percussion, and a dancer mixed with the electronics in a collaborative way – the dancer, for example, had sensors on her wrists and ankles that transformed the sounds as she moved, so the music was composed by the dance as much as for it. There were two sections; the first omitted the sax and the second (mostly) omitted the percussion, but they worked together to form a twelve-minute whole. Ivan seemed to be the spokesperson, and commented at length about the use of electronics and how the software was written by the performers. ( “At length”, is not a negative comment here; it was fascinating, if arcane, and the audience members kept asking more questions.) I didn’t get the names of the other performers, but would like to hear (and see) all of them again.
Blake Degraw: Electronic Quartet for Humans
Extreme saxophony often abruptly cut short. A quartet of saxes, arrayed around the room, wailed and screamed in perfect synchrony, starting and stopping instantaneously or in layers. The “electronic” part was actually audio cues in headphones that the performers wore; but the effect of the music was that of a highly amplified electronic quartet: one sound, for example, would begin at point A and then travel around the room, processed into other sounds. “Interactive” in the way that Ivan’s piece was, and an interesting reversal – in the past, electronic sounds have been used to imitate (imperfectly) acoustic instruments. Here is the reverse, and it’s fascinating.
Sheila Bristow: Two Songs
Mystical lyrics, translated from Medieval texts by Sheila herself – she commented that it was good to be able to take the same meanings but tweak the rhymes to work in a song setting. The music was beautiful, deliberately simplified (melodies over ostinati, though both were often elaborated upon to flow with the text), modal (I recognized one of the modes from Hildegard’s chants – H. was the author of the first text) and very classical (in a Hovhaness mood) with soprano, ‘cello, and piano. A contemplative introduction to the evening’s concert.
S. Eric Scribner: Tree and Stone, performed with The Sherványa Nocturnal Music
Carol Levin, Keith and Karen Eisenbreys, and I performed two of my aleatory pieces at the same time. Or rather, we played one while the audience played the other. “Tree and Stone” (the audience piece) was the “artificial remix” of the piece that we played last summer at Volunteer Park; shaking pieces of partially shredded paper substituted for shaking tree branches, and knocking on the chairs substituted for hitting stones together. The result “sounded more treelike than the original” according to one participant. The other piece goes with my novel “Tond”, and is a form of indigenous classical music of the (imaginary) Sherványa civilization. Bug guitar (“baby kora”) and detuned ukulele formed a microtonal background for quiet modal shifting of melodic fragments. There will be a much longer version of this piece played (at the same venue) next September, hopefully corresponding to the release of Book Three of Tond (in which a performance of this music is part of the plot).
Ivan Arteaga’s band ComManD: Thaumaturgy
Interactive digital music at its finest. Sax, percussion, and a dancer mixed with the electronics in a collaborative way – the dancer, for example, had sensors on her wrists and ankles that transformed the sounds as she moved, so the music was composed by the dance as much as for it. There were two sections; the first omitted the sax and the second (mostly) omitted the percussion, but they worked together to form a twelve-minute whole. Ivan seemed to be the spokesperson, and commented at length about the use of electronics and how the software was written by the performers. ( “At length”, is not a negative comment here; it was fascinating, if arcane, and the audience members kept asking more questions.) I didn’t get the names of the other performers, but would like to hear (and see) all of them again.
Blake Degraw: Electronic Quartet for Humans
Extreme saxophony often abruptly cut short. A quartet of saxes, arrayed around the room, wailed and screamed in perfect synchrony, starting and stopping instantaneously or in layers. The “electronic” part was actually audio cues in headphones that the performers wore; but the effect of the music was that of a highly amplified electronic quartet: one sound, for example, would begin at point A and then travel around the room, processed into other sounds. “Interactive” in the way that Ivan’s piece was, and an interesting reversal – in the past, electronic sounds have been used to imitate (imperfectly) acoustic instruments. Here is the reverse, and it’s fascinating.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
"Magical (Sur)realism" and Music
This is a discussion I started on social media with the intent of putting it in this blog. As in previous such discussions, the initials are changed except for mine.
1
Me: After reading “100 Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Marquez and “Grimus” by Salman Rushdie (as well my friend Karen Eisenbrey’s “The Gospel According to Saint Rage”, which has traces of the same genre), this question occurred to me: To what extent is “magic realism” in fiction the same as / similar to / different from surrealism in art? (Never mind their different origins.) Does either have any kind of counterpart in music? (Don't count song lyrics and 1970's rock album covers.) What do you think?
RQ: I think of magic realism as "surrealism lite" - that isn't to disparage it, just to acknowledge that for some readers (and film viewers) full on surrealism is a bit too much to stay with, but a little dab can spice things up a bit for those who are less inclined toward hard-core experimentalism but appreciate something that challenges "reality". And although Breton and other vintage surrealists allegedly had a disdain for music, there are free improvisers who have made surrealism the basis of their practice for decades - check out the music of LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, and Hal Rammel for starters.
LoDonna Smith on her music: in the early days, we tried real hard not to be influenced by anyone, but to go into that trans: trance...transport...transportation... trans... transcend... transcendence... transcendprovisation... that comes from transfiguration... from tranced out... psychic automatism...! (whew)
We tried to steer clear of anything that sounded "like" anything else and sometimes engage in just raw energies leading the body into making all this noise but with a "listening ear to shape it" like free composition so when you'd hear a rhythmic set up, you'd solo on it, or set something up and watch Davey do guitar theater with it, or duel it out in flights of fury, or float slowly… or make imaginary landscapes – all of these were areas, not idioms...
Hal Rammel: My parents were both artists, …so I grew up in a house where making things and exploring new ideas were everyday activities. I decided in my teens that I wanted to pursue a similar course, and started drawing and making collages. This was all of a piece with reading, listening to Jazz, watching movies… I had been exposed to modern art throughout my childhood, so the historical continuity, the groundwork, was firmly at hand. Abstract and surrealist painting and imagery fascinated me, so in my reading I doggedly pursued the art, poetry, and theater of the early Twentieth Century. I knew there were new directions to take those ideas in new times—this was the early 1960's—and I still feel that way.
2
IR: I agree with RQ’s analysis. True surrealism in books/movies has a decidedly different flavor than magical realism. See The Milagro Beanfield War or Like Water For Chocolate for an example of what I consider magical realism, and perhaps The Life of Pi or Alice In Wonderland for surrealism.
Me: I see the original Alice books as quite satirical, on both politics and the formal logic on which politics is supposedly based. Thus they represent a third genre which may be linked to the other two. Movies inspired by those books, however, go in as many directions as there are directors who have made them.
RQ: There are of course the "classics" of Surrealist cinema from the 20s and 30s, like Buñuel/Dali, Cocteau, Man Ray, Cornell, etc. Some recent films that I think qualify and recommend are the films of the Brothers Quay (their animations, but especially their narrative films with actors, like Piano Tuner of Earthquakes and Institute Benjamenta) Jodorowsky, some of David Lynch's work, and Holy Motors, which I saw recently and loved.
Me: The different flavor is often brought up. Surrealism supposedly has a definite edge of disquiet, as in the art of De Chririco, Max Ernst, Dali, and more recently, Geiger. Though the latter two are more or less commercial brands, the "disquiet" is still there. Magic Realism seems more wondrous and, well, magical. However, Miro is often considered surrealist, and I would say his work is often humorous and whimsical rather than disquieting.
3
Me: Concerning the disquiet, C. S. Lewis wrote the following in his sci-fi novel “That Hideous Strength”:
“[Mark] got up and began to walk about. He had a look at the pictures. Some of them belonged to a school of art with which he was already familiar. There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair. It was very skillfully painted in the photographic manner so that you could almost feel that hair… There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly coloured sea beneath a summer sunset. But most of the pictures were not of this kind. At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only it the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details — something odd about the positions of the figures’ feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. …Why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace… Long ago Mark had read somewhere of “things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the unintitiate,” and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.”
Me: Lewis was stating that surrealism, in representing the unquiet of the subconscious, taps into something truly sinister that we have bottled up, and thus it (surrealism) forms a sort of bridge to the demonic. The subconscious, as explored by Freud and then overlaid with Christian morality, becomes a frightening repository of evil.
Madeleine L’Engle expresses an opposing view of this same disquiet. I am unable to find the exact quote, but I remember her stating that the subconscious has become nasty because we have bottled it up. It should be the creative urge, but has turned into something quite different. This idea, subconscious=creative, minus any “nasty” aspect is, of course, what the original surrealist artists meant by liberating the subconscious to achieve higher states of creativity. (It should be pointed out that Madeleine L’Engle practiced the same religion as Lewis: a form of Christianity quite different from, and in many ways opposed to, our more familiar American fundamentalism. Their differing views on the same topic point to variety of thought within a larger system.)
A parallel theme comes up in the anime “Madlax”, where the antagonist learns how to unleash everyone’s subconscious desires – leading to a bacchanalian and ultimately bloody apocalypse. This antagonist, though, believes that he is a savior, and is doing this in order to liberate everyone from societal demands, and at the same time fulfil their wishes. (A digression: “Madlax” also uses what I call the “split soul” idea, an apparently uniquely Japanese plot element also seen in at least one novel by Haruki Murakami: a single soul is divided and shared among two or more characters. I am not sure if this would qualify as either a surrealist or magical realist idea, or something else altogether.)
4
Me: “Magical Realism” does not have that disquietude. In “100 Years of Solitude” – the man who is always attended by a flock of yellow butterflies; the woman who is taken up into heaven because she is too beautiful and too wise for the earth: both of these seem miraculous rather than sinister. Also, they are narrated as if they were common events, not something dredged up from an ominous dream.
JD: I write Realistic Magicalism.
LD: The closest thing to what I would want magical realism to be, in film, is "Beasts of the Southern Wild".
MJ: I've always had the feeling (and you'd have to ask the writers to confirm if it's the case) that magical realism consists in authors narrating "magical" things that had actually happened to them or their community. The magical quality ensues when many of these actual narrated occurrences are stitched together, in effect concentrating the magic. This kind of thing crops up in my songwriting: after a night dancing in a mosh pit at the Highline I noticed that I had sustained a tear-shaped bruise over my heart thanks to somebody nailing me in the chest with an elbow at some point. Hence the song, “Tear-Shaped Bruise.” Surrealism is so hard to define, because it has to do with different kinds of things: narrating or painting dream images, "found" materials, experimental procedures such as chance-games or "exquisite corpse." An actual example of a surrealist technique is Karen's employment of "St Rage" in her book, after she noticed the lighted STORAGE sign with the O light out (ST RAGE).
Me: So essentially you’re saying that chance occurrences can be seen as “magical” and play a part in one’s personal narrative. Discussion of chance occurrences in art of course lead to the music of John Cage and followers, where events made to happen at random often do not in fact sound random. So by that definition, and not one involving the subconscious, we have arrived at a surrealistic music.
And by the way, we’ve probably all experienced “magical” (or “glitch in the matrix”) events. I’ve had a couple myself that were a little on the weird side.
1
Me: After reading “100 Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Marquez and “Grimus” by Salman Rushdie (as well my friend Karen Eisenbrey’s “The Gospel According to Saint Rage”, which has traces of the same genre), this question occurred to me: To what extent is “magic realism” in fiction the same as / similar to / different from surrealism in art? (Never mind their different origins.) Does either have any kind of counterpart in music? (Don't count song lyrics and 1970's rock album covers.) What do you think?
LoDonna Smith on her music: in the early days, we tried real hard not to be influenced by anyone, but to go into that trans: trance...transport...transportation... trans... transcend... transcendence... transcendprovisation... that comes from transfiguration... from tranced out... psychic automatism...! (whew)
We tried to steer clear of anything that sounded "like" anything else and sometimes engage in just raw energies leading the body into making all this noise but with a "listening ear to shape it" like free composition so when you'd hear a rhythmic set up, you'd solo on it, or set something up and watch Davey do guitar theater with it, or duel it out in flights of fury, or float slowly… or make imaginary landscapes – all of these were areas, not idioms...
2
IR: I agree with RQ’s analysis. True surrealism in books/movies has a decidedly different flavor than magical realism. See The Milagro Beanfield War or Like Water For Chocolate for an example of what I consider magical realism, and perhaps The Life of Pi or Alice In Wonderland for surrealism.
3
Me: Concerning the disquiet, C. S. Lewis wrote the following in his sci-fi novel “That Hideous Strength”:
“[Mark] got up and began to walk about. He had a look at the pictures. Some of them belonged to a school of art with which he was already familiar. There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair. It was very skillfully painted in the photographic manner so that you could almost feel that hair… There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly coloured sea beneath a summer sunset. But most of the pictures were not of this kind. At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only it the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details — something odd about the positions of the figures’ feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. …Why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace… Long ago Mark had read somewhere of “things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the unintitiate,” and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.”
Madeleine L’Engle expresses an opposing view of this same disquiet. I am unable to find the exact quote, but I remember her stating that the subconscious has become nasty because we have bottled it up. It should be the creative urge, but has turned into something quite different. This idea, subconscious=creative, minus any “nasty” aspect is, of course, what the original surrealist artists meant by liberating the subconscious to achieve higher states of creativity. (It should be pointed out that Madeleine L’Engle practiced the same religion as Lewis: a form of Christianity quite different from, and in many ways opposed to, our more familiar American fundamentalism. Their differing views on the same topic point to variety of thought within a larger system.)
4
Me: “Magical Realism” does not have that disquietude. In “100 Years of Solitude” – the man who is always attended by a flock of yellow butterflies; the woman who is taken up into heaven because she is too beautiful and too wise for the earth: both of these seem miraculous rather than sinister. Also, they are narrated as if they were common events, not something dredged up from an ominous dream.
JD: I write Realistic Magicalism.
And by the way, we’ve probably all experienced “magical” (or “glitch in the matrix”) events. I’ve had a couple myself that were a little on the weird side.
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