Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night in L.A. - Minimalism

The Los Angeles Philharmonic�s Musical Jukebox festival began last night with a meditation and ended with a celebration, programmed and performed by CalArts and Dean David Rosenboom. The meditation was the String Quartet (1960) by the then 19-year old prodigy Terry Jennings, a shooting star, now almost forgotten, whose brief creative period placed him at the birth of minimalism. La Monte Young, whose work is unfortunately absent from the festival, wrote for the program notes:

Terry Jennings and Dennis Johnson were the first musicians to understand the unique tonal language, sustained tones, silences, and extended duration format of my works for Brass (1957), for Guitar (1958), and, in particular, the Trio for Strings (1958). Both Terry and Dennis utilized harmonic material based on my four-pitch "Dream Chords," which were the underlying harmonic basis for these works and later became the entire tonal content of my work, The Four Dreams of China(1962).

In 1960-1961, Young held a series of concerts in Yoko Ono�s New York City loft. Jennings was the first of the composers to be showcased in this series, and a recording of the String Quartet was played for the audience there in 1960. The first live performance of the quartet in New York was not until 1989, when it was performed at a Terry Jennings Memorial Concert. Last night was the first live performance in California.

The String Quartet is austere, almost religious, in its focus on a series of single sounds. The score for the 28-minute work is contained on a single page. Each player may have 30-some notes to play in that period, in dynamics ranging from pianissimo to pppp. Each note, and each rest (since the pauses are an integral part of the work --- Jennings had studied Cage), is timed, and each player uses a stop watch to time each note and each pause. The challenge for each player is to produce as pure a tone as possible, with no vibrato, to produce each level of the limited dynamics distinctly, and to begin and end each note precisely with another player when Jennings calls for a chord rather than a single note.

The audience (which appeared to number about 1800) was attentive and quiet, but their reactions at the conclusion of the Quartet indicated that most seemed unprepared for the piece, even if they had read and thought about the program notes. This work called out for some comments from the stage to introduce the work and to let the audience know a little of what to expect. We just don�t hear music so pared down, we don�t hear sounds in such isolation. I was prepared and able to fall into the state evoked by the music, so that the work seemed much shorter than its 28 minutes. Unprepared, however, it would have been easy to wonder �What is happening? What am I missing?� Some in the audience didn�t return after intermission.

The few who left missed an absolutely rousing performance, by 120-some musicians, of In C (1964) by Terry Riley. The performers were students, faculty, graduates, and friends of CalArts. The instrumentalists included a dozen guitars of various persuasions but only a few orchestral strings, a good crew of woodwinds and of brass, the range of pitched percussion, a harp, three accordions, two dozen in a vocal chorus, three upright pianos with two players each as performers, two grand pianos providing the ostinato, and instruments I couldn�t identify.

Among the guests participating in the performance were Katrina Krimsky, pianist in the first recording of In C and Stuart Dempster, professor emeritus from U of Washington, performer in the premiere of In C, and organizer and performer in the first recording of the work.

The performance was probably more structured and guided than usual, understandable with this many people. Rosenboom, as violinist and conductor, had 53 numbered cue sheets to show to the performers to keep things close to the same path. While most of the themes evolved, coordinated by the cue cards, by pre-arrangement, some of the themes were introduced by sections performing in unison; a theme might be introduced by the brass, or the winds, or the chorus. This was effective. Rosenboom also provided occasional guidance of the dynamics. The audience loved it. Can there ever be a �definitive� performance of In C? This may not have been definitive, but it was sure fun. What a great start to a festival.

posted by Jerry Zinser 3/21/2006