Sequenza21

I had never given a moment’s thought to music written for television until 1997. I was watching The Late Show with the great Peter Takács when he suddenly – in reference to Paul Shafer – said: “This guy’s a genius.”

While there’s no reason the art of composing for television cannot be done ingeniously, I cannot at the moment think of a television composer who enjoys the status of “genius.” This is in stark contrast to film composers, a small gaggle of whom regularly get the G-word applied to them (Bernard Hermann, Toru Takemitsu, Ennio Morricone . . . ). But what about Mike Post? Or Alf Clausen? Or . . . Michael Giacchino?

The punchline: Lost returns tonight! Hooray! While I admit Giacchino’s work isn’t the first reason I tune in, I am nonetheless looking forward to those low harp plucks, string tremolos, drum thuds, and creepy ostinatos with which he skillfully scores the show. His terse, austere music rarely gets the sort of attention Mama Cass and Drive Shaft have received, but when Giacchino gets a chance to let things rip, the results can be wonderful. My favorite musical moment is from the first season at the end of the episode “Deus Ex Machina:” a plain-spoken but impassioned string section raises magnificently through Terry O’Quinn’s raging words; he is “beatin’ [his] hand bloody” on a door in the ground that just won’t open. But then –

Last time I wrote about the Argento Ensemble, they were taking their audience on a tour of contemporary French composers. On January 31st at Merkin, they extended their range a century and moved a bit northwest. This new program, entitled “Expressionism in Motion,” traced the legacy of Austro-Germanic Expressionism from Wagner and Schoenberg through Stockhausen to Wolfgang Rihm and Georg Friedrich Haas.

Interestingly, Argento chose not to present the works in order of age. Rather, they arranged the pieces in order of increasing instrumental forces. The concert, then, began in the chronological middle with Stockhausen’s “Der Kleine Harlekin” from 1975. “Der Kleine Harlekin,” for solo clarinet, is one of Stockhausen’s dance pieces, and it’s extracted from his larger work Harlekin. I’ve seen several of these dance pieces in score form, but never in performance. On that basis, I was intrigued, but a little worried, to see “Kleine Harlekin” on the bill. On the page, it’s hard not to suspect that Stockhausen’s eccentricity pushes these works over the top. Fortunately, clarinetist Carol McGonnell offered me some immediate reassurance by forsaking the mutli-colored unitards that Stockhausen’s preferred clarinetist, Suzanne Stephens, favors. My initial impression held true once the music started; the work and its performance proved delightful. The motions that Stockhausen calls for cleverly (and often humorously) inflect the equally playful, almost jazzy clarinet lines. About halfway through the piece I discovered that the visual elements had moved to the foreground for me (in a good way). My only complaint is that Argento presented the work in one of its alternate versions – with a drum accompanying the clarinet. The drum obscured many of the sounds of McGonnell’s footsteps, which, as Stockhausen points out in his notes, are central to the piece. In fact, I believe that in Stockhausen’s proposed alternate version the drum is included in lieu of the clarinetist’s dancing (I hope Argento and McGonnell will forgive me if that’s wrong).

After “Der Kleine Harlekin,” Argento departed briefly from the evening’s theme. January 31st also marked the release of Argento’s first CD, Winter Fragments – a selection of pieces by Tristan Murail. To mark the occasion, they inserted Murail’s “Feuilles à travers les cloches” for flute, violin, cello, and piano. The piece is a something of a spectral etude. It dwells for its duration on a bell-like sound produced by resonant piano chords and violin pizzicato with the flute and cello responding to each toll. Its most significant developments are a jump from the piano’s highest register to its lowest followed shortly by a return the high keys. In its stillness, the piece contrasted richly with the titular “motion” of the rest of the program. Look for a review of Winter Fragments soon.

Argento makes a point of championing living European composers, and the next two works furthered that agenda. The ensemble offered the U.S. premieres of Georg Friedrich Haas’ “Nach Ruf…ent-gleitend…” and Wolfgang Rihm’s “Chiffre VI.” Both works deserve repeated performances. The Haas, for wind and string sextet, came first and transitioned nicely out of the Murail by opening with high, clustered microtones. However, the clusters soon fell to the background as the viola entered with a line that, though also microtonal, drank deeply from Romantic waters. This entrance signaled things to come as microtones calmed into just-intonation harmonies. The microtones and skillful orchestration made for a rich, undulating music that was pierced by some moments of particular urgency.

Rihm’s “Chiffre VI” came next. In the work, Rihm pits two violins, viola, and cello in sonic struggle against clarinet, contrabassoon, and horn with the contrabass acting as a double agent. The piece is fierce and ferocious, and, for my money, it conjured up Expressionism more clearly than anything else on the bill. “Chiffre VI” lasts only five or six minutes, but it manages to both fly by and feel like it must’ve been much longer. I’m looking forward to tracking down the other seven pieces of the cycle.

After intermission, Argento presented the program’s two oldest and largest pieces. First came Wagner’s “Vorspiel und Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde as arranged for 15 instruments by Argento’s multi-talented general manager, Kimmy Szeto. Reducing the forces of such a war horse is always a risk, but Szeto and Argento made it work. As the program notes suggested, the chamber orchestra arrangement did highlight the intimacy of the piece. Individual lines really sung, and only in a few, fleeting passages did I miss the full orchestra.

The 15-instrument arrangement of the “Vorspiel und Liebestod” matched its forces with the next piece, Schoenberg’s “Kammersymmphonie No. 1” (presented in its original form). This piece (with which Schoenberg may have coined the ‘Chamber Symphony’ designation) paints a picture of a composer in transition. Though tonal in the long term, Schoenberg undercuts the E-major tonality with whole-tone elements, augmented triads, and quartal harmonies. Schoenberg is clearly straining against both traditional harmony and Wagner’s extension of it. The roots of Expressionism, if not its flowers, are visible here. Argento, again, performed the work skillfully; even its thorniest moments retained a satisfying openness.

All-in-all, the night was another well-performed and well-programmed concert by Argento. For those of you in L.A. the program will be repeated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on February 15th at 8:00. And keep an eye out for my review of Argento’s new CD on the Reviews page soon.

An acquaintance of mine – a fellow student-composer – years ago once had the fortune to have an extended conversation with György Ligeti. Upon learning my friend was an aspiring composer, Ligeti said: “So you want to be a composer? You’d better go to lots of parties!”

This anecdote comes to mind now when reflecting on the final concert of Juilliard’s Focus Festival. The Festival, which wrapped up last week, focused this year on Hungarian music after Bartók. Among the works on the final concert were György Kurtág’s Stele and György Ligeti’s Violin Concerto.

My friends: the Violin Concerto is party music; Stele is not.

No surprise, of course, seeing as Kurtág has been a pretty reclusive fellow most of his life. Instead of going to lots of parties during his student year abroad in Paris, Kurtág copied out the whole of Webern at the BNF, held himself to an austere regiment of diet and exercise, and underwent psychoanalysis. Gay ole Paris, huh?

Ligeti was impressing years ago on my friend the importance of networking. And Ligeti’s music – in the Violin Concerto especially – is charismatic, entrancing, and ostentatiously brilliant. Even the straightforward parts often have the hint of someone behind them saying: “Look – I can be simple, too!”

Kurtág does not ask you to look. He offers something if you care to listen. And if you on your own volition take the time, you will find an extraordinary spirit. As such, he has always struck me as the more honest of the two composers, the more soulful.

But hang it all: the Ligeti Violin Concerto rocked the house, and, by comparison (dare I say it?), Stele sounded a little stiff.  However the two works reflect on each other, each represents the best of its respective composer, and it was a deep pleasure to hear them both.   Let’s hope Ligeti is partying on in some Funhouse in the sky, and that Kurtág’s access to the true and beautiful continues to bear fruit for years to come.  

P.S. Juilliard’s Contemporary Music Guru, Joel Sachs, in the pic.

Ecce Cor Meum

Paul McCartney

Kate Royal, soprano

London Voices; Boys of Magdalen College Choir, Oxford; Boys of King’s College Choir, Cambridge

Colm Carey, organ

Mark Law, piccolo trumpet

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

Gavin Greenaway

EMI Classics 094637042427

That Paul McCartney was a member of the Beatles should be ignored for the next few minutes as you read the following.

Our expectations are immediately met within the first thirty seconds of music: Bland choral writing, sophomoric orchestrations (not by McCartney, I assume), and predictable melodies that are served with cliché “lyrics” in English (interspersed with Latin). To listen for another fifty-five minutes (which took “eight years to compose”) would be a waste of time, and unfortunately the liner notes provide no interesting reading material to justify the overly produced booklet filled with typical pictures and prose.

Some memorable quotes (not melodies) from the liner notes:

“I’ve never had a lesson in composition or notation.” – Paul McCartney

Speaking of Anthony Smith’s request for a choral work to induct a new concert hall at Magdalen College, Oxford, “His hope was for a ‘choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over – something equivalent to Handel’s Messiah.”

“McCartney instinctively did what many great classical composers have done before him…” – Peter Quantrill

Through Ecce Cor Meum, McCartney reminds us that despite tremendous pop success, not everyone makes a good composer (the opposite is also true). This vanity project gives us plenty of reasons to lament the state of “classical music” and renew fears that professionals will largely be ignored and forgotten and be replaced by frauds with money.

Veni Creator Spiritus

Philip Swanson, et al.

Philip Swanson, trombone

Barbara Bruns, organ

MSR Classics 1137

Philip Swanson (b. 1949), trombonist and composer, is joined by Barbara Bruns, organ, for a collection of duets for trombone and organ, with one organ solo. The literature for this combination isn’t enormous, but it works well. For anyone looking to compose church music, and not use voices or trumpet, may find the trombone/organ duet useful. Philip Swanson’s composition Variations on Veni Creator Spiritus is mostly meditative and slow, and one longs for the rhythmic energy and bounce present in the final variation (Variation IV). Overall the work is idiomatic and tuneful, and would work appropriately in a church setting.

Hugo Distler (1908-1943) was a prolific performer and improviser, and his Partita “Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland” is, like Swanson’s piece, a set of variations on the aforementioned chorale.

The other work by a living composer on this CD, Domine, Dona Nobis Pacem by Frigyes Hidas (b. 1923) is a meditative song for trombone and organ. I don’t know this work, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it exists as a work for voice and organ. Think: “The Lord’s Prayer” by Albert H. Malotte. Also on present in this recording is Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise as arranged by Barbara Bruns.

Memory Spaces

Nathan Davis

Kaija Saariaho

Diving Bell (2002) for triangles and processing opens the disc with one color that is sustained, successfully, for eight minutes. The simplicity is moving and, even to a non-electronic music person, its message was clear. I was less enthused about Crawlspace (2002) a “study” in laptop sounds (literally, the sounds that a laptop makes) and how they interfere with the processing software and, apparently, another audio device nearby. Talking to Vasudeva (2002) for river stones, processing and field recordings “explores the intermutability of stone and water: the ease with which stone impels water to follow its form and the persistence of water to wear stone smooth.” Like Diving Bell, this work makes use of a limited palette, including stones from a river near the composer’s one-time residence, and sounds from his walks near the river.

Kaija Saahiro’s Six Japanese Gardens, for percussion and electronics, is a suite of six miniatures, each one based on impressions of actual gardens in Ryoan-ji, Saiho-ji, and other locations. The electronic component acts a vehicle for “chanting monks,” and is largely independent of the percussion writing.

Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica

Phillip Bimstein

Phillip Bimstein’s “alternative classical” is best described as collage work, taking found sounds, some completely unaltered, and combining original (acoustic) music from more traditional ensembles. Casino combines narrative from Tom Martinet, an ex-priest who has worked in Vegas since 1974 as a “dice-caller,” and various casino sounds (dice, poker chips, roulette wheels, etc.). Bimstein adds a wind quintet score to create a comical, but insightful, triptych that is as maniacal as Las Vegas seems (I’ve never been).

Half Moon at Checkerboard Mesa, The Bushy Wushy Rag, and Larkin Gifford’s Harmonica continue the collage practice, combining sounds from across the country, from a St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball game and the “beer man,” to a harmonica player from Springdale, Utah. All are worth a listen or two.

Rockville Utah 1926 is for string quartet (no electronics) and is a straight-forward, lyrical work based on an earlier composition by Blimstein. It is meant to “evoke the life…of remote rural Utahns…before they had electricity.” At first, Rockville seems out of place, but when considering that the rest of the CD is mainly electronic, this rustic work sits well amidst the technology.

Courtesy of The Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York, I was able to hear last Wednesday three compositions by the Chinese-American composer Zhou Long (b. 1953). Long’s music had been recommended to me by composer Jeff Nichols, and the Lyric found room for it on an attractive program that opened with Debussy’s Cello Sonata and closed with Mendelssohn’s D minor piano trio. The players were the fearsomely solid Cho-Liang Lin (violin), Hai-Ye Ni (cello), and Helen Huang (piano).Two of Long’s compositions were “early” works from the 1980s: Taiping Drum (for violin and piano) and Wu Kui (for solo piano); the other was a piano trio from 2000 called Spirit of the Chimes. Like most Chinese-American composers, Long is clearly interested in developing a musical language that blends sounds from East and West: Taiping Drum, for instance, appropriates musical material from the “Er Ren Tai” – a song and dance practice from northeast China for two performers. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, to learn that Long’s music – at least from the evidence of the selections on the Lyric’s concert – is marked by frequent and stark contrasts: the very high rubs shoulder with the very low, the very dissonant with the very consonant, the static with the mercurial.Walking home from the concert, it occurred to me that Chinese-American composers – of whom there’s a bevy right now it seems – haven’t turned up much in discussion on Sequenza21. What do people out there think of Tan Dun, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi (Mrs. Zhou Long, by the way), and Huang Ruo? Any others out there who deserve a higher profile? Naturally they’re composers first and Chinese second, but can their cross-cultural music be said to be initiating a style that can be appropriated by non-Chinese composers?

Gian Carlo Menotti died today at a hospital in Monaco. He was 95.  In the days before television became a total waste of time, NBC commissioned him to write the first opera specifically for the new medium.  For many years, Amahl and the Night Visitors was played every year at Christmas and it introduced millions of people, including me, to the idea of opera.  I haven’t heard it for years and thus have no adult opinion of whether it is good or not but it was a very good thing for NBC and Menotti to have done. 

The County Museum of Art didn’t cancel all serious music:  just the Monday Evening Concerts.  Under new management, the music program now offers occasional concerts on any night but Monday.  They try to relate the bookings and programming to the art.  Thanks to one other difference — being willing to do some PR — a good crowd came to LACMA to see eighth blackbird.  The ostensible tie-in to the art was with the smashing special exhibition on Magritte and art he influenced.  (Unfortunately the museum is closed on Wednesdays so that for the attendees the art was limited to a distracting slide show behind the musicians.) 

The six musicians of eighth blackbird gave us a well-chosen program in which some of the works did resonate with the attitudes and approaches of the exhibit.  My favorite was by Stephen Hartke, USC professor and composer of this summer’s The Greater Good at Glimmerglass.  The program opened with his The Horse with the Lavender Eye (1997).  This is a work of four disparate movements for violin, clarinet, and piano.  Magritte might well have appreciated the music inspired by history and art images.  The first movement, “Music of the Left” has all three played only by the left hands.  (The clarinetist was allowed to use his right hand to support the instrument, but the violinist had to perform his pizzicati on the neck of the violin.)  The finale, “Cancel My Rhumba Lesson” was inspired by an R. Crumb comic.

Ending the program was Joseph Schwantner’s Rhiannon’s Blackbirds (2006), written for the group and receiving its West Coast premiere.  In justaposition of title and performer this was another nice gesture to the exhibition.  It’s a very good work.  On first listening, this work seemed a story of constant evolution, with shifts of color, rhythm, harmony, volume, texture.  The program notes describe use of a palindrome as a key element, but I was too occupied in the moment to get any sense of shape.

The three works in between were by Gordon Fitzell, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Gordon Beeferman.  Fitzell’s Violence (2001) was, to me, a non-violent meditation.  (A sample is available here.)  The Sanchez-Gutierrez Luciernagas [Fireflies] (1998) was a mood portrait of flickering lights exemplifying souls of the murdered residents from a now-deserted Salvadorian village.  Beeferman’s Reliquary (2005) was inspired by the composer’s going through his grandmother’s attic.  This was another work written for eighth blackbird and being given its West Coast premiere.

The group has been selected to serve as music director of the Ojai Festival in two years, and I’m looking forward to hearing their influence on the programs.  They have taste as well as talent.