jwilzewske: 2009

Friday, December 11, 2009

Tallis Scholars, Notes on Remembrances, Riding

T he oxymoron ‘aural image’ highlights the special nature of musical ‘exemplarity’ and notational representation. Notated music examples are doubly distant from the aural phenomena that they represent: the notation stands for sound, but, excised and framed as example, points back to a presumed whole that it represents (synechdoche) and also forward from the new discourse of which it becomes a part... In moving from an analogical mode to an iconic one, the example itself becomes exemplar—inducing an imitative realization on the part of the audience.”
— Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory, p. 5.

C oncerts like the one that Tallis Scholars presented in Kansas City last night reconstitute iconic ‘things’ in their own likeness, by encompassing them as examples.

A s Cristle Collins Judd (Dean for Academic Affairs & Prof of Music Theory at Bowdoin) has written, examples are inherently ‘dependent texts’: they occur in the context of other/larger texts or discourses, which provide the framework by which we understand them and systematize them and recognize them and remember them.

T he holiday season and concerts that are performed during the holiday season are meta-exemplary? They abound in the recognizable. They leverage both tradition and memory to work their magic. As ‘exemplary’, they bring what’s ‘outside’ into the ‘inside’—inside the texts/discourses that they enlarge and annotate and illuminate as we listen and participate in the spell that’s being cast...

T here are, of course, discontinuities and rhetorical processes that aren’t discursive. The music; the program notes for the Tallis performance; the snippets of rendered music notation that we are able to review, etc.—are extreme in their ability to simultaneously provide streams of visual imagery and sonic stimuli along with the unfolding ‘text’.

W e delight in Josquin’s 6 usual Marian tropes—the delight made juicier by our knowledge that the Missa de beata virgine was later piously excised in the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, in 1562-1563.

I s my reveling at papal pique and Counter-Reformation vanity so wrong?

O h, the final cadences, enriched with thirds that Josquin did not put there. The mensuration of transitions resolved to clean, clear ‘sesquialtera’ completions that were not Josquin’s. The final notes’ durations lengthened or more notes added to tidy it up. Bare spots filled-in. ‘Tis a thing now of even greater beauty than it were in Josquin’s day...

I need to go to library and check out a copy of Sherr’s wonderful book (link below).

T his Tallis Josquin has got to be the most beautiful version of the Kyrie and Sanctus I have ever heard! Tallis’s Missa de beata virgine is a scholarly version, not a vehement or sentimental or valedictory one. I find the Tallis Scholars’ approach brings a new freshness to the piece that I can’t help but prefer. In particular, the soprano, countertenor, and alto parts have a lovely tone and some soul-stirring melodies above the lower voices. The friendly acoustics of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception lends extra warmth to the endeavor.

P hillips’s conducting—and the responsiveness of the ensemble to his direction—are the causes of the vibrancy and freshness. And just watch! The ‘vibrancy’ is explicit, demanded by Phillips’s hand gestures on many downbeats and on fermatas. So besides the notation and the ‘aural image’, we have the visual image of the conductor and the choir...

P hillips’s hands extend outward from his waist, oscillating in a diminuendo—the amplitude of the hand vibrations decays from 2 centimeters, peak-to-peak, to zero centimeters over a period of a second or so. The waveshape of the gestural decay is approximately exponential each time, with a time constant 1/λ equal to about 200 milliseconds. He does this throughout the performance; it is clearly a core idiom of Phillips’s personal conducting language.

A(t) = A₀exp(-λt)

T his is not a ‘bouncy’ gesture. Instead, it suggests exquisite ‘tautness’, controlled impulsion—an equine sort of ‘puissance’ being brought gracefully to rest. It reminds me specifically of a manner of applying ‘leg aids’ to the flanks of your horse when you are bringing your horse to an elegant halt in the dressage ring.

W hat I mean to say is, this choral ensemble ‘animal’ loves its work, and it aims to utterly please. And the choral ‘rider’ [Phillips] loves the suppleness and compliance he finds in the animal, and his subsequent hand ‘aids’ generously adapt to the eager suppleness that’s displayed by the animal.

W hat we see and hear, then, is this sublime unity of the joy of conducting and the joy of singing, the joys of riding and of being ridden. Spirituality through innocent, virtuosic carnality. Maybe that’s what the Council of Trent was worried about.

A usterity, logic, and Josquin’s complete command of compositional form and contrapuntal symmetry permeate [Missa de beata virgine], suggesting a purity of conception meant to please God in its perfection—not excite the passions of men and women.”
— Peter Phillips, Tallis Scholars Programme Notes, 10-DEC-2009.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Berliner Philharmoniker: Schoenberg’s ‘Accompaniment’, Op. 34

Schoenberg discursively playing chamber pingpong in 1930

Schoenberg discursively plays ‘chamber pingpong’ in 1930

H ow words are understood is not told by words alone. How music is understood is not told by music alone. [How films are understood is not told by film alone.]”
— Arnold Schoenberg quote.

T hough originality is inseparable from personality, there exists also a kind of originality which does not derive from profound personality. Products of such artists are often distinguished by uniqueness that resembles true originality… Certainly there was inventiveness at work when the striking changes of some subordinate elements were accomplished for the first time. Subsequently, they achieved an aspect of novelty not derived profoundly from basic ideas. This is ‘mannerism’, not originality. The difference is that mannerism is ‘originality in subordinate matters’. There are many, and even respectable, artists whose success and reputation are based on this minor kind of originality… The moral air of such products is rather for success and publicity than for enriching mankind’s thoughts.”
— Arnold Schoenberg, Criteria For the Evaluation of Music (1946), quoted by Tom Myron.

T onight the Berliner Philharmoniker, under conductor Sir Simon Rattle, performed Schoenberg’s 1929 ‘Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene (Drohende Gefahr, Angst, Katastrophe) ‘ [Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene], Op. 34, at Carnegie Hall. What, if anything does Op. 34 have to do with ‘chamber music’, you ask?

W ell, if ‘intimacy’ is the defining quality of ‘chamber’ music idioms, then Op. 34 has considerable to do with ‘chamber’ collaborative motivations and expressive qualities. Hive-like sectional playing so ‘tight’ and in-tune that a whole section sounds like one person… ‘Open’ orchestration that accentuates individualism of parts… Parts covered by one musician (e.g., timpani; flute flutter-tonguing; heavily muted/smothered trumpet; clarinet near the end of the piece)… A spirit of ‘mutual discovery’ among the ensemble’s parts, instead of orchestral ‘exposition’…

A gainst those ‘chamber’ features you have the fact that the ensemble has a conductor, has 100+ members, and is playing in this large unchamber-like hall. So, go ahead and throw out my fascination with chamber-ness if you want.

J ust the same, maybe the writing does manifest chamber music idioms. Does any modest-size chamber orchestra ever perform this Op. 34, I wonder?

I n 1929 Schönberg was commissioned by the Heinrichshofen Verlag in Magdeburg to write music for films. The autocratic Schoenberg was not about to relinquish his artistic control, contract or no contract, and so he focused on the eponymous ‘threatening danger, fear, catastrophe.’

A s a result, Op. 34 is only loosely an instance of ‘program music’. It does not specifically address any particular film’s scenes or characters. The film was hypothetical, imaginary, never produced. The sections that comprise the work (Introduction; 12-tone theme; Song form; Ostinato; Four Contrasting Episodes; Subdivision into Tetrachords; Climax; Reflection on the Beginning of the Work) are fragments. They are idealizations of features that might occur in music intended to be coupled with a film—it’s a kind of meta-film score, a score about future film scores.

A ctually, Schönberg constructs the climax of ‘Begleitungsmusik’ by colliding a succession of tiny components without predetermining a ‘victor’. The 8-min piece is a series of ideas that enter and enter and enter, intruding upon other ideas that are still being articulated by other parts. New material that unexpectedly eclipses other material—that is a gesture that in 1930 was revolutionary but that we today recognize as a frequent element of film music: overlapping and occluding parts is a way to convey/reinforce that the ‘action’ is changing.

M ore than this even, Op. 34 has an amorphous pattern of rapidly altering meter. The tempo is ‘elastic’, changing on a timescale that is very short—several seconds only—in a manner that palpably means action. This piece feels decades ahead of its time, introducing gesture after gesture that we today recognize as ‘cinematic’.

A ccompaniment’/‘Begleitungsmusik’ is a term that evidently bothered Schoenberg. It’s such a politically ‘loaded’ term, connoting subjection of musicians and abandonment to some larger fate that is beyond their control...

B ut the accurate word for the film composer’s relationship to a director/producer is ‘abandonment’. It must surely be the rare film scoring gig where the director/producer is open to deep collaboration—open to the film’s aesthetic’s being seriously modulated or diverted by what the composer comes up with on her/his own recognizance, like what iconoclast Schoenberg was doing. In a highly competitive world where composers are required to deliver commercial results on tight deadlines, producers and directors do everything that they can to de-risk their projects, with carefully constructed contracts and scene-lists and storyboards. They restrict the budgets and the support in such a way as to preempt novel spiritual discernments and mental awakenings to deep creativity that might extraneously occur. They usurp the composerly role, as Moorefield puts it (link below), and the composer takes a subordinate one... For most film composers, their intimate, chamber Truths lie undiscovered and, if detected, unexamined or edited-away. Exceptions to this exist, of course; but still…

S o here, in the Berlin Philharmoniker’s beautiful, inspired account of Schoenberg’s Op. 34, we heard a singular, intimate Truth that refused to be subdued by film contracts, producers, commissions. It was a performance so dramatic and unusual that I wanted to put these few thoughts about it down here, even though it’s a bit OT for CMT…

A ccompaniment’ is difficult, isn’t it? Tough, in part, because it must sound ‘easy’ and not ‘ask too much’. The listener is to be shielded from the difficulties that arise from constraints that require the composer to shorten or prolong each phrase to match the film’s action, at whatever pace that action unfolds. The music suffuses us generously with deliberation and control that originate in the film but only tenuously so. The film’s action can ‘lean’ on the music if it wishes, like a cushion. The film can fall back onto the music if it needs to, like a trapeze artist’s safety-net. These are the cognitive assurances that the music suffusing us makes. Conventional ‘score-as-accompaniment’ is the epitome of supportiveness and of the absence of surprise and obtrusiveness/iconoclasm.

A nd yet, in Op. 34, sudden viola warmth floods the music—inviting but untrustworthy. There are bassoonistic surprises. Seeping drohende Gefahr, existential Angst.

T remulous cellos, holding the first two pitches in the 12-tone row, are joined by the bassoon and bass who are preoccupied with pitches 3, 4, 5, and 6. Pitches 6 through 12 enter precipitously in staccato fusillades. The score progressively explores violence and estrangement, via col legno bow-ballistics and brass and flute flutter-tonguing.

O kay, so maybe Schoenberg’s temperament was not well-suited to composing to commission ‘spec’ on short deadlines. But the duress illuminates so much about the composer as individual, and about small-ensemble perspectives! Originality is, after all, not necessarily something deeply ‘new’ but often the result of looking askance—an averted gaze that looks at the familiar in a fresh, detached way.

R ainer Seegers (timpani) was particularly skillful in animating Schoenberg’s averted-gaze existential feeling in Op. 34. Large-ensemble orchestration, yes; but still chamber-like sensibility.

I f you're a software programmer or a mathematical linguist, you might like to read Gorbman (link below) on what today we would call refactoring and code hierarchies... film music as cognitive refactoring of codes contained in the film's action/imagery, simplifying complex relationships between object classes and subclasses and/or confirming or refuting provisional concept bindings that the viewer has made based on the film's imagery.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Rational Exuberance: The Joyous Athleticism of St. Lawrence String Quartet

St. Lawrence String Quartet, photo © Marco Borggreve

P lay every concert like it’s your last; every phrase like it’s the most important thing you’ve ever said... Remember that the only reason you’re there is to make people cry and sweat and shiver, and give them that incredible sense of creation happening before your eyes [ears]. That’s the [only] reason to play. Otherwise there’s no point.”
— Geoff Nuttall, violinist, SLSQ.

T he St Lawrence String Quartet performance in Kansas City’s Folly Theater last night, as part of the Friends of Chamber Music’s 2009-10 season, was superb.

Haydn: String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2
Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
Beethoven: String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

T he interpretations were spirited, to the outer limits of spiritedness—often drawing upon auxiliary abductor and adductor muscles for the most vigorous bowing. The exertion and enthusiasm are sometimes so great that, well, your feet simply become airborne:

U nconventional… unique even, Geoff Nuttall’s foot-action. No, the gestures of all of SLSQ’s members are beyond exuberant, really. But never to the point of becoming ‘spectacle’.

T hese are fearless musicians whose spontaneity stretches past conventional interpretation and probes the music’s imaginative limits.”
— The Washington Post.

T he lively, extraordinary mindfulness of the quartet was captivating, vibrant, alive. Watching them and listening to them, it is possible believe that playing music as they do is the ultimate antidote to ennui of everyday life. The majority of people in the audience may not be suffering from any diseases or obvious pathologies. But if there are blocked arteries or high blood pressures, this activity and these sounds must surely help to reverse them!

W hat I mean is, SLSQ performs as though string performance practice were ‘dance’. Their motions are more ‘balletic’ than merely musicianly, and this fact lends itself toward emotionally concentrating or intensifying their musical expressiveness. Fascinating!

W ho knew that great strength in rectus abdominis muscles is needed to play stringed instruments this passionately? Wow! Bravo!

Friday, October 30, 2009

Perfect Halloween Music: The Aesthetic Realism of Josquin Desprez’s ‘Mille regretz’

S ingers in brown or black, in an austere chamber, cold beyond the capacity of their clothing to keep them warm.

F aded Renaissance landscape with fields now harvested and frost well on the pumpkin...

[50-sec clip, Paul Hillier & Hilliard Ensemble, Josquin Desprez, ‘Mille regretz’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he singers’ gestures are Brueghel-like—some threading their way in the foreground and others in the distance. Denuded woods; hunting; dogs; countertenor; pensive magpies.

V alley of ponds, river meandering through it abjectly. Steeply-roofed houses and steepled churches—unremitting sharpness, pointiness.

H ills upon hills, ruthlessly sharp mountain crags, desolate gray sky. Down below, there’s the mill with its wheel iced-in...

M any people skating, so many as to render us inconsequential, anonymous. We could die! We could vanish and they surely would not notice or miss us. They would forget us.

T he aesthetic ‘continuity’ of Brueghel (and of Josquin?) is, I think, not “reassuring” in the way that poet-aestheticist Eli Siegel once claimed. The continuity is instead terrifyingly indifferent to our existence and passing. Ghosts cannot bear dwindling...

Mille regretz de vous abandonner	A thousand regrets at deserting you
Et d'eslonger votre fache amoureuse.	and leaving behind your loving face.
J'ai si grand dueil et peine douloureuse	I feel so much sadness and such painful distress
Qu'on me verra bref mes jours définer.	that it seems to me my days must soon dwindle away.

T he singers continue, plying their musical craft... classical singers evoke a monkish existence, lives governed by the demands of Art.

O r is it instead a ghostly one, this singing existence? Mille regretz, singing their own future epitaphs?

T o me, ‘aesthetic realism’ and ‘documentary genre’ are inherently scary. In painting or in music or in film, they are able to conjure a special kind of existential horror, perfect for Halloween. Horror of being skeletonized, forgotten.

D on’t miss the wonderful new book on Josquin, by David Fallows, just released this month...

Paul Hillier website
Hilliard Ensemble website
Hillier P & Hilliard Ensemble. Josquin Desprez: Motets & Chansons. (EMI, 1995.)
Edward Green (Prof Composition, Manhattan School of Music) on Aesthetic Realism
David Fallows page at Univ Manchester
Fallows D. Josquin. Brepols, 2009.
Fallows D. Who composed Mille regretz?, in Barbara Haggh, ed., Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman. Paris, 2001, pp. 214-52.
Duffin R, Hillier P, eds. A Josquin Anthology. Oxford Univ, 2000.
Sherr R, ed. The Josquin Companion. Oxford Univ, 2001.
Siegel E. Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. Definition, 1981.
Siegel E, Reiss E. The Modern Quarterly Beginnings of Aesthetic Realism, 1922-1923: The Equality of Man, the Scientific Criticism, and Other Essays. 2e. Definition, 1997.
Countertenor page at Spiritus Temporis
Aesthetic Realism Foundation website
Josquin scores at Werner Icking Music Archive
Josquin Desprez page at Wikipedia
Eli Siegel page at Wikipedia