jwilzewske: adolescence

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Beiser/Harrison/YPC: Joyous Time Loops, Just Intonation

T his is the basic premise of the Transient Glory® project: that a child’s voice is a unique instrument during that fleeting time between childhood and after-childhood... and that this instrument can tackle the most challenging and uncompromising music written for them. Children leave something behind [as they grow up and leave childhood]. I don’t know what it is, but children are able to communicate in a way we adults have forgotten how to do.”
— Francisco Núñez, YPC, 09-MAY-2011.

T he entirety of ‘Time Loops’ is performed using ‘just intonation’ tuning, based on whole number proportions. With ‘Time Loops’ I am demonstrating the simpler and more harmonious aspects of just intonation. As a result the tunings on the CD don’t push boundaries per se, but rather they sound clearer and more direct than the normal equal-tempered scale that is used in most Western music.”
— Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he new recording ‘Time Loops’ is a superb stimulus to joy and reflection. Meditation to bring peace at this or any time of year.

I n concert performances, cellist Maya Beiser plays the lead part live accompanied by pre-recorded, digitally-processed tracks forming an auto-ensemble of many sonic layers. Multi-media artist Bill Morrison created a film for ‘Time Loops’ that incorporates archival footage and CGI images that illustrate the movement of the planets, celestial mechanics mathematically conforming to the integer ratios of the music’s just intonation. Composer Michael Harrison performs the piano part with sensitivity and feeling. Even amidst the complexity and conflict of everyday life, we rediscover here the beauty and solace that are immanent in the natural world—the patterns and harmonics of a clockwork Universe whose physics was first formalized mathematically by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others—and rediscover that our own homo sapiens processes are as real and natural and immutable as those.

T he last and largest-scale work on the CD, ‘Hijaz,’ was composed by Harrison for Beiser and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City under the direction of Francisco Nuñez, as well as composer and percussionist Payton MacDonald on tabla and shaker. The text combines a prayer written by Harrison with spoken South Indian rhythmic syllables, which merge with the choral textures to evoke a sense of joy and unity and transcendence—deeply fitting for this holiday season.

E specially vivid and poignant are the perspectives of the school-age voices in the choir (see blockquote above). Wise beyond their years; empowered and uplifted by the music. To me, joy is mainly what music is for, and people should, through writing and performing music, feel joyous and acquire a better ability to create more joy. This CD—the compositions and performances—is first-class evidence supporting this idea. Evidence, too, of how crucially important opportunities are for kids to learn and perform music—before adulthood overtakes them as it does us all. Not a nostalgia for a childlike simplicity, but instead a meditation on clarity, on earnestness, on wonder, on the youthful drive to penetrate the truth of things, on receptiveness to joy.

[50-sec clip, Beiser/Harrison/YPC, ‘Hijaz’; (track 8), 2012, 1.4MB MP3]

M y intention was to invoke a sense of pilgrimage, either to a wondrous or holy place, or, metaphorically, to a sacred place within each of us. The chorus is the soul of the journeyer... The pulsing rhythms trace our footsteps, and those of our camels, as we make our way on the path of self-discovery.”
— Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he recent release of ‘Time Loops’ coincided with the first productions of Maya Beiser’s ‘ELSEWHERE: A CelloOpera,’ created by Maya with director Robert Woodruff, composers Missy Mazzoli and Eve Beglarian and writer Erin Cressida Wilson. For more information, visit www.elsewherecelloopera.com.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Razumovsky Ensemble’s Account of Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat

Octet: Winfried Rademacher, Alexander Sitkovetsky, Laura Samuel, Anna-Liisa Bezrodny, Krzysztof Chorzelski, Barbara Doll, Oleg Kogan, Gemma Rosefield

O ur soul—how like the water! Our Fate—how like the wind!”
— Goethe.

It is difficult to find words that could possibly enhance enjoyment of the [Op. 20 Octet] Scherzo: [it is] at once a perfect and sufficient piece of abstract music and the most vivid tone-painting of wind-swept, cloud-wracked Nature: it is all gossamer, filigree, fugitive enchantment.”
— Hugh Wood.

The study of Mendelssohn has been ‘hot’ in recent years, and attention has focused on Mendelssohn’s identity. Jeffrey Sposato, professor at Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, in particular discusses Mendelssohn’s response to his Jewish heritage. There are examples of cadences composed by Mendelssohn and their close correspondence to cadences in Jewish ritual chants. It is easy to be reminded of this while listening to this famous early composition by Mendelssohn, presented by the Razumovsky Ensemble tonight at Wigmore Hall in London.

The 1825 Octet] attempted to capture the spirit of the last stanza of the Walpurgis Night dream in Faust: ‘The flight of the clouds and the veil of mist / Are lighted from above. / A breeze in the leaves, a wind in the reeds, / And all has vanished.’ One feels so near the world of spirits...”
— Jeffrey Sposato, The Price of Assimilation, p. 111.

It is reflexive, not deliberative; the narrative trajectory of this Octet is dramatic and impulsive. There is an energy of motion that is enhanced by the power of the eight instruments. The extrovertedness of the Octet is amazing—that of the then-16 year-old Mendelssohn—and is unlike the tempered, conciliatory, non-athletic dialogues of, say, Op. 44 and beyond. Larry Todd has a nice analysis of Op. 20 in his Mendelssohn biography, beginning at page 151.

Rather than a mere doubling of a quartet, Mendelssohn approached the writing as if it were an eight-piece orchestra. That much is conventional wisdom. But, to me, it seems that the biographers and historians have, to date, been writing hagiography; none has seriously considered what it must’ve been to write this piece as a teenager.

Mendelssohn composed his Octet for strings soon after his family had moved into a big house in the Leipzigerstrasse on the outskirts of Berlin. On the grounds was a garden house which had a room large enough to seat a sizeable audience for the family’s Sunday morning chamber music performances, which involved a number of Herr Mendelssohn’s musician friends. Mendelssohn presented the Octet to his string teacher, Julius Reitz, as a birthday gift. He wrote the soaring violin phrases at the beginning of the first movement in hopes of pleasing his teacher, but he was careful to provide meaty enough parts for the rest of the ensemble as well. This is the context that is seldom mentioned, in biographies or in program notes for this piece.

Octets for strings show signs of ‘clotting’ into an orchestral style. Spohr hit upon the device of dividing the eight into antiphonal quartets: and his four double quartets are much nearer to the true style of chamber music than his string quartets … But Mendelssohn, in the wonderful Octet, does not find Spohr’s simple antiphonal scheme worth the trouble of specially grouping the players when he can instead use 255 different combinations of the eight without enquiring how they are seated.”
— Donald Tovey.

How badly we need a detailed exploration of Mendelssohn’s notes with Fanny or other evidence—to see what frame of mind he was in during those months when this Octet was composed! This Octet is not a narrative of Jewish assimilation into Protestant Berlin; it is instead, I believe, a narrative of a precocious and eager-to-please teen’s assimilation into Leipzig adult culture. It is a story not of Jewish identity per se so much as it is a story of teen identity. Have a look at the books by Deborah Browning and Jane Kroger (links below) to explore this line of thought.

The Razumovsky Ensemble gave an enthusiastic reading of the Octet tonight that lends credence to the contextual importance of teenage identity and exuberance. The Razumovskys are an ad hoc assemblage of different world class soloists who are convened by Kogan for particular programs, based on their individual proclivities and repertoire affinities.

In 1989 Oleg Kogan won the All-Soviet Union Cello Competition. He has performed with orchestras including the Moscow Philharmonic, the Latvian State Symphony Orchestra, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra and London Soloist Chamber Orchestra and has given recitals in France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Switzerland and the U.K. In 1998 he became founded the Razumovsky Ensemble, a group of dynamic soloists and section leaders from world-class orchestras based in London. Tonight’s beautiful and illuminating performance was just one configuration of Oleg’s many friends and colleagues.

Mainstream kids do assimilate more smoothly and easily into social situations and their own neighborhoods, but often it is the children with out-of-the-box characteristics, who have the ability to make a significant and inspiring contribution to their community and the talent and vision to change the world in a positive way.”
— Stephanie Lerner, Kids Who Think Outside the Box, p. 3.