M usic can—and often does—transport us to places that no other artform can.” — Anne LeBaron.
T his international project presents fresh ideas by opening new and often unexpected horizons of creativity. The serious nature and deep content and design of the cantata aroused genuine interest from the public. The Cantata is one of the most important international events of contemporary classical music in Central Asia.” — Aigul Beisenova, Business Kazakhstan.
T here are artistic projects that heal and redeem and enlighten. And then, to our even greater delight, there are those that achieve this across vast cultural and political chasms, auguring well for world peace.
T he Silent Steppe Cantata Project is an artistic consortium, consisting of composer Anne LeBaron with her co-producer, tenor Timur Bekbosunov, plus filmmaker, Sandra Powers. The multi-media cantata is a sonic and visual portrait of Kazakhstan. Together with Bekbosunov, the Sary-Arka Folk Instrument Orchestra and the Chamber Choir of the Astana Philharmonic Society will perform the official premiere.
T he libretto incorporates Kazakh stories and mythology, and draws upon poems of Russian and Kazakh writers, including the poet Olzhas Suleimenov. Suleimenov has authored more than 16 volumes of poetry and prose, and his 1975 novel Az-i-Ia received both wide recognition in Kazakhstan and abroad, plus censure by Soviet authorities.
T he Palace of Peace and Reconciliation is a 77m high pyramid-shaped facility designed by Foster+Partners Architects and built by Sembol Construction at a cost of 8.74B Kazakh tenge (about USD$58M). Among other things, it houses a 1,500-seat concert/opera hall. It opened in late 2006. What a fitting venue for today’s première!
L istening to excerpts online, I am intrigued by the exposition of Kazakh ethnogenesis that the cantata and film portray. Without being revisionistic or grinding any particular philosophical “axes,” the cantata (the music, and the historical and contemporary texts comprising the libretto) reveals the inherently slippery, shifting imagination of Kazakh ethnic origins. It is their shifting, not a Western shifting; it is an indigenous acceptance of transitoriness/ephemerality that may derive from the primordial “geography” of the Kazakh nation and tribes. Acceptance without relativism/fatalism/determinism.
T he cantata demonstrates evidence of local elders and a musicoliterary elite struggling through the millennia to come to terms with the evolving political demarcations of Central Asia. Through their struggle, they created a handful of discrete ‘nationalities’, sustained through the centuries. If anything, the impression (from the bits of the cantata and film that we can experience online) is one of the indomitability of the spirit and of authentic human diversity. Needless adversity and suffering destroy things; they are never ‘noble’ or ‘desirable.’ But there is this residue of survivors—people, and music, and stories, and culture—and this once-dogged, now-expansive persistence of the will to peace. This cantata inspires as well as teaches!
W hen I was, I think, 8 years old, I first heard Bach’s Ciaccona, from the Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004. I could not stop listening to it. I wore out the record. Afterward, looking at that vinyl record across the room, you could see that that band on the record’s surface… could see that the grooves were completely gone.” — Nicholas Kitchen, remarks at BEMF recital, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 18-JUN-2011.
T his page in the manuscript [of the Sonatas and Partitas], where the end of the Ciaccona is followed immediately by the beginning of the next Sonata, one right after the other, on the same page—this is what revealed to me that there is a ‘glue’ that Bach had devised that is holding these pieces all together. The multiple pairs and powers-of-2 in these pieces, the recurrences of palindromes and the inversions in these pieces—these are not [conveniences; mere expediencies]. All of these pairs form a great monumental ‘architecture’ upon which emotions can be expressed and better understood.” — Nicholas Kitchen, remarks at BEMF recital, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 18-JUN-2011.
A lways when you listen to Nicholas Kitchen perform and/or speak, you will learn things that you would never have expected.
N icholas’s performance today of major portions of Bach’s solo violin works [Partita No. 1 BWV 1002; Partita No. 2 BWV 1004; Sonata No. 3 BWV 1005; Partita No. 3 BWV 1006] was a complete joy for us. And, amazingly, the acoustics were not bothered at all by the Stanley Cup-winning Boston Bruins and their more than 1 million boisterous fans jamming the streets just outside the recital hall.
K itchen vividly accounted for the correspondences among these works, noting the various plausible motivations for Bach’s G minor-B minor-A minor-D minor-C major-E major affective and intervallic progressions.
M ore than this, though, Kitchen discussed the ingenious sequences of meters and tempi, which constitute a Daubechies-like ‘wavelet’ Z-shape over the course of these pieces, performed in this order. Nicholas’s expressions were phrased in terms of geometric series (powers-of-2, and powers-of-3) in a way that is understandable for general audiences of all ages. And his explanations emphasized the sequences—the succession of structures that govern the architecture of these pieces—that is, he described things in a linear, narrative way that is the natural and preferred idiom when teaching or explaining things to people.
B ut it was clear from his gestures, and from the way that he plays these Bach works for solo violin, that Nicholas is also thinking of how these multi-scale structures look when the metric and harmonic time-domain patterns are transformed into frequency-domain by Fourier Transforms or Wavelet Transforms.
T he textural parallels—the sacred posture of the sonatas, juxtaposed with the equal/noninferior profane dance-tune posture of the partitas—occur on various scales, from ‘micro’ scales within a single measure, to ‘macro’ scales involving power-of-2 multiples of measures, to ‘hyper’ scales involving all 6 of these works. The works contain structures that are reminiscent of fractal scale-invariant symmetries where the smallest structure embodies features of the largest and all scales in between.
A perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon! Bravo!
[James Nicolson and Board of Directors present Nicholas Kitchen with the 2011 CSEM Arion prize]
C ultural acts, the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms, are social events like any other; they are as public as a marriage and as observable as agriculture.” — Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, p. 87.
T he program notes for last night’s chamber performance by Chanticleer of works by Orlando di Lasso mention the paintings of Hans Mielich, including the one above from about 1570 which depicts Lasso leading an ensemble of chamber singers and other musicians.
Psalmus Poenitentialis ‘Miserere mei Deus’ LV 727, Ps. 51
Laudate Dominum de caelis LV 954, Ps. 148
Laudate Dominum in Sacris ejus LV 953, Ps. 150
Missa ‘Tous les regretz’ LV 626
E ach beautiful and each iconographically very different, all of these seem intended to assert specific assets of the singers and of the composer and the patrons: good will, generosity, purity of intention, piety, and nobility.
A ccretions from centuries of use and custom must have constrained the mass; here in this missa and laudates and other pieces, Orlando di Lasso’s flowing vocal arcs are freed-up, liberated like sunbeams, spreading light and exposing minute details... inviting the Divine to examine in detail the hearts of those who are offering these sounds. The shiftings from major to minor and back again, again and again—these evoke an ‘optical’ quality not unlike 16th Century Flemish and French and Venetian paintings or even German art like Dürer’s. Individual voices are drawn with truth and utter simplicity. Chanticleer members’ voices ascend in the spiral sanctuary, permeating it, inhabiting it by dint of truth and simplicity.
A Jan van Eyck painting from the same period shows Canon van der Paele, canon of the Church of St. Donatian in Bruges, Belgium (not far from where Lasso was born) kneeling before the Virgin and Child, next to St. George and St. Donatian. They are in the dark interior of the Bruges cathedral, illuminated by a light source coming from the upper left.
T he canon’s manuscript and eyeglasses—a narrative indication that van der Paele has quit reading from his book and turns his attention to Virgin and Child. The canon’s illuminated manuscript and eyeglasses parallel the props held by Christ and His mother—a bouquet and a parrot. To 15th Century viewers these must’ve been symbolic. But it is clear the props are also incidental; transitory; ‘of this world’. The singing of Chanticleer is ‘of this world’ as well, but it propels our minds and hearts beyond it.
T he interweaving voices activate colors and tones—the counter-tenors pick up the gold threads of St. Donatian’s brocade; the tenors catch glints from St. George’s shining armor; the baritones and basses reveal the draping and textures of the rich fabrics—as they are reflected, re-reflected, and refracted from different surfaces... In the painting, just so with the sound in this peculiar architecture.
T he frames of van der Paele’s eyeglasses cast shadows onto the book. The refraction of the lenses distorts the text underneath. Chanticleer 4-, 5-, and 6-part harmony... parts refracting against each other, at times shadowing or occluding each other; with beat-frequencies among the pitches and re-reflections and meta-refractions against the texts.
T he visual intentions of the painting and its descriptive language control or inform our interpretation of symbolic meaning. The sonic intentions of these pieces and their descriptive language similarly control or inform how we parse their symbolic meanings. Minimalist/literalist interpretations hold that, when normative explanation for an object is sufficient to explain its presence, symbolic meaning is both unnecessary and improbable—an application of Ockham’s Razor. But hearing these tunes and reading these eyeglasses in a literal, nonsymbolic way runs counter to the way in which this painting and these Orlando di Lasso compositions encourage us to recognize far more fluid relationships between objects of this world and symbolic, transcendent ideas. This was a winter evening to remember... really wonderful.
B loom’ is about Time or, rather, the suspension of our conventional sense of musical Time… The solo English horn plays bass notes from which chords bloom and rise up through the ensemble. ‘Bloom’ is a series of short sections, each of which is characterized by a specific texture. The English horn is either the prominent solo voice in the texture, or it becomes the lead voice in shaping the sound of the ensemble… ‘Bloom’ ends with a giant canonic chorale, which gradually reduces texturally until all that’s left are the double-reed instruments. This gradually thins out until the last thing we hear is the solo English horn—an ending that reminds us of—but isn’t exactly like—the opening.” — Marti Epstein, program notes.
E ven the sound of the word ‘Bloom’ is evocative—there’s an onomatopoietic rightness to it that we eagerly concur with after, say, only a minute or two into the piece. The world premiere of this composition by Marti Epstein for English horn and wind ensemble was performed by the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble on Tuesday evening this week, in the small recital hall of Boston Conservatory at 31 Hemenway, with Eric Hewitt conducting.
R obert Sheena, principal English horn with the BSO, was the featured soloist. Besides his BSO duties, Sheena is presently on-faculty with the Boston Conservatory, Boston University, New England Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music.
S heena’s treatment of the blossoming, organic phrases in ‘Bloom’ was expansive yet terse. In a work that is permissive of prolixity by the soloist, Sheena’s phrasing and dynamics were elegant, suggestive more than demonstrative—economical. The polyphonic ‘builds’ that Epstein refers to in her program notes—swelling and shrinking, ebbing and flowing—are a novel kind of canonical pattern. Rather than canonical forms that have more or less crisp, decidable beginnings and endings or cyclical structure, the canonical ‘builds’ in ‘Bloom’ involve non-deterministic propagation of musical thoughts or concepts between the soloist and the various sections in the ensemble.
T ime-lapse photography/cinematography of a bed of flowers opening and closing may have been the nominal motivation that inspired Epstein to compose this piece, but the physical and logical correspondences/parallels do not stop there. For example, there are gene-expression and receptor-signalling processes in biology that have closely analogous spatial features and time-oriented kinetics. So, as I sat enthralled with the performance last night I began to think, not so much about the provenance of the imagery that Epstein gave us, but thought instead of meta-concepts—how this piece is constructed, why these waves of sound propagating from section to section work the magic that they do [on us humans? on birds, dogs, whales, cicadas and other musical species?], and the ontology of the concepts underlying the musical structure and processes of ‘Bloom’.
T he English horn, of course, is fundamental to this ontology or world-view. Yes, Sheena’s realization of the part is economical, eschewing anything more than the minimum necessary, never to ‘comment’ on anything (any concept implied by the score) that should be self-evident or obvious to any thinking performer/listener. His refraining from dilatory interpretations makes Time itself more precious—a feature that is consistent with Epstein’s reverence for Sibelius ... Time made to stand still, Time stilled by Music.
B ut my saying this may seem to give too much emphasis to Sheena’s particular choices or Hewitt’s conducting or other performance details. Rather, the preciousness of Time inheres in the composition that Epstein has devised, and in her choice of English horn for the main character/protagonist.
W hat I mean is, not all instruments’ characters are created ‘equal’. The English horn’s distinctive timbre is a lucky endowment—it has an architecture (and a high double-reed back-pressure) that enables it to be ‘terser’ than most instruments are disposed to be.
A writer [musician] is someone for whom writing [musicking] is more difficult [risky; momentous; tight-rope-like] than for other people.” — Thomas Mann.
T he ebbing and flowing of the canonical structures—the contagious crescendos and decrescendos among the sections—reminded me of the aurora borealis… its dancing, shimmering colored curtains of light in the northern night sky… Reminded me, too, of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction or other autopoietic/morphogenetic integro-differential Reaction-Diffusion equations in chemistry... Or, if Time is standing still, then maybe it’s like the birth of a nebula—something celestial, galactic. Yes, ‘Bloom’ seemed to me more celestial than botanical…
T he stochastic (non-deterministic) quality of the incipits’ beginnings and the stochastic dynamics of their propagating to other regions of the ensemble as they play—the uncertainty of the stochastics decreases our attending to the incipits themselves and increases our attention to what I would call ‘continuants’. ‘Continuant’ is a fancy term used in philosophy of language and in informatics, but it really signifies something pretty commonsensical: a sub-class or descendant of a higher-level (and prior/earlier) concept or utterance. Continuants inherit most of the attributes (morphology, behaviors, capabilities, tendencies, processes, etc.) of their higher-level precursor incipits [of which the English horn part is emblematic in ‘Bloom’], but they have autonomy of their own and are influenced by their own contexts and histories.
T here are links at the bottom of this CMT post on informatics ontology engineering, for you composers who want to see whether ontology architecture may have something to offer you as a compositional framework. Your intentions and results may be quite different form Epstein’s, of course. But the ontology engineering framework and methods might well be amenable to your aims, or might at least offer you some innovative inspiration...
T he ‘Basic Formal Ontology’ (BFO) in informatics theory consists in a series of sub-ontologies at different levels of granularity. The ontologies are divided into two varieties: SNAP (‘snapshot’) ontologies, comprehending continuant entities such as three-dimensional enduring objects, and SPAN ontologies, comprehending processes conceived as extended through, enduring, and spanning time. BFO incorporates both three-dimensionalist and four-dimensionalist perspectives on reality within a single framework. Interrelations are defined between the two types of ontologies in a way which gives BFO the facility to deal with both static/spatial and dynamic/temporal features of reality. Each SNAP ontology is an inventory of all entities existing at a time. Each SPAN ontology is an inventory of all the processes unfolding through a given interval of time. Both types of ontology serve as basis for a series of sub-ontologies, each of which can be conceived as a window on a certain portion of reality at a given level of granularity.”
I n summary, one of the most novel and beautiful aspects of ‘Bloom’, to me, upon hearing this premiere performance, was these cascades of continuants—the waves upon waves of consequents: more and more [temporally- and spatially-disperse logical ——] consequents, piling up and washing over the antecedents/incipits laid down by Sheena’s English horn. The more loquacious instruments inject their colors/flavors—they could not do otherwise, any more than Sheena could prevent the English horn from being its terse self. And the organism, or flower bed, or aquatic algae bloom, or transcriptome, or receptor-signalling network, or galaxy, or whatever it is—is big enough and generous/tolerant enough to accommodate all of it. Heartwarmingly, beautifully so.
W e listened to Epstein’s new nebula blooming with an IMAX-type wonderment—floored by discovering a wideness of musical ‘peripheral vision’ that we didn’t previously know we had, awed by a deep-space ontology we hadn’t known was there. And then we stepped out of the recital hall and into the warm, starry Boston springtime night…
M arti Epstein has completed commissions for the Munich Bienniale, the CORE Ensemble, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Foxborough Music Association, the Fromm Foundation, and Guerilla Opera, among others. She has been a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and a composer in residence at the MacDowell Colony. She is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music and at the Boston Conservatory.
