jwilzewske: cincinnati

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Processionals: Repetitions, Situational Minimalism, and Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’

T he kind of learning that will define the 21st Century is not taking place in a classroom. Rather, it is happening all around us, everywhere. We call this the new culture of learning... a fluid infrastructure where everything is constantly creating and responding to change... This new type of learning process is a cultural phenomenon that underlies a large number of people’s experiences and affects them in myriad ways. It takes place without teachers, without classrooms, and it requires [virtual, networked] environments that are bounded yet provide complete freedom of action within those boundaries.”
— Douglas Thomas & John Seely Brown.

F arewell, the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality—
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!”
— Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, Scene III.

T here is a big challenge in shaping the performance, vamping as it must for an indeterminate length of time while the procession continues.

T he CCM Brass Quintet did an admirable job sustaining audience interest throughout, projecting every note with the necessary dignity and authority. They varied the dynamics, softer to convey an intimate feeling while still staying audible in the large arena, louder to convey more pomp and aggrandizement. They varied the instrumentation, the round timbre of lower brass to convey a magisterial attitude, the bright timbre of high brass to convey heraldic progress.

T he physical stamina required for what can be a very long performance is considerable, a gauntlet made all the more risky to run insofar as there are only five of you (or 4 at a time, if trumpets are alternating). The thing then amounts to a 20-min quartet or, in some passages, amounts to a trio or duet ordeal, depending on the arrangement.

W hen you are repeating and repeating the same short passage for 20+ minutes, there is a natural temptation to embark on small improvisations or decorate some figures a little. Somewhat like turning a word over and over in your mind until it looks nonsensical or silly, or until finally you wonder how the word was ever coined or came to be associated with the thing it names ... tangelo, tan-gelo, tan-ge-lo, tange-lo... t’angel-o.

T he CCM Brass Quintet played nice little fanfares throughout, for all of the graduates. But when graduates of the conservatory (CCM) approached the lectern, the Quintet’s fanfares mutated into ones that were longer by several ostentatious bars, with dilatory flourishes and a grand unpredictability… droll extra service, musicians proclaiming the specialness of other musicians, heh!

E stablishing a strong relationship with a faculty mentor is one of the most important factors in determining the success one achieves as a graduate student. Faculty members “know the ropes,” so to speak, and their guidance on research, and on professional and personal conduct, can be invaluable. Typically, a faculty mentor is someone whose research interests are similar to those of the student. As such, the mentor can be an excellent source for ideas and can serve as an informed reviewer of and advocate for the student’s work.

F or those who have succeeded in establishing a strong relationship with a faculty mentor, the prospect of that relationship changing—or becoming more distant—contributes to the tumult of emotions that well-up during the graduation ceremony. Well, not to worry, usually moving away and the resulting absence make the hearts grow stronger. They will remember you fondly, more fondly than when you were slaving away, nearly for free, in their face everyday.

F or those whose mentors’ neuroses aligned in perfectly perverse way with the mentees’ neuroses, graduation may feel like a long, badly-written fugue has concluded. Begin your next Prelude, ASAP, with Pomp and Circumstance marches played by brass quintet:

March No. 1 in D (1901)
March No. 2 in A minor (1901)
March No. 3 in C minor (1904)
March No. 4 in G (1907)
March No. 5 in C (1930)
March No. 6 in G minor

Elgar Chamber Music:

Romance for violin and piano, Op. 1 (1878)
Salut d’Amour for violin and piano, Op. 12 (1888)
Chanson de Nuit and Chanson de Matin for violin and piano, Op. 15 Nos. 1 and 2 (1897/1899).
Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82 (1918)
String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83 (1918)
Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84 (1918–1919)
Concert Allegro, piano, Op. 46 (1901)
Organ Sonata in G, Op. 28 ()

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Robert Johnson’s ‘PrairyErth’: Phobic Geographies, Non-Teleological Atmospherics

T o cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.”
— Wendell Berry.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of Robert Johnson’s ‘PrairyErth’ last Friday night, conducted by Paavo Järvi. The program notes are here. The Cincinnati Enquirer review of the premiere is here.

The 7-minute tone poem is for full orchestra, but the orchestration conveys an intimacy that is characteristic of chamber music.
The spatial acoustic effects (antiphonal, for example of a rainstorm crossing the prairie) resemble effects achieved in fixed-media electroacoustic compositions.

‘PrairyErth’ expounds a Time to Every Purpose or, better, a Time to No Purpose At All. It documents the beauty that can be found in insignificance and the aesthetics that inheres in a lack of discernable purpose. Inadvertently or deliberately, the piece is a persuasive argument against Creationism or Intelligent Design. ‘PrairyErth’ is an essay on ‘belief-desire’ (a philosophical theory that holds that an act is purposeful insofar as the agent has a desire in combination with a belief about how to satisfy it) vs. the causality and explanatory power of intentions. It questions whether anything in Nature can ever be said to have anthropomorphic purposes underlying the tableau of natural events. According to Robert Johnson, Nature simply Is.
Space defines what human subjectivity can be. This is ‘atmospherics-in-where’, the ‘qualities-of-what-when’: Situatedness, context-boundness of the ‘who’.
Criteria of attentiveness provide the aesthetic rationale for all the changes that occur in the course of a composition. ‘PrairyErth’ captures and holds our attention, like a thunderstorm.
Instead of vague, vaporescent impressionism as, say, in some of Debussy, there is a freshness and inspiration in Johnson’s writing. He elevates his subject out of obscurity and creates a clarity and memorability—the writing captivates; it has impact.
This new composition by Johnson constitutes an intensive topographical exploration, much like the one popularized by author William Least Heat-Moon with his book ‘PrairyErth: A Deep Map’. So-called ‘deep map’ works take the form of engaged documentary, and Johnson’s follows in this tradition. There is no question of the cleverness of the music, and of the craftsmanly excellence of its construction. But I was pulled up short by its ending in just 7 minutes. No ‘deep map’ documentary should end so soon. More than this, the long-scale structures of prairie—the remnants of glaciers; the meteorological pace of prairie phenomena and ethos—deserve and require at least 20. At 7 minutes, we are just beginning to sync with the hypermeter that Johnson has set up. We feel disappointed and cheated for the piece to end at 7 minutes.
Like William Least Heat-Moon’s ‘PrairyErth’, Johnson’s piece evokes angst—it portrays a deep existential unease. Our hold here is tenuous, vulnerable. Possibly, we don’t really ‘belong’ here at all. Any presumption to human ‘mastery’ over this primeval landscape is delusional. It will out-last us, out-last humankind. ‘PrairyErth’ is a dream foretelling humanity’s eventual, inevitable extinction.

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”
— Werner Herzog, ‘Grizzly Man’, 2006.

Like William Least Heat-Moon in ‘PrairyErth’, Johnson is here a bricoleur of consummate skill who conjures surreal events and ambiguous textures. Heat-Moon writes of a feminist rancher in the Flint Hills of Chase County, Kansas; of a farm couple swept away by a tornado; of abolitionists who perversely wanted black slaves to be free but not equal. He meditates on fence posts, Indian arrowheads and the nesting habits of pack rats. Johnson’s collage likewise has a happenstantial feel, an ambivalent tonality that Johnson half-disavows. The development of Johnson’s themes is watercolorist-reportorial, as though he were a passive observer bearing witness to the power of Nature via Joan Foth-style ‘wet-in-wet’ brush technic.
Nature is devoid of sympathy. The 7-minute scene has a reality far in excess of Johnson’s staged account. Sentimentalism is fatal, Johnson tells us.

T o make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee—
One clover, and a bee,
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If bees are few.”
— Emily Dickinson.