jwilzewske: collectivism

Showing posts with label collectivism. Show all posts

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Giya Kancheli on the [marital] virtues of revealing, accomodating

M usic, like life itself, is inconceivable without romanticism. Romanticism is a high dream of the past, present, and future—a force of invincible beauty which towers above, and conquers, the forces of ignorance, bigotry, violence, and evil.”
— Giya Kancheli.

I ’m listening to a recording of Tblisi-native composer Giya Kancheli’s 26-minute-long 1997 Piano Quartet ‘In l’istesso Tempo’ performed by Bridge Ensemble. The consistent pulse and the narrative epicness of it intrigue me. I replay it twice and the complexities and layers that I’d missed on the first listen gradually become more apparent...

G iya Kancheli’s sustained tones build in layers; melodic lines hover like chant, either offered plainly or decorated with trills and turns befitting a liturgical cantor. The mostly-smooth surface gives way to bare plucks, crackling outbursts and grand crescendos with a Romantic sense of drama... The wide-open space of his music stems more from silence than the repetitive structures of minimalism.”
— Aaron Grad, 2009.

A nephew of mine and his fiancé are getting married next month; I think about them as I listen to this ‘In l’istesso Tempo’. GoogleTranslate says ‘in l’istesso tempo’ means ‘in the same body’—which seems poetically fitting, given the line of thought that Kancheli’s piano quartet and its pulse has induced in me. This piano quartet is full of musical artifacts of a healthy intimacy... a kind of transcendence through durability, with the relationship between lovers deepening and diversifying as things change and as time passes. No [Nietzschean?] pre-conception of will-to-power with forces/personalities/resources coming together, pushing and pulling. Instead, a [Heideggerian?] will-to-dwell: mutual, enduring attention and being present for the other, present-in-body and present-in-mind.

A nd a pluralistic view of truth that does not insist on any one voice (partner) being ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’... a kind of aletheia (ἀλήθεια).

T he Italian tempo designation ‘in l’istesso tempo’ signifies a musical passage where the speed of the underlying pulse does not change, even if the division of the beats within a bar does so. Music written this way can create an impression of stillness.”
— David Lewis.

K ancheli’s enduring pulse—affirms that love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. There is what music cognition researchers would call ‘event-salience’ in these piano quartet rhythms as-written, leading to automatic beat-induction (BI) for the listener/performer. Auto-BI, in turn, leads us to recognize nature—our bodies!—and how out of our control they are! This is no determinism or fate in which we have no choice or in which human free will plays no part; instead, just an important dimension of reality, and one that we’d do well not to ignore. By the time I’ve finished listening to this the third time, I’ve come to regard the quartet’s accomodation of meter to a pervading, faithful pulse as a romantic gesture—an inspiring acknowledgement of constancy and mutual devotion of friendship, marriage, or civil union founded on true love. No idea as to whether that was what Kancheli had in mind, but the notion is plausible, and I am grateful that the music happened to propel my thoughts in this direction. Unexpected effects like this are a big part of why any person likes music, I think.

T he nothingness of the individual, expressed in simple musical ideas, and its relationship to a more meaningful whole lie at the heart of Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s work, often disconcerting in its profoundly sad take on modern society. The composer’s aesthetic is admirably served on this exceptional ECM disc by performers who appear to share his vision of a world afflicted by destructive turmoil.”
— Andrew Stewart, Music Week.

O ther ‘in l’istesso tempo’ pieces include Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Op. 36, v. 1; or Ginastera’s Variazioni e Toccata sopra Aurora lucis rutilat, Op. 52, vv. 3,5,6; or Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, vv. 1,2,3,6,9,10,14,23. I’ll plan on immersing myself in those on some future evening. Maybe they will lead me further on this path.

B y the way, Artemis String Quartett and pianist Jacques Ammon will be performing at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC on 01-MAY-2012. Their account of Kancheli’s ‘In l’istesso Tempo’ is really superb. Their performance of ‘In l’istesso Tempo’ was positioned in middle of program in last night’s concert in Kansas City and received a standing ovation—which is a pretty uncommon occurrence in mid-program in any performance in any country, you must admit.

A gain and again, with deep regret, we see how alongside obvious achievements of the civilized world we are being worn down. Our planet is being torn apart by bloodshed and antagonisms, and no creative deep is able to withstand that destructive force, which so easily strikes out the fragile means of progress. Taking very close to my heart all that is happening around me, I am trying to express in my music the state I feel in my soul, writing basically for myself, without illusions that ‘beauty will save the world,’ as Dostoyevsky said. That is why my music is more sad than happy, and is addressed more to the lone individual rather than to society. Here you won’t find appeals for striving, equality, or ‘a bright future.’ Most likely, you will find threads of sorrow caused by the imperfection of the world, which keeps disregarding the most horrendous examples in human history. My thoughts are expressed in extremely simple musical language, and I hope that the audience ... will not mistake my deliberate simplicity for what, in my opinion, is the most dangerous phenomenon: indifference.”
— Giya Kancheli.

T he biggest tragedy is to write music.”
— Giya Kancheli.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Parker Quartet: Microludes, Cloud Computing, and Imagination-as-a-Service (IaaS)

S ome of the Microludes use simple dramatic devices such as long sustained notes, while others, such as the 10th, represent a terrifying tangle of string techniques. As there are moments of terror, so are there disturbing breaths of tragic lyricism and even a hint of gallows humor as suggested in the ninth. The total effect, however, is tragic desperation even if we cannot clearly define its source.”
— Lucy Miller Murray.

In China the short-short is called a ‘Smoke-Long’ story [the time it takes to smoke a cigarette].”
— Shouhua Qi.

O ne-page fiction should hang in the air of the mind like an image made of smoke.”
— Jayne Anne Phillips.

T he Parker Quartet’s performance last night in the UMKC Conservatory - Friends of Chamber Music Alliance Series was superb, their cohesiveness and intensity most impressive. The unusual program showcased a sort of vivid storytelling through music, a collectivistic mode of expression at which the Parker excels. You Can’t See Dogs on the Radio, as they say, but you have no doubt that they are there, that the dogs in the story are real live dogs. The Parker Quartet plays with imagination and realism that tops the most realistic video game or interactive fiction.

Daniel Chong, violin
Karen Kim, violin
Jessica Bodner, viola
Kee-Hyun Kim, cello

Dvořák — Cypresses, B.152 (I know that on my love; Death reigns; Thou only, dear one; Nature lies peaceful)
Kurtág — Twelve Microludes, Op. 13, ‘Hommage a András Mihály’
Hindemith — Quartet No. 3, Op. 22 (Fugato; Schenlle achtel; Ruhige viertel; Mässig schnelle; Rondo)
Mendelssohn — Quartet in E Minor, Op.44, No. 2 (Allegro assai appassionato; Scherzo; Andante; Presto agitato)

K urtág’s ‘12 Mikrolúdium Vonósné-Gyesre’ Op. 13 were composed in 1977–1978, commissioned by the Witten Festival, and were given their world premiere in Witten on 21-APR-1978 by the Éder Quartet. Each microlude is a “micro fiction”, phenomenally brief, the longest of them being 130 seconds and the shortest a mere 17 seconds. The emotional impact of each nanostory both is tremendous, and the impact of the concatenation of them even more so.

I n her pre-performance remarks, violinist Karen Kim encouraged the audience to consider these vignettes as similar to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, each volume containing 24 preludes and fugues, chromatically organized in all the major and minor keys. Kurtág’s Twelve Microludes feature each key in ascending half-steps beginning with C.

P ieces so short as these carry tremendous risk. In micro fiction, if you are coercing concision, you run the risk that you will be overpowering or cruel or clichéd, as in Hemingway’s famous six-word story, ‘For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.’ Plot and character development and meaning are eroded if the form is too severely truncated/compressed. The information-carrying capacity of the available bytes is too small; it is like lossy jpegs—hard to be sure of what scenes and meanings are depicted in the bits of blurry evidence.

B ut in the Kurtág we get rich and spontaneous observations of people in as little as 17 seconds; we get both their superficial expressions and their deep inner pathologies. What we experience in Parker Quartet’s performance—what is especially distinctive about it—is the crystal-clear, unambiguous consistency of their quartetly “we,” regardless of individualistic feelings, emotions, or extrinsic thoughts the quartet members may be having. We are, at this moment, all the same, they seem to say: an assemblage of 4 persons, creating one singularity, one reality. “See it? It floats above us, about 1 meter above our heads, in the column of air between our music stands.”

A nd we in the audience eagerly attach ourselves to the intangible forms—the images and fleetingly accepted ideas, which become our “anchors” in this plane of reality. Over the ensuing seconds, those fixations and attachments become the “bars” that cage us and constrain our understanding as well as entrance us. We remain in this plane; we attach ourselves to this plane; we go with the Parkers’ flow.

T he colors and shapes of our emotions within each piece: short-short stories, slices of life. As such, we narrow the time frame and geographical location of each piece. Kurtag’s ’12 Microludes’ is playful—10 minutes of experimentation and exploration of limits. The four voices pass contrariwise—languid sustained notes, accelerating to disorienting tangles. We listeners are not given much of any anchor to hang onto or point-of-reference to maintain our bearings. These invisible dogs are wearing collars and leashes; the Parkers are showing them to us; we pet them. We readers/listeners are empowered to ascribe whatever personalized significance we wish. Interactive fiction!

T he fifth movement is maybe the most fictional one—folk melodies—some in foreground; others backgrounded—people passing each other, all of them are walking their braces of invisible dogs now, bumping into each other, greeting each other. “See it? At the end of this leash? My dog likes to eat nuts, cashews mostly. And that one likes cheese and bacon.”

S peaking of which, the Dvořák ‘Cypresses’ are micro fictions, too, but they are more programmatic or cashew-representational than the Kurtág ‘Microludes’. Kurtág is full of post-structuralist rhetorics ... a ‘metanoia’, a beyond-knowing or about-knowing-and-the-limits-of-knowing, an epistemology of surprise and doubt. Have a look at Jay David Bolter’s chapter in Philip Cohen’s multi-author edited volume (link below) if you are interested in these cashew-ey lit-theory things...

T he music encodes a compiled program—it has a set of initializations; procedural logic and flow-of-control; conditions; contingent outputs—I mean a set of software design patterns and objects and behaviors, whether perceived by us users as tendencies, rules, methods, or procedures. For this reason the formation of an implied code is a normal (and largely unconscious) process for any of us interactors, regardless of our level of technical experience. To possess an “implied code” doesn’t require that we interactors be skilled programmers with an aptitude for conceiving syntax in the compiled language or an aptitude for imagining new data structures.

I n fact, the presence or absence of such imaginings is beside the point. We are... we are cloud-based ‘Imagination-as-a-Service’ (IaaS) agents.

S ometimes our initial notions turn out to be wrong. Our “implied code” contains errors, and we discover that something crucial has changed after we receive what feels like a pop-up error message. Our mental model gets revised.

I nteractive fictions like these embody a sort of command-line-interpreter CLI user-interface, a site of negotiation between the composer, the performers, and us interactors/listeners: our imaginations contain the “objects” and procedural “methods” code for simulation and animation. The composer emits instructions. We cannot help but receive them, but the instructions may or may not be honored by the “implied code” of our listeners’/interactors’ conceptions.

I nteractive fiction is not a painting or photograph containing a command-line prompt or a transcript of a command-line and a new command-line prompt staring at us, nor is it a story describing a series of input command-lines and command-line prompts. It is not Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ nor Stephenson’s ‘Cryptonomicon’. Nor is it a movie scene replaying a command-line interaction, like ‘The Matrix’.

W e interactors are processes in Time, our implied codes contributing to a ‘coming-into-understanding’ system-services ‘stack’. We interactors progress in learning to interact, paralleled by the progress of the protagonists within each Microlude, protagonists who likewise struggle to understand something within the reality of the story, dogs and all. Implied code mallocs an epiphany—the climax—which gives way to the conclusion: the character understands the world in the moment that we listeners understand the code, and at that moment the work ends, and then dealloc/free() and process-rundown.

S o “implied code” in Kurtag is neither a set of instructions nor a transcript of past interactions. The implied code and objects that are instantiated in the minds of us interactors are a reflection of the source code, byte code, or musical manuscript they stand in relation to, but the result is a rendering into a set of an abstractly conceived network of opportunities, allowances, and prohibitions. At the command-line, whose input mode encourages experimentation and ad hoc going-with-the-flow, these prohibitions such as error messages affect our subsequent implied code.

O ur intertwined aesthetic and technical developments can be cast in narrative theory (Iser’s gaps, and ‘fabula / sjuzet’ distinction), in game-theoretic [micro—] ‘ludology’ (player apprehension of rules, evaluation of strategic advancement), and in filmic representations (subjective POV, time-loops). I add more links for your interest below...

I n short, I was blown away by the Parker Quartet’s captivating imagery and flawless technique. The unusual repertoire in last night’s ‘microfic’ program is the epitome of chamber music ensembles’ effectively appealing to broader audiences. And for beautiful art in such a program to end in our making some discoveries, as fictive energy accumulated around the gaps, the ‘unknowns’ in the mind between the ‘knowns’, seems fitting: total success. The Parkers’ invisible dogs were members of the cloud-based potentialDogs class until, in a sudden beautiful and memorable synaptic arc, the connection was made: closure. IaaS gave us visible realDog instances, while the music lasted.

F ounded in 2002, the Parker Quartet was in 2009 awarded CMA’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award which honors rising young string quartets. Currently, the Parker is in its second season as the Quartet-in-Residence with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and in 2010 they were the first-ever Artists-in-Residence with Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Meditations on the Artistry of China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra

C hinese written script is made up of several thousand individual graphs. Each consists of an invariable group of strokes executed in a set order. One of the truly unique features of calligraphy that results from these apparently restrictive guidelines is that the viewer is able to mentally retrace, stroke by stroke, the exact steps by which the work was made. The viewer also is able to observe extremely subtle nuances of execution—where a stroke was made swiftly or slowly; whether the brush was put to the paper with great delicacy or force; and so on. The ability [and inducement!] to perform such mental retracing personalizes the viewing experience and generates in the viewer a strong sense of interacting or communing with the absent calligrapher [composer] ... Calligraphy clearly had this obvious social dimension, but it also had an important ‘natural’ dimension that should not be overlooked. For example, early critics and connoisseurs often likened its expressive power to elements of the natural world, comparing the movements of the brush to the force of boulders plummeting down a hillside, or to the gracefulness of fleeting patterns left on the surface of a pond by a flock of swimming geese.”
— Charles Lachman, Asia Society.

T here were many things for me to be inspired by while listening to the concert performed this past Monday evening at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. The concert—by the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, conducted by Pang Ka-Pang—was a “kick-off” to both nations’ celebrating 40 years of China-Canada diplomatic relations and commercial trading.

F irst, this thought occurred to me as I listened to the 96 Chinese musicians performing: there are parallels between traditional Chinese orchestral music and certain types of traditional Chinese calligraphy!

S ome calligraphic styles involve strokes that are rapid, bold to an extreme—they are sketch-like in their spontaneity; each feature, once improvised, never to be returned-to.

B ut other Chinese calligraphy styles involve the placement of brush stroke on top of previous brush strokes—a “layer-upon-layer” effect with subsequent ink-brush strokes overlaying the ones that went before, creating extra visual, emotional ‘tension’ through the insistent, laminated repetition of a particular stroke-motion in one spot, to create part of the Chinese Hànzì character that is being written. The individual repetitions are not identical, so the effect is accumulative—a collective sonic endorsement of a single thought, one whose quality becomes now more obviously a ‘multi-faceted’ idea than we would have perceived it to be had it only been articulated once, one player to a part as one would do in most chamber music.

Li Huanzhi (arr. Peng Xiuwen): Ouverture du nouvel An chinois
Traditional (arr. Peng Xiuwen): Alors que la lune se lève
W.A. Mozart (arr. Peng Xiuwen): Sérénade pour cordes en G majeur
Tan Dun: Northwest Suite
Liu Tieshan & Mao Yuan (arr. Peng Xiuwen): Danse du people Yao
J. Strauss (arr Guang Naizhong): Pizzicato Polka, Op. 234
Li Huanzhi: Chant folklorique chinois - Jasmine
Liu Yuan: Hua Bangzi de Hebei (Cto. Pour banhu)
Xu Changjun: Danse du dragon

O n Monday evening we heard musical examples emblematic of both: some of the works were bold, soloistic improvised “texts”; and others among them were insistent, collectivized, massively-parallelized texts, with extensive doubling and repetition.

[50-sec clip, China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, excerpt from Track 4, Disc B, ‘CBCO: 2005-2007 Season’, ISBN 978-7-880060280-9, Li Huanzhi, ‘Jasmine’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he ‘frisson’ generated by the massive parallelism—with whole sections of performers ‘doubling’ on the same part, with inevitable microtonal differences among them as they execute the part with fingers on strings 2 cm distant from the shaft/fingerboard—is just scintillating to listen to. But the polyphony of the composition may be quite small—only 8 or 10 parts. The sounds are being ‘crowd-sourced’ by 90+ performers: this may seem a very peculiar but nonetheless ‘chamber music-like’ idiom to a Western listener! Twelve erhus on one note, and twelve more erhus on another note, playing in thirds, two-part harmony. Reminiscent of cloud-computing on dozens of parallel distributed CPUs.

B owing mostly right down on top of the wooden resonator box, with its little deposit of rosin on top to insure that the bowhair keeps its grip on the strings. Snakeskin covering the resonator, with a tiny floating bridge and bit of felt—to minimize disturbance of strings’ motion to the positioning of the bridge and to optimize the sound production.

E ach erhu musician has two instruments, each with a different color of felt—tuned differently, suitable for rapidly switching to perform different compositions? Somewhat like a violinist who needs to play scordatura may keep two instruments at the ready, one of them alternately-tuned?

A second insight—novel, at least for us in the audience who do not frequently have the chance to listen to Chinese music—was the varied narrative structure of the pieces that comprised the program. In several of the pieces, there were at least three “screens” or sonic tableaux where simultaneous “action” was unfolding. One of these afforded an “area” in which each performer could execute her/his part with discreetly improvisatory gestures that are broadly consistent with the score using the language employed in the score and compatible with what the other members of your section are playing. Another: an area where each performer can control the sound elements in the small-scale context of musical phrases or motifs. In yet another, a chance for the listener to collaborate with the performers to “rewrite” a quote from the composition. And finally, a space in which users can imagine and participate (as when, near the end of the last piece of the concert, Dragon Dance, conductor Pang Ka-Pang directed the audience in clapping in-time with the percussion parts). In other words and somewhat in contradiction of the conventional notion of ‘collectivistic’ section playing in unison, etc., etc., there is in reality a remarkable latitude for individual expression and structured improvisation within the Chinese music idioms.

Five Note Scale:	Gong	Shang	Jue	_	Zhi	Yu	_
Seven Note Scale:	Gong	Shang	Jue	Bienzhi	Zhi	Yu	Biengong
Western Scale Degrees:	Do	Re	Mi	Fi	Sol	La	Ti

H armonic structure and voice-leading of these pieces was fascinating as well. For example the nominally pentatonic Chinese scale can be modulated within a diatonic context. The theory may indicate 12-notes to an octave, but most of these compositions are predominantly pentatonic with diatonic/chromatic passing tones and ornaments. The solo concerto performance by banhu virtuosa, Jiang Kemei, displayed tremendous bravura improvisations, including many executed with subtle slides of the bow and manipulation of the bowhair tension with the second and third fingers. Astonishing virtuosity.

W hat else? In some of the pieces, there were figures that were repeated, usually rapidly and over a prolonged interval of 10 or more seconds. But these repetitions are varied, with some musicians altering some pitches or ornaments.

I n other words, there is a powerful, ritualistic effort on the part of all, to sustain the collective impulse of all of the performers.

H ere and there, a small pause was inserted, a fraction of a second longer than in the previous repetition. Or the bows of the erhus slid downward on the strings (creating a tonal slide/gliss that was not present in the previous repetition) and ended in a percussive ‘knock’ of the bowstick against the body of the erhu. Micro-variations.

qupai -- different guises of a tune or figure, whose identity remains recognizable despite the changes or guises; a wide interpretive latitude of valid execution; malleability of the score; individual creativity within controlled boundaries.

O ver the years, I have seen photos of erhu and related instruments but, until now, I had not seen one played—nor had I realized that the bows have the bowhair permanently laced between the shaft (fingerboard) and the strings; I had not realized that the instrument is played by bowing with the 3rd and 4th digits pushing the bowstick ‘out’ (away from the player), so that the inner side of the bowhair is contacting the inner side of the strings to make them vibrate.

T he erhu is a 2-stringed fiddle with a 10 cm diameter cylindrical snakeskin-covered resonator box, held upright by the left hand with the resonator sitting on the player’s left thigh. The strings are about 2 cm away from the vertical shaft (which could not be called a finger board, so far away is it that the fingers never touch it).

T he fingers of the left hand stop the strings, while the right hand and arm operate the bow. By pushing the wood of the bow outward or pulling the bow hair inward with right hand fingers, the player produces sound from one of the two strings. Bowing techniques include long bow (chang gong), short bow (duan gong), tremolo (chan gong), and others. In modern erhu performance, the left hand moves to several positions. Left hand techniques, which often distinguish the special sound characteristics of erhu, include vibrato (rou yin), glissando (hua yin), appoggiatura (da yin), and others.

T he erhu is bowed with an underhanded bowhold. Bowing techniques include ‘la gong’ (analogous to ‘down bow’ technique used on violin family) and ‘tui gong’ (analogous to the ‘up bow’ ). Aside from the usual bowing techniques, the erhu and related instruments can also be plucked, usually using the index finger of the right hand. Left-hand techniques include hua yin (glisses) and rou xian (vibrato).

The outside (lower-pitched) string and inside (higher-pitched) string of the erhu are tuned a fifth apart, most often with D4-A4 (d1-a1) or C4-G4 (c1-g1), sometimes G3-D4 (g-d1) or A3-E4 (a-e1). Erhu has a range of three octaves D4-D7 (d1 to d4).

T hird insight: the diverse timbres of the various instruments make possible a very wide range of musical colors and textures. The sonic palette is so diverse that it demands tremendous expertise, both in terms of playing and orchestration.

S o-called ‘si-zhu’ chamber instrumentation can be executed by small ensembles—as few as 15 members but more typically 24 to 30. String ensemble orchestration is also done and consists of gaohu, erhu, zhonghu, cello and double bass. I wonder what some of the large-orchestra compositions that CBCO performed on Monday would sound like if they were performed instead by chamber-orchestra-sized ‘si-zhu’ ensembles…

erhu -- 2-string vertical fiddle.
pipa -- 4-string lute.
qin -- horizontal zither.
yangqin/zheng -- multi-bridge plucked zithers.
suona, guan -- double-reed with metal bell, about the size of a trumpet and with sonorities ranging between English horn and trumpet.
soprano sheng, alto paisheng and bass baosheng -- vertical free-reeds.
dizi -- flutes.
metal perc: ba (a flat plate of metal struck with a mallet) and luo (gongs), including yunluo (pancake-shaped bronze ‘cloudbells’ mounted in a vertical wooden panel and struck with a small beater).
drumhead perc: da-gu (large drum) and tang-gu.
wood perc: bang-zi (wood clappers) and mu-yu (wood blocks)
many more…

P ang Ka-pang was born in 1965 in Anhui Province. He studied composition and conducting at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and later at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. In addition to leading several orchestras in Mainland China, he has conducted many other orchestras and has been a juror and guest conductor in Asia, Europe and the USA. He has conducted the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra in Japan, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Pusan National Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Vienna Mozart Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, National Symphony of Austrian Musicians (Tonkünstler–Orchester Niederosterreich), Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg and the Grazer Symphonischer Orchester, among others. Since 2000, he has been invited each year to conduct the Chinese New Year Music Concert, a performance promoting Chinese music, held in Vienna’s Goldensaal Musikverein.

T he China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra (中国广播民族乐团) is based in Beijing and represents the merger of the Chinese Film Orchestra Chinese Music Orchestra (中国电影乐团民族乐团), which was founded in 1949, and the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra (中国广播民族乐团), which was founded in 1953. Pang Ka-pang became chief conductor of the CBCO in 1998 and has led the CBCO in its various tours to other countries.

C ongratulations to CBCO on this superb, captivating performance! Thank you, too, for bringing the copies of CDs—recordings that are not otherwise available for purchase in North America!

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.