jwilzewske: counterpoint

Showing posts with label counterpoint. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Constitutional Figments of Bachian Imaginations: Florilegium Compares and Contrasts Compositional Methods of 6 Members of the Bach Family

Bach ahnentafel, the musically important bits

T he Bach family has for a long time been the focus of genealogical research. No other musical family of German origin has spanned so many generations and produced such highly talented performers, as well as composers of the highest order.”
— Florilegium program notes.

T he Florilegium concert at Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 3 November was both illuminating in the musicological sense and satisfying musically.

Ashley Solomon - flute 1
Marta Gonçalves - flute 2
Bojan Čičić - violin 1
Jean Paterson - violin 2
Malgorzata Ziemkiewicz - viola
Jennifer Morsches - cello
Tim Amherst - bass
Terence Charlston - harpsichord

Johann Bernhard Bach - Overture; Marche; Passepied; Air-Lentement; La Joye; Caprice
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach - Sonata in C major
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Sonata in C minor, Wq 161 No. 4
Wilhelm Friedmann Bach - Adagio and Fugue in D minor, Falck 65
Johann Christian Bach - Quintet in D major
Johann Sebastian Bach - Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067

T hey showed through these pieces how each Bach proposed, developed, elaborated, disposed, and decorated each element in structuring his composition.

I f large-scale form really generates the working-out of inventions located right on the musical surface, then one needs plausible evidence of this [in the score]. In the absence of such evidence, the reverse position—following Occam’s Razor—is more compelling: that Bach first worked out his inventions—his themes which he ordered in permutational arrangements—and then ‘disposed’ them in a conventional scheme...”
— Laurence Dreyfus, p. 169.

T hey brought us fresh illustrations of these Bach family members’ working methods, and how they differed from each other. We also learned about the Bachs’ savvy and opportunistic appropriations of French and Italian styles—and about their co-optation of various genres for expressive or programmatic purposes different from their conventional/traditional ones.

T he ensemble played beautifully throughout, and the program was expertly devised to optimize variations in tempi and texture—to maximize dramatic tension, climax, and resolution for the audience—in addition to accomplishing the nominal aim of shedding light on parallels and differences among these Bachs.

T he flutes and viola, for example, in the Johann Bernhard ‘Passepied’ were a lush and serene contrast to the preceding ‘Marche’ and majestic ‘Overture’.

T he flute-violin-harpsichord ‘call-and-answer’ patterns in the Johann Christoph Friedrich Sonata were, for another example, a striking contrast to counterpoint and tutti sectional passages in the surrounding works.

F lorilegium will next perform at the Nicholas Young Society in Lewes, Sussex, on 26 November. The program then promises to be an innovative exposition of Baroque-era trans-national diffusion of musical ideas and is entitled ‘Les Nations’ and includes works by Couperin, Handel, Bach, Purcell, Vivaldi, Marais, Telemann, and Rebel. We look forward as well to future repeats of their fascinating ‘Six Members of the Bach Family’ program.

I n thinking about the various initiatives that Florilegium have taken recently, a unifying concept seems to be ‘innovation’, broadly conceived. Instead of packaging familiar, excellent repertoire in conventional, “safe” concert offerings, they instead differentiate themselves from other first-rate Baroque ensembles by devising novel thematic programs of less-familiar or totally unfamiliar works. Music as ‘international relations’? ‘Nature vs. Nurture’ among Bachs? How was it for Telemann in Paris? Bolivian Baroque? Yes! More, please!

T he program notes and promotional materials for concerts like these are fabulous. They are razor-sharp and provide fresh, engaging copy for print and broadcast and online media, which in turn makes the promotion more effective for these programs compared to more conventional programs, which in turn gets more people buying tickets and into the seats.

A dditionally, the Friends of Florilegium [patrons association] is vibrant and well-managed. The quarterly newsletter (edited by Dame Emma Kirkby OBE [president] and Sir David Lumsden and David Hill [honorary vice presidents]) is a hoot to read, filled with droll humor and exciting news and other bits.

F lorilegium members, led by Director Ashley Solomon, author some of the contributions to the Friends newsletter, and they are informative and engaging. Thank you for the wonderful ‘Bach Family’ concert at Wigmore, and thank you for the Friends’ excellent example of how to foster sustainable financial growth in support of these fine programs and scholarship!

Č ičić [Florilegium principal violinis], coming from a musical family, was sent as a child to play the violin and promptly sobbed, ‘I want the piano!’ He also then began tennis lessons; Croatia is well-known for producing some fine champions. Bojan sadly wasn’t to become one of them… Finally, managing to produce a sound [on violin] that would melt icebergs and later woo women, he gave up on tennis. ‘The fees are getting ridiculously expensive,’ was the explanation given by his parents. Et voilá, yet another child plunges headlong towards the uncertain future of a musician… In order to find out more about his repertoire, he left his job as a modern musician in Zagreb, packed his things, and moved to Paris to study early music, speaking no French. Ahh, Paris, the world’s capital of kindness to foreigners, where one is always welcomed with open arms. Bojan had only one option to escape this everyday problem: immerse himself fully into the music he studied, which was mostly French Baroque. Today, he admits this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but, together with a bath and some Prosecco, it’s a jolly good way to relax...”
— Profile, Friends of Florilegium Newsletter, Summer 2010.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Imani Quintet: Synthetic Homelands, Statecraft & Hierarchies of Belonging

S tandpoint theory’ … asks: could you do science [, or computing, or music or other of the arts] differently if you did not ‘erase’ [disenfranchise] those people outside the [conventionally-enforced] institutional representation? ... Women in science can more sharply expose [science’s] assumptions because they are not party to the prior agreements [of the prevailing Establishment authorities]. And precisely because they are not part of the prior agreements, they may freely prioritize other agreements, including agreements about strategies for dealing with the actual world that are different from those used by institutional science [or institutional music, etc.]; strategies with a different understanding about power relations between the observer and the observed and generating different kinds of knowledge.”
— Lynette Hunter, Situated Textualities, p. 163.

E verybody thinks that classical music is the music of the European canon. But when you go to children [in public schools in the U.S.] now, they don’t know what ‘classical music’ is, period.”
— Toyin Spellman-Diaz, Imani Winds oboist, quoted in Vivien Schweitzer NYT 14-NOV-2008.

A nd so those kids are growing up not imagining that these musical ‘homelands’ exist. They are growing up not knowing that they ‘belong’ and have the possibility of a home within the many communities of classical music including chamber music. Community outreach programs to address that problem are tremendously important, to the kids and to each society as a whole. The Imanis are wonderful ambassadors—Secretaries of State from what, to those kids, are unknown (and what, once they discover them, are revealed to be exciting and congenial—) ‘lands’. Thank you, Imani Winds, for all of your efforts to de-mystify chamber music through your community outreach programs!”
— DSM.

The ‘Thanksgiving’ U.S. holiday seems to me a perfect occasion to point out the recent, festive performances and recordings of the wind quintet, Imani.

Valerie Coleman, flute
Mariam Adam, clarinet
Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe
Jeff Scott, French horn
Monica Ellis, bassoon

M embers of the Imani Winds ensemble all have graduate degrees from conservatories like the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music. But, prior to their illustrious achievements in those settings and subsequently, each of them attended public schools in the U.S., and experienced the limitations that that generally entails. With that as prologue, the ensemble and its members do now perform pro bono and ‘community outreach’ work as a focus of many of their programs. Their own personal experiences in this way inform and propel their natural, generous response to the still-unmet, ever-more-unmet needs, especially for music education opportunities for underserved inner-city kids. This aspect was covered in Vivien Schweitzer’s article on the Imanis in the NYT a couple of weeks ago. It is inspiring and truly wonderful to see the Imanis ‘giving back’ in this way. Please be sure to thank them and acknowledge their efforts. (And, of course, one way of tangibly doing that is to attend their performances and buy their CDs.)

Have a listen to a couple of MP3 clips from two of their recent recordings:

[50-sec clip, Imani Quintet, Ástor Piazzolla, ‘Fuga e Misterio’, 1.2MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Imani Quintet, ‘The Holly and The Ivy’ traditional carol, 1.2MB MP3]

The Piazzolla is especially characteristic, I think, of the Imanis’ chamber music ‘fusion’ interpretive approach. In his chamber compositions Piazzolla notoriously ‘borrowed’ elements of jazz (esp, its harmonies and dissonances)—plus elements of tango, baroque counterpoint, and a variety of other idioms. Essentially, he created a ethnomusicological ‘country’ or ‘territory’ in which to ground his own individualism. The Imanis make a ‘home’ out of it. In fact, they make every sonic-space they enter their ‘home’.

Piazzolla’s—and the Imanis’—style transcends all of the borrowed influences: they don’t merely ‘appropriate’ the influences or ‘reference’ them. For example, the passacaglia form with its circulating continuo line entraining/entrained-in a recursive harmonic sequence was idiomatic for 17^th and 18^th Century baroque music, but it’s also fundamental to jazz progressions. Another example from baroque composition idioms is the complex and often virtuosic counterpoint that epitomizes formal, collectivistic fugal gestures but which in Piazzolla/Imani Winds incarnations becomes a vehicle for individualistic discourse by each chamber artist in turn.

M ore obviously ‘democratic’ and autonomy-related are the improvisational elements. Improvisation might nominally be borrowed from jazz, but in practice it entails different tonal and rhythmic palettes that, despite how extensible and varied they are, do stay within the boundaries of the ‘homesteaded’ sonic territory.

Property rights;
Autonomy and equality;
Enfranchisement;
Social justice;
Decolonizing the colonized;
Becoming anti-colonial musical activists.

Yeah, all of that. Thankful are we, for these beautiful and interesting real worlds and virtual worlds.

Our notions of ‘belonging’ and nation-ness may have mutated in these recent years of globalization, but the issue of belonging is no less important than it ever was—and the Imani Winds sound reminds us of that fact. Thanksgiving is a holiday (in the U.S., Canada, and other places) that is associated, perhaps more than any other holiday, with concepts of nation and family and unity and equality. But it’s also an occasion for remembering and celebrating difference—for affirming the stories that we hold in common with each other, and for remembering and meditating upon the narratives that make us diverse or that, for better and worse, still separate us or colonize us. The Imanis cross genre boundaries as though they weren’t there—one big borderless E.U. as far as the performing arts are concerned.

Shall I put one of the Imani CDs on to play when my own family assembles to celebrate this Thursday? In think yes. The group or family forms a focus for our sense of belonging—and how we move our sense of attachments and identity from place to place. Members of my own family live far apart and travel abroad frequently; we don’t have opportunities to see each other very often. Our processes of ‘identification’ aren’t constant, and they surely aren’t frozen in-time as they once seemed when we were not all so far-flung. The processes are renewed and altered at times of holiday celebrations; they are contingent and fleeting, expressed in relation to our group and its customary holiday foods, and music, and other cultural genres and artifacts. We ‘transcend’ whatever our identities may have been in the past, as we create new experiences together. In a way, Imani Winds is ‘trans-national’ and ‘contingent’ as much as it is transcendent in its repertoire and interpretations. And it is so in much the same way, I think, as what I believe families do, including my own.

All of us are, in the process, avoiding artistic ‘essentialism’ and artistic ‘determinism’ or passivity—and instead actively migrating into or creating new areas. Or at least that is what listening to the Imanis makes me feel.

Their warmth and exciting virtuosity are captivating. To hear Imani Winds perform is to want to be(come) a member of their family...

Upcoming Imani Winds performances include the following:

01-DEC-2008 19:00 at Borders Bookstore, 461 Park Av, New York NY
02-DEC-2008 20:00 at Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium, New York
09-DEC-2008 19:00 at Borders Bookstore, 3700 Torrance Blvd, L.A.
10-DEC-2008 20:00 at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles CA
12-DEC-2008 20:00 at the Performing Arts Center in South Orange NJ