Gene Pritsker’s Soliloquys and Colloquys: Chamber Music by One or a Few

R   eligion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy.”
  — Franz Werfel.

C   ertain insight: that there are no indications of reality in the unconscious, so that one cannot distinguish between truth and affective fiction.”
  — Sigmund Freud, letter to Wilhelm Fliess.

T hese recordings have a warm, gorgeous tone; the performers embody a flawless technique; and, above all, the compositions are vehicles for intense heartfelt expression. They transport us from our everyday reality to times and places of rejuvenation, reflection, and recommitment.

M embers of Dan Barrett’s International Street Cannibals Ensemble (title after Montaigne) deliver tactile performances with a widely-variable, bounding pulse. And CCR’s production values are excellent, providing a recording quality that offers exceptional intimacy, great warmth and depth—perfect for these energetic chamber works.

S ome of the compositions on this disc are enigmatic, like track #3, entitled C17H21NO4. There is nothing to describe what this means in the liner notes. But I look up the chemical formula and see that this is the formula for freebase cocaine. Possibly this is Pritsker’s musicopsychotropic homage to Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Mescaline’ or Lou Reed’s ‘Heroin’? (C17H21NO4 is also the chemical formula for scopolamine, an anticholinergic medication, and for fenoterol, a short-acting β2-agonist asthma drug, so don’t go leaping to any conclusions.)

T echnology has been at the heart of Pritsker’s work ever since he started making music. On this disc, he alternates his sampled electronic pieces, which tend to be around one minute in length, with longer acoustic pieces. The result is edgy, full of immediacy and a vivid conversationality, as though the performers’ control and precision could at any moment be derailed by matters arising—or by interaction of the performer with the listener. It is a titrated, dose-adjusted, relenting edginess that never wears out its welcome.

T he unaccompanied cello pieces ‘What Occurred in the Light, Goes on in the Dark’ and ‘In Memory of Giampaolo Bracali’, solo works performed by cellist Dan Barrett, are fine and intense compositions in the long, venerable tradition of cello soliloquys (see list at bottom of post).

W e have solo cello, in canon with itself. The soliloquy embodies a singular harmonic palette from which a series of hopeful reconsiderations are drawn, giving the impression that the artist’s mind is moving in sequences... not in [aporiatic] circles but in provisional sequences of thought that may or may not revisit positions held previously, rolled round and round in the cellist’s brain.

A fter an interim conclusion is arrived at, we find that the arc continues toward/into an extended climax, stretching out into broader rhythms and thinning the pitch-set.

T his conveys something of the impossibility of certainty——a pragmatic distillation of conviction from a subset of the points and evidence that one has entertained: the poignance of our human limitations and finite time on the planet.

I n some circles, soliloquy—as expressed by passionate, sexy cellos, or by anybody—is disparaged as a ‘naive’ form, irrelevant with respect to discourse theory. In turn, postmodern souls who engage in soliloquy are quick to dismiss theory as unconnected to real life, or, at least, to real life as they know it, their own real lives. Taking his cue from the works of Paul Roazen and Jacques Derrida in these fields, Gene Pritsker grafts soliloquy onto theory, exploring and producing one wild, anti-Freudian recording. He explores the unforeseen “collisions of interests” that unfold in the ‘space’ between the soliloquizing subject and the audience members who are witnesses to the soliloquys.

I rreducible uncertainties amid principled striving; civil but, like true cannibals, no strangers to outrage/despair/incivility/loss.

T hese pieces are captivating. The epitome of good will, the chamber and electronic compositions on this disc are enjoyably bold, muscular, and complex. I will be listening to them over and over. So, I hope, will you. The disc (link below) is to be released by CCR in February.


    [30-sec clip, Gene Pritsker, Chamber & Electronic Music, ‘What Occurred in the Light, Goes on in the Dark’; (track 1), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

    [30-sec clip, Gene Pritsker, Chamber & Electronic Music, ‘Healing Paradox’; (track 13), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

    [30-sec clip, Gene Pritsker, Chamber & Electronic Music, ‘Poem #1: Reflections on Elegy for Jane by Theodore Roethke’; (track 5), 2011, 1.1MB MP3]

I    remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a side-long pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren: happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves: their whispers turned to kissing;
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.”
  — Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse).

• Composers’ Concordance Records
  
• Gene Pritsker website
  
• Pritsker G. Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet: The Chamber and Electronic Music of Gene Pritsker. (CCR, 2011.)
  
• Deleuze G, Guattari F. Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Univ Minnesota, 1987.
  
• Derrida J. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. (tr. E. Prenowitz) Univ Chicago, 1998.
  
• Derrida J. Monolingualism of the Other, or, The Prosthesis of Origin. (tr. P. Mensah) Stanford Univ, 1998.
  
• Derrida J. Politics of Friendship. (tr. G. Collins) Verso, 1997.
  
• Derrida J. Psyche: Inventions of the Other. Vol. 2. (P. Kamuf, E. Rottenberg, eds.) Stanford Univ, 2008.
  
• Feves M, Lambooij H. A Cellist's Companion: A Comprehensive Catalogue of Cello Literature. Lulu, 2007.
  
• Maher M. Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies. Univ Iowa, 2002.
  
• Markevitch D. The Solo Cello: A Bibliography of the Unaccompanied Violoncello Literature. Fallen Leaf, 1989.
  
• Morrow E. Soliloquy: Contemporary Works for Unaccompanied Cello. (Centaur, 1999.)
  
• Roazen P. Cultural Foundations of Political Psychology. Transaction, 2003.
  
• Rothenberg J, Joris P, eds. Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Vol. 2. Univ California, 1998.
  
• Rucker P. Strange Fruit.
  
• Struthers W. Rhythmic Soliloquies (1913). Kessinger, 2009.
  
• Werfel F. Eine Blassblaue Frauenschrift. Fischer, 1990.

H   ans Abrahamsen’s Storm and Still
Alessandro Appignani’s Soliloquy
Richard Arnell’s Suite for Unaccompanied Cello
Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Suites
Bernard Barrell’s Soliloquys for cello solo
Burton Beerman’s A Still, Small Voice for cello, dancer and video
Eve Beglarian’s Eloise Alone
Elizabeth Bell’s Soliloquy
Luciano Berio’s Les Mots Sont Allés
Benjamin Boone’s Buffing the Gut
Walter Branchi’s Forms of the Wind for cello and electronics
Benjamin Britten’s three Suites
Matthew Burtner’s Fragments From Cold
Garrett Byrne’s Sprocket! for solo cello
Robert Griffin Byron’s Epitaph for cello and MAX/MSP
Elliott Carter’s two Figments
Gaspar Cassado’s Suite for Solo Cello
Joel Chadabe’s Many Times Madeleine for cello and live electronics
George Chave’s Three Reflections
Paul Constantinescu’s Sonata Bizantina
Andreina Costantini’s Jion
Tom Cora’s (Thomas Corra) Man with the Movie Camera
Anthony Cornicello’s I’ll have an Electric Mahabarata, Please
Franklin Cox’s Clairvoyance, Recoil
George Crumb’s Sonata for Solo Cello, Toccata
Douglas Cuomo’s Only Breath
Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms No. 3
Paul Michael Dooley’s Gradus for solo cello
Henri Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher
Ludovico Einaudi’s Canto
Alejandro Escuer’s El Arco de Encina
Robert Fleisher’s Two Movements for Violoncello
Domenico Gabrielli’s Seven Ricercari for Solo Cello
Guillermo Galindo’s TX3
Orlando Jacinto Garcia’s Night Fragments for solo cello, Mixtura, After Humans for cello, electronics, video
Djivan Gasparian’s Memories
Ge Gan-ru’s Yi Feng
Ada Gentile’s Per violoncello solo
Mara Gibson’s E-Tip for cello and electronics
Alberto Ginastera’s Punena No. 2
Philip Glass’s Songs And Tissues For Solo Cello
Geoffrey Gordon’s Lorca Musica per Cello Solo
Michael Gordon’s Industry for solo cello and electronics
Sofia Gubaidulina’s 10 Preludes
David Hainsworth’s Other Worlds
Joseph Hallman’s Three Monologues and sixsolopieces
Patrick Hardish’s Sonorities IV
Jonathan Harvey’s Curve with Plateau
Joseph Hayes’s Soliloquy
Michael Hersch’s Sonatas for Unaccompanied Cello Nos. 1 & 2
Jennifer Higdon’s Soliloquy
Paul Hindemith’s Sonata Op. 25
Toshio Hosokawa’s Sen II
Alan Hovhaness’s Yakamochi
Marie Incontrera’s Playing in the Caves
Ben Johnston’s Toccata
Frederick Kaufman’s Inner Sanctum for solo cello
Daniel Kessner’s Four Studies in Melodic Expression
Aram Khachaturian’s Sonata-Fantasy for cello solo in C
Mark Kilstofte’s You (unfolding)...
Hi Kyung Kim’s Five Bagatelles
Jin Hi Kim’s Kae Maek
Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata Op. 8 for Solo Cello
Karl Kohn’s Soliloquy II
David Lang’s World to Come for cello, tape, and video
Mario Lavista’s Cuaderno de Viaje
Ana Lara’s Koaia
Tania Leon’s 4 Pieces for solo cello
György Ligeti’s Sonata
Magnus Lindberg’s Stroke
Andrew List’s Tango-Tango for Solo Cello and Dancer
Witold Lutosławski’s Sacher Variation For Solo Cello
Tod Machover’s Electric Etudes for cello and electronics
Robert Maggio’s Winter Toccata (I can’t believe you want to die)
Kevin Malone’s Four Pieces for ‘Cello
Ovidiu Marinescu’s Quodlibet Sonata
Charles Norman Mason’s Ospedaletto for cello and electronics
Harold Meltzer’s Blush
Alfred Mendelssohn’s Suite for solo cello
Lawrence Moss’s Three Chinese Poems
Zae Munn’s Projectual for Solo Cello
Clancy Newman’s Song without Words for solo cello
Niccolò Paganini’s Caprices, Nos. 13, 17 and 24
Arvo Pärt’s Fratres for cellos
Kryzytof Penderecki’s Capriccio for solo cello
Riccardo Piacentini’s Con fuocco
Gene Pritsker’s What Occurred in the Light Goes on in the Dark, In Memory of Giampaolo Bracali
Shulamit Ran’s Fantasy Variations
Max Reger’s Three Suites for solo cello Op. 131c
Miklós Rózsa’s Toccata capricciosa, Op.36
Edwin Roxburgh’s Solilquy 4
Paul Rucker’s Strange Fruit and Soliloquy Timeless Language in the Present Tense
Paul Rudy’s Vastly Shrinking Space for cello and electronics,Degrees of Separation, Grandchild of Tree
Kaija Saariaho’s Petals
Marc Satterwhite’s Witnesses of Time for Solo Cello
Robert Saxton’s Toccata
Salvatore Sciarrino’s Ai limiti della notte
Mark Sforzini’s Remembrance Upon a Midnight Hour
Judith Shatin’s For the Birds for cello and electronics
Thomas Simaku’s Soliloquy II
Stuart Smith’s "Said, nearly", Willow
Christine Southworth’s Khaen Song
Halsey Stevens’s Sonata for Violoncello Solo
Randall Svane’s Three Unaccompanied Suites and Dreams Go Wandering Still
Kasper Tagel’s Spanish Suite
Karen Tanaka’s Song of Songs (with CD playback)
Boris Tchaikovsky’s Suite for Solo Cello
David Tcimpidus’s Brock Mountain Passage
Augusta Read Thomas’s Spring Song, Ring Bells Summer
Jukaa Tiensuu’s oddjob
Chinary Ung’s Khse Buon
Craig Walsh’s Pipeline Burst Cache for cello and electronics
Charles Wuorinen’s Cello Variations
Iannis Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha and Kottos
Yahuda Yannay’s I can’t fathom it...
Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata for solo cello, Op. 28
Zhou Long’s Wild Grass (with CD playback)
Evan Ziporyn’s Kebyar Maya for solo cello and prerecorded CD.”
  — Some notable works for unaccompanied or electronics-accompanied or self-accompanied/looped solo cello.

It’s Like That, Is It?!: Chopin Hermeneutics

C   onflation may be inadmissible for the editor, but it remains an option and right for the performer. Multiple versions of whole works are presented when differences between the sources are so abundant or fundamental that they go beyond the category of ‘variant’. You see, most in the succession of manuscripts and annotated editions are not ‘corrections’; they are alternative approaches, different equally-valid and endorsed ‘options’ that Chopin put forward. In all, you may conclude from the prolific sequence of ‘options’ and reconsiderations that, for Chopin, everything was eternally a ‘work-in-progress’. So long as he lived, there was no one thought or breath that was ‘definitive’. Every possibility remained ‘open’.”
  —  Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, lecture handout.

T he latitude of authentic interpretations of Chopin’s piano music was explored in lectures yesterday at the Royal Academy of Music in London by professors Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger and Roy Howat. The lectures were held in the York Gate Piano Collection in the second floor of the Academy Museum building and were attended by about 70 enthusiastic devotees of Chopin. Eigeldinger is retired musicology professor emeritus at Geneva University. He was a founder of the Société Suisse de Musicologie and was Chairman of the Section Suisse romande of the Society. Howat, a concert pianist, is Keyboard Research Fellow and professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

I n particular, Eigeldinger and Howat focused on clues about Chopin’s intentions (regarding fingering, pedaling, and other details) that are offered in the annotations of his students’ copies of his music. Restored/remastered 1905 recordings of Chopin “grand-pupil” Raoul Koczalski were also featured.

A   t the time of the Op. 28 preludes, Chopin abandoned the use of the word ‘rubato’. He abandoned placing metronome markings on the music as well. He felt that those notations were doing more harm than good. Besides this, the accuracy of his metronome has come into question insofar as some of the markings on earlier music are quite implausible.”
  —  Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger.

E igeldinger spoke mostly in French, and Howat provided colorful English translations of Eigeldinger’s remarks. At times, some idea that Howat appended stimulated a further line of thought from Eigeldinger or a question that Eigeldinger would put to Howat, and off the two of them would go. The spontaneity of this two-hour ‘talk that was not a talk’ was truly charming, more like a long fireside chat between two old friends than a ‘lecture’.

E igeldinger observed that, in several cases, the students’ affinity for Chopin was so intense that they began to model all of their behavior after that of their teacher. They began to talk like Chopin; their mannerisms began to resemble his mannerisms; their penmanship started to look a lot like Chopin’s writing, to the degree that notations they made on their personal copies of the Chopin scores are very hard to distinguish from things that Chopin had written. Howat related his purchase at a music shop some years ago in Sydney, Australia, of an old galley-proof copy of compositions by the Norwegian Chopin student Thomas Tellefsen, a book in which Jane Stirling (another Chopin student) had made editorial notations and corrections. The details of Stirling’s markings on the Tellefsen galleys were compared by Eigeldinger to the markings in various Chopin scores and it was finally possible to determine conclusively which of the notations were Chopin’s own and which were added by Stirling and by Tellefsen.

D   o not make it melodramatic. Let the music speak for itself. Don’t put ‘programs’ on it.”
  —  Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger.

E igeldinger and Howat both displayed great excitement in recalling this sleuthing and in celebrating the unlikely good fortune of finding the old galley-proof book that ultimately solved the puzzle just lying around gathering dust on a shelf in a shop in Sydney. To watch the two of them was thrilling—laughing, gesturing wildly, faces lit up by the memory of joys shared and the friendship cemented by this mutual passion for music. The spectacle was cinematic in an ‘Indiana Jones’ sort of way—like seeing two archaeologists rejoicing in a just dug-up treasure-room full of golden antiquities; giddy to be so lucky as to make so momentous a discovery; wide-eyed upon finding themselves immersed in such tremendous opulence; yet leery of booby-traps.

B oth Eigeldinger and Howat extemporized fluently throughout their back-and-forth exchanges, playing short passages of Chopin preludes and nocturnes from memory on two ancient Pleyel instruments amongst the 12 historical pianos in the Royal Academy’s museum collection.

O rdinarily, people are continually bombarded by transmitted ideas during most of their waking hours; music students are no different. For the learning process, what are the implications of this didactic saturation and cognitive carpet-bombing? Annihilation! Effective instruction, as traditionally understood, requires a reasonably high level of attention prompted by adequate motivation. But here, in Eigeldinger’s and Howat’s hands, we have a paradigm for motivating everyone—tell captivating stories! Stories, one after another! More stories!

I   s it possible that Chopin’s marking ‘largo’ on Jane Stirling’s copy in this ‘allegro’ passage was ironical, a joke? Was she really that bad a player? [audience-member interjection: ‘Or was she the sort of girl whose constitution was such as to rush that passage, say?’] Well, I think there are many private stories that are here, ones that shall never be reconstructed but that are belied by these notations. It is regrettable that the possibility of humor—of intimate jokes exchanged between a generous, friendly teacher and a beloved student—is seldom considered by scholars. A ridiculous ‘largo’ like this may well have been a private laugh. Or maybe in fact it was simply an earnest reminder to keep the passage broad and not rush it. We’ll never know.”
  —  Roy Howat.

E igeldinger told stories—accounts that explain editorial methods and practices that have affected the various editions of Chopin’s music; stories of Chopin’s teaching methods, with professional performing musicians and with amateur-musician aristocrats, such as Jane Stirling. Some of the editorial practices (like ones that affected the Paderewski ‘Warsaw’ edition) have been ‘syncretist’, compiling multiple versions into a unified one. Others, including the recent multi-volume one by Edition Peters that Eigeldinger has edited, have selected one version as authentic—one that is the most consistent with the available sources—but then extensively annotated the selected version with alternate versions and ‘options’.

T he insertion of such inter-linear annotations into the music dilates the staves on the page and makes the music visually distracting from the point of view of a student or performer, so such an edition would not likely be used as a copy for performance purposes. But the guidance that such an inter-linear edition conveys “off-line” has inestimable value for the performer as well as for scholars.

H owat commended Edition Peters for their great service to music academicians (and to performing artists) in undertaking such a monumental project, given the large expense and effort that this entails and the fact that the market for such editions is inevitably quite small.

H owat also complimented the efforts of John Rink at Cambridge University and the Royal Holloway in collaboration with Christophe Grabowski. Their 994-page compilation of first editions of Chopin compositions has just been published by Cambridge University Press (link below). Their curation of Online Chopin Variorum (link below) and Chopin First Editions Online (link below) are likewise monumental contributions to Chopin scholarship, which any of us can consult to see copies of Chopin manuscripts and discover for ourselves what interpretations make most sense—or simply see how much latitude of style and meaning there really is.

I n summary, it was a memorable and thoroughly enjoyable afternoon of hermeneutics of Chopin texts, delivered with style and enthusiasm by this wild pair of musicologist friends. We are most grateful, and we learned a lot. This was teaching at its best!

T    hese many variants indicate the inherent plasticity of the music, consistent with Chopin’s abilities as an improviser… In some cases, Chopin would make adjustments to accommodate the strengths and limitations of each student. In other cases, he would make adjustments to accommodate the regional differences in piano mechanics, the pedals on different manufacturers’ pianos in different countries, and so forth. I think of this as no less natural than different car-driving practices in different countries. In France they do not drive on the left side of the road.”
  —  Roy Howat, paraphrasing and expanding on Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s remarks in French.

• Roy Howat page at Royal Academy of Music
  
• Roy Howat website
  
• Chopin Institute website
  
• Chopin's First Editions Online (CFEO) website
  
• Online Chopin Variorum Edition (OCVE) website
  
• John Rink page at Cambridge Univ
  
• Eigeldinger J-J. Chopin and Pleyel. Clavier Companion, MAY-2010.
  
• Eigeldinger J-J. Chopin: Pianist and Teacher, as Seen by His Pupils. Cambridge Univ, 1989.
  
• Grabowski C, Rink J. Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Gross A, Keith W, eds. Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science. SUNY, 1996.
  
• Ricoeur P. The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Northwestern Univ, 2007.
  
• Stecker R. Interpretation and Construction: Art, Speech, and the Law. Wiley, 2003.
  
• Thiselton A. Hermeneutics: An Introduction. Eerdmans, 2009.
  
• Vattimo G. Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy. Stanford Univ, 1997.