jwilzewske: early music

Showing posts with label early music. Show all posts

Sunday, March 25, 2012

New Waves in Ferrara: Appealing on Many Levels, Enargeically

George de la Tour: ‘Quarreling Musicians’ (1625-1630)

S wain argues that in Renaissance music stylized cadences—7-6 suspension cadences, with the penultimate soprano note raised a half-step, where necessary, to create a leading-tone—served to provide an easily recognizable cue to phrase endings. From this developed the V7-I cadence, a gesture whose pitch content was so distinctive that the strict rhythmic conventions of the Renaissance cadence were no longer necessary. He argues that it is no accident that the rise of genres such as the string quartet and the symphony—lacking, as they did, the solo/ripieno contrast of the Baroque concerto—coincided with a new interest in the possibilities of large-scale tonal contrast. With one kind of contrast no longer available, something new had to be found to take its place.”
— David Temperley, commenting in 1999 on Joseph Swain’s ‘Musical Languages’.

G esualdo proves [that] ... individual compositions, in the last analysis, count not for what they contribute to the development of a [musical] language, but how they handle their own ‘native’ language [that encompasses expressions and idioms in the broader culture, far beyond music], and it remained for a later perspective to rediscover the intrinsic value... It is a cliché to say of a great composition that it appeals on many levels, but the [inevitably] stratified nature of any musical community makes the cliché a real—almost indispensable—virtue. The health of a musical community depends on great numbers of people who simply listen with sensitivity and intelligence ... plus a few listeners who may attend to the more abstract effects of syntax as well.”
— Joseph Swain, p. 165.

T he performance last night in Kansas City by Piffaro & King’s Noyse with Ellen Hargis entitled ‘New Waves in Ferrara: Two Bands, Fresh Sounds’ illustrated a number of 16^th and 17^th Century innovations. “Large-scale tonal contrasts” of the sort referred to in the quotes above and a surprising amount of chromaticism were among them.

T he King’s Noyse consists of five members (two Renaissance-design violins with the neck in-line with the box, two tenor-register violins slightly larger than a viola, and one cello-sized ‘bass violin’) plus Ellen Hargis (soprano). And Piffaro nominally has seven members, but they have on their on-stage table an arsenal of recorders of various sizes/registers, shawms (pre-cursors to oboes, ranging from tiny sopranini ones to giant basso ones), Renaissance bagpipes, sackbuts (trombones), dulcians (precursors to bassoons, in various sizes/registers), harp, lute, guitar/vihuela, percussion instruments). The instrumentation of the ensemble changes with every piece!

I n contrast to the ‘modern’, ‘individualistic’ intimacy that characterizes chamber music from the Baroque forward, the works that Piffaro-plus-King’s Noyse performed (by de Rore, Gesualdo, Luzzaschi, Agostini, and others) reveal the astonishing degree to which each individual musician had to envision and remember and anticipate the voice-leading of others’ parts as well as her/his own part. What I mean is, the kind of intimacy that is evoked in the chamber music ensemble literature from Baroque times onward entails each voice in the ensemble responding to one or more of the others on a relatively short timescale on the order of milliseconds to seconds. By contrast, the kind of intimacy evoked in the ‘New Waves in Ferrara: Two Bands, Fresh Sounds’ program embodies a kind of ‘collective’ intimacy—arising partly from the mostly-barline-less musical text, and from the musicians’ relation to that text, which entails their planning (conceptualizing in advance, and remembering) their playing on a time horizon of multiple bars, multiple phrases, or even an entire piece. The Renaissance ‘evenly-written polyphony,’ orchestrated such that each instrumental part resembles the human voice, compels a collective ‘band-like’ mentality and rhetoric—as David Douglass and Bob Wiemken said during their pre-concert lecture. [There are various writings on Renaissance poetry that characterize this sort of rhetoric as ‘enargeia’—‘to create or energize a communal actuality’ (see Norton, Plett, and Sharpling links below). I don’t notice that this term is used in the Renaissance musicology research literature, but, if it’s true that it’s not already so used, it seems to me that the musicologists might do well to adopt/adapt this expression from their literary colleagues.]

B efore attending the concert I looked at my copy of Anne Smith’s book (link below), which contains photomacrographs of original scores of Renaissance ensemble and vocal music. In some scores, 16^th-Century composers corrected some notes and made the revisions in the margins or with the correction immediately following the passage as it was originally written. In other words, due to the costliness of paper the composer chose to fill-in empty spaces rather than use a new piece of paper for revision work. In other examples, the parts/voices were not notated in bar-vertical-alignment with each other—again to save paper. The rehearsal and performance consequences of this Renaissance Northern Italian notational practice in terms of performers’ reading and memory and interpretation were (and are!) monumental. And, regardless whether Piffaro/King’s Noyse/Hargis have created for themselves fair-copy transcriptions (using contemporary music software like Finale® or Sibelius®) that conform to modern practices for readability, the inherent challenges and the virtuosic complexity of the parts remain.

O f course, to deliver an emotionally-moving performance and coherent, worthy interpretation of any music requires each performer to have a vision of the whole piece in mind; requires conceiving the trajectory of the whole. Even if there are random/aleatoric/improvisatory elements, you have to have some advance plan or vision or notion of how you will execute those. The distinct or special aspect of this Renaissance music is the long scope this planning has—the autocorrelation and inter-part crosscorrelation with look-aheads/lags of multiple bars, multiple phrases, or even an entire piece. Makes our frenetic little attention-spans of today seem even tinier than usual!

M ore than that, though, these long timescale inter-relationships—and the look of the scores, and the notations’ shapes, and the composers’ revisions in the margins—seem like beautiful schematic diagrams—wiring diagrams!—that specify meditations on courtly love, loss, reminiscence, and how people related to each other (or, how the composer conceptualized those relations, conditioned by the values and morés of their patrons) in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. With evocative Italian poetic lyrics (very nice English translations by Hargis and others in the program notes, by the way)— every passage unfolds an ineffable narrative, charting the process, drawing us in, revealing more and more of the human condition—what it means to be human in any Age. Emulating Walt Whitman’s famous phrase “I contain multitudes,” we consider the “you” in this Renaissance music: we imagine that, in this Renaissance music replete as it is with all of these Large-scale Mutual Awarenesses, the “you” of each performer truly contains multitudes. This is why we like serious music of all kinds, and why we love to attend concerts; at least partly why—one major reason among many.

T he idea ... that one can understand the ratios of musical consonances [in tempered scales] without experiencing them with the senses is wrong. Nor can one know the true theory of music without being deeply versed in its practice.”
— Letter from mathematician Giovanni Battista Benedetti to composer Cipriano de Rore, 1563.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Tallis Scholars’ sound, or why 176 KHz/192 KHz HD sampling for choral chamber music is important

I t is known that energy in the 5-20 KHz range can be perceived even when it is 50 dB or more below the main voice spectrum peak. Also, these upper frequencies are conventionally emphasized in the production of popular vocal music. Yet very few studies of the acoustic content of this range have been made. High fidelity recordings were made of singers sustaining vowels at varying levels of vocal effort. A general characterization of the two highest octaves 5-20 KHz was sought. The prevalence of high-frequency energy, the variation of harmonics signal-to-noise ratio as a function of frequency, and the covariation with overall SPL were all highly variable, but several landmark features were identified... [including] clusters of resonances in the regions 7-10 KHz and 13-16 KHz. Harmonic energy was observed to over 16 KHz in strong female voices.”
— Sten Ternström, KTH Stockholm, 2008.

T he Tallis Scholars’ performance in Kansas City tonight was gorgeous. The concert was performed in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which has a central altar and a wide chancel such that there are myriad acoustic reflections that arrive at one’s ears from multiple directions. Unlike many performance venues where reflected sound for people seated in most locations is predominantly from one or two general directions, Immaculate Conception has quite high reflective efficiency from many of its interior surfaces.

I f you are seated close to the ensemble—not more than, say, 10 meters away from the sound source—the sound projects exaggerated cues of ‘spatiality’, accentuating the atmospheric qualities that are there in the music and the text. This was especially true tonight during the pieces by Arvo Pärt, which have considerable dissonance and frisson amongst the parts, with long sustained notes during which the spatial effects from the direct and indirect sounds arriving at our ears can be fully appreciated.

T aking into account the speed of sound, we can convert energy defocusing in the time domain to “smear” in distance estimation by the ears. Energy spread over ±500 ms is the same as a distance smear of ±15 cm. 96 KS/s keeps almost all the energy within about ±50 ms, or ±1.5 cm. One of the observations people make about 96 KS/s material is that the spatial localisation of everything is very much better than 44.1 KS/s. 192 KS/s is better than this, although very dependent on amp and speaker performance to demonstrate it.”
— Mike Story, 1997.

T he spectrum of frequencies and harmonics returning to your ears in this marble-and-plaster, highly-reflective cathedral has a surprising, pleasing amount of power in the range 4 KHz and up. In an age when noise and unpleasant/irrational/blurred stimuli bombard us every day, the Tallis Scholars’ sound in this sort of brightly reverberant performance space restores our belief in clarity—restores our belief in the fidelity of human communication across large distances in space and time. It is as though high signal-to-noise ratio becomes an aesthetic and cultural emblem of Civilization itself.

W hat I mean is, the sound (with its high S/N and high-end harmonics) not only embodies the enduring and transcendent meaning of the sacred music that Tallis performs and the human spirituality that caused this music to be written so long ago, but it asserts the very possibility of transcendence and persistence—of meaning that lasts beyond one’s own lifetime. After the concert, I go to Gimell Records’ website and download a couple of their 24-bit 176 KHz-sampled Studio Master high-def recordings, to get more of this. What I hear is truly thrilling—as good as the live performance.

C onventional wisdom doubts that humans can hear frequencies much higher than 20 KHz—frequencies higher than that are only perceptible to dogs and other animals. That is foolish—misinformation propagated uncritically since 50 years ago. In recent years, the misconception persists as a reflection of the fact that otolaryngologists’ and audiologists’ primary focus has been on “basic,” “practical” functions such as a person’s ability to hear and accurately understand speech. By contrast, research concerned with aesthetic and musical functioning has received much less attention or funding. [Measurement equipment for studying acoustics of bats in the 20 to 100 KHz part of the spectrum has existed for quite awhile—bat and bird and other animal communication is the subject of scholarly articles in acoustics society journals—but not many researchers studying humans have utilized it. Part of the reason why the freqency spectrum above 4 KHz for vocalizations has been under-studied is that high-speed video strobolaryngoscopy has been unable to detect the very small-amplitude (~0.1mm) vibrations in the larynx. Not surprisingly, if you can’t detect something, then you tend not to study what you can’t detect.]

T here is a common, mistaken notion that frequency response above 10 KHz is only relevant to sibilant “S” or fricative “F” type consonants in speech or singing. Well, that is most definitely not true, as evidenced by tonight’s Tallis Scholars performance! Recent research by Brian Monson, Andrew Lotto, and colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson (link below) shows that the frequency spectrum above 8 KHz figures prominently in singers’ sustained-vowel sound imaging—and figures also in listeners’ perception of open vowel sounds. The Pärt works in tonight’s program—and the effects of reverberation in these, in Immaculate’s chancel—especially emphasize intervallic and spatial relationships and transformations, and remind me of a workshop led by John Roeder at the 2003 Mannes Institute. That workshop examined expressive transformational representations for music by Pärt and others, and addressed how transformational representations relate to musical form, and to how musical forms are experienced. Varied repetition as in Pärt amounts to retracing similar transformational pathways among different sets of musical objects, and plumbing the extent and meaning of their similarities. Canon and contrapuntal cyclical spaces are frequent vehicles for enacting or showing transformations, of course, and—to the degree that each of these enactments is individually convincing—uncovering these unexpected connections becomes our primary mode of understanding and enjoying the music.

T onight’s performance and these HD Gimell/Tallis recordings reveal why it’s desirable to have a sampling frequency that is at least 4 times the desired system bandwidth, a process that is known as oversampling. If your goal is to maintain a “flat” response with 6 dB or less roll-off at the upper limit of the band, then a sampling frequency that is more than four times the desired bandwidth is needed—hence, the 176.4 KHz or 192 KHz sampling rates on these Gimell HD Studio Master files.

A problem (for me, at least) with off-the-shelf HD audio equipment is that the sound reproduction chain (player, preamps, EQ, power amps, speakers) can sometimes have too much high-frequency power. It can sound too sibilant—even for vowel sounds—somewhere between 12 KHz and 20 KHz. The spectrum EQ sliders on your playback equipment may not have center frequencies that correspond to wherever that objectionable tweeter “break-up frequency” peak is—so the adjustments you make to cope with it end up impairing the quality of the sound around that peak, essentially leaving you with a sound that's far less than HD. But Bowers & Wilkins speakers are one example of a product that doesn’t have this issue. They’re clear above 8 KHz, and give smooth mid-range and ample bass. Put two 800 Diamonds in front of you, two 802s behind you, plus a couple of DB1s somewhere in the room to cover the bottom bass frequencies. HD music recordings—such as those produced by Tallis and Gimell—have frequencies that exceed 20 KHz and we need speakers (and other components in the reproduction chain) that can accurately render these. The response of the 800Ds is essentially flat between 25 Hz and 33 KHz. Their tweeter “break-up” frequency is way, way out of harm’s way—at about 70 KHz.

R eproducing high frequencies has everything to do with recreating the sensation of sharpness and immediacy—the experience of being near the sound-source, in or near the front row (see Beranek, p. 511). There is not just the issue of rapid attenuation of high-frequency portions of the spectrum as a function of distance, but also the matter of inter-aural time-difference cues.

W e found that robust pitch perception can be elicited by harmonic complex tones with fundamental frequencies below 2 KHz, even when all of the individual harmonics are above 6 KHz—well above the currently-accepted ‘existence region’ of pitch and above the currently-accepted limits of neural phase-locking. The results suggest that perception of musical pitch at high frequencies is not constrained by temporal phase-locking in the auditory nerve but may instead stem from higher-level constraints shaped by [immediately] prior exposure to harmonic sounds.”
— Andrew Oxenham, Christophe Micheyl, Michael Keebler, Adam Loper & Sébastien Santurette, Dept of Psychology, Univ Minnesota, 2011.

I n other words, our ability to perceive (a) spatial relationships—relative locations of different singers or depth and breadth of other sound-sources—and (b) overtones/harmonics generated by the blending of all of the lower frequencies in ensemble (Fourier spectra of mixed signals) ... depends primarily on the high-frequency (short-wavelength) components and on phase-angle relationships between the frequencies as they mingle with each other in the performance space (or the playback environment, for a recording). If the sound-sources are moving (as in an opera; or even for singers who are shifting or rotating slightly on-stage), then the high-frequency components contribute most to our ability to perceive that motion. It’s part of how our brain sorts out “signal” from “noise” in noisy environments.

A nd we get special pleasure from successfully doing this. Clarity that facilitates the listener’s own brain’s processing—which is what the HD 176 KHz/192 KHz-sampled media does for us (see Vorländer, pp. 222ff).

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Hodie Christus Natus Est
John Taverner - Magnificat (A5)
Robert White - Tota Pulchra Es
Arvo Pärt - Magnificat
Arvo Pärt - Nunc Dimittis
Hieronymous Praetorius - Magnificat IV
Robert White - Regina Caeli
Morales - Regina Caeli
Benjamin Britten: Hymn to the Virgin
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina - Magnificat for Double Choir
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina - Nunc Dimittis for Double Choir

I very much hope that Phillips and colleagues continue to add aggressively to their HD DVD-Audio recording downloads. There are many of us out here who crave the immersive psychoacoustic experience that only very high sample-rate HD can deliver. The Tallis Scholars’ recordings are [one of the types of—] music that powerfully motivates and intensely satisfies the “immersive HD” desire.

B efore you place an order, Gimell recommmends to try the Test Files they provide for free download, to insure compatibility with your system.

T allis and Gimell recommend using an audiophile-quality Network Music Player to listen to the HD download files. If you own a DVD-Audio player and your PC has a DVD burner, then you can create your own DVD-Audio discs by importing the HD download files into Cirlinca’s DVD-Audio Solo® or other similar software apps. The files are 15 to 18 times larger than the equivalent track with MP3 compression. The Gimell offerings also include multichannel Quadraphonic/Surround Sound formats. Cirlinca’s HD-Audio Solo Ultra® v4.1 software costs just USD$75 for a single-user license— HD-Audio Solo Ultra® is the product that I use. Cirlinca has relationships with record labels including Gimmel, Deutsche Grammophon, and Hyperion, plus orchestras and ensembles including Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others.

M arketing-wise, when HD recordings such as these from Tallis/Gimell are coupled with correspondingly good playback chain equipment it opens up a promising (and to-date under-developed) market segment for serious music: tech-avid audiences and software developers and gamers whose primary passion is virtual reality (VR) and who have a strong but decidedly secondary interest in music. Many in this segment or niche market may not be musicians per se, and they may not be people who regularly attend ‘conventional’ live concerts. But they crave excellent VR and immersive “worlds” that can capture the heart and mind—as good music can do so effectively. And such people spend quite a lot of money each year on personal “world-building”. Their sort of passionate “sonic-experience-first-music-second” amateurism is, I suppose, not unlike serious HiFi audiophiles of the 1960s or late 50s.

I n summary, Tallis Scholars and Gimell are creating the right kinds of HD content to grow a VR audio market. Maybe more and different marketing, including social media, will be needed to really drive its growth. For now, I’m delighted to have experienced these wonderful recordings that prove once and for all that very high sampling-rates of 176.4 KHz and 192 KHz are actually necessary, to accurately reproduce the nuances that we hear up-close in live performance. The freshness and lightness and clarity of the sound invite the listener “inside” the world that the music conjures—the Studio Master HD files enable listeners to inhabit that world via interactive replay evoking “live” sensations and realism, most vividly when the listener/file-downloader can freely explore and re-explore again and again ad lib. We avid listeners want to rehearse our neurons—not only to re-experience the shivers up our spines, but (through practice) to train our bodies to optimally respond to the aural cues that are in these beautiful HD recordings, and in the next live performance we’re able to attend. Bravo!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Theorbo-Dulcian-Viola Trio: Beautiful Performance; Beautiful Recordings

E arly music trio last night at Deutscherordenkirche Wien was really excellent.

Katharine Mandl, Fagott / Dulcian
Elzbieta Sajka, Violetta / Viola da braccio
Hermann Platzer, Theorbe

T he program was comprised entirely of 17th Century works.

Bartolomeo de Selma y Salaverde (1595-1638) - Canzon a due tenori (alto dulcian; viola da braccio; theorbo)
Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger (1580-1648) - Toccata nona und Passacaglia für Theorbe Solo
Adam Jarzębski (1590-1648) - Cantata Giovanni Gabrielli
Selma y Salaverde - Sonata Vestiva i colli für Dulcian Solo (with Theorbo continuo)
Jarzębski - Concerto secondo
Alessandro Piccinini (1566-1638) - Toccata XII, Gagliarda III, und Chiaccona in partite variate für Theorbe Solo
Giovanni Battista Fontana (1571-1630) - Sonata nona
Philipp Friedrich Böddecker (1607-1683) - Sonata “La Monica”

D ulcian is a precursor to the modern bassoon. Ms. Mandl performed on two of them—a smaller alto one, plus a tenor one with a range similar to tenor sax. The trio achieved a fine balance and blending of the timbres of dulcian, 5-stringed violetta / viola da braccio, and theorbo (lute).

T he dulcian part in the Böddecker is amazingly ornate and fast—performed over a languid dotted-quarter/eighth/quarter/quarter viola melody, accompanied by the theorbo continuo. The neume-like notation (which Ms. Mandl explained and illustrated in her pre-performance talk) is prolifically dense in its own right; however, the improvisational cadenzas that Mandl applied took this far beyond the densely-notated score. Truly virtuosic bassoon—on this tender, very old instrument.

T he sanctuary at Deutschordenkirche is small and narrow—only about 10 meters wide. The consort last night positioned themselves near the altar, in a 60° circular-segment arrangement with chairs separated by about 1.5m. They recorded the performance using a Roland EDIROL R-44 4-channel digital recorder and two Schoeps MK-21 condenser microphones on a mic stand elevated 2.0m above the floor and angled downward 10° so that the mic axis of the left mic was midway between the dulcian and viola seats and the mic axis of the right mic was midway between the viola and theorbo seats. This distance to the instruments is a good compromise for these pieces—enough separation and directivity for the solo passages and appropriate lower-directivity for the tutti playing, so the listener’s attention is not confronted by unnatural left-right contrasts.

T he wide off-axis response of this mic helps to blend adjacent instruments and enhance ensemble-ness. The 48-volt phantom-power Schoeps CMC-6 preamps (matched pair; one on each mic) are designed to be compatible with really long mic cables—as was the case last night with the EDIROL R-44 placed at one side of the sanctuary. The R-44 uses multi-gigabyte miniature camera-type SD cards or larger-capacity SDHC cards as the recording media and offers 24-bit wide A-to-D conversion and sampling frequencies (44.1KHz/48KHz/88.2KHz/96KHz/192KHz).

T he MK-21 Schoeps mics have a ‘subcardioid’ (wide cardioid) pattern—moderately high directionality and pretty flat frequency response. A pair of them currently costs about USD$3,500 new, and the R-44 is currently under USD$1,000. Mr. Platzer and Ms. Mandl easily set all the mics and recording equipment up within just two or three minutes before the program commenced, switched the EDIROL on, and so began the group’s performance: no muss, no fuss.

W e eagerly purchased 3 of the CDs that were available at last night’s performance (recordings made in 2007, 2009, and 2010, in Deutschordenkirche—which you can order off the group’s website [link below]). The sound imaging that they achieve with these nice mics and this set-up is phenomenally warm and detailed… heartily to be recommended to other early music groups who wish to capture high-quality sound of period instruments without tremendous worry or logistical troubles.

B ravo, for the live performance and for these excellent recordings!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Nicholas Kitchen: Are Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin Scale-Invariant ‘Fractal’ Works?

Nicholas Kitchen, NE Historic Genealogical Soc, 18-JUN-2011

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]

¡Sacabuche! Matteo Ricci: His Map and Music

J ust as western countries have never heard the teaching of the sages of China, so we Chinese have never heard of the books of their ancient sages. Both now enlighten each other; both benefit one another.”
— Feng Yingjing, acquaintance of Fr. Matteo Ricci, 16th-Century China.

S acabuche! is an ensemble of Chinese and western instruments and voices directed by Linda Pearse. Sacabuche! performed a series of concerts and workshops in Beijing, China, in December, 2010, and yesterday at BEMF in Boston offered a multimedia performance of their work about the Italian Jesuit priest (and mathematician, scientist, cartographer, and all-around polymath), Matteo Ricci, whose decades spent in China in the late 16th century resulted in the first map in Chinese. Ricci’s detailed map, completed and presented to the Wanli Emperor in 1602, showed the entire world—eastern and western hemispheres—surprising and edifying both the Chinese and the Italians.

I U Jacobs School of Music faculty members Stanley Ritchie and Wendy Gillespie contributed to the collaboration, as did University of Minnesota professor of History, Ann Waltner. The performance combined historical readings with early music from both sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and China, along with new compositions by Oberlin/Juilliard-trained now-New-York-based composer Huang Ruo, commissioned for the Sacabuche! project.

T he multimedia performance reanimates the seminal political and cultural exchange between Italian Jesuits and Chinese literati in 16th/17th-century China and unifies (1) Italian music of Ricci’s Italy performed on period instruments, (2) Chinese music of Ricci’s China performed on traditional Chinese instruments, (3) Huang Ruo’s new music, (4) dramatic readings, and (5) historical imagery, including a projected digitized version of Ricci’s map (an old original, James Ford Bell Library, U of M) Chinese paintings and calligraphy and other artworks.

Linda Pearse, artistic director & sackbut
Ann Waltner, co-director, speaker, author of program notes/script
Qin Fang, speaker
Yang Yi, guzheng
Carrie Tsujui Chin, sheng
Eunji Lee, piano and organ
Sarah Barbash-Riley, Ray Horton & François Godère, sackbut
Martie Perry & Janelle Davis, Baroque violin
Wendy Gillespie, viola da gamba
Elise Figa, soprano
Andrew Rader, countertenor
Benjamin Geier, tenor
Huang Ruo, composer
Cathy Barbash, producer

T he thoughtful selection of 16th-Century Chinese imagery alternating with Italian Baroque Catholic Church imagery was accompanied by short descriptive and poetical Chinese and English texts read by Qin Fang and by Ann Waltner, respectively, interleaved with the Chinese and Italian Baroque music. The pace and the variety of sonic textures were really exciting—informing those of us who do not know very much about Chinese or Jesuit history; capturing and holding our interest throughout; and inspiring our expanding wonder about what the decades-long contact that Fr. Ricci and his Chinese hosts had with each other really entailed.

H uang Ruo’s “Fisherman’s Sonnet” is patterned after kun opera but includes a number of exotic orchestrations of Chinese and western instruments that have probably never been heard playing together before (sackbuts! viola da gamba! Baroque organ! with sheng and guzheng!).

C arrie Tsujui Chin’s sheng playing and Yang Yi’s guzheng were masterful and incisive—at times forcefully and at other times poignantly and delicately contrasting with the rest of the ensemble’s Baroque Italian harmonies.

Huang Ruo – Fisherman’s Sonnet
A. Gabrieli – Benedictus Dominus Deus Sabaoth
A. Gabrieli – Ricercar
A. Gabrieli – Alla Battaglia
Anon. – Tianfeng huanpei (Jade Pendants of the Immortals)
G. Palestrina – Quan pulchri Sunt
G. Nanino – Amor m’ha posto; I pensier so saette
G. Palestrina – Nigra sum, sed formosa
Bartolomeo de Selma – Vestiva i colli
G. Palestrina – Vestiva i colli
Anon. – Gaoshan liushui (Lofty Mountains and Rolling Waters)
A. Gabrieli – Ricercar arioso
G. Palestrina – Surgam et circuibo civitatem
Huang Ruo – My Promises are Above

T he readings were graceful and passionately delivered. Some of the readings are excerpts from Ricci’s diaries and letters—poetical in their own way and manifesting not so much the worldview of a missionary of the Roman Catholic Church as the personal and good-hearted expressions of a human being who is deeply and continually interested in other people and how they live, continually interested in learning, and in Life. Over his 30+ years in China, Ricci was fluent in writing and speaking Chinese and came to be highly regarded by the local Chinese scholars with whom he came into contact.

R icci [Li Xitai] … there is not a single one of our books that he has not read… In a noisy gathering of several dozen people with everybody speaking at once, the arguments he is following do not disturb him at all… [Other people] err through an excess of either inflexibility or compliancy… they are all inferior to him.”
— Li Zhi, letter to a friend regarding Ricci, 1600.

I f one totes up the durations of the various segments of the performance, the Chinese texts and music occupy considerably less time than the Baroque western music and Ricci texts. This is, after all, a production about Ricci and his activity and travels and his map. But the Chinese material is not merely ‘context’ or ‘backdrop’ for the Ricci saga; it is aesthetically and expressively as strong as the rest. The guzheng and sheng music is, if anything, revealing of a greater depth of existential reflection and contemplation on the part of the Chinese—of a great intellectual openness and spiritual preparedness to receive whatever insights a new experience [with Ricci, or with others] might offer—contrasted with the still-transcendent-but-more-constrained conceptions of Gabrieli or Palestrina. From the performance, we get the strong message that the illustrious Chinese Ricci encountered and whose writings survive were extraordinary human beings, every bit as much as Ricci was extraordinary.

T here are, naturally, other, less sanguine perspectives on Ricci and his accomplishments (see some of the books linked below). Indeed, some of Huang Ruo’s music conveys the diversity of Chinese opinion about the Jesuit(s) in their midst. Ricci’s chronic reluctance to forthrightly state what his or the Church’s purposes and intentions were in China evidently wore thin at times—graciousness has its limits, and there has to be an acceptable bilateral flow of value, or convincing and ongoing prospects of future value flow, for the relationship/exchange/intrusion to be sustainable. Huang Ruo’s music and the ensemble’s playing provide a balanced and empathetic, speculative account of this cross-cultural give-and-take. This is not surface-level alternating now-Chinese-now-Western-sacred-music collage or ‘documentary’; instead, the dramatic tension of the work derives from the fact that the sequence of compositions does recreate this diversity, this give-and-take, complete with the politics and misapprehensions in it. Not inscrutable! Quite the opposite.

M any thanks to the IU and U of M for producing and performing this beautiful and exciting work! International Relations par excellence!

Thursday, June 16, 2011

David Hyun-Su Kim: Schumann’s ‘Davidsbündlertanze’, Op. 6

A lready as a young student he [Schumann] had evolved a philosophy of history, a systematic framework for the evaluation of temporally discrete cultural phenomena. This historical outlook pervades Schumann’s writing at every turn... [a Schlegel-like, Heine-like] faith in a future informed by the spirit of progress....”
— John Daverio, p. 118.

D avid Hyung-Su Kim’s performance of Schumann’s ‘Davidsbündlertanze’, Op. 6, in one of the ‘fringe’ events in the Boston Early Music Festival yesterday was idiomatically perfect—beautifully embodying the spirit and musical intentions of this Romantic classic. Stylistically, one can sense in his dramatic playing some of the influences of Robert Levin and other of David’s piano teachers. David is currently a DMA doctoral candidate at New England Conservatory of Music.

G ood interpretations of the Davidsbündlertänze reveal the essentials of Romantic Period aesthetics and philosophy: Insight derived from personal experience of fragments of life, Witz (humor/wit; provisional exploration; ad hoc reconsideration; fantasy/conjecture), and impulsive movement/arabesque. There is a Romantic ‘assuredness’ that the views you hold of what is true in the world are really true, absolutely true and immutable. Not ‘omniscient’, just ‘certain’, that’s all. Kim’s sensitive, emotionally expansive pianistic expressions achieve this very thing.

T he ‘Ungeduldig’ was as it should be: ‘impatient’, with the instrument’s hammer felts voiced not too hard, not too bright. The ‘Einfachs’ are just that: simple and earnest. We got a very cool, nocturne-like ‘Nicht schnell’, brooding, as though pondering the night sky. Kim’s ‘Zart und singend’ sang with great tenderness. ‘Mit gutem Humor’ did, in fact, amuse, and ‘Aus der Ferne’ was delivered with the right amount of detachment, remoteness… a sort of distance that evokes reminiscence with a touch of regret. David has a fabulous technique, plus fine insight into the composition and its inner motivations. Highlight of my day!

T he instrument itself, a 6.5-octave Viennese design made by R.J. Regier, was also a highlight—its rich, round tone perfect for this literature and for this intimate recital setting. (What is that little brass bell, though, over on the left side? I have not seen one of those before.)

N ote: This recital was performed in one of the small, carpeted first-floor rooms of the Goethe Institut in the Bay Bay area of Boston. The rectangular shape of the room and the tall ceiling height add to the acoustic challenges. In this instance, the fortepiano was positioned a few centimeters from one wall, in a stretch of the room where the wall has an irregular contour with a 25-centimeter-deep indentation/recess. Hardwood parquet flooring was the surface immediately below most of the instrument’s soundboard; only a little of the upper register was over carpet. The result was a surprisingly good sound, ample for the audience of about 100 people. If ever I were faced with a performance environment similar to the one at Goethe Institut, I would try to replicate that fortunate, highly-forgiving arrangement of the space!