jwilzewske: evidence

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Artemis Quartett: Dissonance, Forensic Evidence, and Knowing

L et’s make nonfiction that is more thrilling than fiction. Let’s use the best of what fiction has to offer and make it more exciting because what happened was real.”
— Ellen Windemuth, founder, Off_the_Fence Productions, Amsterdam.

A rtemis Quartet’s performance in Kansas City last Friday night received a warm reception here.

Natalia Prischepenko, violin
Gregor Sigl, violin
Friedemann Weigle, viola
Eckart Runge, cello

T he all-Beethoven program consisted of Op. 95 (F minor) “Serioso”, Op. 127 No. 12 (E-flat major), and Op. 59 No. 3 “Razumovsky” (C major): supple interpretations throughout, without excesses of any kind, either radical or conservative. In this way, what the Artemis are doing sounds perpetually spontaneous, as though each member is reconsidering the ‘evidence’ that is expressed in her/his part—considering it anew each time they play.

I n fact, one of the qualities that impressed me especially was Artemis Quartett’s emphasis on the dramatic tensions between the parts—discourse between the instruments, yes, but as though the instruments (and the scores) have long-lasting disagreements, and express points of view that are founded on different evidence, profoundly different life-histories, irreconcilably different politics, and so on. Each player/part is not about to renounce what he/she ‘knows’.

[50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 II, ‘Allegretto ma non troppo’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he exciting (and thought-provoking) result is a durable refractoriness to “nice” conclusions—a richness of trans-indivdual tension and dramatic complexity, even in works that are very familiar to us from repeated listening or performances.

T he encore, Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Suite del Ángel: Milonga del Ángel – Melancólico’, was another 6.7-min illustration of this.

T his Piazzolla suite is part of his series of “ángel” compositions from the 1950s and 1960s, usually performed with bandoneon or other instrumentation instead of this gorgeous arrangement for string quartet. Piazzolla had studied with Nadia Boulanger and famously alleged that his unusual counterpoint methods, for better or worse, could be blamed on her insidious pedagogy. In the “ángel” movement that the Artemis performed as an encore, we have lyrical elements that are passed among the quartet members, some of whose musical ‘testimony’ is corroborative of others’ testimony and some of whose testimony is discorroborative or contradictory. The scordatura-governed dissonance is earnest but not fierce; laconic, not agitated and verbose; and, as noted above, its rhetoric is serious, not whimsical or anecdotal.

T his peculiar Piazzolla suite is similar in narrative technique and orchestration methods to the 1949 ‘Sonata for Double Bass’ by Paul Hindemith. In that work, the bass player uses scordatura, tuning up a whole-step, which lends an unsettling, destabilizing effect to the sonata. In this Piazzolla movement, the cello’s C-string is tuned, I think, a whole-step down. In both works, the parts conjure a song in the form of a dialogue between the instruments. Hindemith: creator of ‘disharmonious counterpoint’ in which traditional combinatorial rules are subverted by a ‘decoupled system’ of tonality, or, maybe more accurately, a novel with an “unreliable narrator” point-of-view character. Piazzolla: creator of ‘testimonial dissonance’, with similar “unreliable” point-of-view characters.

T he same melody can be sung either alone or together with other players/characters, or entirely different melodies can be enunciated at the same time, or with variations that substantially alter the sense that the melody makes—the very embodiment of subjectivity and multiple, unstable points-of-view.

W hile we can recognize that the point of view of the “ángel” cello is constitutionally dour or sometimes irritable/unsympathetic, the subtlety and the disputes among the other parts’ responses prevent us from deciding that the cello-narrator, for all his vividness and probity, is more than just a figment of Piazzolla’s imagination. Our drive for certainty is flouted again and again, but we continue to listen, and there arrive more clues. We continue our listening with feelings of prolongèdly heightened suspense. Or ‘suspense-mingled-with-poignant-sense-of-loss-plus-optimism’.

T he result is that we get a riveting, realistic depiction of what may happen to human psyches when they are self-styled and unrelenting. They each know what they know; they each agree to disagree. Such complexity is emotionally engaging and believable, not confusing. In other words, read the quartet as you would read a good novel—as though it were real.

[50-sec clip, Artemis Quartett, Piazzolla, ‘Milonga del Ángel-Melancólico’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he Beethoven the Artemis offered was remarkably cogent and organic. The group dispatched the agitated, mercurial first movement of the Quartet in F minor (Op. 95) with a deft combination of rhapsodic vigor and cool control.”
— Anthony Tomassini, New York Times, 02-MAR-2010.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Chamber Music Noir: The Hearable, the Unhearable, and the Merely Suspected

O f all the criticisms ... of Schenker and his school, one has been especially persistent: it is that Schenkerian analysis fails to do justice to rhythm, that critical element without which there could be no music. ... In considering Schenker’s assumption that tonal events take priority over rhythm, we might well begin by determining whether we can even investigate these two aspects of music apart from each other. According to Charles Rosen such a separation is not valid, ‘as if a tonal melody could exist without a rhythmic contour’. ... But does it then follow that any separation of the elements of music must be ‘nonsensical’? Only, I think, if the separation plays no role in our perception of the music; in music theory the nonsensical is the unhearable.”
— Carl Schachter, Unfoldings, p. 17.

Music can provide atmosphere for a good story. In fact, it can propel a story or enliven what would otherwise be a scene or story of only moderate interest. Of course.

But is it proper to think of melodies as affect-generating archtypes? I normally would be inclined to say, ‘No.’ But then I come upon some example—often a miniature chamber music work—where I have to reconsider.

For example, Patrick Gowers’s Sherlock Holmes melody, for the 1980s series produced by Granada for U.S. public TV (directed by David Carson; developed by John Hawkesworth; starring Jeremy Brett). The melody is constructed from supple, irregular phrases—scheming, sleuthly, syncopal in its rhythmic progress. When we hear the suspenseful percussion of horses’ hooves on the cobbles of Baker Street, the music complies. When we see Jeremy Brett (Holmes) gazing cynically down from the upstairs window of 221B, the music completes the cadence and completes the scene, culminating an air-tight, coherent melodic process: supple phrases interleaved with the carefully edited dramatic flow of the imagery. Perfect trailer.

The 221B melody’s obvious pattern of short distinct phrases evokes a sense of ‘chamber music noir’. Continuity is achieved through connecting devices between the short (gasping?) phrases and between the rhythmic shapes of the several parts. The lyrical melody, through its connection to the drama, is revealed to be—by design—inextricably inter-dependent with non-musical elements such as the screenplay’s dramaturgy.

Film scoring at its best. Melodic and rhythmic contours of crimes committed, mysteries solved. Inherently ‘noir’, and supportive of Charles Rosen’s point.

[50-sec clip, Patrick Gowers, 221B Baker Street theme, 1.4MB MP3]

Patrick Gowers is now 72. He took his doctorate at Cambridge in 1965, with a dissertation on the music of Eric Satie. He was music director of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Marat/Sade’ (two seasons at Aldwych Theatre and one in New York). It wasn’t until the late 1960s that he started scoring feature and documentary films and television programs, first in Denmark and then in the U.K.

In 1982 Gowers won the BAFTA original music award for his scores for ‘Smiley’s People’, ‘The Woman in White’ and ‘I Remember Nelson’. In addition to his film work, Gowers has also written several virtuoso works for the organ, music for the Three Choirs Festival, and a ‘Guitar Concerto’ performed by John Williams. Patrick is the father of mathematician Timothy Gowers, author Rebecca Gowers, and violinist Katharine Gowers.

Other examples? The Helsinki quartet Apocalyptica, founded in 1993, does a number of ‘chamber music noir’ pieces—some of them composed by Metallica’s Lars Ulrich. Apocalyptica is comprised of classically-trained cellists Eicca Toppinen, Max Lilja, Antero Manninen, and Paavo Lotjonen. Below are a couple Apocalyptica MP3 clips, with peculiar, dark melodic-rhythmic contours.

[50-sec clip, Lars Ulrich, Apocalyptica, Nothing Else Matters, 1.4MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Lars Ulrich, Apocalyptica, One, 1.4MB MP3]