jwilzewske: garrop

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Halloween: Spooky String Quartets, Scary Piety

T he basic purpose of story-telling ... is not just to entertain but to illuminate life. It doesn’t matter if we deal in the symbolism of supernatural beings such as vampires, zombies, ghosts, werecreatures, and unknowable cosmic entities. If horror is done right—and we have only to look at the stories withstanding the test of time to identify which ones are done right—then it provides a psychological roadmap through the trials of life.”
— Matthew Warner, Horror Isn’t a 4-Letter Word, p. 14.

To many, Halloween is a perfect ‘holiday’, relatively free of the social stresses that burden other celebrations during the year. And, to celebrate Halloween, it’s always good to have some appropriate atmospheric music to mark the occasion. If you and your string quartet friends are looking for something new to put you and your Halloween audiences in the spirit, you can surely do no better than Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2, ‘Demons & Angels’.

[50-sec clip, Stacy Garrop, String Quartet No. 2 ‘Demons & Angels’, Mvt. 3, ‘Inner Demons’, 1.2MB MP3]

Music in the Loft commissioned the first two movements of ‘Demons and Angels’ for performance by the Biava Quartet on its 2004/2005 concert series. The Loft subsequently commissioned the rest of the piece, premiered by the Biava Quartet at Yale University in November 2005. The 4-movment complete work received its premiere at Music in the Loft in October, 2006.

An assemblage of unrelenting demons, unreliable angels, and gothic humanity, String Quartet No. 2 tells the story of a devout man who confidently and self-righteously thought his actions were guided by God, only to discover that he was mistaken—he has in fact heinously murdered five people. The first two movements elucidate the deluded personality of this character. The first, ‘Demonic Spirits’, addresses the darkness that’s inherent in his pious self-deception. The movement begins with a jarring chord played five times, each one representing a murder. These chords return as violent interruptions throughout the piece. This movement has two main themes: the first theme is martial/militaristic; the second theme is sinister in its arrogant impishness. The second movement, ‘Song of the Angels’, contemplates the goodness in the protagonist before his personality is transformed by delusional piety. The cello has a long solo created by blending elements of the first movement’s themes, representing how evil is spawned from good intentions that are oblivious to reality.

The third movement, ‘Inner Demons’, is a vivid account of this character as he descends into psychosis. This movement contains four themes: a tarantella, a demented waltz, a scherzo, and the Kentucky pentecostal folk hymn ‘The Wayfaring Stranger.’ Finally, the eerie hymn asserts itself above all, and we hear the man commit the five murders that opened the first movement. The piece concludes with IV. ‘Broken Spirit.’ This movement explores his realization of what he has done. The man is caught and sentenced to life in prison. With a festinating four-note motive, the man paces in his cell while his mental state alternates between psychotic violence and spasms of remorseful hope that, through contrition, he can be saved by angels.

I am a poor Wayfaring Stranger,
A-trav’lin’ [you betcha!] through this land of woe.
And there’s no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I know dark clouds will gather ‘round me;
I know my way is [darn] rough and steep.
But beauteous fields lie just beyond me [my friends],
Where souls redeemed their vigil keep.
I want to wear a crown of glory
When I get home to that bright land;
I want to shout Salvation’s story
In concert with that blood-washed band.”
— Appalachian Folk Hymn.

Of course, a composer’s decision to write a string quartet is fateful in its own right, linking one to the great European tradition, including veneration of glorious, deceased masters. At the outset the composer always believes in her/his own mind that the quartet-writing enterprise is a just and righteous one. Mindful of the risk of self-deception, however, Garrop dissects her corpses carefully and finds her own funereal path. ‘Demons & Angels’ is a pestilential object lesson in terror—for listeners, performers, and maybe other composers. She discovers her quartetly ‘path’ both musically and theatrically, incorporating diverse elements and exploiting the dimly-lit concert environment in suspenseful bubonic ways. Musically, Garrop’s works are distinguished by the mordant quality of their realization. The Second Quartet embodies a well-(de)composed ‘working out’ of the implications of these various morbidly-contrasting motivic ideas and Ichabodleian gestures with a traditional arch form, galloping repeated psycho-rhythms, and a cadaveric approach to thematic development. ;)

Stacy Garrop has won several orchestra competitions resulting in performances by the Civic Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, New England Philharmonic, the Women’s Philharmonic, and readings by the Minnesota Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. She was also selected for the Dale Warland Singers 2000-2001 New Choral Music Program. She was a finalist for the 2001 Rome Prize, and received a 2001 Barlow Endowment commission, as well as a 2002 Artists Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council.

Her works have been recently performed by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Singers, EARPLAY. Other performances includes ones given by the National Repertory Orchestra and the new music ensembles Third Angle and SoundsNew.

She has held fellowships/residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Yaddo, and Wellesley Composers Conference.

Garrop completed her Doctorate in Music at Indiana University in 2000; she also holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1995) and a B.M. from University of Michigan (1992).

Stacy is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Other Halloween-ish pieces you might consider include these:

B. Bartók - String Quartet No. 4
L. Beethoven - String Quartet in C minor, Op. 18 No. 4
V. Ho - String Quartet No. 1
H. Purcell - Chacony in G minor (Z730)
C. Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre, Op. 40, arr. for string quartet by Matt Kingston
D. Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8 in C minor
I. Xenakis - ST/10

Z ig et zig et zag, la mort crie cadence
Frappant une tombe avec son talon,
La mort à minuit joue un air de danse,

Zig et zig et zag, sur son violon.
Le vent d'hiver souffle, et la nuit est sombre,
Des gémissements sortent des tilleuls ;
Les squelettes blancs vont à travers l'ombre
Courant et sautant sous leurs grands linceuls,

Zig et zig et zag, chacun se trémousse,
On entend claquer les os des danseurs,
Un couple lascif s'asseoit sur la mousse
Comme pour goûter d'anciennes douceurs.

Zig et zig et zag, la mort continue
De racler sans fin son aigre instrument.
Un voile est tombé ! La danseuse est nue!
Son danseur la serre amoureusement.
La dame est, dit-on, marquise ou baronne.
Et le vert galant un pauvre charron - Horreur!
Et voilà qu'elle s'abandonne
Comme si le rustre était un baron!

Zig et zig et zig, quelle sarabande!
Quels cercles de morts se donnant la main!

Zig et zig et zag, on voit dans la bande
Le roi gambader auprès du vilain!
Mais psit ! tout à coup on quitte la ronde,
On se pousse, on fuit, le coq a chanté
Oh! La belle nuit pour le pauvre monde!
Et vive la mort et l'égalité!

[Zig … zig … zag, Death in cadence
Striking a tomb with his heel,
Death on the stroke of midnight plays a dance-tune,

Zig … zig … zag, on his violin.
The winter wind blows, and the night is dark,
Groans are heard in the lindens;
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.

Zig … zig … zag: each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—
A lustful couple sits on pillows
As if to relish a remembrance of softness that they knew in life.

Zig … zig … zag, Death continues
to scrape endlessly his sour instrument.
A shroud fell! The dancer is nude!
The dancers embrace, squeezing each other in withered love.
The lady was, says one, a marquise or baroness.
And the gallant lover was but a poor cartwright – Horror!
Look how wantonly she bonily abandons herself
As if the uncouth one was a baron!

Zig … zig … zig, which sarabande!
Circles of deaths giving each other the hand!

Zig … zig … zag, one sees in the band
The beauteous gambol with the ugly!
But psit! all of a sudden they quit the round ,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.
Oh! How exquisite is this night for the poor world!
And how lively Death and Equality!]
— Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), ‘Danse Macabre’.

The archetype for the Halloween spooky trope is no doubt the grotesque poem by Henri Cazalis that Saint-Saëns set for his ‘Danse Macabre’: ‘Zig et zig et zig, la Mort in cadence.’ Death, the violinist: summoning skeletons from their graves at midnight for a dance. Ghastly merriment, with interruptions. The poem’s two themes—one: osseous, clacking; the other: benighted, desolate.

If your quartet’s cellist is game, you might find Kaija Saariaho’s ‘Petals’ especially fitting as an addition to your play list. The tremendous abjection of it is deeply scary [click on the link to hear a YouTube clip of it]; very different from Danse Macabre.

It’s a challenge for composer and performers alike to achieve the grotesque without devolving into cheap pastiche. Garrop’s quartet orchestration is robust, balanced in a way that does not present excessive risks in performance. Kingston’s arrangement of the Saint-Saëns is vivid and serviceable. And Saariaho’s cello solo will leave everyone hesitant to shake the scary cellist’s hand after the performance. Bwwaah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

P etals für Violoncello solo wurde in wenigen Tagen komponiert; eine lange, unbewußte Vorbereitung war diesem Stück jedoch vorangegangen. Das Material stammt direkt von meinem Stück Nymphea für Streichquartett und Elektronik. Der Name Petals (Blumenblätter) ist ebenfalls aus dieser Beziehung abgeleitet. Die gegensätzlichen Elemente darin sind sehr zerbrechlich, es sind farbenprächtige Passagen, die energischere Ereignisse mit klarem rhythmischen und melodischen Charakter hervorbringen. Diese scharf umrissenen Figuren werden verschiedenen Veränderungen unterworfen und versinken schließlich in einem dynamisch reduzierten, aber nicht weniger intensiven Filigranmuster. Mit der Kombination dieser beiden gegensätzlichen Ausdrucksarten wollte ich den Interpreten zu einer Ausweitung seiner körperlichen Sensibilität zwingen.
[‘Petals’ was composed in just a few days; a long, unconscious incubation preceded this, however. The material comes directly from my piece ‘Nymphea’ for string quartet and electronics. The name ‘Petals’ is derived also out of this relation—the Nymphs; the string/electronics orchestration. The moribund frailty of it all, of the petals! The opposing elements: passages that are very fragile with ambiguous character and rhythm oppose colorful passages evoking vigorous events with clear rhythmic and melodic character. These sharply outlined figures are subjected to different variations; they sink, and are dynamically reduced in the end to just one, but with still-intensive filigreed patterns. With the combination of opposing expression types, I wanted to force the performer to expand her/his sensitivity to the corporeal limits.”
— Kaija Saariaho.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Biava String Quartet: Too Much Is Never Enough

T oo much is never enough.”
— Mick Jagger.

However big the repertoire for string quartets gets, it is not possible to have too many string quartets.

The Biava Quartet performed Saturday night at the annual black-tie gala/soiree benefiting the Friends of Chamber Music in Kansas City. Approximately 250 attendees enjoyed the concert-dinner-auction event in the Kirk Hall of the Kansas City Public (Central) Library, a 1906 historic building which was renovated/restored in 2004.

The Biava Quartet was founded in 1998 at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Its members were trained at the New England Conservatory of Music, the University of Southern California, Yale University, and The Juilliard School. Currently the Biavas are the Lisa Arnhold Quartet-in-Residence at Juilliard. They were also the winners of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 2003.

The Quartet is named after violinist and conductor Luis Biava, who has been a mentor to members of the group. Biava is Professor at Temple University Boyer College of Music and was previously Conductor-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra. A native of Colombia, Biava was a founding member of the Philarte String Quartet and continues to play first violin with the Philadelphia Chamber Ensemble.

The Biava Quartet’s repertoire features American composers John Harbison, Mason Bates, William Bolcom, and Ezra Laderman. Last year the Quartet premiered and recorded composer Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2 ‘Demons and Angels’.

[50-sec clip, Stacy Garrop, String Quartet No. 2 ‘Demons and Angels’, Biava String Quartet, 1.2MB MP3]

The Biavas last night gave the gala attendees a dazzling 30 minutes of ‘bon-bons’.

Schnittke—Polka, 1980 (arr. Sergei Dreznin): parts alternately take on serious and jesting poses; extreme rubato propels the circus theatrics; sheet music available from Sikorski; 2 minutes 30 seconds of ironical hilarity in B minor;
Puccini—Crisantemi (chrysanthemums), 1890: a G minor caricature written in a single night, in memory of duke Amadeo of Savoy; Puccini later reused this work in his opera Manon Lescaut; ‘pneumatic’ phrasing heightens the lyrical and dramatic effects, which alternately call into question the authenticity of theatre and of so-called ‘real’ life; Biavas’ incisiveness succeeds in animating these questions in just 5 minutes; sheet music available from MusicForStrings;
Turina—Oración del Torero (Bullfighter’s Prayer), 1925: opens quietly with stealthy pizzicato (What is this bullfighter praying for?); pace progresses impulsively and reveals out-of-control impetuosity and narcissism, then gets a grip in an expansive and calming melody; sheet music available from MusicRoom;
Beach—Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, Op. 80, 1916: sometimes paired with readings from poet Emily Dickinson or American Indian folk literature; coloristic American/Macdowellian whimsy at its finest; sheet music available from RecitalPublications.com;
Shostakovich—Age of Gold Polka (arr. Jason Calloway): incongruous dissonances that opine that ‘stuff happens’, humans are never really ‘in control’ of anything.

The Biava Quartet’s pacing is edgy and precise, neat, white-knuckled—exciting. Passages played expressively in other settings (conventional concerts; recordings) here come across as paradoxically stern (watch violinist Hyunsu Ko furrow her brow!), whereas rigid sections are in a festive mood read more lyrically and infused with humor and theatricality. The Biava Quartet devises a program that is perfect for a gala benefit!

The Biava Quartet’s members are:

Austin Hartman, violin;
Hyunsu Ko, violin;
Mary Persin, viola;
Jason Calloway, cello

This coming week the Biavas will be performing at the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar in New York. (Probably the repertoire there will be not quite so jocular as at the gala?)

It should go without saying that there is no ‘affluenza’ of string quartets, anymore than there is an affluenza of paintings or photographs or films: the threshhold of unmet market demand for excellent string quartets is still higher than the current supply. Instead of the growing classical musical wealth freeing us from ‘materialist’ preoccupations, it has the opposite effect—of making us more conscious of how much more there is to create and to have, and more conscious and less accepting of mediocrity. Not ‘acquisitiveness’ really; just a hedonistic joy in seeking out more of the experiences that the Biavas are providing!

Would there ever be ‘Enough’? If ‘enough’ means ‘satisfying desire’, ‘adequate to meet the need’, ‘sufficient’, I doubt it. What we have right now is, at best ‘in a tolerable but not super-abundant degree, denoting mere acceptableness or acquiescence, and implying a degree or quantity rather less than is desired’. As in, “This quartet was well enough, but I’m still hungry for more.”

There can never be too many string quartets—not compositions; not ensembles; not performances—especially when carried off with such panache. The Biava Quartet’s wonderful performance contributed significantly to reaching the Friends of Chamber Music’s fund-raising goals. A heart-felt thanks to the Quartet members for generously making a place for these sorts of promotional events in their busy schedule of teaching and concertizing! (It’s hard maybe for performing artists to place a value on promotion and audience development. But presenters know well how vital and valuable promotional events are. Without such events there would not be nearly so many commissions for composers, not nearly so many opportunities for up-and-coming performers and ensembles, and, ultimately, a less vibrant community in which publishers, recording companies, and presenters and other stakeholders also can thrive.)

Gala promotional events may not be ideal from acoustic or musical aesthetic perspectives, but they are a life-blood to the classical music community and privately funding chamber music in the U.S. These events are vital not only for retention and bonding with the usual, older philanthropist-patrons in the community; they are also vital for attracting new corporate sponsors, for whom the events have a certain desirable cachet.

F ind an ‘in’. Find a Board member or even a LinkedIn connection who can introduce you [to the business person you intend to solicit for sponsorship of your chamber music organization] so you’re not ‘cold calling’. I always respond to people who come recommended by someone I know, and businesspeople do, too. Start your sentences [addressing potential corporate sponsors] in the right way. Instead of ‘This is what we do,’ say ‘[Look at this.] This is what we can do for you.’ ”
— Katya Andresen, NetworkingForGood, 17-MAR-2008.

Besides this, gala events also attract a fair number of under-40s who see black-tie experiences as a sort of musical ‘adventure travel’. (‘Tourism’ would be the wrong word; too passive. To this group, gala cultural events are ‘expeditions’—opportunities to visit an esoteric place and society that few members of the group would encounter otherwise; a cross-genre dual art of ‘elegant conversation and dining’-plus-‘chamber music’, ‘hybrid art’ as the Australians would say; an ‘extreme contact sport’.) Participating in a civic cultural event, clustered in dinner tables of ten, these under-40s actively create memories. The uncertainties and risks and thrills involved are very much the same sort as arise in travel abroad, to places where you don’t speak the language.

A spirited and thoughtful volume. One of Bruner’s greatest contributions is his constructivist position, from which he views cultures as continually reinventing themselves. Tourist practices are seen as neither simulacra nor ersatz, but as active social performances in their own right. This position allows Bruner to free anthropologists from their previous impasse of thinking along the binary of authenticity-inauthenticity, a persistent focus of tourism scholarship ever since Dean MacCannell’s 1970s writing on ‘staged authenticity.’ Because culture is always emergent, alive, and in process, every cultural act is authentic.”
— Miriam Kahn, review of Bruner’s book, in American Anthropologist, 2004.

Not merely sight-seeing or posing as explorers, they immerse themselves; they talk with the Biavas and bid against socialites for choice live-auction items. Respectful amateur anthropologists, they conduct themselves politely and with earnestness and interest, as they would do when abroad in a foreign country. ‘Destination Culture’ enthusiasts, they take ‘tribal’ photos of the scene and of each other (discreetly on cell phone cameras, to be uploaded later and virally shared), recording the historical facts of their night’s expedition.

This sort of high-touch ‘face-to-face’ audience development (of Bruner-style active destination-cultural ‘explorers’) just doesn’t happen in conventional concert hall settings or tamer pre-/post-concert ‘socials’. There is no doubt that encounters like these are healthy for all concerned—the ‘natives’ and the ‘explorers’.

W hat we have is a circuit of embodiments and disembodiments, a passage of vivid sensations through bodies—first extracted from perceptions and affections, then rendered perceptible in the expressive matter of the artwork, then engaged by audiences swept up into the artwork.”
— Ronald Boque, Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, p. 170.

Basically, vigorous, civic-minded ensembles like the Biava Quartet are, through gestures like their superb, unusual performance in Kansas City last night, helping to insure the future of chamber music in this country—by revealing wider, more improvisatory, and less ‘serious’ dimensions of chamber music—to a wider audience, many of whom never imagined that these dimensions existed. Too much gratitude from us for their generosity is impossible—too much is never ‘Enough’.