jwilzewske: interspecies

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Chamber Music for Dressage Freestyle (kür)

I want people to feel that it’s not just a kur but something like art. I hope people have a physical feeling as they hear the music—for me it is so special. I want them to be excited as they listen and watch. I think there’s a lot of emotion in it... My music before was mostly French, and this kur has some international music, but I’m also using some music by Polish composers... It’s difficult to put a name to this music, but it’s like a mix of classical with trance.”
— Michal Rapcewicz, FEI World Cup 2009.

T his November 2011 post about the Spanish Riding School in Vienna has in 6 weeks’ time received a surprisingly large number of pageviews and outclicks.

M ost of these new visitors to CMT (and searchers who land on CMT) are equestrians, dressage riders looking for suitable music with tempi in the 140 to 160 bpm range that will suit the biomechanics of their horse and that will offer a chance to dramatically differentiate themselves from the other competitors… these are horse people who are tired to death of riding trite ‘pop’ music for their dressage tests.

B ut some of the horsey CMT visitors landing on that November lippizaner blogpost have come from TCP/IP addresses that indicate they are from Conservatories and from chamber music ensembles’ websites. Are these visitors merely musicians who in their spare time are hobbyist dressage amateurs? Or are they instead seriously looking to program new repertoire for dressage and thereby expand the market for their chamber performances and recordings? Are any of them composers, I wonder?

A nyhow, the traffic does stimulate thought! Possibly some composers would be intrigued by the prospect of writing for dressage... consider it in the same way you would composing for ballet! It is far easier to get commissioned by serious dressage riders to do some ‘miniatures’ than it is to get hired to write a ballet score. [Typically, there is a very brief leader or intro (the rider must enter the arena within 20 sec of the start of the music) to establish the mood/atmosphere and tempo and rhythmic structure of the piece—enough to cue the horse and rider. The dressage rules stipulate that the maximum length is 5 minutes of music. In many jurisdictions, there is no minimum time limit; however, most kür music is a bit longer than 3 min. Depending on the choreography, saying what you want to say in 3’30’’ or 4’20’’, say, is far more crisp, focused and dramatic (and competition-winning) than pointlessly dilating the piece to the max 4’59’’.]

A nd possibly some chamber music ensembles would be interested in recording such works... providing CDs or MP3s for dressage tests.

P ossibly ACF or other sponsors of new music would set ‘dressage to music’/‘freestyle’/‘kür’ as a subject for a future competition and call-for-compositions. Possibly one of the national dressage organizations would commission some compositions for kür.

T hink Bach WTC Bk 1, Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C minor, BWV 847 (prelude), with a dark-angel Sviatoslav Richter-esque tempo. Nothing too delicate! Nothing too subtle! The music will be amplified, typically in a large echoic arena or open space—so you need clear orchestration with not too much polyphony or rhythmic complexity. Think confident, ebullient, full of impulsion! Think music that is emblematic of divine almighty beauty, whatever you conceive that to be! Think intimate and individualistic sound that will showcase the equine dancer! Think ‘What music would a beautiful, balletic horse love to dance to?’

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Friends: Tigran Mansurian’s Four Serious Songs

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, performing barefoot at St. Brendan’s

F or that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts also.
Even one thing befalleth them all;
The one dieth, so dieth the other,
Yea, they have all one breath so that a man has no preeminence above a beast,
For all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
All are of the dust,
And all return to dust again.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:19-22.

Last night violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja gave a brilliant Irish premier performance of the 2006 concerto by composer Tigran Mansurian entitled ‘Four Serious Songs’.

Four Serious Songs (vioin concerto, after Brahms, Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121)

For that which befalleth (Eccl. 3:19-22), 6-min
So I returned and considered all the oppressions (Eccl. 4:1-3), 7-min
O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that lives in his possessions (Eccl. 41:1-2), 2-min
I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal (1 Cor 13:1-3,12-13), 5-min

This concerto is way beyond ‘serious’: it is full-blown tragedy. The first movement is haunted with foreboding: ominous half-note chromatics in the double-bass and eery glisses in the other strings. The second movement is hemmed-in, expectant of the unrelenting oppressions that the Ecclesiastes text suggests. The third movement is genuinely bitter, more or less renouncing the rest of humanity in its addiction to materialistic pursuits; defiant strings give an angry-despondent recitative.

Finally, the concluding fourth movement: in the beginning, it is ethereal, vaporescent. Violins and violas in ultra-high registers; close encounters at the upper extremities of their fingerboards. The cellos hold forth with whisperings that emulate a cold wind, utterly heartless—strings damped by the fingers so as to produce a pitchless sound, gray noise of the bow drawn lightly, on-edge against the string. Law of the Universe, the die has been cast; things in motion tend to stay (heartlessly) in motion; no reprieves. A more desolate, time-beyond-humankind effect would be hard to imagine.

Then the strings, together as a choir, respond in a subdued major key. Maybe there is hope after all, for humans and for other species as well…

But, no, it’s not to be. The major-key chordal writing gives way to impassioned, violent atonal passages and a resolution in a dour, uncertain minor. Agonal gasps; the length of the bow is consumed, millisecond by millisecond: kinesthetically an analogue of lung capacity, the bow with its limits to inspiration (up-bow) and expiration (down-bow). Struggling for breath, exhausting what little is left of the length of your bow-stroke. All species may go down together, but that does not mean that no one is guilty, that no one is to blame for this destruction. We humans are irredeemably at fault: thus spake the prophet Mansurian.

St. Brendan’s, Bantry, Co. Cork, Ireland

Kopatchinskaja’s treatment was superb. The bare feet under Patricia’s red gown were a bit unconventional, although I can readily understand how the sensation of the cold floor under the soles and toes may be crucial to informing her interpretation. If one wants to be forcibly grounded in the decumbent, ascetic, prostratory mood of this apocalyptic ecopolitical Mansurian piece, then one should play one’s violin barefoot on a cold floor in an old, cold church!

Kopatchinskaja has recently served as guest director and soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She was born in Moldova.

Born in Beirut in 1938, in 1947 Mansurian’s family moved to Armenia. Mansurian took his PhD at the Yerevan State Musical Conservatory where he later taught contemporary music analysis. Now prominent among Armenian composers, Mansurian’s output includes orchestral works, seven concerti for strings and orchestra, sonatas for cello and piano, three string quartets, madrigals, chamber music and works for solo instruments.

Violins: Katherine Hunka, Karl Sweeney, Róisin Walters, Ionana Petcu-Colan, Maria Ryan, David O Leary, Siún Milne
Violas: Joachim Roewer, Ruth Gibson, Lucy Nolan
Cellos: Eoin Quinlan, Peggy Nolan
Double-bass: Malachy Robinson