Showing posts with label loft-szene. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loft-szene. Show all posts

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Chiara String Quartet & Jefferson Friedman: Creative Symbiosis

Chiara String Quartet
The Chiara String Quartet gave a nice reprise tonight of their March appearance at TheBrick in Kansas City. As before, the house was packed during both sets.

Let’s set the record ‘straight’: club venues can be excellent for chamber music performances. An expert sound engineer and excellent gear can make the club nearly the acoustic equal of a recording studio or a fine small concert hall. And the audience who shows up is often more engaged and appreciative than most conventional classical music presenters are accustomed to. No rustling paper programs, no premeditated conditioning to a familiar, comodified repertoire. Just attentive immersion in the music. (Note to presenters: to keep your chamber music audience from coughing, just serve them cocktails.)

The Chiaras’ set-list included movements from Brahms’ Quartet in A Minor Op. 51 No. 2; selections from their CD of Gabriela Lena Frank compositions, ‘Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout’; plus movements from Beethoven’s Quartet in E-flat Major Op. 127 and Jefferson Friedman’s String Quartet No. 2. (The Chiara Quartet’s previous appearance here had included parts of Friedman’s Quartet No. 3.)

Chiara String Quartet
The Chiaras’ interpretive skills and aesthetic intuition find perfect application in rendering the music of composer Jefferson Friedman. Friedman’s Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 have been acclaimed by various critics, but some reviewers have also opined about certain shortcomings and problematic sections. Some commenters, such as David Salvage of Sequenza21, have impugned some aspects of the Quartets’ craftsmanship while simultaneously praising other aspects.

Be that as it may, the expressive language in the No. 2 and No. 3 Quartets is reasonably forgiving, and the Chiaras are empathetic and insightful executants. This situation is, I think, not too different from an author having a skillful translator to render the original work into another language.

Without a doubt, the concept of expressive fidelity and authenticity operates on many levels—in musical texts as well as literary ones. One level is vocabulary—mapped as precisely as possible, even in cases where this requires using unfamiliar expressions or inventing new words in the target language: ‘neologisms’ that somehow convey the intent of the original text. In music, this can entail unusual articulation to get unfamiliar timbres; unusual orchestration; unusual voice-leading.

Ultimately, the most important question regarding translatorly fidelity is ‘meaning’. If the words (notes) and syntax and rhythm and style are carried through to the target language (musical performance), the meaning will follow. Even if the original is ambiguous, or even if it has multiple meanings, a skillful translation will replicate that ambiguity/multiplicity of meanings.

There are times, though, when circumstances force the translator—here, the Chiaras—into a particular interpretation. In that case, it’s important to take full advantage of every available clue, including syntactic details, motif usage, and the relationship to preceding and succeeding sections—i.e., the flow. What shouldn’t factor into the interpretation is the translator’s preconceived notions of what the author/composer “must have been talking about.” [Considering David Salvage’s criticisms of Friedman’s work, it seems that Salvage was taking issue with what Friedman was “saying”, not with the Chiaras’ interpretation of Friedman.]

Language is central to any discussion about translation. But there are elements involved in the process of translation that go beyond this conventional area. Literary translation involves a good deal of interpretation about intent and effect. Likewise in music performance practice. On the other hand, a good literary translator is often not as much interested in explicit transliteration as in finding an accurate mood, tone, voice, sound, response, and so forth. Music, the same. Once upon a time, Petrarch said the goal is similarity but not sameness:

A n imitator must see to it that what he writes is similar, but not the very same; and the similarity, moreover, should not be like that of a painting or statue to the person represented, but rather like that of a son to a father, where there is often a great difference in the features and body shape, yet after all there is a shadowy something—akin to what the painters call one’s ‘air’—hovering about the face, and especially the eyes, out of which there grows a likeness ... We writers, too, must see to it that along with the similarity there is a large measure of dissimilarity; and furthermore such likeness as there is must be elusive—something that it is impossible to seize except by a sort of hunt, a quality to be felt rather than defined.”
  —  Petrarch, Familiar Letters, The Young Humanist of Ravenna, to Boccaccio, 287-293.

So, contrary to some critics’ contention that poetry ‘loses’ in translation or that poetry is deeply ‘untranslatable’, there are others who hold that it must be illustrated and illuminated—who hold that the essence that matters most does transcend culture- and linguistic- and generational localizations. To them, poetry is always ‘found again’ and re-created by the translator—even in successive generations of people in the language and culture in which the work originated. Everything is hermeneutics! Of course, the original poetics can’t be ‘transcribed’!—they must be ‘arranged’! The new ‘arrangements’ may be even more fully realize the composer’s aspirations than the original score with its instructions and annotations.

In other words, the translator is not merely a special sort of ‘reader’. She/he is that, yes—but she/he is also vicariously a writer and performer. The translator needs to project herself/himself into these roles and consider translation from the perspective of the culture and linguistic heritage of the readers and audience. In this sense, the Chiaras are especially deeply “invested” in their roles as active musical translators/arrangers/readers/writers, not “only” performers. (Their investment style? High-risk musical growth equities! High-volatility, large alpha stocks, like Friedman!)

Chiara String Quartet
Good translators discover the dynamics of the work, and don’t allow its literal mechanics to trump every other card. This is what the Chiaras do so well. They take what Friedman wrote and add value to it. They make it their own. But they are also like specialists on the trading floor of a stock exchange—they “make a market” in Friedman.

A  bout two-thirds of the way through, something special happens: the instruments climb into their highest registers, start playing quick glissandos and unisons of varying vibrato widths, and, for a few breathless moments, break into birdsong. When the music returns to Earth again, the resolution is beautiful, and one realizes one has just heard something a little amazing.”
  —  David Salvage, Sequenza21, 27-APR-2005, on String Quartet No. 3.

Friedman’s writing is full of non-standard things. ‘Non-standard’ language may be used by an author/composer for other reasons than simply to make character speak in a more realistic way. Non-standard language is incorrect not only from a grammatical point of view, but also from an ethical stance. This sets non-standard language in stark contrast with standard language, which can be seen as representing the Establishment. Great move for a Young Turk composer like Friedman!

‘Non-standard’ language can be a sort of symbolic protest against the prevailing culture and society. For example, it can describe an underprivileged/overprivileged social context from the inside, through the language it uses. Non-standard language may in fact constitute ‘profanity’ against standard forms/norms even if it isn’t inherently profane. As a result, the use of non-standard language may help to make a musical, novelistic, or cinematic work more accessible to a target audience, in a provocative way. [And this Friedman Quartet No. 2 is positively cinematic, by the way.] Translating non-standard expressive language is therefore a hard task—harder than translating ordinary texts. Even when a skilled translator has understood the author’s original motives, the cultural background, the social level(s) referenced, and the intended effect, the problem remains of how to emulate the peculiar flavor and intent in another language.

There’s no easy solution. In theory the reader/hearer of the translated version should be able to intuit the same information the reader/hearer of the native text acquired. But this is tough. Shades of meaning do get lost in translation. So a really good translation is, and must be, a balance between what gets ‘lost’ and what can be ‘found’. The translation of non-standard language, even if it’s a difficult task, can be extremely fascinating and rewarding. Here’s where the Chiaras excel. They muster a hefty dose of creativity, and find ways of making sure that as little as possible is lost and as much as possible is found in their ‘translation’ or ‘arrangement’. Friedman wins; the Chiaras win; we win!

The No. 3 Quartet’s brief movements (first and third) enclose a longer central movement entitled ‘Act’. Both the first and third movements open with long, insistent, crescendo phrases. But while the first movement is “in your face” with aggressive ostinatos, the third movement is quiet, eventually settling on a major triad.

T he content of the middle movement is more varied. Ranging from close Ligeti-like chromatic counterpoint to spacious Copland-esque chorales, ‘Act’ doesn’t quite reconcile its contrasting materials satisfactorily. Particularly disappointing is the easy major resolution that concludes the movement.”
  —  David Salvage, [Sequenza21, 27-APR-2005]

T his No. 3 Quartet is uneven. The first movement never quite emerges. There are passages of ostinato that feel like un-melodied accompaniments. There are too many broad crescendos that terminate in sudden pianos.”
  —  David Salvage, [Sequenza21, 27-APR-2005]

T his young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in five or 10 years it is going to be spectacular. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development.”
  —  Itzhak Perlman.

Is Friedman’s C major resolution in this movement of the No. 3 quartet a ‘mistake’? Why does Salvage think it is ‘too easy’? Does Friedman regret the decision to resolve in this way? Should we accept Salvage’s assessment and feel embarrassment at preferring the C major choice that has been deprecated? Is Salvage a ‘pump-and-dump’ day-trader in Friedman? I, for one, do not think it is ‘easy’ or a ‘mistake’ any more than I think the major-key resolutions in much baroque music were ‘easy’ or ‘mistakes’. Think of Bach’s Concerto in D minor (BWV 974) –the nuances of Glenn Gould’s rendering of it, for example. There’s a poignancy in the major-key resolution that coheres with every minor-key thing that has gone before. There’s a restraint, there’s a backing-off of key attack velocity—many cues in the composition that add depth and complexity to an ‘easy’ major triad.

The Chiaras’ performance of parts of the No. 2 quartet at The Brick tonight was also illuminating—thoughtful without being self-conscious, erudite-but-never-scholastic. Mr. Friedman composed his String Quartet No. 2 for the Chiara String Quartet in 1999 while under the guidance of John Corigliano at Juilliard. The first movement opens with strident rhythms that deliberately shift in and out of sync. The lyrical second movement is a déjà vu view of someone’s secret reveries—either Friedman’s, or your own. In the dance-like third movement, rippling trills lead to a passage of muted longing and a revivified finale.

Quartet No. 2 does not have the first violin or any other part predominating unduly. No part merely ‘fills in’. The string writing deals far less in outlines than in harmonic blocks. The effect is exhilarating and gripping.

Friedman’s writing is contrapuntal and closely-packed—there’s far more texture in it than many ‘new music’ compositions. The excellent sound engineering at TheBrick did justice to the Chiaras’ rendering of this.

Jefferson Friedman
Born in 1974, Jefferson Friedman is American, the winner of the 2004 Rome Prize Fellowship in Musical Composition from the American Academy in Rome. His commissions include two orchestral pieces for Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra, works for the Yesaroun’ Duo, two string quartets for the Chiaras, and a chamber piece for the Utah Arts Festival. His music has been performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and the American Academy in Rome. Mr. Friedman received his M.M. degree in music composition from The Juilliard School where he studied with John Corigliano. He lives and composes in Long Island City, NY.

W   e know it’s great music. We also know that people who have never heard it before have very strong, visceral feelings and connections with the music. But barriers (have to be) broken down for them. I think a lot of our generation is working to take down those barriers that say classical music is elitist, or only for old people or only for rich people. We play all over the place - in schools, in nursing homes, in urban settings, in rural settings. We’ve really played for any audience that you can imagine. That really has to be an m.o. for any group starting out now.”
  —  Jonah Sirota, Chiara String Quartet, 2006.

S uits and tuxedos are designed explicitly to prevent blood from reaching the brain and to prevent audience members from feeling comfortable. We’ve done our best within the conventions of the concert hall to relax this feeling, but in the concert hall there is no easy way to duplicate the freedom of just being yourself you have when playing in a club.”
  —  Greg Beaver, Chiara String Quartet, 2007.


Engineer, TheBrick


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Monday, November 5, 2007

Prepared Piano: Bertelmann’s ‘Room to Expand’ / Improvisatory Politics

Volker Bertelmann
It’s admittedly an acquired taste. To say that you enjoy ‘prepared piano’ resembles saying that you genuinely like Campari or grappa straight. In this respect it is neither more and nor less so than saying you like any form of electroacoustic music or ‘found sound’—you enjoy being stimulated, and you do not insist on conventional narrative structure or conventional tonality or conventional rhythm. But ‘prepared piano’ does ‘grow’ on you, if you let it.

Hauschka Prepared Piano
Volker Bertelmann’s performance at the Goethe-Institut tonight in Boston shows just how far such music will go to ‘meet you half-way’. It was warm, accessible, inviting. Bertelmann’s ‘prepared piano’ was the vehicle for an evening’s discoveries and improvisations among about 100 delighted attendees. For this occasion, an otherwise fine Steinway was ‘tricked out’ with some of its hammers covered with aluminum and some of its strings encumbered with various bits of paper, cellophane, bottle-caps, clips, keys, saxophone reeds, foam wedges, chopsticks, loose guitar strings and metal chunks inserted into and between the piano’s strings. And lots, lots of duct-tape. Ach, der Horror! Nichts da! Alle Sünden in eine münden!

Volker Bertelmann
For Bertelmann, the rate at which various obligations of phrasing need to be met doesn’t always distinguish improvisation from other modes of playing. Yes, some distinctions have to do with challenges of coordination in expressions—the uncertainties involved in achieving something coordinated and cohesive; similar to the problems involved in an improvisational ensemble with each player adjusting his/her text and tune to one another. The players cannot know ahead of time how they themselves, let alone listeners, wil respond to the conjunction of musical ideas. Bertelmann cannot know with certainty how his instrument will respond. It is a process of ongoing discovery and re-discovery. Objects in the overhead bin tend to shift during flight, as they say. From time to time during each piece, Bertelmann reaches into the Steinway to move or re-apply one or more objects inside.

This ‘Prepared Piano’ is essentially ‘Improvisation Under Extreme Conditions’. Isn’t it a bit like Messaien composing in a prison camp? Or think of Haydn and Bach and others of their era: until the late eighteenth century, musicians were generally all good at improvising. They were taught even to invent whole compositions extemporaneously. It was only in the Romantic period and 20th Century that improvisation became a lost art. Have a look at the books by Harrison and Schulenberg and Nettl. The interplay between constraint and freedom is framed by the context and by how your improvisatory technique is used! In order to be able to improvise well, you still need to master the language and techniques of the music you want to produce. Bertelmann just takes it a step further by inserting this randomness into his instrument, so that the techniques required and discovering and mastering the language that the prepared piano will support is an evolutionary process that unfolds during the performance itself. Evolution! Genomics in action!

Of course, improvisation arises in different steps of the creative process and can influence the production of music in several ways. It could be, for example, the technique used to compose a score, or it could be the method used during a performance. Improvisation in jazz performance is nothing but composition on the fly, in real-time. Musical form in improvisatory jazz materials is, in most cases, more diffuse and less structured than the form of compositional works. In addition, it takes longer to develop transitions and variations of the material. Usually, elements and ideas are much more spread out in time. The main reason for this is the difficulty of comprehending the material without a score, and the difficulty of synchronizing events in the case of gestural improvisations by ensemble members.

Ultimately, isn’t Bertelmann’s music all to do with the limits of Gestural Improvisation and the concept of gesture itself? With Wittgenstein’s famous assertion 50 years ago that the most fundamental communication is shown, not said?

And isn’t there a difference between Gestural Improvisation versus Free Improvisation? The term Gestural Improvisation is associated with visual events or motion. On the other hand, Free Improvisation is a term that generally has an instrument or orchestration specified or implied—a way of producing sound. Contrary to this, Gestural Improvisation defines a visual and acoustical result—a collective performance. Attention must be given not only to the sounds that each member of the ensemble is producing but also to the final result received by the audience. Isn’t this configuration with Prepared Piano a sort of collective performance where one of the participants is the inanimate instrument. The piano warrants the ‘participant’ label insofar as it is an unknown quantity, an element that is to a substantial degree beyond the player’s control, in a manner not unlike other ensemble members—whose performance is also beyond a given player’s control.

M  usic is not about sound. It’s about people.”
  —  John Zorn.

What we see, then, in Bertelmann’s playing is how far the concept of improvisation has become normalized and regularized, and hence no longer disrupts anything? The prepared piano breaks those norms and expectations. The idea that jazz performance is post-modern or deconstructive (where what’s outside the contextual framework impinges on your frame of reference) is no longer valid if jazz improvisation is no longer ‘outside’ and no longer ‘disrupts’. What happens if improvisation itself is the frame, as it is for Bertelmann? Michael Jarrett writes that much jazz writing ‘wants’ to be jazz: it aspires to the condition of improvisation. In contrast, Julian Cowley likens post-modern avant-garde fiction writers’ practices to jazz improvisation. The work of writers like Sukenick, Sorrentino, and Barthelme is, he claims, “predicated upon acceptance of contingency and uncertainty”. Bertelmann just moves the frame of reference for what improvisation is.

So what do we have here? In Bertelmann’s playing we have (1) Temporality. The music takes place in real-time, ad libitum, and is not to be reiterated verbatim. It questions, even ‘hacks’ tradition.

Düllo - Cultural Hacking
We have (2) Elasticity. This music exists within a frame but also stretches the limits of frames: improvisation sometimes uses harmonic and rhythmic structures as a scaffold, but sometimes the ‘frame’ is barely there.

We have (3) Sociability. Bertelmann’s music occurs within a myriad of shifting social relationships, just as good jazz improvisation is sociable and interactive, like a conversation.

We have (4) Expressivity. Improvisation is not aimless, abstract ‘noodling’: it must ‘say something’—it must express a musician’s or an ensemble’s emotional and intellectual ideas, in a way that can be grasped by the rest of us. If the piece is named, the name must make sense. Bertelmann’s pieces and names make sense.

We have (5) Risk. Improvisation carries risks of failure—both minimal (‘clams’ or wrong notes) and maximal (discord; incoherence). In regard to the latter, improvisation involves risk because one can't know in advance what to play. Corbett (p. 224) says “Improvisation involves the permanent play of threshold and transgression… The improviser develop[s] and employ[s] a repertoire of possibilities in order to risk the unknown” . Bertelmann: check!

We have (6) Contingency. It resides in the shifting space between planning and acting. Guitarist Joe Beck once asserted that “the essence of playing any instrument [is] not being surprised by what you play. It should be no more surprising than something you would sing.” Playing becomes a constant dialogue between expectation and surprise, control and loss of control. Hebdige says improvisation embodies mastery “through the paradoxical act . . . of letting go,” a paradox of ‘deliberate spontaneity’ that is a model for inspiration itself. “To think that ‘not to think ahead’ might operate as a performance-practice virtue . . . flies directly in the face of most of the theoretical proscriptions currently in place in arts-related discourse”.

And we have (7) Novelty. No two improvisations can be alike. And yet when one considers the others, it is possible that novelty is not a cause but an effect. In this regard, I like the definition of jazz offered by Pat Metheny: “It’s not a noun but a verb”. It seems Volker Bertelmann would agree.

Volker Bertelmann's Favorite Tool Around mid-20th century, jazz experienced a radical evolution. Traditionally, jazz improvisation was based on songs that provide a melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, formal framework for improvisation, as well as an emotional mood or feeling based on the text of the chart. A solid understanding of functional harmony is prerequisite to developing or extending the melodic ideas, as those ideas have to work within the harmonic scheme. The radical expressions of jazz developing over the last five decades, though, shifted away from a strong harmonic/melodic orientation toward timbre—toward sound itself. These developments paralleled similar trends in classical music. And, just as neoromantic and other trends have supervened in classical new music, so too we recently have increasingly narrative and lyrical forms in improvised jazz. Bertelmann’s playing is a case in point.

Some new music of the past 50 years has embraced improvisation, along with indeterminacy and chance, as an important part of performance, calling on classically trained performers to make creative decisions in their realizations of the music. Composers like Stockhausen, Berio, Cage, Feldman, Ligeti, Boulez, Kagel, Lutoslawski, Erickson, Pousseur, and Schafer have used improvisation and indirection in their work—far beyond the strict, deterministic approach of serialism of Schoenberg and others. But the composer’s relinquishing control presents an aesthetic dilemma. What is the work? Is it the score or the performance? Derek Bailey draws a distinction between improvisation and experimental music, stating that few improvisers consider their activities experimental and, unlike composers, “the desire to stay ahead of the field is not common among improvisers.” (p. 83)

Today there’s a growing tendency to acknowledge a new kind of modernity—globalized and multi-faceted and no longer in line with a Western hegemonic center—which acknowledges indeterminacy and chance. The idea of ‘alternative modernities’ holds that development always unfolds within specific cultures or civilizations and that a different starting point of the transition to modernity will lead to different outcomes. This alternative perspective can help generate more adequate descriptions and analyses of different cultures and music.

The communicative aspect (to oneself) and the dialogic aspect (to others) that are central to all improvisation—can be seen as parallel to communication and dialogue that are prerequisites for a “well-functioning democracy.” In all kinds of dialogues there are elements of uncertainty—one cannot know the result until the participation in the dialogue has come to an end. Individuals and societies both face problems of planning that exceed our ability or will to foresee the future or acknowledge current reality. To cope with this mismatch, the function of leadership is to get better and more effective organization and more effective planning and action. But organization based on a hierarchical form of thinking and conventional politics seldom yields the expected, satisfying, hoped-for results. Bertelmann’s compositions and performances serve as timely, evocative and optimistic reminders that the human species may yet solve its problems—if only we will improvise and put ourselves out for each other. The basis for this interaction and interplay is trust and generosity and freedom—each so indispensable for securing societies and each in short supply today. Bertelmann’s inspiring, expansionist example can be a lesson for us all. Go listen to him! See what you hear!

Room to Expand CD
    Room to Expand Track List
  • Dilettante
  • Paddington
  • One Wish
  • Chicago Morning
  • Kleine Dinge (Little Things)
  • Belgrade
  • Sweet Spring, Come
  • Femmeassise (Woman, Seated)
  • Watercolour Milk
  • Zahnluecke (Tooth Space)
  • Fjorde
  • Old Man Playing Boules


P repared Piano’: A playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it.”
  —  FATcat Records liner notes.

R oom To Expand’ largely resembles the masterful piano vignettes of Aphex Twin’s ‘Drukgs’ album, or a condensed version of John Cage’s ‘Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano’. Yet Hauschka’s effort will take many, many listens before it becomes tired or predictable. Through close listening over time, the album unravels—it’s possible to discover a new sound in each song with every listen. This already has to be a contender for the most outstanding, even unique, album of 2007.”
  —  P. Ansell, www.diskant.net

F or Bertelmann, this means covering hammers with aluminum, weaving guitar strings amongst the ones provided, and my own personal favorite, placing crown corks on the strings... ‘Chicago Morning’ is the antithesis of ‘Habits’, much as ‘Room to Expand’ is quite the opposite of ‘Plant, Watered’. A simple piano line tinkles along in the background to its unending satisfaction as an art-damaged horn section woozily provides backup.”
  —  P. Masterson, www.audiversity.com

R oom to Expand eschews purism throughout: although on tracks like Paddington the piano works on its own as a driving rhythm section, elsewhere he is not afraid to throw in synths, drums and electric bass. He does upbeat, contemplative, and even minimalist, as on ‘Sweet Spring, Come’. It’s an album that flows beautifully, and unlike many in its field stands up to close listening as well as holding its own as more than mere background. Hauschka has produced an excellent addition to a burgeoning genre.”
  —  B. Bollig, www.noripcord.com

I try to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, which is not about them, but which produces them.”
  —  John Cage, Silence, 1961.

Hauschka Prepared Piano

Hauschka Prepared Piano


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