Beiser/Harrison/YPC: Joyous Time Loops, Just Intonation

T   his is the basic premise of the Transient Glory® project: that a child’s voice is a unique instrument during that fleeting time between childhood and after-childhood... and that this instrument can tackle the most challenging and uncompromising music written for them. Children leave something behind [as they grow up and leave childhood]. I don’t know what it is, but children are able to communicate in a way we adults have forgotten how to do.”
  — Francisco Núñez, YPC, 09-MAY-2011.

T   he entirety of ‘Time Loops’ is performed using ‘just intonation’ tuning, based on whole number proportions. With ‘Time Loops’ I am demonstrating the simpler and more harmonious aspects of just intonation. As a result the tunings on the CD don’t push boundaries per se, but rather they sound clearer and more direct than the normal equal-tempered scale that is used in most Western music.”
  — Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he new recording ‘Time Loops’ is a superb stimulus to joy and reflection. Meditation to bring peace at this or any time of year.

I n concert performances, cellist Maya Beiser plays the lead part live accompanied by pre-recorded, digitally-processed tracks forming an auto-ensemble of many sonic layers. Multi-media artist Bill Morrison created a film for ‘Time Loops’ that incorporates archival footage and CGI images that illustrate the movement of the planets, celestial mechanics mathematically conforming to the integer ratios of the music’s just intonation. Composer Michael Harrison performs the piano part with sensitivity and feeling. Even amidst the complexity and conflict of everyday life, we rediscover here the beauty and solace that are immanent in the natural world—the patterns and harmonics of a clockwork Universe whose physics was first formalized mathematically by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and others—and rediscover that our own homo sapiens processes are as real and natural and immutable as those.

T he last and largest-scale work on the CD, ‘Hijaz,’ was composed by Harrison for Beiser and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City under the direction of Francisco Nuñez, as well as composer and percussionist Payton MacDonald on tabla and shaker. The text combines a prayer written by Harrison with spoken South Indian rhythmic syllables, which merge with the choral textures to evoke a sense of joy and unity and transcendence—deeply fitting for this holiday season.

E specially vivid and poignant are the perspectives of the school-age voices in the choir (see blockquote above). Wise beyond their years; empowered and uplifted by the music. To me, joy is mainly what music is for, and people should, through writing and performing music, feel joyous and acquire a better ability to create more joy. This CD—the compositions and performances—is first-class evidence supporting this idea. Evidence, too, of how crucially important opportunities are for kids to learn and perform music—before adulthood overtakes them as it does us all. Not a nostalgia for a childlike simplicity, but instead a meditation on clarity, on earnestness, on wonder, on the youthful drive to penetrate the truth of things, on receptiveness to joy.

    [50-sec clip, Beiser/Harrison/YPC, ‘Hijaz’; (track 8), 2012, 1.4MB MP3]

M   y intention was to invoke a sense of pilgrimage, either to a wondrous or holy place, or, metaphorically, to a sacred place within each of us. The chorus is the soul of the journeyer... The pulsing rhythms trace our footsteps, and those of our camels, as we make our way on the path of self-discovery.”
  — Michael Harrison, 23-AUG-2012.

T he recent release of ‘Time Loops’ coincided with the first productions of Maya Beiser’s ‘ELSEWHERE: A CelloOpera,’ created by Maya with director Robert Woodruff, composers Missy Mazzoli and Eve Beglarian and writer Erin Cressida Wilson. For more information, visit www.elsewherecelloopera.com.

• Maya Beiser website
• Michael Harrison website
• Young People's Chorus of New York City website
• Beiser/Harrison/YPC. Time Loops: Music in Just Intonation. (Cantaloupe, 2012.)
• Bang On A Can 'Time Loops' page with MP3 and CD purchase options
• Hijaz, arabic: الحجاز‎ al-Ḥiǧāz, "The Barrier"
• Dolnick E. The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World. Harper, 2012.

Mara Gibson’s ‘Canopy’: Arboreal/Neuronal soundscape/artscape for viola, percussion, and tape

I  recently had the privilege to experience a new chamber music composition by Mara Gibson at the opening of a new art exhibit in Kansas City. The work was commissioned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Premiered in April by Michael Hall, ‘Canopy’ was inspired by ‘Ferment’, Roxy Paine’s (1966-) outdoor installation in the sculpture garden at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

I n the 13-min composition, Gibson meditates on Paine’s conflation of neuronal dendritic architecture and treeness... the multiplicity of meanings of what we perceive in nature is called into question. We all are trees; we all are neurons now.

L arge-scale sculptures and exotic mixed-ensemble chamber music (viola-percussion-tape) aren’t commonly paired with each other. However, in this instance it is an inspired piece of programming, an account that plumbs the depths of the sculpture’s seeming desolation... a melancholy that stems from the constitutional rootedness of a ramifying, arborizing structure that is situated where it is with little prospect of changing its venue (you; the neurons that make up your brain and make you who you are; the tree). And yet the composition culminates in a radiant, nature-affirming performance that leaves the listener-viewer with more than solace—a sense of quiet optimism.

H all takes great care with the score’s myriad directions, resulting in an intensity and beauty that would delight any composer, as well as any audience. There is a brief pause/silent_stasis at about 07:00. The solo_viola/denuded_tree resumes with a soliloquy. Then, with a harrowing climax, the percussion and recorded track of the viola reappear with renewed vigor, and with the live viola layered on top of them—effecting a grieving voice of the solo viola answering its echo and the percussion more quietly, survivors against all odds! The micrometer-precise diminuendo from 11:00 to the end is perfectly realized—and we immediately appreciate why Gibson wrote it in this way.

H all’s technique is superb throughout and manages to sound like 5 different violas, by using combinations of diverse pressures on the bow, bowing near and far away from the bridge, etc.—pensive, taut, with some ‘extended’ viola techniques. Bob Beck’s recording and production values aptly serve the intimacy of this beautiful piece. Few recordings achieve such a level of detailed commitment from the artists and the recording engineer! (I am grateful, too, that Gibson has made digital recordings of ‘Canopy’ available for download on BandCamp.com.)

A nyone who has tried to devise a likeness of a tree—sculpting one as a kid in school, or, with more serious intent as an older person—will recognize how difficult it is to do well. The fractal character of the branch points and the Fibonacci-like decimation of the caliber of the branches as you go further and further out on the limbs is hard to emulate. It is so easy to end up with a ‘fail!’—a crude likeness that looks contrived, a caricature of a tree! But Paine achieves a high level of fractal verisimilitude—a tree representation with enough character-development and complexity and depth to be believable as a tree or as another living organism with moral standing. Gibson’s writing is not ‘representational’ as such, but with equal care and finesse achieves comparable moral weight and attractive, believable, attention-holding verisimilitude.

I n summary, Gibson’s sonic stimuli synergize nicely with Paine’s sculpture’s visual and haptic stimuli. I enjoyed being immersed in both of them at the same time. The visual and musical elements are independent and exciting in their own right and (in the case of Paine’s sculpture, ‘have already stood’ and--) will continue to stand ably on their own. But, together, the two works manifest a cohesion that is evident to listeners/viewers as they encounter the works simultaneously. It is a brilliant success as a tandem installation, and ‘Canopy’ is commendable as a commissioning project. Other galleries and museums should take note of this as an example they can replicate—commissioning companion chamber compositions to accompany major new acquisitions, and organizing gala première performances (with food and wine, as the Nelson did) to cultivate new membership and community involvement! No better way than this to dispel the ignorant museum stereotype of grey-hair elites!

H all is a former president of the Chicago Viola Society and a founding member of the Lake String Quartet. He has performed at numerous summer festivals, including the Grand Teton Festival, the National Orchestral Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School, and the Aspen Music Festival. Hall serves on the faculties of Illinois Wesleyan University, VanderCook College of Music, and the Chicago Academy for the Arts. He is a graduate of Ball State University, with graduate studies with Peter Kamnitzer and with the LaSalle and Tokyo String Quartets, at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and doctoral studies with Michelle LaCourse and Scott Rawls at the UNC, Greensboro.

G ibson graduated from Bennington College and completed her PhD at SUNY Buffalo. She attended London College of Music; l’École des Beaux-Arts, Fontainebleau, France; and the International Music Institute, Darmstadt. She has received grants and honors from the American Composer’s Forum, the Banff Center, Louisiana Division of the Arts, Arts KC, Meet the Composer, the Kansas Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Bass Society, ASCAP, and the John Henrick Memorial Foundation. She is also founder of the UMKC Composition Workshop for Young Composers and co-director/founder of ArtSounds, now in its seventh year. ArtSounds specializes in “immersive art-music fusion” experiences, similar in spirit to ‘Canopy’.

T   he greatest hindrance in the understanding of life lies in the impossibility of accounting for it by the enumeration of its properties. It must be understood as a unity. But if the organism [tree; neural network] is a unity, in what sense are its component properties its parts? Who is it, really, and why? How does this unity arise? To what extent must it be considered a property of the organization of the organism, as opposed to a property emerging [undeliberated] from its mode of life? These questions remain open....”
  — Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela.

• Mara Gibson website
• Mara Gibson faculty page at UMKC Conservatory of Music & Dance
• Michael Hall website
• Michael Hall faculty page at Illinois Wesleyan Univ
• Roxy Paine page at Wikipedia
• Adam J. Mathematics in Nature: Modeling Patterns in the Natural World. Princeton Univ, 2006.
• Ball P. Flow: Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts. Oxford Univ, 2011.
• Ball P. Branches: Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts. Oxford Univ, 2011.
• Hofstadter D, Dennett D. The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul. Basic, 2001.
• Maturana H, Varela F. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Reidel, 1980.
• Mitchell M. Complexity: A Guided Tour. Oxford Univ, 2011.
• Mitchell M. Analogy-Making as Perception: A Computer Model. Bradford, 2003.
• Strange P, Strange A. The Contemporary Violin: ExtENDed Performance Techniques. Scarecrow, 2001.

Kinesthetics/Biomechanics of Instrument Design governs the music that comes out

S  ome works begin their performance life in a shocking way but, with further performances, come to feel ‘more normal’. Not so with David Del Tredici’s ‘Syzygy’. It was composed in 1966, yet it retains all of its novelty and magic. It continues for me to be a source of wonder … and terror…”
  — Michael Tilson Thomas, introductory remarks, Zankel Hall, 29-MAR-2012.

A  fine program at Zankel Hall last night! Excellent New York premiére of Mason Bates’s 2011 ‘Mass Transmission’ for choir, organ, and electronica. A chamber orchestra comprised of members of San Francisco Symphony members gave a stirring account of Lou Harrison’s 1973 ‘Concerto for Organ and Percussion Orchestra’. And Del Tredici’s 1966 ‘Syzygy’ was just as disturbing as Michael Tilson Thomas promised (esp., the pyrotechnics by soprano Kiera Duffy and Nicole Cash, French horn).

B ut the highlight of the program for me was the 8-person ensemble who performed Harry Partch’s 1958 ‘Daphne of the Dunes’, using Partch’s original one-off, home-made instruments that had been shipped cross-country in two semi tractor-trailers for Carnegie Hall’s ‘American Mavericks’ programs. (Performed by Dean Drummond, harmonic cannon & spoils-of-war; Joe Bergen, harmonic cannon & chromelodeon; Charles Corey, kithara, surrogate-kithara, harmonic cannon; jeffery irving, surrogate-kithara & harmonic cannon; Jared Soldiviero, boo, spoils-of-war, kithara; Bill Ruyle, diamond marimba; Joe Fee, cloud chamber bowls; Greg Hesselink, tenor violin, gourd tree, missile-cone gongs, pre-recorded tape.)


T he spatial arrangements of the instruments’ parts give rise to a spectrum of motions that lie well under the human hand. The physical distances between the strike-positions that produce the notes; the non-monotonic relationship of the parts’ positioning to their pitches; the practical biomechanics of what it is feasible for human arms, and fingers, and feet to do; the sensitivity of the parts, namely, how much force is required to generate a particular sound intensity: all of these contribute to the sonic qualities and musical tendencies of each instrument. The geometries of each instrument are associated with patterns and playing motions and sounds that are natural or characteristic for the instrument and the music to which it contributes. This is true of all instruments, of course; but we tend to under-recognize the fact when we listen to or observe performers of ‘normal’ instruments. With Partch’s compositions, the kinesthetics and biomechanics of the user interface are in our face.

F or example, plucking vertical strings that descend down by your knees, where you have difficulty seeing the strings in the shadows—leaning forward, bending down, and plucking them while standing, perched on a tall, narrow, possibly-catastrophically-tippy bench—while the music is located on a frail, kludgy stand way up above your head—these features impart an inherent, peculiar urgency and anxiety to the playing, which on account of these reasons is very different from the sound of a harp played by a performer who is comfortably and safely seated. The emotional quality of the sound is dramatically different, despite the fact that the mechanism of sound production is substantially the same in the two instruments.

W hat an evening!—showcasing compositions that have their own internal reasons for being, mostly refusing to cater to any external audience! And, with the exception of the Mason Bates piece (commissioned by San Francisco Symphony, with support of Michele and Laurence Corash), innovating things with slim expectation of popularity or compensation within the composer’s lifetime. Price of vision.

• American Mavericks Series
  
• Mason Bates website
  
• Lou Harrision Documentary Project website
  
• David Del Tredici website
  
• HarryPartch.com
  
• Adelaide C. An Exploration of Outsider Art. Webster, 2011.
  
• Dunn D, ed. Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives. Routledge, 2000.
  
• Gilmore B. Harry Partch: A Biography. Yale Univ, 1998.
  
• Hopkin B. Musical Instrument Design: Practical Information for Instrument Design. SeeSharp, 1996.
  
• Maclagan D. Outsider Art: From the Margins to the Marketplace. Reaktion, 2010.
  
• Partch H, Blackburn P, eds. Harry Partch: Enclosure 3. ACF, 1997.
  
• Partch H. Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions, and Librettos. (Thos. McGeary, ed.) Univ Illinois, 2000.
  
• Partch H. Genesis of a Music: An Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots, and Its Fulfillments. 2e. Da Capo, 1979.
  
• Tommasini A. On a mission to celebrate the different. NY Times, 24-FEB-2012.
  
• Walker Art Center. Naives & Visionaries. Dutton, 1974.

Savvy Musicianship: Marti Epstein’s ‘Troubled Queen’

W  hen I am painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see [in the painting-in-progress] what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I just try to let it come through.”
  — Jackson Pollock.

H ave a listen to Marti Epstein’s new composition, ‘Troubled Queen’:



I t’s a 21-minute piece for mixed ensemble consisting of flute, bass clarinet, trombone, 2 violins, viola, cello, piano, and percussion—commissioned by the Callithumpian Consort, and premièred on 19-DEC-2011 at New England Conservatory in Boston.

B rooding, dark, and pulsatile... inspired by Jackson Pollock’s brooding, dark, pulsatile 1945 painting of the same name, one of the holdings of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

C allithumpian Consort was founded by Stephen Drury in the 1990s and is dedicated to the proposition that music should be, and is, an ‘experience’. The ensemble is deeply committed to supporting new music. Besides frequent performances of new music, Callithumpian also seeks to foster a vibrant and financially sustainable environment for composers and composing, and has commissioned many compositions over the past 15 years.

I  would say that the composition students here are not composing jazz. Specifically, they’re not composing commercial music; they’re not composing ‘jingles’. They may be composing film music, because we have a lot of dual majors. They’re usually composing music that’s artistically interesting and specifically for the concert hall... To graduate [from Berklee], students have to have a portfolio of pieces and—very important—they have to have a certain number of these pieces performed. Because one of the aspects of a composer’s training is, how do you get people to play your music? So we try to get them to start doing that right away.”
  — Marti Epstein.

I hope her composition students had a chance to attend the première. Epstein leads by example. She doesn’t play musical ‘hardball’ with the listener or with the performers but instead pitches balls that are hittable, ‘accessible’. Not predictable or ‘easy’ pitches, surely. But captivating; natural; intuitive; emotionally moving and ‘fair’, not off-putting. This new ‘Troubled Queen’ is emblematic of the practical philosophy Epstein expresses in her remarks on Berklee’s website (quote above).

W  hen I’m asked the inevitable question ‘What kind of music do you write?,’ I am always embarrassingly at a loss for words. Musicians want to know details of my harmonic language: is my music tonal or atonal? Nonmusicians often ask nervously if it sounds ‘modern’. Here’s the best way I can describe it: it is neither tonal nor atonal; I adhere to no preexisting method of pitch or harmony organization. I am more interested in the use of sounds as organizing musical materials than I am in melody or harmonic relationships. I also do not believe that atonality even truly exists; the term was an attempt to describe the music that broke away from Common Practice Tonality... My music is generally slow-paced. I always tell people that ‘You can take the girl out of Nebraska, but you can’t take the Nebraska out of the girl.’ The wide-open spaces that I experienced as a child, not so much in my living environment, but in the many car trips we took to Colorado to see my grandparents, were—and are—an integral part of my artistic psyche... I love living in the East, but I long for the space and expanse of the place in my childhood memories. I feel like my music is an expression of that longing.”
  — Marti Epstein.

L ike the Pollock painting for which the piece is named, Epstein’s ‘Troubled Queen’ ably evokes/represents psychiatric illness-as-storm—these looming clouds; this mixture of scary unrealness and can’t-look-away awe; these oppressive feelings that elude attempts to control them. This dark-grey, nightmarish 4-bpm thunder and lightning—or is it a deranged heartbeat? [bradycardic between 07:09 to 09:01, becoming asystolic at 20:30]

T he self-doubts, the dread and anxiety, the fractured esteem: are these contributing ‘causes’ or triggers of depression, or are they merely some associated ‘effects’ or symptoms of the condition? Chaotic arpeggios in the piano part; strokes of blue and green and yellow in the winds and strings and percussion—random sonic hail pelting us unbidden, as if formed by Pollockian flicking: flung up into the air, falling now under the unstoppable force of gravity. Callithumpian Consort members’ playing is sensitive and inspired in capturing this ‘Nature is not kind’ harshness...

G othic interiority. Obscure totems; we’re not sure what they mean or how we got here.
Reduction of life to crashing, heaviness. Primitive glare, no escape.

T he interleaved string, woodwind, and brass passages around 14:00-15:00 are especially poignant, and contribute yet more evidence demonstrating the ‘organic’/biologic origins of depression, disabusing the listener of any misconception he/she might have held regarding the depressed person’s responsibility to ‘prevent’ the condition or exercise more self-control and simply ‘Get better!’ under his/her own steam.

W hat’s more, the 21-minute timescale of this piece offers enough latitude to explore the wide range of colors and cognitive states that characterize moderate-to-severe clinical depression. In other words, this is the sort of subject that demands considerable scope; a ‘miniature’ would not be right at all, and would at best be pastiche, unless it were a cue in a film score, subject to constraints of the script and action. Fully developed in this 21-minute work, the character/subject becomes very real. The suffering/horror this depressed protagonist experiences is fully animated and convincing, and, through the performance, we can’t help but care about this person and about the plight of other such people in society. In summary, this new Marti Epstein composition is a beautiful work: it illustrates not only wonderful artistry and craftsmanship, but also conveys the political and social savvy that ‘the arts’ (artists/musicians, and the supporters who finance them and commission works from them) can have, to bring about wider and deeper appreciation for socially/clinically important issues and provoke concord and action to make things better.

E very so often, a painter has to ‘destroy’ painting. Picasso did it; Pollock; numerous others, too. And every so often, a composer has to destroy composing. Here, Epstein smashes conventional ideas of a composition—as John Cage and many others have done. But this ‘Troubled Queen’ is very clearly a composition—and a very beautiful, moving one at that.

• Marti Epstein website
  
• Marty Epstein, Professor, Composition, Berklee College of Music
  
• Marti Epstein page at Sigma Alpha Iota
  
• Callithumpian Consort website
  
• Callithumpian Consort blog on Wordpress
  
• Cutler D. Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living & Making a Difference. Helius, 2009.
  
• Jones-Smith K, Mathur H. Fractal analysis: Revisiting Pollock’s drip paintings. Nature 2006;444:E9-10.
  
• Jones-Smith K, et al. Drip paintings and fractal analysis. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Physics 2009;79:046111-8.
  
• Kristeva J. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia Univ, 1982.
  
• Mureika J. Fractal dimensions in perceptual color space: a comparison study using Jackson Pollock’s art. Chaos 2005;15:043702-10.
  
• Punter D. Literature of Terror. Longmans, 1996.
  
• Depression page at NIMH (NIH.gov)
  
• Depression page at MedlinePlus
  
• Depression page at Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC.gov)
  
• Berman L. ‘An artist destroys his work: Comments on creativity and destructive-ness.’ In B. Panter, et al., eds. Creativity and Madness: Psychological Studies of Art and Artists. AIMED Press, 1995, pp. 59-80.
  
• Friedman B. Jackson Pollock. Da Capo, 1995.
  
• Gray M. Jackson Pollock: Memories Arrested in Space. Santa Monica Press, 2004.
  
• Landau E. Jackson Pollock. Abrams, 2010.
  
• Toynton E. Jackson Pollock. Yale Univ, 2012.
  
• Harris E. Pollock. (Sony Pictures, 2000.)
  
• Discovery Channel. Are 'happy' people nicer [than depressed, angry people]? [Dalai Lama video]

John Bischoff: Audio Combine, Modal/Bispectral Discoveries, Post-Human Futures

L   ocal color’ features synthetic bell-like tones, sustained tonal clusters, and computer-triggered acoustic bells struck in complementary patterns that are sometimes random, sometimes human-triggered, and combinations of both... It is enough to reference the idea of a tactus, but not enough to be [understood as] an organizing [meaning-generating/insuring] element.”
  — Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.

T he music comprising John Bischoff’s new CD ‘Audio Combine’, just released on New World Records, is beautiful, fascinating, thoroughly enjoyable. Philip Perkins’s engineering and production values are superb.

T he five tracks on the disc are diverse, representing Bischoff compositions from 2004 to mid-2011. The third track ‘Local Color’ evokes traditional chinese zhong bells, but also especially calls into question the ‘who’ of music performance [in asmuch as some of the bells are computer-triggered, randomly and deterministically, while others are played by Bischoff from his score] and other limits of performance identity [insofar as the bell modes and timbres evolve after the bell is struck—on the rim; on the bosses/nipples; on the wall; etc.—in aleatoric/random ways that the musician-computer can neither predict nor control]. Of course, all music emerges in less-than-predictable/controllable ways—just less obviously so than bells.


    [50-sec clip, John Bischoff, ‘Local Color’; (track 3), 2012, 1.4MB MP3]

T   he pieces were all recorded in live performance with minimal editing and no over-dubs. Philip Perkins recorded direct from Bischoff’s setup and also from three pairs of microphones placed at various points in the concert hall. The mix heard here switches between these four perspectives as the pieces are played. The distance and pace incorporated into the recordings from various mic positions give a clear sense of the space of the performance, and of the object-ness of the sounds. That space and our place within it become the final part of the ‘material’: when the listener has no fixed point of perspective, then the position from which the listening/understanding is done becomes one of the elements of counterpoint.”
  —  Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.

T here are a few excellent books that empirically measure the modal vibrations of bells... He & Fu, for example. And some books on bispectral analysis—mainly used today in aerospace engineering and vibration-management engineering of turbines and other structures. Useful to explore if you are a composer/performer wanting to know more about how to more reliably utilize distinctive bell harmonics in your work. Links to some of these at the bottom of this post.

[Modal Analysis, Fu & He, 2001, p. 276]

    [50-sec clip, Wang Yuanping & Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra, ‘竹枝词 (Zhu-zhi-ci) Bamboo-pole Love Poem’; (track 1), 1989, 1.5MB MP3]

T he substantial rhythmic independence of the parts in the ‘Local Color’ bell quartet is part of its distinctive Asian beauty. Because each bell projects its sound clearly, each individual bell can easily be heard over the rest of the bell ensemble, and yet the ensemble—the ‘community’ of bells—remains the primary subject. This is dissimilar from other voiced percussion like a timpani choir, performing a ‘programmatic’ role, where the effect of four or more timpani playing together is treated more as an ‘effect’ than as harmony. It is instead quartet ‘orchestration with Chinese characteristics’!

W ith computer-triggered sticking, the timing of the ring-down and the pitch-bend are the same, but the kinematic nuances of human left-hand/right-hand mallet or sticking patterns are gone. But the electromechanical linear actuators for the computer-controlled bells have their own kinematic constraints, in terms of speed of resetting for the next stroke, and so on. They have their own unique, finite kind of ‘embodiment’ just as we humans have ours, and we can hear this in these wonderful Bischoff compositions and this excellent recording of them being performed ‘live’.

A nd so the most amazing thing that we get from Bischoff’s mechatronic compositions like ‘Local Color’ is a vivid glimpse of robotic humanity and machine consciousness, revealed by the beater mechanics and linear actuators... something like an inversion of the ‘human-becoming-machine’ perspective of Ambrazevičius and Balsienė (link below): ‘machine-becoming-human’... a brilliant future of new expressive possibilities, including bionic accomodations for musicians with disabilities. Musical prosthetics? Sonnez les matines! / Din, dan, don!





J ohn Bischoff (b. 1949) is an early pioneer of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as his seminal work in computer network ensembles. Bischoff studied composition with Robert Moran, James Tenney, and Robert Ashley. He has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 year as a composer, performer, teacher, and grassroots activist. His performances around the US include NEW MUSIC AMERICA festivals in 1981 (SF) and 1989 (NYC), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Roulette Intermedium (NYC), and the Beyond Music Festival (LA). He has performed in Europe at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Akademie der Künst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and TUBE in Munich. He was a founding member of the League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world's first Computer Network Band, and he co-authored an article on the League's music that appears in "Foundations of Computer Music" (MIT Press 1985). He was also a founding member of the network band The Hub with whom he performed and recorded from 1985 to 1996.

• John Bischoff website
  
• Bischoff page at Mills College, Oakland, California.
  
• Bischoff J. Audio Combine. (New World Records, 2012.)
  
• Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra; Wang Yuanping, conductor. Unique Music of Great Antiquity. (CRC, 1989)
  
• Ambrazevičius R, Balsienė R. Imitations of bells: Correspondence between bell acoustics and onomatopoeic texts. J Interdisc Music Stud 2010;4:1-16.
  
• Anderson M, Anderson S. Machine Ethics. Cambridge Univ, 2011.
  
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• Choudhury A, Shah S, Thornhill N. Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction. Springer, 2010. [bispectra]
  
• Clark A. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford Univ, 2003.
  
• Courtney C, et al. Global crack detection using bispectral analysis. ECNDT, 2006.
  
• Cremer L, et al. Structure-Borne Sound: Structural Vibrations and Sound Radiation at Audio Frequencies. 3e. Springer, 2005.
  
• Dixon J, Cassidy E, eds. Virtual Futures: Cyberotics, Technology and Posthuman Pragmatism. Routledge, 1998.
  
• Epstein R, et al., eds. Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer, 2008.
  
• Fackrell J, et al. Interpretation of bispectra of vibration signals-I. Mech Sys Signal Proc 1995;9:257-66.
  
• Fackrell J, et al. Interpretation of bispectra of vibration signals-II. Mech Sys Signal Proc 1995;9:267-74.
  
• Fahy F. Foundations of Engineering Acoustics. Academic, 2000.
  
• von Falkenhausen L. Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China. Univ California, 1994.
  
• Fu Zhi-Fang, He J. Modal Analysis. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001.
  
• Gray C. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. Routledge, 2001.
  
• Hammond J, White P. Analysis of non-stationary signals using time-frequency methods. J Sound & Vibr 1996;190:419-47.
  
• Haraway D. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, 1990.
  
• Hayles N. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Univ Chicago, 1999.
  
• Hendriks-Jansen H. Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought. Bradford, 1996.
  
• Holland O, ed. Machine Consciousness. Academic, 2003.
  
• Jing M. A theoretical study of the vibration and acoustics of ancient Chinese bells. J Acoust Soc Am 2003;114:1622-8.
  
• Lin P, et al., eds. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. MIT, 2011.
  
• Norton M, Karczub D. Fundamentals of Noise and Vibration Analysis for Engineers. 2e. Cambridge Univ, 2003.
  
• Perkowitz S. Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids. Joseph Henry, 2005.
  
• Randall R. Vibration-based Condition Monitoring: Industrial, Aerospace and Automotive Applications. Wiley, 2011.
  
• Rossing T. Science of Percussion Instruments. World Scientific, 2000.
  
• Schick S. The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. Univ Rochester (Eastman), 2006.
  
• Shen S-Y. Acoustics of ancient Chinese bells. Scientific American 1987;256:94-102.
  
• Solomon S. How to Write for Percussion. Solomon, 2004.
  
• Tavner P, et al. Condition Monitoring of Rotating Electrical Machines. 2e. IET, 2008. [bispectra]
  
• Timoshenko S. Vibration Problems in Engineering. 5e reprint. Wolfenden, 2007.
  
• Vér I, Beranek L, eds. Noise and Vibration Control Engineering: Principles and Applications. 2e. Wiley, 2005.
  
• Thingamajigs.org

Ingrid Stölzel’s Explorations of Time and Identity

A   fter picking the title ‘For the Time Being,’ I realized just how often I use this expression in my daily life. When we say these words we imply that whatever state we are in or whatever action we are performing is temporary and merely a fleeting moment. In reality, of course, all states and actions are temporary, and our perception of permanence is an illusion. ‘For the Time Being’ is the newest in a series of works examining this concept of passing time.”
  — Ingrid Stölzel.

I   didn’t measure how long I was doing mouth-to-mouth breathing, but I remember thinking during the last several minutes that [the plight of this lifeless, transverse-presenting, APGAR-score-zero newborn] was hopeless. But I persisted [thinking that my doing so was, for the time being, at best ridiculous and, at worst, wrong or disrespectful of the natural fact]. And I was finally rewarded when Anna MacRae of Middle River, Victoria County, came to life.”
  — C. Lamont MacMillan, Memoirs of a Cape Breton Doctor.

I ngrid Stölzel’s new composition for flute, soprano saxophone and piano offers great beauty for the listener, plus intriguing expressive and technical challenges for each of the performers. The flute and soprano sax parts are balanced partners, while the piano undertakes an impetuous, omniscient-narratorly, cantus firmus role, with occasional upper-register tolling that explicitly marks the passage of time.

F or the Time Being’ was a commmission by the Greenbrook Ensemble in Nashville. The work that resulted from their commission is a phenomenally beautiful and poignant addition to the trio repertoire for flute, soprano sax, and piano: a 7-min fantasie, in a Walter Piston-esque, Bohuslav Martinů-esque neoclassicist modal-chromatic idiom, symbolically-charged with repetition in both rhythm and pitch, including pedal points. The work is contrapuntal, highly chromatic.

I ts initial lyrical, light and graceful lento is seeded with contemplative rubato, becoming adagio and intermittently more animated/incisive—embodying the transitoriness/impermanence suggested by Stölzel’s remark in the blockquote above. Flute and soprano sax parts are intertwined, coalescing into close harmony and then diverging again. The work embodies an intense chromatic saturation, as contrasted with more ‘open’ diatonic style. The result is subtle: acutely self-aware but never self-absorbed.

I  relistened to the Colorado State YouTube video several times (vid embedded below), capturing timings for the woodwinds. The rhythmic interplay between flute and soprano sax exhibits a fractional structure as a function of frequency that is close to a 1/f relationship, intermediate between uncorrelated ‘white’ noise and strongly-correlated Brownian noise. (An important property of 1/f timeseries structure is that it correlates logarithmically with past values. The last 3 notes, say, have equal influence on what comes next as the last 30 or the last 300.)

A nother feature of 1/f or “nearly-1/f” structure is ‘self-similarity’, which means that the smaller-scale details resemble coarser features that are higher in the hierarchy of structures that comprise the piece. Self-similarity of musical structures has fascinated composers long before fractal and multi-scale mathematics was known. For example, Bach sometimes used the same pitch contour in his fugues in the slow cantus firmus as in the fast motoric figures. So, too, with this new Ingrid Stölzel piece.

S tölzel changes meter many times in the course of the short piece. The continual shifts of meter and tempo are a most noticeable aspect of the work’s complexity, and of its perspective on personhood, self-awareness, and awareness of Time.

T he piece is constructed on a series of dyadic conflicts: episodic expansion/contraction metaphors, mainly involving the flute and soprano sax. Neither wind player can escape or circumvent these chromatic inflections, but must make believable decisions about how to use timbre/spectra to express the conflicts and their resolution. Am I azure or lavender? Was I light turquoise or dark robin’s-egg blue? Remembering/forgetting? Separating/reuniting? Living/dying?

S tölzel meditates... on the socio-historical reality of what it is to be a person, situated in Time and lacking any guarantees; on the connectedness of how we conceive of ourselves, in the context of yesterday, today, tomorrow; on our uncertainty about how much time we have (or don’t have, in the case of those of us who have a highly-uncertain and likely very-much-shortened future due to chronic, life-threatening illness). Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Paul Ricoeur are among the philosophers who explored this terrain in the 20th Century. (Links to works by other, more recent authors appear below, for your interest.)

I n other words, the trio is a delicate balance of love and horror—we create something meaningful that soon slips from our grasp; we inevitably lose our loved ones or they lose us; we cling futilely, to hopes that no longer have any reasonable basis. Life: so brutal, so unreliable. Life: the only good thing that we have, for the time being.

I   n any instant the Sacred may wipe you [out] with its finger. In any instant, the bush may burst into flames, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.”
  — Annie Dillard.

I ngrid Stölzel has written for ensembles such as newEar contemporary chamber ensemble, NOISE/San Diego New Music, California E.A.R. Unit, Adaskin String Trio, Erato Chamber Orchestra, Allegrésse, and Synchronia, among others. She is the winner of the 2010 NewMusic@ECU Festival Orchestra Composition Competition, the 2009 Cheryl A. Spector Prize, the 2007 UMKC Chamber Music Composition Competition and the 2006 PatsyLu Prize awarded by the International Alliance of Women in Music. Stölzel is a frequent guest composer and her music has been performed at music festivals and conferences including the 2011 Festival of New American Music, 2011 International Alliance of Women in Music Congress, 2011 New Music Festival X, IC[CM] 2010 International Conference on Contemporary Music in Spain, NACUSA 2010 National Conference, soundOn Festival of Modern Music, 30th Sacramento State Festival of New American Music, Oregon Bach Festivals, Ernest Bloch Festivals, Women in New Music Festival, Chamber Music Conference of the East, Otterbein Contemporary Music Festival, and Indiana State Contemporary Music Festival. Stölzel received her doctorate in composition at the University of Missouri Conservatory of Music and Dance in Kansas City, where she studied with James Mobberley, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long. She holds a Master of Music in composition from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Stölzel was a guest composer at the 30th Sacramento State Festival of New American Music. She has done artist residencies at the Ragdale Foundation and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida.
Ingrid is a native of Germany and has lived in the U.S. for the past 20 years.

F or the Time Being’ will be performed in Kansas City in a concert by newEar Ensemble on Saturday, 11-FEB. Go, hear!

I   f the muscle can feel repugnance, there is still a false move to be made;
If the mind can imagine tomorrow, there is still a defeat to remember;
As long as the self can say ‘I,’ it is impossible not to rebel;
As long as there is an accidental virtue, there is a necessary vice:
And the garden cannot exist; the miracle cannot occur.
The garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it
Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.
The miracle is the only thing that happens, but to you it will not be apparent
Until all events have been studied and nothing happens that you cannot explain.
And Life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.”
  — W.H. Auden, ‘For the Time Being’.

• Ingrid Stölzel website
  
• newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble website
  
• Greenbrook Ensemble website
  
• Auden W. For the Time Being. (1942) Modern Library, 2007, pp. 347-400.
  
• Beran J. Statistics in Musicology. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2003.
  
• Bossart W. Borges and Philosophy: Self, Time, and Metaphysics. Lang, 2003.
  
• Dillard A. For the Time Being. Vintage, 2000.
  
• Farin I. Heidegger's Concept of Time: The First Draft of Being & Time. Athlone/Continuum, 2011.
  
• van Hysteen J, Wiebe E, eds. In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood. Eerdmans, 2011.
  
• Ilomäki T. On the Similarity of Twelve-tone Rows. DMA Dissertation, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, 2008, pp. 196–222.
  
• Koblyakov A. Semantic aspects of self-similarity in music. Symmetry Culture & Sci 1995;6:297–300.
  
• Leighton T. Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra. Oxford Univ, 2008.
  
• Lewin D. A theory of segmental association in twelve-tone music. Persp New Music 1962;1:89–116.
  
• Liu J-L, Perry J, eds. Consciousness and the Self: New Essays. Cambridge Univ, 2012. [esp. Ch. 5 'Waiting for the Self' and Ch. 9 'Personhood and Consciousness']
  
• Loizou A. Time Embodiment and the Self. Avebury, 2000.
  
• Muldoon M. Tricks of Time: Bergson, Merleau-ponty And Ricoeur in Search of Time, Self and Meaning. Duquesne Univ, 2006.
  
• Pareyon G. On musical self-similarity: Intersemiosis as synecdoche and analogy. PhD dissertation, Univ Helsinki, 2011 [Acta Semiotica Fennica 2011;39(13).]
  
• Waddell N, Abe M, trs. The Heart of Dogen's Shobogenzo. SUNY, 2002.
  
• Tárogató page
  
• Tárogató at Karl Hammerschmidt & Söhne GmbH

Aries Composers’ Festival at Colorado State University Center for the Arts, 07-NOV-2011.

B   eran and others comprehend musical self-similarity as a problem of engineering. In contrast, investigations that consider its cultural significance within a certain historical tradition, are very rare (e.g. Kieran 1996, Yadegari 2004). In a brief article published in 1995, Alexander Koblyakov throws a first light on this matter, making a basic statement about the study of musical self-similarity, noticing that [in principle] ‘there is a problem[atic] situation... It is necessary to include the perception (mentality) factor in a considered phenomenon of self-similarity.’ Unfortunately, most of the literature on the subject disregards this sharp observation.”   — Gabriel Pareyon, 2011.

Kristen Plumley, Star Fleet Soprano

I   think that the science fiction genre has inspired so many artists... painters, poets, and certainly musicians. It is such an imaginative form of expression that speculates on our destiny — where are we going in the future? Science fiction and the music we associate with it truly resonates with many, many people.”
  — George Takei.

I   was a HUGE science fiction fan growing up, so this concert is like a ‘dream-come-true’ for me. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had on-stage.”
  — Kristen Plumley.

I t takes real guts and musicianship to pull off pieces like the ones we heard last night at Kansas City’s Kauffman Center! Let’s just say that it tests the mental and emotional stamina in a different way, compared to, say, opera. Maybe such pieces should become a part of the repertoire for performance requirements—Star Fleet costume and all!—in conservatories and schools of music. Can you deliver your solo starship-arresting vocalizations and maintain your composure? Kristen Plumley sure can! Hailing frequencies are open!


R enowned pops conductor Jack Everly led members of the Kansas City Symphony in a superb performance, made even more dramatic by voice-overs by George Takei. Tickets were sold-out weeks in advance—which speaks volumes, too, about the tremendous appeal these familiar tunes have for broad audience. Brilliant programming and marketing! Bravo!

• Kristen Plumley website
  
• George Takei website
  
• Jack Everly page at Peter Throm Artists LLC
  
• Alexander Courage page at Memory Alpha

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?’

• Lilley C. Dressage to Music: Build a Freestyle from Choreography to Competition. Allen, 2008.
  
• Patin F. Beat detection algorithms whitepaper. 2003.
  
• Rasin B. Fantastic freestyles: Steffen Peters. Chronicle of the Horse, 03-APR-2009.
  
• Walker J. The magic (and talent) behind the freestyle. Chronicle of the Horse, 14-SEP-2007.
  
• Welsh G. Creating Musical Freestyles Start To Finish . USDF, 2000.
  
• Freestyle search on Dressage page at HorseRadioNetwork
  
• Kür music at Woodwind Studios
  
• Equikur.co.uk
  
• Kür page at Wikipedia
  
• BritishDressage.co.uk page on dressage to music
  
• USDF.org page on musical freestyle
  
• FreestyleDressage.co.uk
  
• Article about freestyle dressage to music at Equiworld.net
  
• The Chronicle of the Horse
  
• BPMdatabase.com 150 bpm search
  
• JogTunes.com 150 bpm search
  
• BPM4DJs 150 bpm search
  
• BestWorkoutMusic.com 150 bpm search
  
• Tangerine software
  
• BeatScanner software
  
• MixMeister BPManalyzer software
  
• Podrunner app at iTunes
  
• BPM detection software at mmartins.com

Cheryl Melfi: Digital Reeds Extraordinaire!

S   pace is social, and each society produces its own space—space that is simultaneously mental and physical. Space is always ‘produced’, in the sense that it is always a set of relationships; it is never a ‘given’; never inert or transparent; never in a state of nature untouched by culture. There is no such thing as an ‘empty’ space. You have already filled it...”
  — David Wiles, p. 10.

I   n electroacoustic music the interrelationship of spatial attributes and spatial schemata is often engaged in a play of perceptual grouping—one that blurs and confounds distinctions like ‘source’ and ‘ensemble’.”
  — Gary Kendall & Mauricio Ardila, p. 125.

T he solo electroacoustic clarinet performance by Cheryl Melfi last night in CharlotteStreet.org’s City Center Square location was excellent. Apart from the beauty of the works, the program illuminated a number of aspects of electroacoustic performance practice—things that are more apparent when it is soloist-plus-electronics, as contrasted with larger-ensemble-plus-electronics.

• Mark Snyder: ‘Butterfly’
  
• Richard Johnson: ‘Hiram’ (première)
  
• Alex Harker: ‘Fluence’
  
• Daniel Eichenbaum: ‘The Lonely Road’ (première)
  
• João Pedro Oliveira: ‘Time Spell’

T hese are all works for amplified B-flat clarinet and electronics. By their nature (with the performer positioned center-stage in a multi-loudspeaker array configuration) the works explore the relationship between ‘enacted’ space (a space whose semantics are created through the presence of the clarinettist on stage), the composed space of the “tape” (electronics) part and the bridge between the two created by live processing (typically in Max/MSP or Pd or other software tool). The clarinet part calls for extremes in register and dynamic range, with extremely animated playing. Each of the compositions draws on sonic causal relationships that we perceive as interactive, but which are in reality generated through careful synchronization with the electronics part. In some of the pieces, by using ‘clarinet-triggered’ causal relationships and gestural interplay (notably in the Oliveira piece) as an alternative to continuous realtime processing, the electronic material becomes more strongly linked—spatially and narratively—to the live instrument.

T he unique potential of electroacoustic music to explore spatial relationships and our auditory perceptions and cognition of the body’s spatial situatedness has raised issues about appropriate performance practices for this music. Throughout the course of its evolution, electroacoustic music has invited research into new modes of performance. Spatial details are invariably a consideration in these.

T he unique potential of electroacoustic music to explore timbral relationships and our perceptions is also invariably revealed... so long as the performer is up to the challenge! Clarinettists are today challenged by innovations in both contemporary music and technology. Compositions for clarinet in recent decades have led to performance practices that include new techniques, such as frulato, multiphonics, glissandos, extreme alternate fingerings, reed-jacking, microtonal pitch-bending, key-clicks, lip-buzzing, and vocal sounds such as humming or singing at the same time the instrument is blown. These techniques are increasingly permeating the repertoire of the clarinet, especially so in the case of film scores. They require the clarinettist to constantly extend her/his technique, both blowing and fingering.

N otably, Rehfeldt recommends the amenability of the clarinet to experiments in new music: “Its flexibility allows a wide range of effects, including all manner of multiple sonorities, microtones, tone, trills, air sounds, percussive sounds” (see also Druhun, 2003).

C larinet and electronics mingle and exchange places. The identities/characters of each, though, remain discernable. An explosive staccato articulation is a ‘Bartokian’ act clearly in an instrumental idiom, while longer note values, with long dynamics changes and circular breathing to sustain them, manifest an overtly ‘vocal’, visceral, diaphragmatic aspect. Cheryl negotiates some superhuman clarinet feats—virtuosic technic [extreme technic] with appealing musicality!

M ono samples were used to dramatic effect in several of the works, panning the samples across the Mackie speaker array. This was most notably the case with the sounds of extended releases of breath through the clarinet, which present spectromophologies that ‘accept’ the spatialization attributes of panning across the area of the Mackie monitors. [Smalley emphasizes that “the motion must be implicit in the sound itself, or the texture itself, or the context itself.” Basically, the use of 5.1 spatialization (as opposed to 8-channel or other formats) magnifies the perceived kinetic energy of material. Small gestural fragments are scattered over the 5.1 array to form “cumulative” trajectories of sound, and the listener becomes immersed in dark and abstract soundscapes generated by the clarinet.] By layering materials a rich spatial hierarchy is created: a World, a believable World. At any given moment, certain sounds/motions dominate others, and the hierarchy is in constant flux as materials emerge, develop, and recede. Cool! A World that is impervious to human mastery!

A  number of processing techniques are utilized.

• Buffering: This is used to extend textures established by the clarinet into more dynamic and irregular textures, building up a dense sound-world which clearly originates from the clarinettist on stage.
  
• Delay Lines: Depending on the delay times, these either exaggerate short gestures through rapid and irregular repetition or, alternately, longer delay lines assist in the build-up of textures.
  
• Freezing: This facilitates harmonic layering based on the clarinet’s note being artificially ‘held’ once it has moved on to another.
  
• Granulation: This is frequently used to add fluctuating textures to sustained notes, often controlled via amplitude tracking (e.g., a louder sound will have a smaller grain size and greater grain variation).

C heryl Melfi has served as principal clarinetist in the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the Catalina Chamber Orchestra, and the Michigan Pops Orchestra. She is a past member of Quadrivium, the Crosswinds Ensemble, the Arizona-based wind quintet Fünf, and the contemporary music quartet THUD. She has also performed with contemporary music groups including the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, the Prime Directive, and the Nova Chamber Players. With Quadrivium, she was a featured artist at the 2010 Electro-Acoustic Juke Joint and the 2011 Thailand International Composition Festival. Melfi has performed at the 2008 International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest where her performance was called “excellent and exotic.” Other festival performances include Electronic Music Midwest and SEAMUS.

• Cheryl Melfi website
  
• Kansas City Electronic Music & Arts Alliance (KCEMA) website
  
• João Pedro Oliveira website
  
• Richard Johnson website
  
• Alex Harker website
  
• Mark Snyder website
  
• Daniel Eichenbaum website
  
• Timothy Place’s Max/MSP objects
  
• Timothy Place’s ‘8space’ Max/MSP spatializer plug-in
  
• Max/MSP Granular Spatializer object at IRCAM
  
• Max/MSP frequency-domain filter Spectral Spatializer object at IRCAM
  
• Karlheinz Essl’s RTClib for Max/MSP
  
• ppooll
  
• IRCAM tools
  
• IRCAM Spat and other tools at FluxHome.com
  
• Batista C. Uma abordagem da música eletroacústica brasileira no final do séc. 20. Monografia de Especialização. Universidade Federal de Goiás, Escola de Música. Goiânia, 2001.
  
• Druhan M. A performer guide to multimedia compositions for clarinet and visuals: A tutorial focusing on Works by Joel Chadabe, Merrill Ellis, William O. Smith, and Reynold Weidenaar. DMA Dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2003.
  
• Emmerson S. Living Electronic Music. Ashgate, 2007.
  
• Heaton R. ‘The contemporary clarinet’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Clarinet, C. Lawson, ed. Cambridge Univ, 1995.
  
• Kendall G, Cabrera A. Why things don’t work: What you need to know about spatial audio. Proc International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) 2011;1-4.
  
• Kendall G, Ardila M. The artistic play of spatial organization: Spatial attributes, scene analysis and auditory spatial schemata. Proc International Computer Music Conf (ICMC) 2007;63-8.
  
• Gary Kendall page at Queen's Univ Belfast
  
• Moore A, Schmidt P, Dockwray R. A hermeneutics of spatialization for recorded song. twentieth-century music 2009;6:83-114.
  
• Rehfeldt P. New Directions for Clarinet. Univ California, 1994.
  
• Smalley D. Space-form and the acousmatic image. Organised Sound 2007;12:35-58.
  
• Wiles D. A Short History of Western Performance Space. Cambridge Univ, 2003.
  
• Young J. Reflections on sound image design in electroacoustic music. Organised Sound 2007;12:25-33.
  
• Zampronha E. Notação, representação e comunicação. Um novo paradigma da escrituração musical. Fapesp. São Paulo, 2000.
  
• Zvonar R. A history of spatial music. eContact! 2004;7(4)

Gene Pritsker: William James and Pluralistic Consciousness Beyond the Margin

T he new recording of Gene Pritsker’s ‘William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience: A Chamber Opera’ is beautiful—musically and dramatically.

W illiam James was fascinated by what he termed our ‘selective interest’—our harmoniously adjusting ourselves to things seen and unseen. In the sea of evolving, conflicting stimuli in which we are immersed, we pay attention to a small subset of things... mostly things that match our predispositions and expectations: our interests and beliefs. A renowned psychologist and pragmatist and empiricist philosopher, James in the late 19th Century set about to assemble evidence that could reveal whether and how experiences that are gated by interests and beliefs in things unseen can catalyze positive changes in people—especially when people attach symbolic or emotional/spiritual importance to the experiences. “Explore the peculiarities of this attitude... All our attitudes... are due to the objects of our consciousness... the things we believe to exist. We feel a presence in the room... definitely localized... coming suddenly, and suddenly gone... I felt myself to be the less ‘real’ of the two...”

I n VRE (p. 55), James says “so far as religious conceptions are able to touch this reality-feeling [of objective presence of the Other] they would be believed in spite of criticism, even though they might be so vague and remote as to be almost unimaginable... even though they might be such non-entities in point of ‘whatness’...”

• Gene Pritsker, guitar
  
• Greg Baker, guitar
  
• Dan Barrett, cello
  
• Larry Goldman, contra bass
  
• Lynn Norris, soprano
  
• Chanda Rule, mezzo soprano
  
• Marc Molomot, tenor
  
• Charles Coleman, baritone
  
• Chester Layman, narrator
  
• Kim Pritsker, narrator

D elicate, taut, and incisive writing. Beautiful interplay between instruments and voices, between the rhythm/melodies/harmonies and the text. ‘Synaptic’ guitar picking; a really elegant solo improvisation on Track 5.

T he guitars-cello-bass instrumental ‘presence’ pervades the whole—this fact plus the fact that the voices in the foreground are so crisp and tangible make it seem as though the instrumental parts must collectively be ‘God’. But then the timbre of the voice changes, and I’m doubting that my sense of that was right. Maybe this is sonic evidence for some sort of pantheism? Everything is divine... everything that’s not being deceptive, anyway.

P ritsker’s ‘William James’s VRE’ is not a contemporary event-centric historical opera per se (not a “headline opera” about a famous historical figure and a famous moment in history, a la John Adams’s ‘Doctor Atomic’, on J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb). Sometimes event-centric works feel too self-referential—‘program music’ or a suite of ad hoc ‘concept’ compositions that are too overtly seeking adherents.

T his chamber opera is not like that. It’s far too unpredictable! It does, though, share with historical operas an attractive ‘topicality’ in terms of (a) dramatizing interrelated subjects (spirituality; religion; multiculturalism; tolerance) that have plenty of currency these days and (b) grounding these in the life of one well-known historical protagonist.

I  really admire the judicious excerpting of William James VRE texts for this libretto! Attention to the unbiddenness of how we recall things: verses, that bubble up in our minds, contrary to our ambitions or plans.

M any passages from James’s book (VRE) are dense and literary: the sentence structure was meant to be read by readers of 100+ years ago. When spoken aloud in this opera, these words engage our minds in provocative ways that highlight the finiteness of our attention as well as the alienness of the century-ago culture that produced the notions in VRE. Our relation to the music that is being performed while the voice-over narration is going on is altered, far more than happens in ‘conventional’ opera.

W hat’s more, some of the narrators/texts are more ‘reliable’ as narrators than others. Each is clearly earnest in his/her own way, and yet some of them make statements that are more accessible or less accessible to us, given our own beliefs and style and inclinations/disinclinations to share our feelings in ways that resemble what the narrator is doing. Listening to these different narrators/singers, we’re led to recognize more of what we ourselves are doing: selectively filtering, giving and getting, allowing and forbidding.

T he opera and the ‘arc’ of the 8 tracks of the recording ably convey dramatic tension of setting out on a journey to explore the diversity of spirituality; of encountering many instances and types of experience; of empirically assessing each of these; and finally integrating and summarizing what we’ve found out.

T he 43-min performance time is just sufficient to develop the ideas and the ambience and characterizations, and bring things in for a satisfying “landing”.

T he sound has warmth and intimacy throughout, perfectly matched to the subject and content. Beautiful performances by all, plus excellent engineering and production values on the recording.

I ’m uplifted by this new Pritsker CD—impressed by the authenticity of music that “had to come out”, had to be composed, had to exist. There is a wonderful ‘meta-meta’ aspect to the work as well. It is as though Pritsker has created a sonic picture of ‘William James’s Red Mood’ (see Arthur Danto’s famous book of 30 years ago, link below)—plus a further picture, an abstract minimalist exemplar of geometrical art which happens to be lush and sensuous and red and pulsating—plus yet a further picture, a metaphysical painting based on the fact that James knew the Nirvanic and Samsara orders are identical and that the Samsara world is fondly called the Red Dust by its deprecators.

J ames near the end of VRE says “Religious mysticism... is much less unanimous than I have allowed... It is dualistic in Sankhya and monistic in Vedanta” (VRE p. 336). He maintains that, rather than being adversarial or conflictual, the varieties of spiritual experience can in fact be harmonious with each other... there can be rapproachment between individuals and religions that hold what appear to be incompatible ‘over-beliefs’. James says that this can be done by looking to everyday feelings and to everyday acts—however unplanned and discordant with ambitions and ideologies as they may be—looking to these as comprising the essence of real religion (VRE p. 397).

T his opera by Gene Pritsker honors that Jamesian notion. The opera—and this recording—are a welcome invitation to self-discovery, to mutual respect and tolerance for the spirituality (or lack thereof) of others, and to joyous, mindful living in community. Look for the CD when it’s released in February. Very worth your listening!

• Gene Pritsker website
  
• Composers Concordance Records [Pritsker release on 28-FEB-2012]
  
• Danto A. Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Harvard Univ, 1983.
  
• Lamberth D. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. Cambridge Univ, 2009.
  
• Proudfoot W, ed. William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’. Columbia Univ, 2004.
  
• Putnam R, ed. The Cambridge Companion to William James. Cambridge Univ, 1997.
  
• Taylor E. William James on Consciousness Beyond the Margin. Princeton, 1996.
  
• Blind Men & Elephant metaphor for epistemology, empirical relation to Truth
  
• Council on Spiritual Practices (CSP.org)