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!
R eligion...is a person’s total reaction upon life.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
Y ou will enjoy and be inspired by the new recording by guitarist/composer Gene Pritsker and his ensemble, SoundLiberation.
Gene Pritsker, electric guitar
Greg Baker, electric guitar
David Gotay, cello
Mat Fieldes, double-bass and electric bass
Joe Abba, percussion
T he original chamber opera from which this VRE Suite derives was orchestrated for narrator, tenor, soprano, mezzo soprano, baritone, 2 guitars, cello, and double-bass.
[50-sec clip, SoundLiberation Ensemble, Gene Pritsker, Varieties of Religious Experience, ‘Everything Else Might Be a Dream’ (track 3), 2010, 1.6MB MP3]
T he Suite progresses in 8 tracks (64 min) from ‘Introduction’, a musical exposition of William James’ early views on psychology of religion, through James’ subsequent reconsiderations of his thought (‘Closer to Me than My Own Breath’, track 5), to an account of Tolstoy’s spirituality, to William James’ “conclusion” (track 8). There are myriad textures here that invite meditation. Accessible, stimulating chamber music throughout—although I do hope someday to experience the VRE opera. The theatrical gestures in here make me curious about the VRE libretto and staging. What texts did Pritsker choose, I wonder?
T he last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
M any of the published reviews of Pritsker’s work note that he challenges musical boundaries. Uh, yes he does. Exceptionally curious and inclusive rather than aggressive or confrontational, Pritsker and his collaborators explore passionate new expressions based on jazz, world rhythms, machine rhythms, lyricism, and the spirit.
W hat interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way?” — William James, ‘Dilemma of Determinism’, 1884.
T he VRE Suite is full of tasteful improvisation, sturdy melodies and voice-leading, strong ‘grooves’. Mystical it may be, but VRE Suite is far from ‘enigmatic’. It positively asserts that your cosmic, mystical experience is as genuine as my mystical experience; or as genuine as that of any organized religion.
R eligion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men and women in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
A ccording to theists’ Argument from Religious Experience, people have “religious experiences” — mystical or supernatural experiences, like angels or ghosts. Theists say that, because we believe other experiential claims people make — that they ate spaghetti last night, or they have a pet cat — then we should believe these claims as well. Theists say that, when skeptics insist on different, more stringent standards for assessing the veracity of claims based on religious experiences than they do for claims based on other experiences, they are prejudiced against religious claims. This prevents them from understanding and believing. William James entertained this argument in his Varieties of Religious Experience. He proposed that all normal persons do have religious experience and, since empirical experience is the final arbiter of truth, then God—as one object of religious experiences—must be accepted as factually true. A problem, though, arises in the variety of religious experiences: if there were just one true God, why is there such wide variety in religious experiences? They are mutually inconsistent, so at least some experiences must be false. There are no independent criteria we can use to separate true experiences from false experiences — not only others’, but our own. There are no independent criteria; there can be no independent criteria; all criteria rely upon the validity of some religious system, a Bible or the Koran, or some other sacred text—some of them, or all of them, must be false.
R eligions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
F or any who are unfamiliar with William James (1842-1910), I should point out that James was not a Christian. He was religious in his own way, but he was hardly a monotheist. William James published his ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’ in 1902 and, subsequently, many theists have taken bits of his writings out of context to support their arguments. But at bottom James was a Rationalist, and he did not believe in a personal God who enters history or personally responds to people’s prayers. Gene Pritsker’s VRE Suite likewise evokes a diverse range of spirituality while broadly extending respect and tolerance to all forms.
A n act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
P ritsker offers a unique look at trans-textual relationships between the poetic text and musical text; between the chamber music creative tradition and new ways of crossing boundaries of genres and orchestration; between the Western canon of chamber music thought and non-traditional, jazz-derived ways of intimacy; and between the ideology of chamber for chamber’s sake and the opposite: the ideology of chamber musicians’ active ethical engagement in, and attention to, social issues.
T he total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but may mutually ignore each other.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
Chamber operas are a good example of new “ideological,” stylistic and technological approaches to composition. They are emblematic of a transition from musical thinking that was orthodox and conservative to more heterodox, multi-layered forms.
T he Hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
P ritsker uses isorhythmic patterns in the first several tracks, retrogrades in ‘The Less Real of the Two’, and allusions to the rondo form in ‘William James’ Conclusion’.
G enius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
T he predominant texture in the VRE Suite is ‘pointillistic’ and tense, but not in the acoustic sense of guitars or pizzicato passages in the cello or double-bass. VRE Suite is organized through a contrapuntal juxtaposition and alternation of single notes, short gestures, and gestural ‘units’ that are based on certain ‘privileged’ pitches and intervals and chosen beat-divisions. Complex linear constructs are mostly melismas—especially exposed in the guitars, but also in the cello part.
T he transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
I t is interesting that in the first parts of the Suite the individual notes and gestures are distributed across the whole available range in each instrument, with emphasis given to irregular, “nervous” rotations of leaps and step-wise motion. A kind of self-less, anonymous, transcendent texture emerges as a result. Such an approach has a lot to do with post-serialist compositional methods, even if Pritsker would be happier to disavow this.
I ntegrity—a unified/unifying collective voice that is robust against the ensemble members individuality and rhythmic complexity—is assured by a technique based on manipulations of similar timbral and gestural units (motives, minimalistic ones or otherwise). The groups of repeated units establish a sonic architectural continuum and create a durable terrain governed by intervals and timbres of desire between consenting adults.
R omeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as the filings. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet’s lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed; the path may be modified indefinitely.” — William James, quoted by Mortimer Adler.
B eyond the ‘Introduction’, VRE Suite becomes more and moredialectical, but in a good way. Gestures of disparate provenance react against each other, animating each other not killing each other off, bringing passages to life (?reincarnating them). The gestures (revealed by guitars, cello, and drums) alternate against a double-bass ostinato. There is much joy and comfort to be had in this...
P ritsker’s use of unusual cello-electric guitar timbres should be considered from a psychological rather than a technological point of view. “Technical” in nature, these timbres intensify the poetic metaphor or enhance the emotional power the music exerts on us, inscribing us, carving us as it goes...
W e are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
I n James’ writing, Pritsker has found a congenial source of conceptual and artistic inspiration. William James himself embodies the contradiction of a spiritual man and rationalist. There is something of the prophet as well as a “martyr” in him, despite his wealth and Harvard credentials and social standing... He was aware of the necessity to combine intellectual effort with social intervention and his own convictions. His writings are humorous, perhaps inadvertently so. His entirely serious meanings are embedded in an “innocent”, “childish, “naïve”, “life-is-short-so-what-the-hell” surface. His psychological writings amount to an exotic kind of poetry influenced by folk literature, supernatural beauty, pain of life, and religion.
T ake the happiest man or woman, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his/her inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his/her ideals in the line of his/her achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he/she has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he/she inwardly knows himself/herself to be found wanting.” — William James, ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’, 1902.
T he complexity of James’ poetic texture and his multi-spectral style must appeal deeply to Pritsker. It is amazing how masterfully Pritsker explored the opportunities offered by James’ poetic vocabulary.
P ritsker’s compositions (including chamber music, chamber operas, electroacoustic and orchestral works, rock, and hip-hop) have been performed widely (Berlin Philharmonic; Adelaide Symphony; Brooklyn Philharmonic; Athens Camerata; and others). He has also collaborated with Joe Zawinul on film scoring projects.
C reatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of ‘Hello! Thing-um-a-bob again!’ ever flitted through its mind.” — William James, ‘Principles of Psychology’, 1890.
I believe that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the Universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries... They are tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. Just so, we are tangent to the wider life of things.” — William James, ‘Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking’, 1907.
Michael Smetanin’s ‘Obsession’ for tenor saxophone, electric guitar, cello, double bass, piano, and drumkit (1995)
Irinel Anghel’s ‘El Enigmes II’ for electric guitar, cello (with processing), bass guitar, and tape (2001)
James Tenney’s ‘Septet’ for 6 electric guitars and bass guitar (1981)
Salvatore Macchia’s ‘Onde’ for double bass and guitar (2000)
Brian Ferneyhough’s ‘Trittico per G.S.’ for double bass (1989); Seven ‘Tableaux Vivants’ depicting the Angel of History as Melancholia; Stelæ for Failed Time)
P olitical myths are narratives that coagulate and reproduce significance [for and in a social group]. They consist of the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group or society represent or posit their experiences and deeds. As such, they are an important part of what can be called the ‘social imaginary’... [Political myths] are positional, in that they are told from the standpoint of the present. In other words, if the historian can be defined as a ‘turned-back prophet’, in what ways does he or she differ from an ideal/typical myth-maker? Or, to put it another way, in what ways do political myths and historical writings respectively contribute to present identities, or in what ways are they the result of them?” — Chiara Bottici, p. 201.
Andrew Imbrie (06-APR-1921 – 05-DEC-2007) had a wry sense of humor, one that hails from an era that seems now long-gone. Exhibit “A”: Imbrie’s ‘Three Against Christmas,’ an opera in four scenes (libretto by Richard Wincor, available through Edition C.F.Peters) about Christmas being banned and restored——premiered in Berkeley in 1964. In the current political climate in the U.S. today, it’s hard to imagine such a thing being written—even in jest—and unthinkable that it could be performed in a public place. Imbrie’s last completed work, ‘Sextet for Six Friends’, was premiered by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in February this year. It, too, manifests iconoclasm at its social-activist best—revising the relationship between the performers and the audience, and challenging the audience members’ conceptions of themselves and their society.
Andrew Imbrie’s music was emblematic of a 60+ year quest for meaningful post-tonal idioms. His compositions honor the individual and social importance of emotion and integrity. He harnesses dissonance and motivic ‘passion’ in the service of narrative development, of dramatic exposition, and of harmonic relationships between the voices/parts; that is to say, he did not indulge in throw-down, dissonant gestures to uncertain ends.
It’s debatable whether Imbrie preferred harmonies that are non-triadic. But, if triadic harmonies were to be sanctioned in an Imbrie composition, then they’d better be ‘non-functional’ ones, or at least not ‘conventionality-subservient-functional’ ones!
His Requiem, for example, is terse, bitter, mercurial—defiant, even. But, rather than dwell upon poignant reflection and grief, the 32-minute, 6-movement work generates an unexpected epiphany. It propels us [performers; listeners] to an unbidden, inadvertent (re-)discovery of the divergence between views about what mortality means—divergent views of people of different ages, between successive generations of humans—decorated by the traditional Latin Requiem text and elegiac poetry by William Blake, George Herbert and John Donne.
M y music does not strive to be American like my nationality, nor Scottish like my ancestry. It is neither experimental nor conventional... Composing for me is a process of drawing out the consequences (as I perceive them) of an initial idea ... Once the idea has become specific enough, it begins to generate its own continuation ... The sense of the large structure becomes increasingly clear as the work progresses.” — Andrew Imbrie.
The divergent views are not resolved, nor are they resolvable. In a thoroughly post-modern way, Imbrie shows the validity of each of the divergent perspectives and affirms each. There is no ideological ‘winner’; there is no ‘best’. Besides our inevitable losses and mortality, the inherent, irresolvable complexity in the human condition is the gaping truth that Imbrie reveals in this peculiar, deeply-moving Requiem. You wanted something nicey-nicey? Tough luck! Discover this!
A sking a composer to describe his own style is like asking a person ‘How do you walk? How do you talk? How do you breathe?’ ” — Andrew Imbrie, Society of Composers interview, 2001.
Imbrie acknowledged his influences and composerly indebtedness to sounds and compositional methods used by predecessors. But he deeply mistrusted mathematical systems and 20th century formal models—12-tone/serialist ones and otherwise. He was, in other words, a brave and sturdy opponent of dogma and coercion and blinkered orthodoxy of all sorts.
‘Three Against Christmas’ was, after all, a comic opera—a tragically prescient one, maybe, considering the course that things have taken lately, anticipating as it did the social and political trends that lay in the decades ahead.
Then and now, of course, no one has ‘banned’ Nativity plays. People are nominally still free to celebrate the coming holiday as they see fit—which may include going to church, celebrating it without any religious content, or completely ignoring it. The only significant change in recent years has been politicians’ and the media’s progressive audacity to pretend that they have ‘values’ (and implying that others do not have legitimacy or ‘values’) by spuriously defending something that isn’t under attack, and by disingenuously ascribing to their political opponents views that those opponents do not in fact hold—all of this done in a shameless attempt to arrogate more power to themselves, and to disenfranchise/suppress voices that are different from their own.
T here is a consistency of style, character, spirit — what is commonly called ‘voice’ — that identify the music as personally, individually his. At no point could it be identified with a ‘movement’, a ‘trend’, a ‘school’, an ‘-ism’.” — Robert Commanday, Memorial remarks, A Composer Apart, SFCV.
Imbrie’s works include five string quartets, plus many chamber and choral works, as well as three symphonies. Each of these, in one way or another, propounds arguments in support of pluralism and explores the merits of cultural and perspectival diversity. By implication, Imbrie exhorted us to be honest, and to acknowledge that we are all of ‘mixed’ heritage—that we all desperately need to ‘belong’.
I n the Latin text, the Offertory is an actual prayer, not a poem about prayer as it is here. The choral and instrumental setting is intended to reflect its ritual quality, enhancing it by the alternation of male and female voices and by the ornamental use of tuned drums. Only in the middle, where the chorus prays that the dead be granted eternal life, does the music escape from this implied formality. ‘Death be Not Proud and Conclusion’ consists of three parts. The first is an extended, agitated orchestral introduction, which was needed in order to generate the energy for the setting of John Donne’s sonnet. Here, the chorus sings in English for the first time and sings only one melody in unison and octaves. This culminating expression of human faith in an ultimate victory over death is followed by a foreshortened setting of the concluding parts of the Latin Requiem, in which the soprano soloist, singing in Latin for the first time, participates by interjecting a ‘Benedictus’, reaching the highest notes of her range. After this, while the listener holds those high notes in memory, together with the preceding choral sounds, the music subsides quickly to its conclusion, recalling the opening of the work.” — Andrew Imbrie.
T he overall concept of civic virtue too often contains a romantic reading of history that, we think, leads us astray. The assumption of a singular moral center in the past and the desire to resume it in the future promotes an ideology [that is] deficient on two counts. It is more intolerant toward those who feel harmed by the prevailing consensus, and it preempts the possibility that greater social unity might flow from value systems that are open to multiple sources of moral authority. To imagine a pristine time before the fall is to assume a harmonious time that never existed...” — Tom de Luca, p.87.
We will miss Andrew Imbrie’s activism, his inclusiveness, his generosity and tolerance, his curiosity and enthusiasm for new ideas. We will miss his good sense of humor; his zeal for manufacturing equality, plurality, and justice where those were in short supply. We will miss his communitarian tendency to encourage all people to join and discover and celebrate their respective traditions and identities.
T he new recording of Gene Pritsker’s ‘William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience: A Chamber Opera’ is beautiful—musically and dramatically.
