jwilzewske: riley

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Terry Riley’s Aleph (א): Music to Code By

A leph in Jewish mysticism represents the oneness of the Divine. The letter can been seen as being composed of an upper yud, a lower yud, and a vav leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffible aspects of God while the lower yud represents God’s revelation and presence in the world. The vav connects the two realms.”
— Wikipedia.

T he 1-hour 53-min recording of Terry Riley’s solo synth performance of his composition, ‘א’, is beautiful—and precisely the sort of experience you would expect from Riley.

B ut, apart from whatever else it may be and apart from its merits as a composition and as a performance, I have found it to be especially conducive to my own productivity when working on complex math problems and coding software to solve them. For me, silence works only up to a point, after which I need minimalist music.

B ut not just any minimalist music. For example, Michael Nyman’s music interferes with concentration. La Monte Young’s music contains, for me, too many distractions. I do find Ellen Fullman’s recent work conducive, though, in the same way that Terry Riley’s ‘Aleph’ is conducive.

T he timbre of the Korg Triton Studio 88 Synth is bright like a Chinese single-reed or double-reed, but with a lot of spectral flux like a car horn... or a choir of Chinese tenor and bass suonas. Spectral flux and spectral irregularity are distinguishing features in car horns (see Lemaitre 2003, link below).

T he two-hour performance is filled with dense, organic, continually-changing textures—nimble car horns, if car horns can ever be nimble, and these are supernaturally nimble. The automaticity of preschool kids’ trying out their fingers on a keyboard, enjoying the raw pleasure of making notes and reproducing patterns and sequences... reflexive movements of their fingers and arms, yielding arpeggiation that involves just those notes that are within easy reach without stretching.

T he effect, some minutes into listening to it, evokes a freedom from intention and planning that is unknown to sober adults, and this is what facilitates my problem-solving and coding mind. The uncertain continuation of woodwind-like fingering patterns without aim, as long as they last, until superceded by some new motif... the stochastic, aleatoric innovations... Riley discounts the creative value of mind and deliberation and discounts it again, and again... the dollar-store of intellect... until the passion of meat is all that’s left, and animal instinct is restored...

O nly connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect...”
— E.M. Forster, ‘Howard’s End’, Ch. 22, 1910.

H ere’s a short MP3 clip.

T here is a ceremonial, magisterial, quasi-liturgical quality of ‘Aleph’ that reminds me of requiem forms. Or of chant, which can be heard as both archaic and contemporary. It is a mystical piece that unfolds at an implacable, glacial pace. The tone is largely meditative and serene, which provides space for contemplation and veneration. There are dozens-of-voices atmospheric Ligeti-like sound-fogs... fields of dissonance that convey an inhuman, infinite, primeval power—this surely is part of the Hebrew significance of Aleph; as is true also of the meaning of ‘א’ in mathematics—fitting as well in the context of requiem-writing.

I t has been said that my ‘Requiem’ does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticized for its over-inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist’s nature? As to my ‘Requiem’, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper...”
— Gabriel Fauré, 1902.

T hroughout, the piece is prodigiously inventive, with prolific layers upon layers of rhythmic and harmonic complexity, yet all presented with what appears on the surface to be minimalistic... it embodies the best of what minimalism can be: full of latent variety that captures and nourishes the listener’s awareness. (Which is why I find it helpful to listen to when I am tackling a hard problem, and why I am writing this blogpost you are reading. If you are interested in reading more about quantitative evidence concerning music listening and work productivity, have a look at the links below, esp. the book by Vikram Kiran.)

T he seamless, cluster-like blends fan out like a spilled liquid on a flat surface—part of the organic quality of just intonation, providing a support structure for the synth suona-like parts, a Toop-style “rawness” of intonation that sustains the emotional intensity of the piece.

M ost a cappella ensembles naturally gravitate to just intonation because its ‘stability’ or ‘target-pitch predictability’ is comfortable. In that regard, maybe the spectral flux and on-again-off-again frisson of this Terry Riley recording will be of special interest to people of a vocal bent, both amateur and professional singers alike.

T his sound of synth suonas keening, synth voices keening, choir of synth car horns keening... bears some resemblance to the György Ligeti piece in ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’, ‘Lux aeterna’... A friend who was overhearing my repeated playing of the 2 Riley ‘Aleph’ CDs wondered aloud “How can you stand that!? It’s driving me nuts!” So, to be truthful I should say that this is an acquired taste, or reveals a patience borne of equanimity. It is like being transported by William Kraft’s music in the walkway between terminals underneath Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It is like listening to a choir of chainsaws in the forest at a great and comfortable distance. Or like the persistent-but-beautiful bleating and tintinnabulation of sheep in a high alpine meadow in the Swiss alps, below the Jung Frau Joch in the late mornings of mid-summer. In other words, the bleating and tintinnabulation signify tolerant, salutary, and humane qualities that are implicit in our planet’s troubled story. Children of the Universe, you (every living creature) are here, hurray. Have a good life.

I n short, these are qualities which make humans, the sum of which could be seen in love (esp. agape, which in turn can be seen as an embodiment of the ‘idea of One’). The musical gaze cast from this sphere upon the story world is distanced, more or less withdrawn, non-judgemental, calm, quiet, and slightly melancholic, yet non-sentimental. As film music, tintinnabuli music often qualifies as an ‘against all odds’ score capable of making the complicated plot-level matters more poignant.”
— Kaire Maimets-Volt, p. 172.

I f you were in a foreign country and experiencing the local people performing on their native instruments, a long raga, for example—you would exhibit a tolerance toward such bleatings and tintinnabulations. But if instead, like my friend, you regard it as a choir of annoying car horns—multiple car alarms being set off repeatedly by marauding kids on a street a couple of blocks away—you just want it to stop.

I n summary, playing these 2 CDs consecutively without a break induces an awareness that can facilitate productive concentration at work and lift you into a realm beyond human understanding or hearing. The music requires an audience who must be willing to accept the spirit of the work and suspend their disbelief in order to receive its many rewards.

Monday, November 5, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Room to Expand Track List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bertelmann - Hauschka webpage
Bertelmann on MySpace
Bertelmann on FATcat Records (RoomToExpand CD, 2007.)
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Fluxus Blog. Mesostics.
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Thursday, July 5, 2007

Remembrance: Retrieving the Right Requiem

DSM: My friend, RMC, died—testicular cancer, 20 kg metastatic mass in his abdomen; died in the operating room while the surgeons were trying to remove it. I’d visited him 2 days before the operation, at his home. He’d just come from a visit with his oncologist, and he had a very clear notion of the risk he was facing. In fact, the oncologist had tried to dissuade RMC from going forward with the surgery. But RMC was adamant. He didn’t want to acquiesce to that fate, simply letting the tumor eat him alive over a period of several months. He wanted to fight it. And now he’s gone, 33 years old, a dear friend of mine and a coworker for 6 years . . .

CMT: I’m sorry for your loss.

DSM: Know any good Requiems I could put in the CD player? What’s good for farewells? I’m craving very, very sad pieces of chamber music right now.

CMT: Fauré’s Requiem in D Minor? Shostakovich’s 15th; Duruflé’s Requiem; Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa? Mozart’s unfinished Requiem in D minor? Among Romantic Era composers who composed Requiems, you could do some Hector Berlioz, Anton Bruckner, Carl Czerny, Gaetano Donizetti, Antonín Dvořák, Charles Gounod, Max Reger, Camille Saint-Saëns, Robert Schumann, Franz von Suppé, and Richard Wetz. They all wrote requiems. And Edvard Grieg’s ‘Sorgemarsj over Rikad Nordraak’ is, I think, acoustically ‘sparse’ enough to be suitable for your remembrance of RMC.

And, among 20th Century composers, you have Vyacheslav Artyomov, Alfred Desenclos, Herbert Howells—his ‘Master Tallis’s Testament’ is atmospheric and well-matched to the spirit of a brave RMC who refused to give up. Or, what about Cyrillus Kreek, György Ligeti, or Meredith Monk? Their elegiac compositions might be a good fit. Or Knut Nystedt’s ‘Pia Memoria’? How about Krzysztof Penderecki, or Terry Riley’s ‘Requiem for Adam’? Or the Finns! Einojuhani Rautavaara—the Lacrimosa movement of his ‘Requiem in Our Time’? Or Erkki-Sven Tüür’s ‘Elegy for String Quartet’?

DSM: Those are all good choices. Schnittke’s Requiem is too angst-filled and thematically explicit. Stravinsky’s, too. The ones you named are good, though.

CMT: Some elegiac pieces are too large and grand. Not intimate enough—many choral pieces are like that. After all, we’re considering who the person was, and how wide or narrow was the scope of the lives that the person touched.

DSM: And some elegiac pieces are quite appropriate for a person of advanced age, but don’t fit at all with a young or middle-aged person or a child. Brahms’s Requiem is beautiful, but it doesn’t match the personality of my friend.

CMT: Schnittke’s Requiem is sufficiently abstract to be a match for your friend, but it’s too thematic and punitive. Same with the Stravinsky. Your friend was a software developer? What about Jesper Kyd—Denmark-born composer of soundtracks for computer games and films. He’s composed several Requiem pieces—in fact, some of them are embedded in the games. Techno-atmospheric requiems!

DSM: ‘Winter Night’ on his Hitman Contracts soundtrack; or ‘Meditation of the Oracle’ on his soundtrack for Spellborn; or even his ‘Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’. Kyd’s writing is not so much ‘thematic’ as it is ‘ambient’. There’s a minimalism that’s consistent with his nominal purpose of composing music for a computer game. But it’s a minimalism that’s open-ended—it can propel introspection and reflection, a focused expectancy. Yes, Kyd’s writing is in a vein that my friend RMC would’ve liked, particularly the railing against the absurdity and waste of a life cut short.

CMT: But I suppose Kyd’s music is far darker and moodier than would be healthy. Rich and very dark. You oughtn’t to stay immersed in it too long . . .

DSM: Well, healthy is in the eye of the beholder. Who’s to say what I need, or what music’s helpful or appropriate, or how long grieving should continue? If I were on a pure diet of Kyd six months from now, or even two weeks from now, that would be unhealthy. You know, the Mourners’ Kaddish is said as part of the Jewish mourning rituals, and, when people speak of ‘saying Kaddish’, it means performing the rituals of mourning, broadly construed. The opening words of the prayer are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23, a vision of God despairing of the nations, a cosmic despair—and God extemporizes a response. With regard to RMC, his loss may be a modest human one, but for those of us who were good friends of RMC, it feels pretty cosmic right now. And we must just extemporize a response that seems right, each one of us, day by day.

CMT: Jesper Kyd’s music creates the atmosphere within the games, and it dynamically changes to fit the players’ extemporaneous action—adding suspense and tension, punctuated with resolution and denouement as events unfold/conclude. Instead of live musicians, he primarily uses GIGAstudio™ Virtual Instruments—understandable, I suppose, because, in Kyd’s game soundtracks, the musical score is non-deterministic—its aleatory varies depending on how the gamer plays the level. The gamer can play the same level repeatedly without ever hearing the same music score twice. But it’s precisely that aleatoric quality that seems very appropriate to your friend RMC’s approach to life, even up to the very brave, defiant end. Kyd’s requiems could be fitting way to remember a software developer, filled with run-time indirection and stochastic flow-of-control branching. Ditch the game imagery, though; keep just Kyd’s music.

The connection is a kind of ‘valediction’: RMC’s life and his writing code, becoming clearer and clearer as a person in the wake of an anticipated, imminent departure. Maybe best if the music is accompanied by reading a poem in suitably gruff Gaelic accent, like RMC’s—say, from the traditional ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, in which sailors drown in a storm.

O , our Scots nobles wer richt laith -
To weet their cork-heild schoone;
Bot lang owre a’ the play wer play’d,
Their hats, they swam aboone.”

CMT: Right. Rather than speculating on what the sailors’ thoughts might have been as they died, the verse merely has their hats on the sea’s cruel surface. While the pathos is there, the image isn’t a sentimental or maudlin one. Sort of like RMC . . .