jwilzewske: saariaho

Showing posts with label saariaho. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2008

Halloween: Spooky String Quartets, Scary Piety

T he basic purpose of story-telling ... is not just to entertain but to illuminate life. It doesn’t matter if we deal in the symbolism of supernatural beings such as vampires, zombies, ghosts, werecreatures, and unknowable cosmic entities. If horror is done right—and we have only to look at the stories withstanding the test of time to identify which ones are done right—then it provides a psychological roadmap through the trials of life.”
— Matthew Warner, Horror Isn’t a 4-Letter Word, p. 14.

To many, Halloween is a perfect ‘holiday’, relatively free of the social stresses that burden other celebrations during the year. And, to celebrate Halloween, it’s always good to have some appropriate atmospheric music to mark the occasion. If you and your string quartet friends are looking for something new to put you and your Halloween audiences in the spirit, you can surely do no better than Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2, ‘Demons & Angels’.

[50-sec clip, Stacy Garrop, String Quartet No. 2 ‘Demons & Angels’, Mvt. 3, ‘Inner Demons’, 1.2MB MP3]

Music in the Loft commissioned the first two movements of ‘Demons and Angels’ for performance by the Biava Quartet on its 2004/2005 concert series. The Loft subsequently commissioned the rest of the piece, premiered by the Biava Quartet at Yale University in November 2005. The 4-movment complete work received its premiere at Music in the Loft in October, 2006.

An assemblage of unrelenting demons, unreliable angels, and gothic humanity, String Quartet No. 2 tells the story of a devout man who confidently and self-righteously thought his actions were guided by God, only to discover that he was mistaken—he has in fact heinously murdered five people. The first two movements elucidate the deluded personality of this character. The first, ‘Demonic Spirits’, addresses the darkness that’s inherent in his pious self-deception. The movement begins with a jarring chord played five times, each one representing a murder. These chords return as violent interruptions throughout the piece. This movement has two main themes: the first theme is martial/militaristic; the second theme is sinister in its arrogant impishness. The second movement, ‘Song of the Angels’, contemplates the goodness in the protagonist before his personality is transformed by delusional piety. The cello has a long solo created by blending elements of the first movement’s themes, representing how evil is spawned from good intentions that are oblivious to reality.

The third movement, ‘Inner Demons’, is a vivid account of this character as he descends into psychosis. This movement contains four themes: a tarantella, a demented waltz, a scherzo, and the Kentucky pentecostal folk hymn ‘The Wayfaring Stranger.’ Finally, the eerie hymn asserts itself above all, and we hear the man commit the five murders that opened the first movement. The piece concludes with IV. ‘Broken Spirit.’ This movement explores his realization of what he has done. The man is caught and sentenced to life in prison. With a festinating four-note motive, the man paces in his cell while his mental state alternates between psychotic violence and spasms of remorseful hope that, through contrition, he can be saved by angels.

I am a poor Wayfaring Stranger,
A-trav’lin’ [you betcha!] through this land of woe.
And there’s no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I know dark clouds will gather ‘round me;
I know my way is [darn] rough and steep.
But beauteous fields lie just beyond me [my friends],
Where souls redeemed their vigil keep.
I want to wear a crown of glory
When I get home to that bright land;
I want to shout Salvation’s story
In concert with that blood-washed band.”
— Appalachian Folk Hymn.

Of course, a composer’s decision to write a string quartet is fateful in its own right, linking one to the great European tradition, including veneration of glorious, deceased masters. At the outset the composer always believes in her/his own mind that the quartet-writing enterprise is a just and righteous one. Mindful of the risk of self-deception, however, Garrop dissects her corpses carefully and finds her own funereal path. ‘Demons & Angels’ is a pestilential object lesson in terror—for listeners, performers, and maybe other composers. She discovers her quartetly ‘path’ both musically and theatrically, incorporating diverse elements and exploiting the dimly-lit concert environment in suspenseful bubonic ways. Musically, Garrop’s works are distinguished by the mordant quality of their realization. The Second Quartet embodies a well-(de)composed ‘working out’ of the implications of these various morbidly-contrasting motivic ideas and Ichabodleian gestures with a traditional arch form, galloping repeated psycho-rhythms, and a cadaveric approach to thematic development. ;)

Stacy Garrop has won several orchestra competitions resulting in performances by the Civic Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, New England Philharmonic, the Women’s Philharmonic, and readings by the Minnesota Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. She was also selected for the Dale Warland Singers 2000-2001 New Choral Music Program. She was a finalist for the 2001 Rome Prize, and received a 2001 Barlow Endowment commission, as well as a 2002 Artists Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council.

Her works have been recently performed by the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Singers, EARPLAY. Other performances includes ones given by the National Repertory Orchestra and the new music ensembles Third Angle and SoundsNew.

She has held fellowships/residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Yaddo, and Wellesley Composers Conference.

Garrop completed her Doctorate in Music at Indiana University in 2000; she also holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago (1995) and a B.M. from University of Michigan (1992).

Stacy is currently an Assistant Professor in Composition at the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Other Halloween-ish pieces you might consider include these:

B. Bartók - String Quartet No. 4
L. Beethoven - String Quartet in C minor, Op. 18 No. 4
V. Ho - String Quartet No. 1
H. Purcell - Chacony in G minor (Z730)
C. Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre, Op. 40, arr. for string quartet by Matt Kingston
D. Shostakovich - String Quartet No. 8 in C minor
I. Xenakis - ST/10

Z ig et zig et zag, la mort crie cadence
Frappant une tombe avec son talon,
La mort à minuit joue un air de danse,

Zig et zig et zag, sur son violon.
Le vent d'hiver souffle, et la nuit est sombre,
Des gémissements sortent des tilleuls ;
Les squelettes blancs vont à travers l'ombre
Courant et sautant sous leurs grands linceuls,

Zig et zig et zag, chacun se trémousse,
On entend claquer les os des danseurs,
Un couple lascif s'asseoit sur la mousse
Comme pour goûter d'anciennes douceurs.

Zig et zig et zag, la mort continue
De racler sans fin son aigre instrument.
Un voile est tombé ! La danseuse est nue!
Son danseur la serre amoureusement.
La dame est, dit-on, marquise ou baronne.
Et le vert galant un pauvre charron - Horreur!
Et voilà qu'elle s'abandonne
Comme si le rustre était un baron!

Zig et zig et zig, quelle sarabande!
Quels cercles de morts se donnant la main!

Zig et zig et zag, on voit dans la bande
Le roi gambader auprès du vilain!
Mais psit ! tout à coup on quitte la ronde,
On se pousse, on fuit, le coq a chanté
Oh! La belle nuit pour le pauvre monde!
Et vive la mort et l'égalité!

[Zig … zig … zag, Death in cadence
Striking a tomb with his heel,
Death on the stroke of midnight plays a dance-tune,

Zig … zig … zag, on his violin.
The winter wind blows, and the night is dark,
Groans are heard in the lindens;
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.

Zig … zig … zag: each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—
A lustful couple sits on pillows
As if to relish a remembrance of softness that they knew in life.

Zig … zig … zag, Death continues
to scrape endlessly his sour instrument.
A shroud fell! The dancer is nude!
The dancers embrace, squeezing each other in withered love.
The lady was, says one, a marquise or baroness.
And the gallant lover was but a poor cartwright – Horror!
Look how wantonly she bonily abandons herself
As if the uncouth one was a baron!

Zig … zig … zig, which sarabande!
Circles of deaths giving each other the hand!

Zig … zig … zag, one sees in the band
The beauteous gambol with the ugly!
But psit! all of a sudden they quit the round ,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.
Oh! How exquisite is this night for the poor world!
And how lively Death and Equality!]
— Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), ‘Danse Macabre’.

The archetype for the Halloween spooky trope is no doubt the grotesque poem by Henri Cazalis that Saint-Saëns set for his ‘Danse Macabre’: ‘Zig et zig et zig, la Mort in cadence.’ Death, the violinist: summoning skeletons from their graves at midnight for a dance. Ghastly merriment, with interruptions. The poem’s two themes—one: osseous, clacking; the other: benighted, desolate.

If your quartet’s cellist is game, you might find Kaija Saariaho’s ‘Petals’ especially fitting as an addition to your play list. The tremendous abjection of it is deeply scary [click on the link to hear a YouTube clip of it]; very different from Danse Macabre.

It’s a challenge for composer and performers alike to achieve the grotesque without devolving into cheap pastiche. Garrop’s quartet orchestration is robust, balanced in a way that does not present excessive risks in performance. Kingston’s arrangement of the Saint-Saëns is vivid and serviceable. And Saariaho’s cello solo will leave everyone hesitant to shake the scary cellist’s hand after the performance. Bwwaah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

P etals für Violoncello solo wurde in wenigen Tagen komponiert; eine lange, unbewußte Vorbereitung war diesem Stück jedoch vorangegangen. Das Material stammt direkt von meinem Stück Nymphea für Streichquartett und Elektronik. Der Name Petals (Blumenblätter) ist ebenfalls aus dieser Beziehung abgeleitet. Die gegensätzlichen Elemente darin sind sehr zerbrechlich, es sind farbenprächtige Passagen, die energischere Ereignisse mit klarem rhythmischen und melodischen Charakter hervorbringen. Diese scharf umrissenen Figuren werden verschiedenen Veränderungen unterworfen und versinken schließlich in einem dynamisch reduzierten, aber nicht weniger intensiven Filigranmuster. Mit der Kombination dieser beiden gegensätzlichen Ausdrucksarten wollte ich den Interpreten zu einer Ausweitung seiner körperlichen Sensibilität zwingen.
[‘Petals’ was composed in just a few days; a long, unconscious incubation preceded this, however. The material comes directly from my piece ‘Nymphea’ for string quartet and electronics. The name ‘Petals’ is derived also out of this relation—the Nymphs; the string/electronics orchestration. The moribund frailty of it all, of the petals! The opposing elements: passages that are very fragile with ambiguous character and rhythm oppose colorful passages evoking vigorous events with clear rhythmic and melodic character. These sharply outlined figures are subjected to different variations; they sink, and are dynamically reduced in the end to just one, but with still-intensive filigreed patterns. With the combination of opposing expression types, I wanted to force the performer to expand her/his sensitivity to the corporeal limits.”
— Kaija Saariaho.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

New Music, Summer Picaresque

Acoustic Locator Array, New ‘War Tubas’, Japan, Summer 1930

CMT: So I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt that John Toole’s classic, Confederacy of Dunces, is unreadable. A friend loved the book, but the very fact that he loved it annoyed me tremendously. The book is so unmitigatedly self-conscious! How could anyone love that book? It’s reassuring to know that you really really didn’t like it, for the same aesthetic reason that I find the book objectionable!

DSM: I think the same phenomenon happens with some musical compositions. They’re excessively self-aware, almost as though the composer thinks the work has to be weird and depressing to be considered serious ‘new music’.

CMT: But then, even with such music, if you live with the music for awhile, it often grows on you. Give it three or four listens. Give it the benefit of the doubt. The bits that, on first impression, seemed contrived or self-referential turn out not to be so calculating or stiff after all. True, the music may never ascend to become popular or “In”, but at least its merits do come into focus with repeated listenings. The composer’s conceits and methods do, when you reflect on the piece, deliver something honest and valid. You just were unable to appreciate it properly on the first hearing.

DSM: Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina and other of his tintinnabulations and iterative compositions were like that for me. But there’s nothing that intrigues me quite as much in music as a fractured analogy, a piece of music that tries to do something emulating another type of art. It is, of course, best if the construction is sound and the performance is convincing and feels ‘right’. But a big part of the fascination of new music for me is the flat-out novelty of the experience—the novelty of discovering for myself whether I like it or understand it. The novelty, if it’s a premier performance, of encountering terra incognita. There’s none of the ‘baggage’ of received wisdom and critical consensus, regarding what the significance and inner workings of the piece may be. The piece is simply a naked fact, something we absorb and react to—both extemporaneously at the time of the live performance, and afterward, usually after a lot of reflection—as you’re saying. That’s always exciting. Seldom comfortable, but always exciting!

CMT: In music and music theater, society only accepts literary Intellectualism if the music is “In,” highly popular and massively acclaimed by the mainstream media. If it’s valued by the broader community, then intellectualizing it is socially acceptable; if it’s not popularly valued, though, then intellectualizing about it out loud as we’re doing is totally unwelcome. In general, musical intellectualism isn’t valued in the U.S.—and it’s especially discouraged when it comes to new music. I don’t understand why intellectualizing about music is treated this way. Painting, sculpture, dance, other of the Arts are at least cut some ‘slack’ by the media and arbiters of public discourse.

T his is about a vacancy in culture, the absence of younger voices, perhaps the absence of a generation. The few—extremely few—intellectuals under the age of thirty-five, even forty-five, have seldom elicited comment. They are easy to miss, especially because their absence is longstanding. An intellectual generation has not suddenly vanished; it simply never appeared. And it is already too late—the generation is too old—to show up.”
— Russell Jacoby, 2000.

DSM: But I don’t think of what we’re discussing as a kind of ‘intellectualizing,’ really. We like to identify some reasons that support our opinions, yes. It wouldn’t be meaningful conversation if you couldn’t explain why you think as you do. But, beyond that, I think we have no prejudices as to what the nature and quality of ‘acceptable’ reasons are or should be—regardless whether it’s new music or otherwise. The whole point is to experience the music, preferably ‘live’, and to (re-)experience and enjoy discovering and refining our experience of the music together through conversations about it. That’s still why we do this, right?

CMT: Yes, of course it is. The dialogue’s the thing! Much in the way that chamber music itself wouldn’t be chamber music were it not for the dialogue among the parts, the various voices. But the summer season is upon us, and summer means that performances of ‘new music’ are harder to find than at other times of the year; our dialogue needs to be more actively cultivated, to keep it going. Summer’s the season for chamber music festivals, so there’re a lot of events to attend. But many of the festivals confine their programming to the classical canon. The Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, however, includes new music. The Banff Festival has its Canadian Commission Round, with a new quartet by Kelly-Marie Murphy that each competing ensemble will perform. And the Kuhmo Festival in Finland has considerable new music in its line-up.

DSM: And the Aspen Festival as well. The Ying Quartet will perform Tan Dun’s Eight Colors for String Quartet, Zhou Long’s Song of the Ch’in, and Chen Yi’s Shuo in Aspen on July 28. Emerson String Quartet performed Charles Ives’ String Quartet No. 2 and Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria there last Saturday. The Ottawa Festival has some Saariaho and other new works (Roddy Elias, Evan Ware, Victor Herbiet, Christian Elliot, Kevork Andonian, Evelyn Stroobach, and Jan Järvlepp – Aug 01) in their events this year.

CMT: Tanglewood has their new-music segment, too, from July 29 to August 3. Zwilich’s String Quartet No. 2; Eckhardt’s New work; Sollberger’s Advancing Moment; Harbison’s Abu Ghraib for Cello; Corigliano’s Troubadours – Variations for guitar and chamber orchestra; and Alvin Curran and others with Musica Electronica Viva on August 3.

DSM: I’m not sure I can be enthused to hear something entitled ‘Abu Ghraib for Cello’. That suggests to me something about as self-conscious as your John Toole book, Confederacy of Dunces. But Alvin Curran’s work, including his collection of solo piano pieces called Inner Cities, will be performed in Italy at the Santarcangelo International Festival of the Arts. That is both topical and honest and elegant. Daan Vandewalle will perform Curran’s Inner Cities No.13 on July 12 and 13. And Pierre-Yves Macé’s musique concrète piece, Passagenwerk, will be performed there on July 6.

CMT: How about MicroFest? MicroFest this summer has a program of Harry Partch’s music, performed on original Partch instruments, at California Plaza in L.A. If you like microtonality, this event is not to be missed.

DSM: You know, not all of Boulez’s music is ‘new’ in terms of its compositional techniques, neither is Terry Riley’s, nor Elliot Carter’s, say. And aleatoric music, “music of chance”, may transform the composer/performer relationship—but that isn’t inherently ‘new’ either, even though the improvisational aspect of it may be ‘new-as-of-this-minute’. Microtonal compositions likewise are not inherently ‘new’, even though microtonality may be far from conventional.

CMT: Okay! Eclectic and unconventional as our “newish” tastes may be, we’re not alone! So what new music do you want to go and hear? What rolicking musical adventures do you crave? When and where?

I n contemporary popular parlance, the attribution ‘picaresque’ refers to any rolicking adventure that delivers the travels and travails of a central character as he or she careens along the narrative way. ... To contend that a new ‘American picaresque’ has emerged ... is not only to call for an eclectic yet responsible use of the designation ‘picaresque’ but to propose an extended continuity in formal literary terms with other [narrative and dialogical] configurations that had their quite distinctive origins in other lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ... The picaresque [genre] [ —like new music— ] changes masks, shifts, dodges, proves resilient, survives … [despite the apparent lack of visible means of support!]”
— Rowland Sherrill, Road-Book America, 2005.