jwilzewske: sydney

Showing posts with label sydney. Show all posts

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra: ‘Bach Eternal’ & Eternal Success

I t’s always a good sign when a music performance sends shivers down your spine… as last night’s Australian Brandenburg Orchestra program did. In fact, for the artistic director of any ensemble or presenter organization, it is, I think, vital that you program and perform works that are capable of doing this to the spines of your audience. The released endorphins, enkephalins, and other natural neuropharmacology of this primitive reflex of joy and emotion are part of what gets butts in seats and keeps money flowing in, year after year. Challenge us with new works, yes, but make sure they are ones that give us shivers down our spines!

Bach – Sinfonia from Cantata ‘Wir danken dir, Gott’, BWV 29
Bach – Chorale from Cantata ‘Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben’, BWV 147
Bach – Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major, BWV 1066
Bach – Chorus from Cantata ‘Unser Mund sei voll Lachens’, BWV 110
Zelenka – Kyrie from ‘Misa Sancti Josephi’, ZWV 14
Telemann – Concerto for Two Horns in D major, TWV 51:D1
Handel – Coronation Anthem No. 2, ‘My heart is inditing’, HWV 261
Handel – Coronation Anthem No. 4, ‘Let thy hand be strengthened’, HWV 259

O ne aspect that is especially impressive about the ABO’s first-rate performance excellence is its personnel—a majority of the performers in ABO are part-time and are employed in other professions outside of music. This, and the fact that members hail not only from Sydney, but also from Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, and other places that are a considerable distance from ABO’s Sydney home-base. Rehearsals and logistics no doubt present challenges. With the logistical and geography issues, performing in this ensemble is more than the usual ‘labor of love’. Yet ABO, founded in 1989 by its director, harpsichordist Paul Dyer, has endured, has performed worldwide, and has 16 recordings on the ABC Classics label, including 5 ARIA Award winners for ‘Best Classical Album (1998, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2010).

P ut another way, the provision of full-time orchestral work for graduates [would require] one quarter of Australia’s full-time orchestral musicians to retire every year. It also requires that no existing musicians, previous graduates, or overseas players apply for the positions. Even if this were to occur, four years later it will be [today’s] graduates’ turn to retire. In this context [of oversupply], part-time/seasonal orchestras rate special mention. In Australia, most part-time orchestras were founded by musicians... Most of the players in part-time orchestras come from academic institutions and from the pool of quality freelance players who engage in a number of different roles both inside and outside of music.”
— Dawn Elizabeth Bennett, Understanding the Classical Music Profession, 2011, p. 83.

D espite challenges for the many who have day-jobs outside of music, the approximately 30 period-instrumental musicians and approximately 30 members of the choir maintain this tremendously high standard of musicianship—the technical fluency and enthusiasm and spine-tingling crispness that projected to our ears last night. They achieve warmth, joy, and musical intimacy that might plausibly and paradoxically be nourished by the challenges and part-timeness that dog their members’ hard-won individual commitments to music—á la “that which does not kill you makes you stronger”, or something like that. The Australian Chamber Orchestra and other ensembles here likewise thrive relying on part-time personnel.

C ould ABO’s music business model be replicated in the U.S. and elsewhere? The facts that ABO’s personnel come from more than one city and ABO’s performances are regional or national and not geographically bound to one city help to ensure that ABO’s sources of philanthropic financial support and corporate donors can be sought in a variety of cities and catchment areas, so that support from a small set of donors in a particular city doesn’t get tapped-out over a period of years and so that the cyclical economic ups-and-downs that disproportionately affect leading donors in one city don’t become an Achilles heel or point of latent financial instability for the organization. Each city and its donors feel strong attachment to the organization and its brand. Market diversity and de-concentration are sensible aims for any arts organization that aspires to sustainability and long-term financial success to have.

S uffice it to say, this wonderful ABO performance gave me quite a lot to think about besides the endorphins and shivers. Eleven ABO Board members, all effective at fund-raising, none of them ‘figurehead’ material. Fifteen experienced staff members—with development and media relations firing on all cylinders. A charismatic artistic director known for affability and bridge-building and inclusive attitude. Lessons here for all of us! A few links below, for your interest.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Andreas Haefliger: Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 19, in Sydney

W ithout doubt, there is something you are doing profoundly right in your interpretation as a soloist when a yellow Labrador retriever in Row 1 listens attentively, head raised and up on her/his elbows, throughout your Beethoven concerto performance. (I do not know whether the same holds true of cats, except possibly Siamese—a point about which Christopher O’Riley and other cat-owning pianists may be able to comment.) Labradors are kindly, good-natured, and take a lot of things in stride. As a breed, the Labrador is notable for being steady-tempered but does display impatience with human pretension in all its manifestations. If she finds your expressions burdensome, the Labrador will sigh or adjust her posture, clunking her bony forearms on the wood floor loudly. But Andreas Haefliger’s account of Beethoven’s second piano concerto was true enough, and the Labrador looked thoroughly pleased as Andreas took his bows. We were well pleased too. (The probity of the cellos was periodically a matter of some doubt, though.)

T his concerto offers many dramatic moments—some Mozartian figures; some prodigious cadenzas that Beethoven only wrote down when the piano part was published in 1809, because up until that time he used the piece as a promotional vehicle for his own career as a concert pianist and did not wish other pianists to co-opt the work or eclipse him. And in that regard the interaction in this concerto between the soloist and the ensemble has been the subject of considerable scholarly writing—some authors opining that Beethoven had not by the early date of this concerto’s birth yet mastered the composerly skills of constructing the arcs that define soloist-orchestra narrative.

B ut Haefliger takes this material and masterfully does with it what can only be viewed as authentic completion of Beethoven’s meaning and intent. He knows how to take the measure of the concertmaster and first violins behind him, and gaze at the oboes as they speak, and then deliver his own lines in a manner that the others accept as truthful—an honest account to which they must respond in-kind. The brass, characters not known for tender sensibilities, wait for the completion of Haefliger’s pianissimo figure, a deep contemplation evident in the piano’s right hand, and are made visibly more humane and introspective by it. Haefliger finishes a burst of activity, leans backward, left hand falling to his side, right hand rising in a flourish, and looks earnestly to his left at the orchestra to see what their answer will be. He imparts a magisterial, conductorly relish to the meaning; to use a cinematic or theatrical phrase, he ‘pulls focus’ beautifully onto and off of himself in a way that makes the ‘character’ of the solo part believable and engaging and which enhances the overall flow of the story, including the part of it that belongs to the ensemble to tell.

T he cadenza was full of bravado; the recitative passages, aptly confessional. When the tempo is slow enough, the shorter notes were played softer, without loss of clarity... which, as I understand, is a ‘bebung’ clavichord technique that Beethoven sometimes used in his piano writing for dramatic expressive purposes. In fact, the whole performance yesterday embodied the best qualities of excellent drama and interplay between soloist and orchestra. Bravo!

I was consumed with sheer terror. How, how, how? How does this start? The silence lengthened, ominously. When you’re on-stage, a few seconds of silence feels like an eternity. This was considerably more than a few seconds, and I felt it pressing down on my shoulders. Finally, in panic, I had an idea: maybe if I just put my fingers up on the keyboard, they’d know what to do. I lifted my hands slowly to the keyboard. The audience was surely, by this point, deeply impressed. And, by a miracle, it worked. By themselves, on their own, my fingers found the right configuration of black and white keys, and I let them go. Before I knew it, they had jumped into the opening theme [of the third movement of Op. 19], and the orchestra soon came galloping up behind them.”
— Leon Fleisher, p. 24.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Knowledge Unspoken: How Much of Xenakis’s ‘Morsima-Amorsima’ Was Really Computer-Generated?

B ut of what essence are these materials made? This essence is the intelligence of man solidified in a way: intelligence that seeks, questions, infers, reveals, and foresees at all levels. Music and the arts in general seem necessarily to be a solidification—a ‘materialization’—of intelligence. Naturally, this intelligence, though humanly universal, is diversified by the individual: by talent that distances one individual from the others. Talent is therefore a kind of qualification—a gradation of the vigor and richness of intelligence. For intelligence is, fundamentally, the result—the expression of billions of exchanges, of reactions, of transformations of energy in the cells of the brain and the body. One could, taking astrophysics as a visual aid, say that intelligence is the form taken by the minimal acts of cells in their condensations and their movement—as happens with the particles of the suns, planets, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies born of or turned back into cold interstellar dust... To think up music as composer, craftsman, and creator, it is first necessary to study solfège, notation, music theory, and even an instrument over a long time. And since, in addition, musical creation is considered superfluous, very few people are able to attain it. Thus the individual and the society are deprived of the formidable power of free imagination that musical composition offers them. We are able to tear down this ‘iron curtain’, thanks to the technology of computers and their peripherals. The system that has succeeded at this ‘tour de force’ is the UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu)...”
— Iannis Xenakis in a typically ‘expansive’ moment in the 1970s, quoted in ‘The Art of Music: Tradition and Change’ by William Christ and Richard DeLone.

T he performance by International Contemporary Ensemble and Steve Schick of five major works—‘Psappha’, ‘Echange’, ‘Akanthos’, ‘Palimpseste’, and Xenakis’s final composition, ‘O-Mega’—is an opportunity not to be missed. It’s at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, tonight at 19:30. Anticipating this ICE performance got me to listening to the recordings I have of Xenakis’s music. I have never been lucky enough to hear a ‘live’ performance like this...

Source-code:

Output:

X enakis’s ‘Morsima/Amorsima’ score says that ‘moros’ = ‘fate’ and ‘amorsima’ = ‘that which does not come from fate’. It was composed on an IBM 7090 in Paris, in increments/revisions between 1956 and 1962, and it was, like Xenakis’s ‘Achorripsis’, supposedly entirely stochastic (random, computer-generated). To me, this beggars belief.

F ew have ever performed a deep-dive source-code review of what Xenakis programmed, nor compared what the 7090 generated to what Xenakis actually wrote down as a published score. Oh, yes, there are people who have ported the FORTRAN code in Xenakis’s book to FTN95, and, yes, the code does run—it does produce things. It has calls to the built-in FORTRAN random-number function; it modifies global variables and accesses the system clock to accomplish a modest degree of runtime indirection and aleatorics, in the limited ways that the FORTRAN language was (and is) able to support.

B ut these source-codes do not produce things that have any close resemblance to any composition that Xenakis actually published. And the in-line commenting of the source code is terrible. The rats' nests of GOTO statements upon GOTO statements are nearly impenetrable-incomprehensible, even by the not-so-great software engineering standards of his day. A static analyzer would be the thing to use with this wild-hare code, not manual ‘desk analysis’! PRQA used to sell an analyzer called QAfortran™. I don’t know whether this is still available. I don’t see it on their website...

W e have lots of software things today that serve as composition-aids... PWGL, Vielklang, Max/MSP, Jitter, harmonization plug-ins in Finale® and other notation applications… all sorts of things. And in the 2000s [almost] nobody goes around touting their use of composition software in the way that Xenakis did. By the same token, [almost] nobody is embarrassed to say that they do use them, or to forthrightly confess the methods by which the tools contribute to the compositional process.

X enakis’s code supposedly causes the [specifications for the scored—] sounds to be generated as a directed-graph (digraph). First the [random] sequence of pitches is generated, with each note’s time of specified onset—it’s time coordinate. Then its timbre is generated (the instrument that is to play it; and its articulation: arco, pizzicato, glissando, and so on). Then the velocity of attack. Then the gradients in loudness (dynamic changes in loudness during the time interval the note is sounded... legato, accent, marcato ^, staccato, slur, portato/martelé ... sforzando, subito whatever) and in pitch (vibrato or not, glissando beginning and ending, shakes’ frequency and pitch-width). Then the duration. Not sure whether the program had anything in it to specify the (random) mode of releasing each note.

[50-sec clip, austraLYSIS, Iannis Xenakis, ‘Morsima/Amorsima’, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, austraLYSIS, Iannis Xenakis, ‘Morsima/Amorsima’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he 7090 was a room-sized $3M, 36-bit single-CPU machine, with 32K words of magnetic-core RAM (144 KB) and a clock cycle of 2.18 μs (459 KHz). It computed at about 0.2 MIPs, 0.03 MFLOPs. [The little laptop on which I am now writing this blog, is 64-bit, 8 GB, over-clocked 3.06 GHz dual-CPU, 46.7 MIPS (Dhrystone ALU), 35.2 MFLOPS (Whetstone iSSE3).]

B ut the probabilities in ‘Morsima-Amorsima’ fate-vs-nonfate are highly unlikely. And this piece and others are too, too beautiful to be ‘lightly edited’ output from any of Xenakis’s FORTRAN source-codes that are available. Instead, there are the hallmarks of the human ear, the human hand, the Xenakisian mind. I am betting that this ‘Morsima/Amorsima’ is maybe 80% Xenakis traditional compositional method-produced and only 20% Xenakis algorithms on IBM 7090-produced—20% Fate and 80% Non-Fate, by one way of thinking about random events and chance. The score only costs €50. We should take a detailed statistical look and see!

I am not saying that Iannis Xenakis deceived anyone, exactly, regarding how his compositions were produced. He was a brilliant, flamboyant character and a wonderful and entertaining speaker, and I experienced these qualities of his, first-hand. I attended a lecture series he gave in 1972… I had been taking Computer Science courses at University of Minnesota at the time. The exuberance and expansiveness he exhibited when speaking were fabulous.

B ut I think that not enough detailed consideration has been given to the stories he told about his compositional methods—comparing his writings and interviews and software source-codes against his finished scores, to see how well (or not) Xenakis’s remarks about his methods are supported by the evidence.

X enakis’s famous book ‘Formalized Music’ and the FORTRAN source-code fragments that have been published obfuscate more than they reveal. Was he unsatisfied with the musicality of the results of his algorithms? Did he feel that he needed to extensively rewrite the computer-produced compositions to achieve a more aesthetically appealing, defensible work? What motives would lead him to withhold so many of the details? Did he have a sense of obligation to IBM Paris, who had provided resources and upon whom he depended? Was it pride? The François Bernard Mâche and the James Harley biographies are well worth studying! But none of the biographers to-date have been software engineers capable of performing detailed code-reviews, to ascertain whether or not Xenakis actually did things in the ways he claimed that he did.

I f you have views about these things—about the roles of computational composition and interactions between algorithms and human composers; and about Xenakis’s evasiveness about his actual methods—please add a comment below or send me an email. If you knew Xenakis personally and think my speculation is a bunch of hooey, please write and tell me so. If you yourself delegate to Vielklang or PWGL or other software tools part of your composerly work, I’d be delighted to hear from you, too, to learn how you use these tools to generate ideas and edit them.

O f course, if you’re able to attend the Steven Schick—ICE performance tonight in Chicago, please put a comment here, too! Thanks!

Xenakis score pages
Xenakis 'Morsima/Amorsima' score at Boosey
Xenakis FORTRAN code (from 'Formalized Music') ported to FTN95.
Bailes F, Dean R. When is noise speech? A survey in sonic ambiguity. Computer Music Journal 2009; 33:57-67.
Harley J. Xenakis: His Life in Music. Routledge, 2004.
McKechnie S, Stevens C. Knowledge unspoken: contemporary dance and the cycle of practice-led research, basic and applied research, and research-led practice. in Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, Smith H, Dean R, Eds. Pp. 84-103 , 2009.
Mâche F. Portrait(s) de Iannis Xenakis. Bibliotheque nationale de France, 2001.
Schiege G. Iannis Xenakis: The electroacoustic work. Computer Music Journal 2007; 31:82-92.
Smith H, Dean R, eds. Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh Univ, 2009.
Solomos M, ed. Présences de Iannis Xenakis. CDMC, 2001.
Temperley D. Music and Probability. MIT, 2007.
AustraLYSIS. Windows in Time. (Tall Poppies, 1995.)
Varga Β. Conversations with Iannis Xenakis. Faber and Faber, 1996.
Xenakis I. Formalized Music. Pendragon, 1971.
Xenakis I. Science and music: An interview. UNESCO Courier 1986; 39:4-7.
IBM Archives - 7090
IBM 7090 page at Frobenius
MusicFromMathematics
austraLYSIS website
Roger Dean page at Jazz.com
Roger Dean page on MySpace [RecordedShapeMSPmore sensory; Tuning the Tempers Pt 2; other interesting pieces]
Roger Dean page at Univ Western Sydney
Dean R, Bailes F. Human understanding in imagining and organising sound: some implications of John Locke’s Essay for ecological, cognitive and embodied approaches to composition. Organized Sound, 2007;12:89-95. [200KB pdf]

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Australian Chamber Orchestra, Epitome of ‘Embodiment’

O ne of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style… In his compositions, Rameau tried to highlight music’s potential for dramatic meanings. But his listeners, who understood lyric tragedy to be a ‘poetic’ rather than ‘musical’ genre, were generally frustrated by these attempts. In fact, some described Rameau’s music as ‘monstrous’—using an image of deformity to represent the failure of reason and communication.”
— Charles Dill, 1998, Professor of Musicology, Univ Wisconsin-Madison.

L isten to that, will you?” the person next to me could not help but say to me during the intermission. “Have you ever heard an ensemble so in-tune? or so ‘tight’, rhythmically? Each section is playing like they were one person!”

Y are right. I couldn’t disagree,” I said. “And to see them pivoting and rotating left and right, each by as much as 90 degrees, to see each other and physically gesture directly at each other! Their knee-flexing and expressive leaning and swaying... Their stretching of the dynamics, decibels quieter (with mutes on) and louder, beyond the usual interpretation of the as-written dynamics... How intriguing to see instrumentalists do this! It’s like they are opera singers, singing to each other.”

T he Australian Chamber Orchestra performance in Kansas City tonight was exceptionally good. And the exchange above occurred after the Haydn and Mozart before they got to the Suite from the opera ‘Dardanus’.

E nglish pianist Paul Lewis (who trained with Alfred Brendel, among others) joined the Orchestra for the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 12, K. 414... “A lush yet ‘crystalline’ tone... rhythmically ultra-synchronized with the ACO members... Amazing!”

Haydn: Symphony No. 44 ‘Trauer-Sinfonie’
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414
Rameau: Suite from ‘Dardanus’ (1739, 1744, 1760; RCT 35)
Haas: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 7, Monkey Mountains Suite (‘Zopicich hor’)

T he Rameau after the intermission was especially dramatic. Sans recorders and flutes but equipped with antiphonally-distributed horns, we were treated to six short movements with wonderfully rich acoustic colors and textures. Oboes cohabited with violas, the bassoon communed among felicitous cellos, and Lions laid down peaceably with Lambs. The textural and spatial novelty is not gimmicky—it’s innovative, aesthetically defensible in the context of Baroque sensibilities, and stimulates more drama and interest than the music might otherwise do. Very cool. And an excellent way to illuminate Rameau’s complex sense of the interplay between the narrative arc of the libretto and the associated arc of the instrumental music for the opera.

R ichard Tognetti became Artistic Director and Lead Violin in 1990, and under his leadership the ACO has embarked on ever more flexible ensemble configurations: small chamber group; small symphony orchestra; electro-acoustic chamber group; and so on. In ‘live’ performances, only the cellists are seated. The energetic interactions that this deployment encourages are nice—the visual gestures amongst the artists tend to be more demonstrative than when ensemble members are all seated. The standing ensemble members and the antiphonal positioning of some of the instruments add substantially to the excitement of the experience for audience members—these directorial/production decisions were especially appropriate for the dramatic Rameau. Oboes, far far stage-left, their backs to the shell, behind the violins; horn, center-rear; bassoon, far stage-right. These parts speak to each other across the distance, while the strings play with tight precision, as though they were one! Not just stretched dynamics, but dramatically accentuated spatial depth. Uncanny!

T hese decisions and variations also help tremendously realize and vividly accentuate Rameau’s physicality. These directorial/production decisions draw attention to the metaphorical ‘embodiment’ that Golan Gur and other Rameau scholars have written about. ‘Embodiment’ in the field of cognitive science refers to understanding the role of an agent's (character’s; performer’s) own body in its situated interactions with other agents in context—the role that the body has in the agent’s comprehending the situation and those interactions. For example, Dardanus “can’t stand to see” his future relationship with Iphise reduced to questions of pre-arranged nuptials and political alliances—his physical experience of standing, or failing to remain standing, or failing to endure the situation—is an example of cognitive ‘embodiment’, of physicality, which colors Dardanus’s cognition of the situation. His impulsive decision to go kill the monster could hardly arise from anything less than a powerful emotion, mediated by ‘embodied’ cognition.

A CO’s production values are fabulous throughout, but this Rameau really captured my imagination… Richard Tognetti is the Dardanus character! We are so not accustomed to instrumental players physically ‘acting’! These are not a Baroque ensemble performing a Suite ‘from’ Rameau’s opera; they are playing and moving physically on-stage as though they are the opera singers.

I n Greek mythology, Dardanus was a son of Zeus and Electra. The name ‘Dardanus’ in Greek (Δάρδανος) is forboding: it means ‘burnt to a shrivet’, from the verb δαρδάπτω (dardapto)—to grind down utterly, to burn up completely, to vaporize. In the Rameau opera, Dardanus is feuding with King Teucer. Teucer has promised to marry his daughter Iphise to King Anténor, done deal, so much for women’s rights. King Anténor is sucking in his attempts to defeat the monster that’s terrorizing Teucer’s kingdom. Dardanus and Iphise meet, through the probably-superfluous intervention of the magician Isménor, and fall hopelessly in love. An ‘army of one’ and now properly/amorously motivated, Dardanus then single-handedly defeats the terror-monster, saving Anténor’s life. Teucer and Dardanus make peace, and Dardanus finagles Teucer’s release of Iphise from her betrothal to Anténor. Anténor’s happy enough just to be alive, so Dardanus and Iphise marry and live happily ever after, so far as we or Rameau know. So, embodiment, yes; burnt shrivets, no—at least not in this opera or this Suite for chamber ensemble.

Ouverture (Lent)
Premier air (Grave)
Ritournelle
Premier menuet; Deuxième menuet en rondeau
Air de triomphe
Bruit de guerre pour Entr’acte

T he piece by Pavel Haas—Tognetti’s arrangement of String Quartet No. 2 for the larger ACO ensemble—pushed the dramatics up a notch. A dark, dissonant work, filled with punctate staccatos and percussive effects; very ‘cinematic’. Once again, the rhythmic crispness of the ensemble lent extra energy and excitement to the endeavor. The synchronicity of each section was astonishing—every player’s vibrato starting simultaneously, executing with identical width and periodicity, and ending simultaneously; every sautille, identical. To paraphrase Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, who are those guys!??! ACO’s unprecedented dramatics and beautiful physicality brought the audience to its feet.

I f you haven’t previously encountered it, you may like to look at Charles Dill’s book on Rameau from about 10 years ago. Also, as relates to the inter-relationships between text and music, have a look at Peter Kivy’s new book. Several sources regarding ‘embodiment’ and theory of aesthetics and cognition are also included in the links below, for your interest.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1975 in Sydney. Their performances have been very popular at home (more than 10,000 Australian subscribers to their concert series) and heavily attended abroad, too. The ACO’s repertoire ranges from baroque and classical pieces to 20^th-Century and new music. ACO has in recent years commissioned quite a few compositions. The financial sponsorship of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Music Office have contributed significantly to ensuring ACO’s success and sustainability. Would that ACA and AMO examples were emulated by other countries, particularly during the current economic down-turn! (As Tognetti said to the audience, maybe in a more affluent time ACO will not have to conserve on expenses so much and once again tour with their percussionist. That way, Julian Thompson will not need to treat the body of his cello so severely/pugilistically, to create the knocks, bangs, paper-in-the-strings buzzes, and other percussive effects called-for in works like the Haas.)

[ACO, Surfing Chamber Music ‘Musica Surfica’]