When listening to and observing the New Complexity unfold in class on Wednesday, I was struck by what actually was transpiring within the piece. First of all, I was amazed at the skill level that it must tke for the performer to be able to represent the piece in a meaningful way, and without just screwing everything up. To play the piece as it were on a standard piano would be difficult enough, but when you add the problems caused by the action of the keys on a harpsichord and similar instruments, the whole process seems pretty intense and unbelievable to me. Looking at the score for the piece was a trip in and of itself as well, as new notation had to be written just to convey the meaning of the scribbles on the score. As for the piece itself, the playing seemed very erractic, and haphazard by nature. Of course, I believe that that was the real purpose of the piece, to show how something that is inherently haphazard can be made into music. In that sense, the piece was effective, as there were many instances where the contours of the musical motion were structured and set to a certain direction. However, this does not make me want to listen to the piece again. I am sure that if I listened to the piece a fair number of times, that I would hear a some concrete musical qualities about the piece, but for me the piece was so annoying and taxing to listen to that I do not think the effort to apply meaning to the piece is worth it. Overall, an eye-opener, but the piece is not for me.
The piece we listened to in class on Wednesday was somewhat interesting for me to listen to. The piece itself seemed to lack a certain formal structure, and appeared to only be framed by certain events that were supposed to happen at some point in the piece, such as when the note patterns shifted up and down the octaves on the piano. When listening to the piece, especially the opening, I found myself to feel quite literally like sitting at a piano, with my hands at opposite ends of the keyboard and myself, the listener, in the middle. I suppose this sensation was felt due to the fact since i play the piano, the piece sounded like what I would play when I was just bored of practicing or was fiddling around on the keys, making up patterns that were pretty much random notes. Also, the sort of free-form time of the piece provided an openness and a variability that suggests to me a lack of set parameters for the direction of the piece.
The piece does have its moments, though. When the note patterns played by each hand started to converge, the overall sound and timbre of the piece became more interesting and somewhat disorienting. I equated this happening in my mind when two drops of water create waves that are distinct from one another at first, but when they collide they combine to create a sort of chaotic pattern.
Another interesting occurence was when the note patterns of each hand changed to include different notes. This stage was intriguing, and provided a change of tone for the piece. I equated this to be similar to an artist who, after only using “hot” colors in a painting, decided to throw in some blue streaks.
Overall, the piece was not exciting for me, due to its seemingly improvised nature, but did provide a number of interesting features.
Listening to the Triadic Iteration Lattices piece was quite affecting for me. At the beginning of the piece, I was focused on trying to listen solely to the more musical aspects of the piece and the structure of the piece. After just a few seconds, however, this task became much more difficult for me to do because of the significance that air sirens take on in real life. In just a short period of time I was distracted from my goal of “stepping away” from the music and separating any outside connotation from what was going on in the piece. The area in which I grew up was not the best sort of neighborhood, and the air sirens brought back many images and memories from my earlier years that made the experience of listening to the pieec inescapably sad for me. I still was able to pick out certain elements of the piece that were interesting for me, however, such as the way that the sirens kept the same interval relationship to each other when they were descending in pitch, and when the sirens ‘crossed” pitches when one siren would be descending in pitch while another would be rising. The climax of the piece was fairly intense, but it was interesting that the sirens did not arrive at the exact same pitches, so that the effect was that the “resolution point” of the piece really had no resolution at all, at least in terms of chord structure or pitch. I guess that that would be difficult to acheive using air sirens in the first place, however. The piece did provoke emotion in any case, and that is what mde it profound for me, though it did this through ways different than conventional pieces.
The performance of the choral work by the Anonymous 4 was a very intense and pure experience for me. The way the piece opens with the pure droning tones with the melodic line interlaced brought some chills to me, I assume because the quiet strength and force moved me. The piece continued in much of this fashion, as the piece showed much expressiveness and dynamicism, not in its loudness or softness, but in the way the phrases flowed and the colors that the melody created. Much of this raw emotion can be contributed to the fact that the piece was in the Dorian mode, which gave the melodic line a very colorful contour in the way the intervals of the mode were used, most notably the whole step between the octave and minor seventh of the scale. Also, I found the way in which the melodic line flowed through the dominant harmonics provided by the underlying drones was very moving. When the melody flowed from the perfect intervals of the scale, especially the octave and fourth, to the less harmonically pleasing intervals, such as the seventh and the third, I felt very captivated, as the melody would seemingly hung in the balance between this stability and dissonance. Then, when the line returned to the perfect intervals, it gave me chills yet again, as the purity and timbre of the voices allowed for some beautiful harmonic ringing, with the drones providing the base for which the melodic line could ring upon. All these elements combined made this piece one of the most enjoyable experiences for me to have so far in the course.
This is a delayed blog, and yep, thats right, I’m doing a blog on Atmospheres. Hopefully I’ll be able to contribute something new that hasn’t already been said.
When I was listening to the piece on my own after we had listened to it in class, I had forgotten how the piece had started. When I started the file on my iPod, there was a slight lag in the playback, so I thought maybe the piece had been a gradual crescendo to start. However, when the opening chord actually hit, I was somewhat startled, not because it was loud at all, but because the chord was so unexpected for me. The beginning is intriguing because of the relative ambiguity of the motion of the music; I did not know where the piece would lead.
Through the first half of the piece, I had this vision in my head of a bubble vibrating in space, and the expansion and contraction of its walls from the inside. There was a sense of delicacy and unease to the music, but certain passages seemed to override this sense and “smooth” the bubble, especially at 1:59. The bubble then began to stretch at the 3:20 mark, but the low blast at 3:43 seemed to be a force weighing down tremendously on the bottom of the bubble, and the echoing sounds around the bubble intensified until it burst at around the 4:50 mark. Suddenly, I had an image of many metal blocks and objects grinding and pushing against each other, until they started gliding away at 5:50.
From this point until the end of the piece, I just saw the journey of these metal objects across deep space and time and their interaction with the nothingness around them.
The piece is a distinct experience to be involved in.
Powered by FireStats