Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

Sorry I’m late folks, I been sick.

I found that this past week had so much amazing music to talk about, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I could ramble on about everything but Dan Deacon to Gorgoroth to Joanna Newsome to Morton Feldman, but I finally bit the bullet and decided to talk about another one of Ligeti (AKA Gyorgi “No Diggity” Ligeti)’s works, Continuum.

I made my timeline based on the harpsichord (cembalo?) version of the piece, but I’ve listened to all three versions a few times each, and I’ve decided I really like the song in all versions, due to the different timbres, beats, and dynamic ranges of the piano, barrel organ, and cembalo.

My favorite version was in fact the cembolo version, which had more cool spots for me than I think any piece we’ve listened to under 4 minutes. The main ones are at 0:01-0:06, which at first sounds to me like a section of Italian stringed instruments being strummed, Godfather-style, but that’s just coincidence I guess. The next really special cool spot was at 1:16-1:22, which sounded to me like the 16-bit chimes of a Gameboy. 1:55-2:11 was another one of my favorites, with its unavoidable explosiveness and organ-like quality with the base notes reigning for a few permutations in notes. Finally, the ending notes of 2:58-3:11 really caught my ear, not just because of the ungodly hammering of the player’s fingers, but also because of the purity of that high E at the end that stands out so well in ending such a dynamic, epic piece.

Now, I really held back in my assignment of cool spots, because there are so many note additions and chord changes in Continuum that really stood out to me, so I’ll give honorable mention to 0:44-0:49, which I thought was a really nice, clean chord that was going to progress and resolve into another one, but in fact goes in a different direction entirely. While it wasn’t what I expected in the end, I liked where it went. It was unconventional and creative, like the rest of this piece, which I have to say is easily one of my favorites.

Well. I should say that this piece is absolutely amazing. Not only because of the technique the piece required but also the structure and the texture. When I first listen to it, I immediately thought about the article by Feldman “the anxiety of art”. I was holding my breath without even noticing during the whole piece. It was such a relief when the piece ended. I don’t know if everyone feels the same. However, although they have the same structure and notes, each of the three versions impressed me differently. Or to me, the piano version is different from the other two versions, and the organ version is definitely the best one.

The piano version of continuum has the most distinct notes. I can tell the difference between the notes. They are not really merged together. So this version is actually ” uncontinuous continuum”. It gave me the feeling of glass pearls falling on a iron tray, bouncing restlessly. But anyway, people can still see each of the pearls clearly. And at the “explosion” moment, it gives me an awkward feeling that it just abruptly turns up its volume rather than has a explosion-like process which is not only the moment that a balloon is pinched by a needle but it also should have a expansion of the air. Or put it in another way, it should be three dimensional but not two dimensional of just a louder sound. The piano version failed to capture me. “Continuum” should be a flow, a smooth and continuous sound texture, ( I thought it would be soft when I saw the title but it turned out to be really “anxious” which is rather cool.) that is what the organ version gives me. I really feel like that I’m inside of a supernova explosion where mist consists of little articles and rock-like objects and other things moving at a ridiculous speed, colliding with each other and getting out of control. And at 2:00, it exploded. Exactly the feeling of explosion, some sounds don’t just disappear immediately but they just linger there for a while, and then gradually decays.(although everything still happens in a relatively short period.)The texture is much more smooth than the piano version as the sound organ creates don’t immediately fade away. Since each note is “longer”, every note seems to blend into each other and the piece is more continuous. But we can still feel the distinct beats the player is playing which give people the feeling of anxiety.(so that’s why the piano piece also makes me anxious) I don’t know how to explain it but it should have some psychological meanings.

In general, I really appreciate the idea of the piece, I thought that long, smooth notes plus some unexpected short notes is the only way to make people tensioned, but “continuum” proves me wrong.

Lontano as a whole seems to describe a long journey. From the start to about 1:55 everything feels beautiful and ready with just hints of the tribulations to come. At 1:57 when the strings enter with such a harrowing rhythmic pattern it feels as though an obstacle has presented itself. The sustained note above depicts the hero of the journey persevering over the evil which disappears at 2:39. Then the basses set up what seems to be a a much more difficult task to overcome. The loud noise at 3:30 and then the subsequent strings that come in at 3:54 almost set up a subplot in the hero narrative. And the crescendo and slow, steady rise in pitch create a feeling of deception. So the entire scenario is something like Hercules with the Nemian Lion. A beautiful woman is discovered who ends up being a terrible monster. From 5:10 on the hero is getting more and more wary about his situation, but also sucked further in. This continues until 6:30 when the danger reveals itself and the hero is presented with the tall task of fighting his way out. The near silence and then short bursts of loud noise could be the foe attacking the hero and then disappearing, only to come out and attack again. At 8:00 there is a face to face confrontation and the two just stare each other down until 8:21 when the hero realizes that he isn’t so different from his enemy after all. Disillusionment sends him into a panic at 8:55 that grows steadily into sadness and anger and hatred all at once represented by the low, middle, and high sections of the orchestra. These three emotions battle for prominence until 10:08 when the hero re-realizes his current task and discards his distractions and completes his duty. I know I may have taken that story a little far, but I just kept listening to it over and over again and piecing the thing together.

When I listened to this piece again, after the Wednesday discussion in class,  I found that my perception of this piece has had changed greatly.
If I had to listen only to the beginning of this song,  I would reckon that it does not give you an indication of what you are going to experience through out the piece.   The start of Atmospheres is quite simple,
As the melody gets more complicated,  images start appearing.  I had not noticed the similarities with nature that we discussed in class, although I had experienced the “good vs. evil” feeling many of the class shared.  As I heard it again I noticed a  part, starting at minute 5:11, where there is a particular chaos.  As I heard, I couldn’t help noticing that this particular period of time did not resemble nature, but the opposite, it sounded to me like the chaos of  civilization, with its noise and traffic.  This part seems antagonistic to the nature, which indeed can be related with many of the parts of the piece.   All the straight points in the song have an element of chaos, but in this part, this element is particularly strong.

The first substantial chunk of time in the piece runs from the beginning up until about 1:04; it consists of high pitch strings and some ambient chrome-sounding horns. Then, until 1:21, more mid-level strings fade in and out, and organs start coming in with stringent chords. The first full-orchestral crescendo at around 1:25-1:54 encompasses what I feel to be the true beginning of the piece, with a second similar, but different, very harmonious crescendo following thereafter (this is where I saw meadows and monastaries, and felt a majestic presence). The piece then cools down, like the eye of a storm, with string ‘debris’ floating around a space hollowed out by what sounds like a droning organ until around 2:53. Woodwinds lead the next slow charge, wherein high pitch flutes and reeds fill the void as they bounce off of each other. This caucophony ends abruptly with the introduction of loud bass strings at 3:43. It feels like a house fell. Something fell. The stark realizations soon following this catastrophy can be felt as the creeping high strings come back in again, wimpering in a downward spiral until 4:25, when more various-pitch strings join into a whirling crescendo that is silenced immediately at 4:43. Afterwards, the isolated multi-pitch moans of horns and winds strike sparingly until 5:12, when the trombones wail and wail, with other horns joining in, one bass horn idling in and out in an oscillating manner, until the slow end of the crescendo at 5:48, where high-pitch strings and winds enter the stage again, meandering through my aural cavities, harmless but potentially lethal it seems. The piece is almost completely silent at 6:25-6:35, which is ended by a few violins and the ‘wave’ sounds at 6:45. This is followed by the whistling, fluttering sounds of flutes and clarinets and violins from then to 7:00. At this point, the room for aloofness is taken away by the attention-demanding sounds of various quiet winds until 7:50. From then on until 8:08, A very low bass note (I assume a tuba) underscores the slowly crescendoing unidentifiable (by me) “mechanical” sounds that take the last scene from 7:50 on until the end of the piece. The imagery is undeniable. Gloomy, macabre, yet striking.

The “cool spots” I would have identified would probably be the strikingly beautiful aforementioned crescendo at 1:55, and the “waves” moment at 6:45. I know we discussed the latter in class, but I’ll stand by my opinion that the glory I felt at 1:55’s crescendo truly weighted the piece in its background of what a classical sense of beauty can be, tossed into an array of what I’ll admit were at first very awkward-sounding nonharmonious chords in this piece. It grounded me and my sense of self in such a way that the rest of the piece has so much more of an effect on me. It’s brilliant. I love it.

After reading up on some Ligeti biography from the ever-trusty Wikipedia, I found myself visualizing a background story to Atmospheres as I listened. I envisioned a time-traveling journey spanning the history and demise of some dystopic and ravaged land, with the listener alternately speeding past faint, quickly occurring events or seemingly entering and becoming part of the events (or the aftereffects of the events) him/herself. The traveler begins at the present time, where anxiety reigns and the fate of the entire country is balanced precariously on the edge. Tensions rise and fall in waves throughout the first two minutes, where life is marked both by uneasiness and sporadic hope, eventually cresting with some glorious event heralded by the brass (from 1:50 to 2:05) as a sign of optimism for a better future. But afterwards (2:07), confusion and disorder seep in; society begins to decay, industries crumble. A new powerful party forces its way towards the ruling position, and the tension and chaos begin rising again. The listener is brought up, up, through the turbulent “atmosphere” of the nation’s fast-paced history (the screeching flutes at 3:15), so close to the sunlight of a new and better time to come…and suddenly the new authority brings down the hammer with a totalitarian, resilient, unforgiving power (3:44). The listener falls back through the grey despair below, passing hints and memories of the past when art and music were gifts to be treasured and used (4:02), not qualities to be censored and exterminated (4:38). An era of machinery arrives, with a complete absence of romanticism or creativity, marked by the grating, blaring horns of cars and trains and sirens (5:14).

Fast forward to the far future: only faint, distorted memories of music remain (5:54), and the nation has deteriorated into a barren wasteland haunted by stragglers and wandering creatures (6:38 onwards).

I realize that this interpretation is pretty wacked out and a bit far-fetched, but like I said–especially after studying a bit of Ligeti’s history, it was only too easy to correlate Atmospheres with some of the experiences he went through and the creative stifling he suffered as a composer in Hungary. It was much easier to visualize the piece rather than analyze it with words.

As for a “cool spot,” the one moment that always leaves goosebumps down my spine is 1:48-2:03, where the brass come in with a huge swelling chord that sweeps over you like the sun breaking through dark thunderclouds and spreading its light across a giant plain. In my opinion, it’s a section that seems different from the rest of the piece, and could almost be described as more traditionally “musical” then many of the other elements. It also has this sense of utter desperation/pride and sort of a last-man-standing feeling that lends it an extra dimension of power, besides its sheer dynamic range and volume.

I hear something that sounds almost like static in the very beginning seconds of “Atmospheres,” which then gives way to a ghostly sound mass—ghostly because it seems to have the idea of something solid behind it, but not the density.  The notes float and collide with each other in mid-air, creating a shimmer. The low bass notes are the ground, from which the top notes are repelled, suspended in air once more. The shimmer is like a cloud of insects, in the random yet contained way they seem to buzz around in the air. The music then decresendos into near-silence. Although the song doesn’t seem to have a defined pattern, the interplaying of loud and soft sections seems to be a theme, starting with the opening to the song.  One of the “cool spots” that really struck me was at 1:37 to 1:55. It sort of comes out of nowhere, this frantic and high-pitched cacophony of violins. The more closely I listen to it, the dizzier I get, because as soon as I latch onto a certain sound–a particular strain of violin, for example–that sound recedes and another similar one takes its place, yet as soon as I focus on the new sound, it fades, and the vertigo continues. This spot strikes me because of the nature of its intensity, and the anxious feelings it creates, but also because of how quickly it comes and goes. It’s like a foreshadowing of what is to come in the piece.  

I found this piece really intriging,  I liked how the tension was build up into several climax and anticlimax periods.  I found it quite nerve racking at times and I think it created a really good anthmosphere of suspense.

I guess I tend to find everything disturbing, but I felt as is this piece was telling me a story, the ending of it, being a such an anticlimax made fe feel that this particular story did not end well.

I braced myself as I pressed play, afraid the music would, like the music we listened to in class on Monday, seem to have the sole purpose of trying to give me a migraine.

It didn’t.

In fact, I found it incredibly relaxing. The echoing of the long high notes undid all the tension in my shoulders, and I could only think of glens, of forests, of those things I had seen in animated children’s movies with leaves and vines and shadows. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen Bambi, but I feel like this piece is the sonic embodiment of the moment when Bambi’s mother dies. It is unnerving, and becomes completely chilling, and yet at the same time there is this air of beauty to it, this feeling that this is the way things were meant to be and how they had to happen. I completely agree with what everyone else was saying about how this piece contains an entire universe: it has cities and turrets and wilderness and sky. I’ve been playing it on repeat even as I write this, and I can always find something new in the sonic landscape: a stained glass window, a crying violin, some harmony I hadn’t heard before. This song has so much space inside it. It’s like the antithesis of the Steve Reich piece “Come Out” we were listening to in class that someone felt was a ground for creating whole mental universes. Lontano already has them.

I also couldn’t help but think of words, because that tends to be how I relate to the world. This piece was a long, pretty word, perhaps French, like pirouette or oscillate or circumambulate or villanelle. It’s one of those words that rolls off the tongue properly, with long vowel sounds and tall, menacing, tree-trunks of letters. I think I could play this song on repeat all day long and not get sick of it.

When I watch movies with my seven year-old brother, I’ve noticed that he always plugs his ears during the scary parts of movies, rather than covering his eyes. The absence of sound—the muting of the frantic violins, for example, or the silencing of villanous laughter—seems to make the terror on screen easier to handle.I’ve listened to Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” numerous times by now, first on my laptop’s iTunes and then on my ipod. I kept on scrolling back, trying to make sense of certain parts, or sometimes just replaying it from the beginning, convincing myself that I would get it this time. My first impression of the song was how it seemed to create an atmosphere of tension, just like the soundtrack of those horror movies. Yet that idea of fear or suspense never seemed to be concrete in the moment of listening, but more of an impression lent from previous stanzas. Like I said, it intrigued me as much as it puzzled me. I was reminded of what Pauline Oliveros wrote in “Some Sound Observations”: “…a bulldozer is eating away a hillside while its motor is a cascade of harmonics defining the space between it and the Rock and Roll radio playing in the next room.” Like the bulldozer, “Atmospheres” seemed to draw me into the beautiful and haunting world it was spinning around me, rendering other sounds into some aural room-next-door.After listening to this song, my idea of what is “beautiful” in music has changed completely, not to mention my idea of what can be categorized as classical music (as this song was in my itunes). The arching sound of the screaming violins, the cicada-swarm of sounds that other instruments made (I don’t know enough about classical music to identify them)—I couldn’t believe that it sounded beautiful, but it did. Was it because I overcame my instinct to, like my brother, plug my ears and click away? Although, from doing that I know I was rewarded with an experience I might otherwise have avoided.This song is far from the conventional classical music that I grew up hearing around the house. The layering and combining of the shrill with heavy drum beats—the rise, soon followed by the chromatic fall—cannot be called melodious. But I know Ligeti’s music will remain in my atmosphere for a long time to come.-Alice