My first listening experiences with Du Yun were of compositions that incorporated a lot of tape and effects. I enjoyed this a whole lot, and was completely unsure as to where to link her within the lineage (although we can’t even really claim to have any sort of lineage) of contemporary music. This girl has so much mystery to her, and her music has such edge and conviction. I was pretty hooked from the beginning. However, I found it very interesting to hear what she could do when scoring for traditionally orchestral instruments. The creative and confident forces behind these pieces is incredible, and it’s wild to hear someone creating such raw, complete, original music in such a traditional setting. Vicissitudes 3, the piece we listened to repeatedly, is a perfect example of this – the piece is incredibly cohesive, and has a surprising amount of form to it. The motifs are truly engaging and textured. But on a broader level, as proved by our class discussion of the piece, it can be viewed in a number of ways. Not only can we ponder if this is indeed a form of programmatic music, with the musical ideas intending to emulate the text presented toward the end (a tone poem of sorts), but we saw several different interpretations of what exactly it was she was trying to bring out through the music. I think Du Yun’s music is connecting with a lot of us in different but intense ways, and it makes me happy to see everyone digging it from different perspectives.
It seems that most people are writing about this concert, and for good reason. These guys are extremely tight, energetic, and very much on the cutting edge of musical performance. I had a blast at this concert; the music they chose to perform covered a wide range of feelings and ideas that kept me on my toes. I loved the last two pieces, but everyone seems to be talking about Double Sextet so I’ll focus on Les Moutons de Panurge. Despite the informative program notes on this piece, I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was first happily surprised to find myself locked in a twisted groove, but after some time I realized the piece would begin to deconstruct. Here’s where things got interesting; as we briefly discussed in class yesterday, the musicians took the piece off the page like a child lets a balloon fly into the sky. You begin with a foundation, an initial structure, but the true musicality is found in drifting away. At this point they began to walk about the stage, immersed in their own path of this byzantine sequence of notes. The overlapping rhythms felt great and the individual ideas leapt out in all sorts of directions. The piece melted itself to an end, the only real way to complete such a concept. Thoroughly enjoyable.
I thought I’d write about Caroline’s presentation this week; I really enjoy Kaki King’s music and haven’t really listened to her in a few years, so it was great to hear her stuff in both a musical and nostalgic sense. Her style is full of personality and energy, and she approaches the instrument in a unique way that produces unique results. Due in part to her slapping style and in part to the drop tunings she uses, there’s this great sound of fret buzz and steel “sizzle,” if you will; the sound of a steel strings vibrating against the neck of the guitar. I remember reading a while back that she started on drums before playing guitar – this hints at her percussive style of guitar playing. On the other side of the spectrum, her use of harmonics in conjunction with fast low-end grooves and textures produces rich overtones and notes that seem to pop out of her guitar and fly into the air, a notion that relates to much of the music we’ve checked out in class. I find her music to contain influences from across the musical map, sharing ideas with similar guitar-oriented instrumentalists like Michael Hedges and Keller Williams to artists rooted in groove like Fela Kuti. All in all i find King’s work to be filled with interesting and abstract ideas (it’s great for rainy days, too, I find). It’s always refreshing to hear someone making new and different music out of an ordinary instrument.
I found Feldman’s “Why Patterns” to be a really interesting piece, maybe the most interesting one we’ve looked at of his. His compositions feel like dreams to me; I drift off further and further into that delicate state of semi-consciousness as the piece progresses. As mentioned by a few others, there is this sense of weakness as well. The notes and textures are restrained and light. I think this is where Feldman’s music gets its real power – the feeling of resistance. Music should flow in an organic and musical way but resist at the same time. Feldman makes this work so perfectly; his orchestration is understated and sparse (and also very quiet and gentle), but there is this underlying weight to it at the same time. It has a resistance to it that keeps you engaged with each emerging part and with the piece’s overall intensity. Feldman’s compositions feel like blank slates to me, and streaks of texture and color emerge throughout. In “Why Patterns,” the orchestration develops slowly and becomes just a little bit more textured in the middle, taking your whole body deeper into a state of relaxed but focused energy. The perpetual piano notes are about the only consistent part of the piece, and his use of winds gives off the real dreamy feeling. Very cool piece.
Bryars’ composition is one of my favorites that we’ve looked at. While a lot of you guys hear it in an ironic context, I really do think it’s a genuine concept seeking genuine responses. Over the course of the six movements, your emotions build and build; the imagery I get from extended listening of this piece is incredibly powerful. I’ve been transported to parts of my life I haven’t thought about in years and years. The fact that we don’t really quite know who the tramp was adds depth to the composition – it’s as if the tramp is nobody, and yet everybody at the same time. I’ve always thought this effect was ungraspable unless you’re Bob Dylan. Bryars’ orchestration is tasteful and colorful. It adds a sense of hope to the tramp’s voice and gives beautiful context to the words.Several people in class brought up the idea that Bryars was capitalizing on the tramp’s soul. I really don’t agree with this; there’s no material compensation that could have made it more “okay” to use the tramp’s singing. The idea of taking his voice and bringing it together with orchestration stands as a shrine, an homage to the tramp’s singing. Tossing the guy a nickel would be not only inconsequential but insulting. This composition isn’t about helping this tramp out of his situation (of which we know little), but rather opening the door to a voice that would otherwise go unheard. The other thing I’d like to address is the Tom Waits aspect of the composition. Some say he’s over-doing it or that it’s out of place since he’s a famous dude. But for me, it fits perfectly. I don’t think Tom Waits cares that he’s famous; he cares about weirder and more visceral things, like black coffee, midgets, or spiders. In any event, Waits is in fact the only other guy I would add to the list of the nobody/everybody list along with Dylan and the tramp. His voice is filled with such filth, truth, beauty, and life; it perfectly suits the tramp’s essence. Stay cool everyone. If anyone knows how to skip lines when writing these things, please let me know – I’ve been trying since blog #1 to make paragraphs to no avail. So my apologies if my statements seem abrupt at times. Thanks y’all.
Since everyone seems to be talking about the awesomeness that was “In C”/”Everything in its Right Place,” I thought I’d deal with the awesomeness that was Reich’s Six Pianos. The piece is exactly that – six pianos, intertwining rhythmically to create an intense and driving groove. There are definitely parallels to be drawn between Six Pianos and Piano Phase; there’s that sense of breaking apart the notes into small clusters of register when listening. But far more interesting in Six Pianos is the texture. There’s simply no match for the feeling, the intensity, the unity of six of the same instrument playing with such vigor in such perfectly precise time. The personality of each player comes through, and just like in “In C,” you can hear each part coming and going, changing ever so slightly its rhythmic ideas. With each pianist playing slightly different parts, the groove became a funky soup of superimposed rhythms that pull your ears in every direction at the same time. This piece was not only a true minimalist composition but also a breath of fresh air for my ears; very few of the pieces we have listened to emit such bounce, such zest, and such musical interplay as “Six Pianos.” It was able to retain its stripped down and bare-bones structure of harmony while remaining rhythmically bursting with energy throughout. The first 8 minutes and 12 seconds are almost unchanging, taking your ears into a trance-like state. Then a diminuendo comes out of nowhere and totally takes you by surprise. Following the dynamic change, Reich takes us to (or at least hints at) the relative minor for the rest of piece, providing a new sonic color with the same exuberance and energy as before. “Six Pianos” is a real exciting composition, and certainly the first piece we’ve looked at that I’ve wanted to boogie to.
John Luther Adams’ “Triadic Iteration Lattices” is an incredible concept, a fascinating piece of music, and a feeling that I still have in my gut. While I’ve really enjoyed everything we’ve listened to in and out of class, this one gave me the most intense physical and intellectual ride of any. It gave me feelings from my head to my toes, and on the inside and outside of my body. The sirens are really the perfect instrument for the effect I believe Adams was going for; you’re never quite sure where the peak pitch will be, and the increase and decrease in pitch is perfectly gradual and smooth while maintaining an incredible level of intensity. More effective than the sirens themselves was the relationship between them. As a low siren finally hit its demise, a high one would take off into the sky, rocketing your body up into the stratosphere, and likewise when the highs went down and the lows went up. These moments gave me that “roller coaster” feeling – the anxiety, the uncertainty of the moment of climax, but also the feeling of simply being shot up into the air and being surrounded and enveloped by the sky. This feeling of being catapulted was so perfectly captured by the sirens that each time they climaxed I thought my body would jump out of the seat and fling itself in the air. It gave me this massive combination of euphoria and anxiety that was just fantastic. I think what makes me happiest about stuff like this is that you can experience something so physical to the point where you’re actually convinced that a giant catapult is throwing you into the atmosphere, and then you realize that mere sounds were doing the work. Nuts.
“Puisque bele dame m’eime” is one of the more delicate and perfect pieces of music I’ve encountered in a while. The first drone is so pure and true, giving the melody freedom to soar above like a bird. The drone is so incredibly effective in that it doesn’t even feel like a voice, just a stagnant pitch upon which the melody sings. What I like most about the melodic voice is how she pushes the notes that make her lines distinctly dorian just a little bit louder than the other intervals. This gives her lines an eerie and distant quality, again making me think of the soaring bird. The singer’s melismatic lines on the major 6ths and flat 7ths ring so beautifully (for example, at 1:05) as she gives the notes just an extra push, giving the phrase a more dynamic and emotional effect. Conversely, when she comes to a perfect 5th, she backs away slightly, giving the solidly powerful interval a more gentle feeling. The voices are sweet but light and delicate, almost fragile. At 1:00, a third voice enters, giving more motion to the low voice’s line as the 3rd voice provides the drone for the rest of the piece. The motion of the low voice provides a more definite pulse to the song, pushing the emotional level upwards until the final syllable fades in perfect harmony. Awesome.
Ligeti’s ”Atmospheres” is a composition filled with melodic and rhythmic chaos, but also with intense emotion. Not to draw too heavily upon the title, but the piece does indeed feel very atmospheric, very vast and exploratory. The huge sheets of sound expressed frequently during the crescendos embody the immense power of space and time, while the quiet whimpers of woodwinds and delicate passages show the serenity of the universe as a deep and natural abyss. The chord at 1:57 in particular provided me with intense imagery – each time I hear that chord I see the sun rising into the sky. But many parts are also unsettling and full of confusion and turbulence. In the excerpt from 3:02 to 4:44, notes seem to chase each other from one instrument to another, never quite catching up but coming within half-steps of reaching them. Ligeti’s harmonic and textural ideas are eye-opening and incredibly radical; he draws from a wide palette of concepts and sonic ideas to capture something fresh and bold. The end of the composition sees a slowing down of sorts, expressed by an array of natural sounds that diminish into sounds of the air and of the ocean. Ligeti hits perfectly on the massively beautiful nature of the world around us and the sounds it brings us. Scientists have often tried to mathematically figure out exactly what sound the universe makes. I think we should toss them a Ligeti record.
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