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 want to blog this week about the Eight Blackbird concert.
I think the first piece by Reich, the Cello Counterpart, was a wonderful performance, not only by the musician, but as a general presentation. I will not take time on this piece because I would just end up repeating how much I liked it.
Instead I am going to talk about the first piece Eight Blackbird performed, Knight, Death, and Devil by Rzewski. This piece is far for being the favourite composition of Rzewski I have heard, but it was very interesting to see performed. The most obvious point to mention is the broken glass-broken plates period in the middle of the piece. The percussionist got into work globes and glasses and broke glass and plates inside a garbage can he was using as percussion. He hit the can repetitively wit a stick and by throwing it from over his head. Then he made noise with his finger in the metal. This period of apparent randomness was definitely something I did not understand at all, but that certainly blended with other absurd aspects of the composition.
The other aspect I think was interesting was the vocals. The performers would at some points make vocal noises, both similar to singing and just “coughing” noises. This was once enlarged by the fact that everyone took their tongues out after a particular part of the performance.
Knight, Death, and Devil was a very mixed composition. It had parts when all the instruments came together in harmony and was really easy to digest, only to then break into disorder and dissonance. I thought this composition was interesting, although I would like to hear more about the specific parts of it and their importance towards the piece as a whole. I particularly thought the glass event was really random and had no other hooks in the rest of the piece, I didn’t see the need for it. While commenting with other people that went to the concert, there was an opinion, that I myself share that this event just wanted to make the piece seem intellectual by confussing the audience.
Maybe it’s because of the proximity of Halloween, or maybe it’s because my nerves are still jangled from watching Oberlin’s production of the bloody play Bug this past weekend, but a lot of the music we’ve been listening to lately seems to have a menacing quality. Andrew’s show-and-tell song really evoked the atmosphere of the play, for example, because it resembled the music they played before they began the show. The first blare of the trumpet was elephant-like, so I smiled and scooted down in my chair, ready for a relaxing time listening to experimental trumpeting. Well, that was what I got, but not in the way I expected. The following blare of trumpet was distorted and wild, like the kind of sound a Dr. Seuss animal would make as opposed to its real life counterparts. I could best describe the song as like a carnival fun-house for my ears…there were traces of the familiar, like one’s reflection in the mirror, hidden within the bizarre, one’s reflection stretched out in the fun house mirror, stretched fat or thin–but in this case, with a scary effect, as opposed to a funny one. The heavily distorted Hey Jude inspired chills because it took something that was so genially familiar and made me do a double-take, in a way looking at a familiar friend and realizing that they had a deeper side that apparently was under the surface the entire time, just unapparent to me. It also amazed me when Andrew said that the song was performed live–I can’t imagine the kind of improvisational skills that must have required, or if it followed a practiced score, the kind of practice and preparation that went into it. On a similar note, I had that same amazement after listening to Matt’s bagpipe piece, which was so complex. The beautiful, pure tones that instrument produced would be worth claiming “I listen to bagpipes” just to hear it. That song also had a sort of twist, a musical equivalent of a poem’s turn. While the mournful, saxophone-resembling melody seemed to represent the Irish family’s struggle and pain, the too-cheerful portion at the end was when I felt that the family had finally died, releasing their earthly suffering in a vulgarly celebratory uproar, because death isn’t “supposed” to be so happy. I was really happy that Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place was the closing piece to our class. For once during those two hours, I felt as though everything was in its right place…here was a beloved, familiar song, straightforward and just as how I remembered it.
Layer upon layer of simple repetitive lines play alongside a spoken mantra, creating a weave of interest, beauty, and intensity. In Coming Together, the parts are well acted – not just those of the individual voices, but also in the instrumental emphasis of the words. I loved this piece – It easily kept my full interest the whole time. The limited number of phrases did not bore me. On the contrary, they made it possible for me to focus on both the poem and the song, without feeling like I was missing anything. When certain words were brought to the focus, either through repetition, or instrumental emphasis, the meaning within the piece came out. ”I am deliberate, sometimes even calculated”… I feel that Rzewski thought long and hard about his choice of words, and his choice of instruments. At times I didn’t know whether I should laugh at the overly dramatized spoken word or hurry to write down each word, as if it were THE TRUTH. The build-up throughout the piece is awesome, as it becomes increasingly complex and exciting. The piece is insistent and impassioned – listening to it again, I was agitated and energized – and couldn’t focus on what I was trying to write, as you can see from the mess above. But nevertheless, this piece was awesome and I loved it.
So I just looked up the background of this song, and I think that it’s really interesting, so I’ll paste it in here:
“In September 1971 inmates of the state prison at Attica in the state of New York, unable to endure further the intolerable conditions existing there, mutinied and succeeded in capturing a part of the institution, as well as a number of guards, whom they held as hostages. Foremost among their demands during the ensuing negotiations was the recognition of their right “to be treated as human beings”. After several days of inconclusive bargaining, Governor Rockefeller ordered state troopers in to retake the prison by force, justifying his action on the grounds that the lives of the hostages were in danger. In the slaughter that followed, forty-three persons lost their lives, including several of the hostages. One of these was Sam Melville, a political prisoner already known for his leadership in the Columbia riots and one of the leaders in the mutiny at Attica. According to some accounts, Sam was only slightly wounded in the assault. The exact case of his death remains a mystery. The text for Coming Together is taken from a letter that Sam wrote from Attica in the spring of 1971:
“I think the combination of age and a greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time. It’s six months now, and I can tell you truthfully, few periods in my life have passed so quickly. I am in excellent physical and emotional health. There are doubtless subtle surprises ahead, but I feel secure and ready. As lovers will contrast their emotions in times of crisis so am I dealing with my environment. In the indifferent brutality, the incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, I can act with clarity and meaning. I am deliberate, sometimes even calculating, seldom employing histrionics except as a test of the reactions of others. I read much, exercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life.”
from http://www.topologymusic.com/index.php/coming-together-by-frederick-rzewski/
That definitely put an entirely different spin on the piece for me. Now I can see the different personalities of the prisoners in each of the voices, and the increasing desperation of their life within the confines of an inhumane prison. Wow.
Erin
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