For all of the opportunities
to become acquainted with the music performed by the San Francisco
Contemporary Music Players at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum last
night, even the most sympathetic listener was faced with major
challenges. Harold Bloom may have been "anxious"
over poets who were influenced by other poets; but where music is
concerned, whether in composition or performance, influence is more
often the fertile soil from which new ideas emerge. In the case of
listening, influence can actually be a two-way street.
Thus Ludwig van Beethoven's dedication of his Opus 2 piano sonatas to
Joseph Haydn is, at least in part, an acknowledgement of influence;
but, by the same count, if we are familiar with the Beethoven sonatas,
we can hear Haydn's 1790 E flat major sonata (H. XVI/49) as a source of
that influence. The practice of music weaves a thick and extensive
social network; and, more often than not, the "shock of the new" is a
matter of getting one's bearings within that network.
As
Alessandro Solbiati and François Paris discussed their work (both
laboring under difficulties with the English language) prior to last
night's concert, there was considerable allusion to the influence of the
"spectral music" school of thought but little by way of expository
introduction. To be fair this approach, practiced primarily in Europe
since the 1970s, has been well represented in past performances by the
Contemporary Music Players; and one of its pioneers, Gérard Grisey, who
died in 1998, taught at the University of California at Berkeley from
1982 through 1986. Such facts do little for the disoriented unwashed
(like myself), however. While it was clear that the works of both
Solbiati and Paris (as well as the contribution of Philippe Hurel to
last night's program) reflected Grisey's influence, there was not enough
"working knowledge" of what that influence was to benefit the hapless
newcomer. If all one needed to know about "spectral music" had to do
with working with acoustic spectra as a musical medium, then techniques
such as Solbiati's scordatura assignment of the twelve chromatic
pitches to the open strings of a cello, viola, and violin in his
"Sestetto à Gérard" came across as a rather blunt instrument for
manipulating spectral properties. The same could be said of Paris' use
of quarter tones in his "À propos de Nice." In his remarks Paris said
that he wanted to get beyond the "compromises" of traditional tuning
systems; but, if his objective was a tuning system with fewer
"compromises" to the natural harmonics, there is a relatively simple
mathematical demonstration that quarter tones do not function as well
as, for example, third tones. (The "bottom line" is that the quarter
tone tuning helps you get a far more "natural" tritone; but the other
"natural" intervals are not as well served.) Finally, Hurel's "Loops
IV" was composed for solo marimba, whose spectral properties are
relatively rigid and thus afford few opportunities for acoustic
manipulation.
The other composer represented on the program was
Tristan Murail, who, like Grisey, was a member of the Groupe de
l'Itinéraire and shares Grisey's status as a "pioneer" of spectral
music. Murail was represented by two short piano pieces, "Cloches
d'adieu, et un sourire …" (Bells of farewell, and a smile) and "La
Mandragore" (The Mandrake). Orientation to Murail's piano music is
facilitated by familiarity with the solo piano music of Olivier Messiaen, an excellent case in point being his Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jésus.
In these twenty short compositions, the very sound of the piano itself
is always a key element; but Messiaen arrives at those sounds not
through spectral manipulation but through meticulous instructions to the
pianist. Given the extent to which "Cloches" acknowledges Messiaen's
influence, my guess is that Murail took the same approach in both of
these works.
Whatever the listening challenges may be, the
approach of the Contemporary Music Players is to be as faithful as
possible to the intentions of the composer and let the music speak for
itself. (I have called this the "stare decisis approach" in some of my past writing about Messiaen.)
There is no questioning the sincerity of their performances, and their
institutional relationship with the composers they perform suggests that
their authenticity is also unquestionable. In the long run listeners
can only be served by more exposure to such music. However, between the
rehearsal time required to "let the music speak for itself" and the
expense associated with performances like this one, increasing the
"exposure level" is neither physically easy nor economically feasible.
So the best thing we can do is take what we can get. Orientation will
come. I know. I have been there with other "disorienting" instances of
"new music," which would later become "old friends!"
No comments:
Post a Comment