Around the World in a Daze
John the Revelator

This simultaneous release by Starkland and Cantaloupe showcases two contrasting sides to Phil Kline’s music. Other than the name, there’s not much on the surface connecting these two albums. Around the World in a Daze is a double-DVD package, commissioned specifically to exploit surround sound audio with lots of extras on the second disc, like a blockbuster movie release. John the Revelator, on CD, is more straightforward – a Mass for voices and string quartet, no less.

Daze is, according to Starkland’s publicity, the first work commissioned for a full-length surround sound recording. As a result, there is quite a lot of hyperbole in the accompanying materials – “a landmark work”, writes John Schaefer, comparing it to Das Wohltemperierte Klavier in its specific exploitation of new technologies. (Kline himself is more modest: “It is not Die Kunst der Surround”, he writes.)

I’m sceptical about the inherent value of this being the first surround sound commission – non site-specific spatial music has been around since at least Gruppen, surely? – but, since I don’t have access to surround sound facilities and my best option of listening to a DVD is through my laptop, I’m in no position to comment further on that side of things.

Sticking with the sleevenotes, it’s clear early on that Kline is very attracted to the cool possibilities that multi-track surround sound recording opens up for him. He’s especially pleased, for example, that at one point in ‘Pennies from Heaven’ the overlapping layers expands up to “hundreds of thousands” of bells. That attraction is fine, but there must be a temptation to fetishise that potential and abdicate one’s responsibilities as a composer. There were times in this 18-minute track, for example, when I thought I’d lost sight of Kline’s hand on the tiller. Somehow, though – and through the lightest of touches – he keeps the whole thing alive and on course.

Not every track is an elaborate soundscape of this sort. In fact, the music collected here ranges pretty widely into song forms (‘The Maryland Sample’), almost-field recordings (‘On the Waterfront’), to digital dissections of Wagner (‘Luv U 2 Death’). If you strip away all the portentous verbiage that comes with the music, a lot of what Kline is doing is pretty uncomplicated: identifying interesting possibilities within the format (similar processes running at different speeds in different channels, for example) and letting them speak for themselves. The range of results is a reflection of that exploratory, open-minded approach. To my surprise, I found the more ‘composerly’ tracks – ‘Grand Etude for the Elevation’, say – less distinctive and less interesting. When Kline keeps it simple (and his best-known work, like Unsilent Night, is super-simple) the results are very seductive.

John the Revelator is more of a piece than an album of individual tracks. Described as a Mass for six voices it intersperses seven movements from the Ordinary with nine ‘Propers’ to texts chosen by Kline (including the Old Testament, David Shapiro, early American spirituals and Samuel Beckett). The textual materials are thus pretty diverse, and are matched by the musical styles (medieval polyphony, Bruckner, Nyman, the Beach Boys) that are also stirred into the mix. One of the most immediately striking things when listening is how well Kline holds all this together. I think it comes about through a general strategy of keeping each movement short and singular and, more significantly as a point of style, consistent approaches to phrasing (regular), harmony (uncomplicated) and voicing (chunky). If this was a hip-hop album it would be ‘well-produced’: the sonic space is uncluttered but consistently filled across the whole range to keep the ear’s attention total and undivided.

The overall effect is therefore many things but not quite anything. It’s perfectly crafted, polished to a high sheen, and clever in its way. Some bits (like the stretched harmonies of ‘Dark was the night’) are very lovely. But overall it stays too long within a safe zone of its own making. And that sonic consistency becomes a real barrier to introducing drama or conflict. Sixteen parts is a lot for a single cycle without any of them asking what they were doing there, and I was desperate to find something that would bite back and surprise me.

Three concerts on three wednesdays curated by three composers. This is a great series of concerts, and essential listening for anyone interested in the experimental fringes of new composition.

Markus Trunk
1st july 2009

jennie gottschalk – enclosed VII (2007)
kunsu shim – intermezzo I (2003)
makiko nishikaze – st michael’s garden (2004)
chico mello – do lado do dedo (1986)
christian wolff – malvina (1989)
walter zimmermann – 15 zwiefache (1979)

Tim Parkinson
8th july 2009

christian wolff – balancing (2006)
manfred werder – stück 1998
chris newman – air fool agony face (2009)
chiyoko szlavnics – cilia tremble (2006)

John Lely
15th july 2009

portrait of tom johnson (b.1939) to include:
music and questions (1988)
narayana’s cows (1989)
formulas (1994)

Performers
makiko goto – koto; stephen chase – guitar; angharad davies – violin; sara hubrich – violin; mark knoop – accordion; the post quartet; tom johnson; john lely

My review of this concert last week is now up at Musical Pointers.

It has become a feature of Radius concerts to programme works of the experimental, mostly American, avant garde alongside their more obliging European counterparts. This practice reached a sort of zenith so far in the evening’s enticing performance of Cage’s Telephones and Birds, which, instead of taped birdsong, used Messiaen’s piano transcriptions, along with the requisite recordings of telephone calls (all made in this case to the Monterey Bay Area ‘Birdbox’ hotline).

As a broad strategy it has its pros and cons. In particular, I have reservations about how the coherence and ‘throughline’ of concert (rather than an assortment of recently rehearsed works) is affected. Another effect – more ambiguous and thus potentially more interesting – is the relative influence of one tradition upon another. In general – and in this performance of Telephones and Birds in particular – I’ve found that the glossier European masters tend to smooth out any experimentalist abrasions.

Read more here.

Jammie Thomas (now Thomas-Rasset) is not the first person charged by the RIAA with copyright infringement for downloading and sharing music files, but she is the first to have taken the RIAA before a jury, rather than reach a settlement outside.

She lost her first trial and was ordered to pay $222,000 damages for sharing 24 songs. However, a retrial was ordered when the judge revealed that he had falsely instructed the jury on the technicalities of copyright infringement. The retrial concluded yesterday, with a federal jury finding Thomas-Rasset liable again, and a judge now ordering her to pay damages of $1.92 million, or $80,000 for each of the following tracks:

* Guns N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”; “November Rain”
* Vanessa Williams “Save the Best for Last”
* Janet Jackson “Let’s Wait Awhile”
* Gloria Estefan “Here We Are”; “Coming Out of the Heart”; “Rhythm is Gonna Get You”
* Goo Goo Dolls “Iris”
* Journey “Faithfully”; “Don’t Stop Believing”
* Sara McLachlan “Possession”; “Building a Mystery”
* Aerosmith “Cryin’”
* Linkin Park “One Step Closer”
* Def Leppard “Pour Some Sugar on Me”
* Reba McEntire “One Honest Heart”
* Bryan Adams “Somebody”
* No Doubt “Bathwater”; “Hella Good”; “Different People”
* Sheryl Crow “Run Baby Run”
* Richard Marx “Now and Forever”
* Destiny’s Child “Bills, Bills, Bills”
* Green Day “Basket Case”

Statutory damages for willful infringement of copyright can range from $750 to $150,000. The jury in this case were particularly punitive, it is thought, because they felt that Thomas-Rasset had been lying to them. And it must be said that the story of how the files got from her computer onto the Kazaa filesharing site has been sketchy. Nevertheless, the judge in this case appears not to have clarified the difference between the right to statutory damages and the right to compensatory damages. The former allows for whopping punitive fines like this without the burden of demonstrating exactly how much money has been lost for each infringement.

According to ars technica, there is talk, however, that the RIAA may not try to collect these damages for fear of stoking even more grassroots anger. There is also a good chance that this case will go further, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, since there may be Constitutional concerns over the exorbitant fines that music corporations are empowered to wield against individual citizens.

Whatever happens, it is extremely unlikely that a cent will go to any of the artists above, some of whom have had previous brushes with copyright infringement. Bryan Adams has forced fansites into signing rights agreements for use of his name and picture. A blogger was arrested for streaming nine leaked songs from Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy (his sentence was reduced to one year imprisonment for assisting the FBI); the band weren’t impressed. And Aerosmith have successfully used the threat of copyright action to prevent one of their songs being used in a GOP campaign video.

There are pros and cons to all these stories, and to the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case. Artists have, and deserve, rights in their works that need to be protected. The big flipside, particularly evident in Thomas-Rasset, is that the legal mechanisms appear to be in place now for corporate copyright holders to exercise a power way beyond the spirit of the rights they are defending, and possibly even against the interests of their own artists if anger against their policies continues and spreads. The big question still unaddressed is for how long will artists be happy to remain complicit in the punitive strategies of their paymasters, or will there come a point when they realise that such wild-eyed greed is not why they got into music in the first place?

I’ve dropped the ball slightly on this one, so apologies for the late notice, but Radius play tonight at the Wigmore Hall. Their programme celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of “On The Origin Of
Species” by taking up the theme of “chance” in music. The group will play pieces by Messiaen, Boulez, Cage and new works by
Paul Newland and Tim Benjamin.

Full Programme
Boulez: Domaines
Cage: Telephones And Birds (Not Birds But Messiaen)
Paul Newland: Monotonous Forest
Messiaen: L’Alouette Lulu and L’Alouette Calandrelle from Catalogue D’Oiseaux
Cage: Radio Music
Tim Benjamin: A Dream Of England

More information: Wigmore Hall; Radius website.

The following email, just received, might be of interest:

The Library of Congress has completed digitization of another batch of
the compositional sketches of Elliott Carter. These are now available
on our web site. This current release consists of the following
material:

Pocahontas (18*)
Symphony No.1 (224)
Piano Sonata (20*)
Minotaur (108)
Emblems (192)
Woodwind Quintet (141)
Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (140)
Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord (51)
Variations for Orchestra (771)
Double Concerto (161*)

For technical reasons, these are not all complete yet. Numbers in
parens indicate page (image) counts; an asterisk indicates digitization
is incomplete (more to come in future releases).

Along with the previously released sketches for the Cello Sonata (338
images) and the First String Quartet (538 images), these sketches are
now available at:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/search?query=%2BmemberOf:carter&view=thumbnail&sort=titlesort&label=Elliott%20Carter%20Manuscripts

There will be either one or two more releases in the near future to
complete this project.

I’ve been browsing around today working on compiling a reading list for 20th century music. Delighted to have found the following items on Google Books:

Milton Babbitt: Words About Music
John Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings
Iannis Xenakis: Formalized Music

Also (smaller chunks available, but still plenty of reading):

M.J. Grant: Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics
Keith Potter: Four Musical Minimalists

And probably many more besides.

… with live performances of Alvin Curran, Keiko Harada and Michael Maierhof, thanks to the Monday Evening Concerts series.

(This recent show looks like it was amazing – hope some of this ends up on YT.)

Also, I found this – haven’t added it to the main post because it’s not a video, just the sound file, but it’s a gem worth sharing:

Mark Knoop, piano

Kelly Ground
Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh’
Cambewarra
Six Postcard Pieces

Tall Poppies TP198

David Lumsdaine’s piano music, as heard on this excellent disc, is rich in technical intricacies. One can take analyses of these constructions on faith, but Lumsdaine’s intellectual approach is apparent as soon as one attempts an initial description of the music: one hears groups of pitches rotating and transforming, melodic and rhythmic contours evolving, the careful control of register and density. (Mark Knoop makes an ideal interpreter, conveying the full range of these subtle interactions without ever crossing into inappropriate histrionics.) This is most apparent in Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh’, an extended fantasy on the opening chords of the Bach chorale, which ghost the music’s 20-minute span, gently pushing open a window into the unfolding of Lumsdaine’s technique.

In the opening section of Kelly Ground, one can hear that the (serial) pitch organisation is arranged to determine that similar pitch collections tend to cluster together. There is also a restricted gamut of gestural possibilities: predominant is a two-note ‘spring’ upwards, like a rabbit hop. Such factors – similar examples can be found throughout this CD – contrive to give Lumsdaine’s music a certain consistency of grain, out of which emerges a sustained expressive character.

Thus, although the music is highly organised, there is never a sense of contrived abstraction. In Kelly Ground, the overwhelming mood is a sombre one of energies and freedoms restrained. This suppression is deliberate, of course, a compositional attempt to tame an infinite and anarchic field of possibilities. Over the course of the piece’s six sections, from Ned Kelly’s awakening on the morning of his execution to his eventual hanging, the musical shackles are slowly released, but the music loses cohesion and purpose. In the final section, the hanging itself, the sprung figures from the opening return to more morbid effect in slower rhythm and with portentous bass undertones, swinging like bells or a body. With Kelly’s death, the fizzing energy of the earlier movements has become petrified, the musical tension lying in the relative merits of various degrees of control and freedom.

In the late 1970s, Lumsdaine began making field recordings of Australian wildlife and landscapes. In his excellent sleevenote, Michael Hooper writes of Lumsdaine’s self-imposed rules for producing and editing such recordings, to do with fidelity to the diurnal cycle, to location and to season. In one technique, several recordings would be made in a single location, but with the microphones pointing in different directions each time, thus capturing in sound a sense of perspective and the spatial interrelationship of the landscape and its inhabitants. It is this process of objective observance within a sparsely occupied three-dimensional space that is the subject and effect of the piano piece Cambewarra. Whether there are birdsongs here or not (and this isn’t sub-Messiaen exercise in transcription) doesn’t matter: one hears musical objects simply presented and organised in contrasting temporal and spatial relation to one another. It is the way that the understanding of one’s environment is structured through phenomenal experience that is captured, more than the local details of that environment. As with Kelly Ground, in Cambewarra Lumsdaine again approaches programmatic content, whilst avoiding the temptations of crude mimesis.

An Australian landscape and a national hero. One is tempted to uncover an underlying nationalism, but to do so would be to miss the point. Despite his titles, Lumsdaine doesn’t deal in musical representations – or at least, not in any straightforward, unmediated way. He avoids parochialism by unearthing from such stories and locations structures that speak to universal experience: the tensions between freedom and a determined society, the sensation of open space and one’s own environment. It is such steadfast belief in the power of technical abstraction to articulate human concerns that gives Lumsdaine’s music its profound beauty.

Thanks to Aaron, Colin and others for spotting this: