New Music for Chamber Orchestra

various artists compilation - New Music for Chamber Orchestra

SOME WORDS ABOUT WORDS ABOUT MUSIC by Carman Moore

The attempt of words and symbols to explain the subject of music represents so pure a history of failure that it might be regarded as itself a thing of perfection. The implications of the "sighing" Mozartean score, for example, with such an adjective as "female" thrown in has the makings of poetry but leads us away from the intellectual rigor - no matter how involuntary - represented by Mozart's music. And the term "chamber orchestra" may send the mind galloping off into the four winds. We may know that the "chamber" in question asks that you date and place it - a palace lounge in 1810? a South Rampart Street brothel in 1910? a New York City recording studio in 1970? Must an "orchestra" employ strings?

Even the score must be viewed as a program note, endeavoring to make the sonic journey seem more business-like and less physically hazardous than it really is. Nonetheless, while word and symbol may be imposters, they may also serve music with honor. For they function as that body of expectations over against which the truth of sound as organism performs its magic. The composer has profound need of these expectations, for taking the ear - even his own - by surprise (by storm) lies at the heart of his craft.

Iannis Xenakis - the architect, the mathematician as composer, to many listeners the man representative of all that is inscrutable in modern music (if you can't read his score, how can you presume to respond to his music?) - represents a prime example of the contemporary symbol-vs.-music tension. His very name at the head of a program note may cause the experienced reader-listener to expect a visually beautiful chunk of score and mathematical jargon. Yet the name when thought of relative to most of his works will probably call up memories of vast sonic textures and unforgettable psychic experiences. In his Achorripsis (1957) the Xenakis characteristic of overtly dramatic sound coupled with elegant formal proportions is already central to his style. Almost analogous to this fact, who can avoid noticing how the relatively civilized dryness of the pitched-instrument counterpoint is clubbed again and again into submission by big, primitive smacks from the bass drum? Xenakis's music seems to refuse the term "chamber," and rather transports the ear outdoors onto a rugged landscape. Yet in its juxtapositions of woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings as agglomerate color families Achorripsis slyly reminds us of its debt to the Baroque concerto grosso.

Through Aldo Clementi's little "Triplum" (1961) and the even tinier Three Pieces (1910) for chamber orchestra of Arnold Schoenberg the point of broad expressive power within short time span is made and seems to deepen the mystery of how music works. "Triplum" presents fragile colors which is slipping away from each other seem to touch hands. Mobile pitch lines and densities seem to pause for re-coloring from time to time and then rush or slide away. It's all over in four minutes.

Ruggedly dramatic in another sense if Bo Nilsson's Szene III (1961). As if it has given way to total savagery after early attempts to conform to what a mad era insists is civilized, the closing measures of the work become a stretch of unrestrained tumult led into by a shattering crescendo on the tam-tam. Mr. Nilsson on side B shows another aspect of his expressive range through the elegant little Frequenzen (1956). With traditional Western percussion augmented to include jazz drum set, guitar, vibraphone, and xylophone the eruption promised by this heavily-batteried instrumentation never really occurs. Tightly organized of duration, pitch, and the like, it interestingly enough indicates dynamics by number 1-10 (pppp to ffff). Conductor Francis Travis expresses the basically low profile, and the beauty of this performance seems to prove it a sensitive work and performance.

Schoenberg's amazing "Three Pieces" recorded here for the first time (Darmstadt Festival, 1961), is little over 2 1/2 minutes and 28 measures long, but its powers to transport the listener are extensive indeed. Pieces I and II are sections completed by the composer, and Piece III is unfinished. Composed after the "Chamber Symphony" (1906), the "Gurrelieder" (1901: orchestrated 1911), and the "Five Orchestral Pieces" (1909), this work, relatively so slight of means, was obviously undertaken as a study in terse statement and perhaps as a shadow piece to the "Five Pieces." In the next decade or so Schoenberg was to ardently begin and then abandon many works, so it is not so strange perhaps that "Three Pieces" should end suddenly in mid phrase. What is both strange and remarkable is the fact that the third piece, from measure 5 to the end, sounds so like a work that was to be published and performed three years later - Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." And for anyone seeking a precedent for Anton Webern's still, aphoristic style of composition there is the second piece - eight measures and three fermatas long.

Wlodzimierz Kotonski's Canto (1961) for chamber orchestra indicates a dynamic marking for every note, with a range from ppp to fff. From rhythms, almost all of which are long-held notes, the composer evokes, nonetheless, a true sense of momentum. Careful coloration and sensitive pitch choices make of the work a strange kind of high adventure.

As if to combine all of the impulses to formal precision presented in the above-mentioned works, Yuji Takahashi's brutally-difficult Six Stoicheia (1969) for four violins is totally written out and specific about pitch, for example, to the point of indicating "+=1/4 tone sharp" and "*=3/4 tone sharp." But it is the composer's creative imagination and the uncompromising brilliance of Paul Zukofsky (heard here on all four parts) which reveal this tight-looking score to be in reality a full-blooded sonic experience - an experience not at all out of place on a chamber orchestra recording.

These have been words and post-expectations of value to me. Perhaps they will function as an analogy to what each listener might bring to his own first and repeated relationships with these seven extraordinary compositions. It is to be done shamelessly. Just as nature has its still-life, it appears that music will always have its verbiage and symbols - as the last outposts of the outer world before the leap into the dimension of all sound and all form is made.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Iannis Xenakis - Achoripsis {5:39}
Performed by Hamburger Kammersolisten, Conducted by Francis Travis

2. Aldo Clementi - Triplum {3:57}
Performed by Severino Gazzelloni - flute, Lothar Faber - oboe and Guy Deplus - clarinet

3. Bo Nilsson - Szene III {5:36}
Performed by Internationalen Kranichsteiner Kammer-Ensembles, Conducted by Bruno Maderna

4. Arnold Schoenberg - Drei Kleine Stucke {2:42}
Performed by Internationalen Kranichsteiner Kammer-Ensembles, Conducted by Bruno Maderna

Side 2

1. Wlodzimierz Kotonski - Canto {5:07}
Performed by Internationalen Kranichsteiner Kammer-Ensembles, Conducted by Bruno Maderna

2. Yuji Takahashi - Six Stoicheia {6:22}
Performed by Paul Zukofsky - violin (recorded on four separate tracks)

3. Bo Nilsson - Frequenzen {4:01}
Performed by Hamburger Kammersolisten, Conducted by Francis Travis

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