Karaikudi Subramaniam and Trichy Sankaran - Sunada
released in 1992
Performers:
Karaikudi Subramaniam - vina
Trichy Sankaran - mrdangam and kanjira
Lalitha Sankaran - tamboura
Instruments:
Vina - The vina is the major solo stringed instrument of South India. The present day instrument dates from the early 17th century and contains 24 copper frets which are held with wax to a hollow wooden soundboard. A gourd resonator is placed at the top end to amplify the sound. There are four main playing strings which are stopped by the forefinger and middle finger of the left hand, and played by the corresponding fingers of the right hand. There are also three side strings which are sounded by the little finger of the right hand.
Mrdangam - The mrdangam is a double-headed barrel drum from South India. Its body is made of jackwood. The drum is placed horizontally over the lap and legs while in a cross-legged position, and each hand plays a corresponding side in different rhythmic patterns with the hand, wrist and fingertips. Like the North Indian tabla, it has a dark tuning spot in the center of the skin of each head which is made of iron filings and rice paste. Both heads are held tightly to the body by leather thongs, and are tuned by striking the rims with a stone or other heavy object.
Kanjira - The kanjira is a single-headed tambourine made of a wood frame and lizard skin, which is used widely throughout South India. Although basically a simple instrument, it is capable of many different textures and tonal subtleties in the hands of a master drummer.
Tamboura - A long-necked fretless drone instrument which provides an undercurrent of pitch for Indian music. The strings are often tuned to the tonic and fifith, and are plucked steadily with the fingers.
SUNADA
This is a recording of instrumental chamber music in the Karnatic, or South Indian art music tradition. One of the main differences separating the Karnatic system from its Northern counterpart, the Hindustani system, is the use of devotional songs whose texts (sahityam) are woven into the melodic (ragam) and rhythmic (talam) frameworks. While distinctly instrumental forms have evolved within Hindustani music, Karnatic music is firmly based on these songs. Even in an instrumental performance, the words are present, if only in a latent form. While most of the songs date from the 18th and 19th centuries, the musicians use several different types of improvisation to decorate both vocal and instrumental performances, thus ensuring that the music remains fresh.
Sunada is the second recording for Music of the World by Karaikudi S. Subramaniam and Trichy Sankaran. The first, Laya Vinyas, was a showcase for Sankaran's virtuosity within the style of his renowned guru, Sri Palani Subramania Pillai (1908-1962). This second volume of their collaboration emphasizes Subramaniam's role as a guardian of the vina style of his great uncle and guru, Sri Karaikudi Sambasiva Ayyar (1888-1958). In his choice of pieces and in their treatment, Subramaniam has remained respectful to his lineage, while using improvisatory passages to demonstrate his distinctive creativity. While an instrumental recording of Karnatic music often requires no reference to the text of the songs, in this case such references are necessary. Subramaniam's treatment of each song is based on a deep awareness of the text; his approach to all the songs is reverent, drawing attention more to their devotional beauty than to his considerable technical skill.
Sankaran, however, does not remain in the shadows on this recording. His accompaniment (which, by the way, is entirely improvised) is sensitive and flawless, and his two solos, on mrdangam and kanjira, enhance the whole performance with their skill and ingenuity. He uses the muscular sound of the mrdangam without ever intruding on the delicacy of the vina, demonstrating - for all who did not yet know - his thorough mastery of this majestic drum.
Sunada may be translated as "pleasing sound," and as anyone who has ever heard these two masters on record or in performance will attest, there is no sound from either of them that is not pleasing. But to limit the meaning of "pleasing" to the sensuous in this case would be to miss the point. The goal of all great Indian music is to allow for individual access to universal unity, and so there is a spiritual component as well. The study and appreciation of music is considered a pleasant form of yoga, the goal of which is nothing less than spiritual liberation. The intellect may also be engaged: this is challenging music to play and it requires an agile, responsive mind to grasp its structures and processes. One of the great achievements of this music is the interpenetration of the sensuous, the spiritual, and the intellectual. Thus Sunada is sound that pleases body, spirit and mind, allowing the listener to pass through any or all of these three channels. (David Nelson)
Tracklisting:
1. Sarasasamadana {5:16}
2. Varanarada {5:29}
3. Ramachandra Bhavayami {6:34}
4. Nidu Charanamule: Ragam {6:34}
5. Nidu Charanamule: Tanam & Kriti {30:05}
6. Tiruppugar: Iyal Isaiyum {3:50}
7. Mayatita Svarupini {7:11}
(1)
Eduard Brunner - Dal niente
recorded October 1995, released 1997
Eduard Brunner - clarinet
The composition Piri by Isang Yun, originally scored for the oboe, exploits the nuances of the single tone in a manner characteristic of East Asian music. Eduard Brunner transforms it into a paradigmatic clarinet piece.
...
Igor Stravinsky recommended the A clarinet with its darker timbre in the first two of his Three Pieces for Clarinet. The deep register thus has the effect of a Gedackt organ stop in the first of the three miniatures. The second piece as well as the third, which is played in the Bb clarinet, recall the puppet and fairy-tale world of Petrushka and The Soldier's Tale with their airy, lightfooted, prancing figurations. Stravinsky jotted down the following previously unpublished miniature of five measures on a decorative telegram with the works "Apprille Rome 1917." It is dedicated to Picasso.
...
The Domaines by Pierre Boulez, also existant in a version for orchestra, illustrate the aleatory practice used by the composer to counteract the danger of formal rigidity inherent in serial thinking. According to the instructions in the score, the soloist is at liberty to decide on the order of the six Cahiers designated as Original, followed by six Miroirs (although "palindrome" would be an equally appropriate designation since most of these are reversed forms of the Originals).
...
In Freundshaft (In Friendship), composed for the clarinettist Suzanne Stephens, was designed by Karlheinz Stockhausen so that it can be played by different solo instruments. The piece is composed in three layers, as horizontal polyphony.
...
In Preghiera per un'ombra, Giacinto Scelsi also works with layers and registers in structuring the sound space. But instead of adhering to a strictly multilayered model, he lays a melodic trail by playing around single notes that recur elsewhere in the space of the sound, like hidden paths.
...
Like Accanto for clarinet and orchestra, composed for Eduard Brunner in 1976, which also investigated the realm of pure sound, Helmut Lachenmann's Dal niente (Interieur III) also exploits the entire spectrum of possibilities contained in the clarinet. . . . Lachenmann's penchant for the shadowside, for rough surfaces, hollowed sounds or what might be called the unlit side of sound, could be interpreted as a musical version of Brecht's visual metaphors - "Those in the shadows remain unseen" - or perhaps only as an expression of scepticism towards the hackneyed language of conventional notions of the beautiful tone. And yet these sounds bespeak the power of musical invention. (Max Nyffeler)
Tracklisting:
1. Piri {10:25}
composed by Isang Yun
2. Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo: I {1:30}
composed by Igor Stravinsky
3. Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo: II {1:08}
composed by Igor Stravinsky
4. Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo: III {1:19}
composed by Igor Stravinsky
5. Piece for Clarinet Solo {0:38}
composed by Igor Stravinsky
6. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier A Original {0:43}
composed by Pierre Boulez
7. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier D Original {1:00}
composed by Pierre Boulez
8. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier F Original {2:29}
composed by Pierre Boulez
9. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier E Original {0:57}
composed by Pierre Boulez
10. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier B Original {1:38}
composed by Pierre Boulez
11. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier C Original {0:54}
composed by Pierre Boulez
12. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier C Miroir {0:58}
composed by Pierre Boulez
13. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier D Miroir {1:05}
composed by Pierre Boulez
14. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier E Miroir {1:03}
composed by Pierre Boulez
15. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier A Miroir {0:54}
composed by Pierre Boulez
16. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier B Miroir {1:21}
composed by Pierre Boulez
17. Domaines pour clarinette seule: Cahier F Miroir {2:38}
composed by Pierre Boulez
18. In Freundschaft {12:32}
composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen
19. Preghiera per un'ombra {11:04}
composed by Giacinto Scelsi
20. Dal niente (Interieur III) {16:16}
composed by Helmut Lachenmann
(1) or (1) (2) or (2) [links coming back soon, (1/22/2012)]
various artists compilation - Solo Brass: New Perspectives
LP released sometime in the 1970s
Para-Tangents (1973) for trumpet and pre-recorded sounds
composed by Aurelio de la Vega
Performer:
Thomas Stevens - trumpet
PARA-TANGENTS is a virtuoso work for the solo trumpet, which climbs high and sinks low (pedal tones) throughout the work. Quick passages alternate with lyrical ones, and all kinds of attacks, articulations and use of several mutes help to create a varied aural spectrum. The work was written in close consultation with Thomas Stevens, to whom it is dedicated and who premieres the piece in this recording. In the concert version of PARA-TANGENTS certain passages for the trumpet, that are played "alive" in this record, will be pre-recorded and incorporated to the tape at certain points, mainly in the second "cadenza" which is a veritable "tour de force" for the soloist.
PARA-TANGENTS establishes a dialogue between the trumpet and the pre-recorded sounds in which thematic elements are stated, developed, transformed, atomized and presented again. The pre-recorded sounds, although maintaining an identity of their own, also establish a series of related events. The work has two "cadenzas" for the trumpet, one rather short, about half way through the piece (centering around middle C), and another longer near the end. The sounds were created at the Electronic Music Studio of California State University at Northridge. Mr. Peter Davison assisted in the preparation of the taped sounds, which were created using two Putney synthesizers and several other electronically modified sound sources. (George Skapsi)
Concertazioni (1973) for solo trumpet, 6 instruments, and 4 (a2) channel tape amp.
Composed by Henri Lazarof
Performers:
Thomas Stevens - "D" trumpet and "Bb" flugelhorn
Ann Diener Giles - flute and alto flute
Merritt Buxbaum - clarinet and bass clarinet
Ralph Pyle - French horn
Daniel Rothmuller - cello
Dorothy Remsen - harp
Henri Lazarof - conductor
CONCERTAZIONI (1973) was written for Thomas Stevens. The idea for the work came while working on SPECTRUM - a large scale composition for Solo Trumpet and Orchestra which uses a group of 6 instruments (flute, clarinet, harp, vibes, horn, cello) as "concertati". The same six instruments constitute in CONCERTAZIONI a sonorous canvas against which the Solo Trumpet explores, examines and displays its variegated part, at times fortified by a 4-channel tape of pre-recorded trumpets or flugelhorns. (Fred Dutton)
The Yellow Bird (1971-72) for tuba and rhythm section
Composed by Fred Tackett
Performers:
Roger Bobo - tuba
Fred Tackett - guitar
Ralph Grierson - piano
Skip Mosher -bass
Ray Rich - drums
In Tennessee Williams' short story THE YELLOW BIRD, a yellow bird named Bobo serves as an intermediary between the Devil and the elder Tutwilder. Needless to say, there is no reason to believe a connection exists between Bobo the bird and Bobo the tubaist, save for comparatively supernatural performances in their respective mediums.
The piece was commissioned by, and written expressly for, Roger Bobo, with the hope that, the almost overwhelming physical demands on the tubaist not withstanding, the work would serve to extend the instrument's solo repertoire into an area previously left untried. The work was premiered at the California Institute of Technology in May, 1972.
The piece consists of three sections: FAST-NOT SO FAST-REAL FAST.
The opening section is in ABA form, with a guitar - tuba duet preceding the recapitulation of the opening material.
The second section is primarily an improvisatory vehicle for the individual performers. Out of a dream-like texture of guitars comes a melody played by the tuba, first in its entirety, then in an abridged form. This is followed by the improvised solos of the guitar, tuba, and piano. This section ends with a return of the original melody, heard this time in diminuition.
The third section opens with a tuba-drum duet which is followed by a fast, mixed-meter rhythmic section featuring the tuba as the lead voice. This section serves as an introduction to solos by the guitar, piano, and tuba. The piece closes with a cadenza in the form of a tuba quartet, with three pre-recorded tuba parts played by Mr. Bobo. (Fred Tackett)
Tracklisting:
Side One
1. Aurelio de la Vega - Para-Tangents {14:17}
2. Henri Lazarof - Concertazioni {8:20}
Side Two
1. Fred Tackett - The Yellow Bird {15:16}
(1) or (1) [links coming back soon, (1/22/2012)]
Sam-Ang Sam Ensemble - Echoes from the Palace
released in 1996
Performers:
Sam-Ang Sam - sralai thomm, vocals, music director
Musicians for all tracks except "Robaim Me Ambao" and "Roeung Tipp Sangvar" are:
Ngek Chum - roneat ek, korng tauch, korng thomm
Ra Khlay - vocals
Chhieng Proeung - skor thomm
Chan Moly Sam - vocals
Malene Moly Sam - chhing
Tath Sum - roneat thung, sampho
Yan Van - vocals
Musicians for "Robaim Chhouy Chhay" are:
Saroeun Chey - vocals
Rithaony Hutajulu - korng thomm
Noeung Poeung - sampho
Chan Moly Sam - skor thomm
Malene Moly Sam - chhing
Sam-Ang Sam - sralai thomm, roneat ek, roneat thung, vocals
Sophiline Shapiro - vocals
Timothy Young - korng tauch
Musicians for "Robaim Me Ambao" and "Roeung Tipp Sangvar" include:
Khan Chea - vocals
Kong Chum - korng thomm
Son Ek - korng tauch
Theay Em - vocals
Sobon Nol - sralai thomm
Thouren Phan - vocals
Chhieng Proeung - skor thomm
Pruon Proeung - roneat ek
Bun Chan Rath Pum - chhing
Nguonly Seang - roneat thung
Tath Sum - sampho
Borin Yann - krapp
The complete pinn peat ensemble, traditionally used to accompany court dance, is composed of a wide variety of gongs, reeds, xylophones, and drums, along with vocals (chamrieng).
The instruments heard on this recording are sralai thomm (a low pitched quadruple-reed shawm), roneat ek (high pitched xylophone), roneat thung (low pitched xylophone), korng tauch (high pitched circular frame gongs), korng thomm (low pitched gongs), chhing (small cymbals), sampho (small double-headed barrel drum), skor thomm (large barrel drums), krapp (bamboo or wooden clappers) and chamrieng (vocals).
KHMER COURT DANCE
Dancing has been associated with the court of Cambodia for over a thousand years. On the walls of the Angkor temples, 1,737 apsara (celestial dancers) were carved, reflecting a period of history in which Khmer performing art reached its greatest expression. Khmer court dance, in its present form, is the continuation of this highly expressive dance tradition, of which the Khmer take great pride.
There are two general types of dance in the Khmer court repertoire. These are pure dance - pieces prefaced by the word robaim (dance) - and narrative dance or dance drama - prefaced by the word roeung (story). The former are dance pieces with occasional lyrical text. The latter are dances that portray or recount traditional stories or fables.
Khmer court dance has long been regarded as a female tradition. Women perform the major roles of king, queen, prince, princess, and demon. In the past 50 years or so the role of the monkey has been portrayed by men but prior to that it too was played by women. The varied costumes, headdresses, masks, movements, and gestures identify each of the characters. Dancers are trained from childhood in the royal palace. Traditionally, they ventured beyond palace walls only to attend the kings. Dancers are trained from age five or six for a repertoire which includes romances, myths, pure dance, narrative dance pieces, and stories from folk legends.
Since 1970 (the overthrow of the Monarchy), court dance has taken on a new image and status. It has journeyed beyond palace walls to the campus of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, to the refugee camps along the Khmer-Thai border, and finally to the Khmer communities abroad, especially in Australia, Japan, France, Switzerland, Canada and the United States. In these new environments, dance has been learned and performed widely, particularly by children of Khmer communities.
This dance form is traditionally accompanied by the pinn peat ensemble of wind and percussion instruments. The chorus sings texts that recount stories while dancers convey the story lines through expressive movements and gestures.
In Cambodia, traditional music has been largely neglected and minimally produced. Khmer dance troupes, both in Cambodia and abroad, have had to use poorly recorded music for practice and training. This recording was produced to aid in the understanding and appreciation of traditional Khmer court music, and also to serve as inspiration for Khmer dance troupes around the world. (Sam-Ang Sam)
Tracklisting:
1. Robaim Monosanhchetana {6:31}
2. Robaim Tivea Prapey {4:10}
3. Robaim Neary Chea Chuor {3:51}
4. Robaim Tipp Sangvar {5:14}
5. Robaim Me Ambao {6:56}
6. Robaim Choun Por {7:55}
7. Robaim Chhouy Chhay {8:41}
8. Robaim Supheak Leak {7:09}
(1)
Louis T. Hardin (Moondog) - Selected Works
released in 1978
Performers:
Gavin Black - harpsichord
Fritz Storfinger - organ
Guy Carmichael - horn
Louis T. Hardin - percussion
Pannonia Quartet: Gabor Cui, Ludovik Sandrik - violins; Klaus Koenig - viola; Bertalan Ikrenyi - cello
Heimdall Fanfare conducted by Dave Kamien
The organ pieces were recorded on the Brell organ in Herz-Jesu Kirche, Oberhausen, West Germany.
The harpsichord pieces were recorded in New Haven, Connecticut.
Louis Hardin, born in 1916 in Marysville, Kansas, wrote his first song at the age of eleven. Only several years later, however, did he make the final decision to become a composer, inspired by the book "The First Violin." After musical study with Maud Manniny, Bernard Schaefer, Anna May Sansom, and Daphne Ivans, at the lowa School for the Blind, Hardin moved in 1943 to New York, which he felt to be the musical center of America at that time. Over the next thirty years Hardin remained in New York writing and playing his music. As a strong believer in tradition he chose to respect the ancient rules of counterpoint in his work, following them even more strictly than most composers of the past. He was attracted especially to the form of the canon: in the 1950's and 60's Hardin wrote 300 madrigals in the form of canons, and over a hundred canonically based keyboard works, including four books of The Art of the Canon for keyboard. As the canon is the strictest musical form, so the couplet is the strictest poetic form; and Hardin has authored over one thousand couplets and longer poems over the years, including the madrigal texts. In New York, Louis Hardin, who lost his sight at age 17, met many of the greatest artists of the day, such as Artur Rodzinski, Arturo Toscanini, Dmitri Mitropolous, Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Martha Graham, Charlie Parker, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Hardin began using the name Moondog in 1947, and under that name produced several records of his music from the early 1950's on. During a concert tour of Germany in 1974, Hardin, who in recognition of his affinity for classical tradition had previously described himself as a "European in Exile", decided to remain where he was. After a stay in Hamburg he settled near Recklinghausen where he lives today ("incognito", according to 'Le Monde'!). The present record contains a sampling of Hardin's recent music.
The four works played on harpsichord are taken from collections put together in the early 70's. The Canons in C major and C minor are from The Art of the Canon, Book 1, and the two modal works are from Troubador Harp Book 1. Though these works were not originally conceived for harpsichord, composer and performer agree that they are well suited to the instrument. The harpsichord used here was built in 1977 by Keith Hill.
The Chaconne in G was written in 1974. This piece is a Tonata in one movement. The Romance is the second movement of a three movement Tonata in C for string quartet, completed in 1976. The Tonata is a form conceived by Hardin. He says "it is an outgrowth of the Sonata, though different enough from it to require a new name. Each Tonata is a law unto itself, though they all have much in common, all relying heaving on counterpoint, featuring the canon and the ground, relieved here and there by harmonic and rhythmic effects." The development sections of the two quartet pieces are in canon form, double 2-part canons. In the Romance it has the added feature of being a mirror canon. The Pannonia String Quartet of Marl has been playing together since 1975. The Heimdall Fanfare forms part of the Creation, begun in 1971, Hardin's most ambitious contrapuntal work to date. The work tells the story of the Nordic Creation myth; in music and elegaic couplets the music is based on the first nine notes of the overtone series of the note g, used in order as a contrapuntal theme. The Fanfare is a nine-part canon in the dorian mode. Heimdall, a figure from the Nordic mythology, is the watchman of Asgard, who blows the Gjallar-Horn. The Chaconne in C for organ was written in 1967. Along with the other organ works recorded here, it is played on the Breil organ of the Herz-Jesu Kirche, Oberhausen. The works on side two are taken from the Logrundr Book One for organ, written between 1974 and 1976 and dedicated to Paul Jordan. Like the twelve books of Madrigals and the four books of The Art of the Canon, this collection contains 25 pieces in all keys, arranged according to the circle of fifths, beginning and ending with pieces in C major. The works are canons over a repeated bass, sometimes with a coda. The counterpoint in all of Hardin's canons is invertible, allowing the order of parts to be reversed in the middle of each piece. Logrundr XIX is a portrait of the composer's mother. About organ sound, Louis Hardin has said, "I like the diapason and the flutes the best, and care very little for the reeds. I like a clear, pure classic tone on the organ, without vibrato." On Hardin's being asked why some of the organ pieces as recorded here have reeds, the reply was, "Ask Storfinger". Hardin is currently at work on a second Logrundr Book, dedicated to Fritz Storfinger, which will contain organ duets as well as solo organ pieces. (Gavin Black)
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. Canon in C Major {1:14}
harpsichord
2. Canon in C Minor {1:36}
harpsichord
3. Ground in the Ionian Mode {1:39}
harpsichord
4. Canon in the Mixolydian Mode {1:23}
harpsichord
5. Chaconne in G Major {4:47}
string quartet
6. Heimdall Fanfare (Canon in the Dorian Mode) {3:06}
for nine horns
7. Romance (Second Movement of String Quartet in C Major) {5:22}
8. Chaconne in C Major {3:04}
organ
Side 2
Selection from Logrundr Book I for Organ
1. Logrundr No. XV in B Major {1:25}
2. Logrundr No. XVII in E Major {3:48}
3. Logrundr No. XIII in F-sharp Major {3:26}
4. Logrundr No. XII in B-flat Minor {3:05}
5. Logrundr No. VII in E-flat Major {2:09}
6. Logrundr No. IX in A Major (Portrait of My Mother) {9:04}
(1)
Luigi Nono - Fragmente-Stille, An Diotma/"Hay que caminar" sognando
Performers:
track 1: Arditti String Quartet: Irvine Arditti - violin; David Alberman - violin; Levine Andrade - viola; Rohan De Saram - cello
tracks 2-4: Irvine Arditti - violin; David Alberman - violin
Recorded during July 1990
A certain conception of music prevailed around the mid-nineteenth century: the conception of instrumental music as "pure art", as an acoustic representation of the realm of ideas. This concept still endures through the twentieth century in the notion of "absolute music". A great number of instrumental works, among them major masterpieces, from Mozart's last three symphonies to Boulez's "Structures", can be correlated to this conception within which one instrumental combination occupies a choice position: the string quartet. Thus around 1850, the theoretician Karl Kostlin defined it as "a music of the spirit, a pure art, removing us far away from the deafening turmoil of life to lead us to the silent kingdom of conceptual shadows" (in "Die Idee der absoluten Musik", Carl Dahlhaus, Kassel 1978, p. 21).
Completed in January 1980 and premiered on June 2, 1980 by the LaSalle quartet at te Beethoven Festival in Bonn, Luigi Nono's string quartet, entitled "Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima" ("Fragments-Silence, To Diotima"), would seem to fit quite naturally within the principle of this thesis. Nothing in this arcane music, sprinkled with pauses and virtually always performed softly, ever recalls "the deafening turmoil of life." With just a touch of naiveness, the title might even be interpreted as a tribute to an ideal Greece. And then again, the 50-odd fragments of Friedrich Holderlin's poems which Nono wrote down above the notes on his score, seem indeed to refer to the "silent kingdom of conceptual shadows". The annotated poems are intended for the performers and meant to help them achieve an intuitive comprehension of the music: "a more secret world"/ "In rich silence" / "born from ether" / "In the eternal silent light", etc. Other shards from Holderlin's text can nevertheless be found with yet a quite different tenor: "emerging into air and light" / "I, how could I rest?" / "When in sorrow I was engulfed" and - no less than five times - "yet you do not know this". Might those be the echoes from the "silent kingdom of conceptual shadows"? Or rather, a very tangible, at times even insistent way to address an imaginary interlocutor, a situation perhaps of dialogue rather than monologue.
...
"Hay que caminar" sognando, for 2 violins, was composed in 1989, and was the last work to be completed by the composer. The piece is related, though perhaps not obviously, to the String Quartet written nine years earlier. In both works Nono uses the "Scala Enigmata" ("Enigmatic scale") from Verdi's "Four sacred pieces". In the title page of the score of the Violin Duo, Nono carefully quotes the notes of which the scale is comprised; they are to be brought out by the interpreters, and players almost without vibrato. As pieces of purely instrumental writing, the String Quartet and the Violin Duo mark the beginning and end of the composer's final period of development between 1980 and 1990.
During this period, Nono worked with live electronics in the Friburg Experimental Studio, and became intensively occupied with questions of spatial acoustics, and with the analysis of pure sound. "Hay que caminar" is however not simply a return to instrumental music: Nono's experiences with live electronics have left a deep imprint on this work. The concept of "mobile sound" used in this work, for instance, is particularly striking.
In the music using live electornics this effect of "rotating the sound source" would be achieved with the help of carefully placed loudspeakers. In the Violin Duo, it is the interpreters who are the mobile sound sources: Nono has instructed that the pages of the score be distributed among three music stands for each performer. These stands are then to be placed in different positions in the concert hall. Both the order in which these positions are to be used, and the route used to reach them, are to be determined by the interpreters. Nono's experiences with live electronics have also left traces in the microstructure of the sound itself - for instance in the extremely high pitches used, the wide variety of articulation (col legno, ponticello, etc. . . .), and a dynamic range which extends as low as 7 pianissimi. Both the subtle shifting and fluctuating of the sounds, and the exploration of the very lowest limits of human hearing refer back to the opera "Prometeo", Nono's central work of the 1980's. With the more recent restriction to purely instrumental music, Nono seems to have set himself to seek new ways of realising his visionary aims as a composer. This quest was brought to a brutally premature end by his death in May 1990. (Max Nyffeler)
Tracklisting:
1. Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima {36:10}
(1979/1980) for string quartet
2. "Hay que caminar" sognando: première partie {6:20}
(1989) for 2 violins
3. "Hay que caminar" sognando: deuxième partie {10:46}
(1989) for 2 violins
4. "Hay que caminar" sognando: troisième partie {10:34}
(1989) for 2 violins
(1)
Salvatore Sciarrino - Lo spazio inverso
Performed by ensemble recherche:
Melise Mellinger - violin (tracks 1, 3, 4 and 5)
Barbara Maurer - viola (tracks 4 and 5)
Lucas Fels - violoncello (tracks 1, 4 and 5)
Klaus Steffes-Hollander - celeste (track 1)
Martin Fahlenbock - flute (tracks 1, 2, 3 and 5)
Jaime Gonzalez - oboe (track 5)
Jacqualine Burk - English horn (track 2)
Shizuyo Oka - clarinet (tracks 1 and 5)
Uwe Mockel - clarinet (tracks 2 and 3)
with
Clarens Bohner - bassoon (track 5)
Marc Noetzel - horn (track 5)
Achim Gorsch - trumpet (track 5)
Andrew Digby - trombone (track 5)
Felix Borel - violin (track 5)
Marc Fischer - contrabass (track 5)
Kwame Ryan - conductor (track 5)
tracks 2, 3 and 4 recorded on April 27-28, 1998
tracks 1 and 5 recorded on November 8, 1999
All tracks recorded at hans-Rosbaud-Studio, Baden-Baden.
Shade eaters: Through the deserts of Salvatore Sciarrino's music
I
The paradises of music have become viscous.
II
Music, set into the concrete of glass buildings, hardened to syrup by being played, is no longer palatable to the bored citizens of today. They yearn for decay, for mould, for putrefaction, if not even for the cheering cries from hell. From there, out of the place of darkness and cold - heated according to age-old belief - noises emerge, now and then, snatching fissures in the walls of beauty. Deliverances, thus, from the eternally reproducible, hoping to change to the dreadful, hoping to join the caravans on their way to the wasteland of exactions, where the wealth of memorylessness torments the recalling mind.
III
Salvatore Sciarrino's music tortures expectation. Once in a while, a mirage feigns the contours of oases in the midst of worlds of sand. The seemingness of his music stages its deceptions. In this aridity, drops stutter an annoying regular rhythmed morse code onto infinitely refined stone, which devours them as evaporated nothingness.
IV
They are easy to identify, the scores of the Sicilian, born in 1947, particularly since the problem is always only of a compositional nature, which in its insolubleness devour the score sheets ... some blackened ... some left blank.
His dissecting instruments that serve to find a compositional carcinoma are whirring and teeming, occasionally whimpering flageolet tremoli, the secco-dry impulses of wind instrument keys or soundlessly puffed breaths, sometimes tiny micro-interval slides or glissandi weakened by age, which bleed to death on their long stretches through the spaces of thirds and fourths, occasionally sound strokes, which sever the crown from the base of the sound as a laser beam, and "always-always" the thematic self-revolving figures present in all scores, strung together as the beads on a rosary, praying to themselves as the eternally thoughtless, blatantly senseless praise of the Virgin Mary, reverence to robots in Italian, mercilessly repeating, ceaseless Sisyphean thirst for the ever same, without becoming American. No minimalism, but the rotating swish of bodily streams, the scrapping wheeze where arteries bend ... set on paper.
In the middle of this operating room, Sciarrino sets the body of music below freezing point. Thus the composer dissects his brittle notes, excises the ulcers. The superfluous is suctioned off. The ear basks itself at the ice of the scores.
V
Shade eaters are the rays on melted stone.
Glass.
VI
The image orgies Salvatore Sciarrino contrives are attempts at showing analysis as a desiccated cadaver. As if the painter's brush spoke from its mouth as soon as it confronts its own works with language. Far from merely being the revelation of motivistic structures, of instrumentation, of dramatisations within musical time.
Desert stones full of riddles.
What he wishes to say is expressed in metaphors, does not retell that which resounds, but speaks what is tangible but not provable.
Sciarrino on Codex Purpureus: "...We differentiate between visions and blindness in vain: every light transgresses this threshold, when it blinds us with a train of illusions. Do you not feel as well that which is visible in sound?"
Sciarrino on Omaggio a Burri: "Unfolding the senses is the background of my music."
Sciarrino on Lo spazio inverso: "After abrogating the rhythm, movement is created out of polyphonous gravitation like that of the stars in the sky or as the profiles of the mountains on the horizon. In the desert, the physiognomic traits appear as outlines: pulsating islands of sound brush seas of silence. Within this silence we find the sounds of our body, we recognize them as our primeval own and hear the smallest tensions of the intervals like will-o'-the-wisps, which - devoid of all drama - light up as gestures in the dark. . . Our mind is generous enough to accept this wretchedly fragile music. Music is no longer made to put to sleep market places but to awaken realisation - in the moment when the market place has fallen silent in us."
Sciarrino on Introduzione all'Oscuro: "In this composition the imitation or transmission of some vital sounds of internal physiology are clearly discernable - a kind of objectivation, a speechless dramatisation of the heart and the breath. Here, music tends to reverse the relations between absence and presence, to move it toward the 'uncanny'. You do not perceive what you feel: it practically remains merely a blind, mysterious movement expressed in an acceleration and retardation of periodical pulsation, an atmosphere of fear, whose 'outer' psychological cause escapes our comprehension."
Salvatore Sciarrino's granite blocks in the vastness of scorching sand glow like lamps on operated skin. (Hans-Peter Jahn)
Tracklisting:
1. Lo spazio inverso {7:35}
(1985) for flute, clarinet, celeste, violin and violoncello
2. Muro d'orizzonte {11:20}
(1996) for old flute, English horn, and bass clarinet
3. Omaggio a Burri {12:59}
(1995) for old flute, bass clarinet and violin
4. Codex purpureus {11:14}
(1983) for string trio
5. Introduzione all'oscuro {17:48}
(1981) for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone and string quintet
(1)
The Erguner Brothers - Preludes to Ceremonies of the Whirling Dervishes
Turkish classical music is based on modal systems, or maqam, similar to the western scale system. One of the genre's principal components is the music of the Mevlevi order of the Sufi sect, as performed on this disc. The Sufis, also known as the whirling dervishes, believe that music can provide a mystical link to God. Their ritual involves a dance, in which the celebrants spin continuously, their left hands pointed toward the earth and their right hands raised to the heavens, symbolizing their role as a conduit between the two.
One of the most prevalent instruments used by the musicians who accompany this ritual is the ney, a wooden flute which occupies a sacred position in Turkish classical music. Among the most acclaimed artists working in this genre, both Kudsi and Suleyman Erguner perform on this delicate-sounding instrument. The elder of the brothers, Kudsi, who emigrated to Paris, has for some twenty years strived to promote the appreciation of Sufi music throughout America and Europe and has recorded and performed with many western artists, including Peter Gabriel. Suleyman, who has remained in Istanbul, is a professional musician attached to Istanbul radio, as well as respected lecturer at the Academy of Music in that city. (from the liner notes)
Tracklisting:
1. Makam Bayati {13:55}
2. Maka Adjemashiran {9:40}
3. Makam Saba {13:27}
4. Makam Segah {15:12}
5. Makam Bayatiaraban {11:12}
6. Makam Yegah {8:51}
(1)
Morton Feldman - Chamber Music
Performed by Ensemble Avantgarde:
Kerstin Klein - soprano (track 1)
Markus Kohler - baritone (tracks 2, 3 and 4)
Ralf Mielke - flute (track 8)
Matthias Kreher - clarinet (track 8)
Johannes Winkler - horn (track 1)
Jochen Pleb - horn (track 5)
Stefan Stopora - percussion (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8)
Winfried Nitzsche - percussion (track 8)
Steffen Schleiermacher - piano/celesta (tracks 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8)
Andreas Seidel - violin (tracks 1, 2, 5, 7 and 8)
Ivo Bauer - viola (track 4)
Matthias Moosdorf - violoncello (tracks 1, 2, 5, 7 and 8)
Direction - Roland Kluttig (track 8)
I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important. What the American painter Franz Kline (1910-62) said about his paintings - brusque, black brush gestures on a white background - can be applied equally to Morton Feldman's composition. Composition means defining sound space, and this is done just as much with the "black" of the notes as, ex negativo, with the "white" silence, the absence of sound. In its reduction of sound elements, its new balance of sound and not-sound, Feldman's music attains the magical, floating quality that the composer admired in the early - nonfigurative - paintings of his painter-friend Philip Guston (1913-80): the complete absence of gravity of a painting that is not confined to a painting space but rather existing somewhere in the space between the canvas and ourselves, as Feldman once wrote. Again and again, Feldman noted that the illusion of stasis in his scores could only be understood in the context of his intensive engagement with the visual arts: Stasis, as it is utilized in painting, is not traditionally part of the apparatus of music. [...] The degrees of stasis found in a [Mark] Rothko or Guston were perhaps the most significant elements that I brought to my music from painting. (Peter Niklas Wilson)
Tracklisting:
1. For Franz Kline {5:12}
2. The O'Hara Songs I {4:53}
3. The O'Hara Songs II {1:45}
4. The O'Hara Songs III {3:49}
5. De Kooning {14:46}
6. Piano Piece to Philip Guston {3:18}
7. Four Instruments {12:21}
8. For Frank O'Hara {15:49}
(1)
Arvo Pärt - Collage
Performers: Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus, Neeme Jarvi - conductor; Boris Berman - piano
Born in 1935, Arvo Part comes from Estonia, a remote country with cultural traditions rooted in an ancestrally religious past, while being part of an aggressively secular state, the Soviet Union. It is hardly surprising that Part was divided and distracted, uncertain of identity or direction. He began by composing symphonic music roughly in Western tradition, with some kinship with Shostakovich and the solitudinous inner drama of Sibelius. We don't know much about this music since the composer disowned it; but we can understand why the Beethovenian task of wilfully imposing order on chaos proved, for Part, formidable. Desperately, he sought other ways out, briefly flirting with then fashionable serialism and with aleatoric techniques: both of which proved to be for him, technical alternatives to orthodox Western traditions, rather than imaginative and moral solutions of a creative impasse.
The earliest work on this recording, the Second Symphony of 1966, belongs to this experimental phase. It is scored for a large conventional orchestra unconventionally treated.
...
During the middle sixties he paused, hesitated; and found a raft to cling to in the music of J. S. bach, who owes his crucial position in European history to his being a halfway house, looking back to the Middle Ages and to Renaissance contrapuntists, while relishing the procedures of the contemporary High Baroque, and acting as harbinger of unsuspected futures. This disc includes three collage-pieces based in a general sense on bach's idiom, with some reference to specific works by him. The earliest and longest is the Credo of 1968, which sets two fragments of holy writ for mixed chorus, piano solo and orchestra.
...
The work specifically called Collage sur B.A.C.H. is scored for strings, oboe, harpsichord, and piano; and its first movement is again a minimalist 'moto perpetuo,' gradually shifting from B flat to B minor. The slow movement transcribes a noble Bach sarabande for oboe and harpsichord; then transfers it to strings and attempts to demolish it with the noise, rather than music, of note-clusters on a modern piano, embracing all the chromatic semitones within the octave.
...
Part's Bach-collages, though fascinating and often startling, represent a transitional phase, linking his eclectic start to his discovery of identity in his works of the 80s and 90s. For after a self-imposed silence, Part was Born Again - not in the crude evangelical sense, but in that all his music was now concerned with the numinous. Henceforth, his music betrays a debt to monodic religious cantillation, especially that of the Orthodox Russian Church; to medieval organum and heterophony; and to the austerely mathematical polyphony of Renaissance composers like Machaut and Ockeghem, whose work Part studied during his 'silent' period. If one wants points of reference to define the nature of Part's music beyond these traditional sources, one might mention the liturgical music of Stravinsky, the ceremonial music of Janacek, the children's music of Orff, and Satie's Socrate. This does not mean that Part was 'influenced' by these composers, only that he shares with them a consanguinity of mind, creating, from the rudiments of mode and triad, a music that is extraordinarily simple, and simply extraordinary. Three examples of this phase of Part's creation complete this recording.
Summa was originally a setting for four voices of the Latin version of the Christian creed. The music does not attempt to illustrate or express the words: in this respect it resembles medieval music and is distinct from a Renaissance polyphonist such as byrd, even when writing liturgically.
...
Festina lente, written in 1988 for string orchestra and harp, is 'out of this world' in a rather different sense. The white-note texture, without a single accidental, induces calm of mind, all passion spent: an effect compounded by the ambiguity of the modality, which is Lydian, Aeolian, or Dorian, neutrally in limbo. The title, Festina lente, bears on both the piece's technique and its meaning, for it is built on mensuration canons that 'hurry slowly' in that the theme is chanted by the violas at basic speed, and is canonically imitated by first and second violins at double speed, and by cellos and basses at half speed.
...
Fratres dates from 1977, but was revised in 1983. This later version is for string orchestra, with claves and bass drum. Throughout, cellos and basses sustain a drone on the open fifth, A to E: a device common in medieval organum and in sundry oriental musics.
...
These three late works are brief in temporal duration but eternal in atemporal effect. Similar principles inform the major liturgical works of Part's maturity, culminating in the St John Passion of 1982. At the end of this work Part, far from relapsing into the 'paradise of archetypes and repetition' beloved of children, savages, and minimalists, is poised on the verge between Becoming and Being, creating what is surely one of the sublime moments in 20th century music. His has indeed been a miraculous pilgrimage. (Wilfrid Mellers)
Tracklisting:
1. Collage sur B.A.C.H: I. Toccata. Preciso {2:45}
2. Collage sur B.A.C.H: II. Sarabande. Lento {3:33}
3. Collage sur B.A.C.H: III. Ricercar. Deciso {1:32}
4. Summa {4:18}
5. Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte {7:34}
6. Fratres {10:00}
7. Symphony No. 2: I. {6:52}
8. Symphony No. 2: II. {3:06}
9. Symphony No. 2: III. {4:45}
10. Festina lente {5:53}
11. Credo {12:38}
(1) or (1) (2) or (2) [links coming back soon, (1/22/2012)]
Dalang Ki Suparman - Semar Murca
I found this other tape along with the Khusus Tabuh Joged tape (which has already been posted) at a local thrift store. This one is more of a mystery to me than the other tape. The recording is of a conversation or storytelling or both (I'm not sure which since Indonesian is the only language spoken on this tape.) interspersed with musical performances by gamelan. No liner notes are included. Does anyone know anything about the label Gong who released this tape? Hopefully, more information and background of this recording's contents will be brought to light.
Note: While the time of tracks on both sides are the same, the contents of sides 1 and 2 are different.
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. Semar Murca side 1 {28:54}
Side 2
1. Semar Murca side 2 {28:54}
(1)
