Black Angels

The Cikada Quartet - Black Angels

released on CD in 1995

recorded at the Academy of Music, Oslo, Norway: March 25-27, 1994


The Cikada Quartet:
Henrik Hannisdal - violin
Odd Hannisdal - violin
Marek Konstantynowicz - viola
Morten Hannisdal - violoncello


tracks 1-13 Black Angels composed by George Crumb

tracks 14-16 String Quartet Op. 28 composed by Anton Webern

tracks 17-18 String Quartet composed by Witold Lutoslawski

George Crumb - Black Angels

The score of Black Angels is inscribed in tempore belli, "in time of war." In 1970 that meant the Vietnam War and Crumb was later to explain that the work was "conceived as a kind of parable on our troubled contemporary world". There are aspects of Black Angels which can be construed as making oblique reference to that particular conflict: the vivid "electric insects", the liquid sonorities which form a gentle quasi-oriental backdrop, even the surrealistic juxtaposition of the two. But the work is not "about" Vietnam, nor even war itself, although it can certainly be interpreted as an anti-war statement. In Crumb's own words the "parable" is told in terms of "a voyage of the soul. The three stages of this voyage are: Departure (fall from grace), Absence (spiritual annihilation) and Return (redemption)". This mystical programme is underpinned by "the essential polarity - God versus the Devil", giving rise to a number of musical (and non-musical) allusions. In Black Angels, Crumb's preoccupation with some of the techniques and principles of the medieval age, characteristic of much of his work, is greatly in evidence. But the most immediate impression is that of its highly individual and graphic timbral effects. The Quartet is amplified, the use of an electrified quartet to heighten expressiveness rather than to manipulate the sound pre-dating the the recent trend for doing so by some twenty years. The work is also a catalogue of ingenious string techniques and requires each of the players to double on various percussion instruments from the more usual (maracas and tam-tams, the latter being bowed as well as struck) to the more outre (water-tuned crystal glasses and solid glass rods).

Anton Webern - String Quartet Op. 28

If Webern's Quartet was not actually written "in time of war" it was certainly written in circumstances not far removed, the Nazi Anschluss leading to the conducting appointment Webern had held with Austrian Radio since 1927 being "liquidated" in 1938, the year in which Op. 28 was completed. Webern had already begun sketching the Quartet when a commission arrived from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the American patron who also commissioned Schoenberg's third and fourth quartets, giving Webern the welcome opportunity to accept it for a work he had already commenced.

"The worse it gets the more responsible our task", Webern once wrote about the conflict into which his country was forced, yet nothing could be further from Crumb's extrovert response to the world around him than this supreme example of "pure", abstract music. (Ironically and tragically Webern was to suffer more than most composers because of the "time of war", killed by an American soldier days after the end of the Second World War in what was probably a case of mistaken identity.) The very sound of the work is austere - no harmonics or col legno effects (found in other compositions by Webern), let alone the pyrotechnics of Crumb's piece.

There is, therefore, minimal distraction from the "primacy of pitch" and the twelve-tone technique which articulates it. Webern's compositional development had followed a parallel path to that of his mentor and teacher, Schoenberg, the rich late-romanticism of his early work giving way to the atonality of the years around the First World War and the fully fledged serialism he was ultimately to adopt. By the late 1930s this in Webern's hands had become a fascination with canons, palindromes and symmetry, not as in Crumb's work for symbolic or expressive reasons, but as a means of creating even greater musical integration.

Witold Lutoslawski - String Quartet

"The tempo is approximate as are all rhythmical values. Each performer should play his part as though he were alone... As the vertical result of the juxtaposition of the four parts of this work is not completely fixed, there can be no score." Lutoslawski's indications in his String Quartet, written in 1964 for a commission from Swedish Radio, mark the logical culmination of the trend for using aleatoric (random) procedures which had started with his Jeux venitiens of 1961 and characterised the works of his middle period (Paroles tissees, Symphony No.2, Livre pour orchestre). It was in 1960 that Lutoslawski heard John Cage's Piano Concerto and it was this which brought to his attention the potential of using chance as a compositional technique. So, the String Quartet takes the form of a series of "mobiles", varying in length from a few seconds to as long as a couple of minutes, within which "particular players perform their parts quite independently of each other. They have to decide separately about the length of pauses and about the way of treating ritenutos and accelerandos". The transition from one section to another is realized in various ways and sometimes requires a fairly complex system of signals between the players.

However, how does this square with a composer who wrote, "I firmly believe in a clear delineation of duties between composer and performers, and I have no wish to surrender even the smallest part of my claim to authorship of even the shortest passage of music which I have written"? How can he claim in the String Quartet that "if each performer strictly follows the instructions in the parts, nothing could happen which has not been foreseen by the composer"?

Lutoslawski himself has explained this apparent contradiction in what he has said or written of the Quartet on a number of occasions. "It is not a question of diversity between performances; nor is it a question of the element of surprise; nor of freeing myself from a part of the responsibility for the work and placing it on the performers." It is clear that whilst Cage may have been a catalyst in Lutoslawski's embracing of the possibilities of chance techniques, his aesthetics and his use of aleatoricism provided no deeper influence than that. "The aim of my endeavours has been merely to attain a definite sound result. This result is impossible to attain in any other way especially as regards rhythm and expression." (Nicholas Rampley)

Tracklisting:

Departure

1.  Black Angels: Threnody I: Night of the Electric Insects  {1:22}

2.  Black Angels: Sounds of Bones and Flutes  {0:44}

3.  Black Angels: Lost Bells  {0:56}

4.  Black Angels: Devil-Music  {1:38}

5.  Black Angels: Danse Macabre  {1:03}

6.  Black Angels: Pavana Lachrymae  {1:02}

Absence

7.  Black Angels: Threnody II: Black Angels  {2:50}

8.  Black Angels: Sarabanda de la muerte oscura  {1:00}

9.  Black Angels: Lost Bells, Echo  {1:17}

Return

10. Black Angels: God-Music  {3:22}

11. Black Angels: Ancient Voices  {1:02}

12. Black Angels: Ancient Voices, Echo  {0:21}

13. Black Angels: Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects  {3:50}


14. String Quartet Op. 28: Massig  {3:36}

15. String Quartet Op. 28: Gemahlich  {1:43}

16. String Quartet Op. 28: Sehr Fliessend  {2:36}

17. String Quartet: Introductory Movement  {9:57}

18. String Quartet: Main Movement  {16:23}

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