The Original New Music Community
Benjamin Britten, composer, pianist, conductor, pacifist, humanitarian, and visionary, died on December 4th 1976. The thirtieth anniversary of his death is being celebrated with the remarkable story of how he left not just a legacy of 20th century masterpieces, but also a remarkable music vision which is about to be realised after three decades. Take An Overgrown Path to Britten celebrated with new music campus.
Our weekly listen and look at (mostly) living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since it’s right there waiting online. (the “click picks” category at the bottom of the post isn’t working, but you can revisit all the previous “click picks” by visiting this link: https://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/?cat=29
Elizabeth Olivia Walling (b.1981 — UK)
Walling started out as a self-taught soprano and flautist. She began composing in 2001, and moved to formal composition and performance studies a year later. She’s been a member of New Music Brighton since 2003, and currently writes and performs with the recently-formed group Accident Ensemble. Her work bears a self-confessed “brazen” range of influences and styles which emerge from her long-standing interest in music of many periods: early liturgical and secular music, baroque, classical, modernist and avant garde, jazz and electronic. Recent experiments with electronics show a greater focus on using both modern and early electronic music technology in live performance.
Click on “Works”; you’ll find recordings of many pieces waiting (try Nani, nani, Cane Hill, or the Sanctus if you’re looking for a place to start). For someone who’s only been at composition for 4 or 5 years, there’s a real “voice” and a sophistication that usually doesn’t come so early.
Brian Kane (b.1973 — US, NYC)
Wonderful composer who also does double-duty as a fine jazz guitarist. California-born and trained, but dragged himself across the Rockies and Mississippi to be a post-doctorate Fellow at Columbia University for a while. And boy, does it show!… Besides lots of complete recordings of his work, the site also has quite a few interesting articles on all kinds of contemporary music topics. A nice touch: you can even get Brian’s music fed to you as a podcast, if that’s your thing.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970 — DE)
Ah, my first dead guy. And rather than a range of work, just one piece: Zimmermann’s fantastically fun Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu of 1968. From the notes there:
“I am presumably a mixture, typical of the Rheinland, of monk and Dionysus” — “… as the oldest of these young composers” : two self-revelatory sayings of Bernd Alois Zimmermann. In both of them there is not only a concentrated charge of psychological problems, of pessimistic estimation, of clear vision; two famous quotations of the composer who was regarded as being “difficult” in his lifetime, to whom success was denied — apart from his opera “The Soldiers” — who could be so ecstatically joyful and profoundly dejected; an all-round mind and, as many have put it, the last composer who was a master in every field. Perhaps Zimmermann is so popular with younger composers because they find in his works concrete material, comprehensible compositions, first-rate craftsmanship and well-formed material; a composer who, in spite of his basic philosophic tenet, never suppressed “inspiration” or a “flash of insight”, but encouraged spontaneity.
One of the best “pastiche” works I know, with quotes from all over the map (some are blindingly obvious, but see if you can catch the unusual, such as Stravinsky’s Symphony in C), masterfully squashed and skewed, and truly made his own. Every bit worthy of Jarry’s great Ubu Roi!
In Ohio over Thanksgiving, I was happy to discover a small pile of mail from Manhattan School of Music: it’s about time they decided to keep in touch with their alumni. Anyway, browsing the school’s new newsletter, I was pleased to learn they’ve just established a new Masters program in Contemporary Performance. This, of course, should come as no surprise now that a composer’s in charge up there.
The requirements include playing four semesters with Tactus, MSM’s increasingly hot contemporary music ensemble; lots of reading of works by student composers; and plenty of instruction in performing with electronics. All in all it sounds like a great way for performers to segue into the NYC contemporary music scene. Now if only MSM could find a donor to cough up a cool $100 million ala Yale: a Masters from MSM doesn’t come cheap, and contemporary music, alas, still doesn’t pay well.
As part of his residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thomas Ades was given a Green Umbrella concert, his choice of music, and his choice of role. Ades chose to conduct, and for music he chose “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit” (1995) by Gerald Barry. This was originally written for British television and broadcast by Channel 4; as artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, Ades brought it back to open the 2002 festival, and it has began receiving performances since then, with performances scheduled for Paris and Amsterdam next year. Last night’s performance was the North American premiere.
“Triumph” is described as an “Opera in Two Acts”, which is misleading. It is an hour-long chamber oratorio for 16 instrumentalists and five singers (two countertenors, tenor, baritone, bass), with each singer representing a concept: Pleasure, Truth, Beauty, Deceit, and Time, respectively. As for two acts, there is merely an instrumental bridge between thoughts. Barry stated that the framework was “taken from” Handel’s oratorio “The Triumph of Time and Truth”. Without reading Handel’s libretto, it is easy to speculate on the effects of the contemporary re-examination which would have “Beauty” and “Deceit” replace “Time” and “Truth” as the triumphal spirits. From the performance of Barry’s version, “Pleasure” was truly triumphant. Several in the audience worked on applause to bring Ades, Barry, and the singers back on stage for more than the three times that occurred.
I have one problem with Barry’s work, and it’s a major problem: he writes music to be sung so that the words are incomprehensible. He ignores the rhythm of speech; worse, far too much of the time he works against natural rhythms. When Barry re-imagines the baroque coloratura, rather than supplying vocalize for the rapid notes, he too often uses a new syllable for each note. There are so many words in such a short period, that it was a challenge just to follow the libretto in the surtitles, much less match the words to any sound you heard from the stage. For a cantata about ideas, shouldn’t you really be able to grasp the ideas while listening to the music? I know that this approach doesn’t bother Ades, because as recently as in his “Tempest” he gave us music for Ariel that cannot be understood.
Given that problem, the music is quite interesting, sometimes fascinating. It demands excellent singers, which last night’s performance certainly had. Not a single role was easy, and some required exceptionally wide range and coloratura technique. I felt Andrew Watts was brilliant as Pleasure, and I can’t imagine a better performance. Here’s a link to the performers; they were all good. Of course the Phil’s musicians were good; they can handle anything, and usually do it quite well. Ades worked quite hard, as well; by the end of the performance, his shirt was soggy with sweat.
This site gives a 20 sound clips of a minute each (a third of the work!) so that you can get a feeling for the sound of Barry’s music, although I think last night’s performance was better than on this recording. (Sometimes the site’s response is slow.) You might start by listening to the last clip; this is from the final duet of Beauty and Pleasure, and you can understand the words, most of them, anyway. That clip also gives a feeling for the degree to which Barry played off Handel, and this isn’t always so clear while actually listening. Then tenth clip is the instrumental bridge between “acts”. To help you as you sample the clips, remember that the two countertenors are Pleasure (the major role) and Truth, the tenor is Beauty, the baritone is Deceit, and the bass (a wide-ranging bass) is Time. The samples give you only a feeling for Barry’s styles, they don’t convey how these blend into a cohesive, interesting whole.
It’s awfully quiet out there. What are you folks up to? I’m off to lunch at a nice bistro called Le Singe Vert. Why don’t you talk amonst yourselves for awhile. Somebody say something controversial, like why has Derek Bermel become the kingmaker in new music in New York and should he be? I have no opinion, of course, but maybe some of you do.
Name all the people in this photo and win a turkey. (Thanks to Steve Layton for the Last Supper treatment.)
There are three anniversaries today of important events connected by a fascinating thread. November 22nd is remembered by many for the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, while on a happier note Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft on this day in 1913, and quite appropriately today is also the name day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. The connection between these three anniversaries also involves folk singer, political activist and pioneering conservationist, Pete Seeger. The full story is at Benjamin Britten – We Shall Overcome
Thomas Ades is back in town, and this season he will have five different programs showing Los Angeles his range of talents as composer, pianist, and conductor. We saw the first of these yesterday: a performance of his opera “Powder Her Face” (1995), with Ades conducting, by the USC Thornton School of Music. This was fully staged, including full simulations of each of the sex scenes in the first act. A few older members of the audience debated leaving at intermission, but most stayed, finding the music to be worth being occasionally offended.
And the music has real treats to offer, particularly in the second act as the opera descends from sexual comedy and social satire to the near-tragic destruction of the woman who had become a duchess. If you listen to the music’s clips available from Amazon or iTunes, you can hear how Ades uses melodies or rhythms from popular music, supported by the Duchess’ recollection that songs were once written about her and her beauty. You can hear how much musical color Ades gets from his chamber resources. The sound clips of the interludes, however, only hint at how effectively the 24-year-old Ades developed music to move the plot from scene to scene. Yes, there are weaknesses; I’d start with the libretto. But seeing and hearing this was well worth braving the USC campus on football day and negotiating the way to Bing Theatre through the tail-gate parties. Probably we wouldn’t have done so without having heard such a good sampling of Ades in last season’s residency.
Thornton School had double-cast three of the four roles, and the singers did commendably. The tenor (the recipient of the sexual favors in the most notorious scene), appearing in all performances, seems exceptionally talented. Three musicians from the Phil supplemented the orchestral resources, as concertmaster, clarinetist, and horn, respectively.
Next week Ades will serve as pianist in a Philharmonic chamber music program at Disney. It’s a delectable program (Francaix, Stucky, Faure), and I will be out of town. Real world commitments prevented me from writing about last week’s piano recital by Aki Takahashi at REDCAT. It was a lovely concert, and the Feldman was perfection, ending with a nice recognition of James Tenney.
‘If you’re talking about “relevance to the wider culture” and “speaking to our times“, and all that Greg Sandowian stuff, I couldn’t possibly care less … People seem to forget that there’s always going an audience for whom Beethoven’s 5th or La Boheme is a brand new experience’ – writes Henry Holland today in Killing classical music in the US. Well worth the click, and my photo is of the audience queueing for core classical repertoire at the 2006 BBC Proms.
All too often today, appealing menus of new music turn out to be measly meals relying heavily on technical gimmickry, self-serving cliques, bitchiness and cynicism. By contrast the Britten Sinfonia at Lunch project is a nourishing meal whose courses include imaginative commissioning, innovative and open-minded programming, a truly international perspective, and some damn hard work from the musicians.. But don’t take my word for it. Here are the words of clarinettist Joy Farrall (above) as she introduced the Huw Watkins first performance at today’s Britten Sinfonia at Lunch concert – ”It is great to see such a large audience for this concert, and it is also really nice to see so many young people here.
For the full story of a pioneering contemporary music project visit New music lunch box