Sequenza21

In just over a week minimalist musicians, scholars, and fans will descend on Kansas City, Missouri for the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, which runs from September 2 to 6.  I’ll be there–I’m giving a paper on Saturday–and I’ll be blogging regularly to give you a participant’s view of the proceedings–papers, concerts, lunchtime conversations, drunken rants, or whatever else is happening that seems noteworthy.  I’ll also be Twittering (@galenbrown), and the conference has its own Twitter account (@2ndminimalism). We’ll be encouraging other Twitter users to post their own thoughts with the hashtag #minconf.

Our pal Kyle Gann is one of the co-organizers of the conference, and in order to whet your appetite I asked him a few questions about the event:

GB: You went to the first version of this conference two years ago in Wales.  How did that conference come about, and what made you and the organizers decide to turn it into a regular thing?

KG: I don’t know what led Pwyll ap Sion (author of a book on Michael Nyman) and Tristian Evans to attempt the first festival. They clearly didn’t think it would succeed much, and when they got three dozen paper abstracts, they expanded it from one to three days. They lined up three keynote speakers in case two decided not to come. The last day of the conference, a group of us formed the Society for Minimalist Music, and decided to hold the conference every other year, alternating between Europe and America. When someone asked who should direct the next one, everyone sort of looked at me.

I have to say that Bangor, Wales, was an over-the-top picturesque spot for a conference, even if you did have to fly to London and take a four-hour train to get there. Kansas City is a wonderful place too, but I think only the barbecue can compete in the charm area. (more…)

In celebration of Louis Andriessen’s seventieth birthday, the first UK performance of his The Hague Hacking was scheduled for the Prom concert on August 17.  The piece was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and first performed with that orchestra by the pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who were the performers for the Proms, playing this time with the Philharmonia Orchestra.   There were several sources, or perhaps references embedded in The Hague Hacking: the piano parts make use at the beginning and subsequently in the piece of the notes of the beginning of the Lizst Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, which Andriessen knew not so much from knowing the piece itself as from knowing its use in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Cat Concerto (Warner Brothers used the Lizst in a similar way in a fairly well known Bugs Bunny cartoon, Rhapsody Rabbitt); the work also uses a Dutch “sing-along ballad” about The Hague, O, O, The Hague (Andriessen suggested in an interview that the text of this song is vulgar), whose notes are presented first at lengths which render it unrecognizable, but on subsequent reappearances faster, finally, apparently, at the end of the work, at its original speed; in addition the work’s Dutch title, Haags Hakkûh, makes allusion to the slang name (the second word of the title) for what we are told in Robert Adlington’s program note is a “a distinctive kind of dance, characterized by quick ‘chopping’ foot movements, that emerged in Dutch nightclubs in the 1990’s.

All of these allusions are very subtle, however.  If one knows they’re there, the notes of the Lizst are recognizable, but if one wasn’t looking for them they could easily be missed.   The surface of the piece is full of fairly rapidly zig-zagging hocketing notes in rhythms that one could see coming from some kind of house music, but since the bass is fairly consistently in long notes, certainly not suggesting any kind of dance music, the sense that there’s some kind of clubby dance music going on is absent.  O, O, the Hague not being a particularly well known tune, outside of Holland anyway, a non-Dutch listener has to take its presence there on faith.   What one hears if one isn’t worrying about all these subtle allusions is an engaging,  mostly slow, rather monumental work with very active surface texture, although not as lively as all the preliminary information suggested.  The orchestration is forcefully sonorous and bell-like and the piece makes an impressive sound.

The concert also included three dances from El amor brujo by De Falla, and two works of Ravel, the Mother Goose ballet (the movements from the original four hand piece, which Ravel turned into a ballet, changing their order and adding music, mostly short interludes connecting the movements, and Bolero.   The performance of Mother Goose was astounding and unforgettable due to  beauty of the playing, particularly of the winds, and its great subtlety. (more…)