Composer and synthesizer performer Leo Chadburn uses very little in the way of material, but it is employed to craft expansive compositions. On “Reflecting Pool,” pianist Ben Smith plays repeated arpeggios with a sustained low note, shadowed by Chadburn’s bass synth. The unpredictable change of harmonies against the constant bottom note brings together a compositional conceit important to Chadburn, movement concurrent with stasis. Gradually, the synth bends the low note down, creating new chordal implications. A brief fade ends the work.
“Map of the World” is a piece for violin ensemble, played here by Angharad Davies, Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono, and Amalia Young. A shimmering sustained vertical is offset by tremolando entrances at several different pitch levels and off-kilter metric accents. The combination of stasis and movement affords the ten minutes of music a continued sense of vibrancy and surprise. “De La Salle (Violins)” builds verticals out of tremolando passages, and Chadburn uses a breathy synth to support the top line, followed by a bell-like angular melody. Even though they only go down to G3 (the G below middle C), Violins have an impressively wide range, which allows Chadburn to create wide spacings and successive blocks of harmony. Even a small pitch change seems consequential, the move from a third to a fourth in the top voice announces a new section where things go sideways and the bell synth once again tolls. Near the very end, a bell line and single pizzicato line close the door on all the preceding music.
Smith returns for “Camouflage,” where the left hand breaks up chords and the right hand plays a syncopated melodic line. The left hand adds syncopations on different beat divisions than the right, creating a fascinating whorl of counterpoint. This process is continued, sounding like a fast-paced phase. The constant flow of variation eventually grows into a fortissimo climax, only to recede gradually, slowing, then suddenly silent. The final piece on the recording, “A Secret,” also for piano, begins with whole-tone scalar ascents followed by mixed interval scales that run all the way to the top of the keyboard. The piece has a bit of a “Hanon in Hell” vibe at first, but as the scales complicate, one realizes that again a procedure is afoot. Chadburn once again uses synthesizers to create a pedal, but this one is in the middle high register, filled with overtones, and moves gradually through a sequence of pitches. Unlike Feldman, who would draw one of these processes out over long stretches of time, Chadburn limits “A Secret’ to nine minutes. Plenty of ground is covered during this time, yet the synths provide the concomitant sense of stasis that Chadburn prefers in his work. Primordial Pieces is compelling throughout, and one of my favorite releases of 2024.
Guitarist Yasmin Williams displayed a number of unconventional methods for playing acoustic guitar during her first two recorded outings, Unwind (2019) and Urban Driftwood (2022). These were no mere tricks of the trade, instead serving as organic components in her creation of supple folk instrumentals. Acadia is her first recording released on Nonesuch, and features a number of collaborators. In another first, Williams also writes lyrics for her music.
Although it is her primary instrument, on Acadia Williams doesn’t confine herself to the acoustic guitar. She also plays tap shoes, harp guitar, banjo, bass guitar, calabash drum, electric guitar, and kora. On the track “Cliffwalk,” alongside her guitar and tap shoe percussion, folk musician Don Flemons plays rhythm bones. One of the best tracks is “Harvest,” on which Williams and Kaki King trade rhythm guitar patterns while violinist Darian Donovan Thomas outlines a melismatic tune. Abetted by banjo-player Allison de Groot and fiddle player Tatiana Hargreaves, “Hummingbird” starts with an effortless hoe-down and then has a slow interlude in the piece’s middle, the fast music returning in ebullient fashion to conclude it. On “Dawning,” Aoife O’Donovan sings multiple layers of vocalise while percussionists Kafar and Nick Gareiss accompany Williams’s folk style finger-picking. Darlingside and Rich Ruth join Williams, who plays harp guitar, on “Virga,” another nuanced vocal piece.
“Sisters” may have the most collaborators joining Willams, a string trio, marimba player Steph Davis, and another acoustic string-slinger, William Tyler. The arrangement is artfully made, suggesting that Williams could easily do a convincing album with larger groups of musicians. “Dream Lake” is the first track on the album on which Williams plays electric guitar and bass, accompanied by drummer Malick Koly in a piece that opens and closes with New Age music only to rock out in the middle. Multi-instrumentalist Magro contributes drums, synths, and bass guitar to “Nectar,” on which electric guitar is also featured in a fluid solo. On the last piece, “Malamu,” Williams plays both acoustic and electric guitars, with introductions and interludes featuring the former and the verse and chorus abetted by overlapping with the latter. Joined by drummer Marcus Gilmore and saxophonist Emmanual Wilkins, “Malamu” demonstrates a more jazz influenced side of Williams’ playing.
Acadia is one of my favorite albums of 2024, and it reveals exciting potential pathways for Williams to take. I am eager to hear what’s next.
Splinter Reeds, the West Coast’s first wind quintet, has distinguished themselves as advocates for living composers. Dark Currents, their latest recording for Cantaloupe, features two twenty-ish minute long pieces, Tall Grass (2022) by the totalist composer and Bang on a Can member Michael Gordon, and Antenna Studies (2018) by Paula Matthusen, a professor at Wesleyan who is one of the finest experimental electronic composers of her generation; both works were written for Splinter Reeds.
Gordon has steadily developed an eclectic musical language that exhibits fluency and variety in large scale forms. The entire first section of Tall Grass is about ascent, with overlaid ostinatos in polyrhythms reaching for the skies. Alongside the melodic material are held notes that accompany and intersperse them, as well as periodic rests. The lines drop out for a long held altissimo note, then resume, the bass clarinet joining with a microtonal scale. The brakes are put on the section by a held low note, followed by an effects-filled solo from the bass clarinet. In the next section, the material slows, creating triadic arpeggiations that both ascend and descend, with octave leaps in the bass. It is like the aural equivalent of a close-up. A chorale-like passage ensues, and the section cadences in mid-register octaves and trills. The fast tempo returns with the melody ghosted in pairs and passages of hemiola that gradually unravel into their constituent elements and then knit back together, punctuated by multiphonics. The slow tempo returns in a soft, mysterious section. A galloping fortissimo passage announces the piece’s climax, rife with repeated notes. A denouement provides a slender version of the piece’s original ascent, and Tall Grass ends with an inconclusive single note.
Matthusen’s Antenna Studies starts pianissimo with half tuned-in radio blasts and held sine tones, and sampled percussion, followed by non-pitched wind sounds, such as breath and pops. Sustained single tones in the winds enter on the same pitch as the electronics and accompanied by flashes of radio static. Brief canonic passages are introduced, with secundal intervals and deliberate detuning used to create beats. Sustained bass clarinet arrives two octaves lower, working its way up harmonic partials, soon followed up an octave and then haloed by electronics. The entire group soon engages in holding notes and hocketing in various registers. An interlude contains repeating patterns, warm synth chords, a held altissimo note and, once again, a plethora of non-pitched wind sounds. Overlapping mixed interval scales, the winds re-enter as the electronics recede to an upper register drone. A general crescendo is sculpted from repeated notes in the winds and another secundal tune, this time in the electronics. Uptempo ostinatos, interspersed by a tart chord, continue alongside a wide registral swath of electronics. There is a long decrescendo in which a sampled voice joins sustained winds, closing with the electronics and acoustic instruments finally on equal footing
The two pieces that are on Dark Currents contrast well. Both are strong additions to their respective composers’ catalogs that benefit from skillful playing and artful musicality by Splinter Reeds. Recommended.
Miles Okazaki – Miniature America (Cygnus Records)
Miles Okazaki – guitar
Jon Ibragon, sopranino saxophone, slide saxophone, voice
Caroline Davis, alto saxophone; Anna Weber, flute, tenor saxophone
Jacob Garchik, trombone, bass trombone
Matt Mitchell, piano; Patricia Brennan, vibraphone
Ganavya, Jen Shyu, Fay Victor, voices
David Breskin, producer
Miles Okazaki’s latest recording, Miniature America, is one in which his compositional process has changed. He spent time sketching elements of sculpturist Ken Price’s work and was also inspired by the intricate line drawings of Sol Lewitt. The pieces created as a result of this research were coined “Slabs” by Okazaki, process pieces that include text, notation, and his own line drawings. These are then performed with a measure of aleatory.
The chance procedures don’t end there. In addition to sung passages, there are also spoken word snippets from various poets, ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Blake. Most of the texts were obtained using a findex, a compendium of final lines from poems. The speech rhythms of these are in turn used by Okazaki and his colleagues to create musical phrases. It is an ingenious amalgam that Okazaki credits to collaboration with producer David Bresken, who first suggested the findex.
There is a masterful group of instrumentalists in Miniature America’s ensemble, as well a trio of female voices that embody both singing and speaking in an equally expressive approach. Sometimes, the musicians and singers hold the same pitches or intone using the same rhythms, at others, such as in the beautiful, soulful “And the Deep River,” a voice takes a melodic solo turn. The album’s opening, “The Cocktail Party,” features pianist Matt Mitchell playing an alt version of cocktail piano while the rest of the space is abuzz with chatter. “The Funambulist” uses a chromatic set of pitches spread out over multiple octaves, with Okazaki and trombonist Jacob Garchik accompanying the voices, which include stratospheric squeaks Swingle Singers style. The participants are willing to bring a lightness to the proceedings that moves alongside the ample virtuosity. Speaking of which, there is “The Funicular,” in which Okazaki, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, alto saxophonist Caroline Davis, and Garchik trade mercurial riffs with expert timing. “Lookout Below” contains flurries of riffs and dissonant interjections at a hypersonic tempo. “Zodiacal Cloud” is more reserved, but its mysterious chords shimmer in a captivating way.
Miniature America includes many miniature pieces, and the overall feel is of a suite of interconnected music. A longer serving of music is supplied in the penultimate piece, “In the Fullness of Time,” where the players work with drone bass octaves to create overtones, with a melismatic vocal added alongside instrumental arpeggiations. The closing track, “A Clean Slate,” is a spoken fugue with guitar accompaniment, ending with the line, “The Show is Over.” Okazaki’s compositional shift is abundantly rewarding, and Miniature America is highly recommended.
Jennifer France, soprano; Lotte Betts-Dean, mezzo-soprano
Volker Hemken, bass clarinet
James Crabb, accordion
Juho Pohjonen, piano
Andrey Lebedev, classical guitar
Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Brett Dean, violist and conductor
Composer and violist Brett Dean has spent a number of years engaging with Hamlet, creating a controversial, successful, and musically compelling eponymous opera premiered in the UK in 2017 and subsequently produced at the Metropolitan Opera. Rooms of Elsinore (BIS, 2024) collects pieces serving as character sketches written in advance of the opera, those recasting material from the opera that premiered concurrently or subsequent to its premiere, and new musical imaginings of Hamlet. It is fascinating to compare to the opera’s music, but one needn’t have heard it to find Rooms of Elsinore an engaging stand alone listen.
The vocal work And Once I Played Ophelia is sung by soprano Jennifer France, who is accompanied by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Dean. Its text is adapted from Shakespeare by Matthew Jocelyn, and it is a visceral piece cast in five movements. Interestingly, Jocelyn uses words that Ophelia says in the play and also lines directed at her (Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery”) The first section, marked “Fast, breathless,” is rife with stridency (a deliberate expression, not because France’s voice is anything but pliant) and intense, angular lines. “Hushed, distant, mysterious” begins with pianissimo utterances that indeed sound far off. Eventually, the singing moves closer in the soundstage, now lyrical yet enigmatic in expression. The third movement, marked “Fast, agitated,” uses the text “This is the ecstasy of love” as a recurrent motif that is elaborately described. France demonstrates adroitly rendered, ringing high notes alongside intimidating vocal fry. Dean employs brisk ostinatos with tritone weighted harmonies to add to the hysteria. It closes with a breathless recitative passage, as if all the energy has dissipated like the air from a balloon. The music moves attacca into the fourth section, “extremely still.” From questioning pianissimo to altissimo sustained notes, an entire range of expressive vocality is brought to bear in the “willow tree” text by France. The section concludes with a high register cello solo recasting some of the soprano’s music. The final section, “Slow austere,” begins by harmonizing the cello’s music with the string section, with clarion sostenuto lines followed by ones in supple decrescendo, employing the “Good night ladies … sweet ladies” text. The piece ends with a mysterious, thwarted gesture in the instruments. And Once I Played Ophelia … brings the listener straight into the soundworld of Dean’s Hamlet, and is superlatively performed by France and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra.
Dean and pianist Juho Pohjonen play the duo The Rooms of Elsinore, each musically describing part of the castle. It begins with “I. The Dark Gate,” with descending scalar string lines set against sepulchral bass melodies in the piano. Gradually, the viola and piano crescendo and ascend together to their high registers. The viola then plays rhythmic lines against chordal sections in the piano, the stringed instrument bridging to the second movement with an altissimo ostinato. “II. The Four Gate Courtyard” continues the viola line alongside lush verticals from the piano amid tuplet flourishes. A gradual decrescendo closes the movement, only to be followed closely upon by “III. The Platform,” with a sliding tone abetted theme in the viola against repeated notes and arpeggiations, including a bass register flourish, in the piano. A pause is followed by the viola descending in sliding harmonics against low register punctuations in the piano. Open strings close the movement. “IV. The King’s Chamber” positively bustles with florid runs, pizzicato passages, ascending chromatic harmonies, and quick attacks. As the centerpiece of the piece’s seven-movement framework, it is the longest movement (4’02”), and also the most developmentally consistent, presenting as a rondo. Sustained viola with microtones and punctilious fragments from the piano are developed in “V. The Chapel,” while silences are interspersed by duo attacks in “VI. The Queen’s Chamber,” which part way through splits runs between them. The movement ends with repeated note passages and a chromatic viola melody contrasted with color chords in the piano. Rooms of Elsinore concludes with “VII. The Trumpeter’s Tower,” in which repeated bass notes in the piano are juxtaposed with high chords and a liquescent viola melody. A long decrescendo ensues, with high viola harmonics and a slowed-down set of piano harmonies.
Photo: Bettina Stoess
Gertrude Fragments is performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and classical guitarist Andrey Lebedev. “I cast thy knighted color off” begins the group with a wide-ranging, angular setting. Betts-Dean has a versatile instrument, with a strong lower register and blossoming high notes. The guitar part is well-crafted, with elements of lute songs alongside chromatic harmonies and modernist gestures, notably the acerbic attacks in the second song, “Wring from him my cause.” The texts are adaptations of statements by Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. They are more aphoristic than the Ophelia texts, but still afford wide emotional range. The third song, “My too much changed son,” is melismatic, almost sobbing at its beginning before a sense of gravitas is regained. “How is’t with you?” is the shortest and sparest of the songs, almost a preparation for the concluding “If words be made of breath,” which includes plaintive sighs alongside glissandos.
Bass clarinetist Volker Hemken performs Confessio, a ten minute long solo that references the entrance of Polonius. It is a technical tour-de-force, depicting the emotional tumult of the scene in lines throughout the compass of the instrument, special techniques, and a wide dynamic range.
In the final piece, accordionist James Crabb is the soloist in the twenty-minute long concerto The Players. Material from the analogous scene in the opera included Crabb as part of the cast, playing alongside pantomiming actors. The concerto includes an introduction and closing material for Crabb added to musical material from the opera, deftly translated in its scoring for the ensemble. In the play/opera, Hamlet nearly loses control of his faculties, with manic explosions and a clear desire for revenge. The scene is depicted not only by the accordion, but taunting winds, bumptious percussion, and bitonal strings.
The Players is an energetic closer for Rooms of Elsinore, an inspiring recording that suggests that Dean’s obsession with Hamlet may have room yet for more music about the dark prince of Denmark. If the works here are his last exploration of the play, Dean is still left with a tremendous legacy. One of my favorites recordings thus far in 2024.
Okay, I’ll admit it; this year I’m having a bit of trouble letting go of summer. Especially because September has brought the temperature down just enough to enjoy being outside; not so the new normal of climate change we experienced in July. The band Cal in Red seems similarly preoccupied. They released a number of singles during the summer, including the excellent “Kitchen,” on which they are joined by James Mercer (The Shins, Broken Bells). But the band held off on releasing their debut album Low Low until August 30th. It’s worth the wait.
They are a duo of brothers, Connor and Kendall Wright, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and share vocal and instrumental duties in the studio. Low Low is indie rock, but with a delicate touch. Auto-tuned vocals are used as a texture rather than because of any liabilities. “Flagstaff” has a loping vocal chorus undergirded by powerful rhythm guitar and emphatic, economical drumming. It has a recently released video that shows the band in an Arizona tour stop and onstage, where Kendall plays guitar and Connor bass and synthesizers. “My Love” has duet vocals, an overlapping set of riffs as lead-in material to the verses and bridge. and soaring falsetto in the chorus.
“Boyfriend” is filled with eighth note repetitions in the bass-line and short syncopations in the rhythm guitar. A wash of synths and gradually unfolding vocals supply a slower layer, warmly spacious in its delivery. “1985” casually references that bygone era with art rock guitars and vocoder. “Frontside” is not only the best song Cal in Red has released to date, it also has a video that is an homage to countless eighties films. From the club to watching an apartment from the street, an innocent crush moves to obsession.
Low Low is a memorably tuneful debut that listeners may want to play on their way to the beach – just one more time.
Olivia De Prato, violin;Victor Lowrie Tafoya, viola;
Constance Volk, flute; Szilárd Benes and Katherine Jimoh, clarinet
Mivos Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini
Ensemble Dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor
On Geister, a double-CD release on Kairos, the music of Joël-François Durand receives benchmark performances by some of the best performers in contemporary classical music today. It features works from 2005-2022. Originally from France and currently based in the United States, Durand is Professor of Composition and Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington.
Over the course of his career, Durand has increasingly used microtones in his works. Since 2019, he has added the technique “beating,” in which two pitches are placed very close together, creating strong fluctuations. Another signature aspect of his style is intricate development of linear material.
His First String Quartet (2005), played here with fastidious detail by the Mivos Quartet, predates this investigation, but its use of simultaneous pizzicato and arco attacks, microtonal duets, and altered bowing, makes for an intricate musical surface. Written in the same year is In the Mirror Land, a duetplayed by Constance Volk, flute, and Katherine Jimoh, clarinet. The technique of shadowing, with the clarinet slowly emerging from its overlapping into the background, is important to the piece. Then the duo supply heterophonic overdubs of strident lines. La descente de l’ange (2022), for violin and clarinet, played by violinist Olivia De Prato and clarinetist Szilárd Benes, addresses similar concerns, but with its own distinct formal trajectory.
De Prato also provides a tour de force performance of the solo work In a Weightless Quiet (2020). At twelve minutes long, the intensity of the piece’s energy never flags.The use of open strings in the aforementioned beating technique appears at structural points in the piece. Then fortissimo fast repeated notes and bowed glissandos are juxtaposed against the beating, harmonics. and multi-stops. It finishes with altissimo secundal passages, double stops, and harmonics – a difficult piece delivered with élan.
Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, performs Mundus Imaginalis (2015), the largest of the works programmed. Bass drum and a clattering metallic ostinato supply a syncopated groove. Lines overlap, at times contrapuntally, at others doubling to create reinforced textures. The tempo fluctuates, and semitones suggest cadences, only to be canceled swiftly by dissonant verticals. The incorporation of microtones intensifies as the piece progresses. Forte lower brass and chimes are added as it reaches its climax. Then a gradual denouement with a slowing of the percussive groove, chimes, colorful chords, repeated notes in the harp, and sustained wind solos that disassemble the opening material. Overtone verticals provide the piece with a stirring conclusion.
Geister, schwebende Geister … (2020) is a highlight. It also uses off-kilter percussion, corruscating melodic intervals, and open strings against small intervals to create beating and copious glissandos. Soloist Victor Lowrie Tafoya and Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Lewaski, provide a fantastic performance that would serve as an excellent introduction for anyone curious about Durand’s music.
Cast in four movements, String Quartet No. 2 (2020), “Cantar de amigo,” played by Quatuor Bozzini, once again begins by bringing together previously mentioned techniques: the pulsation of tight beating intervals, sharp attacks, and bent sustained notes. Another texture prominent in the quartet is repeated notes set against glissandos. The tuning pitch, A = 440Hz., appears over and over, treated by all of the aforementioned techniques rather than settling into the in-tune version one would expect to hear before the beginning of an orchestra piece. The second movement begins to add harmonics above the A. The third movement puts hollow retorts of different notes below A, most relating to fifths above and below (E + D: other open strings found in the quartet in conventional tuning). The A bends this way and that, with microtonal glissandos distressing its centricity. With loud utterances, a high E starts to take prominence, only for A’s to cluster against it, and then low open strings weigh in as well. The only movement that begins attacca is the last, which at nine and a half minutes is of a significantly longer duration than those preceding. It begins once again with glissandos, but this time these start in the low strings, only gradually having all registers represented. In addition, some move in lower sliding figures, thus are higher up on the stringboard than the usual open sonorities. This creates a bit more of a covered sound. Midway through, octave A’s make a veritable cadence, only to be replaced by beating seconds in various registers. After a significant absence, a dash of repeated notes enter. Overlapping glissandos create a swath of blurred sonorities that persists throughout the middle section of the movement. Multi-octave A’s continue to announce each sectional division. As the piece progresses, glissandos ascend and descend into overlapping, mutable pitch schemes. High B cancels the penultimate octaves, leading to a final section in which the glissandos first grow smaller, prevailingly microtonal, and then wend their way towards A played pianissimo and cut off abruptly. String Quartet No. 2 is a combination of centricity, ambiguity, and extended harmony: a fascinating and successful work played with riveting poise and superlative attention to the smallest details by Quatuor Bozzini.
Geister is a collection to which I plan to regularly return to listen. It is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.
Jazz pianist and composer Marta Sanchez was born in Madrid and now resides in Brooklyn. She presents eleven originals on her fifth recording, Perpetual Void (Intakt, 2024). Usually Sanchez performs and records with a quintet featuring two saxophonists. Here, in her first trio outing, she is joined by bassist Chris Tordini and drummer Savannah Harris. The leaner lineup works well, as it allows Sanchez abundant room to solo and, moreover, to express elements of the emotional journey that transpired during the time she composed the works on Perpetual Void. She had lost her mother and subsequently coped with frequent insomnia and anxiety.
The tracks are titled to reflect these challenges. “I Don’t Wanna Live the Wrong Life and Then Die,” which opens the album, is uptempo and nervous-sounding, Sanchez and Tordini run through presto melodic lines while Harris lets rip on both crash symbols. This is followed abruptly by “3:30 AM,” which once again presses the tempo and uses crunching half steps and abundant syncopation to channel an angst-filled bout with insomnia.
“Prelude to Grief” is a solo by Sanchez with the yearning bird calls of early morning set against wide-ranging arpeggiations and biting dissonant attacks. It is followed by “The Absence of People You Long For,” a mid-tempo ballad with an offset duet between piano and bass and subtle percussion effects. “Perpetual Void” has a chromatic melody overlaid with Latin rhythms. The second time through, a countermelody in the bass is juxtaposed against it. Sanchez’s solo is the most overt use of Spanish and Latin American materials, and it exudes a sense of exuberance. Tordini accompanies with bits of the countermelody interwoven with a walking line. Harris’s drumming is virtuosic, following the melody and adding ample fills.
“The End of That Period” allows for a momentary cessation of the previous intensity, with a major key melody split between piano and bass and economical drumming. On “Prelude to a Heartbreak,” Sanchez again plays solo, building arpeggios in both hands into faster and faster gestures. The piece’s coda is a slow exploration of tender harmonies and tuneful feints. “The Love Unable to Forgive” spotlights Tordini, who plays ostinatos and a bass tune that guides the proceedings. After Sanchez contributes a mercurial solo, she rejoins Tordini on the ostinato passages, dovetailing in counterpoint with the bassist. “Black Cyclone” has an intense opener, with stabbing fortissimo jabs, followed by a swinging melody and zesty harmonic changes.
Eventually the album announces a turn. With “This is the Last One About You,” a blues-inflected tune and driving tempo are bounteous terrain for fleet soloing from all three members of the trio. The final track, “29B,” is a fiery climax. After Sanchez’s solo, Tordini shares a slower one of his own, building to a final section that adds the other players and speeds back up to the original tempo, ending abruptly.
One hopes that Perpetual Void proves to be cathartic for Sanchez. Her lived experiences are exemplified in this moving and musically superlative set of compositions: recommended.
On Queen of Hearts, the low male vocal ensemble Gesualdo Six explores pieces devoted to queens, both the Virgin Mary (in her guise as Queen of Heaven), and queens from England and Continental Europe during the renaissance era. Some of the selections blur identities, linking the saintly actions of earthly monarchs with those of Mary.
The Song of Songs, from the Hebrew Bible, has an interesting place in both sacred and secular music of the Renaissance. In liturgical pieces, it is an insertion that venerates the Virgin Mary. In secular motet-chansons, it is often incorporated to make a connection between virtuous secular queens and Mary. As is their usual mode of operations, Gesualdo Six present a well-researched and musically inspired program. The eminent musicologist Guy James prepared editions of the music sung on Queen of Hearts, making it a bespoke collection that reflects the most recent and respected editorial trends.
The motet-chanson, particularly the regretz chansons, are a pivotal part of the program of Queen of Hearts. In the regretz genre, the beloved’s heart is broken because the desired one doesn’t reciprocate their affection or they aren’t available to each other. As James discusses in his excellent liner notes, the first regretz chansons were dedicated to Margaret of Austria, who had them collected in a large songbook, then called a chansonnier. Secret regretz, by Pierre de la Rue, begins in duet textures, eventually fanning out into four-voice polyphony. The poem’s author refuses to be defeated, asking for aid from fellow poets to raise his spirits. This response is against the grain of many regretz texts, suggesting that the genre didn’t cohere at first, exploring various themes before settling on just a few.
Several regretz chansons were dedicated to Anne of Brittany, who throughout her life had a series of relationships end in heartbreak. Jean Mouton’s De tous regretz was likely written while the composer was at Anne’s court. Gesualdo Six plays up the antiphonal passages with a slight accelerando, while liquescent legato lines provide the piece’s moving conclusion.
Antoine de Févin is represented by Fors Seulement, with tight upper duet constructions offset by registrally dispersed lower voices. There are multiple settings that honor “Gentle Févin” after his passing. It is speculated that Dulcis amica dei by Johannes Prioris might have been one. The piece’s melody was popular enough to be used by other composers at the French court. Another piece by Prioris, this one likely dedicated to Anne of Brittany upon her passing, Consommo la vita mia, is even more attractive, with each phrase beginning with slowly articulated melodic lines and concluding with achingly slow. chordal descents. Prioris should be better known, and it is typical of Gesualdo Six’s programming that they include such composers alongside those more frequently programmed. Only one composer from Italy appears on Queen of Hearts, but Costanzo Festa’s Quis dabit oculis is a riveting extended motet that also mourns the death of Anne. Its doleful chords and a proto-fugue are given an expressive performance by the ensemble.
Anne Boleyn’s songbook contained a number of pieces by Joquin, in addition those by other continental composers. Josquin’s Mille Regretz is perhaps the most popular of the genre. One can readily hear why; it is exquisitely well-constructed, with an initial architecture of leaps eventually filled in to make for a seamless conclusion. Praeter rerum seriem is a Marian motet with canons, beginning from the bass, with text describing the visitation of Mary by the Holy Spirit. The second section begins with an upper duet that then accumulates, top-down this time, into six-part writing. A favorite of mine from the Boleyn songbook is Antoine Brumel’s setting of a devotion to Mary, Sub tuum praesidium. Homophonic duets in the upper voices are juxtaposed with polyphony that begins its rise from the lowest voices. The resulting harmonies are gorgeous.
Two new pieces were commissioned for Queen of Hearts. One is by Gesualdo Six’s director, Owain Park, Prière pour Marie. The text is a prayer that was said to have been uttered by peasants about Mary Tudor when she was glimpsed traveling towards her wedding to Louis XII. “Mary on earth, Mary in the sky.” Park has a fine command of the polychords and chromatic tonal shifts frequently found in 21st century choral music. The piece’s declamation combines stacked verticals, and canons found amid other voices in free counterpoint. Its mood is portentous, as if the peasants have, by analogizing one queen to another, felt as if they have seen a divine vision. Plaisir N’ai plus by Nifea Cruttwell-Reade, is full of harmonic surprises, especially ones that resolve curiously against a pedal tone. In places, it appears that Cruttwell-Reade is repurposing the chromatic cadences that occurred in the renaissance to function in their own polytonal idiom.
The recording ends with one of the great pieces of the middle Renaissance, the Song of Songs setting Ego flos campi by Clemens non Papa. A seventh singer, the countertenor Alasdair Austin, is added to the performance. Perhaps Clemens’s best known piece, it is a beautiful treasure. Gesualdo Six plus one give a memorably expressive performance of it.
Queen of Hearts is both curated and performed with exquisite care. It is one of my favorites thus far of 2024.
Video: Guided by Voices: “I Am A Scientist,” 30th Anniversary Version
Guided by Voices celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of their album Bee Thousand with a remake of one of their early, most-beloved songs, “I Am A Scientist,” via Rolling Stone.
In an interview with RS, frontman and principal songwriter Robert Pollard describes “I Am A Scientist” and Bee Thousand as follows:“The song and the album opened the door for me and allowed me to play rock music for a living.” Prior to that, he was a science teacher.
Guided by Voices
Strut of Kings
GBV Inc. (2024)
The ever-prolific Pollard and band have released dozens of titles. Their most recent recording,Strut of Kings, streeted late last month. Pollard is joined by guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare, Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March in the current iteration of Guided by Voices, which debuted in 2017 and has proven a durable unit.
The opener, “Show Me the Castle,” has a slow, crunching guitar riff over which Pollard sings the first verse laconically, the second double-tracked with quirky interval relationships. The band double times in the chorus while Pollard’s line remains in the original tempo. A flute synth interlude leads into the third verse, which is adorned with a different vocal harmony, followed by a brief burst of sustained guitar. This moves directly into the next song, “Dear Onion,” which is played in a loping mid-tempo groove of interlocking rhythm guitars. Unlike “Show Me the Castle,” which is built up in multiple sections, “Dear Onion” is typical of Pollard’s more aphoristic song craft, in which an entire narrative can be found in under two minutes and the skin of an onion.
Even by the elliptical standards of Pollard’s titles and lyrics, “Olympus Cock in Radiana,” which includes the phrase “Strut of Kings” in the lyrics, is one of the more unusual ones. Power chords speed up and slow down, with Pollard’s voice serving as the eye in the hurricane. “Caveman Running Naked” is another weird title for a tuneful song, with March’s brusque fills offsetting the guitars’ duet breaks and Pollard’s quick delivery. The coda overlaps open string arpeggiations in a marked contrast to the rest of the song. “Leaving Umbrella” is led by a sinuous vocal, the band punctuating it with emphatic downbeats.
“Timing Voice” embodies the grandeur of seventies prog, incorporating a Romantic chord progression and a guitar solo that channels Steve Howe. “Fictional Environment Dream” is another standout, with duet vocals on a memorable chorus. “Serene King” and “Bicycle Garden” deliver a one-two punch to conclude the album, with its best hooks and most energetic performances from Pollard.
Some artists creatively dry up as they age, others flourish. Pollard is among the latter camp, and Strut of Kings is ample evidence. While Bee Thousand and other earlier albums should still play a part in live set lists, Guided by Voices also has memorable new songs to play.
