Tuesday’s second Music in Time installment brought us three very different and appealing creations from cutting-edge composers of right NOW. All three items were scored entirely for strings – save for the winsome addition of a lone clarinet in the second number.
Series host (and justly famed composer) John Kennedy kicked things off with Baghdad Variations: his own musical response to one of our ongoing national travails, the war in Iraq. As he told us, his view of the war in an abstract one, as he has no personal stake in it: no soldiers in the family … no friends who came home in body casts or coffins. So, instead of some grisly programmatic war-epic, Kennedy gave us a set of variations on the musical notes corresponding to the letters of BAGHDAD. Where the heck on the diatonic scale is “H,” you ask? Well, like many composers before him, he simply used the h-note from German tablature: we call it b-flat. Attentive ears could pick every one of the notes out (not necessarily in order).
As I intimated, you’d never know that this is war music: there was no real musical violence here; no searing tonal tales of mass death and destruction. The predominant aura was one of infinite, aching sadness: the kind that war always brings, no matter what its causes are or who wins. The ominous opening string glissandos set that mood right away, and not even the subdued pizzicato sections did much to dispel it. The pitiful little “mewing” sounds near the end could’ve been anything from cries of grief to moans of the wounded.
Japanese composer Somei Satoh’s Glimmering Darkness was an entirely different sort of beast. Slow and solemn throughout, it tended to dwell on single notes and sonic textures, and there was no perceptible rhythm. It struck me as a kind of serene, dreamlike meditation on the gleaming wonders of the night. Hearing it was something like visual contemplation of a moonlit Zen garden … at least that’s the kind of pleasant trance that it brought my way. I was sorry when it ended.
And it ended abruptly, with the much more manic (and really hard) music of emerging English composer Steve Martland. His Tiger Dancing was inspired by William Blake’s famous poem (“Tiger, tiger, burning bright”). It seemed to take a sort of perverse delight in the dark side of dancing. If you had to classify it, post-minimalist is the proper term – witness its repetitive, gradually evolving harmonic and rhythmic patterns. It was full of relentless energy and veiled menace, though one whimsical passage towards the end was more like Tigger cavorting with Winnie-the-Pooh (or any cat in a playful mood).
The excellent string players were all — as usual — members of the formidable Spoleto Festival Orchestra – oh, and the dulcet clarinet work in the Satoh piece was courtesy of Sonia Sielaff, also of the SFO. Hey, there are three more terrific programs to come in MIT. So show up with open minds and ears (you can usually get tickets), and give this ever-stimulating series a try.
More Cutting-Edge Marvels from Music in Time
Tuesday’s second Music in Time installment brought us three very different and appealing creations from cutting-edge composers of right NOW. All three items were scored entirely for strings – save for the winsome addition of a lone clarinet in the second number.
Series host (and justly famed composer) John Kennedy kicked things off with Baghdad Variations: his own musical response to one of our ongoing national travails, the war in Iraq. As he told us, his view of the war in an abstract one, as he has no personal stake in it: no soldiers in the family … no friends who came home in body casts or coffins. So, instead of some grisly programmatic war-epic, Kennedy gave us a set of variations on the musical notes corresponding to the letters of BAGHDAD. Where the heck on the diatonic scale is “H,” you ask? Well, like many composers before him, he simply used the h-note from German tablature: we call it b-flat. Attentive ears could pick every one of the notes out (not necessarily in order).
As I intimated, you’d never know that this is war music: there was no real musical violence here; no searing tonal tales of mass death and destruction. The predominant aura was one of infinite, aching sadness: the kind that war always brings, no matter what its causes are or who wins. The ominous opening string glissandos set that mood right away, and not even the subdued pizzicato sections did much to dispel it. The pitiful little “mewing” sounds near the end could’ve been anything from cries of grief to moans of the wounded.
Japanese composer Somei Satoh’s Glimmering Darkness was an entirely different sort of beast. Slow and solemn throughout, it tended to dwell on single notes and sonic textures, and there was no perceptible rhythm. It struck me as a kind of serene, dreamlike meditation on the gleaming wonders of the night. Hearing it was something like visual contemplation of a moonlit Zen garden … at least that’s the kind of pleasant trance that it brought my way. I was sorry when it ended.
And it ended abruptly, with the much more manic (and really hard) music of emerging English composer Steve Martland. His Tiger Dancing was inspired by William Blake’s famous poem (“Tiger, tiger, burning bright”). It seemed to take a sort of perverse delight in the dark side of dancing. If you had to classify it, post-minimalist is the proper term – witness its repetitive, gradually evolving harmonic and rhythmic patterns. It was full of relentless energy and veiled menace, though one whimsical passage towards the end was more like Tigger cavorting with Winnie-the-Pooh (or any cat in a playful mood).
The excellent string players were all — as usual — members of the formidable Spoleto Festival Orchestra – oh, and the dulcet clarinet work in the Satoh piece was courtesy of Sonia Sielaff, also of the SFO. Hey, there are three more terrific programs to come in MIT. So show up with open minds and ears (you can usually get tickets), and give this ever-stimulating series a try.