Canon Fodder: Haas 2

Georg Friedrich Haas: String Quartet No. 2 (1998)

Haas was born in Graz, Austria in 1953. His childhood was spent in the mountains along the Swiss border and he currently lives and works in Basel, Switzerland.
The Second Quartet was commissioned by the Wiener Konzerthaus for the Hagen Quartet.
My other favorites (not for string quartet) by this composer are In Vain and …und…

The Second String Quartet of G.F. Haas opens in the bedrock. The cello's open C string anchors the entire opening four minutes of the piece. We know where we are, and where we have been.

However, atop this seemingly impervious rock, minerals are interacting and tectonic plates are slowing grinding. The rest of the quartet traverses the complex, high overtones of the cello's C. The harmonies are full of potential energies and unexpected geodes.

Then, at 4:19 the cello crushes its sound, as if a sudden schism has opened in the earth. This violent change leaves a gulf in the musical space and our eyes cast downward. Around 7 minutes in, the quartet begins a series of plummeting glissandi. Arriving on an A-flat that is seething with white hot energy - full of clashing flows of lava - a crack in the surface of this inner-chamber of the earth opens and we can see the shimmer of a beautiful light.

Just as quickly, it closes, and we are left with a mystery. What will this moment of beauty bring us? As the music re-awakens after this scene in the depths, we realize that we couldn't have possibly been there. It was just a dream. But, the surface of the earth begins to rumble, something is forcing its way upward.

As the second part of the piece (as I've linked it) begins, we don't even believe what we've seen. But, as the energy builds to the point of bursting the earth wide open, what should begin to spout from the ground but the very sparkling, flowing lava of our dreams. (4:10 in the second video)

Time opens up. These unknowable geological forces are building something we've never seen before, full of natural beauty and covered with a sheen unlike any mineral we've known. At 5:30 this eruption creates the most beautiful towering cliff. Soaring into the sky, it needs not reveal itself with might and bombast, but simply announces its presence and rises heavenward.

By seven minutes into the second video, it has reached its full form, but we've seen something more than just a monument to the earth's creative powers. Looking up, we see the sky for the first time, and everything we've just witnessed is put into scale. Simply a speck in the cosmos, we look up it this mountain which reaches toward the stars and slip back into sleep.

 

The Old Man and the C: Free to Be Glass and Me

I have an indelible memory from age 7, one in which my diminutive hands have intruded inside a handsome walnut card catalogue and plucked out a prism-covered cassette. My selection was no doubt graphically driven, and my permission to pilfer from my mother's music collection unclear, but the result was definitively my introduction to new music. Dad had handled introductions to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd while Mom facilitated those of Brahms and Shostakovich, but "Glassworks" was a singular, personal discovery.

I was reminded of this vector redirect of my musical development reading Alex Ross' latest in the New Yorker, Number Nine. Much of Glass coverage tends to either the poles of dismissiveness or fan-boyishness, but Ross' career recap and first-person reactions to the recent premier of the composer's Ninth Symphony (Jan 31st, 2012, Carnegie Hall, American Composers Orchestra led by Daniel Russell Davies) are characteristically even-handed.

Take a moment to jump over to the above link and give it a read.

Much like author/illustrator Chris van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, in which a reader must draw on her imagination to compose the narrative to wordless drawings, Glass leaves much to the listener. It's music that invites a 7-year-old brain to explore, unafraid, or a 33-year-old brain to bliss out to after twelve hours of rehearsal. It's also music through which the Spektral Quartet began to develop its continuity of ensemble sound in its first year together, with Quartet No. 2, Company. Finally, it's music that is undoubtedly responsible for a not-insignificant number of seats filled at our more cerebral new music concerts.

As a cultural icon, Philip Glass has remained a divisive character in the new music scene, with many of my colleagues claiming it's high time we moved beyond the easy popularity of minimalism. There is some truth to that sentiment, but I am unable to divorce myself from sublime experiences such as performing The Hours with Michael Riesman at the Harris Theater (MusicNow, 2008) or wearing out the aforementioned tape on a hazzard-yellow Sony boom box, circa 1985.

Photo Gallery: Miami in February!

The Spektrals are apart this week, with Doyle and I down in Miami to play the Bach B-Minor Mass with an amazing choir called Seraphic Fire and their sister organization, Firebird Chamber Orchestra.

The organization brings players and singers from around the country for 4 to 5 concerts a season. Doyle has been playing with them for quite some time, and he has graciously wrangled invitations for Aurelien in the past, and for me this time around. (Thanks, Doyle!)

As you might imagine, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week in Miami in February, and already it's been quite a trip. The orchestra has put me up with a host family here in Miami, and not just any host family. I'm lucky to be hosted by Ruth and Marvin Sacker, who for many years have been avid and thorough archival collectors of typographical art, amassing one of the largest collections in the states with over 50,000 different works! Their home, a penthouse aparmtment formerly owned by latin superstar "El Puma," (no joke) is a museum of sorts, and I have spent the better part of the last 48 hours examining some truly beautiful and inspiring pieces that are on display.

Here's a little photo album with some shots of Miami, the Sackner apartment, and some of the phenomenal art in their home. Enjoy!

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The Old Man and the C: Metronomics

Nothing will ever best pumping a Dr. Beat through an amp for deep rhythmic exploration and practice, but the inconvenience of shouldering a 30-Watt-er to rehearsal every day is difficult to argue. Until recently, Frozen Ape's "Tempo Advanced" was the Spektral (iPhone) app of choice with its intuitive finger-swipe interface and not-unpleasant tick timbres. With the plethora of polyrhythms we've encountered in Thomas Adés' "Arcadiana" or Hans Thomalla's "Albumblatt" a standard metronome loses its efficacy.

     

Mining through the droves of metronome apps, I happened upon "Metronomics", a simple-looking program with one killer feature: customizable subdivisions. As a tear of joy rolled down my cheek (and the soundtrack swelled, etc.) I discovered that 1-100 beats per 1-100 subdivisions were now possible. Best educated guesses at how Eliza Brown's 15:4 lies in her "Quartet No. 1" are now a thing of the past. The real boon here is the ability to hear subdivisions against the prevailing beat as a composite, allowing the musician to get a global sense of each figure. Also, if the performer wants to determine how a particular subdivision falls in relation to the larger beat (extremely useful when working with a conductor), this clarifies the geography.

         

Of course, no app is perfect. Here, the beats are derived from percussion instruments, which can be distracting when spending hours at a score, disassembling complex passages. I'll look forward to developer John Nastos offering a wider array of sonic choices in the future, but for the moment, I'm in love.

Readings at University of Chicago

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of reading pieces by three University of Chicago students during an open session in Fulton Hall.  Moderated by Director of Performance Studies Barbara Schubert, we gave feedback and advice to the composers and fielded questions from the lively observers.  Here's a picture we snapped of us tuning while the audience filed in from a short break:

The Old Man and the C: George Lewis

One of the ensembles I admire most is the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Obvious, of course, but having both written about it as a journalist, and having been invited to perform with ICE on occasion in Chicago, the group’s artistic integrity has proven itself to be unquestionable. Founder Claire Chase creates an inviting atmosphere for ICE’s excursions to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and even the most cerebral composers are given emotionally engaging performances in the hands of the ICE performers. If a particularly gnarly Varèse or Xenakis score suddenly becomes relevant to a newcomer, it is undoubtedly because what is seen onstage is genuine belief in the music. 
 
Most of us that called a dormitory home at one point or another flirted with a Sun Ra record or two. We gingerly placed one foot in the door of experimental jazz, but kept the other safely on the other side of the vestibule. If you doubt the genre’s legitimacy, watch the opening credits of Funny Games and tell me the John Zorn track didn’t melt your face. One of Zorn’s collaborators, and a highly esteemed composer in his own right, George Lewis is being honored by ICE in the February 5th “George Lewis and Friends on the MCA Stage”, and this is one concert Chicago would be idiotic to miss. 
 
Below is my TimeOut Chicago preview of the concert, but first, let me say that George Lewis, with his staggering résumé is one of the most generous and brilliant musicians I have ever interviewed. He is a champion of new works and young composers…even in a cutthroat environment like NYC…and is unapologetic in his disregard for marketability. The likelihood of his selling out to ephemera such as marketability is akin to the likelihood that I will ever knowingly purchase a record by Lang Lang.
 
Here is the lede, unfortunately cut by editors at TOC:
 
“Top 10 lists are inane and reductive. Nevertheless, that New York composer/trombonist George Lewis is coming to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and that his music is being performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) will result in at least this writer having only to locate nine other entries for 2012.”
 
Next, let me include a link to the Zora Neale Hurston essay referenced in the article. It is one of the most compelling pieces on dialectics I have ever come across: http://www.l-adam-mekler.com/hurston_expression.htm
 
Composer Nicole Mitchell and her piece “New Work (2012)” were inexplicably deleted from my copy in the editing process. Apologies to Ms. Mitchell, whose inclusion is an integral component of the concert.
 
Do yourself a favor and go purchase Lewis’ “Sour Mash” before going to the show on Sunday. If ever there was an experimental record to squelch the contention that experimental music is inherently off-putting, this is it. Also, Sunday will sell out, so get those tickets STAT.
 

Canon Fodder: Adagissimo

Brian Ferneyhough: Adagissimo (1983)

  • Brian Ferneyhough was born in Coventry, England in 1943. He currently teaches at Stanford University.
  • Adagissimo was written for the Arditti Quartet.
  • My other favorites by this composer are Terrain and La Chute d'Icare.

 

Brian Ferneyhough has gained a reputation for being a composer of hard music: hard to play and listen to. This piece, while certainly not easy for the performers, is a great in-road to his style due to its extreme brevity. Give it a chance, you'll only need two minutes.

The broad brushstrokes of his pen remind me of an early painting by Jackson Pollock that I love. It's full of emotional depth, but bursting with flourish, energy and wild virtuosity. Oddly, I even think of a short story by David Foster Wallace. Like Wallace, Ferneyhough has a masterful command of his technique, and is teeming with material to work with, but there's also a deeply soulful underpinning to the music.

The violins splash colors as the work opens, revealing the dolorous music of the viola and cello below. The lower voices lay it on thick with dark browns and dirty navy blues while the violins sparkle in golden threads.

If you're interested in more of the technicalities, the YouTube notes provide information from the composer.

The Old Man and the C: Strad Science

Last November, NPR ran a piece on Dr. Steven Sirr and violin maker Steve Rossow, two gentleman using a CT scan of a 307-year-old Stradivarius in an attempt to recreate it. It’s likely that most string players joined me in the commencement of eye-rolling upon hearing this story. For as long as I can remember, luthiers have tried to recreate the storied violins with little, or more often, no success. Replications of varnish, sourcing of era- and geographically-specific woods, even manufactured divots and scrapes to mimic the originals have failed to parallel the aural color palette of the Strad. So it is far from surprising that a CT Scan is unable to unearth the long-searched-for “x factor.”

More recently, on January 2nd, 2012, NPR aired another piece that put forth the proposition that the entire enterprise may be moot. A double-blind study led by Claudia Fritz of France's National Center for Scientific Research assembled seventeen professional violinists (evidently selected from the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis), two Strads, a Guarneri and three modern instruments. Shockingly (insert gasp here), only three were able to identify a Strad by sound alone.

So case closed. String players are no better than those who would burn cash on a handbag simply because of the initials patterned across it.

Well, perhaps not. In a study following the true tenants of the scientific method, all factors must be considered variables and each must be tested  against a control. Where did this experiment take place? A hotel room. As any ambitious musician who has flown across state lines for an audition is aware, a hotel room has the unique effect of making even the finest instruments sound about as sublime as the restroom at an IBS convention.

Secondly, who are these esteemed violinists? What is familiarity of each with centuries-old instruments? We can assume they are capable players, but if they, like most, have not spent their respective careers playing on three million dollar violins, what could they have been listening for? The best sound, probably.

My own hunt for a viola took six years and stretched from Los Angeles to Manhattan. Questing for the ideal sound in an instrument is an altogether different beast than what Fritz was exploring, but my search had the unanticipated benefit of an exposure to violas of myriad time periods and price tags. It did not begin as a quest for an old Italian specimen, but that is where it culminated. In the process, I took everything from a $900,000 Amati to a $12,000 Vanna So through the twitter of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” as well as the geometric launch of “Der Schwanendreher” (among many other works). By the end of the excavation, the one solid conclusion at which I arrived was that price is meaningless. That Amati was nothing more than a piece of overpriced furniture. What was clear, though, was that no modern viola I played approached the nuance and depth of the best of the old Italians.

Which bring up the final point: where does the aforementioned Strad fall in the spectrum of Strads? All are not created equal, as a colleague of mine discovered when she was awarded one…and promptly, if sheepishly, returned it.

Just as with any pseudo-scientific claims that your child will be cooing Quantum Theory if subjected to Mozart in utero, the research here in question is a far cry from that on which we depend  to knock out a pneumonia or send protons careening into one another. All that has been concluded in this study is that this particular cadre of violinists couldn’t identify a Strad. What is also true is that Good Strad = Good Strad, and Bad Strad = Bad Strad. Finally, it is most certainly true that these genius-carved violins cost too damn much. If you believe anything beyond that, Dietmar Machold has a violin to sell you.

Canon Fodder: Hyla 4

[dropcap_1]W[/dropcap_1]elcome to the 2nd edition of Canon Fodder, a series dedicated to presenting string quartets that deserve to be heard.  Lee Hyla is a close friend of quartet, and he's got a new piece in the pipeline for us.  Hope you like our old favorite by him, with video from our recent performance -Austin

Lee Hyla: String Quartet #4 (1999) - www.leehyla.com

Lee Hyla was born in Niagara Falls in 1952, he currently lives in Chicago, IL and teaches at Northwestern University.

First performance: 9/23/99 at University of Mass. Amherst.  Written for the Lydian String Quartet, commissioned by New England Presenters

My other favorites by Lee are We Speak Etruscan and Pre-Pulse Suspended.

 

 

As a second part to this series on contemporary works for string quartet, I thought I'd continue with another Spektral favorite.  I think you'll see from the video below that this piece takes full advantage of the expressive and virtuosic possibilities from each chair of the quartet.
Keep an ear open for those spots where Lee has the quartet playing in different tempos.  Particularly at 1:53 you can hear that transition from "together" to "apart" as the cello picks up its own faster tempo, as well as the large section in duos (cello/vln. 2 and vla/vln 1) starting at 3:34.  The conversation happens from so many angles, pairs, and tones of voice from each instrument throughout the piece!
Lee's music is a continual joy for me to listen to and perform because of its integrity to his own personal voice (he reminds me of the musical equivalent of Lenny Bruce).  His combination of disparate musical impulses into a coherent language that's immediately "Lee's Music" would make Stravinsky or Beethoven giggle.

Canon Fodder: Dig Absolutely

[dropcap_1]W[/dropcap_1]elcome to the first of my Canon Fodder, a series dedicated to presenting string quartets that deserve to be heard.  I thought I'd start with a personal and Spektral favorite, accompanied by a brand spankin' new video by us.  I will be featuring a new quartet each week, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.   -Austin

Christopher Fisher-Lochhead: Dig Absolutely (2010)  -   www.cflmusic.com

Chris was born in Lewiston, ME in 1984 and currently lives in Chicago, IL where he is pursuing a Doctoral degree in Composition at Northwestern University.

"Dig Absolutely" is dedicated to Laurel Borden and was premiered at the Manhattan School of Music on Feb. 6, 2011.

My other favorite pieces by Chris were written for me, of course! I love his string writing and think his solo violin pieces "water(l)ily" and the piece I'm premiering next month, "Belles Letteres" are fantastic.  Also, "Gouache: 'Runcible Spoon" is almost as fun to play as "Dig".

The opening of "Dig" spins out a twisting line of music that weaves between the upper three voices of the quartet.  The patience of this piece as it waits to burst the initial bubble of energy is quite remarkable.  When Russ enters just after the 2:00 mark all the energy flies into the air, fragmented but not fully released.

In this heightened realm of expression where we land - floating above the earthy, gritty gestures of the opening - there is a sense wonder at the sounds a string quartet can make.  Harmonics build upon each other and swish by like insects.

By 3:20 all the angst of the opening has been filtered out by the air of this fragile nocturnal region.  The journey from the dense forest of rhythmic counterpoint and metric instability at the beginning to this place of rest is one worth taking more than once.

From this point, the unification of this newfound metric stability with the sighing and expressive gestures of the opening builds up to the climactic moment the opening's energy was begging for.  But, afterward…why is Doyle left alone, journeying through the terrain of fragile harmonics by himself?  A fascinating short story.

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