Minimalists - or Rhythmicists ?

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22 April

The composers on the bill at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) on Sunday 27 April are usually (nay, invariably) referred to as members of the school of Minimalism.

Dennis Russell Davies, interviewed on Tuesday afternoon’s edition of Radio 3’s (@BBCRadio3’s) ‘In Tune’ (@BBCInTune) (available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04153wl for seven days from transmission), pointed out that the composers in the series of three approaching concerts at London’s Cadogan Hall, from which the programme in Cambridge has been derived, all know each other – with Arvo Pärt having looked to Michael Nyman as an example before the disssolution of the Soviet Union led to The Baltic States becoming free (Pärt is Estonian).

Nevertheless, although Nyman took the term from art history*, and, it seems, first used the words ‘minimal music’ in a review in The Spectator in 1968**, it seems to have lost its connection both with other movements in the arts, and with evidently fitting the music to which it refers : does a work by Frank Stella, for example, bear any significant resemblance to the way in which a composition by John Adams works ?

If there is any common element in the work of composers that is described as minimalist, it is never as distinct as John Cage’s unavoidable 4’33” or unconventional in the way that his ‘prepared piano’ is. Instead, it tends to treat a theme as an ostinato or a ground bass might be used, for its rhythmic possibility, and the same is as true for Steve Reich, with the fringe effects caused by two or more players (who gradually become more and more out of synch and cause interference), as when a repeated motif in a work by Philip Glass modulates in relation to the parts of the other instrumentalists.

More here (the long version - easy-read one to follow soonish) as a review of Sunday’s concert…


End-notes

* Whereas it had initially been applied to Black Square (1915), a famous painting (of the infamous kind) by Kazimir Malevich.

** In relation to various compositions that had been performed at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA – @ICALondon).

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Gala with a glitch

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

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10 January

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

Confession : I am not very practised (or confident) with how to view silent film :

* self-perpetuating lack of exposure to the field

* which means that my lip-reading* never gets better

* and disinclines me to make the effort to choose silent


For I find the concentration needed even greater than for a poorly subtitled film, where there is the anxious race to read and make sense of captions before the next ones come up (and, necessarily, the one in hand disappears).

None of this deterred me from this gala screening:

Catch Anthony Asquith’s beautifully restored Underground, a tale of love, jealousy and murder: bit.ly/WqdTmi
— BFI (@BFI) January 11, 2013

It had all the elements : a Q&A (and hosted by Francine Stock, to boot); the buzz of a first night at the BFI; in Underground, the restoration, by the BFI, of a film 85 years old; the involvement of silent-film musical interpreter Neil Brand, not as accompanying musician this time, but as composer of the score; and the tie-in with the 150th anniversary of the tube, with a film that almost made a character of its tunnels, staff, trains.

It brought out all sorts, from the train enthusiasts (there was one on the panel, with a looping presentation of stills) to, as it were, the silent crowd, and, of course, film buffs in general (into the latter two categories of which Brand and Stock** fitted, as did Bryony Dixon (curator at the BFI) and ?? Ben Thompson ?? (from the team of restorers)).

However, there were only two drawbacks, the minor one that, with a panel of four, each of whom had to be given a say, there was only time for five (it may have been four) audience questions, and the major hitch, which had Brand leaping from his seat and disappearing within minutes, which was that the soundtrack was no longer in synch with the projection (which, apparently, it had been earlier).

So, for example, an urchin playing on some sort of whistle was heard before he was seen. As Brand had, of course, carefully scored each moment of the 84 minutes, it was immensely distressing for him (hence his sudden exit to voice his concern), but it seemed from the apology at the end from the BFI’s director that there had been a lack of confidence that stopping the film would have allowed the problem to be remedied***.

I asked for a complementary ticket to allow me to see it as it should have been, because, although there was no doubt of the power and skill of the scoring (and of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s performance****), the concentration involved in hearing a soundtrack that did not match the visuals compounded my interpretative impairment.
That apart, it was a grand evening, and I was pleased to be able to talk briefly to Neil Brand again and offer my congratulations (and commiserations). This is why :

@bfi Othello's plot always strikes me as flimsy - #Underground has the power of an Iago figure heightened by realist obsession / great music
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 11, 2013

I had heard Brand talking to Sean Rafferty last year, on Radio 3’s late-afternoon programme In Tune (one could equally say early-evening, as I choose not to say ‘drive-time’), and was very interested both in what he had to say about the film’s dynamics, and to hear not only some of the music, but also how it had been composed. So I knew that Anthony Asquith, son of the prime minister of that name, had been the art director, I knew a skeletal amount about what the film dealt with, and I had heard Brand’s palpable enthusiasm for this commission.

I knew, therefore, that I wanted to see it, and, when I saw Brand at the Silent Film Festival (I only managed to see one film, though, where he had been playing with Mark Kermode’s band The Dodge Brothers) and then at Festival Central, I learnt that all the attention was focused on a likely release timed with the tube anniversary.

This film – including in its original sense - is terrific, and there is no doubt that the patient work of restoration, of composing the score, and of recording and tracking it has been an excellent use of resources. I want only to say enough about it that is consistent with leaving it to unfold to a new viewer, but showing what there is to be appreciated.

My Tweet will have alerted to the scheming and self-centredness of Othello, but (in no particular order) there is also, as Bryony Dixon put it, a love quadrilateral, a fight and other moments of tension, shots of trains and escalators in and around Waterloo tube-station, a magnificent chase, and a picture of the metropolis and a romantic trip to (as a member of the audience asserted, since no one knew) Hampstead Heath. What more could one want... ?


End-notes

* It is a useful adjunct to indistinct speech, as a clue (or cue) to what is being uttered, but a different proposition, I find, with no speech sounds. A film of this kind has few inter-titles (have they always been called that?), and for me, used as I am to the dialogue driving many a scene, there’s a frustration at not knowing what is said.

** Aurally, it has the ring of a partnership, warehousing, maybe, designer goods.

*** When I talked, at a later date, to Cambridge Film Festival director Tony Jones, he was confident both as to the nature of the problem, and how the technology caused would have made it not capable of easy remedy : he also seemed to know, but lost me in the detail of the technicality, how it should have been done, and so would not have been beyond repair on the spot.

**** Brand provided information about how the recording from a live performance at a screening last year, once the audience noise had been taken off, had to be intermixed with taping from that event’s rehearsal. Here, too, there had been a technical issue, because the frame-speed of the projection when the two had been recorded differed !


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Stravinsky's Mass

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7 July


Inserted amid this reconstruction of a 13th century English Mass are two parts specially written by Gavin Bryars. The old and the new intermingle in the work of this stellar vocal ensemble.


This is what early music typically does just at the moment, e.g. Stile Antico, in their new programme of works from the times of all of the Tudors, having the Kyrie (and, maybe, the Gloria, too) of a Mass by Byrd followed by a work, say, by Tye before going back to the Credo of the Byrd, and so on.

However, since 'everyone' seems to be doing it, the words that I have lifted (above)* - from Trio Mediæval's CD A Worcester Ladymass - are describing a common approach, one that I did not want to hear applied the other night (on said Radio 3):

Stravinsky's simple, late Mass I know well, but it is never given a live outing. Unlike these fifteenth- or sixteenth-century settings of the mass, which it may be rather artificial to hear as concert works in one run and which may benefit from the contrast of another composer's style or another period's approach to help us focus on what it is that they are, his work is very compact and scarcely lasts more than fifteen minutes.

Whether it was the point of contrast for the earlier composer's music that was sung on this occasion, or it was thought necessary to allow entry into Stravinsky's sound-world by performing works that influenced him, I do not know. I simply wanted to hear his Mass, and then some other things, perhaps.


End-notes

* And which I could almost imagine Sean Rafferty saying (he who, for me, is the one and only true host of Radio 3's programme In Tune).


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Written by a sixteen-year-old Mozart

Written by a sixteen-year-old Mozart : Evidence for time-travel and / or multiple selves

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8 February (8 April, emphases and Tweet added)

Written by a sixteen-year-old Mozart : Evidence for time-travel and / or multiple selves

If you were like me, you'd imagine that Mozart proudly showing the score of his new string quartet to the five-year-old Mozart, while twenty-two-year-old Mozart looks on and yawns (or, probably, worse) - just a quirky turn of phrase from Jonathan Swain, who is presenting Through the Night on Radio 3.

And it interacts with a recent realization that the daytime schedule (by chance or design) is now dominated by female presenters, and those all of a certain age and apparent class - yes, there is Sean Rafferty still, hanging on in his very enjoyable spot on In Tune, and there is the excellent Donald Macleod following on (the less-excellent DM goes and picks grapes instead), usually straight after, with Composer of the Week.

Otherwise, though, it's Sara Mohr-Pietsch (2.5h), Sarah Walker (3h), then DM for 1h (for his first airing at noon), then, this week, it was Suzy Klein as, I think, both afternoon anchor and hosting In Tune in Sean's absence, which would be I don't know how many hours.

Where are the male presenters of that age isn't my question, but why, when one goes from SW to SM-P to SK to Katie Derham, the utter death-knell of my interest in listening (if I can help it), is there - what I may not be alone in finding - a gradient of irritation with their self-satisfaction?

Added lately to a more elderly posting, a comment that might sting the adherents or acolytes of some on @BBCRadio3 : http://t.co/vMBysCSKPP
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 8, 2015

I confess that I mistook SK for the dreaded KD this week - it's something, for me, not far off the renowned oiliness of the Reverend Chadband in Bleak House, it's an expression of an opinion that goes beyond the bounds and tells me what I think (or should think) of what I have just heard, or what, in the case of something to be played or to be heard, what I will think.

Sorry, but I want to make my own mind up! I don't mind the odd 'Listen out for what the piccolo does in the opening of the slow movement, which might sound like a bird / which many have thought resembles a bird', but not being told piccolo = bird = fact. Music isn't like that, and, maybe, I resent the surface knowledge that seems to claim some sort of superiority, some sort of passport to understanding a piano sonata or a concerto - we all know that presenters are just presenters, but the ones whom I mention seem to have this edge of seeming to want to be too keen to tell you what's what in case you don't think that they're doing a good job.

That, I think, might be the underlying motivation - which I can understand, as few things are secure - but I perceive it as smugness, of glad-handing it with my mates Brahms or Bach, and - if you're lucky - Tag along with me and you might learn something. To which, without saying it or putting it into words (until now), I feel like saying: I welcome being told facts or details that might enhance my enjoyment, but Please don't teach your grandma to suck eggs.


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