More about Giacinto Scelsi

Definitely an odd bird, was Giacinto Scelsi. He was odd enough that he spent years in institutions. He was born an aristocrat, and was received at Buckingham Palace. He died only 20 years ago, a recluse, and there are only three known photos of him, taken in his youth. His music is unusual, but conceptually fascinating as it's way ahead of its time. Including ours, too, in some ways.

Scelsi has influenced many – even Tristan Murail, whose own music is much more accessible, visited him in Rome. Last week there was a concert in London by Ensemble Liquid Architecture, whose name alone is interesting. I didn't go, which is a pity, as Scelsi fests don't happen every day.

Scelsi's piano music is a good way into him as the piano is like a lone voice. and Scelsi was definitely a lone voice. Perhaps it's a flavour of the man ? Nothing is too difficult to get into if you try, and this is early work for him. Here is a very useful article and review of Scelsi's piano music. Since there is so little available about him, this is an important resource! The major article was in fact written in 1986 when Scelsi was still alive - definitely prescient.

http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/cddvd/scelsi%20_hinterhauser.htm

Also look at the labels on the right for more, including PGW's obituary of Scelsi written for the Independent in 1988. This blog is becoming a link to many Scelsi resources on the net.

Tristan Murail Terre d'ombre

Terre d'ombre is a shade of brown frequently used in oil painting because it adds a warm "burnt umber" glow. The colour, for most people, connects to nature, the soil, growth, fertility. Murail's choice of this name for this piece refers to his father, a painter, and to Messiaen for whom colour was inextricably connected to music. "Spectralists" (to use a horrible blanket term) extend the concept so that visual connotations are as valid to the musical whole as any other reference. Just as painters extend the depth of colour by adding density, composers can "paint" by intensifying sound.

Murail's Terre d'ombre, though, also references Scriabin's Prometheus, the Poem of Fire. Scriabin was probably clinically synaesthetic, unlike Messiaen who would have liked to have been, so again the reference is to the concept of colour in music.

Perhaps too much can be made of Murail's fondness for quotation. In many ways it's a good thing because it helps access since it gives those new to the music something to relate to. But it's also misleading because it underplays the originality of the work. God forbid that the anti atonality fundamentalists get hold of Murail and use him to beat up on modern music. These extremists, who don't usually actually listen, are crazy enough, so it's a real threat.

Here Murail uses a massive orchestra, no less than 12 cellos, 8 double basses, a swathe of violas and a panoply of dark brass. Cue the idea of "ombre", earth tones, depth of shading. He uses a large orchestra because that in itself allows a wider range of sound, getting round the problem of fine tuning or de-tuning instruments and working out modulations and micro tones which only the most sophisticated musicians can play. Electronic projection is still an important feature, but it doesn't act like a soloists in a concerto, like the piano part in Scriabin. Rather it works with the orchestra, extending its range. This is a much bigger piece than Gondwana, and more sophisticated.

Terre d'ombre also refers to the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, bringing light to mankind. Murail's treatment is no way as profound and passionate as Luigi Nono's Prometeo (see links to that amazing piece in the subject list on right, below). Nontheless the dark, throbbing resonances do evoke a sense of primeval struggle. Poeme d'Extase it isn't. Note that even fifteen years before this, Murail was quoting passages from Scriabin in Gondwana, with its slowly building mountains of sound, themselves reminsicent of Messiaen's shifting tectonic plates.

Terre d'ombre is a spectacular piece, perfect for large scale auditoriums like the Royal Albert Hall, where its dark richness will wow the audience. The piece is only five years old, and Proms planning has a run in of several years. It is an ideal Proms piece and would be a huge hit. Much fuss has been made of the fact French music doesn't get Proms coverage "because of Boulez" which is a laugh, since even Boulez and Birtwistle were relegated to the "ghetto" of late night slots in recent years. So much modern French music, specifically Maurice Ohana and Dutilleux, is chamber music, not suited to the Proms ambience. Besides, why shouldn't the BBC favour British composers, even if they choose Thea Musgrave et al year after year?

Murail himself uses the metaphor of cooking to explain what he does. With his FM and computer generated calculations, he's working out the "chemistry". Boulez is more like an intuitive cook who just "knows" by instinct and experience. FM allows precise perfection. Boulez doesn't do much electronic/computer enhancement but without him, there would have been no IRCAM, no Ensemble Intercontemporain, no springboard for so many French (and British and German) composers. And in this Murail Immersion day, let's not forget, we heard Hugues Dufourt. (see the link below or use the subject list at right)

Photo of the paint pigment is from www.iconofile.com

Tristan Murail …amaris et dulcibus aquis…

…amaris et dulcibus aquis… takes as its starting point the “Medieval Michelin”, as Murail calls it, the travel guide for pilgrims crossing northern Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostella. Travelling in the Middle Ages was dangerous and uncomfortable so just making the effort was a sign of devotion. At each stage in the pilgrimage there were shrines to worship at, and bells. The cathedral bells of Santiago de Compostella were a wonder of the age. Imagine their sound, ringing out over the countryside in a world less overloaded with rubbish noise than ours!

Bells are ideal, too, for expressing the concept of spectralism. The moment a bell is struck, it sounds a particular pitch, but the sound vibrates, extending the palette, untuned, “spectrally” like a ghost.

Thus …amaris et dulcibus aquis… encapsulates many ideas central to Murail’s work. Technically the vocal parts are not “that” difficult, though at times they veer towards overtone singing. The vowels curl o a i u er as if the piece was haunted by Stockhausen’s Stimmung. Two synthesizers extend the tones.

Bells peal in carillon, creating complex patterns from simple repetition. The music replicates a kind of numerical pattern clearly focussed on the final destination. A long early section describes the four routes from which travellers begin the pilgrimage. It’s repeated twice as if it is being committed to memory – this was an age before printing, when communication was oral. There’s a strong directional thrust, the line …Una via exinde usque ad Sanctum Jacobum efficitur firmly enunciated. There is a purpose to this journey, it’s not just early tourism.

Then the 13 stages of the pilgrimage are individually enumerated, like in a chant : Pampiloniam, Biscartum, Stellam….culminating yet again in a firm Sanctus Jacobus Compostelle. Later the rhythmic discipline of bells is evoked. Each line in the next chant section starts with the same word, Deinde, entered with sharp attack, like the discipline of bells played in unison. Indeed, it comes over like "ding ding", especially as the synthesizers carry the voice part into deeper resonance. The earlier references to the four starting points return, so the music creates an effect of events happening on different levels and in different sequences : concepts of time, memory, reiteration, extending the spectrum of sound.

The sonorities are bell like, too, the darkest male voices like huge brass gongs, the highest female voices sharp and clear. The synthesizers create a kind of circular reverberation, like the sound inside a bell, perhaps, mysterious and profound. A climax builds up where sounds burst in full glory: have we reached the fabled sanctuary of St James ? Then, just as bells fade back into silence, the music evaporates.

There’s no recording as yet, but this is such an interesting piece that it’s worth getting the score from the publishers, Éditions Henry Lemoine (link below). BBC Radio 3 has a two hour broadcast of the day’s proceedings on its Listen Again Facility. Although it’s padded out at least it’s Murail himself talking about his work. …amaris et dulcibus aquiis… comes in just after 60 minutes, after Time and Again and Gondwana.

The photograph shows ancient bells in the cathedral courtyard at Santiago de Compostella. It’s by Greg Gladman, used on Creative Commons conditions, so don’t reuse without proper credit.

Score for …amaris et dulcibus aquis…
http://www.tristanmurail.com/en/oeuvre-fiche.php?cotage=27535

Tristan Murail Total Immersion

This is why I pay taxes. Each year the BBC sponsors a series at the Barbican in London for “total immersion” in a particular composer. It’s intense: whole days of music, talks, extra activities. In fact so intense that this year they’ve divided it into three separate days. Stockhausen Day was described earlier (follow the subject link on the right). Next month it’s Xenakis, and on Feb 7^th it was my favourite, Tristan Murail. Anyone who still thinks that Messiaen had no influence (and there are some) is totally deluded.

Messiaen taught people to find themselves, said Murail to Julian Anderson. In the evening, Pascal Rophé conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in two early Murail works.

Gondwana was the land mass formed when the continents we know were once joined together. Very loosely, this describes Murail’s Gondwana (1980) when densely textured blocks of sound gradually evolve. The concept is Messianique, recalling Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, even The Quartet for the End of Time. Murail also references Sibelius’s Leminkäinnen in Tuonela, from the Kalevala saga, grounding the piece in tradition even though the harmonies were derived from frequency modulation (FM).

Time and Again (1985) was commissioned by Simon Rattle, with whom Murail played ondes Martenot on the famous CBSO recording of Turangalíla. Themes from Turangalíla pop up joyously, but the real tribute is in the way Murail unites Messiaen’s wayward exuberance with electronic techniques made possible by Murail’s use of FM and synthesized sound. If Turangalíla bothers some with its “cinematic” wildness, Murail makes it a virtue. Time and Again moves back and forth, as Murail says “replete with flashback, premonitions, loops…as if the listener were inside some sort of time machine”.

Murail’s more recent work is even more inventive. So much so, that I’ll write about ...amaris et dulcibus aquis….(1994/5 rev 2004) and Terre d’ombre (2003/4) in much greater depth later. Come back to this blog for more.

Murail’s “greatest hits”, Winter Fragments (2000) and Treize couleurs du soleil couchant (1978), were played by students of the Guildhall School of Music in the afternoon, joined by Rolf Hind in Territoires de l’oubli (1977), a thundering turbulence for piano. Plus the Hugues Dufourt Hommage á Charles Négre which is described below. But there’s only so much I can write at one go. So “watch this space”, as they say.

Hugues Dufourt Hommage à Charles Nègre

In the mid 19^th century photography was such a new medium that there weren’t any conventions to assume: Nègre and other early pioneers created the medium from scratch. Charles Nègre was a painter, who saw how photography could be art, not merely reproduction.

This picture shows doctors examining a patient in the asylum at Vincennes. The doctors stand in neat, formal poses, but notice how Nègre includes the vast expanses of emptiness that are floor and ceiling. This is part of the composition, for what this depicts is an inmate in the asylum at Vincennes. Psychiatry in those days was barbaric. Note, the patient is blindfolded, and he's rendered immobile in a straitjacket. What are these men in suits and stovepipe hats going to do to him ? Nègre’s photograph screams mute horror.

Hugues Dufourt's flute concerto Antiphysis is fairly well known, as it was commissioned for Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the recording with Boulez has been issued several times. Dufourt coined the term "spectralism" now associated so strongly with Grisey, Murail and Vivier. (See list of subjects at right for more on these composers). So it was good to hear Dufourt's Hommage à Charles Nègre included as part of the Barbican's Tristan Murail retrospective on Feb 7th.

Hommage à Charles Nègre was indeed written in connection with an exhibition of Nègre's photographs. Dufourt captures in his music the "empty spaces" and surreal angles so characteristic of Nègre's work. A photograph represents time, suspended. Dufourt's uneasy silences hang in limbo, chords held longer than expected, or suddenly curtailed. He uses low register instruments like contrabassoon to play at the top of their range, and high pitched instruments like piccolo to play at their lowest. Chords extend into space, particularly evident in the writing for electric guitar (fairly alien to classical convention), whose sounds, extended still further by electronic projection, oscillate into empty space.

That's why I chose the photo above. Like Nègre, Dufourt is deliberately distancing the observer/listener from the subject, forcing them to think past smooth surfaces. Just as photographs present a "perfect"image, this music might be heard as serene. Indeed, the elegiac pace stretches colours, so they seem as mellow and nostalgic as the faded, sepia tints in the pictures. But like Nègre's photographs, surface calm belies reality.