Riegger: Study in Sonority

Day 195

Wallingford Riegger: Study in Sonority for 10 violins op 7

Louisville Symphony Orchestra

Jorge Mester

I knew nothing about Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) before starting this project. I knew the name - who  could forget such a distinctive appellation - but otherwise I was only vaguely aware he was an American modernist but I couldn't have placed him historically. So I was quite surprised to see that he was born as early as 1885. He was well trained and spend much of his life teaching music in New York State. 

This work dates from 1927. It was quite hard to place stylistically - there were some elements of Schoenberg type atonalism but also some interesting experiments in sonority. With 10 instrumental lines to play with there were a lot of opportunities for quite complex textures and antiphonal effects. The problem with writing for 10 violins of course is that there is no bass register to balance the high notes - the 8th violin is asked to tune the G string down to E but that doesn't really make up for a lack of bass notes. Indeed at times the ever higher texture got really hard to listen to and indeed quite painful though the actually harmonic language was not that difficult to follow. 

The composer called this a study and I suppose on those terms it was an interesting experiment in what could be done. But as a purely music experience I found it unrewarding and indeed hard going. I've no idea of how typical this music is within Riegger's overall output but I can't say I am very keen to explore further.

This marks the end of this week or so of experimental American composers. I'm very glad that I spend the time listening to this music but my overall sense is that a lot of it was was leading to rather a dead end rather than the creation of a really new and vibrant musical tradition. I don't think that it is an accident that these composers, with the possible exception of Ives, have not entered the musical mainstream.

Tomorrow I will start a new series looking at some nationalist operas.

Crawford Seeger: String quartet

Day 194

Ruth Crawford Seeger: String quartet

Amati String Quartet

Ruth Crawford, who married Charles Seeger and was the mother of Peggy Seeger the folk music specialist, was one of the most important modernist female composers in the USA in the early part of the 20th century (1901-1953). She underwent a rigorous training and was in contact with many of the leading musical figures of her time. I've never heard any of her music before so this quartet, which dates from 1931 and is acknowledged as one of her most important pieces, seemed a good place to start.

My initial impression was not that positive. I thought that the first movement was fairly anonymous in a broadly Schoenberg/Berg idiom which seemed rather to meander along. It to me had no rhythmic impetus - a feature which I certainly feel was a problem of a lot of the 2nd Viennese School's music. But the second movement had much more of interest. It sprung to life rhythmically and had an energy about it - indeed at times it almost seemed to be looking forward to the sort of rhythmic vitality that Tippett was to explore a few years later. The slow third movement was fascinating. Essentially it was a study in resonance, almost entirely consisting of long notes but with lots of small crescendos and diminuendos but at time times in different instruments - it created a really haunting effect. Seeger suggested that it could be performed by a string orchestra as an alternative to a quartet and I can imagine it making a real impression done that way.  The last movement was also distinctive. This involved quite harsh recitative-like passages in the first violin contacted with arpeggio figures in unison quavers played by the three other players with mutes on. The very end was a little abrupt.

So this was a work which grew in interest as it went on - only tailing off a little towards the end. There was nothing particularly American in the piece as far as I could hear but Crawford clearly had a distinctive voice. From the mid 1930s she seems to have devoted most of her energies to folk song collecting, editing and dissemination. One wonders what she might have written had she written further string quartets into the 1940s and 1950s.

Nancarrow: Three Studies for Player Piano

Day 193

Nancarrow: Three studies for player piano - no 8, 11 and 12

I'd heard some of the player piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow before but I had never listed to any of them properly. I chose these three purely at random. They are written for player piano because Nacarrow wanted to create music that was impossible for any human pianist to play because of the sheet speed, the rhythmic complexity or just the number of notes to be played at the same time.

I listened to these three performances (which I think were computer generated rather than performed on a player piano) with a score and that certainly helped understanding what was happening. To my surprise the basic material was not that unconventional -the music is broadly tonal and some of the basic musical shapes were fairly straightforward. Indeed study no 12 had some Spanish touches which would not have been out of place in Grenados or Ravel! What is far from straightforward, of course, it the way that this is all put together.. Nancarrow was very interested in contrapuntal textures and with the freedom that the player piano brought he was able to use all sort of techniques, including rhythmic displacement , multiple voices and simultaneous voices in different registers. The effect is quite mesmerising in short doses - these pieces each last 4-5 minutes - though I can imagine than playing several of them one after the other could leave your head buzzing. But I'd take this music every day over than of Sorabji (day 96).

Partch: Castor and Pollux

Day 192

Harry Partch: Castor and Pollux

Harry Partch was one of the most innovative of the American modernists. He rejected almost all of the standard apparatus of western music - he was interested in microtone and designed and built his own instruments on which to performed his music. He made primitive recordings of some of his pieces uses multi-track tape recordings, but others have gone on to recreate his sound world. This piece is for an ensemble including marimba like instruments, glass bowls of various sizes and large plucked string instruments broadly related to the dulcimer.

I enjoyed the sonorities in this 15 minute piece. Some of it was very reminiscent of the Gamelan music from Bali and reminded me at times of the effects that Britten contoured up with conventional instruments in The Prince of the Pagodas. At other times use of short repeated melodic patterns reminded me of the minimalist music of Steve Reich and others from much later in the 20th century.  Structural the piece is a set of duets which are played separately and then combined in large ensembles. There was a real musical imagination underpinning the piece and it certainly has whetted my appetite to hear more of Partch’s music.

Ruggles: Sun Treader

Day 191

Ruggles: Sun Treader

Cleveland Orchestra

Christopher con Dohnányi

Ruggles was one of the most self-critical composers. In a very long life (1876-1971) he wrote only a dozen or so pieces - most of them lasting less than 15 mins. I came across a couple of his pieces years ago and rather enjoyed Angels for six muted trumpets. Sun Treader , completed after 5 years work in 1931, is Ruggles’ longest piece. It uses a large but not enormous orchestra. What struck me how ‘normal’ the piece was. There was none of the experimental textures or allusions to popular music that you find in Ives, the mad rhythms of Antheil or the tone clusters of Cowell. Instead this is a serious piece of music firmly in the European tradition. At times is could be mistaken for pre-Serial Schoenberg or even Hindemith. It had an impressive seriousness with some clear building blocks - particularly the opening drum motive which returns at key points in the score. 

I was impressed by the whole ethos of the score and can well imagine it making a good impression in performance. It is far more than simply an experiment or a creation of sensation for the sake of it. 

Ruggles by all accounts was an unpleasant individual who held some very unsavoury views. But he clearly was a composer who knew exactly what he was doing.

Cowell: Dynamic Motion

Day 190

Henry Cowell: Dynamic Motion

Chris Brown

Henry Cowell is one of the most well known of the American experimental composers but this is more by repute than by actual experience of his music.  I have heard his piece The Banshee which a piano piece in which the strings are plucked directly by the pianist rather than by the depressing the keys. 

This short piano pieces features Cowell’s characteristic use of clusters - the placing of the arms on the keys to depress a group of notes at a time. I had assumed, because of descriptions of his music, that this would all be at maximum volume but in fact much of it is at a gentle volume.  The music was not unpleasant but once the novelty had worn off  there was not much to recommend it. It sounds like the sort of thing that somebody would sit down at the piano and let his/her fingers (OK arms ) wander idly over the noisy keys.  There’s really nowhere for the composer to go once the novelty has worn off.

Antheil: Ballet Mechanique

Day 189

Antheil: Ballet Mechanique

Boston Modern Orchestra Project

Gil Rose

George Antheil (1900-1959) is certainly one of the more extraordinary composers that I have covered in this project. He was an inveterate self publicist and courted controversy, His autobiography was titled Bad boy of music and if the story that he pulled a revolver from his jacket and laid it on the piano before giving a recital in order to intimidate the critics is true one can see why he was worthy of the label. He was also an inventor and, astonishingly, was granted a patent for joint work with the film star Hedy Lamarr for work on wireless telegraphy which in part led to the modern technology found in Bluetooth and WiFi.

He was a properly trained musician and studied with important figures such as Bloch. But he quickly rebelled against that formal training and started to write extremely modern and challenging works. He was particularly interested in percussive effects and the possibilities of mechanical music. The Ballet Mechanique is by far his most famous work: it is in all of the text books as an example of the extreme avant guarde. His original conception was for an ensemble of 16 synchronised player pianos, 2 grand pianos and a vast array of percussion including electric bells, propellers and a siren.  It was impossible to co-ordinate the player pianos (Stravinsky had the same problem in a proto-version of Les Noces) and all later performances of the work were done in an arrangement for much smaller forces without the mechanical instruments.

it is only with the advent of computer technology that it has been possible to go back to the original concept and this performance attempts to do that. It all makes a fantastic noise.  The whole effect is like a combination of The Rite of Spring and Les Noces on steroids with two pianists playing the same piece of Bartok out of synch with each other in the next room. It is great fund for a while - the siren makes some very telling contributions - but at 30+ mins it is far too long. I did feel tempted to shout ‘please stop’ several times, but I did make it though to the end. You can tell that Antheil underneath all of the chaos, was actually a composer who knew what he was doing - but the gulf between this and the music of Stravinsky is almost too great to comprehend. I’d love to hear the piece live once, just to get the full force of the noise when everybody is going at things hammer and tongs, but after that it will certainly not go into any of my playlists.