ECM New Series Releases

Arvo Pärt: Passio (ECM New Series 1370)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
Passio

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Lynne Dawson soprano
Michael George bass
Elizabeth Layton violin
Melinda Maxwell oboe
Elisabeth Wilson cello
Catherine Duckett bassoon
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Western Wind Chamber Choir
Paul Hillier conductor
Recorded March 1988, St. Jude-on-the-Hill, London
Engineers: Peter Laenger, Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Sometimes music arrests you the moment it begins. Arvo Pärt’s Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem of 1982 is just such a piece. Its opening proclamation speaks directly to the heart. Although the music is rooted in St. John’s Gospel, one need not be a believer to feel its spiritual tug. Pärt’s is one of an outstanding line of St. John Passions, most notably those of Orlande de Lassus (1580), Heinrich Schütz (1666), J. S. Bach (1724), and more recently of James MacMillan (2008). Pärt’s music is distinct from these in that it is so uniquely situated both in and out of its own time. His setting harks back to the monophony of the spoken word and accordingly makes us of an antiphonal structure determined by the rhythms and dynamics inherent in the Latin text. Passio is scored for bass and tenor soloists (as Jesus and Pilate, respectively), an SATB quartet as the refracted evangelist, choir, and a modest assortment of winds, strings, and organ. Under the sensitive direction of Paul Hillier, the musicians achieve an utterly breathtaking unity of diction and tone throughout the entire unbroken 70-minute duration.

Microtonal harmonies dominate the lead solos as the piece leads in from its captivating intro, rendered all the more dialogic with the countertenor’s entrance. The sopranic evangelist adds a feathery fringe to an already gauzy sound, even as it needles the patchwork it borders. The voices build into ascendant clusters against occasional commentary from woodwinds. Michael George is heartwrenching in the title role and sings with an almost orthodox flair. The higher voices work their way into compact triangles in a tessellation of strings and throats as winds weave their way through with the surety of fish swimming through water. A shaft of light cuts through the solace as the organ blossoms with fuller force and the entire choir bursts forth with flowering tendrils of fire, hurtling massive emotions into the cosmos. From this dense overgrowth emerge clusters of voices in a far-reaching conversation. The piece evolves in textually ordered sections, using its own remnants to build new vocabularies along the way. As such, the music feels “recited” more than played (not unlike the sacred works of Alexander Knaifel), gathering energy from the very blessing of articulation and peaking as that energy becomes concentrated when bid to be sung. Vocal lines bleed into one another, brought to life by the connective tissue of faith that flows through them, covering the score’s skeletal structure with skin while leaving stigmata untouched. These brief moments, during which the full weight of the assembled performers comes crashing down, are simply earth shattering and leave us effectively stilled for the quieter contemplations in which they are housed. This album is filled with moments of heart-stopping beauty: a high note from Lynne Dawson at 25:09, John Potter’s solo 90 seconds later, the chromatic climb from David James at 40:40 (and another at 54:11), the proclamation at 58:50, and of course the glorious final minute that leaves us spellbound.

One of the Estonian composer’s most beloved works, Passio is an epitome of the tintinnabuli style and ranks alongside such masterpieces as his Stabat Mater and Miserere. While Passio treats each section of text as its own poetic enclosure, a certain continuity casts the entire work in a light of repentance, a planetary prostration at the feet of something so almighty yet so pliant that only music can even begin to express in human terms that which is anything but.

Of the small handful of versions available on disc, this is the first and most definitive. A manifold approach to the recording is evident in every aspect, striking an ideal balance between intimacy and sheer vastness of sound. Some may be put off by a single long track that offers little respite for the overwhelmed listener, but the rewards that await us at the end far outweigh the patience required to get there.

<< Heiner Goebbels: Der Mann im Fahrstuhl/The Man In The Elevator (ECM 1369)
>> Markus Stockhausen: Cosi Lontano … Quasi Dentro (ECM 1371)

Thomas Tallis: The Lamentations Of Jeremiah (ECM New Series 1341)

| Tyran Grillo

Thomas Tallis
The Lamentations Of Jeremiah

David James countertenor
John Potter tenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Paul Hillier baritone
Michael George bass
Recorded September 1986, All Hallows Church, London
Engineer: Antony Howell

“The joy of our heart is ceased;
our dance is turned into mourning.”
–Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet

I remember first hearing The Lamentations of Jeremiah of Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) as performed by the Deller Consort on an old Vanguard LP. Needless to say, my fifteen-year-old ears were awestruck by the ache of their eponymous emotion. In the hands (or should I say mouths?) of the Hilliard Ensemble the music of Tallis has become something else entirely. What the Deller recording displayed in brooding sensibility, the Hilliards have matched tenfold in the sheer expanse of their craft and in the ways in which that craft unfurls in a realm of earthly care. Composed during the latter half of the sixteenth century, the Lamentations are of the utmost spiritual refinement. Yet Tallis scholar Paul Doe asserts that the Lamentations “were not conceived as church music at all, but rather for private recreational singing by loyal Catholics.” Nevertheless, their masterful shifts in harmony and register make for a challenging “recreation” to say the least. Tallis has forged a delicate balance between each vocal line, and recreating this balance requires astute attention to many intricacies beyond the printed score. This the Hilliards pull off with dutiful concentration in a fluid and precise performance. The sheer sense of continuity and retrograde motion in these motets lends itself well to the shape and mood of their source texts. Each voice is clearly heard, rising intermittently above the others in slow waves in one of the most stunning examples of polyphony ever composed.

A languid tenor line spins the second setting into a gorgeous tapestry and intensifies the sonic textures. Here, Tallis constructs his voices much like cells: each one seems to subdivide until it develops into a living, breathing organism in its own right. Bodies individuate, shedding skin and emotional excess. In this pollinated space the Hilliards display an almost intuitive control of dynamics, and the way they ease into minor-to-major shifts at the ends of phrases is a perfect example of their ability to restrain at near silence, letting syllables breathe on their own without losing any harmonic tension. And perhaps this is exactly what these cells are: “pure” morphemes building into larger texts that become more recognizable with age. By the end they have successfully rendered the words of God’s subjects, who themselves interpret audible impulses of spiritual awareness into concrete blocks of meaning to be transcribed and notated by the faithful composer living through the religico-musical gesture alone. In this manner Tallis caresses the text, laying his hands upon the words with every note, and in doing so lays them also upon the listener. For this recording of the Lamentations the Hilliards have used a score tuned to modern pitch—which requires a deeper, more demanding sound palette—avoiding the pitfalls that transposed renditions often create when breaching into soprano territory. The countertenor is ideally suited to the haunting quality of the work, and in this regard David James paints a lower ceiling toward which the other voices may waft.

After these juggernauts come Salvator mundi and O sacrum convivium, two shorter motets that pave the way for the monumental Mass for Four Voices. In these pieces the alto line becomes more than a thread, but a thick, heavy cord that anchors the music down with its gravid faith. The music climbs and waits in the rafters to breathe in preparation for the Mass-ive descent to follow. Where the Lamentations are a tightly meshed macramé, in the Mass they resemble a lattice through which the wind blows freely. The voices are like water caught in a cove—sometimes they crash against the rocks; others they trickle between them, eddying in eroded pockets, splitting in infinitesimal directions. As such, they remain divinely ordered, flowing to the rhythm of some invisible articulation that can only be implied through the sounds of the sea, the trickle of a stream, the rush of a geyser, the tranquil violence of a waterfall.

This album represents a collection of music that has been “left behind,” having survived centuries of upheaval. In order to be heard and experienced, it must be transmitted from paper to voice, from materiality to intangibility, from the mundane to the sacred, only to be reinscribed onto a compact disc and sold as a commodity. Either way, the music outlives its creator. From the opening strains of the Lamentations to the harmonic gumbo of the closing Absterge Domine, we are treated to a veritable feast of sounds upon which the mind and body may gorge in abstract mastication. The recording is flawless—with just enough sheen from the highs and a touch of earthly muddiness in the lows—and couched in just the right amount of reverb. David James never fails to amaze throughout, while the two tenors (and Rogers Covey-Crump in particular) outdo themselves in the Mass. Like a freshly broken geode, the music they create surprises with its inner wealth. Its intense complexity and dissonant grinds make its moments of resolution all the more breathtaking. Those unsettling harmonies shake the listener down to the feet, underscoring the fallibility of the body. They also characterize the turbulent era in which Tallis lived, marking humanity at the center of music that is otherwise ecclesiastical. In listening to this disc one loses all sense of time and place, and in doing so begins to latch on to whatever individual voices are discernible from this beautifully ordered cacophony. The sheer variety of color shifts is beyond comprehension: it seems inconceivable that one could sit at a piano or organ and pluck these sounds from the ether. It is a music of dreams, of visions, and I daresay a music of divine inspiration. As such it lays itself bare as a supremely constructed object, though like any object it can be used to create magic. With all the formative elements nested in this world—earth, water, wind, air, fire—this music reminds us that, to that list, we must also add: light.

<< Thomas Demenga: Bach/Holliger (ECM 1340 NS)
>> Christy Doran: Red Twist & Tuned Arrow (ECM 1342)

Arvo Pärt: Arbos (ECM New Series 1325)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
Arbos

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Gidon Kremer violin
Vladimir Mendelssohn viola
Thomas Demenga cello
Brass Ensemble Staatsorchester Stuttgart
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Arbos, An den Wassern zu Babel, Pari Intervallo, De Profundis, and Summa recorded March/August 1986, Karlshöhe, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland (Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg)
Stabat Mater, Es sang vor langen Jahren recorded January 1987 at St. John’s Church, London
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Andreas Neubronner (Südwest Tonstudio, Stuttgart)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The music of Arvo Pärt, says Wilfred Mellers in his liner notes, is “concerned with the numinous”; as direct a statement as one can make about the sounds contained in this relatively neglected disc, overshadowed as it often is by the popularity of Te Deum and Tabula Rasa. For those new to Pärt, the wide selection represented in Arbos makes a solid primer. From the succinct to the majestic, the listener is treated to a carefully programmed process of transformation, culminating in one of the great masterpieces of modern choral literature.

The journey begins with the title piece, a terse blast of energy scored for brass and percussion. While cacophonous and chromatic, it is also perpetual and dark, providing the core for the “Dies irae” of Pärt’s later Miserere. On its own, it swirls into a self-sustaining galaxy that becomes more ordered with distance.

An den Wassern zu Babel saßen wir und weinten renders the well-known “By the rivers of Babylon” passage from Psalm 137 in a series of lilting triads, alternating between men’s and women’s voices. Here and elsewhere throughout the album one encounters the essence of the composer’s “tintinnabuli” style. Sustained tones from organ thread a line of subdued vocal beads, reaching ever higher, only to fall like kites whose strings are cut.

Pari Intervallo provides respite from denser surroundings. Comprised of gravid lead tones resting on a blanket of softer commentary, it is a funereal postlude, waiting and watching as the end draws near, promising not cessation but new life in its reverberant heart. It is a sublime meditation on the meaning of divinity and the divinity of meaning, a soul left unscripted by the wayside, where it can be captured neither on paper nor in sound. And yet, here we find an attempt to sketch its contours against our better judgment, against our feelings of inadequacy, against our assumptions of complexity in all things spiritual. In this piece we find the fibers that bound the garments of Christ on the cross, the creaking of knees of those who knelt at his feet. Pari Intervallo shimmers like heat distortion, moving with the force of a slow tide before receding into a still sea.

This is followed by Pärt’s stunning De Profundis, which also makes an appearance in the Miserere, if augmented by a broader choral palette. Different also here is the recording, which is less spacious (the bass drum, for one, is far more present). The voices are allowed to luxuriate in their own fallibility, in that beauty of impermanence that makes them human. In exposing its fragility so readily, the music becomes resilient. An organ provides the waters upon which this vessel of music floats, while a gong adds a dual note of ceremony. Whereas this piece brings us to the end in Miserere, as a standalone composition it seems to suggest a beginning.

Es sang vor langen Jahren sets a German poem (text and translation available here) by Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) for alto, violin, and viola. Alto Susan Bickley weaves a delicate song in this bare setting. Her tone is rich, as if residing somewhere in the back of her throat, heard before it is seen. The strings are like a lectern upon which the poetry rests, its pages bronzed with age.

Next is Summa in its original choral version. It is the quintessential Pärt composition: balanced, lush with triadic splendor, and concise. Along with Fratres in its many guises, Summa is a red thread in Pärt’s oeuvre and shines in this heartfelt performance.

This is followed by a curious reprise of Arbos that may divide listeners. Either way, it startles us from our reverie before pushing us into another.

At last we come to the highlight of an already fine disc: the 1985 Stabat Mater for 3 voices and string trio. The downward movement of its opening strings presents us with a unique metaphorical inversion. Where many a Stabat Mater works toward transcendence in its mourning, here we are brought from Heaven to Earth, even as we know that we must look from the latter to the former. The voices are the Trinity in a single open Ah, as if to spin their grief beyond the confines of language. Only then, after a brief comment from strings, does the text reveal itself. David James is the standout performer here, leading the way to a more rhythmic passage, echoed sul ponticello. Soprano Lynne Dawson enters like light through a window, bringing a maternal edge as she joins with James in duet, dotting the frosted glass of eternity with her warm fingertips. From Mount Zion they overlook the valleys—as green as they are brown—until everything that we have known is washed away in sound.

On the whole, Arbos goes down like a potion brewed in a vast melodic crucible. This is music that revels in its own exiguousness, for it is within those empty spaces that the greatest discoveries await us.

<< Jan Garbarek: All Those Born With Wings (ECM 1324)
>> Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy: Avant Pop (ECM 1326)

Kim Kashkashian/Robert Levin: Elegies (ECM New Series 1316)

| Tyran Grillo

Elegies

Kim Kashkashian viola
Robert Levin piano
Recorded 1984 in New York
Engineers: Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Kim Kashkashian is easily one of the finest violists to ever place her bow on the instrument. She shines just as effervescently in the company of an orchestra as she does solo or here alongside Robert Levin, a trusty accompanist with whom she shares a palpable musical bond, and puts the range of her talents on full display in this fine chamber program of mostly rarities.

Benjamin Britten: Lachrymae: reflections on a song of Dowland (1950)
As the title suggests, Lachrymae is built around the merest skeleton of quotations. One doesn’t go into this piece expecting a recognizable motif. Rather, one wanders a dense exegesis of thematic material that splits the narrative into unspoken “reflections.” The only way in which these voices are renderable is through a music born in obscurity, like a film transitioning from blur to discernible image. This emergence from a darker history does little to foreshadow the drama that follows. An early pizzicato passage glitters with poignant resonance and the occasional touch of vibrato. At moments, Kashkashian and Levin fall into unison, only to scamper off again into the shadows. Kashkashian draws out a mosaic of double stops as Levin sprinkles her playing with suitable adornments. This leads to an eruption of emotion that seeks resolution through the sharpening of its own agitation. In its quieter passages, the music evokes a mouse running skittishly through hollow walls. At 14 minutes, Lachrymae is much to absorb in a single movement. Still, the fervor of the performance of this finely nuanced masterpiece is a revelation. In the hands of these competent musicians it is given its fullest possible breadth, so that the end leaves us wanting more.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Romance
A rarely heard work that blossoms in a gorgeous, almost cathartic outpouring of emotion, Romance is neo-romanticism at its finest. One thinks perhaps of summer, of those youthful infatuations that seemed so utterly consuming, only to be replaced by those even stronger and unimaginably overpowering. Whereas Vaughan Williams’s orchestral arrangements often evoke the pastoral landscape in all its vastness, Romance skirts the edges like a wayfarer who, during an unseasonable cold snap, stumbles upon a half-buried skull: remnants of a forgotten hunt. As the sun rises, the animal’s spirit animates the dawn with promise and leaves us feeling light as air.

Carter: Elegy (1943)
If the Vaughan Williams is inhalation, then Carter’s attractive miniature is exhalation, a windy sigh across nostalgic waters. Each note lilts with careful equality. Even as the energy increases, the music remains constant in its message. This is a solitary world where only composers can open their eyes, and only listeners can close them.

Glazunov: Elegie (1892)
This is perhaps the most evenly structured statement on the program, a crystalline rivulet that knows exactly where it is headed. Kashkashian’s vibrato is particularly resplendent here and one can almost imagine the comportment of her playing, the arches of fingers and tilts of body that produce such sounds from this neglected instrument. Her tone is rich and inviting, if a touch regretful. Elegie is melodically succinct, rhythmically consistent, and symmetrical in approach, closing with a lovely phrase amid an ivory cluster.

Liszt: Romance Oubliée (1881)
Liszt’s dedication on the original manuscript reads: “To Herr Professor Herman Ritter, the inventor of the viola alta.” Ritter (1849-1926) was responsible for designing the instrument in question, a 5-string affair with a larger body for a higher range combined with deeper tone. And certainly, one can hear the expansive reach Liszt has wrought into this piece, weaving as it does like a needle and thread. Our musicians here work in studied synergy, building to a carillon-like crescendo. Listening to this piece is like body surfing: you just have to let its undulations take you where they will. The viola goes down to its lowest note, never venturing much higher as it washes ashore in a mournful end.

Kodály: Adagio (1905)
Composed just before Kodály would launch his monumental gathering of Hungarian folksongs, this quaint Adagio shines with a Brahmsian lacquer. The music is plaintive, even timid. It gives the piano a few asides in which to speak with minimal interjection. These segue into a gorgeous series of fast arpeggios over which the viola glides with an ice skater’s ease. This breaks down into a dirge that turns slowly toward a more uplifting song. The viola seems almost to weep; whether with joy or sadness is never clear.

Vieuxtemps: Elegie (1854)
This closing piece feels choral and almost militaristic, as if it were an anthem or war song meant to inspire troops down on hard times. The nostalgia with which it is painted attests to its arousing qualities as it marches through silent trenches in a flurry of confusion. This dark mood leaves the listener with much to ponder after the CD ends.

On the whole, this album is very warmly recorded. Levin pulls from the piano an almost gamelan-like quality, while Kashkashian luxuriates in the plurivocity afforded to her. She interacts with her instrument as would fingers upon a spine and her tonal depth often breaches cello territory. For anyone who is curious to discover what her playing is all about but who is wary of her penchant for the contemporary, this is an ideal place to start.

<< Werner Pirchner: EU (ECM 1314/15 NS)
>> Keith Jarrett Trio: Standards Live (ECM 1317)

Meredith Monk: Do You Be (ECM New Series 1336)

| Tyran Grillo

Meredith Monk
Do You Be

Meredith Monk voice, piano, synthesizer
Robert Een voice
Ching Gonzalez voice
Andrea Goodman voice
Wayne Hankin voice, keyboards, bagpipes
Naaz Hosseini voice, violin
Nicky Paraiso voice
Nurit Tilles piano, voice, keyboards
Johanna Arnold voice
John Eppler voice
Edmund Niemann piano
Recorded June 1986 and January 1987, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg and Clinton Sounds, New York
Engineers: Martin Wieland and James Farber
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The appearance of words in Meredith Monk’s work can be rather jolting, as it is so easy for one to get used to the lack of semantic footholds. Like few other vocalists (Elizabeth Fraser comes to mind), Monk grinds the surface of what is being conveyed to such a fine patina that quantifiable meaning is often no longer necessary. Her vocal ramblings are mimetic, purposeful. Monk ably switches between registers and modes with lightning precision, creating a veritable conversation in and through a single body, gazing in multiple directions in the same breath.

Do You Be is a Meredith Monk hodgepodge culled from an assortment of operas and theater pieces. As such, it contains more in the way of quantifiable semantics.

We open with four selections from Acts From Under And Above. A synth ruptures the silence that precedes “Scared Song,” in which Monk’s immediately recognizable voice furls and unfurls itself across a text that blurs the line between confession and innocent recollection. And just when we have been primed to embark on yet another wordless journey, we recognize the emergence of narrative from its constituent parts as she sings:

And a runnin’ and a skatin’
and a runnin’ and a skatin’
and a runnin’ and a skatin’
A runnin’ and a skatin’    A runnin’ and a skatin’
A runnin’ and a skatin’    A runnin’ and a skatin’    A run, oh I’m scared
Oh I’m scared, oh she’s scared, oh she’s scared
Scared, oh he’s scared, scared    Oh, oh, oh, oh

This rondele of sorts is self-contained, and as such bars its own interpretive cycle from completion. Enter piano, coloring the sound with a somewhat harsh and underlying urgency, and a series of fragmentary commentaries. “I Don’t Know” continues pianistically, now in quieter accompaniment. Against this faded backdrop, Monk squeals and dips, sounding veritably bird-like as she hops among the branches of her scant libretto:

So what, what do you know?
What, what do you know?
I don’t know, I don’t know

and variations thereof. She seems to inhabit the edges of these words, picking at their scabbed edges until those membranes join the dust of countless expelled breaths. “Window In 7’s” comprises a brief interlude, a linear narrative upon a road that is freshly paved, yet which also retains all the old potholes and cracks that its travelers remember so well, and along which we proceed with the regularity of a printing press. “Double Fiesta” abounds with sublime vocal reflections. A second piano joins the first, playing a staccato note that becomes almost indistinguishable from Monk’s voice as it punctuates the audio landscape like a Morse code signal. Monk laughs, but musically—that is, in accordance with a predetermined time signature. She lowers herself, only to rise higher with each recapitulation. Amid a series of motives, she leans back and laughs. And with this the pianos build to a crescendo and release.

The next piece is our title track and is excerpted from Vessel: An Opera Epic. “Do You Be” ululates and runs around in frantic circles. As with much of her earlier work, Monk plumbs the depths of communication.

This is followed by a representative selection from The Games. “Panda Chant I” works in a round, tracing its center with the throat and coloring it in with air. Unpretentiously built around the syllables “PAN-DA,” an a cappella ensemble provides its own rhythm and direction. “Memory Song” lays down a delicate Casio ostinato, over which women’s voices skip like stones across water, jumping octaves with beautiful ease. They narrate from a space in between German and English:

Ich vergesse, Ich vergesse, vergesse, vergesse
Ich vergesse, vergesse, vergesse
(I forget)
Ich vergesse, vergesse, vergesse
Ich vergesse

Trees, trees
Oh trees, birds
Oh trees, birds, coffee, coffee, coffee
Do you remember, do you remember, do you remember…

as a violin comes and goes, arising in solo at last as if to mourn while also paving the way to resurrection. The voices speak through their song:

Trees, birds
Champagne, champagne, champagne
Football, football, football
Cherries, cherries, cherries

After a sylvan cacophony, there is a litany of memories:

I remember mushrooms
I remember candlelight
I remember early morning coffee
I remember fish
I remember newspapers
(Ich erinnere mich an altes Großsteinpflaster)
I remember a black Suzuki
(Ich erinnere das Tischgebet)
I remember aspirin
I’m thinking about Shakespeare’s garden

As Monk so brilliantly demonstrates time and time again, after the rather startling aphasia that lulls us into this unusual sense of communion, when hearing language in its more standard form, even the most innocuous asides take on fresh meaning. “Panda Chant II” is another a cappella round. Perhaps a distant cousin of the Ramayana Monkey Chant, it similarly recreates the chattering of lush forestland.

“Quarry Lullaby” is our only selection from Quarry, and opens with a plaintive male voice, joined in unison by a female one, and still by others in counterpoint. The piece builds to a fine display of extended vocal techniques. As the dirge ends, it lays itself bare to a strange animal rhythm, the complexity of which lies in the open spaces that it leaves unbreathed upon.

We close with two more selections from The Games. “Astronaut Anthem” inhabits, as its title would imply, the depths of outer space, reaching us only through a sort of dynamic motionlessness, like that of a comet in the sky. It unfolds with the resonance of medieval polyphony and is certainly the most “atmospheric” piece on the album. Its resplendent harmonic twists and soaring sensibility; its confluence of title and musical expression; its closing sirens that hurtle themselves into the ether with the force of rocket propulsion—all of these elements make for a mystical experience. For the final “Wheel,” the listener is fed on bagpipes and a linear vocal line. It is a fitting closing that proceeds like end credits rolling over characters’ faces in freeze-frame. Memories still move among us, but we know the story must end. Accepting this end, we find great beauty in the solace it promises. The bagpipes summon shrill breath, even as the vocal after-effects linger with the assurance of something that will outlive us all.

Listening to this music we might swear we’ve heard it before, for it may very well tap into something familiar but hidden, something intimately touched by the promise of singing and sealed by the taste of mortality.

<< Steve Tibbetts: Exploded View (ECM 1335)
>> Norma Winstone: Somewhere Called Home (ECM 1337)

Gavin Bryars: Three Viennese Dancers (ECM New Series 1323)

| Tyran Grillo

Gavin Bryars
Three Viennese Dancers

Pascal Pongy French horn
Charles Fullbrook percussion
Gavin Bryars percussion
Arditti String Quartet
Recorded February 1986, Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The opening moments of this seminal disc encapsulate Bryars in a nutshell: restrained yet so full of life. A murky prologue drags us through reverberant waters, never quite breaking the waves of percussion above. Like the tides, sustained tones caress the coasts of our attention with invisible rhythm. If one were to record a wind chime, slow it down to a languid crawl, and submerge it in a tank, and if we were outside that tank with our ears pressed against the glass, straining to feel the vibrations with every inch our bodies, we might approach an analogous sound. Despite the lack of discernable melody, the mood is thick, fading into the silence whence it came.

String Quartet No. 1 (“Between the National and the Bristol”)
The result of a 1985 Vienna Festival commission, this quartet allowed Bryars to look beyond the insular world of his main instrument (the double bass) and into new territory. Having never written for string quartet, Bryars was faced with the task of both expanding upon the intricacies of his instrument while being faithful to the dynamics of this new medium. On the title, Bryars says:

During the time that I was working with Robert Wilson on The CIVIL WarS I undertook research into the life of Mata Hari in order to find text for an aria. One night in 1906, unknown to each of them, the three most famous dancers of the period were staying in Vienna. Maud Allan was at the National, Mata Hari was at the Hotel Bristol, and Isadora Duncan, another reference within the quartet, was staying in a hotel “somewhere between the National and the Bristol”.

While one might easily dismiss the anecdotal underpinnings of the quartet, they do add a splash of color to its monochromatic canvas. The instruments seem to enter in procession, with the violins in the lead. Each layer of the quartet is clearly introduced, as if each were its own string in a larger instrument, speaking as one story between worlds. The music here is fairly minimal and at moments puts me in mind of Michael Galasso’s wonderful album Scenes, also available on ECM. With the same grace that embodies so much of his work, Bryars traces his path in arcs. The quartet evokes a European city in pastiche. Violins raise a call to arms and, with one foot firmly planted in the arid terrain of imperialism, sound an alarm of imminent histories. We become privy to the sentiments of a young girl who has grown up in an oppressive regime and who must now choose between life and death, between family and freedom. She wanders the lamp-lit streets, glistening with a fresh spate of rain, and she despairs because she has lost something more than her grounding: her identity. The state does not beat her with its fists, but oppresses her with its presence of mind, even as her not-so-distant memories haunt her with promises of a better life. But then, we are suddenly lifted away from this scene in a swish from cello to violins, whereupon the narrative slips into a bizarre sort of dance—one that sways and tilts in conversation with gravity. It is the twirl of slippered feet dotting the landscape with steps as yet undiagrammed. The passage of time becomes contested as strings ascend once more into new harmonic possibilities.

First Viennese Dance
This third piece nears the 20-minute length of its predecessor and is scored for French horn and percussion. Again, we get a broad swell of gongs and liquid tones. Tubular bells resound in our ears as metallic clusters glitter like handfuls of coins dropped into a fountain. Like the prologue, this music is murky—so much so that even the trebly glockenspiel is diffused in a haze of post-production. Unlike the first string quartet, the structure of this first dance is so amorphous that all potential themes are stretched to the point of misrecognition. By the time we get to the end of any melodic line, we are so far from the beginning that we forget it. This music is more atmosphere than motive, flickering somewhere between an unknown future and nostalgia. Bryars is able to elicit from these acoustic ingredients a sound that is almost electronic in taste. In contrast to Bryars’s earlier The Sinking of the Titanic, however, the music represented on this album seems to have no specific vessel. It is, rather, the aura of a war-ravaged city yet to be built, much less destroyed.

The album ends where it began, plumbing the depths of clouded waters, leaving us to recede ever downward into a heavy darkness. This is an album to be experienced with closed eyes.

<< David Torn: cloud about mercury (ECM 1322)
>> Jan Garbarek: All Those Born With Wings (ECM 1324)

Meredith Monk: Turtle Dreams (ECM New Series 1240)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1240

Meredith Monk
Turtle Dreams

Meredith Monk voice, piano, organ, mini-moog, casio
Andrea Goodman voice
Paul Langland voice
Robert Een voice
Julius Eastman organ
Steve Lockwood organ
Collin Walcott organ, didjeridoo
Recorded June/July 1982 and January 1983 in New York and Ludwigsburg
Engineers: John Kilgore, Thomas Lazarus / Howard Kaufman, Phil Lee, M. Monk, M. Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Collin Walcott

The shell of Meredith Monk’s Turtle Dreams is, like that of its eponymous animal, of cellular design and impenetrable strength while also housing a fragile heart within. This turtle’s heart is the album’s rhythmic center, represented through the regularity of the organ that opens the title track. The instrument is stripped of effects, direct and without pretension. We meet a voice that might be described as eerie, yet which with a few deep listens reveals its sobering honesty. A second vocalist mimics these incantations. Their combined syllables feel precisely notated and yet free, as if passed down orally rather than through the written page. Eventually the voices rise into mechanical sirens, becoming protracted and devoid of the regularity that has spawned them, until they bubble and froth. The organ stops suddenly, leaving vocal trails to flash and fade like shooting stars. Notes ululate and dance, congregating like insects—dispersed with the wave of a hand, only to return in greater chorus. The first movement ends with return of the two voices, only now slightly askew and in freefall, as other voices rise in countermeasure before fading against the organ, which continues its commentary before deciding on a contentious chord.

The second movement, “View 1,” introduces a sharper pianistic sound. The music is so precise and so cyclical that it almost resembles that of video games, which must also be open-ended so that it can be looped seamlessly (and potentially endlessly) to match the imagery for which it was composed. A single voice comes in, post-processed with a shallow echo, presaging a similarly processed keyboard that slathers the music with nostalgia. Against Monk’s private songs, two voices interject like teasing children. The electric piano then signals a shift in narrative. No longer is the human voice responsible for telling us the tale, but is instead co-opted by silence, reminding us that the same realm which guards our cherished past is the same realm from which arises the most hurtful things. A modulated synthesizer shows its face before bringing the movement to a close.

Next is “Engine Steps,” in which timed silence breeds an unusual industrial rhythm, like a conveyor belt carrying things to be stamped and shipped out into the universe.

A diminutive voice laces the following “Ester’s Song,” a brief peek into the mind of a child at play.

“View 2” signals the organ’s final return, carrying upon its back the same choral cargo. The single voice, the narrative voice, becomes divided, speaking of ancestors, each of whom casts a single lure into Ester’s mind. Her hair grows, but her face stays the same.

The title of the album as a whole, aside from being rather evocative, also might just be the most accurate description of the mood contained therein. For what is a turtle, if not a living being whose body is its home, whose life is lived in and near water, and whose dreams must also be liquid, submerged, and full of the sounds of the marsh. As with much of Monk’s compositional work, what we get on this CD is only half the journey, complimented as it is by dance and imagery. The brief clips available online don’t seem to do justice to the overall shape and feel of what I am sure is a far more inclusive live experience. Nevertheless, the descriptive power of Monk’s wordlessness is staggering, and albums like this one continue to enlarge the scope of linguistic possibility. I can only hope it might do the same for all who listen.

<< Denny Zeitlin/Charlie Haden: Time Remembers One Time Once (ECM 1239)
>> Bill Frisell: In Line (ECM 1241)

Meredith Monk: Dolmen Music (ECM New Series 1197)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1197

Meredith Monk
Dolmen Music

Meredith Monk voice, piano
Collin Walcott percussion, violin
Steve Lockwood piano
Andrea Goodman voice
Monika Solem voice
Paul Langland voice
Robert Een voice, cello
Julius Eastman percussion, voice
Recorded March 1980 and January 1981 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Collin Walcott

Like much of Meredith Monk’s work, the atmospheres on this album are as foreign as they are familiar and comprise a vivid testament to the staying power of her compositional talents. When I first heard Dolmen Music as a teenager, I thought of it as folk music from lands that had yet to be discovered (admittedly, this interpretation was shaped by an oft-cited description to the same effect). Listening to it anew, I prefer to think of it as music that comes from a place so deep within, so familiar, that we tremble to hear it blatantly exposed. Monk’s music is all about the voice: it extends from the voice, begins and ends in the throat, reveling in its elasticity, its pliancy, its fragility.

Gotham Lullaby
Over a sparse layer of four-note arpeggios, Monk sings and squeals, tracing her swan song in the dust. Sustained tones hover in the background just out of reach as her voice ebbs and flows along a wordless coast. This is a lullaby of trees, if not for trees; a dream of darkness between branches and the decay of leaves falling past the city’s edge; a place where the wind can still be felt…

Travelling
This little journey springs to life with a rollicking piano laced with ritualistic drumbeats. Monk carries full weight in her confident ululations. The emergence of a rain stick adds an air of ceremony, where the piano becomes our circle and Monk the medium who channels voices of the dead in a semblance of life. Words dissolve, wetted by the trickling of monosyllables, grunts, and cries. Monk converses with her self, as if the piano were not another voice but a landscape in which the voice has found purchase. She casts her lot into the chasm at her feet as one other voice takes up the call, floating like a severed head in the ether, its mouth agape to expel the song of its birth and its death.

The Tale
A thread of piano and mouth organ supports a series of vocal beads in which we get our first and only discernible words. Over this conformist backdrop, she proclaims:

I still have my hands.
I still have my mind.
I still have my money.
I still have my telephone…hello, hellooo, hellooooo?

And between these seemingly innocuous interjections, she riddles our attention with rhythmic laughter against the sound of breaking glass, the detritus of the living.

I still have my memory.
I still have my gold ring…beautiful, I love it, I love it!
I still have my allergies.
I still have my philosophy.

This is not the voice of the insane, despite what its many disjunctions might have us believe. It is the voice of a larger social body gone awry rather than that of a single individual corrupted by its oppressive infrastructure.

Biography
This is the most emotional composition on the album and makes me stop what I’m doing every time it comes on. It is a keen in reverse that scrapes the interiors of our lungs. Peeking out from the deepest recesses of articulation, Monk sings as if in mourning. Her utter abandon allows her access to divine control through the very lack of her desire to control. In doing so, she looses the strictures of emotional conduct, shedding the outer walls of her physical makeup. She cries as she sings, intoning and droning. Her register strays into animal territory, as if intent on communicating to any and all creatures that might be listening. She runs through this vocal catalog, as it were, as a way of rearticulating the nature of her supposed loss and the comportment of its breathing remnants. This piece in particular rests on a razor’s edge, seemingly content on lying back and letting the world press down until it is cleaved in two. She wakes and walks, a divided self, into the night.

Dolmen Music
The last 24 minutes of the album are dedicated to its title piece, and what an epic journey it is. Dolmen Music unfolds liturgically, as delicate as it is persistent. A cello breathes into our ears with soft harmonics: introit. Women’s voices evoke the fundamental phonemic underpinnings of language. This language is not primitive so much as formative, spreading its vocabulary across space and time. Male voices process, lilting with “Ahs” that degenerate into a sort of ritualistic aphasia constrained only by time signatures. The cello returns: communion. The congregation partakes of a musical host and drinks vocal wine. And in the ecstatic peace that follows, Monk’s voices gather energy and speed with evangelical fervor. The voices work in canon, floating even as they crash into the limits of meaning.

With this album Monk reinvigorated the linear song, the sole/soul singer, the monophonic performer. With the barest resources, she and her highly trained ensemble gave us an eternity of sounds. Dolmen Music makes a stunning addition to any music collection not only for its audible dimensions, but also as an art object, for it boasts one of the most perfectly suited covers in the entire ECM catalog.

<< Thomas Demenga/Heinz Reber: Cellorganics (ECM 1196 NS)
>> Steve Eliovson: Dawn Dance (ECM 1198)

Steve Reich: Tehillim (ECM New Series 1215)

| Tyran Grillo

Steve Reich
Tehillim

Pamela Wood voice
Cheryl Bensman voice
Rebecca Armstrong voice
Jay Clayton voice
Bob Becker percussion
Russ Hartenberger percussion
Garry Kvistad percussion
Steve Reich percussion
Gary Schall percussion
Glen Velez percussion
Virgil Blackwell clarinet, flute
Mort Silver clarinet, piccolo
Vivian Burdick oboe
Ellen Bardekoff English horn
Edmund Niemann electric organ
Nurit Tilles electric organ
Shem Guibbory violin
Robert Chausow violin
Ruth Siegler viola
Chris Finckel cello
Lewis Paer bass
George Manahan conductor
Recorded October 1981 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Human languages are contrived, insofar as they have undergone extensive sociopolitical reshaping. In Steve Reich’s Tehillim, however, words take on a self-sustaining feel, deeply rooted as they are in the nutrient-rich soil of the composer’s instrumental configuration, and serve to dictate the rhythmic and dynamic flow of a seminal shift in American “minimalism.” Being the first document of this new path in Reich’s personal and professional development, this recording matches an endearing trepidation to every practiced gesture. The music therein, says Reich, may be “heard as traditional and new at the same time,” as it was both a way for him to explore his Jewish roots while weaving a fresh brand of secularism into the many liturgical threads at his feet. At just under 30 minutes, Tehillim is but a fleeting unraveling of that very fabric.

Tehillim, meaning “praises” and referring to the Hebrew Book of Psalms from which it borrows its texts, is more than a remarkable work. It is also a work of remarks. The scoring is deceptively simple, built around a core of drum and clapping before introducing a female voice doubled by clarinet. This opens into a series of four-part canons against a backdrop of electric organs and maraca. Each melodic line—human and instrumental alike—moves distinctly, unaffected by the trappings of vibrato or other flourishes, as an imitative counterpoint works its way into the smoke of this short-burning votive candle. Part II carries the women’s voices into higher elevations in which the passage of time is marked by a light interplay of drums. Part III is the slowest of the four, ebbing and flowing with a breath’s involuntary precision. Like the most engaging of Gavin Bryars’s ensemble pieces, this section pulses with the quiet splendor of a deep-sea organism. The final part opens our eyes again to sunlight. With the barest assortment of auditory keys, it unlocks just enough doors to usher us into a more personal understanding of exultation. It can be no coincidence, then, that the derivation of the title—Hey, Lamed, Lamed (HLL)—also forms the root for “hallelujah.” And so, when the hallelujahs that close the piece spring up like so much plant life, they seem to forage even deeper into their origins. Tehillim is the Tree of Life feeding off itself, bathing in the spores of the Word made flesh.