Variable Expression

Distractfold‘s sixth installment featured more new music written in the last decade from around the globe, the highest profile composer whose work was performed being Georges Aperghis with Rasch for violin and viola. Other offerings came from Serbia, Australia, Italy, USA, Ireland and the UK.

In the Aperghis, an initial oscillating motif is held constant to highlight changes between loud and soft, pizzicato and arco, violin and viola, before itself being juxtaposed with linear glissandi. Regular rhythm is then introduced and assimilated into the discourse. The problem I had with this method (as I often do with pieces which start with relatively complicated and fluid writing and seek constant rhythmic subdivisions as a secondary idea), is that imposing a rhythmic base is a weak way to develop a texture already with a high density of information, and indeed I would suggest that gestural variation is a much more powerful tool for development than truncating rhythm. Swapping the ordering of these developments in this piece might have helped it support its trajectory better (saving the best until last, as it were). In addition, it was not until I saw the score afterwards that I realised it was littered with quarter-tones, and I certainly do not think it was the fault of the players (Linda Jankowska and Emma Richards) who captured the spirit of the piece perfectly; the gestures were mostly fast and rarely were there chords presented which gave me (at least) the opportunity to register that the harmony was microtonal. Perhaps this reflects my belief that microtones should be used as “out of tune” entities, but in the case of this piece I felt that the quarter-tones could be mapped to the nearest semitone at little cost to the argument of the work.

The piece in the concert which most impressed me was Milica Djordjevic‘s Fail for ‘cello and electronics, given a dedicated performance by Alice Purton. Partials of the harmonic series derived from the ‘cellist’s bottom E and distortions thereof provide the basis of an electronic commentary. These themes continue throughout the work with an overall trajectory provided by shifting the fundamental to D, then to trills between the D and the E, and then juxtaposing the resulting harmonic field with an overtone series on A (albeit with blurring by electronic distortion).

It was a shame that the audience was as small as it was on the night and I hope the relationships that the ensemble has formed with composers from far afield begin to rectify this. The next concert is a joint effort between Distractfold and the MIVOS Quartet from New York on 31st January and I hope it receives the attention it deserves.

Sounds of the Engine House are a collective of concert programmers and promoters, founded by composers Steven Jackson, Ben Gaunt and Eve Harrison, which offer young, upcoming soloists and ensembles the platform to perform the works of living composers, hitherto in venues in and around Manchester. Friday’s installment featured clarinettist Rocío Bolaños, cellist Rod Skipp representing his performer-composer collaboration _scape with his composing brother Norm, and Chiasmus Ensemble under the directorship of James Stephenson.

Three pieces on the programme stood out for me, two of which were by founder member Eve Harrison herself. for the pillars of the temple stand apart, for solo clarinet, juxtaposes shortly articulated, rhythmic material with more lyrical writing, at first linearly, then vertically as the lyrical material comes to define an expansion upwards in range whilst the articulated music defines the bass. The lyrical material stabilises onto a fixed concert B, before a larger secondary section mixes all previous ideas more finely. Luckily, my ear-analysis and the composer’s programme note were very closely related (I wrote this before reading her commentary – I promise!), indicating that she had done her job very well.

Harrison’s second piece was for Chiasmus, entitled Guthun Nan Eun (The Songs of Birds). The structure of this piece was similar to that of for the pillars of the temple stand apart: different musical cells assigned to different instruments (presumably evoking bird calls) are used to generate an isorhythmic texture which is juxtaposed by a more sustained and static one played by the clarinet and cello. Again, these two ideas are juxtaposed linearly, but the static texture gradually gains the upper hand leading into a section with sustained chords from the whole ensemble. An echo of the opening is heard when individual instruments recapitulate some of the opening motifs, but the texture only simplifies further towards a coda where the opening is given more rhythmic regularity. In both pieces, the structures were clear and the writing economical.

Norm and Rod Skipp, the members of _scape, describe 858 as the result of wanting to “improvise, compose and record a complete piece for cello and electronics within an afternoon”. I remember Philip Glass paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg: “first idea, best idea”, and this piece certainly seemed to benefit from this approach (although length of gestation period, from composer to composer at least, has little correlation with quality – most composers seem to have a “natural” speed of productive writing which if exceeded, results in a rushed, ill-thought-through piece or in the other direction, fussiness or paranoia over isolated passages over longer periods of time can be equally unhelpful. Speed of writing is also dependent on what stage of development the composer is in – the more you know the composer you want to be, the more assured and quicker composition is bound to be; Carter and Benjamin are examples of this. It also depends on how much time in a day you have to compose, or at least think about composition!). Anyway, the piece itself alternates between two cycles of pitches (C#-Bb-A-D up high versus A-F#-F down low, with the later addition of bottom C and C#) with simple variation generated by an electronic commentary the resonance of the cello (adding echoes, distortions) and octave displacements of individual pitches within the cycles. Simple, but effective.

Pared-down musical languages within simple structures seemed to be a theme for most of the evening’s music, but the beauty of Sounds of the Engine House being an umbrella organisation for artists is one never knows what to expect! The collective are steadily expanding their audience base and I hope they get a chance to export their showcases to further afield.

Df #4 was the latest installment in a series of concerts from Manchester based new music ensemble Distractfold, the diversity of nationalities of whose players is reflected in the composers whose pieces are performed: countries represented in Df #4 included Argentina, Italy, the UK, France, Russia, Germany, the US, Spain and Costa Rica. As well as attempting global musical representation, each concert typically presents purely instrumental, electroacoustic and purely electronic music, reflecting the interests of composer Sam Salem, who is one of Distractfold’s founders.

The evening’s programme consisted of works written in the last decade alongside older pieces from more established composers in Salvatore Sciarrino and Sofia Gubaidulina. The first piece in the programme, No Input for clarinet and tape by Santiago Diez-Fischer preceeded Sciarrino’s Tre notturni brillanti for solo viola, with the first piece sharing Sciarrino’s preoccupations with boundaries between sound and silence and static, repetitious, cellular textures punctuated by outbursts, but aside from this, there was no obvious continuity to the programme.

It was two of the purely electronic pieces that most impressed me. End transmission by Joseph Hyde was with a video projection displaying distorted, pixelated images not stylistically dissimilar to the colour field paintings of Clyfford Still. These images remained mainly abstract until near the end where concrete symbols, to me evocative of those for gender, emerged, panning across the scene. It seemed to me as if the video was a visual interpretation of the music, rather than the other way round or a balanced dialogue and indeed for me the images had no clear structure in time, save for the rate of projection of images following the beat speed of the music. I could not make a narrative sense of the images either and wondered whether the projections were really necessary. However, musically the piece was a success; a heavy rhythmic bass with a constant rhythmic pulse is initially counterpointed with higher pitched noises with variation provided by distorting unit lengths, then by varying the rhythmic base(!) used. Eventually, rhythm is disintegrated giving way to more indefinite textures before a ternary form is completed with the reintroduction of rhythm, this time with constant unit lengths. A coda recapitulates the opening sonorities explicitly.

The piece which I felt most exploited the textural density and variety possible when composing electronic music was Hans Tutschku‘s Rojo. Voices and prayer bowls are electronically manipulated and layered to generate rich textural blocks of material, separated by rising and volatile screams which mark the start of each section. These demarcations occur with increasing frequency and lead the music into a climatic passage consisting of an extended manipulation of the screams, which dies away to reveal the return of the opening texture.

As with my experience attending gaussian 1, I found the concert very refreshing and I found its ambition to perform music (mostly) from abroad which would not otherwise be given a platform in this country and the dedication of the players extremely comforting. I regret not having been able to attend the previous concerts in the series and Distractfold have certainly acquired a new fan in me.