|
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
SFCMP (1): Modernists 1, Postmodernists 0
February 26, 2001
|
By Jules Langert
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presented two unusual ensemble works, one from Denmark, the other from the Netherlands, Monday evening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Between them was Messiaen's Le Merle Bleu, played with superb intensity and clarity by pianist Julie Steinberg.
Movements on a Moving Line (1988), by the Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen, originally an orchestral composition, was here in its reworked form as a chamber piece for seven instruments. It is a series of episodes whose contrasting moods — dynamic, introspective, martial, lyrical — seemed almost like a set of poses or attitudes derived from scraps of other music once heard, dimly remembered, and haphazardly reconstructed. Ostinatos kept the textures confined in repetitive patterns, which tended to run down like a music box. The effect was passive and enervating, even at the somewhat forced climaxes.
Was this piece portraying the ephemeral relationship between music and memory? Was it also ironically suggesting that music can be heard as a sequence of interchangeable sound patterns to which we arbitrarily give meaning? Movements on a Moving Line was put together with skill, its ambivalences well calculated. After a while, however, when the composer's intentions became clear, his devices became predictable. From that point on, the piece simply went by, adding little that was fresh or interesting.
At the other end of the program, Through the Realm of Spirits (1989), by Dutch composer Klaas de Vries, for a large mixed ensemble of some 20 instruments, consisted mostly of long, declamatory melodic periods, often played in unison by most of the group. These were punctuated by heavily accentuated percussion or sometimes by veiled, sensuous sonorities in the harp and piano. The main problem is that de Vries eliminated too much variety and complexity. Just as some minimalist composition focuses solely on rhythm, de Vries here restricts himself to unadorned melody. It was unable to sustain my interest for the length of this amply proportioned composition. In Le Merle Bleu, Messiaen's style is severe and restrictive in its own way. There is never any counterpoint of line or rhythm. An almost ritualized isolation and repetition of musical gestures and patterns persists throughout the piece. Yet Messiaen's musical ideas are so striking and full of contrast that the piece brims with energy and vitality. It depicts the blue rock thrush, along with several other birds, on a high, rocky cliff overlooking the sea. The composer seems to delight in conveying in sound the visual imagery of the scene. This composition genuinely transcends its self-imposed limitations, the only piece on the program to do so. It reminds me that originality is still the primary ingredient of successful art. Postmodernists, such as the other two composers on Monday's program, will find it hard to maintain a stance of ironic detachment and critical reevaluation without relinquishing the spontaneity and vigor that enlivens a work like Le Merle Bleu. (Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.) ©2001 Jules Langert, all rights reserved |
