Xenakis and the Music of Today xpost
rich...@gmail.com
I returned from a concert given at the Morgan Library of the JACK
Quartet performing the four quartets of Iannis Xenakis, written
between 1983 and 1994. The JACK, which specializes in 'modern' music,
played brilliantly to a virtually sold-out house, packed with young
people but also some more typical 'concert goers'. I will let you
decide which group I was in.
My exposure to Xenakis has been the odd piece here and there, and of
course, everyone's Xenakis, A Space Odyssey. Without reviewing the
performances in detail, let me only say that the works are brilliant,
coruscating, and utterly involving. Depending on the work, Xenakis
moves from music that is chordal if not tonal to some amazing and
outrageous effects, but there's not a single piece that doesn't hang
together, or make you feel antsy on hearing it.
The artist who comes to mind immediately with Xenakis is actually
Jackson Pollock, of the so-called 'drip paintings'. Pollock was
acutally a very great painter, imho, and although he used a specific
technique for many of his canvases, it is no more accurate to call him
a 'drip painter' or an 'abstract painter' than to call Rembrandt a
"brush painter" or a "realist painter". All of Pollock's great
canvases really cohere; even if he seemed to use aleatoric means to
create the canvases, this was really not the issue. He gave up
'perspective', but there's not a canvas that doesn't hold together
visually, with a clear center and structure.
This is also true of Xenakis. His means may involve unique sound
worlds, and have nothing recognizable to do with any system of
tonality, but the STRUCTURE is as compelling, and as immediately
apparent to the listener, as if we were talking the first Viennese
School. One may not always know where one is, or what is coming, in
terms of sound, but you sure have the sense that you are 'somewhere'
and within a structure that will take you somewhere else.
Xenakis himself was apparently much taken with Brahms (in a preconcert
lecture, the quartet discussed that around the time of the first
quartet's composition, someone was trying to talk about 'his' music to
Xenakis, and all Xenakis wanted to talk about was Brahms. The last
piece played, Tetras (from 1983), though full of amazing sound
effects, put me in mind more of Schubert's 'quartettsatz' than
anything else. Whether I would have been able to find my way into the
music for a first time without the presence of performers is a
separate question - it would have taken some concentrated listening -
but having experienced the music first hand now, I am eager to hear it
all again.
None of this, though, is the point. The point is really that 'this' is
where music is, and should be, in the present. We all spend so much
time dealing with museum pieces, one way or another (and for good
reason), but it is the past, and this is the present. There were more
young people in this concert than I have seen at the MET, for example,
a house of 3,600 seats, except for Adams' and Glass' works.
A friend was kind enough, a while back, to send me some of the earlier
Boulez interviews, where he suggested that opera houses be blown up
(Boulez apparently has a fan in Placido Domingo <evil grin>), and some
other related interviews where Boulez talks about really wanting to do
something 'new in opera that changes the rules and expectations of the
form.
We all, I think, bemoan the slow death of classical music - the
musical museums are getting emptier, even with the blockbuster shows -
but I think there is pretty clearly some audience out there for forms
and types of music which simply don't fit in our museums, or for that
matter in conventional recital programs, and there are evenings, such
as today, when I wonder just where the problem may lie.
The answer may not be putting the 'token' modern piece on the
conventional program - you won't get new audiences for that, I don't
think - but maybe we really are too set in our ways, and in our
attachment, however understandable, to the past.
Dorme Riposa
wrote:
I went through a Xenakis phase a couple of decades ago. Unfortunately,
unlike Beethoven's quartets or Schubert's, etc., his work doesn't keep
increasing in interest after many repeat listenings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1hj9ibCUQ
I can see four reasons why you enjoyed the performance. :-)
I predict, however, that you'll agree with me in a few years.
dav
rich...@gmail.com
me,
I will love you night and day, know our love not fade away
My love is bigger than a Cadillac, I try to show you but you drive me
back,
Your love for me has got to be real, your gonna know just how I feel.
Love is real not fade away
Know our love not fade away
Not fade away, not fade away
not fade away, not fade away
Know our love not fade away
not fade away, not fade away
not fade away, not fade away
Know our love not fade away
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