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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 8, 2007
"You feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be..."
The reaction of veteran music critic Alfred Frankenstein on hearing Terry Riley's In C describes the experience of listening to a performance perfectly. With his 53 short phrases and two pages of instructions, Riley laid the blueprint for a mesmerising musical experience - and a generation of imitators.
In C has always seemed to me to exemplify the best in minimalism. Certainly the penny-in-the-slot criticism is that it "all sounds the same", yet if one were to leave a performance and return five or ten minutes later, it would be as if one were listening to a different piece. Unlike more conventional music, here one has to listen to the actual process of change, to the infinitude of contrapuntal complexity which changes almost by the second.
In C closed Thursday evening's Sonic Lab concert performed by a cast of thousands. Actually, it was (by my reckoning) around 30, with only a dozen of the musicians actually on the stage, the rest ranged around the peripheries of the hall. We even had a couple of peripatetic players to liven things up.
With a wide selection of instruments involved - from ukulele to toy piano to piccolo to double bass to celesta to bass guitar - the performance added a dizzying variety of sonorities to the mix.
Although the performance lasted for the better part of an hour it never failed to hold the attention; as the players moved from phrase to phrase, the music ebbed and flowed in huge waves - it is surely no coincidence that the rise of minimalism coincided with the rise of psychedelic drugs; the composers may not have been using them, but they provided a ready audience for the music.
Of all the players - and singers - I must just mention percussionist Mason Koenig, who, except for a brief period when he was spelled by one of the others, manfully risked Repetitive Strain Injury by playing The Pulse - a continuous octave C which holds the performance together. This must be one of the most essential, yet unrewarding roles in all of music.
Gordon Mumma's FROM THE RENDITION SERIES is scored for piano and electronics. Unusually, the electronics are reproduced inside the body of the piano, so that one could not sometimes be certain whether one was listening to the pianist playing with the natural resonance of the instrument, or the the composer manipulating the sound electronically.
Jee Yeon Ryu played the pithy, often spiky piano part with what seemed likely deadly accuracy: certainly Mumma seemed more than happy with the performance, while he himself sat next to the piano tinkering with the electronics with an air of playful benevolence.
As the audience entered the auditorium it became clear that the first piece, Christopher Butterfield's Grotto (for Fred Douglas), had already begun. Or, to be more accurate, the eight recorded voices, speaking the text by the late Fred Douglas, were already playing.
The recorded part of the music consists of individual words ("drift", "snuffle", "wilt" to mention but three) spoken in isolation - funny how much more significant even such a simple word as "drift" sounds this way.
After (some seconds after) a signal (the only downbeat of the entire evening) from Butterfield, the eight percussionists - each with a single instrument, most of them of indeterminate pitch - began playing their repetitive, moderately quiet parts.
Eventually, they dropped out one by one, each with a final, louder single stroke of their instrument.
Such a sparse description can hardly accurately convey the sensation of the music itself, which was quite rivetting and did not outstay its welcome by a single minute.
We are exceedingly fortunate to have the Sonic Lab to provide us with cutting-edge contemporary works as well as modern classics.
A delightful evening.
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