Happy St. Cecilia's Day! (Charles Daniels Part 2)

A few months ago, I wrote something about two favourite records, A Venetian Coronation 1595 and Venetian Vespers. That post turned into an account of my first meaningful encounter with a solo classical voice, as I tried to put into words my delight at discovering Charles Daniels' thrilling performance of Grandi's O Intemerata. I had a similar experience a couple of years later, when Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players released their version of Purcell's ode, Hail! Bright Cecilia.

Commissioned by a London society set up to celebrate the feast day of the patron saint of music (22nd November), Purcell’s contribution to the 1692 festivities is a 50 minute, 13 movement treasure trove. It opens with a substantial orchestral overture, followed by a series of solos, duets, trios and choruses, praising both music and Cecilia herself. A selected group of instruments (organ, violin, flute, guitar and fife) receive more specific attention. The whole thing is a joy. 

On the McCreesh recording, Daniels sings The fife, and all the harmony of war, as well as the piece that really grabbed me, ’Tis Nature’s voice, an exhilarating virtuoso song that took me straight back to my time with the Grandi.

Henry PURCELL (1659-1695) - Tis Nature’s Voice (from Hail! Bright Cecilia) - Charles Daniels (tenor); Gabrieli Players / Paul McCreesh

Daniels has the measure of Purcell’s "incredible Graces" (1), including the lung-bursting melismas towards the end. He is not afraid to use the full power of his voice (at "mighty", for instance), and clearly relishes the more dissonant passages (both appearances of "grieve or hate"). Purcell’s setting of the last line is superb, the teasing repeats of "charms" leading to a final long run of notes on "captivates". Daniels’ thrilling second pass at this is something special - I'm reminded of his stunning "et virgo gloriosa" in the Grandi motet (Purcell text here). 

Charles Daniels also played a part in my introduction to even earlier music, as a founder member of the Orlando Consort, a one-to-a-part vocal group specialising in Medieval repertoire. By the time I got round to hearing them in concert (in their ingenious Voices Appeared silent film with live music programme), he had already left the consort. I still have the earlier recordings, though. By a whisker, my favourite is Popes And Antipopes - Music For The Courts Of Avignon & Rome. I'm struggling to find any clips online, but there are CD copies around. Highly recommended.

I still remember the Gramophone review of Popes And Antipopes: "To be savoured meditatively, like an Islay malt".

(1) Thanks largely to an article about the premiere in the November 1692 edition of the Gentlemen’s Journal, ’Tis Nature’s Voice has been the subject of some musicological debate. According to this article, it "was sung with incredible Graces by Mr. Purcell himself", leading to uncertainty as to whether Purcell actually gave the first performance, or whether he wrote the "incredible Graces" (ornaments) for someone else to sing. The couple of recentish Purcell books I've seen indicate the latter, although the liner notes for my other (very fine, modern instrument) recording of the piece claim that the composer did give the premiere. On this CD (English Chamber Orchestra / Mackerras - 1969), ’Tis Nature’s Voice is performed by a countertenor. McCreesh’s decision to use a tenor is supported by an Andrew Parrott article in the Faber Purcell Companion, which addresses the subject of male voice types in this music: "the 1680s and 1690s seem to mark an historical mid-way point in the evolution of the countertenor, with the emergence of the later, and indeed current, falsettist countertenor overlapping with the glorious last years of an earlier tradition in which - contrary to popular belief - the voice was, in modern terms, essentially a (high) tenor". (pp. 417-8)

Holiday Listening Part 3 - Linda Catlin Smith's 6th String Quartet

The Sheffield-based record label Another Timbre has now released six CDs of music by Linda Catlin Smith. The most recent, Flowers Of Emptiness, features eight chamber works, including her superb 6th quartet, an endlessly fascinating piece I first heard on holiday. Since then, I've come back to it many times...

Linda Catlin Smith - String Quartet No.6 - Apartment House (Mira Benjamin, Chihiro Ono (violin); Bridget Carey (viola); Anton Lukoszevieze (cello)) (Another Timbre)

(There is a performance by the Mivos Quartet here, although I would urge you to get hold of the Apartment House record. Purchase details and a decent extract here).

On first listen, I was reminded of favourite viol consorts, by the likes of Lawes and Purcell. This was partly down to the starkly beautiful vibratoless string sound, and partly down to the busy texture, that can suggest more than four players. In an interview on the Another Timbre website, Smith talks about creating a "tangled, woven polyphony" in this quartet, adding "I wanted to try to get lost in the polyphonic thickets." This is a music of small surprises, and subtle, easily missed change. With ears primed for micro dramas, we may detect a slight shift in tone colour, or spot one note moving in a chord. Sometimes, the texture briefly thins, and there is a bout of rhythmic unison - a recurring pulsing gesture. The "polyphonic thicket" is thorny in places; while this piece is harmonically beautiful, it is not a warm bath of consonance. Tension comes from tightly packed lines, fighting for the same space.

As the music goes on, there's a definite sense of expanding and developing, but it's hard to pin down. Longer lines emerge, sometimes projected by two instruments in unison, and the music becomes more continuous. Earlier in the work, there are significant moments of silence. Smith suggests that "maybe I'm like a still life painter, looking at the same objects again and again." This is pretty much what happens in the first part of the piece, with the listener invited to compare what comes before and after the silence, almost like a musical spot the difference. Her enthusiasm for Japanese gagaku feels relevant here: "the sense of time in that music is very slow and you feel you have all the room you need to hear everything that's going on, and it requires a kind of slowing yourself down."(1) I've enjoyed adjusting to the gagaku-like underlying slowness of the quartet, although having the space to step into this music doesn't necessarily make it any easier to untangle. Smith embraces this unknowable quality: "I like things that are slightly obscure, that you can't quite make out, but I also like the idea of something that has multiplicity of meanings."(1)

The final section of the piece is perhaps the easiest to grasp. It's certainly magical. From around 15 minutes onwards, the music becomes more effortful, almost dragging itself along. Gradually, it seems to shake off the extra weight, begins to rise, and just keeps going, untethered from the earth. Often, my immediate response was to go straight back to the beginning, to spend another 20 minutes with this special piece of music.

I've dwelt on the 6th quartet, the longest piece on the disc, but it's worth saying that the rest of the music is also excellent (and superbly played). In fact, the record makes an ideal introduction to Smith's work, with pieces from across her career (1986-2024). If you're not familiar with Another Timbre, do investigate. Simon Reynell has put together an impressive range of over 200 releases, several of which have become great favourites of mine. If you're looking for a place to start, I can recommend John Lely's Meander Selection, Oliver Leith's Me Hollywood, John Tilbury playing Terry Riley, ffansïon by Angharad Davies and Tisha Mukarji, James Weeks' Gombert arrangements, and Pauline Oliveros' Sound Pieces. All superb. If you want more Linda Catlin Smith, try the marvellous Dirt Road, a series of violin and percussion duets.

(1) From an interview in Tempo, Vol. 71, No. 280, pp. 8-20

Holiday Listening Part 2 - Bang On A Can play Eno's Music For Airports

Part 1 here.

David Lang, one of the founders of the new music collective Bang On A Can (BOAC), once described their repertoire as "too funky for the academy and too structured for the club scene."(1) Brian Eno's ambient classic Music For Airports (MFA) doesn't quite fit this bill, although Eno's position as a key figure at the intersection of 70s rock and experimental music would definitely have put him on the BOAC radar. Their version appeared in 1998, and, inevitably, given the special status of the original, it raised some eyebrows. The anti position is well laid out by Cecilia Sun, who sees BOAC's version as an attempt to claim MFA "for their own musical canon and narrative", by "dragging the piece into the concert hall, with its aura of culture."(2) Lang's liner notes do tend to dwell on the more "classical" aspects of the piece, calling it "music that's carefully, beautifully, brilliantly constructed", adding that its "compositional techniques rival the most intricate of symphonies." Suitably intrigued by all this, I took both records on holiday, for some side-by-side listening...

1. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music For Airports (1978)

2. Brian Eno, arr. Gordon, Lang, Wolfe, Ziporyn - Music For Airports - Bang On A Can All-Stars (Robert Black (bass); Mark Stewart (guitar); Lisa Moore (piano/keyboards); Evan Ziporyn (clarinet/bass clarinet); Maya Beiser (cello); Steven Schick (percussion) + guests - Katie Geissinger, Phyllis Jo Kubay, Mary Runyan Maratha, Alexandra Montano (voice); Wu Man (pipa); Davis Fedele, Liz Mann (flute); Chris Komer (horn); Wayne du Maine, Tom Hoyt (trumpet); Julie Josephson, Christopher Washburne (trombone); Todd Reynolds (violin); Matt Goeke, Greg Hesselink (cello) Mark Stewart (cello/mandolin/mandocello)) (1998)

MFA is in four parts, titled simply 1/1, 2/1, 1/2 and 2/2.(3) The original 1/1 was put together from keyboard improvisations by Robert Wyatt and Rhett Davies (guitarist Fred Frith was also present, but we don't hear him). Eno took a section of music he liked, and made a tape loop. He then slowed the whole thing down, and added touches of his own. The 17 minute final version is apparently made up of 11 repetitions of the loop, but it's hard to hear the music that way, such is the length of each repeat, and the repetitive nature of the music within it (Eno's additions also serve to conceal the joins). 

For the BOAC version, arranging duties were shared between the three founder members of the group (Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe), with the fourth and final piece given over to clarinettist Evan Ziporyn. In his version of 1/1, Gordon makes full use of the expanded line-up of the organisation's performing arm, the Bang On A Can All-Stars. Slowly-decaying tuned percussion instruments help to recreate the reverb-heavy environment of the original, although Gordon also adds quiet string lines to extend certain notes within phrases. Unsurprisingly, the BOAC version of 1/1 becomes a more "active" listening experience; ingenious composerly touches and the technicolour palette are bound to tickle the ear. Oddly, I was reminded of Webern's version of the Ricercar from Bach's Musical Offering. Webern's approach is more kaleidoscopic, but like Gordon, he transforms a rigorous, tonally muted original into something more vivid (for better or worse).

The remaining parts of MFA were composed/assembled before 1/1. 2/1 came about during a visit to the studio owned by Conny Plank, a German musician who worked with both Stockhausen and the leading lights of the Krautrock scene. Seeing and hearing the results of Plank's experiments with tape loops, Eno had the idea of making a piece from the recorded voices of Plank's partner and two studio assistants (his own voice also ended up in the mix). The sound of Eno's highly processed chamber choir has a tranquillising effect on me - I find it just about impossible not to slow to the glacial pace of 2/1. Sometimes, I'll fight it, and end up tracking the gaps between the vocal entries, but not for long. In the BOAC version, David Lang also has fun with instrumental colour, and, as in 1/1, I find myself engaged in wondering how and why he makes the choices he does. It's worth noting that the BOAC singers do a terrific job of reproducing the original (all of the arrangements were recorded in single takes). That said, although they are electronically treated to sound remarkably like Eno's singers, there are occasional moments of (very) slight imperfection. On repeated listens, these little blips became oddly touching: tiny glimpses of real life humans through the electronic haze...

1/2 combines the ethereal voices of 2/1 and the gentle piano excursions of 1/1. The mood is different, though. The vocal entries are further apart, and the piano responses (Eno this time, I believe) are more fragmentary. Again, there is a sense of patterns repeating, and, as before, it's hard to pin down, thanks to the similar nature of the material involved and the time between repeats (if they are repeats). The BOAC version is more sure of itself. I think this is partly a result of the arrangement, with its strong, anchoring bass notes, and the now familiar range of colours, including vocal-sounding brass. It may also be down to the playing of the ensemble - some of Eno's tentative phrases are briskly dashed off by these new music virtuosi. This, and the rapid shifts of instrumentation give the BOAC version a much greater (unwanted?) sense of forward motion.

Eno's 2/2 is an improvisation on an ARP 2600 synthesizer, slowed to half-speed, and drenched in delay. The synth has a lovely, warm sound, swelling and fading like a well-matched low brass choir (with identically perfect articulation). Listening again now, I'm drawn to the play of these gentle attacks, which seem to increase in frequency as the piece goes on.  My goal-directed ears, conditioned by hundreds of symphonies and sonatas, point me to the lowest line, which occasionally suggests we're making a big harmonic move. It never comes, though, and the end feels quite sudden.

As mentioned, the BOAC 2/2 arrangement was entrusted to clarinettist Evan Ziporyn, a familiar name to new music fans. In an interview, Ziporyn talked about his approach to MFA, saying: "I asked myself: What's going on inside the piece [...] what's the pattern and what do I want to do with it? I began to impose my own narrative on it."(4) While Gordon, Lang and Wolfe make the most of the resources at their disposal, they don't tamper with the form of the original. Ziporyn does, adding two and a half minutes of his own material, right in the middle of the piece (around 4'40" onwards). What's more, this new music has a different character: over a drone, Ziporyn and pipa player Wu Man trade and expand ideas, in what feels like a kind of written-out improvisation. After this section, Ziporyn sticks to the original, although the frequent tremolando effects maintain the surface busyness (lots of "expressive" playing here). The introduction of more dynamic, developing material makes for a different kind of piece, and I'd understand if ambient Eno devotees found it beyond the pale. For my part, I prefer the purity of the original - I'm not sure that Ziporyn's extra music really adds much. In fact, it made me wonder if he really likes (or approves of) MFA. 

Personally, I can't get too upset about the idea of a concert arrangement of Music For Airports. As someone from the more classical side of the tracks, I was bound to want to check out the arrangements. Plus, as a listener fascinated by how we listen, this experiment in ambient/active listening was sure to grab me. Eno has suggested that his ambient records are designed to "accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular." For me, his original succeeds in achieving this: it can fade into the background, but will stand up to focussed listening, without seeming boring or facile (not always the case with other ambient records I've heard). Eno himself is a big fan of the BOAC version. At the UK premiere, at Stansted airport, he called his original a "demo", waiting for its first "proper performance." He was also impressed by the BOAC record, sending them this fax: "I don't know why this recording has moved me so deeply [...] I think this is so very beautiful I'm almost embarrassed to say it, except for the fact that what I'm finding beautiful is the powerfully emotional quality you brought to it."(5)

(1) Alex Ross - Shall We Rock?, The New Yorker, 23rd June 2003

(2) Cecilia Sun (2007) Resisting The Airport: Bang On A Can Performs Brian Eno, Musicology Australia, 29:1, 135-159

(3) For more on how MFA was put together, plus an account of the album's origin story, see this excellent Pitchfork article.

(4) Quoted in Sun, pg.154

(5) Bang On A Can Bandcamp page

Holiday Listening Part 1 (The Necks in Northumberland)

My last holiday listening piece looked at music conceived for specific locations - duets for musicians and resonant buildings. This time round, I picked out three records with a slow resting heart rate, and hoped a theme would emerge. Here's the first...

The Necks - Aether - Lloyd Swanton (bass); Chris Abrahams (piano); Tony Buck (drums)

The Necks began as an improvisation workshop, formed by three key members of the late 80s Australian jazz scene. Swanton, Abrahams and Buck were keen to try something new, in part inspired by their experience of working in other musics, particularly those where long-form repetition is common (salsa, funk, dub reggae, some African and Indonesian music...). They moved away from standard jazz forms, and worked to break down the usual distinction between soloist and rhythm section (Tony Buck: "we wanted to play in a way where no one was soloing.")(1). Buck contrasts this with the "everyone solos" approach of some improvised music.

Decades on, we have a good idea what to expect: a typical Necks live performance consists of an hour-long piece of music, created in the moment, with no plan or rehearsal (Buck: "we don't have anything we have to do.")(2) Long, slowly evolving grooves are common, but not compulsory. On record, The Necks still tend towards hour-long epics. They make full use of the studio, though, bringing in extra instruments, and recording multiple overdubs, mixing and matching until they're happy. The first Necks record I heard was the only one in the shop that day, Hanging Gardens. This, their fifth release, begins with a skittering cymbal figure, which sets up a head-nodding drum n bass flavoured groove (with strong hints of electric Miles Davis). According to Lloyd Swanton, the first mix was "really full on", so the band "decided to be ruthless with the laser scalpel and cut it right back."(3) The finished record got me hooked - the brilliant playing, and skilful studio sculpting makes for an absorbing 60+ minutes (I'd love to hear that full on mix, though)

On their sixth record, the band came up with a bolder way of building an hour-long piece of music. Aether begins with of a series of isolated "events", separated by spells of silence. In the first section, these silences are daringly long, giving the music an unpredictable, hard-to-track quality.(4) Gradually, the silences shorten, and the warm synth/bass/cymbal "events" are joined by a variety of new gestures, which fill up the space: we hear a pulsing piano, a bowed cymbal, and a juddering synth effect. At around the 20 minute mark, there are hints of a piano melody, and, at about 30, that synth becomes more constant, fully closing up the gaps. Five minutes later, the music finds a pulse, with a heartbeat "lub dub" in the bass. Then, about two-thirds of the way through the record, we head into the "finale", with a busy piano idea which fades in very slowly, cutting across the synth. The bass drops out, and a deep drum enters, locking in with the piano. A second piano joins (very Steve Reich now), and the synth comes back - from here on in, the music is a hulking machine, heading our way. At the climax, Swanton(?) drops big bass bombs (terrific on good speakers/headphones), and from there, things slowly tail off. The pianos, drum and synth fade away, leaving the bass and, finally, just a wash of cymbals.

Live, The Necks are known for impressive displays of stamina. I've no idea if those pulsing pianos and drums were set down in single takes, but the final third of this record gives a good idea of their more muscular mode. Listening again to Aether just now, it still seems unlikely that this is where the music will end up. Ultimately, though, I've always found the journey from Morton Feldman-like mystery to ecstatic, pounding minimalism totally convincing. For me, it's a special record - have a listen here (my attempts to describe the music inevitably fall short).

(1) Quoted in Shand, John - Jazz: The Australian Accent, pg. 98

(2) From a Guardian article

(3) From the Uncut magazine review of the year 2023

(4) The Uncut article above offers some clues about how Aether was put together. Apparently, the band played to click tracks at two different tempos, which may well account for some of this rhythmic unpredictability.

(Record 2 is Bang On A Can play Eno's Music For Airports. Coming as soon as I've written it).

Between A Grock And A Hard Piece - Luciano Berio's Sequenza V For Trombone Solo (1966)

Between 1958 and 2002, Luciano Berio composed a series of fourteen virtuoso solo pieces. Called "sequenzas", they were often written with specific performers in mind. In the case of number five, Berio sought the advice of two trombonists, Stuart Dempster and Vinko Globokar, both of whom were involved in what became the final version of the piece.(1) A third performer, the Swiss clown Grock (Karl Adrien Wettach - 1880-1959), also played an important part. Berio grew up near Grock's villa, and, as a child, was scared of the great clown. Only later in life did he come to appreciate Grock, and to value the "blend of humour and profundity"(2) in his work. Grock's act would often feature music, including performances on the violin and piano. He was also adept at yodelling and multiphonic singing (producing two or more pitches simultaneously), an effect explored at the length in the sequenza, where the performer is often asked to play one note while singing another. The trombonists Abbie Conant and William Osborne have gathered together clips of Grock's performances on their website, creating a valuable resource for interested performers and listeners. Among those clips is a version of the routine which would provide much of the inspiration for Sequenza V. Berio explains: "halfway through a wonderfully interpreted scene he'd stop and stare at the audience with an expression of confusion - No, it is impossible to describe it. He'd ask warum? why? It was a really beautiful moment. That's why I wrote a sequenza about this warum?, only not warum? in German, but why? in English."(3)

A quick look at the score shows that Berio devised special notation for the vocal sounds, produced both into and away from the instrument. There are also bracketed vowels, [u], [a] and [i], which must be either "vocalized in a perceptible way" or produced through the trombone. Musically, it quickly becomes clear how "warum" became "why": by using these vowel sounds, Berio can produce ghostly "whys" fairly easily. He also directs the performer to use a metal plunger (or wah-wah) mute, which has its own "on/off" line at the bottom of the score. This is another means by which the composer produces "whys", as well as a more veiled, less brassy tone, further blurring the line between what is played and what is sung. The sung/played/plungered "whys" are particularly prominent in the first part of the work, although there are echoes in the less frenetic second section. Berio plays with our expectations, giving us a mixture of [u]s, [ua]s and [uai]s, as well as, at one point, a full, spoken "WHY?", marking the divide between the two sections (A and B). For a brief moment, Grock takes centre stage.

I first heard Sequenza V in the early 90s, when I picked up Christian Lindberg's 1984 CD, The Virtuoso Trombone. The Berio is the final track; before that comes an appropriately diverse selection of serious and lighter fare (Hindemith and Martin, alongside Arthur Pryor's variations on The Blue Bells Of Scotland and Lindberg's frankly ridiculous double-tongued version of The Flight Of The Bumble-Bee). This impressive performance of the sequenza is one of the fastest on record: he gets through the whole thing in just 5'18". As a result, the quickfire exchanges of the first part are thrillingly dynamic, almost suggesting a second player. The slower-moving B section is also immaculate, particularly when it comes to managing the tricky balance between the sung and the played.

In 1998, Deutsche Grammophon released a boxset of the (then) complete sequenzas, including the Sequenza V of Ensemble Intercontemporain trombonist, Benny Sluchin. It's another scrupulously accurate version, with the added benefit of excellent recorded sound, which really helps when it comes to hearing the full effect of the multiphonics.(4) Despite being a fair bit slower overall, Sluchin generally takes a similar approach to Lindberg, moving fairly swiftly in the first part, and smoothing out the second, despite the odd more violent interruption.(5)

Vinko Globokar's 1967 premiere recording (Wergo) is something different. A full 2'10" longer than Lindberg's, it is also much more overtly theatrical. Employing a rawer, brassier tone, he seizes on every opportunity to shock - in this version, the louder outbursts really erupt. In the second section, after the "WHY?", Globokar really digs in. Berio's sung and spoken slides become slow smears, giving the music a pained quality that feels a long way from the generally more streamlined traversal of Lindberg and Sluchin. It's an essential listen for anyone interested in the piece, but sadly, it doesn't seem to be easily available online (it's this one). Fortunately, his Deutsche Grammophon remake is on YouTube. It's similar in style, if not quite as arresting as the original. Stuart Dempster's 2006 recording is part of a set of the complete sequenzas on the Mode label (including no. XIV for cello, from 2002). It's superbly played: Dempster matches Lindberg's nimble virtuosity, and is brilliantly recorded. At 5'01", he's faster still, resulting in a B section that has some of the pinballing drive and drama we usually only hear in the first part. Highly recommended.(6)

Recording the sequenza in the safety of a studio is one thing; playing it for a live audience is quite another. The score contains extensive notes for prospective performers, detailing the many extended techniques involved, and offering staging suggestions from both Berio and Dempster. The composer suggests the performer should be in "white tie," with a "spot from above etc." In the A section, they should "strike the poses of a variety showman about to sing an old favourite." Berio also highlights the score instructions to raise and lower the instrument (both quickly and slowly), which may well be a nod to Grock's musical routines, in which he often prepared to play, before aborting. The B section should be performed seated, "as though rehearsing in an empty hall." Dempster gives detailed suggestions on lighting, as well as how to play the opening notes ("like gunshots") and how to bow at the end ("stiff and aloof"). In his excellent article on the piece, trombonist Barrie Webb compares the visual aspects of Dempster's and Globokar's performances, noting that Dempster "dressed in tails, would enter in quite agitated fashion." Globokar, on the other hand, "always presented in normal dress and with an absence of showmanship" (intriguing given my response to his CD recording). Webb cautions against an approach that "says more about the performer than the piece," adding that "too much gratuitous clowning - entertaining as it may be - creates an (unintended) empathy with the audience which could seriously detract from the impact of the music." Globokar backs him up: "Berio did not think about any kind of clothes or any kind of theatralisation, only standing, sitting and the gesture up and down. When I saw the first time somebody who did it in a clownesque way, I found it superfluous, not necessary, because the piece is so strong musically."(7)

Despite these concerns, in the almost 60 years since the first performance, many trombonists have been unable to resist the temptation to go "full clown", particularly when it comes to dress. Indeed, you will struggle to find a YouTube version that doesn't go down this road. Here's Christian Lindberg, with another impressive account. Costume and make-up aside, this is pretty much in line with the Berio/Dempster conception of the piece, with Lindberg seen "rehearsing in an empty hall." Aside from a few close-ups at the beginning, the performance is simply filmed, sticking to a handful of basic shots. Gerard Costes, by contrast, gives us something of a multimedia extravaganza, centred on Grock. It begins with a montage of Grock clips, while the performance itself takes place in a room full of TV screens showing yet more Grock. It's well worth a watch, but, for me, it's all too busy - the rapid cuts between cameras and superimposed pictures of Grock tend to distract from what is actually a very fine performance. See what you think.

The recording by Gabriele Marchetti presents the piece as an interruption to a standard orchestral concert. Marchetti enters to much nervous laughter, which continues throughout the somewhat manic performance.(8) At the end, the orchestra go straight into another piece, giving the audience little chance to reflect on what just happened. Deb Scott's audience are similarly shocked by her appearance, and, like Marchetti, she plays up to it, tripping up the stairs, and letting the trombone slide fall off, before pretending to use it to bow the bell, like a cello. Scott's excellent performance (impressive circular breathing) is the first I've heard by a female trombonist, raising the interesting question of how the sung lines could and should be modified for female performers. That said, if I'm not mistaken, Scott manages to sing the majority of it at the written pitch.

While some of these clips play fast and loose with the score instructions, there's a lot to enjoy, and any filmed performance is a useful reminder of the huge challenges (and rewards) involved. When the piece is done well, "instrument and voice, instrument and breathing, indeed, instrument and the whole body [are] inseparably blended together," as composer Henri Pousseur puts it in his liner notes for Globokar's first recording of the piece. In recent days, I've returned to Pousseur's interesting essay a few times, partly because, while getting lost in multiple recorded versions, it's helped to focus my listening, and to remind me of this music's special qualities. I'm particularly drawn to his intriguing suggestion that Sequenza V is: "unquestionably closer to electronic music than to those indispensable trombones of the underworld in Monteverdi's Orfeo." He goes on to describe it as "a completely continuous and wholly uninterrupted tone modulation."(9) This chimes with me: music this multi-faceted invites a variety of interpretations, but I most often hear it as a study in extraordinary tone colour. It really does resemble early electronic music, although the heroics of Berio's fabulous one-man band, and the kindly shadow of Grock, add an extra dimension to this strange and beautiful piece.

(1) The story of the two trombonists' involvement is quite complicated. See page 47 of this fascinating dissertation for more.
(2) From a film clip of Berio, quoted in Barrie Webb - "Performing Berio's Sequenza V" in Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2007.
(3) This clip isn't quite as Berio describes, but it's still good to have.
(4) In the B section, Berio often has the sung and played pitches slowly pass one another, producing distinctive beating, fluttering tones - especially prominent in this recording.
(5) There is a YouTube video of the Sluchin performance synchronised with the score here. If you haven't seen it, do have a look - it's a work of art.
(6) I have one further audio-only recording to recommend. It's by Byron Fulcher, and comes as part of a BBC "Discovering Music" programme. Having skilled performers on hand gives host Stephen Johnson the opportunity to explore three sequenzas using audio examples - particularly useful for studying the ways they are organised harmonically and melodically. Trombonist Fulcher gives demonstrations of some of the extended techniques involved, before a very fine full performance of the piece.
(7) All quotes here from Webb, 2007.

(8) Like clowns, trombonists have a long history of operating in a space between the serious and the humorous. The instrument is often tasked with light relief (raspberries and disruptive glissandi) as well as more weighty, dignified material. 
(9) Creating this stream of sound requires considerable ingenuity from Berio, and (again) very considerable skill on the part of the performer. Berio covers the gaps by having the player breathe audibly through the instrument, or by making them rattle the metal mute in the bell of the trombone.

The Penguin Scores (1949-1956)

Between June 1949 and April 1956, Penguin Books published a series of beautiful music scores (see here for some nice photos). It took me around ten years to complete a collection - the challenge being to track them down in bookshops, rather than resorting to the internet. My biggest haul came at Edinburgh Books, somewhere behind the castle. It was also there that I picked up The Penguin Story,  released to celebrate the company's 21st birthday (June 1956). The Penguin Story contains a catalogue of the books released up to that point, including the 30 scores (there were no more published after that date).

Penguin's move into music publishing was part of a plan to extend the company's interests beyond their original remit of fiction and reprints, and to establish Penguin as the 'popular educator'.  In The Penguin Story, William Emrys Williams is haughtily evangelical about Penguin's mission to educate the common man:
'The dominant motive in the firm's endeavour is to provide good reading for people who have acquired a sound taste for books. For those who lack an habitual appetite for reading, Penguins have nothing to offer; they do not deal in those products which aim to excite and contaminate the mind with sensation and which could be more aptly listed in a register of poisons than in a library catalogue'. (1) The scores themselves were intended for 'the growing band of knowledgeable concert-goers and wireless listeners'. (2)

The scores were designed by Jan Tschichold (1902-74), a big figure in the Penguin story. Tschichold arrived in March 1947, and soon began a comprehensive overhaul of the company's design and typography. He was clearly a real stickler, and, in his determination to improve the sometimes sloppy work of his new colleagues, he ruffled a few feathers. Penguin founder Sir Allen Lane recalled that: 'nothing compared to storm when Jan Tschichold arrived. Mild-mannered man with an inflexible character. Screams heard from Edinburgh to Ipswich and from Aylesbury to Bungay'. (3) There is an excellent article by Richard Doubleday on Tschichold's years at Penguin. It details all of the design changes made at the time, and also examines and explains the introduction of Tschichold's 'Penguin Composition Rules', intended to unify design across the various Penguin series.

Penguin commissioned eight artists to provide the colourful backgrounds for the scores series. This page gives credit where it's due, and also gives details of how some designs were re-used for the Penguin Poets series (I'm sometimes tempted to start a collection, but they published a hundred of these). Exactly half of the background designs were by Elizabeth Friedlander, a German-born designer who came to England in 1939, and worked frequently for Penguin in the 40s and 50s. Friedlander was also the designer of an elegant font: 'Elizabeth'.

For the Penguin scores, Tschichold employed an update of a font originally designed by William Caslon (1692-1766), a giant of 18th century English publishing (4). Caslon fonts were also popular in the U.S.: the first mass-produced copies of the American Declaration Of Independence were printed in Caslon, while the New Yorker magazine still uses a version today. If you want to know much, much more, there is an admirably thorough article on Caslon through the ages here. 

(1) William Emrys Williams, The Penguin Story. Penguin Books, 1956, p.22
(2) Ibid. p. 21
(3) From a Guardian article
(4) Richard Doubleday identifies the font as Caslon Old Face, although others seem to think it may be Garamond.

Goodbye Classical CD (July 2017)

(I wrote this in 2017, about a much missed shop. I've reposted it because a couple of people asked about the name of the blog...)

By the time I get round to writing this, Classical CD will have gone for good. The shop opened in 1987, on Heathcoat Street, in the Hockley area of Nottingham. Since then, it has moved several times, ending up in this more prominent spot on Goose Gate. It isn’t the first classical record shop to disappear in 2017 - Prelude in Norwich, The Outback in Hereford, McAlister Matheson in Edinburgh and London’s Harold Moores all closed their doors in the first six months of this year. These four will no doubt have faced the same pressures that finally did for Classical CD: sky-high city rents, steadily shrinking profit margins, and - of course - the internet. In truth, considering the huge growth in online shopping and streaming, coupled with the fact that many people simply don’t pay for recorded music at all, these shops did pretty well to make it to 2017.

Classical CD did a lot right. Prices were always in line with mail order companies and the internet, at least for new releases. The owners also maintained strong links with the live music scene in the area. Beyond simply stocking all the brochures (always useful), they ran stalls and signings at the Royal Concert Hall, and sold tickets for events at some other venues. More recently, they shared the shop space with a bookshop run by a local charity, Music For Everyone, presumably helping to bring in new customers.

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Richard & Tom, Classical CD

Most importantly for me, they provided a place where a sometimes shy, awkward teenager could develop a love of classical music alongside like-minded anoraks. Both back then, and as a slightly more self-confident adult, I always knew I could spend ten minutes or two hours browsing, chatting and listening, with no obligation to buy - they knew I’d be back. If the conversation tended to return to the same old topics (typically Handel, Mahler, Shostakovich and misguided council arts policy), it was always stimulating, and often led me to something new.

Last Saturday, it hit home just how much I will miss the place. Ordinarily, I would have dropped in to see who had won that morning’s Radio 3 Building A Library, or to pick up a copy of a CD I’d read about in the week. That lovely ritual of finding out about a piece or performance, buying the disc, and then listening to it the same evening brings back lots of happy memories, the names and sounds of the pieces and players mingled in with thoughts of whatever else was going on at that time of my life.

I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t bought loads of CDs over the internet or that I don’t get a lot out of discussing music online, although the civilised disagreements in the shop suited me better than the sometimes bruising debates online. Plenty of people I know listen to pretty much all of their music via streaming services, but it’s not for me. I’m wedded to the outdated idea of selecting a disc, then sitting down to enjoy it. I like browsing my racks of CDs, making connections and planning programmes myself, rather than having it done for me by Spotify’s algorithms. I want to read all of the information in the CD booklet, and I want people to get paid at least a bit - those 0.00something pences can’t add up to very much.

This morning, I’m toasting Richard and Tom with a big cup of tea, and sampling my final purchases: The Palladian Ensemble playing Matteis, Volodos in Liszt, and a third version of Brumel’s fabulous Earthquake Mass I didn’t know I needed. Thanks for all the music, and see you at a concert somewhere soon.

(Music For Everyone kept the shop on, and it is now a very good second-hand bookshop that sells some second-hand CDs. Silver linings.)