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Nono CD release!

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I am really thrilled that my CD of Nono “La lontananza” will be released next month on the Urlicht Audiovisual label. It has been a truly great thing to work on. I hope you can join us for some really interesting and exciting performances and discussions to celebrate the release. Please see my blog posts from last year to read some thoughts on this very moving and multi-layered piece.

From the press release:

“la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” distills Nono’s manifold lifelong preoccupations – philosophy, politics, history, theater, text, spatialization, improvisation, real-world sounds, electronics and amplification – into the relatively simple medium of solo violin and 8-track tape. The work requires a highly spatialized eight-channel speaker configuration for the electronics, and the violin soloist also wanders among the audience during the performance. Previous stereo recordings did not capture this crucial aspect of the work. The DTS-CD version of this new recording endeavors to present the work as the composer intended: a “surround-sound” experience. In addition, this recording also includes an element overlooked by previous recordings: vocalizations from the violin soloist that are pivotal to Nono’s intentions.  In the words of Miranda Cuckson, “Nono’s indications for the violinist to sing illuminate the fundamentally lyrical, almost operatic quality at the heart of the work: the piece is truly a ‘madrigal’ as Nono described it.”

Pre-release Event: November 2, CD release Event: November 3

Friday, November 2, 2012, 8 PM
Spectrum
121 Ludlow Street
Tickets: $15 general/$10 students and seniors

–Miranda Cuckson and Chris Burns perform Dai Fujikura’s “prism spectra” for viola and live surround electronics, which they are recording for an upcoming CD

–Chris Burns presents his compositions: “Opalescence”, a glockenspiel solo performed by Trevor Saint, and “Alligator Char”, electric guitar/percussion duo performed by Chris and Trevor

–Richard Warp demonstrates his new brain-computer spatialization interface

Saturday, November 3, 2012, 8 PM
Spectrum
Tickets: $15 general/$10 students and seniors

–Live performance by Miranda and Chris of Leggii 3 and 4 from “la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura”

–Demo of Richard Warp’s realizations of the electronics in 5.1 channel surround sound

— Chris’ composition “come ricordi come sogni come echi: six studies on Nono’s ‘la lontananza nostalgica utopica futura’ for solo violin”

–Open forum with the artists

from my liner notes:

There have been several recordings of “La lontananza”, including one by Kremer with Sofia Gubaidulina as sound artist, and another by violinist Melise Mellinger with Sciarrino. I recorded the piece in 2011 with composer/sound artist Christopher Burns, soon after our live performance that autumn in New York. In the performance, I was acutely aware of the physical environs (a high-ceilinged chapel); of the listeners sharing the performance space, thus eliminating the “fourth wall” between performer and audience; and of my sound mingling with the tape sounds emitted from various locations.  A few days later, I was immersed in the process of turning this intrinsically dramatic work into a recording. Any audio recording of music extracts the sound itself from its physical origins and its actual temporal context, thus creating a different experience. A recording of “La lontananza” particularly distills the piece, turning a theatrical, partly improvised musical work into a documented combination of sound elements. In this way, a recording of “La lontananza” is much like a sound recording of an opera, in that it removes the vivid visual distractions of the stage.  While this might be a partial experience of the whole, it can be a thrilling and illuminating means of focusing in on the music itself.

I am excited that, with this recording of “La lontananza”, we actually offer two  ways to listen to Nono’s piece: in stereo and in surround-sound. In stereo, you will hear simply the music itself from a concentrated sound source. In surround-sound, you will experience a recording that restores the sense of spatialization – and thus theater – to the piece. Through current technology, the “musique concrète” sounds come alive as if actually happening in the same room, the wandering of the violinist-figure is ghostly but palpable and the listener’s role in the work feels central and participatory as in a live performance. I am truly delighted that we are able to create such a tantalizingly immediate experience of this great work for the first time.

A couple years ago, I started looking into “La lontananza” and was drawn strongly to its magnetic synthesis of music, theater, text and socio-political awareness. I feel its evocation of the refugee’s condition is as urgent today as twenty years ago. I am delighted to work with Chris Burns and Richard Warp, who have done such brilliant, sensitive work on this piece and recording. I am grateful to New Spectrum Foundation, Urlicht Audiovisual, Glenn Cornett and Gene Gaudette for making this project possible.

Phillips Collection recital program

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I’m playing a recital with pianist Aaron Wunsch at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC on April 15 at 3pm. Hope you enjoy! Come and hear if you’re in the area!

Here are program notes I wrote:

This recital program, consisting of the Violin Sonatas of Leos Janácek and Richard Strauss and a suite of transcriptions by Ross Lee Finney, presents two streams of commonalities among the works to be performed. One is the composers’ nationalistic use of folkloric material, and the other is the flowering of an ornate, stylistically individual Romanticism in the late 19th-early 20th centuries.

The Czech composer Janácek (1854-1928) developed a highly personalized manner of writing that incorporated piquant inflections and gestures from Moravian folksong, remarkably vivid atmospheres, and a beguiling mixture of fantastical and earthy qualities. Deeply involved in the collection and study of his country’s folk music, Janácek was a forerunner to the ethnomusicological work of Hungarians Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and was contemporaneous with Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, whose music also displayed a personal association with folksong. Janácek became known mainly for his vibrantly colorful and soulfully moving operas – Jenufa, Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Case, House of the Dead– and he put much of his own effort into seeing those works produced in opera halls. However, his small but tremendously distinctive output of chamber works garnered great fondness and admiration in later years. These works often had an autobiographical bent – relating to his youth, falling in love etc. They include some piano pieces (Into the Mists, the Sonata), two programmatic and fiercely Romantic string quartets, and the Sonata for Violin and Piano.

The Violin Sonata was written in 1914 amid the early rumbles of World War I. Janácek kept revising the piece until 1920, by which time he was at work on his opera Katya Kabanova. It is in four movements, with moods that shift suddenly from sweetly wistful and warmly relaxed to breathless and impassioned. Pizzicato gestures evoke sounds from nature, and melodies have a plainness and directness that contrasts with the flourishes that suddenly erupt throughout the piece.

 

German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) possessed a very identifiable compositional style that combined extravagantly swirling lines and intricately layered textures with advanced chromatic harmonies. Following on the innovations of Liszt and Wagner, Strauss and his contemporary Gustav Mahler took Romanticism to heady extremes of complexity, intensity and harmonic experimentation. Though florid and seemingly free-flowing, Strauss’ works form remarkably cohesive expressions of emotion, whether of heroic grandeur, poignant longing, tenderness or ardent romantic outpouring. Strauss did not profess particular interest in folk music, but certain elements, such as horn calls and snippets of melody, evoke the indigenous music of the Bavarian countryside.

Strauss was mainly renowned for his operas – Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Salome, Ariadne auf Naxos, Capriccio – his orchestral tone poems – Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Ein Heldeleben – and his songs. However, he did produce a small number of chamber works, mostly earlier in his career. These include the Cello Sonata, the Piano Sonata, and the Violin Sonata in E-flat major. The Violin Sonata was written in 1887-8 and is considered the last of his works to adhere to classical forms (mainly the sonata allegro of the first movement, Allegro ma non troppo). At the time of writing the piece, he was in love with the soprano Pauline de Ahna, and the work exudes a youthful, optimistic exuberance and an undercurrent of sweetness that pervades even the bold virtuoso writing. The second movement, titled Improvisation, meanders gently; its wistfulness and hovering dreaminess are qualities that recur throughout much of his oeuvre. The closing Finale movement opens with a somber introduction in the piano, after which the instruments sally forth with almost orchestral grandeur and sweep.

 

Ross Lee Finney (1906-1997) belonged to the generation of American composers that included Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Walter Piston and Virgil Thomson- artists who grappled with the conflicting European and homegrown influences on American classical music and sought to define it as a distinct national art form. Finney, who was born in Minnesota and grew up in North Dakota, sang folksongs with his family during his childhood, and he always retained a great love and affinity for the tunes of his native land. Following studies with Nadia Boulanger and Alban Berg, Finney sought to incorporate the twelve-tone method with material and melodic/harmonic qualities drawn from folksong, and the fluctuating balance of these elements formed the central dynamic of his compositions throughout his life. Though never a hugely well-known composer, he had some high-profile premieres and was a much-regarded teacher for decades at the University of Michigan, where his pupils included George Crumb and William Bolcom.

Fiddle-doodle-ad is a suite of transcriptions of American folktunes. Written in 1945, it comes from a time when Finney was making much direct usage of folk material in his compositions. The piece was a nationalistic response as World War II was reaching a close. The eight melodies are presented simply, with little embellishment or departure from their basic forms, and with subtly enriched harmonic support.  The suite is artfully organized in a satisfying sequence of moods, ranging from the rambunctiousness of Rye Whiskey and Rippytoe Ray to the sorrowful Wayfaring Stranger, and from the pure simplicity of The Nightingale to the intriguing asymmetries of Cotton Eye Joe and Oh, Lovely Appearance of Death.

 

more on “La lontananza…”

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A follow-up on the Nono performance:

It was a remarkable experience to perform it live, to move around the space and inhabit the character of the wanderer while dealing with the abstraction of the sounds and timbres: the fragile held tones, the rough outbursts and offhand-sounding phrases, pacing my breaths for the singing, and hearing the tape material emerging gently or jumping out from the speakers. Walking among the audience really took away that “fourth wall” to me – I saw and felt the people in the room as part of the scenario, as participants in the drama.

On Tues. and Wed., I spent a few hours with Chris Burns and composer/sound engineer Richard Warp recording the piece in a studio in Queens. Again, an amazing, unusual experience! We ran the piece a couple times (each run was 50-something minutes), and I found the playing and interaction with the tape part much more exhausting in the studio. The piece is certainly demanding live, not so much in terms of lots of physical busyness and technical hurdles, but because of the concentration and immersion in character that’s required. In the recording studio, I had to keep the theatrical message of the piece in mind, but also bring my focus fully onto the sounds. I realized as I recorded just how much the spatial aspects – my walking around and the spatialization of the speakers – had affected my perception of the music.

The piece has an openness to me, a visceral sense of an arena in which it takes place..it was intriguing to realize how ingrained the spatial dimension was in my musical concept.  I love recording because, even as I’m always conscious of playing ultimately for people, in the moment there’s nothing to it but the sound you’re making and the microphone…so simple, pure, intimate and detailed. Any performance, on the other hand, brings in those elements of theater – audience, space, visual factors. Distilling the theater of “La lontananza” into a sound recording, it was very contrasting to concentrate my energy into my static position in the recording booth, to hear the tape sounds in my right ear through a headset rather than from all round the hall, and to be, as Chris put it, “hyperattentive” for almost an hour just to the sounds. Anyway, we now have a couple quite different versions to choose from. Chris and Richard will work some technological magic to configure the spatialized effects of the piece for our “surround-sound” CD. I will be consulted on that but I basically leave those wonders to these guys. They have both been fantastic collaborators.

For the concert, I wrote a program note reworked from my previous blog post- read it below.

Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924-90) was one of the most significant and influential avant-garde artists and philosophers of the 20th century.  Early in life, he studied polyphony, the Italian madrigal tradition and the Second Viennese School, and was mentored by Bruno Maderna and Luigi Dallapiccola. During the 1950s, he participated in the Darmstadt courses in Germany, where, along with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, he was a visionary leader among composers of new music. His 1955 work, Il canto sospeso, for solo singers, chorus and orchestra, was his first major success. Many of Nono’s compositions put forth pointedly political, anti-fascist themes. Encompassing ideas drawn from philosophy, politics, history and religion, his work strove toward a new kind of music theater, involving text, spatialization, improvisation, sonic references to the real, physical world, and the most current technologies for electronics and amplification. He wrote many large-scale pieces, often involving electronics, including Intolleranza 1960 and Prometeo. Nono had a great impact on other composers, including Lachenmann, Sciarrino, Gubaidulina. Kurtág and Ferneyhough. Nono also formed close working partnerships with instrumentalists, among them Rudolf Kolisch, Gidon Kremer, Maurizio Pollini and the Arditti Quartet.

Nono wrote “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” in 1988-89 at the electronics studio of the Strobel foundation in Freiburg. His penultimate composition, it distils many of his lifelong preoccupations into a relatively simple medium. The full title is “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura. Madrigale per più ‘caminantes’ con Gidon Kremer, violino solo, 8 nastri magnetici, da 8 a 10 leggii.”  Nono borrowed the term “lontananza” from Sciarrino, who used the word, usually reserved for poetic expression, in the title of his work “All’aure in una lontananza”.  “Lontananza” essentially means “the far distance”. So, Nono’s title is “The nostalgic, utopian, future far-distance. Madrigal for a ‘wanderer” with Gidon Kremer, solo violin, 8 magnetic tapes and 8 to 10 music stands.”

Nono recorded Kremer improvising, then processed the sounds to make the tapes. Also on the tapes are noises from the room as they worked: chairs scraping, objects being slammed down, voices speaking. In performance, the sound artist plays all eight tracks from beginning to end, but chooses which to boost in volume or to suppress – thus, which material to bring into play at a given moment. He/she also controls from which of eight speakers the sounds will emanate. The violinist has six sections of music placed on music stands located around the performance space. He/she is directed by the score to walk from one music stand to the next after playing each section.

Nono took inspiration for this piece from an inscription on the wall of a monastery in Toledo: “Caminante, no hay caminos hay que caminar.” “Wanderer, there is no way, there is only walking.” The “wanderer” is here not only an evocation of a general human condition – of looking for one’s way through life and in society – but also a reference to those displaced by war: emigrants, refugees, “alien” residents in foreign lands. Nono’s use of “musique concrète”- sounds from everyday life – also grounded his music in a political consciousness. The sounds from the work studio are a sonic diary of the work process – thus, an element of nostalgia. Other nostalgic elements are his use of a scale employed by Giuseppe Verdi in his “Quattro pezzi sacri”, and Kremer’s Romanticized style of playing, displaying characteristic 19th-century virtuoso gestures such as jeté and spiccato bowing.

Tonight’s performance features a facet of “La lontananza” that has perhaps never been experienced before by listeners. Nono indicated in the score for the violinist to sing (at the unison, 5th or octave) in parts of the piece. This does not seem to have ever been done. However, it brings a whole other meaningful and beautiful dimension to the piece, emphasizing the humanity of the violinist-figure and the introspective, “serene vision” that lies at the heart of this tumultuous work. I believe that, because Kremer did not vocalize, and he was so integral to the piece’s creation, people have not attempted it. It is possible that a male voice did not sound effective, given the register. However, Nono did not change the score and the indications are there. With the voice, “La lontananza” becomes even more of a human drama: the wanderer’s confrontation with a threatening environment leads her/him to turn inward, finding calm and harmony in what Nono calls a “serena visionata”. The warmth of the human voice contrasts with the hard percussive noises on the tape and with the harshness in the live violin part, specified by Nono’s numerous markings of “ponticello” (a raspy sound from playing on the bridge) and “legno” (a thin, unstable sound from playing with the wood of the bow). Afterward, the wanderer must weather external discord and tumult again, retreating ultimately in a state of uncertainty and becoming a fragile memory.

-MC

Nono’s “La lontananza”

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I hope everyone had a very good summer! On Saturday, September 17, I’m playing Luigi Nono’s “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” for violin and 8-track tape! This is part of  the whimsically-titled “Nono, Muchmore Warped festival”, music by Pat Muchmore, Richard Warp, and Luigi Nono.

Nono’s piece has drawn some illustrious interpreters of the tape part in past: Sofia Gubaidulina with Gidon Kremer, Salvatore Sciarrino with Melise Mellinger and Helmut Lachenmann with Mark Menzies. Chris, who teaches composition and music technology at the U of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, has performed the work multiple times in the US, and represents a younger generation’s technologically-fluent approach to this ground-breaking music. 

In addition to the usual matter of our trying to give a fantastic performance, this presentation of the piece will be exciting for a few reasons. We are performing in a remarkable space (the James chapel at Union Theological Seminary) which – given the theatrical, spatialized nature of the roughly hour-long piece and its philosophical and textual underpinnings – is very suitable to the performance and will enhance its impact. This rendition is also a great opportunity for you to hear the piece in a way that, I think, has never been heard or experienced before: I was surprised to see that Nono indicated in the score for the violinist to sing (at the unison, 5th or octave) in parts of the piece. I had never heard of this facet of the piece and I don’t think it has ever been done. However, I find it brings a whole other, wonderfully meaningful and beautiful dimension to the piece, emphasizing the humanity of the violinist figure and the introspective, “serene vision” that lies at the heart of this tumultuous work. I hope you’ll come and experience this performance!

“La lontananza…” is such a richly layered piece, offering much to think about and try out. In any case, I wanted to write out some thoughts and share these with you. If you want to be fully in suspense about what happens in the piece, you could read no further, but I do think a fuller awareness of the piece’s many facets can deepen your experience of the piece.

I’m busy and pressed for time, so, even though I love to write good prose, I am going to forego contiguous paragraphs for now and set all these ideas and pieces of information as bullet points. It’s a bit like what I’d do as an outline for an essay, but anyway given the mobile, open quality of the Nono, maybe this is in the spirit of the piece (!) Sometime, I’ll actually turn this into an article or essay.

  • Luigi Nono (1924-1990) wrote “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura” in 1988-89 at the electronics studio of the Heinrich Strobel foundation in Freiburg, Germany. It is his penultimate composition, the last being “‘Hay que caminar’ soñando” for two violins.
  • Collaboration with performers had become a significant part of his process (he worked closely, for instance, with pianist Maurizio Pollini and the Arditti Quartet). In “La lontananza”, he worked with violinist Gidon Kremer.  Nono had Kremer record improvisations at the studio, then he selected and electronically processed sounds from the recordings to make the 8-track tapes. Also on the tapes are noises from the room as they worked: chairs scraping, objects being slammed down, their voices speaking.
  • The full title is “La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura. Madrigale per più ‘caminantes’ con Gidon Kremer, violino solo, 8 nastri magnetici, da 8 a 10 leggii.”  Nono borrowed the term “lontananza” from composer Salvatore Sciarrino, who used this word, usually a poetic expression, in the title of his work “All’aure in una lontananza”.  “Lontananza” essentially means “the far distance”. So, Nono’s title is “The nostalgic, utopian, future far-distance. Madrigal for a ‘wanderer” with Gidon Kremer, solo violin, 8 magnetic tapes and 8 to 10 music stands.”
  • In performance, the sound artist has all eight tracks playing from beginning to end (about 75 min. of material). He/she makes the choice of which tracks to bring out and boost in volume, which to make quieter – thus, which material on the tapes to feature or bring into play at a given moment.
  • There are eight speakers placed around the performance space. The sound artist also chooses from which of these the tape sounds emanate.
  • The violinist has six sections of music, each placed on a separate music stand. These are placed around the performance space, including locations among or near the audience. The violinist enters after the tapes have started, sits by the first music stand and plays. He/she is directed by the score to walk slowly from one stand to the next, after playing each section of music. It is suggested that the stands be randomly placed so that the performer must go searching for the next stand.  The violinist plays standing except in the first section. At the end of the piece, the violinist’s last note is picked up by a microphone, recorded and sent out into the hall, as the performer exits.
  • The violinist can modulate the pacing of the performance through choice of tempos (usually marked within a range of tempi in the score) and by the speed or slowness of walking between sections.
  • Nono took inspiration for this piece (and several others, including his last work) from an inscription he saw on the wall of a monastery in Toledo, Spain: “Caminante, no hay caminos hay que caminar.” “Wanderer, there is no way, there is only walking.”
  • Much of Nono’s work bore a political message. His early works, such as “Il canto sospeso” were often based on anti-fascist texts. The idea of the “wanderer” is not only an evocation of a general human condition – of looking for one’s way through life and in society – but also a more pointed reference to those displaced by war: emigrants, refugees, “alien” residents in foreign lands.
  • Nono’s use of “musique concrète”- sounds from everyday life – also grounded his music in a political consciousness
  • In “La lontananza”, the sounds from the work studio (bangs and scrapes and voices) are meant as a record or sonic diary of the work process that went into the piece – thus, an element of nostalgia (“nostalgica”)
  • Other nostalgic elements: use of a scale employed by Giuseppe Verdi in his “Quattro pezzi sacri”, and Kremer’s romanticized style of violin playing on the tapes, displaying characteristic 19th-century virtuoso gestures such as jeté and spiccato bowing.
  • I see the piece in this emotional progression:
  • leggio I:  wanderer enters into an ominous, rather threatening environment, somewhat confrontational
  • leggio II:  agitation and intensity but starting to turn more inward (a few passages with voice)
  • leggio III:  the “serene vision”, inward harmony as the violinist’s voice joins with bowed lines
  • leggio IV:  tumult, sudden fluctuations of speeds
  • leggio V:  uncertainty, use of microtonal instability, Nono writes: “cercando il suono” (“looking for the sound”)
  • leggio VI:  continuing uncertainty, microtonality, sound becoming very fragile before exit, the violinist’s last note lingers in the hall as the wanderer becomes a memory and part of nostalgia
  • on the use of the voice:
  • Nono calls the piece a madrigal. As a young man, he studied Renaissance madrigals and here, late in his life, he returns to the idea of a polyphonic vocal piece. Much of his work used text and singers, whether as soloists or chorus, vocal commentary or sung or spoken parts by instrumentalists
  • Here the voice invokes a “serena visionata”, the inner harmony and peace of the wanderer, whose relationship to the environment is more one of discord and flux. The warmth of the human voice contrasts with the harsher sounds, both on the tape and in the live violin part (dissonances, ponticello, col legno)
  • Nono writes in leggii 2 and 3:  “con voce dove possible, a unisono, V, VIII”. “With voice where possible.” Why has this not been attempted? Why have I never even heard the vocalizing mentioned?  I think that, because Kremer did not do it, and he was so integral to the piece’s creation, people have not bothered with it. However, Nono did not change the score: the indications remain. It is possible that a male voice did not sound very effective: given the register of the violin part, it would be difficult for many men to sing at the unison or even the octave.
  • I admire Kremer’s playing hugely and he plays with such staggering conviction in all he does.  But I think he just had a different idea of how to execute some things in the piece. On his recording of the piece, he arpeggiates the chords in leggio 3, much as in the Bach Chaconne. It is a really lovely effect but it is very different from singing!
  • Chris and I discussed by email the theatrical issue of the two human figures in the performance: who are we? what do we represent? We agreed that, as the wanderer who is actually moving around the space and is described as a “caminante”, I am a personified figure. However, Chris is representing a world of sounds with all its associations and somewhat more abstract- and rather than being a controlling figure, he sees himself as a “hyperattentive listener”, exemplifying the listening of the audience and reacting in real-time to what he hears.