In soundskein, the microtonal filling in of the opening interval of  the descending fourth suggests the diatonicism, yet the microtonal  movement eventually takes us to glissandi, and the intervening minor  mode polyphony seems almost romantic yet avoids octave reference. And  then you also articulate moments by breaking into octaves. How are  you achieving all of this?

JAMES HARLEY: This is a big question. In “soundskein”, there are a couple of elements that shape the harmony. One is a background “seive” (mode), built on an ordering of intervals, that is in some cases applied to quarter-tones, not semitones. There is also a “cantus firmus” behind everything, in one sense this could be a focal pitch on the local level, but that progresses over the course of the whole piece in a melodic fashion, gradually getting higher (hence, all the harmonics in the last part of the piece). There is also a kind of “chorale” or fragments of one, that intervenes. The harmonies for this are derived from the background “seive”, so there is some coherence to the fragments as they appear (maybe 15 times). The “filling in” of the opening fourth, as you notice, also gives impetus to the rhythmic energy. The very opening, to be more specific, goes from C4 to G3 over nine 16ths, and is notated as an articulated glissando. As the music progresses, there are various divergences from this very basic gesture, both melodically and rhythmically (and texturally). But the slightly indeterminate, microtonal nature of this gesture provides impetus for exploring microtones and the pitch space within intervals (glissandi) in different ways. Even though the piece sounds like it is made up of different sections, there is an underlying continuity and coherence to it that I hope helps it to hang together. I tend to need this kind of structural foundation to help me shape the music.

In “aXis”, the underlying idea was different. In the harmonic construction, I wanted to gradually “reveal” the pitch seive that Xenakis used in “Jonchaies” (and a number of other pieces written after that), then fill it in again. So, the piece starts with music drawing on the full chromatic gambit, with pitches dropping out systematically as the piece goes on. There are a couple of sections where I made use of pedal tones (the spectralist element you remarked on), but I intentionally colored those with harmonies that evolved and that had no particular connection to overtone series or whatever. I agree that it’s sometimes tricky to make use of octaves and such without evoking tonality or overtones, but I hope that the coherence of the “modal’ approach that I use helps to overcome that. I’m quite interested (as Xenakis was, in his later music) in exploring the territory between “noise” and “harmonicity”. In “aXis” there were also cycles of chordal material (as in the opening) where the content is “noisy” (chromatically saturated) but where the repetitions contribute some coherence that is otherwise hard to perceive. There are lots of other orchestrational features of this piece where I was exploring the treatment of the whole ensemble as a single, mixed entity, then splitting it off into related groups: woodwinds, brass, strings. I haven’t written a piece for large ensemble like this for quite a while, so it was great fun to work on it!

OLIVER: What were the highlights of the festival for you?

JAMES HARLEY: That it happened at all, in its diversity. That would be the first comment.
I really enjoyed hearing “Jonchaies” in the “surround” version by Esprit. It was risky, and it worked, and conveyed the spirit of Xenakis very well. it was just great to hear that piece live–it’s got so much energy! One of my favourites.
It was also great to hear one of my other all-time Xenakis faves in “Tetras”. Again, a big risk on the part of the Penderecki String Quartet, but they really pulled it off. It’s incredibly visceral and over-the-top in terms of allying performance (quartet) technique with the compositional material.
And, “La Legende d’Eer” is another favourite, and one of X’s best works. To hear this in true multi-channel sound is very different than the stereo mix or an encoded home-theatre mix. I really enjoyed hearing it twice in two very different venues (the Atrium of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo and the Auditorium at OCAD in Toronto). I found the live diffusion of it a bit distracting the second night, but that did make it more of a “live” experience, that’s for sure.
I also thought the New Music Concerts performance was stunning. They did a great job on the Xenakis pieces, and it was very gratifying to have such a large, enthusiastic audience show up for the show.
Of course, having my own music presented on a couple of these concerts was great for me. I didn’t seek out these commissions, as I was already busy organizing the Xenakis Legacies symposium and the CLC panel discussion on Exploring New Places for New Music, but I’m glad they both worked out so well.
Beyond that, I think it was great that there was so much interaction between people working in different disciplines–the architects, musicians, scientists, etc. That was really stimulating, I think.

OLIVER: What can Canadian creators and performers learn from the music of Xenakis?

JAMES HARLEY: For me, Xenakis is about thinking deeply about what music is, what it could be, and how to accomplish this. And for performers, it is about being willing to take risks in order to reach a new experience, a new level of energy, and ultimately of communication. it was great to see young performers, such as the violin-piano duo who performed “Dikhthas”, take it on and play it as if it was music, not some ridiculous new music score that one needs to get through as best one can. Seeing their commitment is gratifying, and inspiring. Hopefully other performers, and audiences, will notice.

OLIVER: Which performances would you like to hear again or that you would  like to see become a permanent part of our cultural heritage by their  being recording on CD or DVD?

JAMES HARLEY: Well, all of them ought to have been recorded. This was a very important festival, and for the CBC, our national broadcaster, to not be involved at all is really sad. I’m glad that the big brass concert produced by Soundstreams Canada was recorded and filmed. The setting in that unusual church, and the spatialized music, will make for an interesting presentation on DVD, etc.

OLIVER: How can Canadian culture benefit from a better understanding of the  multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work of Xenakis and those  inspired by his work?

JAMES HARLEY: Well, I think Canadian culture will always benefit from being exposed to important creative work, from wherever in the world it was produced. Canadian artists need to be exposed to what’s going on internationally in order to better place our own work into a wider context. Hearing it live is important–much is not really communicated through recording, although this is a great resource. We need to be challenged in order to do our best and go beyond what we may have thought were the limits or constraints. Xenakis was quite unusual in that he had such a strong self-discipline and idealism; he worked very hard to achieve what he conjured in his imagination, and didn’t worry about what was trendy or current in some particular milieu. I think we can take his example as a challenge and inspiration, to do our best and not settle for something less because it’s easier.

I remember going to a concert of Xenakis orchestral music in Pittsburgh, sitting through it, and being completely blown away by the music, especially by the new piece that I’d never heard before or seen the score of (Dammerschein, 1994). When we went up to Xenakis after the concert to congratulate him, he said, “I tried.” Yes, he certainly did!

OLIVER: What do you hope will be the long-term outcome of this festival?

To find out more, contact:

Dr. Pedro Rebelo 
Sonic Arts Research Centre
Tel: +44 (0)28 9097 5406
Fax: +44 (0)28 9097 4828
email: P.Rebelo@qub.ac.uk

To apply, please send your CV and a cover letter, in electronic form to: k.shilliday@qub.ac.uk
 
You will also need to complete and submit the Admissions Application Form which can be downloaded from:
http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/AcademicStudentAffairs/AdmissionsOffice/FileStore/Filetoupload,26009,en.pdf

The closing date for receipt of applications is Friday 21st July 2006.

The most memorable event of the soundaXis festival occurred in the main concert hall of the CBC building and was not recorded by our national radio network. Apparently, our national broadcaster, whose mandate is to reflect Canadians back to themselves and let the whole country know about the passions of its citizens does not see fit to recognize the artistic decisions made by Canadian performing ensembles and presenters. Most of the new music professionals in Toronto dedicated countless hours to preparing a major festival, and are ignored by the CBC. Surely there is at least one producer in this public corporation who might see fit to bring this festival to Canadians. This festival deserved to be produced for any daytime or evening music show and as a news item on either radio network. I, for one, would like to hear an explanation from the CBC for their absence. The CBC had a duty to let Canada know about this unique festival that celebrates one of the greatest creative minds of the past century, and some of the top musical talent in the country.

New Music Concerts dedicated 47 hours of rehearsal time to prepare this concert, which goes well beyond the norm of most music organizations. The results were spectacular! On the program: three works by Xenakis and a premiere of a work by Canadian composer James Harley.

I first heard Xenakis’ Phlegra in 1989 when the students of the Banff Centre for the Arts performed the work in Xenakis’ presence under Robert Aitken’s direction. The work left a strong imprint, and so I was more than pleased to hear tonight’s performance, one worthy of being recorded directly to a CD release. The title refers to the “battlefield where the Titans and the new gods of Olympus clashed.” This was one action-packed battle. The performance went off superbly, the individual components that make up the whole clearly etched: drones that ground the music are altered by intensity or small fluctuations or cluster enhancement, over which we hear the main material, random walk melodies that are sometimes doubled at the octave or the quarter-tone. These are juxtaposed with sieve-like rhythmic pulsations. The melody, passing from strings to winds eventually ends up painting continuous circles and then it suddenly fades out and we are hit with a dramatic effect: the whole ensemble playing the same note over 6-octaves. After this there is an extraordinary summary of the previous circular motion which goes around a few times, then another variation that is much quieter. Then suddenly a gate slams shut and the bassoon is left alone playing a single note whose rhythmic profile, consisting only of durations 1 and 2, might come from a narrow sieve or other process, but whose sound reminds me generally of the dance-like rhythms found in Greek and eastern-European folk music. The oboe, bass clarinet and piccolo then do the same thing at different, faster speeds, preparing the way for the brass to come in at even faster speeds. The strings then appear out of nowhere to cut off the previous with more sliding around and then the piece disappears mysteriously a minute later. The New Music Concerts soldiers, with Robert Aitken wielding the baton, were in good form, fought the good fight, and left me wondering if the battle has only just begun.

What followed was the best performance of any piece of music, from any period, that I have heard in recent memory. Échange (1989) was commissioned by Dutch clarinetist Harry Sparnaay. I heard Canadian clarinetist Lori Freedman play Échange for the first time at the Banff Centre during the same week as Phlegra. But this performance brought tears to my eyes. The precision of every sound, every phrase, every sonic transformation and transition left me breathless. A musician capable of communicating such power and tenderness, such beautiful tone and rich multiphonics, such deep musicianship, is a treasure for the world. And New Music Concerts Ensemble returned this gift by taking up the Lori Freedman energy and giving it back with equal conviction with every exchange. Canada is very lucky to be home to such incredible talent.

James Harley’s work aXis, named to pay homage to Xenakis and the festival, was commissioned by New Music Concerts. The work seemed to have cyclical forms as a core idea, and though there were certain polyphonic/heterophonic structures that reminded me of Xenakis’ procedures, the spectralist attitude in the sound world made it clear that Harley is on his own journey. I found some of the phrase lengths to be too self-similar and was wanting more drastic transformational trajectories, but this was likely due to having just heard the two Xenakis works. Though the homage character of the piece felt right, I wanted to hear Harley stretching his muscles a little more.

Jalons, the last work on the program, was terrifyingly beautiful, in a kind of Bruegelesque way. The growling contrabassoon, contrabass clarinet, trombone, tuba and double bass were contrasted with high wind multiphonics and striking harp passages over glissandi spider webs of strings. Strands of angular lines that constantly slide in their speed while going up and down the range of the instruments gave way to a homophony that lead to crazy almost-together pulsations with chord changes. The transformations are many and constant. I felt as though I was hearing the creation of the world. In many respects I actually preferred tonight’s performance to the recording with Pierre Boulez conducting the L’Ensemble Intercontemporaine.

June 10, 2006
Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto
part of the soundaXis Festival

This concert had its ups and downs musically, technically, and sonically, but there were some important highlights. The premise was to present a program of music for prerecorded audio and live instruments that would show off the new surround sound system of New Adventures in Sound Art. The program promised just that, but I was disappointed with some of the artistic decisions made in the setup of the system and in the execution of some of the pieces.

When entering the hall, the audience saw 8 oval loudspeakers surrounding the audience, two stereo loudspeakers in front, in the traditional frontal position, and two others, also in traditional position, pointing up toward the ceiling. There was also a large speaker for reproducing very low frequencies, the kind you usually find in a night club. The main problem with the setup derived from the problematic space itself: there are no appropriate reflective surfaces to support the music, neither for live musicians, nor for loudspeakers. I found this rather unfortunate for a festival that included a major conference about the axes among architecture, music and acoustics. Even so, other decisions could have been made. Suffice to say that, as a presenter of this type of music myself, I would have placed the loudspeakers differently.

INDUSTRY, by American composer Michael Gordon, is a piece that presents the listener with a minimally-varying sequence of slow cello notes that produce difference tones, defined in the program as “when two loud notes are sounded together [the] resultant tone is lower in pitch…and corresponds to the difference in vibrations between the two original tones.” A more important piece of information for the listeners is to understand that the difference tones are created inside the head and that the “tones” themselves, although invasive of the body, do no harm. Cellist Alex Grant’s instrument was amplified in such a way that its sound became distorted almost beyond recognition. The amplification was hard on the ears and too loud for the effect needed, an incredibly noisy nasty cello sound unnecessary for the production of difference tones. I thought I would like this piece but in the end I found the post-minimalist slow-paced evolution of the sound and the gradual introduction of the difference tones to be less than satisfactory. It felt like an academic paper on the physics of music, delivered by a guy in dirty jeans with an attitude.

The next piece on the program was a total fiasco. Paul DOLDEN is one of Canada’s most famous electroacoustic composers, though he works entirely outside the norms embraced by New Adventures in Sound Art, by musique concrète, by most genres of avant-electro/techno/industrial/trance/etc, and by most electroacoustic composers. His oeuvre is particularly famed for the careful composition of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tracks of microtonal lines and harmonies; pacing, timing, rhythm and evolution during the time-period of a piece, as well as the positioning of these sounds in a 2-dimensional “stack of Marshalls”-type speaker array. A Dolden composition is entirely predetermined and not to be tampered with by “interpretation” at the mixer; his Glenn Gould approach to production is well known and documented. And the music is to be “played loud” (like Xenakis and most pop/rock/punk groups). I am therefore dumbfounded why composer Darren Copeland would decide to interpret one of Dolden’s most famous works, the prize-winning Below the Walls of Jericho, using a surround sound system, and on top of that, to use his golf-ball controller to move the sound image around the hall in a manner that contradicted the composition itself, that in fact destroyed the rhythms and phrases that the composer had so carefully constructed. It was clear from the outset that Darren Copeland had some technical problems with the volume and the actual control of the audio, and there were at least three audible hiccups in the audio during the performance. But the fact remains that this “performance” did not let us hear the music of Paul Dolden. The audience in attendance should get a copy of the Dolden CD, pop it in the best stereo system they can find, and “turn it up to 11.” If Darren Copeland wants to remix Paul Dolden through his new sound system, he should call it like it is: “Somewhere in the Neighbourhood of the Walls of Jericho: the Copeland chaos remix.”

PSAPPHA, the 1975 percussion work by Xenakis, was played by Jerry Pergolesi to initially stunning effect when the percussion emerged from a space above and behind the audience, to be spacialized into the sound system after the initial section. The opening seemed quite promising: the loudness and coherence of amplification of the drums made them massive in volume and colour, clear proof of what the sound system is capable of. But after five minutes of spinning the sound around the room, and breaking up the coherence of the phrasing of the composition, I had had enough. The percussionist also took the piece under-tempo, elongating the journey to the end of the piece and losing the habitual hard-edged intensity I’ve heard in good performances of the past.

ORACLE, by Toronto composer Wende Bartley, was a work in two parts, the first of which was, I believe, the only proposition during the festival to play and recontextualize the architecture and aural & visual memory of a space. (Other events focussed on the musical.) This is a real shame considering the theme of the festival: architecture & music. It is a pity for Bartley that the very next evening, the mind-blowing light/space/music work La Legende d’Ere by Xenakis would be presented in the same space, reminding us what exceptional cultural conviction can bring to art. In any case, I appreciated the simple elegance of the Bartley’s proposition: to place a cellist, two singers, an image collage (ice flow/clouds) of approximately 30 square feet, and an electroacoustic soundscape, in various locations of the open spaces so that one could create one’s own pathway through the sounding or visual spaces, thus creating your own version of the composition by your own movement. If you stood in one particular spot you could hear and see all of the events as one single composition. In any “version” of the piece, the soundscape and image created a synaesthetic echo that played the role of textural underlay to the weaving, wandering melodic lines of the cello and voices. Very nice realisation, though I found the material underdeveloped, with not enough details in each of the units of the whole to encourage a compelling interactive listening/reading. (The details of the sound or visual composition did not have sufficient depth to hold interest.) This made it easy to take the pathways and make some connections, but did not encourage me to stay and want to go deeper into the experience. This first part took place “during the intermission.”

The second part began back in the hall with the musicians seating in traditional concert position on a stage in front of the audience. A sonic environment emerged surrounding the audience, consisting of overtones singing being moved around the room, creating a berceuse of lovely sound. Unfortunately, the musicians were left somewhat abandoned on the stage for what seemed a very long time, and then, when they finally stood up to sing and play, they embarked on a very short ersatz-Hellenic melody that, though nicely rendered by Maryem Tollar, with some lovely vocal ornaments typical of the Mediterranean, seemed undeveloped and unfulfilled.
I was not entirely convinced by this first performance of a work commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art. I hope a second performance might help this work blossom into a fully integrated work.

I entered the church before the concert started! (Lateness promise
kept.) But I got there close enough to show time to be faced with a
capacity audience and so I sat in the pews on the right-hand side of
the church. This turned out to be a most interesting acoustic
experience.

Soundstreams Canada Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney gave
introductions to the program, apologizing for running out of printed
programs, then explained the commissioning of the 8 Canadian fanfares.
To match the symmetry of the church, the program was divided into 7
parts. Unfortunately, this may have been one of the few direct
correlations between architecture and the music we heard.

In general this was a very friendly program of music, most works not
straying from a tonal or modal idiom or language. The pepper in the
program was provided by composers with a spectralist attitude.

I        Scott Irvine    
        Ceremonial Fanfare (True
NorthBrass)
        Kelly-Marie Murphy
        Fanfare (Fanfare Trumpets)* 
*LAIDLAW FOUNDATION COMMISSION

These two short fanfares provided us with traditional, conventional
fare. These two “new” works sounded as if they could have been written
50 years ago by the Harry Freedman/Jean Coulthard axis.

II        Giovanni Gabrieli
            Sonata Pian’e
Forte  
           
            Canzone
Septimi Toni   
           
            Alain Trudel,
Conductor
           
            members of
Stockholm Chamber Brass and True North Brass;
           
             Alistair
Kay & Gordon Wolfe, Trombone; Larry Shields, Bass Trombone

Gabrieli’s masterwork of the renaissance (the Sonata Pian’e Forte) interacted with the architecture of the
building, echoing it back to me in a significant way. As I listened to
the successions of long tones followed by short, cadencing here and
there, interweaving with egalitarian mirrors among all of the parts, I
looked up to see the arcs of the trios of windows, each trio composed
of one larger window in the centre with two mirrored flanks, the curved
tops seeming to echo the quicker movement of the voices. The arcs of
the ceilings and vaults all supported the sound both sonically and as
visual correlate to the sound. When the music accelerated toward the
end with successions of downward scales and echoes, one felt drawn now
toward the light and its relation to the window, streaming down to
alter the colours of the pictures. I found it easy to listen to the
music and to make these synaesthetic observations, because this music
was truly conceived of at a time when the arts were one and wonder was
a valued experience. The performance was sublime. The Canzone Septimi
Toni was well played, thought the tempi changes were not as marked,
perhaps due to the acoustic situation.
                       
III        Andrew
Staniland         
    Axis: Bold as Brass (Fanfare Trumpets) *LAIDLAW
FOUNDATION COMMISSION
        Raymond Luedeke  
        Joy (Stockholm Chamber
Brass)*  *LAIDLAW FOUNDATION COMMISSION
        Alexina Louie   
        Zina’s Brass (Stockholm Chamber
Brass)*  *LAIDLAW FOUNDATION COMMISSION
        Rolf Wallin   
        Fanfare (Fanfare
Trumpets)**  **NOMUS COMMISSION
        Gary
Kulesha         
        Without Fanfare (Fanfare
Trumpets)*  *LAIDLAW FOUNDATION COMMISSION

Staniland’s Axis: Bold as Brass is a direct reference to a Jimi Hendrix
album from the 70s called Axis: Bold as Love. The opening promised a
Hendrix-style piece with the imitation of electric guitar overtones
over open resonance, and, in the context of the title, I could forgive
the fourths that followed. The stacked semitones could really have gone
further to take a bold step by merging with the last idea of the piece,
the difference tones created in the listeners’ ears by the loud
articulation of a whole tone (8th and 9th harmonic).

Luedecke’s Joy was a timeless tonal fanfare, very conventional and happy.

Louie’s piece raced up and down the registers, sometimes sounding a bit
out of sorts in the tuba. The opening material, dominated by the minor
third, was nicely developed in the 3 sections of the piece that stepped
up the tempo with each transition. Yet I was left with the impression
that the piece wanted to be more than a fanfare. I sensed a bit of
sloppiness or unsuredness in this performance.

Wallin’s Fanfare was a real treat with rapid chorus/cluster
melody-building driven by the double-tongue technique. The energy,
clearly indebted to the Ligeti/Xenakis attitude of perceivable yet
complex musical processes, blew some fresh air into the concert.

Kulesha’s Without Fanfare certainly was not a fanfare. It seemed more
like the Ghost of Petrushka, leaving the room without dying. But I
can’t imagine this as an alternative ending to Stravinsky’s great dance!

IV        Magnus Lindberg         Ottoni   
           
            Alain Trudel,
Conductor
           
            members of
Stockholm Chamber Brass and True North Brass;
           
            Bardhyl
Gjevori & Gabriel Radford, Horn; Alistair Kay, Trombone;
           
            Larry Shields,
Bass Trombone

This was the most fascinating and fantastic work on the program. Here
is the result of years of serious thought about how to make a new
tonal/spectral music. This was the only other time in the program that
I felt the hand of architecture clearly at work. The listener is
introduced to three notes that happen to embody equally the sound of
pentatony, the sound of the dominant seventh chord, and the core set of
a Fibonacci series. By adding the semitone to the top of this chord as
the fourth note, the Fibonacci set is completed, a melodic arc is
created, and a minor ninth chord is implied. The richness of this
initial material is simple yet profound, and the composer takes an
entire dense and challenging work to bring us out the other end with an
inversion of the opening chord and to final rest. The coherent
structure and polyphonic thinking is very satisfying and the
performance was stellar. (It was during this work that I noticed a
peculiar acoustic phenomenon that I could not explain: the sound of the
trumpets playing about 20 feet to my left and facing the wall opposite,
to the left, seemed to inhabit the space from the source of sound point
to the wall to my right. Very strange.)

INTERMISSION

V        Anders Hillborg 
            Toronto
Fanfare (Fanfare Trumpets)  **NOMUS COMMISSIONS
    Toru Takemitsu             Garden Rain
                Alain Trudel, Conductor
           
    True North Brass & members of Stockholm Chamber
Brass; Gord Wolfe, Trombone;
                Larry Shields, Bass Trombone

Sweden’s Anders Hillborg provided us with a great spacial fanfare,
featuring attacks and sustained chords that moved back and forth in the
space between two ensembles. This spacial concept really worked.

In the context of such active music, I was not ready for Takemitsu’s Garden Rain and would much rather have heard it in a concert hall or less resonant space to better perceive the alternations of materials.

VI        Chris Paul
Harman        Fanfare/Processional
(Stockholm Chamber Brass, Ryan Scott)*
        Tryggvi
Baldvinsson        
        Fanfare for a Blue Mountain
(Stockholm Chamber Brass)** **NOMUS COMMISSIONS
   
   
Fuzzy                        
        Iron Lips (Fanfare Trumpets)**
**NOMUS COMMISSIONS        

I like Harman’s spectralist attitude, but I wanted more than the ninth
chord and friends that we heard here. I wonder if the musicians are
asked to played altered tones?

Iceland’s Baldvinsson gave us a busy, very idiomatic work, with cool
mute effects, descending fourth phase-ends, imitation and typical
interlocking tritone four-note motive that frames the major seventh.

Fuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy was he? Maybe he was a warm-and-fuzzy? The
drive was hot, but the tonal materials were not cool. So that would
mean that it was mainly “hot” – not. (But well performed though. I
really hope “Fuzzy” is – like – a DJ name: no disrespect intended. The
music was fun.)

VII    R. Murray Schafer     
    Isfahan+   +ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL
COMMISSION WORLD PREMIERE
                Alain Trudel, Conductor
           
        Stockholm Chamber Brass; True
North Brass; Toronto Fanfare Brass

Vintage Schafer: theatrical opening, slap-stick and bass drum
signals, movement about the hall, musicians exit at end while playing.
It’s almost a recipe. But hey, it’s a good recipe. I have to say
that the attitude is right. The piece starts with all musicians facing
“south” playing unison; they face west and play a semitone; north gets
a major third (isn’t the north lucky!); and the east, where the sun
rises, get the fourth added to the major third, to create the
dissonance of the semitone that we heard when they faced west. Nice
symmetry. When they all face south (the audience) again, the “music”
begins with a tuba fluttertongue. Then the slapstick is struck several
times by the conductor to indicate the beginning of the ritual. The
music unfolds with the evolution of minor triads with a major 7th and
other easily-resonating sounds which the musicians take around the room
as they all walk in different directions. Later the bass drum signals a
cadenza of trumpet rips to the “major/minor” triad and around the room
they go again, ending the piece off with the octave which all musicians
play as they exit from all possible exits, leaving the conductor in the
centre of the room playing a Japanese temple bowl. The entire piece was
beautifully done and quite convincing. I was hoping for a little more
adventure in the development of the materials, but who knows, that may
have detracted from the ritual. Schafer’s intention was to identify the
piece with the architecture of the church. I liked what he did. Ritual
is part of the concept: the work was inspired by the 7 echoes of the
Shah Abbas Mosque of Isfahan in Iran, as well as the mythical “Room of
Eternal Sound” in the Palace of Forty Columns of the Ali Qapu palaces.
In fact, the entire evening’s program was structured in seven sections
to create a conceptual relation to the Schafer commission.

Proposal for Acquisition by the City of Toronto
of a Transportable Acoustic Venue

Introduction

The new music community in Toronto has taken the initiative of
developing a project which will explore the intersections between
architecture, music and acoustics.  The project is envisaged as a
festival of events under the rubric of ‘Architecture – Music –
Acoustics’ to take place in June 2006.  The project is a
collaborative one, involving other arts organizations, the
architectural and design communities, and universities.  The
intent is to create a spirit of shared intellectual and artistic
exploration.  
       
Toronto is the site of several major building projects that will
provide topics for debate and venues for presentations.  In 2006
the Opera House, and the renovations of the Royal Ontario Museum, the
Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Royal Conservatory of Music will have
become major additions to the cityscape of Toronto.  Plans for the
Waterfront may then be considerably advanced.  The year 2006 will
be designated by the City of Toronto as “Year of Creativity”.


The Structure


One of the proposed components of the festival is the creation of a
temporary transportable acoustic venue (the “Structure”).  This
would be placed in a public space (still to be determined) for the
duration of the festival and would function as one of its venues. 
The festival would assume responsibility for raising the funds required
for the design and construction of the Structure.  

It is proposed that following the festival, the festival organizers
will donate the Structure to the City of Toronto, with the intent that
the Structure be made available to performing arts groups in Toronto at
a low and affordable rental.  The City would be expected to
assume  responsibility for ownership and storage of the Structure,
its relocation from time to time to different locations (presumably
public spaces), assembly and disassembly, security and power.  


Curatorial Premise

 
The space of performance is temporary only in its sense of place and is
to be considered as another instrument in the orchestra; an instrument
that can accommodate its colleagues to amplify, quantify, and to modify
their voices.  

Whether sited in a verdant landscape, an urban square, a floating
barge, or a “host” building it shares the stage with the other
instruments for the duration of the performance. It must, of necessity,
sit above the ground plane to allow for a space of entry and detachment
beneath and for the possibility of the installation of acoustic and
electronic devices.

The space is to be played by musician and audience, performer and
listener for both visual and aural response.  The instrument of
the temporary venue is reflector, absorber, refractor, and projector of
light and of sound.

The space of containment is determined by issues of performity, not by
conventional wisdom of building science and structure or modes of
enclosure and climatic control.  Materials are to be selected for
visual, aural and tactile acuity with the precision and clarity of an
instrument maker seeking to find the voice within a piece of wood,
carefully selected for its weight, its colour, and its feel.

In architecture and in music, Iannis Xenakis employed mathematics as a
means to structure thought and composition, searching for a reductive,
spare and articulate voice with which to address classic philosophical
reasoning.  The music and the installations, diotopes and
polytopes, initiated considerations of spatial discourse as fundamental
compositional strategies.  Mathematics was the threshold of
departure, geometry is the discipline of its development; and these
geometries need not necessarily be based in the rigours of
linearity.  With the advent of technological advances in
computation and fabrication, architecture can engage and propose new
paradigms; music and acoustics generate the clarity of pure
sound.  It is the sound, which punctuates the choreographed
occupation of the space and most eloquently gives meaning.  

The temporary venue, if only by virtue of size, is the ark and the
vessel.  The amphora has been opened and calls our attention and
seeks to engage the audience in moments of reflection and contemplation.

This, then, is the place and the space of music.


Design Considerations


Given considerations of time and budget, it is suggested that a
consortium of local architects and designers prepare a schematic
proposal for the Structure  in the form of both drawings and
models complete with an outline specification of preferred materials
and a working budget.

A competition, either open international or invited could generate press, but it is an expensive and lengthy process.

The proposal for the Structure should accommodate an audience of up to
400 people and 50 plus performers.  The piece will be driven by
acoustic considerations and have the flexibility to be tuned for
different performances.  It must also provide accommodation for
the integration of electronic amplification, generation, and modulation
of sound when required and have provision for the integration of light,
including “cinematic” projection and/or composition for specific use.

The Structure is not site specific, but is easily erected and demounted to travel in standard semi trailers.  

With the possibility of the Structure being used for a variety of
performances, consideration must be made for these variances in both
design and construction.

Hopefully my lateness pattern ended with this concert: I missed the first piece, Hard
for tenor saxophone by Christian Lauba. But the first sounds I heard
astonished me: the Duo Diorama is a first-rate duo of Minghuan Xu, violin and Winston Choi, piano. They performed Xenakis Dikhthas
like Brahms. The intensity of phrasing and ensemble playing was so
strong that the classical “duo/duel” nature of the work referred to in
the program came out loud and clear. Originally written for  the
City of Bonn’s 30th Beethoven festival, I can imagine this performance
easily fitting into a classical program and proving to doubters that
there is a different kind of idiomatic violin and piano music. The wild
glissandi outbursts are particular to the violin; the piano responds
with rapid cluster banging or arpeggios, each instrument speaking and
shouting its own voice in a most entertaining, but more, really
enlightening dialogue.

Ferneyhouhg’s Lemma-Icon-Epigram for
piano (1981) was something I was dissatisfied with after such an
intense outburst from the Duo. I found the work almost improvisational,
episodic by comparison, though a lovely piece that sounded the piano
well with a post-serial complexity sound that suits the instrument and
contributes to the post Boulez Third Sonata repertoire and would nicely
counterbalance that work on a program.

Daniel Weymouth’s Unexpected Things
for violin, piano and prerecorded sounds was just great! The composer
presents us with the classical duo, establishing a wonderful musical
conversation, and gradually during the course of the performance brings
the music quite logically to outside the socio-cultural paradym to
moments when the piano sound gets shut down by the violinist placing
mutes on all of the strings; to outbursts of interaction between the
musicians and altered sounds on CD; to a moment when slide whistles
handed out to a dozen members of the audience suddenly join the work
near the end; to the very ending when the pianist plays a recorder duet
with a now-subdued violin, exiting form the stage while playing. The
piece held together well, seeming to be driven by the composer’s
fascination with relating sounds in a piece by their possible colour
relationships. And it was very entertaining.

Xenakis Dmaathen
for oboe and percussion (1976) was played by saxophonist Wallace
Halladay on soprano sax to great effect. The folk music of the opening
establishes the ground for the time and tone interplays of the work.

Andriessen’s Workers Union for
any loud ensemble got off to a bad start with the amplified cello
louder than the band, but once that sonic glitch was fixed the work
proceeded. It wasn’t loud enough for me and I wanted to hear more
instruments. This is truly a work that needs a microphone on each
instrument if any single instrument is to be amplified, if just for the
equality of sound, or perhaps I should say the “equal access” to the
sound space that this would provide the musicians and audience.

Follow this link http://vision.mdg.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp/isea/program/E/artists/a579.html to see another idea on this theme presented at ISEA 2002. And here’s another interesting quick backgrounder.

Toronto composer Henry Kucharsyk had two works on the program, Room and Flock, which both derived from similar material derived from the harmonic series and the ideas of arcing, clustering, and resonance changes. One of the most effective moments in the first work came when clarinetist Bob Stevenson played a series of long tones while wildly swinging his instrument over his head, back and forth from the ground to the sky to the ground over slow marimba chords. The cluster melodies that came afterwards (played on clarinet, trumpet and violin) carved similar arcs, this time with melody rather that spectral shifting of one note. There were several points when musicians would move around the stage interlocking and establishing opposition/union relationships during the piece. The series of sections hung together well enough, although the musicians’ movement to the back of the hall at the end of the work seemed anecdotal. In Flock, we heard more carefully-crafted control of the cluster-melodies with interesting moments when the sustaining instruments seemed to pull resonances from the piano chords, with smudgy chords changes, and a piano flourish gesture that was often used to signal musical changes. The same choreographic gesture we saw and heard at the end of Room appeared again in Flock, but this time Kucharsyk created a magical moment when the offstage (and behind the audience) bass clarinet wailed out an incredible multiphonic that seemed to contain all of the sound energy of the preceding music, and followed it by a bass clarinet solo that was accompanied by two harmonicas played by the percussionists who now walked slowly on either side of the audience from the back of the room to the front, also slowly turning rain sticks, while the clarinetist walked up the centre aisle.

I have to say that I do not like Hart House as a performance space. The space is too long and the acoustic for spatialized music is quite imbalanced, with the close sounds too close and dry, and the far away sounds too reverberant and losing too much resonance to the high ceiling.

Lanier’s Daredevil was a nice bluesy piece that the Arraymusicians carefully helped the guest artist build by cautiously filling the blues space with slow heterophony, resonance reinforcements, and gentle decorations. Lanier opened the performance playing a chromatic keyboard-wind instrument that sounded like a cross between a Chinese sheng and a recorder. The tonguing techniques created a magical sound in the hall. The second part featured two nose-flutes and the performance finished with a Khaen solo (Thai chording instrument) that was not sufficiently amplified to achieve the bringing-down-the-house feel that I sensed wanted to break out of the music.

COMMENT 1: Such a tall order! We live in a time when there are few individuals who can bring all of these disciplines into a single vision, but many agree with the goal and pursue it by collaboration among the arts and sciences. There is a movement that acknowledges and pursues this through open source programs and collaborations based on that model. The concept of the genius would seem to die with Xenakis at the same time that software based on his ideas becomes more common and the tools that he helped develop become available to anyone with a computer.