Concert Report #3. Music For 18 Musicians.

     In what turned out to be one of the most inspiring and eventful hours of the academic year, I'm glad I turned out for an interpretation of composer Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. In Ford Hall at 9 p.m, November 11th, eighteen musicians from Ithaca College put on one of the best shows I've seen all year. It exemplified what music is meant for, it moved me, it left me speechless afterwards, and it gave me something in return for my time, something I can hold onto forever. During the concert  texture, rhythm, melody, and minimalism set the stage for what would become more than musical values, but raw and pure emotion.
     Music for 18 Musicians was written by legendary composer Steve Reich in 1974 (completed in 76'), and is one of his most prominent pieces. Before I knew of this concert I had just started getting into Steve Reich earlier the week before and had listened to this piece in its one hour non-stop entirety. Literally there are no movements or breaks to rest. The ensemble of eighteen musicians comprised of a violin, a cello, two clarinets (who also played bass clarinets), four voices (all female), four pianos, three marimbas, two xylophones, and a metallophone. Notice how these are all acoustic instruments. The piece revolves around pulses, in kind of a way they were ideas that layered and weaved within one another. According to the program there were thirteen of these ideas, the fourteenth piece going back to the first pulse. The rhythm throughout this piece is basically split in a battle between two voices. The mallets and piano providing one study rhythm and the voices and strings providing a counter rhythm over that. The voices were awesome, they used the microphone to fade in and out in volume, creating a push and pull effect, like the tides coming in. The greatest part of this concert is the effect the music had on me.
     The piece's texture was vast and each had a unique sound. Sometimes it was monophonic, with just the marimbas or piano hammering down on a steady pulse, driving it forward. Other times it turned polyphonic, a battle of xylophone and strings under the steady foundation of the pulse. Each piece weaving in and out, louder, softer, push and pull. To me it was if the earth itself was breathing, as if the tide was coming in and out, the steady pulse and light "melodies" echoing life itself. I sounds like a bunch of mumbo crap but really it was quite enlightening and refreshing. The texture and instrumentation were are a perfect match for the tune and it helped get its message across. It was minimal in complexity, simple in structure and form; yet it proved that complexity is not needed to create music, meaningful music. This piece really gets in your head, it provides imagery and lets our imaginations expand, it creates emotions of passion and contemplation. For me a least, for me. I definitely enjoyed this piece and it reminded me why I play music and incorporate it so heavily into my life.

Clifford Brown: Study in Brown.

Prepare to have your mind blown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoLuDSO33js

Stravinsky: The Rite Of Spring

8:17-9:50

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Throughout history, music has always pushed off from the base of its descendants, creating something new in the process. Modernism is no exception to this rule, and yet perhaps it is one of the best examples to demonstrate the drastic change that is possible. Modernism, starting in the early 20^th century, gave art a whole new perspective. It was radical, expressionistic, free, and experimental. It disregarded almost entirely the logic behind the Enlightenment, and the "folk art" of Romanticism. Instead it sought the abstract and unchartered. Perhaps this can all be embodied in one of the most celebrated Modernistic pieces of music in history, at a time when Modernism was really starting to take charge; on the brink of World War One. This piece being Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 Rite of Spring. A product and absolute genius work of Modernism, Stravinsky’s piece showed new ideas like Disjunction, Fragmentation, and Stratification; all which can be shown in just over a minute of this thirty-five minute piece. Stravinsky demonstrates 20-th century aesthetics of modernism by his own use of texture, rhythm, and melody.

            By looking at his work in the Rite of Spring from 8:17-9:50, and his use of texture and rhythm, Modernism aesthetics can be applied. Though Stravinsky uses an exceptionally large orchestra for this piece, he uses them sparingly and often writes parts as if they were playing chamber music. This creates many different voices throughout the piece. This section of the piece starts off with the low strings hitting the one, driving the music forward, while the middle strings and the woodwinds banter for the rest of the bar. And because of this banter the beginning doesn’t shout 4/4, rather the off beats give it this kind of flowing aura. Then the second idea (at 8:29), fronted by the light flutes and the middle strings come in, completely contrasting to the first idea. Then its fades out and the ominous low groove comes back in. This is a play of light and dark, of ritual and the slow awakening of the Earth. As this continues the melody on top is constantly switching instrumentation. The horns take the strings, the strings take the flute, and a complete swap takes place (8:49). Its as if the musicians didn’t know what part to play. This is a good example of Fragmentation, the breaking of ideas. Stravinsky dissected the piece and created more movement by making each instrument play the same line throughout different points. And as the instruments weave in and out of roles Stravinsky weaves in and out of time signature, going from 4/4 to 3/4.

            Stravinsky shows modern ideas like stratification and disjunction through his melody as well. At 9:10 a new melody arises from the flute, completely separate from the underlying theme that flows under it. This flute creates stratification, creating a deep contrast from the light and dark sounds, and making it seem as if they were in conflict. Also disjunction, two sharply unrelated ideas against one another. In Paul Cézanne’s painting The Large Bathers there is a sense of two things going on. The nude bathers sitting on the edge of the river are in complete contrast to the town just across. Two seemingly different things brought together, and that’s what Stravinsky has done with this part.  After this brief intrusion by the flute the listener is taken back to the original theme. This whole section takes place over 32 bars in two different time signatures, coming out from a piece that was considerably faster in tempo, and using its instrumentation in a disjoined way. Stravinsky was painting a picture, and it was unlike anything that had come before it.

           Stravinsky demonstrated these 20-th century aesthetics of modernism in what became one of the greatest and most recognizable pieces of all time. He took the ideas budding in the early 20^th-century and explored them in way no one had conceived before, in fact so radical it caused a riot! His abandonment of past aesthetics like definitive phrase structure and complete embrace of something completely new really did wake the Earth up. This piece was not only an awakening in a ritualistic sense, but truly did bring the 20-th century into full swing.