Adolphus Hailstork / Liza Lim
Episode 4: Spirituals and Strings
Josh hips Jon to a choral banger and the guys go deep on Jon’s favorite articulation on wildly different pieces that both interact with folk traditions.
Featuring performances of Adolphus Hailstork’s Crucifixion by the Brigham Young University Singers and Liza Lim’s Ochred String by Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:
Notes:
Josh accidentally refers to Old Dominion University as an HBCU. He was thinking of nearby Norfolk State University (Go, fightin’ Spartans!). The campuses are three miles apart.
While there are a few albums of the Lomax recordings Josh mentions on Spotify, you’d do way better to head over to the Lomax Family Collections at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress if you really want to dive in Scrooge McDuck-style.
Jon mentions some works by composers who are often categorized as members of the New Complexity. Here are some works he recommends if you’re curious to listen more:
Brian Ferneyhough - Time and Motion Study II (cello and live electronics) performed by Neil Heyde (cello) and Paul Archbold (electronics)
Massive piece for cello and live electronics; uses two tape loops at different rates, numerous microphones attached to the cello and one to the cellist’s throat
Commentary on the various technologies in the post-WWII era that led to workplace efficiency time and motion studies, and the way they break human beings into quantifiable data points to maximize efficiency (and therefore profits), and the overall dehumanizing character of these studies. The commentary extends to the extensive electronics setup which literally straps the performer into a network of wires and devices. The performer struggles through the dense score while the tape loops and electronics are being handled by at least one or two other people. The imagery is intended to evoke an electric chair, the performer as someone whose struggles are viewed as entertainment by onlookers and whose fate (success of performance) is ultimately controlled by those running the electronics no matter the effort the performer puts into realizing the score.
Chaya Czernowin - Sahaf (for chamber ensemble) performed by Ensemble Nikel
Part of her “shifting gravities” set of pieces. The piece explores the behavior of various laws of physics and how those can be explored with musical materials.
The work introduces the theme of a clicking ratchet surrounded by a collection of other musical ideas. Over time the different strands of development begin to coalesce into a crystallization of the ratchet idea taking over as the primary theme, but mapped onto pitch and registral space.
Richard Barrett – “II. Politeia” from Construction (large chamber ensemble) performed by ELISION Ensemble
This work is divided into two ensembles: a quintet and an octet (designated by different ‘fonts’). These ensembles are often juxtaposed while playing starkly disparate textures and meters. The contrast is so substantial that the two ensembles cannot be represented in a vertical format in a traditional score; indeed, Barrett wrote them out sequentially, providing instructions for when the ensembles should play simultaneously.
Franklin Cox - viz. (ensemble) performed by SONAR Ensemble (of UC San Diego, c. 1991/92)
Explores the concepts of narrative and syntax through the Neoplatonic hierarchy, dividing instruments of the ensemble into various categories of activity based on melodic or textural themes that unfold at varying rates (read more about this piece here).
