Incantation / Elaboration (part two)

I’d never seen people walk out in the middle of an early music concert before…

It was not by any means having to do with the quality of the performance, which was exemplary.  It was instead a testament to the power of music written centuries ago.  

This post might be considered a followup to the previous post from couple of weeks ago in which I wrote about a listening experience of music from before the time of Bach, and how it left me intrigued if not confused.  At the same, time I felt an affinity towards that music as an improvisor that took time to identify and articulate.  This past week I heard one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon yet, upping the ante in this process of experiencing musical connections across time.  Connections that are very much alive in this crazy period we are living through now.  Somehow it gives me hope.

The venue was the same, the Gotham Early Music Scene’s weekly midtown concerts series here in NYC.  I had written about the blend of voices in the Theotokos ensemble given that I was perfectly situated near the front of the audience.  In this case the ALBA Consort was presented and for whatever reason I decided to listen from a different sonic vantage point, from the side and rather far from the musicians.  Given the amount of reverberation in the church some of the detail was obscured but with a little extra concentration I was still able to hear quite clearly.  The first composition, by Guillaume de Machaut, was slow and spare beginning with psaltery and oud (a middle eastern string instrument) joined by a vocal duo (female and male) creating a spacious almost other-worldly sound out of minimal elements. 

As the second piece began I found myself straining a bit to lean in and discern exactly what was going on.  The vocalists were singing in an unusually low register and the reverberation was making it challenging to zero in on exactly what pitches they were aiming for.  The oud seemed to be playing a completely independent part lending a disjunct quality to the proceedings even as the percussionist maintained a steady pulse.  On the one hand I loved it and at the same time I couldn’t help wonder if they might have gotten lost and were hanging on for dear life.  At this point the couple sitting behind me starting murmuring, I wasn’t sure what about but I could make out the words “is this kind of weird?”  Well, I guess it was which made me all the more interested.  About a dozen folks felt differently though and after the piece ended they and the couple behind me filed out.  This I something I’d only ever experienced at a contemporary music concert.  Or perhaps that time at a Cecil Taylor concert years ago when a full third of the audience left not even midway through a free outdoor performance of his band (featuring the great saxophonist Jimmy Lyons) in Chicago.  Anyway, the rest of the concert was varied and involved music from Spain and Armenia as well as from Balkan, Greek and Moroccan Sephardic traditions leaving me feeling much better than when I'd walked in.  

Upon returning home I began researching that second piece of music and quickly found that its idiosyncratic sound and structure have been of note for quite some time.  The title is “Fumeux fume” written by someone under the name Solage from the fourteenth century and is included in the Chantilly Codex, an important manuscript of medieval music.  It is a three-voice rondeaux in the tradition of the French “art subtilior” (more subtle art), a kind of avant garde of it’s time characterized by a high degree of complexity often utilizing what look like the kinds of graphic scores one might encounter in the twentieth century avant garde.   Perhaps because it appealed to a smaller group of aficionados or that it was more difficult to perform or that it was more challenging for audiences the style fell out of favor.  And yet seven hundred years later some folks are still moved towards the exits.  That’s really awesome when you think about it.  

The concert was recorded and while I tend to resist disseminating on-line listening I want to at least provide something by which you may also become intrigued enough to venture out into the unexpected, in person.  Here is the link to the ALBA Consort’s performance, cued up to “Fumeux fume”.  Once you’ve heard it I invite you to compare it with a recording in which all three parts are sung as opposed to assigning one of them to the oud (which I suspect may have been truer to the original intent) by the ensemble Alla Francesca.  Additionally here is yet another vocal version, this one a bit faster, by the TENET Vocal Artists.  Upon multiple listenings I’ve acclimated to it and am deeply moved by this music.   

Also of interest are the words to this composition.  I have no idea the meaning, perhaps it is metaphorical.  I've also encountered an alternate translation that uses smoke to describe brooding and vexatious states of mind.  

Fumeux fume par fumée, The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Fumeuse speculacion. A smoky speculation.

Qu’antre fummet sa pensée, While others smoke in thought,

Fumeux fume par fumée. The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Quar fumer molt li agree’ Because smoke pleases him greatly

Tant qu’il ait son entencion’. As he meditates.

Fumeux fume par fumée, The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Fumeuse speculacion. A smoky speculation.

My otherwise superficial rendering of the performance and music should in no way be seen as critical.  Confusion is not a bad thing and it often motivates an investigation paying off with more grist for the mill for the process of improvisation.  As always I extend my great thanks to the folks behind this ongoing series.  Attending these concerts each week has become my therapy.

Also on my mind…

...has been the recent passing of pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn.  A wonderful artist beloved by the community, I was fortunate to have worked with her a number of times and recorded with her and bassist Michael Formanek on a recording titled “Mirage”.

I can’t help but appreciate the vocal quality of her sound and I might assert that it does not require much in the way of imagination to hear a connection to the “distant” sounds of Solage.  Perhaps a good example might be Susan’s performance of “O. Sacrum Convivum”, a choral piece by composer Olivier Messiaen whose music, while perennially modern, evokes the spaciousness and mystery of early music.   

PS...I'm adding this a couple of days after having posted the above given that in my continuing exploration of music involving chant and polyphony the following has come across the radar...

Easter Liturgy in 1673 - Old Slavonic Polyphony | Chronos Ensemble

It strikes me as yet another approach in this rich tradition and quite a bracing one at that.  Here is an except from the description provided by the artists:

The Old-Russian liturgical polyphony, as well as the folk music, did not follow the Western system of consonance and dissonance that gave birth to European harmony and tonality. The Russian polyphony was based on the diatonic modal system of the Znamenny chant. This system gave no preference to «consonances» over «dissonances», considering both equally pure and natural. The thirds are not characteristic of this chant, the fourths and seconds occurring much more naturally in the tetrachord-based system.This may partially explain why this typically early-Russian type of polyphony is so valued in the aesthetic system of contemporary classical music. 

Incantation / Elaboration

The music had already started before I realized it, taking me by surprise.  No tuning up and settling in, the ensemble members (four vocalists and four instrumentalists) were focused and ready as soon as they took their places.  Led by the cellist (using his body to direct the music) the sound immediately grabbed me and yet I wasn’t sure why.  The vocal blend, four independent voices unified in perfect intonation, constantly unfolding in harmonic motion was so beautiful that I found it difficult to think.  I could only take it in asking myself how this music held together while seemingly in a state of constant dissolution.

  

The ensemble is called “Theotokos” and they are performing a program of music from before the time of Bach.

In time I began to notice a few things, not so much about the music but more the feelings it elicited.   For one I was beginning to feel like I was in church.  Of course, this was taking place in a church quite literally, just not an actual church service.  While my church going experience is rather limited I recently witnessed an Eastern Orthodox ordination service that lasted more than three hours and this was resonating in a similar way, a non-stop unfolding ritual of chant and liturgy.  Interestingly, during that service I was sitting next to a zen monk and while neither of us knew what was going on it wasn’t wholly unfamiliar since chant and liturgy play an important role in Buddhism as well.  The music being presented on this concert utilized chant much the same way it would have been used in such services and it had much the same effect.

In religious practice chant may serve a number of purposes; a form of announcement, an incantation, a mantra or simply a unifying element for those in attendance given its focusing effect on the mind and body. Chant is typically an intonement on a steady pitch although not always.  It may be flowing and non-metered or it may be rhythmic and repetitive.  But it’s usually not considered music in the way a song would be.  The words may or may not have any literal meaning but in either case it is the embodied act of chanting itself that allows the sounds to take direct effect, bypassing rational mediation.  No matter how you may feel about religious practice it’s hard to imagine being immune to these qualities.  

As the concert proceeded a pattern emerged in which one of the vocalists would go into an unaccompanied chant which was responded to and elaborated upon by the rest of the ensemble in a form of musical polyphony.  Polyphony refers to multiple voices each moving independently of each other, this particular brand of polyphony being quite intricate with little obvious imitation or repetition between the players or within the overall form.  There were cadences (resolution points) but they tended to cascade from one to another in unexpected ways.  This all went on for an hour without stop.  Given no obvious signposts of “where we were” the music began to feel cyclical rather than linear.  At a certain point I found myself thinking about gamelan music due to the timeless quality of continuous flow.  What I couldn’t figure out was how this was all ordered, achieving such cohesiveness within such detail.

It wasn’t until later that it dawned on me that it had to have been the words.  Researching this a bit led to the term “text painting”, a through-composed compositional technique (meaning without return to previous material) in which the flow of the words determines the flow of the music.  This is what allowed the polyphony to be so rich in complexity while retaining a sense of direction.  The program was a presentation of pieces written by a half dozen different composers played from one to the other, all of which were drawn from a musical form known as a passion setting, a form of composition with roots going back to Gregorian chant.  The texts utilized stem from a tradition of recitation of the story of the passion in church services going back to the fourth century.  These particular pieces ranged from the 1400’s into the late 1600’s, a period just prior to the advent of the tonal system that defined the time of Bach onward.  It is a music rich with all sorts of unorthodox musical procedures that eventually became smoothed out with the emergent codification of western harmony combined with an increased attention to compositional structure.

In spite of the fact that I did take history of western music classes in college, this is essentially new to me.  Back then, mostly what was on my mind was John Coltrane, getting a good sound on the saxophone and figuring out how to play chord changes.  I saw very little relevance with respect to most of what we were studying in class.  I feel very differently about that now.  These qualities, born out of a tradition based on the voice and the vocal production of sound (and it’s role in the development of harmony) may seem very far away from the concerns of an improvising saxophonist from a tradition based largely upon rhythm, the heart of which is the drums.  But I wouldn’t make too much of this distinction, at least I don’t want to be held back by it even though I’m still not sure what the effects of all this listening and my practicing of Bach may come to.  After having played the Buescher tenor and Rascher “classical” mouthpiece exclusively for the past several months I went back this past week and picked up my Conn tenor using my “jazz” mouthpiece.  I’m reminded of what my voice on the saxophone is and yet the through-composed unfolding qualities of that concert resonate with the way I improvise solo saxophone.  Without a formal basis for my own process I’ve sometimes wondered whether it was all a reflection of some kind of psychodrama.  I never actually trusted that assessment but I am feeling confident that there is in fact something at the heart of it all, whether I know exactly what it is or not.

I might have guided you to the recording of this concert but unfortunately it suffers from the recording process itself.  Not that it was recorded poorly or unprofessionally, it wasn’t.  The presenters take great care in what they are doing in documenting the concerts they present.  It’s simply the fact that what happens in the room is often elusive to even the best recording processes.  The rich blend and fullness was missing completely and the result was, to be honest, unpleasant compared to what was experienced live.  Instead, I’ll guide you to an excellent example from this time period in the music of composer Carlo Gesualdo, who lived from 1566 to 1613.  Gesualdo’s musical language is highly chromatic in ways that would not reappear again for centuries and exemplifies this kind of constant unfolding.  Have a listen here to his sacred music for five voices.

Interestingly, the music on this recording, the music on this concert and so much of the music we may study from any culture throughout world history can be recognized as spiritual music.  And it is completely up to you what to make of that.