A Conversation with Marilyn Nonken

This Saturday, September 6, 2014 at 7PM at Chicago's Constellation, Marilyn Nonken will present an intense exploration of the piano's many sonic identities. In addition to three of my works, the program will include pieces by Paul Clift, Joshua Fineberg, Gerard Pesson, Dominique Troncin, and Claude Vivier. Tickets are only $10 and can be purchased online at Ticketfly.com or at the door.

Below is the complete program as well as a brief interview with Marilyn. Her historical, philosophical, and technical insights provide an engaging preview of Saturday night's concert. Hope to see you there!

Program:

Dominique Troncin: Ciel ouvert     

Gerard Pesson: La Lumière n'a pas de bras pour nous porter

Joshua Fineberg: Grisaille

Drew Baker: Asa Nisi Masa

INTERMISSION

Drew Baker: National Anthem

Paul Clift: Action painting -- dark blue, green

Drew Baker: Gray      

Claude Vivier: Shiraz

DB: In your book, The Spectral Piano, you talk about “the spectral attitude” and define it as “an approach to music composition and performance supported by four related preoccupations: timbre (tone color), process (transformation), time (temporality), and perception.” While the program you will play in Chicago is not exclusively comprised of spectral composers, these preoccupations seem nonetheless applicable. Is this spectral attitude an appropriate filter through which to view the concert?

MN: I think it's a great way to listen to these pieces—it does provide that through line, and those four preoccupations are affinities all of these composers share.

Of course, many of the pieces on the program are directly connected with the spectral composers. Paul Clift's piece doesn't "sound" spectral, in terms of its use of the instrument, but he worked George Benjamin and Tristan Murail, and he shares their sensitivities to color and process. Troncin and Fineberg both worked with Murail, and in their pieces we hear something really tied to the spectral tradition: a fascination with resonances and building resonances in ways only the piano can, through use of highly specific kinds of articulations and pedaling. It's all very tactile, physical, sensual music. There is a drama to the sound that supersedes any kind of typical narrative or traditional musical form.

One thing to keep in mind is that the spectral composers' interest in timbre and color was closely tied to developments in computer and electronic music, and many of these composers were also taught by Ivo Malec at the Paris Conservatoire, who was a kind of disciple of Pierre Schaeffer. Many share an interest in electronic music, and have been influenced by those revolutions in how we hear and make sound, which have taken place in the past thirty years. Pesson's piece, which hardly uses pitched elements, still explores a continuum of tone colors, resulting from barely attacked tones on the keyboard to the various sounds of skin and nail on the keyboard, and the attack of the foot on the pedal as well. So there is this extraordinary attention to the sound itself, as the basis of the drama of the work.

In your own pieces, too, there is this fascination with transforming harmonies and layered resonances. I always think of your work as being intimately connected to Feldman, and although he wasn't in any way a "spectral" composer, he had that affinity for sound. Feldman also studied piano with a student of Scriabin, whom I consider a primary proto-spectralist.

DB: You will open the program with Ciel overt by Dominique Troncin (1961-1994), a composer whose works are seldom performed in the United States. When did you first discover this piece and how would you compare Troncin's treatment of the piano to that of his teacher, Tristan Murail?

MN: I’m not sure when I first heard his music, but before performing this piece for the first time last spring, I had wanted to learn it for years. I'm sure I heard it from Dominique My's recording. Troncin died of AIDS in 1994, only 33 years old, but he was an inspiring teacher and composer. I've come across so many composers and performers who crossed his path, who describe a wonderfully generous and inventive man. There's a fabulous CD of works written in his memory by the major composers of the time, many his colleagues in Paris, and both the Pesson work (La Lumière n'a pas de bras pour nous porter) and Joshua Fineberg's Til Human Voices Wake Us (a work I also play, but not on Saturday's program) were written in his memory.

Troncin's piece resembles Murail's music, but is also highly individual. There are great swaths that Murail would never have written! Texturally it is very much his own, and dramatically it is sometimes very weird. Troncin's piece doesn't have the same "organic" feel as many spectral works, which can be intensely-process-driven. He is able to find these moments of rupture, that are very shocking, particularly because the piece begins in such a beautiful, delicate fashion.

DB: The sheer physicality of Vivier’s Shiraz stands out as a unique challenge. Yet it seems that this program requires an impressive technical range that goes beyond the more obvious virtuosic demands. What are some of the technical concerns you've encountered in preparing this concert?

MN: Shiraz is certainly one of the hardest pieces physically in the repertoire, in terms of sheer stamina and power. Vivier requires that the pianist play extremely athletically, for what seem like impossibly long passages, and then immediately afterwards play graceful passagework with sensitivity and delicacy. One needs to play with certain abandon, but retain the control or reserve to bring nuance to the material as well. In Pesson's piece, of course, there is a different kind of control and skill required—no actual "notes" are played, so the pianist needs to recalibrate her relation to the keyboard. Many, many levels of articulation and dynamic are required—but the keys must never hit the key bed.

There is a fantastic center-section in Joshua Fineberg's piece which borders on the difficulty of the "new complexity," and perhaps transcends it: requiring that the pianist play polyphonically, physically being almost phantom-like, in two or four or six places at once. I really enjoy practicing this material, and ultimately I think the pianist is able to create a compelling illusion of what's on the page. As a pianist, I think that "compelling illusion" is often what I'm after.

Technically, I am always interested in the variety of color and nuance, and this is always directly tied to the instrument and space in the live performance. So in all the pieces, traditionally "virtuosic" or not, a real challenge to me is developing these conceptions of each piece and its individual sound world, and then creating these sound worlds Saturday night on a new instrument (to me), in a new space. So there is a high level of anticipation, uncertainty, and chance involved with each one—that's a big technical concern which I don't really address until the night of the concert itself.

NOTE: Below are YouTube videos featuring some of the pieces that Marilyn will perform on Saturday night. With the exception of National Anthem, all performances below are by other pianists.

Megan Grace Beugger Discusses 'Liaison'

In Megan Grace Beugger's Liaison, a dancer is harnessed to a piano via wires that, when pulled, bow the strings inside the instrument. Thus, the physical movements of the dancer generate the sonic result. It is a visually and aurally striking work. Below is a video of Melanie Aceto performing Liaison at this year's June in Buffalo Festival. In addition, I asked Megan a few questions about how the work came together. Her responses reveal a fascinating process informed by multiple collaborations.

D.B. How long did it take to create the apparatus that connects the dancer to the piano? Did you work from a pre-conceived plan or was the process defined more by trial and error?

Megan Grace Beugger

M.G.B. It was quite a long an intense process. From the initial conception, it probably took about 9 months to get a contraption that produced sound which resembled the final apparatus. After, there were a lot of adjustments made along the roughly one year it took to write the piece. I originally just thought of really long piano bows being tied to a dancer. When I tried that, parts of the piano (dampers and the frame bars) actually prevented any sound from occurring. So first, I just designed a simple device that was just a large wood block with a pole, which would be placed on top of the piano and pull the bows away from anything preventing them from resonating. This worked fine, and could be a useful tool for other pieces, which include intricate bowed piano, but it was rather limiting for this piece. It required two hands or body parts to operate one bow, which was off-putting because of the few amount of potential bows we could use, and the mandated scissors motion would get old really fast. From there, we wanted to have a contraption which would retract the strings, and we had to enlist tons of help from everyone we knew that had any sort of experience in designing mechanisms of any sort. We had three guys from the Center for the Arts at UB, who normally work on set design, Tom Tucker, Gary Casarella, and Tom Burke, architect Michael Rogers, and engineer John Roeseler, among others who worked extensively with us to come up with designs, problem solve, and physically build the contraption. It was extremely exciting to have so many people from such diverse fields actively and enthusiastically involved in making my idea for a piece with into a reality. Once the machine was built, we found problems as we began to work on it, which we consulted our friends for advice and help. The solution for one little problem would usually cause a trail of more, so we had to follow it to the end to get a final apparatus that would work.

D.B.To what degree is the gestural vocabulary in Liaison informed by your collaboration with Melanie Aceto?

M.G.B. It was extremely informed by my collaboration. Due to the nature of the piece, there is no possible separation of dance and music, so we had to write the entire thing together. Melanie would record improvisation sessions with the contraption, which was really helpful, and I’d bring pre-composed segments to rehearsals. The success rate of my pre-composed segments was much lower than I’d normally have composing music. Probably about 80-90% wouldn’t even be physically possible, and that is before you start to cut out what is boring, overdone, and ineffective. Melanie was much more likely to come up with gestures that were linear, rounded, gentle, and smooth, while I was much more likely to come up with gestures which were more choppy and harsh. Our collaboration allowed us to work with material that we would have never come up with on our own, which was really challenging but also rewarding. Additionally, our points of view about larger scale issues, such as form, were very different due to the different fields we were involved in, and it was really interesting for me to see how someone outside the music field thinks about the same concepts composers think about.

D.B. Is there a score for Liaison? If so, what does it look like and how did you come up with an appropriate notation?

M.G.B. Not yet, but one is in the works. As a composer, I always have worked in score, but dancers and choreographers use purely videos of performances in lieu of a score (giving an even stronger interpretive role to the first performers of a work). The piece clearly uses motion beyond that of an everyday person, and requires a skilled dancer. I’m sure there are a few musician/ dancers out there that have a relationship to written scores, but they are in the minority. Most dancers are very visual, and prefer that I show them how to do a movement instead of reading about it, and I prefer doing that too (given enough rehearsal time) as I get to really refine the movement and interpretation to fit with my visions for the piece. However, as this piece has consumed the last year and half of my doctoral studies, I’m hoping to create a score in order to include it in my doctoral portfolio, as well as be something that can open up more musicians to the work. The notation will be a mix of pictures depicting a motion and boxed text that describe sections where one specific motion is repeated until it is “maxed out.” Right now, the focus is on creating extremely detailed diagrams, which document the apparatus and its setup so it can be successfully recreated.

D.B. Given the physical setup of the piece, it makes sense that the pitch material is static. How did you decide upon the chosen pitch collection?

M.G.B. That was something that we experimented with and changed a lot as we wrote the piece. A lot of my choices regarding pitch for this piece were more about practicality than anything else. There were many pitch combinations that I was pleased with the sounds, but due to their placement in the piano they created some sort of technical issue (getting stuck, being hard to pull, twisting with other lines, or producing too much friction and snapping). I also wanted to pick a collection with enough timbral variety. After much trial and error we found a collection that worked great physically in the piano, and I was happy with the sound. The pitches are quasi based off the A spectral series, but there are a few pitches in there to throw it off and create dissonance.

D.B. The title of the piece, the striking image of a performer harnessed to a piano, the provocative ending gesture- all of these elements suggest a variety of possible sexual/political themes. Is this piece intended to explore a particular political idea?

M.G.B. Our goal was to create strong imagery, but not specific imagery. I think when you allow an audience member to connect with the piece by creating their own symbolisms, imageries, and meanings; the piece becomes more personal for them. Neither of us is interested in creating a linear story, however we were interested in creating characters. I often think of the piece more as a duo than a solo piece, where the piano/contraption is character too, and I was very interested in exploring the relationship between the piano/contraption and dancer. The dancer is in control of moving the bows that sound the piano strings, but the piano and contraption have more physical weight and mass, therefore the dancer must face the contraption’s resistance while being stuck in a confined space. This raises questions for me, such as what is strength and what/whom holds it.

2 Pianos and an Accordion: Mabel Kwan Plays and Talks About Haas

Mabel Kwan is a pianist of impressive range and artistry. Last Saturday she presented a stunning performance of Georg Friederich Haas' Trois Hommages for one pianist playing two pianos tuned one quarter-tone apart. Having completed this 45-minute virtuoso marathon, Mabel faces yet another imposing test from Haas this Thursday when she plays the accordion part in Dal Niente's performance of In Vain. Simply put, these works present unique and uncompromising physical and mental challenges. With that in mind, I asked Mabel the following:

D.B. I think the first question that comes to mind is very straightforward: How did you practice the Trois Hommages? More specifically, how did you acclimate yourself to the physical challenges that stem from sitting between two pianos arranged in a V-formation?

M.K. The first movement is the most demanding and worrisome from a physical standpoint-- I started out playing a three-minute version of the piece, and gradually upped the duration to fifteen minutes. I had access to a room with two pianos and even though they were both regularly tuned, it was helpful to practice the first hommage on two pianos. I practiced the second and third movements at home with my piano and a keyboard which I programmed a quarter-tone lower. For those two movements it's essential to practice with the different tuning between the two pianos. I had to take a lot of breaks while practicing and often I had to quit sooner than my brain would've liked just because my arms were shaking and I couldn't control in my fingers. It was strange to experience this law of diminishing returns to such a degree in practicing this piece.

D.B. Aside from a possible dress rehearsal, did you have a chance to practice on pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart?

M.K. The pianos in the hall were tuned two days before the concert so I got to practice for real those two days which was fantastic. I had to figure out some pedaling issues which I hadn't dealt with when practicing at home with the piano and keyboard setup, and another thing I had to get used to was the different timbres between the two pianos.

D.B. Can you describe the on-stage experience of performing all three Hommages?

M.K. It was unexpectedly scary. I've never been so aware of the possibility of mechanical failure. So I was pretty much worried about that the whole time while playing. I didn't know that was going to happen until I was up there. It was kind of awful! But I would totally do it again.

D.B. You are in the very unique position of performing the Trois Hommages and the accordion part for In Vain within the same week. In the case of the latter, you are once again in foreign territory from a physical standpoint, this time as a pianist playing a related but nonetheless very different instrument. How have you approached the challenge of the In Vain accordion part?

M.K. First I really want say, EVERYONE PLEASE COME TO THIS CONCERT. IT WILL BE INCREDIBLE!

This is another case where I had to gradually build up the physicality in order to play a piece. Learning the part at first was very unnatural because the only way I could learn it was to play it on the piano and then "translate" it to the accordion. It was kind of maddening, but as I got more accustomed to playing the accordion and I stopped having to doing that. It's been fascinating to play this part on chromatic accordion because the intervals--lots of tritones, whole steps, half steps--are perfectly suited to the arrangement of the buttons on the accordion-- three rows, each a diminished 7 chord. While I can't recommend a piece by Haas being the first thing you learn on a new instrument, it's been an interesting way to get to know the accordion very well.

D.B. Do you have any plans to perform the Trois Hommages again? Are there any other pieces on your agenda that place similar demands on the pianist?

M.K. I would love to play the Trois Hommages again. I'm also interested in your piano solo, Stress Position, and a piece for three toy pianos by Evan Johnson, Positioning in Radiography.

Note: I very much appreciate Mabel taking time to answer my questions and it would certainly be an honor to have her perform Stress Position. After playing Haas' Hommage to Ligeti, however, I'm sure my piece will seem rather tame!

If you're in Chicago on Thursday, don't miss Dal Niente's performance of In Vain. It is a rare and special experience. Here's an excerpt performed by the Argento Ensemble:

A Sampling of Recent Piano Concerti (1997 - 2010)

Audio excerpts appear at the bottom of the post.

As a genre, the piano concerto is surprisingly well-suited to reinvention. I was reminded of this fact last month after hearing Ensemble Dal Niente and Winston Choi perform the Ligeti Piano Concerto.

This inspired me to compile a few audio samples of recent piano concerti (written between 1997 and 2010) that similarly convey a unique perspective.

Hans Abrahamsen's Piano Concerto (1998) starts with undulating patterns in the piano surrounded by busily plucking strings and swelling winds. Within 25 seconds, the fast-paced rhythmic activity is sharply cut off, replaced by sustained chords that paralyze the harmonic rhythm while simultaneously maintaining and even elevating the overall dramatic intensity. All of this happens in less than two minutes. The enigmatic and unconcerto-like nature of this brief movement yields a powerful entry point into the piece. Audio of the complete first movement is posted below.

The notion of unusual proportions is also applicable to Jason Eckardt's Trespass (2005), which the composer describes in the following way:

"My composition for piano and chamber ensemble establishes formal boundaries between thirteen telescoping sections, each slightly more than half the length of its immediate predecessor. The opening, longer sections contain several contrasting subsections that are united by the necessary relief that they provide through internal proportional and tensional balance. As the later sections are radically diminished in length, their contents — some of which have been displaced from previous sections — become more homogenous and the juxtapositions between them are intensified. This formal contraction produces an implosive momentum that brings the work to its turbulent conclusion." 

The clip below is taken from one of the longer, multi-faceted sections. In this case, different instruments take turns ricocheting off of the bounding piano. The brusque nature of this starting texture makes it easy to overlook how seamlessly the piano and ensemble exchange foreground and background roles during the first half of the excerpt. This back-and-forth interaction between soloist and ensemble coupled with intricate surface level detailing, make it well worth your time to take in multiple listenings. Special thanks to Jason for providing the excerpt.

While Regis Campo's aesthetic differs from Eckardt's, the clip provided here similarly involves a piano-centric introduction out of which the orchestra carefully emerges. For further thoughts on Regis Campo's Piano Concerto (1998), please see my previous post which includes audio excerpts of his chamber music.

For a full recap and analysis of Bent Sørensen's La mattina, check out this post on the 5:4 blog.

Lastly, in addition to the streaming audio below, I recommend these clips (to listen, click the links):

Arlene Sierra - Art of War (2010) (movement 2: Strategic Siege)

Arlene Sierra describes this movement as follows:

"In this movement the role of soloist is changed from instigator to saboteur. Its gestures chip away at a wall of sound created by the orchestra, subtly manipulating it until the orchestra follows the lead of the piano and succumbs to its persuasive power."

Georg Friedrich Haas - Piano Concerto (2007) and Fremde Welten for piano and 20 strings (1997)

Though brief, the excerpts for the Haas concerti are quite striking. Both of these pieces need to be performed in the US immediately. I am also eagerly awaiting a commerical recording.

Do you have any favorite piano concerti from the last 10-20 years? Please feel free to share in the comments section.

Enjoy!

Politics, the Piano and the Making of Stress Position

The following post contains the liner notes to Marilyn Nonken's CD of my complete piano works on New Focus Recordings.

Pianists spend lifetimes alone in small rooms with antique instruments. This intimate scenario is defined by an atmosphere of confinement as well as an overt physicality. The piano receives the weight of the body and disperses sound.

These simple and rather obvious facts regarding intimacy, physicality and space are essential to my piano works. Whether addressing extra-musical and political topics or simply existing as "absolute music," every piece on this recording attempts to lay bare the visceral intensity that directly results from the act of playing.

This is quite apparent at the outset of Asa Nisi Masa for solo amplified piano. With brute force, the performer strikes a series of low cluster chords that begin as dry, cannon-like shots separated by long pauses, before evolving into resonating, beating choruses of pitches. As the piece inches forward from the lowest depths of the piano to its highest octave, the listener experiences a vast spectrum of articulations, densities and rates of decay.

Gray for solo piano also investigates the instrument's resonant capacities, albeit on a much gentler and smaller scale. This work is named after my nephew and was written to commemorate his birth. I think of this piece as a series of melodic phrases moving in slow motion. As with Asa Nisi Masa, the deliberate pacing enables the listener to take in the action of the piano as sonorities appear, interact and dissipate.

Interaction of a sonic and spacial nature is a critical feature of Gaeta for two pianos and water percussion. One might think of this work as examining the piano through the filter of its percussive relatives. I began the compositional process by deciding upon the percussion instruments (waterphone, wind gongs, almglocken, earth plates and more - many submerged in water) and exploring their timbral potential. After establishing a set of sounds and textures, I incorporated the pianos with the intent to conceal their traditional identities. Not only are the pianos treated as percussion, the pianists and percussionists move around the stage, playing, holding and transporting a wide array of instruments. Interaction is critical to the process of playing, the resultant sound and, in the case of live performances, the visual experience.

Watching the process of interaction is also central to the title track of this recording, Stress Position. Here we return to the aforementioned intimate physicality embodied in the relationship between pianist and piano. In the case of this piece, however, that relationship is taken to an extreme and even perverse level. The insistent and unrelenting rhythmic repetition, coupled with an ever-increasing mass of pitches and dynamic intensity, creates a scenario whereby the piano becomes a torture apparatus. Virtuosity in this case is defined by the ability to endure. To a large extent, perfection in the most basic sense (avoidance of wrong notes and rhythms, command of tempi) is impossible given the manner in which the pianist must marshal all strength and concentration in order to merely continue.

The title of Stress Position refers directly to an ancient form of torture that was recently brought back into the public consciousness following the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Prisoners at both locations were forced to maintain positions in which the full weight of the body is directed at a specific muscle group, resulting in extreme pain and even disfigurement. In the case of the U.S. military, this technique was often augmented by visual deprivation (use of blindfolds) and auditory abuse via the playing of deafeningly loud music.

The pianist in Stress Position must play the entire piece with the arms extended to the extreme ends of the piano. As events unfold, the hands are likewise stretched until each accommodates six pitches spanning over an octave. The tension is not limited to the performer. The audience, which initially plays the role of voyeur in this situation, is subjected to ever increasing volume. Once the pianist reaches a maximal dynamic, amplification is introduced and steadily increased. Finally, without warning, the lights are cut and the closing section of the piece is played in total darkness.

To a large extent, Stress Position makes the notions of confinement and physicality the focus of the piece. However, one may rightly note that the confinement of the practice room or concert hall stands in direct opposition to the brutality and inhumanity of the torture chamber. Within this stark contrast lies one of the central political themes. As humans, we are capable of remarkable civility and the most base, animalistic behavior. The piano, a historical technology of great innovation and beauty, reveals these conflicting human capacities when turned into something that physically compromises the player.

The other politically motivated work on this recording is National Anthem for solo piano. Unlike Stress Position, the political ideas are somewhat hidden despite the fact that they provide the harmonic, rhythmic and formal basis of the piece. The Star Spangled Banner is simultaneously played in three different keys at three proportionally related and very slow tempi. To further conceal the anthem, the melodic contour is altered so that ascending motives often descend and vice versa. The solemn and almost dirge-like sound that results is intended to contradict the usual overt and often trumped up patriotism of the anthem. Instead, I wanted the mood to more accurately reflect my own unease and sadness about America’s place in the world as wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I must express my deepest thanks to Marilyn Nonken for championing my music and for challenging my understanding of the piano and its potential for continued exploration. Marilyn commissioned National Anthem and Stress Position, both times requesting politically charged works. I had not previously attempted to musically investigate political themes in this way, but was very much intrigued. My goal was to create works that engage the listener from sonic and political perspectives. In the end, just playing the piano seems a political act in itself, one which from the confines of small rooms, refuses to forget the past while continuing to grasp at now.