Newer Music - Runnin' It Down

My New and Newer Music listening project has gotten off to a very slow start. I've tried to get down with Louis Andriessen's music; but I've not yet experienced a break through into this composer's world. Most of my home listening involves chamber music or at most chamber orchestras - massive orchestral works aren't often played; exceptions are Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Stockhausen.... But I'm a chamber music person, a Basie or Ellington sized ensemble is enough for me.

     I was excited to have the opportunity to audition Louis Andriessen's string quartets as performed by the Schoenberg Quartet. The results were not impressive to my ears. I must admit that it appeared to me that Andriessen was not entirely committed to composing string quartets. The Quartet in two movements (1957) is the work of an eighteen year old composer. Its straight-ahead string quartet writing, and not remarkable in any way. I was most looking forward to the Charlie Parker inspired quartet, Facing Death (1990). It incorporates elements of Parker's Ornithology. While it's obviously a labor of love, for Parker and bebop's creators; the quartet's performance took a few measures to get into the music, but after the ensemble caught fire the music after the halting beginning actually sounded exciting - the way bebop sounded. After four or five auditions, I did not dislike Facing Death (as I had on previous hearings). Is this the composition of a stone-minimalist composer? Let's see. Let's call this?

     There's plenty of melodic repetition, tastes of droning, cranked-up harmonic shots near the end of the piece. Characteristic properties of minimalism, yea? I am amused at myself in having to admit that after five of six hearings I liked Andriessen's Facing Death! First couple of hearings I hated it. This minimalist stance of mine - my droning, micro-changing attitude, from a hater to a liker - regarding  Andriessen's quartet exemplifies a fundamental critical principle of mine.

     In order to apprehend an unfamiliar musical work one  must attend to the work over a course of repeated hearings. The great former music writer for The New Yorker Andrew Porter outlined his requirements for reviewing performances of new music as follows: a copy of the score, a pen-light with which to follow the score during the performance, and a tape of the performance.

     So it's not too much to require of ourselves when facing new music to submit to repeated hearings.