Electronic Music Festival II

I went the second night of the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, but didn't hold out for the whole thing.

The situation was the same as the night before. There were four performers, so there were four groups of instruments and computers set up. Everybody uses Apple computers. This is a note to me. I have always used microsoft and the products are not that hot. Maybe I should switch.

Again the order of performance was changed. Donald Swearingen was first. His setup is called "an expanded, computer assisted performance environment." It was a group of odd looking coils that surrounded his computer. He waved his hands in the air above them and sounds came out. He is interested in something called "interrupted narrative," which means that sometimes when he waved his hands, words came out. They sounded like words from the radio. The piece was called salvation station and included various evangelists saying the word "Jesus" in an oratorical style. I don't think I was saved.

The second performer, Mark Trayle, had four saws in his setup which seemed to vibrate in an industrial sort of way. It was like being locked inside an electric saw. I longed for the saw lady who makes her saw sound sweet.


I should have stayed, but I was very tired after walking around most of the day.

Electronic Music Festival I

I went last night to the 10th Annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. This is sort of an antidote to Cats. People walk out on Cats, it seems. Maybe what's needed is an electronic Cats. They would sound more like cats that way.

I digress. The festival lasts for four days. I'll see how I do.

There are three or four performers per evening with each performer having his/her own set of gear. The show starts with all the gear on stage, so that makes for a pretty crowded stage. Apple is the computer of choice.


Last night it also started with Mariko Masaoka-Drew on the stage while the audience filed in. She is Miya Masaoka's daughter and performs the LED kimono piece, the first item on the program. Miya and her Koto and her computer play the music while Mariko wears the kimono and stands in various positions. The komono has a bunch of white LED lights on it which respond to electronic stimuli. The low and growly sounds did not particularly appeal to me, but it was fun to watch.

My favorite of the evening was Lukas Ligeti who plays something called a marimba lumina. This is like an electronic keyboard, except it's flatter, has things on it that light up and is designed to be struck like a marimba. It is sensitive to how hard it is struck, like a marimba.


The sound palate produced in performance comes from the computer that is attached. Different sounds map to different keys, much like a synthesizer drum track, except as each piece progresses they seem to change. I especially liked the piece where the sounds were like someone hitting tin cans.

He performs the pieces himself with a set of four padded drum sticks. I am trying to explain what I saw and heard. Perhaps you would prefer the program notes: "...a motion-based, polyrhythmic drumming technique, a choreography for drums, allowing performance of extremely long cyclic patterns." It goes on.

Anyway, as I was saying. Sometimes the sounds that are mapped to a key are a group of a few notes which then repeat until he stops them. Or perhaps they just loop a certain number of times and stop on their own. The result is extremely complex rhythmic patterns, dynamic, driving, exciting, loud, basically quite fun. I vote yes.

He was followed by "the fabulous amy x neuberg," a very amusing performer who used a device called the analog Blippoo Box, a synthesizer that features "chaotic modulations," or so the program notes proclaim. I advise ignoring the program notes. The device involves hand motions like a Theramin, or so it said. I have heard a Theramin and it sounds nothing like this. It makes high whiny sounds and this was yet another low and growly. I prefer high and whiny to low and growly.

She sings with her performance and was projected on a screen behind using a web cam. The piece is called the dude trilogy, and the word "dude" appears at intervals. Her diction isn't that great, so I'm not sure what it was about. She is funny and takes a close-up bite out of her Blippoo Box to end the piece.

She is more in the Lori Anderson school. After dude, she performed a few cabaret songs for voice, percussion pads and live looping. I'm not sure how extemporized this was. Electronic operas were mentioned. I would like to see these.

If you are looking for something completely different, you might try this. It plays for three more nights in the Brava Theater on 24th street.

Number One of Eighteen

First in Lotte's Eighteen Song Cycles is Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte. Like most things, Beethoven invented the song cycle.





I rather like this performance of it from 2008, which is by Peter W. Shea, tenor, and Monica Jakuc Leverett, fortepiano,. That instrument that looks like a harpsichord but doesn't sound like one is a fortepiano. If this is the type of piano Beethoven had, it's easier to imagine him beating it to smithereens. A comment explains that the lights are dim so the fortepiano doesn't go out of tune. A small light on Peter's face would help.

I like a number of things about this performance. The subtitles are nice, though unnecessary because Peter's diction is excellent and quite easy to understand. The sound of his voice is sweet.

One of the curiosities of learning German pronunciation at Indiana University was the really quite bad job that was done. I did a lot of Lieder, and I enjoy listening to my performances except for the painfully bad pronunciation. The Germans were having none of this. Jonas talks about having to learn to sing in German, but I doubt if he's available for lessons. Maybe Peter could help you out.

This tenor is not of the Lotte Lehmann school of interpretation. He seems to cast his eyes only on his crib notes in his left hand.

The cycle is just too long for a single YouTube film. A curious feature of this performance is the sudden burst of energy at the end of each film. But still, it's worth hearing.

There's no one but you

The question that immediately comes to mind is: is Cecilia Bartoli vying for the title of Sexiest in Drag? Far be it from me to argue.

And the musical clips here are spectacular.

Lehmann's Books

Lotte Lehmann (1888 – 1976) wrote a number of books on the subject of Lieder interpretation, an art in which she was for many the undisputed master. I remember several books sitting on my school library's shelves. In my collection is only Eighteen Song Cycles, a volume the covers all the important German cycles, or at least those she might have been expected to sing. Mahler's Kindertotenlieder does not appear.

She moves on to cover a few French cycles, including Berlioz' Les nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade. She includes both piano cycles and orchestra cycles.

Her books fell out of favor, were considered far too specific in their directions. She talks about where your eyes should be directed, e.g.

I took classes in Lieder interpretation at IU and felt that the more specific the discussion the more helpful it was to the singer. Lehmann's best words may lie at the beginning:

"First and foremost I want to say that this book will fail in its purpose, if the young singers, for whom I am writing it, should consider my conceptions as something final and try to imitate them instead of developing their own interpretations which should spring with originality and vitality from within themselves.

"What I want to try to explain here is not any final interpretation, but an approach which may be an aid towards the development of your individual conceptions. I want to point a way which might lead from the lack of understanding of those singers, who seem to consider only voice quality and smooth technique, to the boundless world of expression. And it will be seen that there is not just one, but an infinitely varied pattern of ways, which lead to this goal. Only he who seeks it with his whole heart will find his own approach to interpretation."

I couldn't agree more. Perhaps her books still sit on a library shelf somewhere. See if you can find them.

This is a funny comment I know, but here goes--I think perhaps the stricture against imitation does not really apply to Italian opera. Your heart must still be fully engaged, but the proper style can only be achieved through imitation.

This is the only film of Lehmann singing during her active career. She was 60.

Blogging

I feel obligated to blog today just to get the 9/9/9 date. If I think of anything to say, I'll add it later.

I was interested to see that Gert labels her jokes as humour. British spelling, of course. Maybe I should start doing that.

Quote

This is a quote from a German review of Sacrificium, Cecilia's new recording.

"Cecilia Bartoli proves again the fact that cultural archaeology and commercial success are compatible with one another in the best way. And that this lively, tremendously fiery Italian temper has deep inside a very sensitive melancholy nature, which understands music as bridge into the hearts of men."

I tried to translate the whole thing, but it's mostly descriptive of the contents of the album and very much in the serious style of German I'm not that good at.

I'm very interested in this album.

Sacrificium is also a death metal band from Stuttgart.

Another Christa Ludwig

I posted this before but it deserves a whole entry on its own. She will never be the same for me after this.

Poem for Cats

A morning feline concert
Disturbs my restless sleep.
Embrace the piercing celebration.
Wake up from dreams too deep.

Orchestrate the melody.
Add lyrics and a beat.
An end of summer musical
Might almost sound as sweet.

Definitely not T.S. Eliot. This is in response to a suggestion that I should blog entirely in verse.

Comment on nothing

At Santa Fe walking past a clump of the young ushers that are everywhere, I said for no particular reason, "Opera! Nothing beats it. Nothing even comes close." A young woman with dark hair snuck over beside me and whispered, "We all agree with you."

Piotr Beczala is featured in Opera News for September. I swear I didn't know.