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Remember Your Poll'er is an hourlong<br />
septet (three winds. 1hree<br />
s1rings. piano) whose 1hree movements<br />
an: separately titled .. The<br />
Call.- "Remember Your Power:·<br />
and '"Re1urn - In a program essay .<br />
1he composer acknowledges the<br />
intluence of a collaborating music<br />
therapist as well as a mythologist<br />
and recem expens in "Lhe rela1ionship<br />
of sound and consciousness."<br />
Researching one therapeutic meLhod.<br />
Burke says he formed a "notion<br />
of developing music expressly<br />
for this purpose, which otherwise<br />
uses recorded classics that<br />
unfold in conventional ways. -<br />
Though experienced by its first<br />
audience on yoga ma1s, Remember<br />
Your Power has little in common<br />
with 1he therapists' soolhing<br />
or feel-good repertoire. Its contempla1ive<br />
continuity is fresh and challenging:<br />
the composer pursues his<br />
intentions with deep seriousness.<br />
Morton Feldman's music for the<br />
Ro1hko Chapel in Houston comes<br />
to mind, as does Karlheinz Stockhausen's<br />
Stimrmmg (in the long crystal-gong<br />
coda).<br />
Listening while sitting up (rather<br />
than, as recommended. prone),<br />
you can approach the piece as you<br />
might almost any fully developed<br />
instrumental music in the modern<br />
1radition. Permutations of a fournote<br />
chord knit the stray strands of<br />
1he first movement; in the second.<br />
a piano gesrure. like the wave of a<br />
wand, punc1uates a series of slow<br />
sta1ements by subsections of the<br />
ensemble; in the third, quasi-vocal<br />
fragments suggestive of yearning<br />
evolve imo a long stretch of cluster<br />
1remolos, changing colour imperceptibly.<br />
The exiraordinary tiveminute<br />
coda. based solely on overtones<br />
of that gong, may work beuer<br />
if you' re prone on a mat.<br />
The performing ensemble is<br />
first-rate. Jane Hayes, in the crucial<br />
piano role. is especially persuasive.<br />
Burke's Quartet. 1995 winner of<br />
the Jules Leger Prize. is a short<br />
one-movement work whose intensity<br />
and energy seem to develop<br />
na1urally from 1he instruments'<br />
open strings. Burke mostly 1reats<br />
1he players as contributors to a<br />
sound-mass rather than as indinduals.<br />
John Beckwith<br />
Selected Works, 1961-1969<br />
James Tenney<br />
New World Records 80570<br />
James Tenney - Postal Pieces<br />
The Barton Workshop; James<br />
Fulkerson, director<br />
New World Records 80612-2<br />
"When John Cage, who s1udied<br />
wi1h Schoenberg. was asked in<br />
1989 who he would srud) v. ith if he<br />
were young today. he replit!d:<br />
'Jamt!S Tennt!y' .. . The quote is<br />
from Kyle Gann's seminal book on<br />
twen1ieth century American<br />
music. 11 's a fine index of where<br />
Tenney's innova1ions rank in con-<br />
1emporary composition. It was<br />
Canada's very good foriune 1ha1<br />
Tenney spent 1976-2000 1eaching<br />
at York University.<br />
Recorded music by . . America's<br />
mos1 famous unknown composer".<br />
to borrow Larry Polansky·s apt<br />
phrase. has been shamefully<br />
sparse. New World Records has<br />
closed an irnponam pan of the<br />
gap. "Selec1ed Works·· covers the<br />
electronic compositions of Tenney·s<br />
early years at Bell Laboratories.<br />
He was the firs1 composer<br />
<strong>10</strong> systematically employ Max<br />
Mathews' pioneering music soflware.<br />
MPostal Pieces . . focuses on<br />
instrumental music composed during<br />
Tenney·s·first year teaching at<br />
CalArts. 1970-71. The transition<br />
from digital composing on mainframes<br />
to twirling knobs on 1he<br />
university's analogue symhesizers<br />
was not attractive and so Tennc::y<br />
turned his attention t0 extracting<br />
WWW. THEWHOLENOTE.COM<br />
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