New Music Show 2/10/21 Rebecca Saunders and George Crumb

[Beresford]

A first British performance of Void by Rebecca Saunders, which I thought was very inspiring. Two percussionists playing their hearts out. I find Saunders music, especially this and its sequel Void II, to be extremely creative, and not in the least indulgent. The idiom takes some getting used to, and then it reaches feelings and moves the spirit in ways that no previous music has elicited in me.

I had not realised that Rebecca used Samuel Beckett's "Textes Pour Rien" as an inspiration, especially the last of these thirteen fragments of text. To me these comprise the most lucid and expressive writing in the English language (which Tom Service's quotation managed to mix up pitifully), up to and perhaps including Shakespeare. I was so excited by these pinnacles of modern music and modern literature being linked that I could not get to sleep afterwards. Wonderful. Best thing in this "galanty show".

There was also a charming performance of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale. I never know whether he is a Minimalist or not.

[kindofblue]

A first British performance of Void by Rebecca Saunders, which I thought was very inspiring. Two percussionists playing their hearts out. I find Saunders music, especially this and its sequel Void II, to be extremely creative, and not in the least indulgent. The idiom takes some getting used to, and then it reaches feelings and moves the spirit in ways that no previous music has elicited in me.

I had not realised that Rebecca used Samuel Beckett's "Textes Pour Rien" as an inspiration, especially the last of these thirteen fragments of text. To me these comprise the most lucid and expressive writing in the English language (which Tom Service's quotation managed to mix up pitifully), up to and perhaps including Shakespeare. I was so excited by these pinnacles of modern music and modern literature being linked that I could not get to sleep afterwards. Wonderful. Best thing in this "galanty show".

There was also a charming performance of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale. I never know whether he is a Minimalist or not.

I'm definitely going to listen to this - agree completely about Saunders... and of course Beckett!

[Quarky]

A first British performance of Void by Rebecca Saunders, which I thought was very inspiring. Two percussionists playing their hearts out. I find Saunders music, especially this and its sequel Void II, to be extremely creative, and not in the least indulgent. The idiom takes some getting used to, and then it reaches feelings and moves the spirit in ways that no previous music has elicited in me.

I had not realised that Rebecca used Samuel Beckett's "Textes Pour Rien" as an inspiration, especially the last of these thirteen fragments of text. To me these comprise the most lucid and expressive writing in the English language (which Tom Service's quotation managed to mix up pitifully), up to and perhaps including Shakespeare. I was so excited by these pinnacles of modern music and modern literature being linked that I could not get to sleep afterwards. Wonderful. Best thing in this "galanty show".

There was also a charming performance of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale. I never know whether he is a Minimalist or not.

Thanks for the information on Rebecca Saunders. Void was not advertised on the BBC website. Missed it first time around, will have to listen again.

Agreed on Voice of the Whale.

[tim2017]

Here is the score of Rebecca Saunders Void.

https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs...void_score_pcl

[Serial_Apologist]

Here is the score of Rebecca Saunders Void.

https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs...void_score_pcl

That's not void - it's covered with notes!

[tim2017]

That's not void - it's covered with notes!

No avoiding the notes!
Some strange percussion. Aluminium flowerpots, car coil springs , Nicophones whatever they are.

[Bryn]

No avoiding the notes!
Some strange percussion. Aluminium flowerpots, car coil springs , Nicophones whatever they are.

https://www.lunason.com/nicophone/

https://www.lunason.com/english/nicophone/bassnicophone/

[Serial_Apologist]

No avoiding the notes!
Some strange percussion. Aluminium flowerpots, car coil springs , Nicophones whatever they are.

Nothing to do with the Velvet Underground, then!

[Mandryka]

A first British performance of Void by Rebecca Saunders, which I thought was very inspiring. Two percussionists playing their hearts out. I find Saunders music, especially this and its sequel Void II, to be extremely creative, and not in the least indulgent. The idiom takes some getting used to, and then it reaches feelings and moves the spirit in ways that no previous music has elicited in me.

I had not realised that Rebecca used Samuel Beckett's "Textes Pour Rien" as an inspiration, especially the last of these thirteen fragments of text. To me these comprise the most lucid and expressive writing in the English language (which Tom Service's quotation managed to mix up pitifully), up to and perhaps including Shakespeare. I was so excited by these pinnacles of modern music and modern literature being linked that I could not get to sleep afterwards. Wonderful. Best thing in this "galanty show".

There was also a charming performance of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale. I never know whether he is a Minimalist or not.

Weaker still the weak old voice that tried in vain to make me, dying away as much as to say it’s going from here to try elsewhere, or dying down, there’s no telling, as much as to say it’s going to cease, give up trying. No voice ever but it in my life, it says, if speaking of me one can speak of life, and it can, it still can, or if not of life, there it dies, if this, if that, if speaking of me, there it dies, but who can the greater can the less, once you’ve spoken of me you can speak of anything, up to the point where, up to the time when, there it dies, it can’t go on, it’s been its death, speaking of me, here or elsewhere, it says, it murmurs. Whose voice, no one’s, there is no one, there’s a voice without a mouth, and somewhere a kind of hearing, something compelled to hear, and somewhere a hand, it calls that a hand, it wants to make a hand, or if not a hand something somewhere that can leave a trace, of what is made, of what is said, you can’t do with less, no, that’s romancing, more romancing, there is nothing but a voice murmuring a trace. A trace, it wants to leave a trace, yes, like air leaves among the leaves, among the grass, among the sand, it’s with that it would make a life, but soon it will be the end, it won’t be long now, there won’t be any life, there won’t have been any life, there will be silence, the air quite still that trembled once an instant, the tiny flurry of dust quite settled. Air, dust, there is no air here, nor anything to make dust, and to speak of instants, to speak of once, is to speak of nothing, but there it is, those are the expressions it employs. It has always spoken, it will always speak, of things that don’t exist, or only exist elsewhere, if you like, if you must, if that may be called existing. Unfortunately it is not a question of elsewhere, but of here, ah there are the words out at last, out again, that was the only chance, get out of here and go elsewhere, go where time passes and atoms assemble an instant, where the voice belongs perhaps, where it sometimes says it must have belonged, to be able to speak of such figments. Yes, out of here, but how when here is empty, not a speck of dust, not a breath, the voice’s breath alone, it breathes in vain, nothing is made. If I were here, if it could have made me, how I would pity it, for having spoken so long in vain, no, that won’t do, it wouldn’t have spoken in vain if I were here, and I wouldn’t pity it if it had made me, I’d curse it, or bless it, it would be in my mouth, cursing, blessing, whom, what, it wouldn’t be able to say, in my mouth it wouldn’t have much to say, that had so much to say in vain. But this pity, all the same, it wonders, this pity that is in the air, though no air here for pity, but it’s the expression, it wonders should it stop and wonder what pity is doing here and if it’s not hope gleaming, another expression, evilly among the imaginary ashes, the faint hope of a faint being after all, human in kind, tears in its eyes before they’ve had time to open, no, no more stopping and wondering, about that or anything else, nothing will stop it any more, in its fall, or in its rise, perhaps it will end on a castrato scream. True there was never much talk of the heart, literal or figurative, but that’s no reason for hoping, what, that one day there will be one, to send up above to break in the galanty show, pity. But what more is it waiting for now, when there’s no doubt left, no choice left, to stick a sock in its death-rattle, yet another locution. To have rounded off its cock-and-bullshit in a coda worthy of the rest? Last everlasting questions, infant languors in the end sheets, last images, end of dream, of being past, passing and to be, end of lie. Is it possible, is that the possible thing at last, the extinction of this black nothing and its impossible shades, the end of the farce of making and the silencing of silence, it wonders, that voice which is silence, or it’s me, there’s no telling, it’s all the same dream, the same silence, it and me, it and him, him and me, and all our train, and all theirs, and all theirs, but whose, whose dream, whose silence, old questions, last questions, ours who are dream and silence, but it’s ended, we’re ended who never were, soon there will be nothing where there was never anything, last images. And whose the shame, at every mute micromillisyllable, and unslakable infinity of remorse delving deeper ever deeper in its bite, at having to hear, having to say, fainter than the faintest murmur, so many lies, so many times the same lie lyingly denied, whose the screaming silence of no’s knife in yes’s wound, it wonders. And wonders what has become of the wish to know, it is gone, the heart is gone, the head is gone, no one feels anything, asks anything, seeks anything, says anything, hears anything, there is only silence. It’s not true, yes, it’s true, it’s true and it’s not true, there is silence and there is not silence, there is no one and there is someone, nothing prevents anything. And were the voice to cease quite at last, the old ceasing voice, it would not be true, as it is not true that it speaks, it can’t speak, it can’t cease. And were there one day to be here, where there are no days, which is no place, born of the impossible voice the unmakable being, and a gleam of light, still all would be silent and empty and dark, as now, as soon now, when all will be ended, all said, it says, it murmurs.

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[Bryn]

. . . There was also a charming performance of George Crumb's Voice of the Whale. I never know whether he is a Minimalist or not.

Most of those frequently identified as musical minimalists are swift to reject the label.

[french frank]

Most of those frequently identified as musical minimalists are swift to reject the label.

Don't like being categorised, I suppose.

[Beresford]

Another Rebecca Saunders first British performance on the New Music Show last night - a 21 minute piece called Dust. This time a collaboration between her and Enno Poppe, for violin and piano. I cannot imagine how they combined to create a collaborative piece; did she write the violin part then he added the piano, or perhaps the piano came first? Something must have come first. It definitely has a somewhat different character from other Saunders works I have heard.

[Beresford]

Mandryka - Thanks for posting a complete version of Beckett's final (13th) Texte Pour Rien.

I am always struck by the similarity between Beckett's concerns here - the Voice, the Heart, Dying, Dreams, and Silence - "Last everlasting questions" - and the central subjects of Buddhist theory of the nature of mind - the absence of anything that can reliably called self, and the emptiness of phenomena.
I don't imagine that Beckett had any interaction with such theory, but the overlap is remarkable.

[Serial_Apologist]

Mandryka - Thanks for posting a complete version of Beckett's final (13th) Texte Pour Rien.

I am always struck by the similarity between Beckett's concerns here - the Voice, the Heart, Dying, Dreams, and Silence - "Last everlasting questions" - and the central subjects of Buddhist theory of the nature of mind - the absence of anything that can reliably called self, and the emptiness of phenomena.
I don't imagine that Beckett had any interaction with such theory, but the overlap is remarkable.

One Buddhist theory conceives of Mind as a larger consciousness or transcendental Self that "makes the world go around" of which the individual consciousness is [a] part. Western philosophy has made the mistake of confusing interpretation, the "menu" or "recipe" for living, with life's multiplicity of operation - attempts to grasp which constitute the perennial quest for meaning and fixity. In the Eastern doctrines of Taoism and Zen emptiness and fullness are mutually inseparable opposites conditional, as with many polarities, on the conceptual model of understanding. (Which of course is not to say objective polarities do not exist in the nature of things). Alan Watts included Beckett alongside Freud and the Existentialist thinkers in his own critiques of Western interpretations of the Buddhist theory of Emptiness, citing the long legacy deriving from Judaeo-Christianity's tendency to interpret it pessimistically. I.e. what is "the point" if nothing ultimately has any meaning? Meaning is inferred through conceptualisation, our way of separating what is explicable from what is not: what we call meaning is thus filtered, a fiction or categorical imputation, excluding what does not fit within its framework, which it thereby renders "meaningless".

The rest of Nature does not, as far as we know, proceed on such rationalised premises in this way - were it to do so it would have seized up already without our interventions - but of course we have a long long tradition of separating ourselves from the "natural" and have built entire socio-economic systems for living on this basis, and mistrusting the nature of which our own is part. My guess would be that Beckett, along with others such as TS Eliot, was seeking another spiritual pathway from the Judaeo-Christian one.

[oliver sudden]

Another Rebecca Saunders first British performance on the New Music Show last night - a 21 minute piece called Dust. This time a collaboration between her and Enno Poppe, for violin and piano. I cannot imagine how they combined to create a collaborative piece; did she write the violin part then he added the piano, or perhaps the piano came first? Something must have come first. It definitely has a somewhat different character from other Saunders works I have heard.

How's your German? Their programme note for the duo is here: https://ultraschallberlin.de/aufsatz...aunders-taste/

Rebecca wrote a piano part to an existing violin solo by Enno, and Enno wrote a violin part to one of Rebecca's piano solos. (The duo is called Taste, though, which is a word in both English and German. Dust is for percussion...)