(+++) THE MEANINGS OF “MODERN”

Rhythm Nation. PUBLIQuartet (Curtis Stewart and Jannina Norpoth, violins; Nick Revel, viola; Hamilton Berry, cello). AVIE. $19.99. 

Music from SEAMUS, Volume 35. New Focus Recordings. $16.99. 

     The devoted determination to be with-it on the musical scene shows itself nowadays in a variety of mostly predictable ways: extensive electronics, refusal to accept any singular musical genre and insisting that all are equally valid, strange names for performers and compositions alike (which would have been typesetters’ nightmares if they existed when human typesetters did), “tribute” arrangements/rearrangements of various kinds, music that does not stand on its own as music but whose rationale and underpinnings must be thoroughly studied by audiences for the works to have their intended effect, and recitals/recordings that insist they are “inclusive” (however defined) and designed exclusively for the cognoscenti while claiming that they are by definition forms of outreach because they are not limited to the performance of works of any particular type or time period. There are some performers in the with-it space who are really quite good, but their recordings’ insistence on being for the “in crowd” limits their reach instead of expanding it. And that may, in fact, be the intent: it grants a degree of exclusivity. Certainly the members of PUBLIQuartet approach all the material on a new AVIE disc with equal engagement, regardless of how engaging the individual pieces actually are. Four tracks here that are commissions by the quartet (out of 13 tracks total) are quite variegated: Baobab by Jlin (Jerrilynn Patton), Blues for Buddy by Jeff Scott, Cachumbambeando En Clave by Eddie Venegas, and Digging Gold; Deeper Blue (punctuated that way) by Mazz Swift. Listeners need to explore the reasons for the titles to appreciate the music fully, just as they need to be quite familiar with the rationale for the title of the album as a whole: Rhythm Nation refers to a 1989 Janet Jackson album that here is partially rethought into three very short electronically modified interludes scattered among the rest of the pieces. There is exuberance here when a work calls for it: Hip-Hop Studies and Etudes No. 10 by Daniel Bernard Roumain is a particularly good example – and also an example of the determination of many contemporary composers to use instrumental sounds and techniques that go well beyond the norm (or the instruments’ history). There is sensitivity and some degree of emotion, even near-lyricism, here from time to time, as in the string-quartet arrangement of Sunjata’s Time by Fodé Lassana Diabaté. The performers show their improvisational bona fides when those are needed, as in the longest work on the CD, Sixfivetwo by Henry Threadgill, which lurches along for an interminable 13 minutes. And there is even a pleasantly warm nod to Duke Ellington in PUBLIQuartet’s version of Come Sunday. There is versatility aplenty in the performances and variation aplenty in the music at whose service the performers display their eloquence. But there is no underlying theme for this recording, no sense that it exists for any purpose other than to let the players hold forth in varying ways with varying works for a presumed audience that enjoys the sound of a string quartet handling a wide variety of forms from a wide variety of genres. This is a CD for existing fans of PUBLIQuartet and existing believers in the equality – and equal quality – of music from any source, created for any reason. It does not reach out beyond a core group already enamored of variegated productions of this type, but it does present the skill of the performers effectively and give listeners a chance to hear that skill applied to widely differing works drawing on widely differing forms and cultures. 

     Whatever self-imposed audience limitations may exist for determinedly cross-genre recitals and the performers presenting them, they are less exclusionary than those associated with SEAMUS, the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music of the United States, whose audience is self-identified as an “in crowd” for people who enjoy a venue in which the avant-garde composers who use SEAMUS as a membership society can test and sometimes extend the limits of acoustic instruments, voices, and electronics of all sorts. The 35^th volume of SEAMUS creations, offered by New Focus Recordings, includes seven works that are, by design, aimed by SEAMUS members (who perform on electronics) at other SEAMUS members – and perhaps also at a small “extended family” already committed to material of this kind. The need to understand where these works come from and how they got their titles is ever-present here. Bang, Crunch, Bounce (2023) by Jon Christopher Nelson is supposed to reflect, electronically, nothing less than a theory of the entire universe, from the Big Bang to an eventual Big Crunch and then repeat. Wordless, yet needing to embody anything (2022) by Connor Scroggins – which adds saxophones, flutes and a violin to the electronics – mixes syllabification with individual electronically altered acoustic notes and in doing so tries to explore focus within overstimulation. Daiyu (2023) by Yao Hsiao is for voice and iPad and has a very elaborate backstory involving Yue opera and the portrayal of a tragic love; there is really no way for someone  not immersed in the piece’s foundation to figure out how to respond to it. CD 40209 (2022) by Alex Christie features untuned percussive sounds resembling those of old-fashioned clocks ticking, juxtaposed in ways that produce some rhythmic variation as the piece goes on. Ancestor (2024) by Simon Hutchinson is loud and defiantly unpleasant to listen to in its mixture of squeaks and squeals and tidbits of altered drum sounds and an overall sonic universe that consists of the sort of noise that is all too easily parodied by those who are not enamored of electronic sound production. Margaret Anne Schedel’s 2023 metatonia (spelled without a capital letter – a common avant-garde affectation) makes sounds inspired by breathing and was “written for Kyle Hutchins on the occasion of retirement of Cort Lippe,” which means only those intimately familiar with both those names and the specific referenced retirement will have any chance of relating the sound world to anything thematically understandable. And Here Come a Candle to Light You to Bed (2022) by Marcin Pączkowski – at 11-and-a-half minutes the longest work on this CD – uses machine learning as a tool to try to produce a work relating to memory and also reflecting George Orwell’s 1984, in which the nursery rhyme from which the piece’s title comes is a plot element. The absolute necessity of understanding the background of all these pieces can readily be shown by imagining an arbitrary swapping of their titles: from a pure sound-generation standpoint, virtually everything here can be given the name of virtually everything else here with no diminution of any of the soundworlds. What distinguishes the pieces is what they draw on and what they are supposed to mean, not how they sound or what specifics are used to produce their aural qualities. The rarefied tastes of members of SEAMUS, and friends of members, represent the entirety of the potential for understanding and enjoyment of everything recorded here – works for a self-defined in-group devoted to a specific form of sound generation carefully shaped in the service of notional storytelling.