A1. To Punish Their Desire
A2. Corrective Attack Victim
A3. Baltimore Single Mother
A4. All Ways Without
B1. A Terror On Nothing
B2. Casual Attributions Of A Homophobic Murder
With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King. Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. (Psalm 98:6-7, KJV)
Monday 26 October 2020
Sharpwaist - Sucking from the Breast of a Castrator
Per Nørgård - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5
"Indeed, Nørgård has always had a close relationship with Sibelius, but it is by no means imitation of his music that constitutes the influence. 'What I think has been the most profound lesson from studying Sibelius' symphonies is the extent to which each of the works is really in a class by itself. This permeates my own attitude to composing symphonies. I feel each of my symphonies is a whole continent in itself,' Nørgård has said.
"Symphony No. 5 was given its first performance in 1990 by Esa-Pekka Salonen (to whom it is dedicated) and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in a concert where the rest of the programme was the fifth symphonies of Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. More than the number five and the Nordic element connects the works: for each of the three composers the fifth symphony was a breakthrough after a crisis. In the 1980s Nørgård had been through a period when chaos shattered his holistic world-picture. The greatly polarized Symphony No. 4 is a central work from those years. But with his Symphony No. 5 Nørgård showed with supreme courage that he could look all the chaotic forces in the eye however violent they might be.
"The mighty work has an unprecedentedly powerful expressive force. From the beginning of the symphony Nørgård shows that he dares go to the edge of the volcano with an awareness that he can face it. The forces of nature are not tamed, for control and chaos exist at the same time in this music – two opposites in what otherwise seems an impossible embrace.
"Nørgård takes the view that it is up to the listener to decide on the number of 'movements' in the symphony. It can be perceived with the contours of a traditional symphonic form with a large dynamic first movement, a quick second movement, a slow section (or two) and in the end an unstoppable, wildly rushing final movement. But it can just as easily be heard as one great development of the dynamism set in motion by the innumerable eruptions of the music at the beginning. The dynamic upsurges are intense and irregular, as if they come from an unpredictable geyser or a bubbling sea of lava. And the silence betwee the eruptions is full of powerful tension, for what will the next phase be like?
"The second section is typified by quivering spasms in the strings and grotesque manifestations in the woodwinds, which among other things play on loose reeds. The beginning of 'Jingle Bells' even pops up from the material as an objet trouvé, and the dynamic cascades reach absurd heights. Nørgård refuses actually to call this section a 'scherzo', but it is certainly a burlesque world that the symphony has developed into here.
"The third section builds up to yet another eruption of cascades, after which a chaconne-like foundation is firmly laid. The subsequent development comes close to running amok, and after a final culmination the music falls calm and fades out. But it is too early to write off the activity of the forces of nature. Like the awakening of a slumbering dragon the discharges of energy break out in the last section and the billowing cascades are once more in full flow. In the concluding minutes the ecstatic fanfares are transformed into a manic version of the end of Nørgård's own First Symphony, written 35 years previously. After which it is all swept away as by the wave of a magic wand.
"In the symphony Per Nørgård has developed his technique with the infinity series into a complex system he calls 'tone lakes'. The principle does not, like the infinity series, form fractal repetitions, but opens up tonal material that has developed from 12 notes to 36, 108 etc. For Nørgård it was a natural development to abandon the well tried principle of the infinity series. 'Techniques are quite simply modalities, tools for achieving results. They must be refined – or abandoned if they become too restrictive,' he said. And if there is music without irksome fetters it is decidedly this Fifth Symphony, where Nørgård juggles all the balls in the air at the same time.
"'That has been the fascinating and frightening thing about composing the work,' Nørgård explained. 'How long can it go on? Where it is going? Since something has always been going on, while something else is in the making, you experience a constant restlessness.'
"Symphony No. 4 comes from a period when Nørgård shattered the visions of a cosmos in harmony that he had presented in his Second and Third Symphonies. The main reason was his encounter with the Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930). For most of his life Wölfli was a patient in a mental hospital, where he created thousands of texts, images and musical fragments which with their intense creativity give the impression of a split personality. In his layer-on-layer art swarming with details and perspectives Nørgård could recognize himself – just with the poles reversed: the dark side with chaos and agitation instead of system-building according to a natural order.
"'I knew that this was a liberating moment,' Nørgård said about the encounter with Wölfli's art, speaking at the Louisiana Museum of Art at Humlebæk, Denmark, in the autumn of 1979. Wölfli's chaos became a direction indicator for Nørgård in a period that can reasonably be called his crisis years. The first work was the three choral songs Wie ein Kind to texts by Wölfli. Other major works from the period are the opera 'The Divine Circus' and Symphony No. 4, which for many of Nørgård's adherents were a surprising and perhaps also disappointing break with the intoxicating world-harmonies of the preceding works. But amidst all the Gothic horror Nørgård found a new rhythmic dynamic that took him a long way in the course of the following years – now with the focus on the misfit and the loner, including himself. 'Irreconcilability is my position today, and that can hardly be called a classic doctrine,' Nørgård said in an interview in 1982.
"In 1912 Wölfli had laid plans for a musical work with the title 'Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexen-See' ('Indian Rose Garden and Chinese Witch Lake'). For obvious reasons it was not realized, but the title alone was enough for Nørgård. 'Such precision in the expression of polarity is rare,' as he remarked. The result was the closest Nørgård has come to a programme symphony: the symphony Wölfli himself never managed to write. The subtitle is 'Hommage à Adolf Wölfli', and Per Nørgård has aptly spoken of it as 'a handshake with a friend, with thanks for a good idea.'
"The symphony constitutes a balance of oppositions. There are two movements – the rose garden and the witch lake – each of which involves something of its own opposite. Nørgård compares it to the yin and yang symbol, which has a black eye in the white 'fish' and a white eye in the black one.
"The first movement begins on the foundation of a melody Nørgård had written for Wölfli's poem 'Abendlied' ('Evening Song'). The words of the song, 'Traulichem, Alleine sein' ('Sad it is to be alone') form a descending motif that is transferred here to the violins and takes on disintegrating, collapsing forms – in fact, quite peacefully, but with an unreal calm. We are in a sanctuary – for something. The second part of the movement builds on the birdsong motif of the African robin-chat, which is first manifested softly in the piccolo and then in the solo violin. It is the most important theme of the symphony. Nørgård took the broad view of the fact that that the bird is neither Indian nor Chinese – it was the musical qualities that counted. 'The theme fascinates me, because it has something that goes beyond any system, it so to speak contains the existential, paradox of joy and sorrow.' The ambivalence becomes all the more striking when Nørgård lets the theme spread to the brass and the dark woodwinds. That is when we experience 'the black eye in the white fish.'
"The transition from the rose garden in the first movement to the witch lake in the second is quite abrupt. 'It is the rest of us who are mad if we do not know that we are living atop a catastrophe every second,' Nørgård has explained, and now the catastrophe breaks forth without warning. From the first note the witch lake has fiery, warlike rhythms. The unreality has become hair-raisingly horrific. Quotations from foreign music appear in the development of the music. The old salon waltz Fascination, known from Mantovani's saccharine orchestra, penetrates into the brass in a grotesque version. Crazy Swiss Ländler music breaks out, an echo of another Wölfli song by Nørgård. The falling thirds of the melody even have something in common with the 'inextinguishable' theme from Carl Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, another symphony that is a life-crisis work with conflict and irreconcilability as a bearing principle.
"Relentlessly we are brought to the brink of the burning water of the witch lake when, at the ultimate cliffhanger moment, we hear a new opening. The five last notes of the symphony are a small glimpse of the birdsong motif. A sensation of the rose garden that has been there all the time. The white eye in the black fish." (Jens Cornelius. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Oslo-Filharmonien, John Storgårds
1. Symphony No. 5: I. Moderato Più Allegro -
2. Symphony No. 5: II. Allegro Feroce -
3. Symphony No. 5: III. Andante -
4. Symphony No. 5: IV. Lento - Quasi Una Passacaglia -
5. Symphony No. 5: V. Allegro Robusto
6. Symphony No. 4: 'Indischer Roosen-Gaarten' -
7. Symphony No. 4: 'Chineesischer Hexen-See'
Per Nørgård - Symphonies Nos. 2 & 6
"Nørgård has indeed always had a close relationship with Sibelius, but it is by no means imitation of his music that constitutes the influence. 'What I think has been the most profound lesson from studying Sibelius' symphonies is the extent to which each of the works is really in a class by itself. This permeates my own attitude to composing symphonies. I feel each of my symphonies is a whole continent in itself,' Nørgård said when his Sixth Symphony was given its first performance in 2000.
"It was with a roguish smile that Per Nørgård presented the title of his new Sixth Symphony At the End of Day or, in Danish, Når alt kommer til alt at a press conference in 1999. Nørgård was then 67 years old, and men of his age retire. Had he written his last symphony, a summation of a lifelong immersion in the genre?
"The symphony had been commissioned by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic to celebrate the Millennium, and the first performance six days into the year 2000 was to prove one of the self-renewals with which Nørgård has so often surprised us. For it is quite certain that no doors were closed in this symphony. On the contrary Nørgård is more exploratory, more playful and rhythmically ebullient than in any of his previous symphonies. For despite the two titles of the symphony (teasingly not-quite-synonymous as they are) the point is that the end never comes. Each closure is followed by a new beginning. Nørgård in fact underscored this quite specifically by following up with both a Symphony No. 7 and No. 8.
"Symphony No. 6 is also one of Nørgård's most classical symphonies, divided into three movements: a large, dynamic first movement, a slow second movement and a short, lively final movement. Despite the pauses between the movements the music develops in one long, fluid process, and Nørgård therefore prefers to call the movements in his Sixth Symphony 'passages' and compares the pauses to bridges over an onward-flowing stream.
"The first four minutes of the symphony form a restless statement recalling the exposition of a classical first movement. But the exposition ends at a standstill. After rumbling drum sounds the music dies out. After which the first of the symphony's new beginnings immediately takes over! The restart develops with tremendous imagination into a game with the orchestral possibilities. The exuberance comes close to ending in anarchy, and then the orchestra drops into a gorge of dark timbres, produced by hordes of low-sounding, unusual instruments such as the double bass trombone, double bass tuba and double bass clarinet.
"The dark, unreal sounds become the point of departure for the second passage, which starts with a very slow pulse. The bass chords function as a passacaglia, a foundation for a development over it which increases in tempo and in the number of layers. The flow moves the music onward in the mischievous third passage, where jerky riffs and the rolling, descending lines from the beginning of the symphony frolic with the listener. A humorous game with the infinite, until that development too sinks into the depths. Was that – at the end of the day – the ending? No – for at a quite unexpected point a narrow chink is opened up to new horizons. 'A delta of other worlds,' Per Nørgård calls it. From here new journeys begin. A thousand new years wait ahead.
"The symphony is dedicated to Nørgård's wife, Helle Rahbæk Nørgård. After another performance in 2000 Nørgård revised the score along with the conductor Thomas Dausgaard, but by then he had already embarked on the pursuit of the 'other worlds' that Symphony No. 6 had presented for him. The symphony quickly acquired a sister piece, a mirror-image in the form of the large orchestral piece Terrains vagues. It begins where Symphony No. 6 ends. But that, as usual with Per Nørgård, is quite another story.
"In the 1960s Nørgård had discovered the principle he called the Infinity Series; a sequence which, translated into notes, combines modernist rigour with natural metamorphosis. The endless generation by the infinity series of new intervals emerges, among other ways, from the formation of the inversion of the series itself and of fractals. The intervals of the series can be found in other proportions such as every fourth note, every sixteenth note, every sixty-fourth note etc., and thus it develops so it can exist on several planes at the same time.
For Nørgård this was a revelation, and his quite personal path out of the experiments of the 1960s with the serial techniques that had a stifling effect on him. Instead the infinity series threw all the doors open wide. Its breakthrough was Voyage into the Golden Screen for chamber orchestra. The year was 1968, the hippie era was changing the world, and Nørgård too. He fetched the title of the work from a song by the singer/songwriter Donovan.
'Voyage into the Golden Screen' unfolded the infinity series in 'a full round' of 1,024 notes. The result was so fruitful that Nørgård immediately resolved to write a whole symphony on the same principle. Symphony No. 2 – in one movement became the title, and it is a tribute to the power – both rule-governed and natural – of the infinity series.
"'Instead of about 1000 notes of the series, I wanted to use about 4000 notes to exploit the potential for further immersion in the many layers and interval combinations of the infinity series. Instead of the 'untouched unfolding' of the tonal sequence and its orchestration I now wanted to 'intervene': to create melodies, take it to climaxes, to enlighten etc., but all with respect for the continuing flow and preservation of the special, timeless objectivity characteristic of the infinity series,' Per Nørgård explained.
"The main course of the symphony is the first 4096 notes of the infinity series, which run as a constant strand in more or less uninterrupted quavers. The long one-movement sequence is composed of phases, specifically 16 phases each with 256 notes of the series. After each phase of the development Nørgård places a bell signal. A 'round' is completed and we have risen one level. After every fourth phase Nørgård marks the progress of the music with what he calls a 'screen' of brass fanfares. Great, deafening orgastic eruptions. They too are part of an order such that screens Nos. 1 and 3 and screens Nos. 2 and 4 are related pairs.
"The symphony begins with a 'birth' of the infinity series. It develops gradually, first as pitchless air sounds, then unison sounds and after that quarter tone intervals. The chromatic intervals are approaching. And the peal of a bell marks the starting shot for the unfolding of the infinity series. The music takes off, euphorically, almost psychedelically, as if it has been given wings.
"For most of the symphony the quavers are played by the flutes, while the slower layers are usually pitched lower in the orchestra. Because the various layers of the music have the same origin, this gives the symphony a sense of totality that recalls ambient music. The non-stop rhythmic flow is also, one could say, related to the American minimalism of the time, although the rhythmic pulse in Nørgård's Second Symphony has a different 'swing'. But there are even lines back to musical precursors, for the growth of the symphony makes it a radical extension of the metamorphosis idea of Nørgård's teacher, Vagn Holmboe, and their shared model, Sibelius. Nørgård's Second Symphony and Sibelius' Seventh Symphony are both demonstratively onemovement symphonies and originate in a scale presentation (C major for Sibelius and the infinity series for Nørgård!). And the trombone theme which marks the key points in Sibelius' Seventh Symphony acquires a distant cousin in the form of Nørgård's overwhelming brass 'screens'.
"A few years before Symphony No. 2 and Voyage into the Golden Screen Nørgård had even made a geographical break with conservatism by terminating his tenure at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. Instead he relocated with his best pupils to Jutland, to the Royal Academy in Aarhus, and in 1970 the Aarhus City Orchestra gave the symphony its first performance, conducted by Per Dreier.
"At that time the world-famous Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache was a frequent visitor to the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen, and he had become very enthusiastic about 'Voyage into the Golden Screen'. Nørgård played the radio recording of the new Second Symphony for him, and Celibidache stated that he had never heard such beautiful music in his life. An international success for the symphony, which Nørgård revised for the occasion, was in the offing. But Celibidache's temperament got in the way; first when he demanded a whole 20 hours of orchestral rehearsals for the symphony, and then on a quite different occasion when he walked out on the orchestra in a rage. Celibidache never came to conduct a single Per Nørgård work, but by then the symphony had already been dedicated to him – and it still is." (Jean Cornelius. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Oslo-Filharmonien, John Storgårds
1. Symphony No. 6 'At The End Of The Day': I. Moderato
2. Symphony No. 6 'At The End Of The Day': II. Lentissimo
3. Symphony No. 6 'At The End Of The Day': III. Allegro Energico
4. Symphony No. 2
Per Nørgård - Symphonies Nos. 1 & 8
"The two symphonies on the CD are his first and his last so far. Different as they are, they share several features; both internal phenomena such as a spatial dimension in the music, and external factors such as the connections with Denmark's Nordic neighbour Finland. In Symphony no. 1 we hear a link with Finland's great composer Sibelius, and in 2012 the Eighth Symphony was given its first performance by the Helsinki Philharmonic, the orchestra which a century earlier premiered most of Sibelius' symphonies. The symphony is dedicated to the chief conductor of the orchestra, John Storgårds.
"Nørgård's very distinctive creative talent came more or less out of the blue – his parents had a drapery shop, and there were no musicians in the family. But in his boyhood years he was already writing music, and at the age of 17 he became a private pupil of the great Danish composer Vagn Holmboe.
"Holmboe's life close to nature and his ideas on musical metamorphosis were of huge importance to the young Copenhagener, and Holmboe's masterly Symphony no. 8, 'Sinfonia boreale' ('Northern Symphony') from 1953 actually changed his life. It gave him the idea of writing a symphony himself, and sparked off notions of a Nordic world of music: one that he had a strong urge to define in more detail.
"At that time Nørgård knew only a couple of Sibelius' seven symphonies – Holmboe had given him the score of the First Symphony shortly after they met – but now he went to work on all of them, and in Nørgård's own words this was 'a shock of an encounter that struck something deep inside my mind.'
"In 1954 Nørgård summoned up courage and sent Sibelius a long letter of homage which included an analysis of his style. In contrast to the age's view of Sibelius as a dinosaur from National Romanticism, Nørgård admired his sophisticated musical structures.
"'Your music is, in a way that far exceeds your contemporaries, in touch with the elementary, innermost and quite timeless forces of existence, with nature in the broadest sense. I felt this mystical connection with existence at the same time as I became aware of my nature as indefinably northern. The pure northern air, the powerful darkness and the crystal-clear, undimmed light; this, the Nordic feeling for nature, is today one of the most precious things in my life.'
"Sibelius replied approvingly: 'I am surprised to see how deeply you have delved into my music. Only rarely have I received letters that show such an understanding of my creation.' At the same time he praised the Quintet op. 1 that Nørgård had sent with the letter, and in a subsequent letter Sibelius accepted the dedication of Nørgård's choral work 'Aftonlandet' ('The Evening Land').
"The last chapter in the story of this meeting of composers followed the same year when the 22-year-old Nørgård was a member of a Nordic delegation and visited the 89-year-old Sibelius at his home Ainola – but he did not dare make himself known to the older composer...
"In 1955 Nørgård finished his First Symphony, his largest work so far, which he gave the title 'Sinfonia austera' ('Austere Symphony'). In the symphony Per Nørgård does nothing to conceal the link with his Finnish model. It begins with a bass clarinet and a timpani roll, not unlike the introduction to Sibelius' First Symphony, and a few minutes into the movement it quotes the 'bird cry' from Tapiola, Sibelius' last orchestral work about the Nordic nature-universe.
"But Sinfonia austera is not an imitation – it is inspired by and further develops Sibelius' thoughts and structures, marking the emergence of a new composer's personality. In this youthful work we already sense the ambivalence that is so characteristic of Nørgård's music: motifs that shift place without settling; rhythmic layers that open up a new dimension; metamorphoses with an undercurrent that is sombre and mysterious. It is a vibrant version of 'Nordic Noir,' a powerful, unorthodox drama of mankind and the elements.
"'Sinfonia austera' was unfortunately long in finding its audience, and it has always been a neglected work. The first performance was a studio production with the conductor Lamberto Gardelli, broadcast on national Danish radio in 1958. Not until 1963 was the symphony played in a concert, and by that time Nørgård had moved into a quite different artistic phase. His interest had veered from the Nordic landscape towards central European serial music, and a break with his mentor Holmboe had become necessary.
"Today, more than half a century later, it is clear that Nørgård's First Symphony is not an isolated work of his youth, but the beginning of a lifelong development of fundamental ideas. A specific example is the conclusion of the symphony – its most radical section – which turns up in a multifarious, chaotic version as the conclusion of the Fifth Symphony from 1990. Nor has Nørgård ever rejected his first work in the genre:
"'The austere character, in its earnestness, is undoubtedly very youthful. But since life and music are in so many ways just as indubitably youthful, I see no reason to dissociate myself from – or kill off – my First Symphony.'
"The leap from Per Nørgård's First Symphony to the Eighth Symphony seems enormous, but it is not solely a matter of chronology. 'Each of my symphonies has its own personality, which cannot be repeated,' he says himself, and this is very much the case with Symphony no. 8, whose character does not have much in common either with its closest predecessor, the aggressive Seventh Symphony from 2006.
"Symphony no. 8 is bright and playful, more transparent and airy than any other Nørgård has written. At the same time it is a highly Classical symphony. Its three separate movements are archetypes from the Classical tradition: a full, active first movement, a slow second movement and a fast final movement. 'The three possible states,' Nørgård calls them.
"The first movement is the longest, and has a content that develops luxuriantly. Glittering scales run both up and down – Nørgård compares this to spiral patterns or to the stepped pyramids of Mesopotamia – the ziggurats – while a horizon is maintained as a 'floor' in the midst of the music. The motions shift in lively fashion in many simultaneous layers without any sense of strict regularity. The process seems to take place all by itself.
"The canvas of sonorities is stretched tautly from top to bottom, and Nørgård paints on it with wonderfully light, transparent brush strokes. Out of the growing mass of the orchestra individual masses are drawn in surprisingly concertante elements: four flutes are give a prominent role as the movement changes to a siciliano rhythm in 6/8, and towards the end a group of celesta, piano, vibraphone and glockenspiel emerges with something that recalls a solo cadenza.
"After the thematic activity and drive of the first movement the slow second movement is pure being, where the reflections have the same point of origin. In Nørgård's own words, the music is 'sensually melodic,' but with innumerable facets added: not only orchestral layers, but also the way the main subject of the movement appears in three different variants. 'Three revolving stages, each with its own mobile expression,' Nørgård calls it. In this way the movement takes the form of a rondo, where the presentations of the theme are separated by quick, dynamic interludes.
"The last movement presents a third state: 'The state where you have nothing to hold on to,' Nørgård has explained. The movement begins restlessly and with no fixed grounding, and the ascending scales from the first movement haunt it in hyperactive, restless form. In time the orchestra rallies round the previous material, and the instruments unite in an ecstatic, glittering climax marked Lento visionario. It is a transitory apotheosis where the music vanishes magically into higher spheres, as if it will continue there beyond our understanding.
"It is not unreasonable to compare Nørgård's Eighth Symphony with works from the same life-phase of the two great Nordic predecessors, Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. The lightness and playfulness typify Carl Nielsen's last symphony, no. 6, whose deceptive title 'Sinfonia semplice' covers a complex enigma. And for Nørgård writing an Eighth Symphony must also have been a pat on the shoulder to Sibelius, who had himself tried for years to write a Symphony no. 8, but only found peace when he threw the drafts on the fire. Nørgård's creativity took a much more fortunate form: he has written over 400 works, wonderfully represented here by the span from the dark Sinfonia austera to the Eighth Symphony's sparkling, dizzying spots in the air." (Jens Cornelius. From the Dacapo website. See here.)
Performers: Wiener Philharmoniker, Sakari Oramo
1. Symphony No. 1: I. Tempo Moderato
2. Symphony No. 1: II. Calmo Muito Affetuoso
3. Symphony No. 1: III. Allegro Impetuoso
4. Symphony No. 8: I. Tempo Giusto - Poco Allegro, Molto Distinto
5. Symphony No. 8: II. Adagio Molto
6. Symphony No. 8: III. Piu Mosso - Lento Visionario
Per Nørgård - Libra
"Per Nørgård (born 1932) is Denmark's great, original composer in the period after World War II. With his vital, emotionally rich imagination and his ingenious structures he has shifted boundaries, opened up new musical vistas and made discoveries that challenge the musicality of the musicians and the listeners.
"Per Nørgård plays with language, both when he speaks and when he composes. He works with stresses, motion, vocal sonorities and subtleties. This feature of his personality has been interwoven in interesting ways with the principles surrounding his so-called infinity series and with his rhythms, which are often formed from the proportions of the Golden Section. As a choral composer Per Nørgård has written a long succession of works. Some are hymn-like in character, some are virtuosic a cappella works, other pieces have accompaniment. One of the earliest vocal works, 'You must plant a new tree' (1967 with text by Piet Hein), exists as both a song and a choral piece. This intuitively written song bears the marks on the one hand of the youth culture's flower-power cult of the natural and the collectivity, and on the other hand of something deeply rooted in the almost modally harmonized song. At the other end of the expressive spectrum one finds the highly expressive, virtuosic, free choral works, including 'Wie ein Kind' (1980), which was inspired by the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli.
"Per Nørgård has spent most of his life in Copenhagen, where he was born. But he has also travelled widely in the East and in the West, and he has spent many days and nights in his holiday home on the island of Langeland. In his student years at the Academy of Music Per Nørgård was a pupil of Vagn Holmboe, and at the same time was a great admirer of the music of the Finn Jean Sibelius. Later, like other composers of his generation, he explored the serialist music of Central Europe. This was the background for Per Nørgård's invention in 1959 of his unique 'infinity series' on the basis of the fractal theories of the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot.
"Per Nørgård's tone-rows and patterns grew out of a vision of 24 columns of harmonic and subharmonic series. At the horizontal level the melodic structures of the infinity series and the rhythmic dynamics of the Golden Section could move on a number of simultaneous but staggered planes and thus generate melodies and chords; a hierarchical system whose principles could to a great extent be found in nature and in the so-called Fibonacci numbers. In some strange way Per Nørgård came back towards diatonicism by this route, at a time when major-minor tonality had fallen into great discredit among the avant-garde. Against this background Per Nørgård composed a large number of works, among which the opera 'Gilgamesh' (1972) and the Third Symphony became monumental high points of the method of composition derived from the system and from his thoughtson the cosmic interrelationships of everything. Other similar and minor works from the 1970s that can be mentioned are 'Libra', the piano work 'Turn', the trio 'Spell' and the choral work 'Singe die Gärten', which is incorporated in the ending of the Third Symphony.
"Around 1980 Per Nørgård began to extend his compositional palette, looking for means of expressing himself more deeply and finding his way into the darker sides of the human mind. To this end he created a number of Wölfli-inspired works, including a series of choral works and the Fourth Symphony, which alternates between idyll and disaster, order and chaos.
"'Libra' (1973). In some periods Per Nørgård has taken an interest in astrology as a phenomenon. This is reflected in his Third Symphony, whose first movement runs through all twelve signs of the Zodiac musically, and in Libra. Libra is a cantata-like work in ten movements, which despite its very varied parts is thoroughly structured.
"Per Nørgård writes: 'In accordance with the meaning of the title the elements of the music are treated on the basis of the harmonically balanced. The fundamental material is the same, but it is split into forms which at once contrast with and balance one another'. The tonal material is a fragment of Per Nørgård's 'infinity series', in which motifs appear, disappear, return and are reflected in overarching tempos. The texts consist partly of Rudolf Steiner's strophe 'Die Welten erhalten Welten' about love, harmony and balance, partly of extracts from the psalms of David. The composer calls it love music for tenor solo, guitar, 2 choirs, an cappella choir and a chorale choir, as well as 2 vibraphones and winds ad libitum. The ten movements alternate such that against the lively guitar introduction one hears a calm chorale, against the solo singing a choral piece at a tempo four times slower, etc. In the eighth movement the singers accompany the guitar by singing exclusively on vocalized phonetic syllables, which produces a sensation of singing in harmonics. The work culminates in the ninth movement, with all singers and musicians performing a music that offers a synthesis of all material brought into play so far. The poem by Rudolf Steiner is presented at a slow tempo; the delivery is calm, sonorous, controlled. The tenth movement is a fast, festive choral apotheosis where the two choirs sing different texts with an ornamented accompaniment from guitar and vibraphones.
"'Libra' was composed for the guitarist and singer Ingolf Olsen and exists in several versions. The so-called 'integral' version which can be heard on this CD was originally performed in Lysekil Church (Sweden) on 8th November 1973 by Ingolf Olsen, the Gothenburg Chamber Choir and Collegium Musicum conducted by Gunnar Eriksson.
"'Rêves en pleine lumière' (1989/2002) was originally one chorus of a large work for double choir with the title 'La peur' – As it were to (concurrently sung) texts by Paul Éluard and John Cage. This large work was later withdrawn, but the Paul Éluard part had its own life and later became the independent work 'Rêves en pleine lumière' ('Dreams in broad daylight'). In this work Per Nørgård has gathered a selection of the French poet Paul Éluard's (1896-1952) texts. The first poem 'La peur' (Fear) can be compared in terms of content to Picasso's great painting Guernica. The stanza that has given its name to the choral work, 'Ses rêves en pleine lumière', is about the desire to live rather than die. For these sensual, surrealistic French texts Per Nørgård has composed a series of closely connected movements in a very free, sensually expressionistic vocal texture. Minor and major thirds clash with one another, almost as an image of the concern of the texts with life and death. The struggle for life seems to be reflected in the parts, which range over very large vocal leaps and registers. The melodies seem thrown up and down between the octaves. The sopranos aspire upward, the middle-range voices cling to the text, while the basses lay down an extremely low foundation. There is whistling and playing on finger cymbals and claves.
"The melodies in 'Rêves en pleine lumière' may be highly complex and virtuosic, but the structures are relatively simple. In the other two works on the CD, 'Libra' and 'Cycle', the situation is almost reversed. Here it is the melodies that are relatively simple and the structures that are highly complex.
"'Cycle' (1977) is a work that develops and changes along the way – also in terms of the part-structure, where there is an alternation between unison and 12-part. Per Nørgård writes of this and other related choral works to texts by the Danish poet Ole Sarvig (1921-81): 'When I had finished my Third Symphony (1972-75) I wrote a number of simple melodies to texts by Ole Sarvig (especially the poems 'The Year' and 'Choral Hymn'). The melodies had originated in the same fundamental material as the second part of the symphony, and they could be harmonized together and expressed in several different tempo layers at once – today one would say fractally – which inspired me to write several choral and instrumental works over the next decade, including 'Frost Hymn', 'Winter Cantata', 'Cantica', 'Now snow covers the whole earth' and others. Each work thus has its own distinctiveness – like a prism or a crystal, in which light can create an endlessly variable play of shapes and colours.' One of the melodies, 'As the year passes', is in the standard Danish hymnal 'Den Danske Salmebog' (no. 720)
"In 'Cycle' three melodies are combined and unfolded: the chorale-like hymn ('It is so quiet on our earth'), a descending, more dancing song stanza ('A heaven-germ on winged foot') and a longer, winding theme ('We walk in circles in great forests'). The melodies were created by extracting selected notes from the infinity series. Per Nørgård has also formed the structure of the movements differently: 'spiralling' in 'Circles and spirals' (1st movement) through constant tempo increases and glissandi. From the centre out in the movement 'Germ and crystal', as well as dynamically from the quite silent to the very loud. In the last movement, 'Circles and reflections', the music and text fragments from the beginning of the piece are taken up again in changed and reflected forms. 'Cycle' was originally composed in six movements, but the second movement has been omitted at the wish of the composer, since it consists exclusively of a silent sequence where the songs change places." (Eva Hvidt. From the liner notes.)
Performers: DR VokalEnsemblet, Fredrik Malmberg, Adam Riis, Stefan Östersjö
1. Libra: I. Allegretto, Poco Rubato
2. Libra: II. 'Når Jeg Råber'
3. Libra: III. 'Die Welten Erhalten Welten'
4. Libra: IV. 'Die Welten Erhalten Welten'
5. Libra: V. 'Synger For Herren En Ny Sang'
6. Libra: VI. 'Die Welten Erhalten Welten'/'Når Jeg Råber'
7. Libra: VII. 'Die Welten Erhalten Welten'/'Lover Herren'
8. Libra: VIII. Presto
9. Libra: IX. 'Die Welten Erhalten Welten'/'Når Jeg Råber'
10. Libra: X. 'Lover Ham, Himlenes Himle'
11. Rêves En Pleine Lumière
12. Kredsløb (Cycle): I. Ringe Og Spiraler
13. Kredsløb (Cycle): II. Kim Og Krystal
14. Kredsløb (Cycle): III. Forårs-duet
15. Kredsløb (Cycle): IV. Forårs-duet
16. Kredsløb (Cycle): V. Ringe Og Reflekser
A.Z.A.B. / Sonnenrad - Renegade Blood Insurgence
American power electronics split centering on race hatred/national socialist themes. Mostly formulaic P.E. made up of looping noise sections, distorted vocals and media samples but still enjoyable if only for the novelty value. Joint release as a cassette on the now defunct US-based Vanguard Productions label and as a CD run of one hundred copies (rather than the usual eighty-eight...) on Russian natsoc label Barbatos Productions. Fun for all the family.
1. A.Z.A.B. - Renegade Blood
2. A.Z.A.B. - Scorched Earth Policy
3. A.Z.A.B. - Culture War (Physical Removal)
4. Sonnenrad - Doctrine Of Hatred (Totenkopf Elite Militia)
5. Sonnenrad - Eternal Torment In Desolation
6. Sonnenrad - Subliminal Terrorism Pt. II
7. Sonnenrad - Conviction
Propergol - East, Borne on the Naked Backs of Murdered Men
1. East, Borne On The Naked Backs Of Murdered Men
Muzio Clementi - Piano Sonatas Op. 9, 10, 11 & 12
"Clementi was born in 1752 in Rome, where he received his earliest musical education. Then at the age of thirteen he moved to England, and made his home there for the remainder of his life, first as a teenager in Dorset, thereafter in London, and at the very end in Lichfield (Staffordshire) and Evesham (Worcestershire), where he died at the age of eighty in 1832. After about 1800 Clementi was one of the most prominent music teachers in London, and also very active as a music publisher and piano manufacturer; his firm, Clementi and Co. (with additional names reflecting the coming and going of various partners) operated at a London Cheapside address from 1798 until his retirement in 1830. In the summer of 1780 Clementi set off on a tour of the European continent that took him to Paris, where he remained for a year, and thereafter, via several German cities, to Vienna. After a four-month stay there he evidently spent some months teaching and playing in Lyon before returning to London. All of the music included in the present volume Clementi composed during or just prior to this trip, and some of it he clearly performed in the cities along the way.
"Clementi evidently composed the six sonatas of Opp. 9 and 10 in Vienna, where they were quickly put out by the local music publisher Artaria during or just after his stay in that city. All but one of these sonatas is in three movements, as was the fashion in Vienna; only the second sonata of Op. 10 (Maestoso—Presto) is in the two movement Italianate format of Clementi’s past. In these sonatas he shows a heightened interest in movements of the sonata-allegro type, the characteristic shape of first movements of all the composers of this period. The sonata-allegro structure stresses the development of a small amount of musical material and the interplay of stable and unstable tonal areas, a format that in Clementi’s time suggested a certain weight and seriousness. The formal principle of rondos, commonly used in finales, depends upon literal repetition and a juxtaposition of unlike materials associated with a kind of folk-like jollity.
"Four out of the six finales in Opp. 9 and 10, like all the first movements, are cast in sonata-allegro form. And even the two rondos among them (the finales of Op. 9 Nos. 1 and 2) have a certain heft and gravity not often associated with the genre. The rondo-finale of Op. 9 No. 2 features a plangent minore episode cast in what eighteenth-century musicians called tempo rubato; that is, the melodic notes are systematically offset so as to fall on the off-beat—an effect that connoted sorrow or lamentation.
"In one of the sonata-form finales—the lightning-like moto perpetuo of Op. 10 No. 1 in A major (a movement that retains distinct traces of Clementi’s Italian past and the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti)—the second half lingers long and quietly in the distant key of C sharp minor before bursting back into the brilliant A major of the foreshortened recapitulation. And in the sonata-allegro finale of Op. 10 No. 2 in D major, Clementi engages in the sort of restless formal experiment that marks a good deal of his music from this period. This movement has a ‘subdominant recapitulation’, in which the return in the second half of the piece occurs in the ‘wrong’ key, G major. (One can easily hear this when, towards the end of the movement, the ebullient opening theme, rising through a full two octaves, appears again but beginning at a surprisingly low pitch.) This stratagem, together with the readjustment of the tonal bearings it entails for the rest of the movement, reappears shortly after this time in the first movement of Mozart’s famous Sonata in C major K545.
"Clementi arrived in Vienna on Christmas Eve 1781. He barely had time to unpack his bags before he was summoned to perform that evening for the Emperor and his guests, the Grand Duke Paul and Duchess of Russia. What he was not told was that a local pianist of note, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was also invited, the idea being that the two should engage in a kind of piano-playing contest—which was a surprise to both musicians. Each improvised and performed compositions of his own, after which they played together on two pianos. Though no winner was declared, Mozart was later unremittingly critical of Clementi’s playing; shortly after that evening he wrote to his father: ‘Clementi plays well, so far as execution with the right hand goes. His greatest strength lies in his passages in thirds. Apart from this he has not a kreutzer’s worth of taste and feeling—in short he is simply a mechanicus.’ Eighteen months later, he added: ‘Supposing you do play sixths and octaves with the utmost velocity (which no one can do, not even Clementi) you only produce an atrocious chopping effect, and nothing else [...] he writes Presto over a sonata or even Prestissimo and Alla breve, and plays it himself Allegro and in 4/4 time. I know this is the case, for I have heard him do so.’
"One composition Clementi tells us he played at this contest was the Sonata in B flat major, Op. 24 No. 2, whose opening theme much resembles the beginning of Mozart’s later overture to 'The Magic Flute'. Another is his Toccata from Op. 11. The first and last sections of this piece feature long passages of those notoriously difficult parallel thirds, marked, true to Mozart’s characterization, Prestissimo, alla breve. This is a composition that belongs to what Clementi later referred to as his initial ‘virtuoso’ phase. We do not know what the Emperor or his Russian guests thought of this kind of technical wizardry, but Mozart was little impressed. At the time of the contest Clementi almost surely had available some of the more mature and expressive music of Opp. 7 and 8 (see volume 1 of this survey); it would be interesting to know how Mozart might have reacted to this.
"At least some movements of the four sonatas of Op. 12 were also finished by the time of the Viennese sojourn. Some of this music reverts to the triadic and ‘murky bass’ (i.e. broken-octave) accompanimental formulas that recall Clementi’s writing as early as Op. 2, and all but one of these sonatas again have rondos as final movements. The finale of the first sonata is a charming set of variations on ‘Je suis Lindor’, Antoine-Laurent Baudron’s setting of the romanze from Beaumarchais’ Barbier de Séville. Here ornamental runs of even semiquavers (sixteenthnotes) mix with Clementi’s well known specialities such as passages in thirds and broken octaves to produce a convincing result—such techniques somehow seem rather at home in variations. Mozart also wrote an unpretentious set of variations on this tune (K354); this time his composition (written in 1778) came first.
"Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the sonatas of Op. 12 are the slow movements. All four of them are deeply serious pieces that aim for depths of expression seldom encountered in the composer’s earlier music. Far-flung harmonies, including generous use of that favorite agent of harmonic obfuscation of the early nineteenth century, the diminished seventh chord, add to an impression of impassioned pathos. Sometimes all this emotion seems terse and controlled, as in the remarkably laconic Largo of the second sonata; or it can be given more space to play out as in the ambitious and eloquent (at points perhaps merging on the grandiloquent) Lento of the fourth.
"In a retrospective statement of 1806 that reaches us through his student Ludwig Berger, Clementi seemed to acknowledge that Mozart’s excoriation of his early ‘virtuoso’ manner was not entirely unjust; according to Berger, Clementi recalled that ‘in his earlier period he had taken particular delight in brilliant feats of technical proficiency, especially in those passages in double notes that were not common before his time, and in improvised cadenzas. It was only later that he adopted a more melodic and noble style of performance.’ The slow movements of the Op. 12 sonatas are a good example of this ‘more melodic and noble style’." (Leon Platinga. From the liner notes.)
Performer: Howard Shelley
1.1. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 1: I. Allegro Assai
1.2. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 1: II. Larghetto
1.3. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 1: III. Rondo. Prestissimo
1.4. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 9 No. 2: I. Allegro Assai
1.5. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 9 No. 2: II. Lento
1.6. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 9 No. 2: III. Rondo. Allegro Spiritoso
1.7. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 3: I. Allegro Assai
1.8. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 3: II. Larghetto
1.9. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 9 No. 3: III. Prestissimo
1.10. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 10. No. 1: I. Allegro Con Spirito
1.11. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 10. No. 1: II. Menuetto. Allegretto Con Moto - Trio
1.12. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 10. No. 1: III. Prestissimo
1.13. Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 10 No. 2: I. Maestoso
1.14. Piano Sonata In D Major, Op. 10 No. 2: II. Presto
1.15. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 10. No. 3: I. Presto
1.16. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 10. No. 3: II. Andante Con Espressione
1.17. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 10. No. 3: III. Allegro Assai
2.1. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 11 No. 1: I. Allegro
2.2. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 11 No. 1: II. Larghetto Con Espressione
2.3. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 11 No. 1: III. Rondeau. Allegro Di Molto
2.4. Toccata In B-Flat Major, Op. 11 No. 2
2.5. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 1: I. Presto
2.6. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 1: II. Larghetto Con Espressione
2.7. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 1: III. Lindor With Variations. Allegretto
2.8. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 2: I. Presto
2.9. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 2: II. Largo
2.10. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12 No. 2: III. Rondo. Allegro Assai
2.11. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 12 No. 3: I. Allegro Di Molto
2.12. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 12 No. 3: II. Largo
2.13. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 12 No. 3: III. Rondeau. Allegro
2.14. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12. No. 4: I. Allegro
2.15. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12. No. 4: II. Lento
2.16. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 12. No. 4: III. Rondeau. Allegro Con Spirito
Muzio Clementi - Piano Sonatas, Op. 1, 2, 7 & 8
"Clementi's music for piano (or harpsichord in his earlier days) reflects something of the extraordinary length and diversity of the composer's career. Born while Handel was still alive, he showed early influence from his music, as well as that of Italian keyboard composers from that time and a bit later: Domenico Scarlatti, Baldassare Galuppi and Domenico Alberti. By the time of Clementi's death in 1832, Beethoven—and his ninth symphony and the late quartets—belonged to the past, Rossini had finished his career as a composer of operas, and Clementi had attended the London debut, in 1824, of the young Franz Liszt. Clementi's music from the 1820s is fully consonant with its time: its harmonic idiom and leisurely melodic ornament might remind us of Carl Maria von Weber, perhaps the young Mendelssohn, or, on occasion, Chopin.
"In between, in the 1780s, Clementi attracted a good deal of attention for his amazing virtuoso feats at the piano, duly reflected in his sonatas: most particularly lightning-fast runs for the right hand in thirds and octaves. But another factor also came clearly to the fore, especially in his minor-key sonatas from about 1782 to 1795. Here propulsive keyboard figurations, a penchant for high drama shaped by powerful climax, and a kind of expressive radicalism that kicks over the traces of eighteenth-century decorum, mark this music as a convincing model for the young Beethoven. Clementi's Sonata in F minor, Op 13 No 6, of 1785, with its driving figurations, unsettling dissonance, and huge dynamic range, shows some remarkable similarities to Beethoven's sonata in the same key, Op. 2 No. 1, composed a decade later. And there is good reason to think the young Beethoven knew Clementi's sonata.
"Born in Rome of humble parentage in 1752, the thirteen-year-old Clementi, already an accomplished keyboard player, caught the attention of an English traveller on his 'grand tour', Sir Peter Beckford, cousin of the novelist William Beckford. According to Beckford's forthright explanation, he 'bought Clementi from his father for seven years', and brought him to his distinctly rural estate of Steepleton Iwerne, just north of Blandford Forum in Dorset. The idea was apparently that Clementi, as a single-person low-cost musical establishment for the place, would play for the entertainment of Beckford and his guests. Clementi spent the next seven years mainly in intensive solitary practice at the harpsichord. These years also saw his first publication, the Six Sonatas for the Harpsichord or Pianoforte, Op. 1, of 1771, printed in London and dedicated to his English patron.
"In 1774 Clementi, freed from his obligations to Beckford, moved to London, where he joined a throng of Italian and German musicians who made their way to this city, described in a contemporary account as 'a veritable Peru for musicians'. He made his way there by teaching, and performing as keyboard accompanist at the King's Theatre and as soloist in a few concerts. In 1779 his Sonatas Op. 2 appeared, adding great momentum to his career as a performer and composer. What particularly caught people's attention was the virtuoso aspect of these sonatas; a satirical musical lexicon of the time said Clementi's sonatas 'abound in passages so peculiar and difficult [...] we particularly allude to the succession of octaves with which he has crammed his lessons. Mr. Clementi executes these exceedingly well, and is a most brilliant performer.'
"Encouraged by his recent London successes, Clementi embarked on a Continental tour in the summer of 1780. A report published in London, one of slightly doubtful authenticity, has it that he was much celebrated in Paris, and enjoyed the 'most unqualified applause' from the queen, Marie Antoinette. But Clementi's subsequent appearance, on Christmas Eve 1781, before the queen's brother Joseph II, sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire, is amply attested. This was the occasion of the famous piano contest between Clementi and Mozart, staged by the Emperor for the amusement of his guests, the Grand Duke Paul and Duchess of Russia. In turn the two players improvised on given themes and played selections from their own compositions. Clementi reported (partly via his later student Ludwig Berger) that two of his pieces he played were the Toccata Op. 11 and the Sonata Op. 24 No. 2—the one that begins very much like the later overture to Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'.
"Here is Clementi's retrospective description of the contest: 'Until then I had never heard anyone perform with such spirit and grace. I was particularly astonished by an Adagio and some of his extemporized variations.' Mozart was less generous; two weeks after the event (evidently with thoughts of Clementi's Toccata and its long stretches of parallel thirds in mind) he wrote to his father: 'Clementi plays well, so far as execution with the right hand goes. His greatest strength lies in his passages in thirds. Apart from this he has not a kreuzer's worth of taste or feeling—in short he is simply a mechanicus.' And about a year and a half later his invective reached new heights: 'Clementi is a ciarlatano [a charlatan], like all Italians'. But in the 1780s the 'ciarlatano' became an internationally admired player, while the pianist Mozart's reputation remained largely confined to the environs of Vienna.
"Clementi rose to prominence in conjunction with the surging popularity of that new instrument, the piano. In the cities of Western Europe middle-class households created a rising demand for this instrument, the ideal one for amateur players and growing children—especially daughters whose prospects for a favourable marriage would likely be improved by an accomplishment as attractive and decorous as piano-playing. Thus there was also a growing demand for piano music, the central genre of which became the sonata (often known in England as 'lesson'). In the hands of musicians such as Clementi and Mozart the solo piano sonata had two principal uses: as music to be published and used by amateur players or children, and as material for the performances of the pianist-composer himself. (The difference is often clear: compare, for example, Mozart's Sonata in C major, K. 545, published as a 'little sonata for beginners', with, say, his earlier Sonata in A minor, K. 310.) The sonata for four hands (on one instrument), and the 'accompanied' keyboard sonata were understood to be nearly exclusively for amateurs.
"Clementi's earliest surviving composition is the threemovement solo Sonata in A-flat major, WO13 ('WO' means 'without opus'), composed in 1765 when the thirteen-year-old was still in Rome. This piece and the sonatas of Op. 1 (1771), while at points betraying their composer's youth, show that he was fully conversant with the European keyboard practices of the time, while also revealing some real strokes of originality. For the most part this music consists of a spare melody-plusaccompaniment texture typical of what even then was called galant style. But a movement such as the appealing final Menuetto of Op. 1 No. 5, for all its simplicity, shows rather advanced rhythmic sophistication for a composer in his teens. The alternative first movement for the Sonata Op. 1 No. 2 (WO14), included in the present recording, is very likely a replacement which Clementi on a couple of later occasions seems to have preferred to the original movement.
"During his first years in London (beginning in 1774) Clementi seems to have lived in some obscurity composing and publishing little. But in 1779 the publication of his six sonatas Op. 2 created something of a sensation. This collection is of the 'mixed' variety: three with accompaniments for violin or flute (Nos. 1, 3 and 5) and the other three, included in this recording, for solo keyboard. And the distinction between these genres is plain: the accompanied sonatas are distinctly 'amateur' music while the solo sonatas are clearly for a professional player, most particularly for Clementi himself.
"The Sonata in C major Op. 2 No. 2, which quickly became known as 'Clementi's celebrated octave lesson', starts right out with octave runs which, at the prescribed Presto tempo, alla breve, are virtually unperformable. (We might recall Mozart's later complaint: 'He writes Presto over a sonata or even Prestissimo and Alla breve, and plays it himself Allegro in 4/4 time. I know this is the case, for I have heard him do so.') The other two solo sonatas of this set also feature formidable technical challenges, notably dazzling bursts of scale passages in thirds. But these compositions, both perhaps more musically satisfying than No. 2, also show a remarkably successful incorporation of the old and new. In the first movement of the A major sonata, the endings of the principal sections could have come straight out of Domenico Scarlatti (who was a contemporary of J. S. Bach): a thin-textured, running figuration, sparkling with ornament, arranged in repeated cadence patterns.
"The main melody of Sonata in A major is decorated with the sort of chromatically inflected turns in thirds that were to become a staple for a whole generation of pianist-composers from John Field to Chopin. After the confrontation with Mozart in Vienna at the end of 1781, Clementi—to the local composer's obvious discomfort—remained in the city for another four months. He then spent some months in Lyon, after which he returned to London, his reputation much augmented, to play a central role in the concert life of that city. Appointed the regular keyboard soloist at the prestigious Hanover Square concerts, he began to attract fine students, including the young Johann Baptist Cramer, who before long became a serious rival. Then in the spring of 1784 Clementi abruptly disappeared from the London concert scene and returned to Lyon where he embarked on an abortive elopement with his erstwhile student, the eighteen-year-old Marie Victoire Imbert-Colomés. After her father, a well-to-do citizen of the city, put an abrupt stop to this, the disappointed pianist retired to Switzerland for a time of solitude and solace.
"The sonatas Opp. 7 and 8, published in Vienna and Lyon, are a product of those tumultuous years of travel and adventure. These sonatas are all of the threemovement variety, while in the previous ones the two movement Italian manner predominated. They show great gains over the earlier ones in expressive range and structural cogency. The very attractive whirlwind motoperpetuo finale of the Sonata in G minor Op. 8 No. 1 is almost entirely built, à la Scarlatti, on a single running motif, while the first movements of this sonata and the other one in G minor, Op. 7 No. 3, achieve a satisfying unity in quite another way. Constructed from a wide range of diverse materials, these movements nonetheless create an impression of economy and wholeness through the subtle manipulation and reuse of fragmentary motifs. Most rewarding among these pieces as an entire composition is perhaps the G minor sonata of Op. 7. Its second movement is an atmospheric Adagio of startling stylistic precocity, and its finale a virtuoso tour de force that revisits Clementi's famous octaves, but does so in the service of convincing expressive ends. In these six sonatas Clementi achieves a new degree of harmonic density and expressive potency; in the process he seems to have found his own voice." (Leon Platinga. From the liner notes.)
Performer: Howard Shelley
1.1. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 1 No. 1: I. Allegro Con Comodo
1.2. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 1 No. 1: II. Tempo Di Minuetto
1.3. Piano Sonata In G Major, Op. 1 No. 2: I. Spiritoso
1.4. Piano Sonata In G Major, Op. 1 No. 2: II. Allegro Assai
1.5. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 1 No. 3: I. Maestoso
1.6. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 1 No. 3: II. Andantino Grazioso
1.7. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 1 No. 4: I. Spiritoso
1.8. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 1 No. 4: II. Larghetto
1.9. Piano Sonata In F Major, Op. 1 No. 4: III. Rondeaux
1.10. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 1 No. 5: I. Larghetto
1.11. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 1 No. 5: II. Tempo Di Menuetto. Grazioso
1.12. Piano Sonata In E Major, Op. 1 No. 6: I. Moderato
1.13. Piano Sonata In E Major, Op. 1 No. 6: II. Rondeau. Grazioso
1.14. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 2 No. 2: I. Presto
1.15. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 2 No. 2: II. Rondeau. Spiritoso
1.16. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 2 No. 4: I. Allegro Assai
1.17. Piano Sonata In A Major, Op. 2 No. 4: II. Spiritoso
1.18. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 2 No. 6: I. Allegro Di Molto
1.19. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 2 No. 6: II. Prestissimo
1.20. Piano Sonata In G Major, WO14: Allegro
2.1. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 7 No. 1: I. Allegro
2.2. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 7 No. 1: II. Mesto
2.3. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 7 No. 1: III. Allegretto Spiritoso
2.4. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 7 No. 2: I. Allegro
2.5. Piano Sonata In C Major, Op. 7 No. 2: II. Allegretto Con Espressione
2.6. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 7 No. 3: I. Allegro Espressivo
2.7. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 7 No. 3: II. Cantabile
2.8. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 7 No. 3: III. Allegro Agitato
2.9. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 8 No. 1: I. Allegro
2.10. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 8 No. 1: II. Andante Cantabile
2.11. Piano Sonata In G Minor, Op. 8 No. 1: III. Presto
2.12. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 2: I. Allegro Assai
2.13. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 2: II. Larghetto Con Espressione
2.14. Piano Sonata In E-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 2: III. Rondeau. Allegro
2.15. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 3: I. Presto
2.16. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 3: II. Minuetto. Allegretto
2.17. Piano Sonata In B-Flat Major, Op. 8 No. 3: III. Rondeau. Allegretto Grazioso
2.18. Piano Sonata In A-Flat Major, WO13: I. Allegro Ma Non Troppo
2.19. Piano Sonata In A-Flat Major, WO13: II. Larghetto
2.20. Piano Sonata In A-Flat Major, WO13: III. Allegro Assai
Prurient & Hanged Mans Orgasm - Unknowns
"Dominick Fernow meets Patrick O'Neal (Skin Crime) in
Hanged Mans Orgasm mode for a vocal companion to the epic 7LP Prurient
opus, 'Rainbow Mirror'. Fernow shares vocal narration with DC Comics
story-writer Scott Bryan Wilson (who’s also credited with writing on
'Frozen Niagara Falls') set to bleak backdrops of atomic radiation
textures and field recordings of Hanged Man's Orgasm, the début '90s
project of Patrick O'Neal from cult death electronics unit Skin Crime.
"The label compare 'Unknowns' with 'the american counterpart to Nurse With Wound set in the decaying rural fields of new england' and, for us, the
combination of low key vocals and textural attrition could also
be compared with John Duncan's efforts in that arena, as the density of
atmospheric pressure inside better recalls Duncan's esoteric experiments
with shortwave radio on Riot, but, in the case of this A-side, mixed
with the kind of vocal delivery heard on Duncan's surreal Bitter Earth
songbook.
"The notorious Kris Lapke aka Alberich lends his haggard
touch in production to bring both sides to life with unflinchingly stoic
and visceral force, most powerfully in the B-side's burial by rubble in
a shallow grave." (Product review from Boomkat. See here.)
A. In The Ashes Of Science We Fall
B. In The Peeling Birch We Remain
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