HEAR I-XII

hear

sessions I-xii

hear sessions i-xii jason blasso

C H A RY B D I S P R E S S new york

Published by Charybdis Press New York 2017 Charybdis Press Some rights reserved Printed and bound in the USA 15 14 13 12 4 3 2 1 First Edition http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Writing, layout and design by Jason Blasso Photos: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Auricles_(anatomy)#/media/ File:Richer_-_Anatomie_artistique,_1_p._159.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Water_002.jpg HEAR is set in Skyfall Done, CiscoSerif, Rockwell & Whitman www.charybdispress.com

for the unremembered maestros and musicians

intro The HEAR idea came to me when I realized how poor my concentration levels and presence of mind usually are. This worried me because I never quite feel HERE. And I also realized that lately I only play music when I’m doing other things: working on my house, working at work, and driving between the two. I never really listen to an album with my full attention.

Music has always been an important part of my life. It’s something I absolutely love, but it’s receded into the background. As an artist, I understand the desire to bring your work to the foreground of attention, to have it seen or heard, to have it witnessed and audited. I thought that perhaps the way to focus on the present was to use music, to really listen to it, to HEAR it. So, I decided to fully listen to an album with all of my concentration.

Armed with this idea, I chose the oldest recorded music that I could find, a selection of plainchant choral works by Léonin and Pérotin that were performed at Notre-Dame Cathedral during the Middle Ages some time around 1200 CE, and worked my way—as best I could—forward in time.

I began my HEAR session with two unsolicited gifts: A pair of Panasonic headphones (RP-HTX7) from my friend, Niall, and an e-cigarette loaded with hash oil from my brother-in-law, G. These came, as things do, at the right time.

So, a big, heartfelt thanks to Niall and G before embarkation.

Well, there you have it. This is a way for me to listen to art the way I look at art. I’m hoping to use listening as a means of focusing on presentness.

I think it’s going to be a bit of a struggle, but G’s gift may help smooth the way.

Try it with me if you like. Let’s try to be hear together.

begin

hear sessions i-xii

medieval and renaissance

tonus peregrinus Léonin & Pérotin: Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral Naxos 2005

i I closed the lights, put on the headphones, drew up my hood, pressed play, reclined in the chair, and the voice of an angel sounded from a cave like a ray of light piercing the gray veil of cloud and rain. I said a prayer without meaning to. A simple thanks for the grace to hear that smooth, golden voice filling my ears. It was beautiful. I asked myself what other singers would think of this performance, I asked what other music directors (?) might think of the approach and interpretation of the work. Did I know enough to judge? But I knew the answers didn’t matter because it was me and her. It was our time to share. I had to give up questioning the perspective of others and return to her voice. This was our moment and I was grateful. When the next song started, I said to myself this is what voices were meant to do, this is what cathedrals were built for. When the alto took up his voice, I became buoyant, the hard horizontal edge where the walls met the ceiling gave way to verticality and I was floating, buffered on the resonant voices that curved as graceful as sails, as feathers. There were tears at the edge of my eyes. I smiled. Would all my listenings be like this? Perhaps I was too eager for this to have meaning; perhaps it was the hash. Regardless of what it was, the voices were beautiful and left me suspended like a mote in sunlight and I was happy. As the album played on, the background voices held what sounded like an impossibly long sustain as the foreground voices broke in like the hands removed from the mouths of a cartoon pipe organ I remembered seeing in some Disney animated film, maybe Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The sound was sculptural, it had form and body, filled space. I was glad I couldn’t see the performers. I

was glad not to place a body to the sounds. I then thought of being alive at the time of the music’s composition. I was hiding in the cathedral from the king for some crime. They hid me in a box-like seat in the choir section. And in the dark and cramped confines of the box, I felt like I was a free man when the chorus sang. The voices broke down borders and I rode out on the wind. This was a glorious thought until my bladder reminded me that I had just drank a full glass of water before playing the album. Note to future self: Pee before settling in for a listen.

jeremy summerly and oxford camerata Guillame de Machaut: La Messe de Notre Dame & Le Voir Dit Naxos 1996

iI How to approach Machaut? At first underwhelmed. The Notre Dame Mass begins; the voices, rich and sonorous, weave and cling and burst in flowery blooms. It’s like listening to a rose garden grow. And it feels that slow too. Like, a word a minute slow. As each vowel is stretched out mellismatically to the point of near rupture before the final syllable closes off the deliriously long Entspeech. Phew! And this is just the Kyrie. The moot’s just begun. And I feel uncomfortable and restless. My mind wanders and I have to keep redirecting it back to the music. I follow the words as close as I can. I follow the cadence and textures. And then I hear their breath, that short pause for an inhalation before they begin again. And I realize this is why I’m uncomfortable and restless: because they’re just voices. There’s no music, just naked voices. I always expect to hear music. And I have to remind myself that this is music, vocal music. The voices are doing everything. They’re carrying the whole thing. I have to cut them some slack and refocus. I followed the voices to the end of the mass and into the songs from Le Voir Dit or A True Story. These are Machaut’s poems sung in plainchant. They’re noticeably looser and fresher. When the two ballades move to the rondeau it sounds like there’s one less voice present. This makes the music more personal and intimate. Then the lay arrives. It’s a solo voice for almost twenty minutes. I can follow the French some. The voice rides over the top of the language, embellishing it. A story told in song. Then something amazing happens. When the lay ends and another rondeau returns, the voices sound absolutely incredible. After the sparsity of the lay, the rondeau sounds positively complex and dynamic. This is the treat. Had they put that slab of a

lay right after the mass, the ballades and rondeaus would have elevated and floated me out till the end of the album.

Bernhard Landauer and Unicorn Ensemble Dufay: Chansons Naxos 1996

iII I honestly have no context for what I’m listening to. I know these are the secular songs of Dufay, but I don’t know much else. I don’t know if what I’m hearing is authentic Dufay or an interpretation and an embellishment. I don’t know what source material these artists are working from and what liberties they’ve taken with it. I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t know that it matters. I’ll never hear Dufay the way Dufay was played in his time. There is something undeniably left in the past. What does one listen for when listening to early works like Dufay? Perhaps the better question is: What do we have left from the past: fragments or complete annotated scores? I’m not sure I’ll ever know the answer to this without a lot of digging. Here, if possible, it would be best to have a guide. It is, perhaps, easier to authenticate a guide as either a Sherpa or charlatan than to do so for these individual albums. But, in the absence of a guide, I will, like most everyday, go with my gut and the little knowledge that I have. What raised this question of authenticity in the first place was the presence of the drums on the first track and on several tracks that follow. I know that during the Middle Ages, when these songs were created, sacred music wasn’t accompanied by instruments. Perhaps the secular chansons were, but the presence of the drums, with their martial beat, begs me to ask if this is in fact the way the music was played. But even with this doubt, I enjoyed listening to the voice accompanied by the instruments accompanied by the drums. And although it sounded like music from the Middle Ages, there was something modern about it. And compared to last week’s Machaut, this is much easier to listen to. Unfortunately, I’ve written little about the actual music here. But I don’t know what else to write about. The album was good, every other song

contained vocals and the ones in between were instrumentals. But this wave pattern gave way to the closed loop of uncertainty. I kept trudging around this circular thought like I was trapped in one of Dante’s malebolgias. But there’s little torment here, just the awareness of the limitations of my understanding and the knowledge that I’m quite tired tonight.

The Hilliard Ensemble and Paul Hillier Josquin Desprez: Motets and Chansons Erato 1996

iv This album is beautiful. I know the Hilliard Ensemble from their work on Arvo Pärt’s Arbos. The voices are gorgeous and lush and the presence of a bass singer adds great depth to the listening experience. And depth is the key word to this album. When I listen to it from my iMac it sounds rather flat, but when listening with my headphones, the album takes on a three-dimensionality that is astounding, especially for the first couple of chansons. With my eyes closed, it sounds like the singers are standing and sometimes moving about at different depths and intervals on a stage. There’s a sense of perspective to this music. Hearing was like seeing, and at times, my mind’s eye brought me images of a painting and the aforementioned images of a stage. And while this perspective seemed to stretch into existence before me in the Z-axis, it also, at times, seemed to exist in the Y. On occasion, the music felt as if it were coming from below and the sound rising and descending from the floor as stalagmites in a cave. It was a curious and immersive experience that created a field of sound. Kudos to the recording engineer or whomever was responsible for this. The motets that followed lacked the depth of the chansons, but their brevity and resonance were quite moving. The two standouts were El grillo, with its upbeat tempo and staccato chorus, and Petite camusette, with its beautiful lilting melody. These two songs brighten the more sober motets and give a levity to the album that would have had more successful at the end of the album than in the middle. Good listen.

Delitiae Musicae and Marco Longhini Gesualdo: Madrigals Book 6 Naxos 2011

v Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa’s history is about as notorious as the polychromatic sound of his later madrigals. They are things of legend. The brutal murder of his unfaithful wife, who may or may not have been the model for the Mona Lisa, and her lover, led Gesualdo to a penitent lifestyle where he spent his remaining time self-flagellating and composing music. Having no patron to please other than himself, Gesualdo made music for his ear alone—and was far, far ahead of his time. Such is the music of Carlo Gesualdo, that centuries later Werner Herzog would hear it and create a movie very dear to his heart: Death for Five Voices. The film displays Herzog’s use of truth over fact. Truth gets to and satisfies the heart of the matter; it penetrates and operates internally, fluidly, and rhythmically. Fact quantifies and tabulates data; it runs dryly across a surface algorithmically in an endless dancing string of ones and zeroes. Both are necessary and correlative. — — But what does this have to do with the music? I’m making a broader statement here about my early dissatisfactions with some of the music I listened to. I was concerned about the music being historically correct or presented as it was intended. Herzog is wiser than this. He knows that history isn’t the same as narrative. Just as he cheekily knows, given enough time, his movie may become the official history of Carlo Gesualdo. And this is where we can laugh with Herzog who, like Gesualdo, is centuries ahead of his time. So too with me, let me not look to history but to narrative and how the music moves me presently. And here, I must confess, I was unmoved. Upon listening, I understood why this music was advanced. The voices cascaded and flourished visually. I saw them

as much as I heard them, but I didn’t feel them. Perhaps it’s because I don’t know Italian and don’t understand the meaning. I know everything I listen to won’t move me. But perhaps in these HEAR sessions, I can start understanding and developing a vocabulary to convey why certain songs, styles, and music resonate and others fall flat. With all the recorded music in the world today, I’ll only be able to scratch the surface of only a portion of what’s available. This is why Herzog’s comment about his Gesualdo becoming history is so poignant.

Think of all the media available to us today. Think of all the media that will be available for future generations. Who will be able to comb through it all?

Who will decide what is historically correct and relevant? Who will be the gatekeepers, teachers, curators, auditors, and archivists of the future? Taste is transient. What will survive through it all? Because of my tastes, I know there will be music that I won’t respond to. But I will listen and give it my time, even though I never return to it again in my lifetime. Hopefully, we’ll all be accorded the same respect.

Ensemble Metamorphoses and Maurice Bourbon Carlo Gesualdo: Madrigaux, Livre VI Arion 1998

VI So, in light of last week’s listen, after finding the recording unmoving, I wanted to return to Gesualdo before moving ahead. He deserved another chance, I deserved another chance, and since I had another album of his final book of madrigals, it seemed fair to return to it again with fresh ears. And I’m glad I did, because the second I heard the first voice (a female soprano) I was immediately engaged. The last album had an all male ensemble whose voices gave the album a more contained and monochromatic range. The presence of a female here made the songs bright with life and color. But the longer I listened, the dancing voices began to sound fixed. The voices moved, but the bodies of the singers stood still. The singers lacked the dynamicism of the Hillard Ensemble who sang Josquin’s Motets and Chansons and sounded like they were moving about at different distances on a stage. This perspective was lost, I think because the voices were split equally between both ears, so that when they recombined they did so right in the middle of my soft palate.

A strange effect when both the left and right headphones were playing the same thing. They seemed to be singing inside my head instead of outside. But this may be some physiological effect peculiar to me and not the recording.

(I prefer voices outside my head, as I already have enough within my head.)

Be that as it may, the voices were gorgeous and built and buttressed and sunk under and around and over each other beautifully, but I wish they were set at some remove instead of clustered like a choir in my head.

Cantica Symphonia Guillame Dufay: Quadrivium (Motets) Glossa 2005

vii You had me at sackbut. No, seriously. I had to look this up. The wonderful performers of Cantica Symphonia use sackbuts and slide trumpets and the sound is gorgeous. The horns perfectly accompany the singers, three of which are female sopranos. And listening to this, I do believe I confirmed one thing about vocal music: I love female sopranos. Their voices strum my heartstrings.

The obvious adjective to use here is angelic, but when I hear that, I picture, for whatever reason, a gold-leafed Russian icon of the angel Michael. But for all the beauty of the angelic painting, it’s static. The word I would choose is volant, as I feel I’m no longer touching earth as I sit in my dark room with my hood up and headphones on. The voices soar, my soul flies. What’s particularly lovely about this album is the mix of motets, which feel both sacred and secular. Some songs carry a very serious tone while others are quite whimsical, but every song seems perfectly balanced with the voices in harmony with one another and with the instruments when they’re present. My earlier listen of Dufay by Landauer and the Unicorn Ensemble had me questioning its authenticity with the presence of martial drumming and instrumentals. Not that that album was bad—it wasn’t. It just sounded very modern with the percussion. This album never raises the question of authenticity. It sounds like I expected it to sound.

Researching Cantica Symphonia brought me to their website which states that they specialize in interpreting Dufay, have not one but three female sopranos, and play sackbuts. Win.

The Hilliard Ensemble 2 Albums Lassus & Perotin ECM 1998 & 1989

VIII I wanted to leave plainchant like a champ. The way to do this was with the inimitable Hilliard Ensemble. First was with Lassus or Orlando di Lasso.

B-Lasso? A distant relative? Probably not. But maybe there is some great artist before my arrival waiting to be found along a forgotten, lichened limb of my family tree that I can liken myself to. Who knows? Anyway, Lassus as performed by the Hilliards was, as to be expected: beautiful. The first part is the Missa in controlled, sustained gorgeosity. The second part is the Sibyllarum in cascading polychrome that’s less adventurous than Gesualdo but still wonderful. Next, we end where we started, with Perotin. The Hilliard boys weave their gossamer sound to surround me, and like a dandelion seed, I’m easily caught up by a blithe breeze and set adrift through a golden summer meadow. Viderunt et audivit omnes fines terræ. They saw and heard all the ends of the earth.

Peter Philips and The Tallis Scholars The Tallis Scholars Sing Palestrina Gimmell UK 2005

ix I don’t think I can leave the Renaissance just yet, as I’ve ignored a few voices that I should like to hear. I first want to linger and listen to Palestrina’s beautiful counterpoint as performed by The Tallis Scholars. And counterpoint seems a perfect word for the musical structure. As I listen, the voices defy gravity, and their entrance into the song, point by point, is like a piton or cam inserted into the vertical face of a cliff; and their soaring voices are the ropes, linking in a skein of sound, that aids my swinging simian ascent to the summit. I still know so little about the music, the composers, and the artists, but my primitive mind is evolving the ability to hear. The longer I listen, the more I appreciate it.

Perhaps, even love it. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to capture on my first foray into this musical era. I speculate that I’ll have to live with it a lifetime to learn its habits and how it inhabits and moves about my house. It’s like something beautiful and timeless has moved in with me; something that I dare not approach directly, but study from a distance, and occasionally roughly poke at with a stick. I feel like an intruder in my own home. This is why I feel a little bit lost and uncertain, on familiar unfamiliar ground, with a strange charge that I can only feel poor and slovenly in comparison to. But this troglodyte had sense enough to let it in. Perhaps opening the door with my hairy-knuckled hand is the first step towards grace. A new world came indoors with my guest; my cavern in the foothills filled with light. Who is this angel that entered? I ask, receding into the shadows. I know not; but it seems willing to stay and the door is open and there’s much to learn and more of the mountain to explore.

the hillard ensemble and Paul Hillier Ockeghem: Requiem & Missa Mi-Mi (Disc 1) Erato 2010

x The mountain continues on above my head. The Hilliard boys are back delivering their inspired voices. The climbing motif still resonates. I don’t think I need another metaphor to describe the music. The journey is the same but different. Two thoughts occur and recur while listening. The first: If I heard these albums again blind, what would I recognize in them? Would I be able to tell if it’s Pérotin or Léonin? Would I be able to tell you if it’s Palestrina or Gesualdo? Definitely not. Certainly many of them cover the Catholic Mass, but if they were played side by side, I wouldn’t know how the composers manipulate the material enough to distinguish between them. There’s something in this music where the composer gets lost. And this is probably a significant part of this music that was made to honor god and not the individual. The latter would come later but not much. Perhaps with more repeat sessions, I’ll be able to hear the difference between them and understand how they approach the material, handle it, and shape it. What I think I could hear is the Hilliard boys. They’ve definitely become a presence here. But that’s about it. The second thought I had was of meeting one of the Hilliard tenors on the street and hearing them speak in an unbearably high-pitched voice. This is, of course, ridiculous, but in my imaginings it was incredibly exaggerated like that fella from Seinfeld.

Anyway, upon hearing the tenor, I would laugh in my rough baritone but in a way so as not to offend or draw attention to my laughter. I probably chuckled in my head and just “heard” myself. Then, I imagined this fella inviting me to a recording studio. I would follow him and upon hearing the tenor sing, I would think: This is the place for this voice, this is it’s home. It was out of place in the

street; but here… This was a strange thought. I think we all have these. We run a story through our head without any understanding of why or where it came from. But there is something to this little tale my mind staged for me: I think the moral here is that every voice has a home. Don’t judge but listen and learn.

the hillard ensemble and Paul Hillier Ockeghem: Missa Prolationum (Disc 2) Erato 2010

xi As the second disc played, I found myself asking myself: How does this music make me feel? The answer is: It makes me feel smart, patient, and kind. Smart to have thought of the idea to listen to it. Patient to give it the time it needs, and Kind to not judge it too quickly. There’s no doubt about it, the music’s gorgeous, and gorgeous remains a much abused adjective. The music is timeless and otherworldly, and it’s this factor that makes me feel, more than anything else, quite unreligious. All of the music here is music of the Christian Church. And much of the music to come will be the same. Christianity is at the core of this music and this is what gives it its otherworldliness. Now, I was raised Lutheran and spent my time singing the hymns of Luther between hard wooden pews on Sunday mornings. I always liked the music, it moved me. I was also okay with the sermons, as I liked how our pastor would connect a selected scripture passage to life. He told stories. Not very adeptly, but they were stories. And it seems to be in our very nature to enjoy a yarn. But the music, the music was always very moving. A Mighty Fortress is Our God. The title still gives me chills. The song touched something fundamental in me. Tears well up even as I write this. The power of music is sorcery, a sublime sorcery. I still haven’t broken it’s spell, even though I have, since my confirmation, drifted away from the Protestant sects and the Christian church, and passed through the Eastern religions and philosophies without ever settling down anywhere. They all contain some truth, and each is beautiful in its own peculiar way, but they remain as alien to me as my native Lutheranism. Yet there are those for whom religion still remains an active channel to communicate with god, the gods,

or what-have-you. And I am thankful for this. As I imagine that the songs that raise Hosannahs and Halleluiahs to the heavens have never fallen silent since they began, and that even now, as I write this, somewhere songs are being sung to a being who may or may not be. And I think of the bravery of this belief, that fervent light that burns in the heart of the faithful, that brings them to sing so beautifully into the night and up to a heaven that may never hear their prayer.

Taverner Choir and London Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble and Andrew Parrott Giovanni Gabrieli: Symphoniae Sacrae II Decca 2007

xii Alright, so, this is going to be the last album of plainchant before moving into the Baroque, and I lined up a doozy: female soprano + sackbuts should = amazing. But this album is so even tempered that I had to listen to it again, with more volume to really hear it. The first listen didn’t move me immediately like Cantica Symphonia’s Dufay album did. That album stretched out their songs creating more sonic space and a more somber atmosphere. Now, that doesn’t mean this album isn’t good, it’s great, it’s just very contained and unfolds at a different pace. It doesn’t soar in the same way as Dufay. It doesn’t defy gravity. And it, of course, shouldn’t. This is Gabrieli and not Dufay. And these are sacred, not secular, works. Here the sound of the voices and instruments expand, reach a limit, and end as new sounds rise up from under them. It gives the music a sense of a circumference, like looking directly down on a great bubbling cauldron where the many elements of the song boil with great energy but never threaten the edge of the pot. This is especially true of the Magnificats. which wonderfully bookend the album. And the last one, is a real treat. I can’t say that I’ve experienced this sense of containment before. It’s like a viper pit, roiling and folding in on itself when it really gets going. So much fun to listen to. Implosive instead of explosive. I had to come back to it again because I questioned what I was hearing, and I’m glad I did.

end

hear sessions i-xii