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a r t i s t : Cikada String Quartet
t i t l e : Saariaho-Cage-Maderna
d a t e : 2005
l a b e l : ECM New Series
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Oct-2005
t r a c k s : 07
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 67,3 MB
_______________________________________________________________________
The Cikada String Quartet:
Henrik Hannisdal violin
Odd Hannisdal violin
Marek Konstantynowicz viola
Morten Hannisdal violoncello
The Norwegian Cikada String Quartet has set itself clear
repertoire priorities. As with the Cikada Ensemble (founded in
Oslo in 1989), within which it forms an autonomous unit, the
Cikada String Quartet concentrates on contemporary music in its
more challenging manifestations ôWe made a conscious decision
to stay away from ænew romanticÆ compositional tendencies,ö
says Odd Hanisdal, second violinist of the quartet. ôWe wanted
to get to grips with the newest ideas, with demanding and
technically advanced new music.ö Accordingly, the quartet here
presents three very distinctive, highly original compositions
from the second half of the 20th century. These are all works
in which extreme compositional standpoints are reflected and
brought, vividly, to life. Each of the three pieces represents
a breaking away from avant-garde orthodoxies, and the shaping
of new and personal musical language. .
Kaija Saariaho, born in Helsinki in 1952, studied with Klaus
Huber and Brian Ferneyhough in Freiburg, before going on to
attend courses at IRCAM in Paris. In an interview with Anders
Beyer, whose essay is printed in the CD booklet, Kaija Saariaho
described the liberating effect of her contact with French
æspectralÆ composers GΘrard Grisey and Tristan Murail in the
early 1980s. ôSpectral music was fantastic compared to the
post-serial aesthetics dominant everywhere, and which didnÆt
suit my ideas. When all my fellow students saw fantastically
complicated systems on the blackboard, I didnÆt see or hear
anything in the music. I wanted to make music for the ears, and
when I first heard GΘrardÆs and TristanÆs music it seemed so
fresh.ö
In the years leading up to the composition, in 1987, of NymphΘa
for String Quartet, Saariaho had worked extensively on the
spectral analysis of instrumental sounds, especially those of
the cello. The impulsive brush strokes of Claude MonetÆs late
water-lily paintings and their intensely-daube colours provided
a starting-point for a suggestive discovery of sound in
NymphΘa. The concept of plant growth determines the form. The
technical realisation of the changing values of dark and light,
rough and smooth, hard and soft are meticulously prescribed in
the score: not just the type of vibrato and the contact point
of the bow between the finger-board and the bridge, but even
the gauging of bow-pressure. The grating of the wood of the bow
against the strings is another of NymphΘaÆs defining sound
characteristics.
An additional associative space is opened up by the use of
words from an autumn poem by Arseny Tarkovsky, which, in
English translation, are whispered into a microphone by the
musicians at two points in the score. Live electronics are used
only sparingly, and then mostly as an echo or resonance. In the
modified version of the piece for String Orchestra, NymphΘa
Reflection (2001), the composer dispenses completely with the
live electronic sounds and instead simulates them
instrumentally.
Saariaho has a deep mistrust towards a merely analytical
approach to music, and the reduction of art to the purely
rational and logical. Her poetic, subjective approach to
music-making links her to John Cage, who strove to set his
compositions free, not only from rules and systems, but also
from the dictates of his own taste. Of his String Quartet in
four Parts which he completed in 1950, the composer said: ôIt
is music undefined by personal likes or dislikes. It is as if
one is running after a rolling ball.ö
Cage, then in his thirties, had turned away from dodecaphonic
ideas after having studied composition with Arnold Sch÷nberg in
the late 1930Æs and applied himself to composing for percussion
instruments before he discovered the percussive and
sound-colour potential of the prepared piano in 1940. The
string quartet mirrors not just these experiences, but also his
preoccupation with Far-Eastern philosophy, a fascination
subsequently intensified through his contact with Japanese Zen
master Daisetz T. Suzuki.
The quartet deals, Cage explained, with the Indian
understanding of the seasons, with creation, preservation,
destruction and peace, as well as the Indian artistic theory of
the nine basic emotions, of which peace is the middle-point.
Each movement represents one season: summer, autumn, winter and
spring. According to the score, the whole quartet is to be
played without vibrato and with a minimum of bow pressure.
For all its Buddhist non-intention, the material is organised
systematically: The quartet as a whole adheres to a fixed,
rhythmical scheme of proportions. In addition, each of the four
instruments uses only a very limited range of notes, which are
not transposed throughout all four movements. Furthermore, each
of the notes used appears again and again with identical
articulation and tone-colour. ôThe music develops by no means
organically, rather more in a temporal-kaleidoscopic wayö,
writes Helmut Rohm in his accompanying text to the CD. ôWith
glassy, weightless charm it holds to a constant tempo, its
prism-like sound formations following the fixed course of a
quasi-cosmic time-cycle.ö Or, as Cage argued at the time: ôThe
responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so
that it may become attractively disinteresting.ö
The disruptive and yet catalytic effect of CageÆs first visit
to Donaueschingen is legendary, the European avant-garde was
polarised in its responses. One of the first composers to grasp
the implications of CageÆs work was the Italian Bruno Maderna.
He was also one of the first to attempt a musical analysis. In
MadernaÆs later works, indeterminacy would play an important
role. However, the Quartetto per archi in due tempi from 1955
is regarded as his strictest serial work and as one of the
first ever serial string quartets. As a comparison between the
first and last bars of the piece immediately shows, the
somewhat livelier second movement is a retrograde of the slower
first movement. But a detailed analysis, such as the one
carried out by the musicologist Horst Weber, reveals
inconsistencies. This is quite in keeping with the aesthetics
and personality of the composer, who was always cheerfully
sceptical of the dogma of ôpureö serialism. As an eminent
expert on music from Guillaume de Machaut to Bach, moreover, he
strove to find points of contact between innovation and
tradition.
Maderna dedicated his quartet to his companion Luciano Berio,
with whom he founded MilanÆs Studio di Fonologia for electronic
music in 1955, the same year that he wrote the quartet.
_______________________________________________________________________
01-Kaija Saariaho--Nymphea [18:59]
02-John Cage--String Quartet-Quietly Flowing Along [03:31]
03-John Cage--String Quartet-Slowly Rocking [03:59]
04-John Cage--String Quartet-Nearly Stationary [08:12]
05-John Cage--String Quartet-Quodlibet [01:39]
06-Bruno Maderna--Quartetto Per Archi In Due Tempi I [06:52]
07-Bruno Maderna--Quartetto Per Archi In Due Tempi II [07:02]
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50:14 min