Christian Wolff: For Ruth Crawford

This 1994 release on the Swiss label HatHut presents four works from 1968 to 1993 by the composer whose work was large built, as stated in the liners by Art Lange, on the fact that his "particular interest was in creating circumstances in which the performers would need to react spontaneously—with either precise details or those chosen from variable possibilities—to events occurring within unpredictable conditions." 

This could mean notation that had different forms or the use of graphs, images or spoken instructions "to create such indeterminate conditions of musical activity."  That word in the quote evokes the landmark 1959 John Cage/David Tudor recording, Indeterminacy and Cagean principles relating to chance operations and the choice made available to the performers.  

For Brown, however, it got to the point where his 1968 work, "Edges" was developed for "any number of players, any number of instruments" and no instructions as to harmony, pitch, rhythm, tempo or time.  Rather, players were given 25 symbols, the words "singing" and "slow" and markings of "ff" and "ppp" along with the number "3" randomly placed on a black page.  So, the performers on piano, trombone and viola decided to have four separate types of movements in 20 minutes.  The effect, Lange writes, is that "the sounds are in a constant state of . . . becoming" and "completely dependent upon the commitment of the performers.

1970's "Snowdrop" was written for harpsichord and perhaps other instruments and with notes placed on staves without bars and indications space, with numbers, "between the phrased sequences," emphasizing the importance of space and silence.  The piano, violin and trombone are overdubbed and "they are free to distribute the material at their discretion.

The more recent pieces of "Ruth" (1991) and "Peggy" (1993) are for Ruth Crawford, stepmother of folk master Pete Seeger and an experimental composer who later worked on transcriptions of folk music with Seeger's father Charles, and her daughter Peggy, also a folk singer.  "Ruth" has standard notation, with opportunities for players on piano and trombone to work with microtones, timbre and other elements at their choosing.  Drumming on the piano and whistling are also included.  With "Peggy," overdubbed trombones also perform with mostly a notated score, with some melodic material taken from the namesake's pieces.

Interspersed in Lange's text are quotes from Wolff, such as "I'm trying to see how little I can indicate [to players] and yet come up with a piece that's clearly itself, one that still has a life of its own," or his idea that "we had to liberate ourselves from the direct and preemptory consequence of intention and effect," or "my music is often just material" but that a key to performance was "how the individuals relate to each other as they play."  Perhaps most important are the statements that "all music is propaganda music" and if "you still haven't the foggiest idea what my music sounds like; you have to hear it or play it to find out."  For this untutored listener, the main idea is to go where the performers take you and to enjoy the journey, not worrying about the map.

Christian Wolff: Pianist: Pieces

Christian Wolff, who is still among us as he approaches his 87th birthday, has survived all of his compatriots in the so-called New York School of experimental composers centered around John Cage and his theories and approaches to sound and including Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and David Tudor.  The exploration of the possibilities of expression of sound through prepared instrumentation, the use of indeterminacy and chance operations (using, for example, the I Ching to determine what to play next), and other aspects, can be understandably off-putting, though, with an open mind and ears, the ride can be quite intriguing and fascinating.

An example is the three-disc set issued by the Belgian label Sub Rosa called Pianist: Pieces and which provides the dramatic contrast between Wolff's early work during the 1950s heyday of the New York School and a slew of pieces issued between 2000 and 2010 after he retired from teaching from Dartmouth.  Perfomer Philip Thomas provided very useful and interesting notes, observing, for example, that Cage felt that Wolff was the most musical of the group and Thomas outlines how the experimentation and pedigree of musicality through Ives, Webern, Bach, Schumann, Hayden and others can be discerned in the music.

Most helpful is Thomas' evocation of how Wolff utilized discontinuity, silences, isolated and fragmented sounds and indeterminacy of notation. This latter involves indications of which fingers to use, but not which notes; unspecified duration of notes; playing notes in any octave or clef; leaving out instructions for tempo, articulation and dynamics and the "wedge," or a pause or breath of any length.  This allows tremendous freedom, along with significant challenges for the player in working towards a "meeting point" with the composer.  Thomas stated that the experiences of working with Wolff's work "provoke me to play in ways I would not ordinarily consider."

For the listener, at least this one, this also is the case, in that listening to experimentalists like Wolff leads to new ways of hearing music, though none of this is anywhere nearly as shocking and unnerving as it was to those confronting such approaches to sound back in the Fifties.  It is also apt that, when the set was burned to my computer, the pieces were not arranged in the order by disc, but, rather so that the three track 1s are followed by the three track 2s and so on.  This discontinuity and a sort of indeterminacy seems more than fitting and does not, in the least, affect the enjoyment of hearing Wolff's particularized approaches to composing for the piano.