In my last blog I shared information about a few different abstract forms of music-making, from albums made of tree rings to Swedish cattle herding calls. Much in the same way that people from different parts of the world create meals unique to the ingredients found in their region, musicians from around the world are able to draw on their local environments for artistic inspiration. In keeping with the theme of unique creations, I want to introduce you to the work of French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

I first learned of Boursier-Mougenot when I saw a YouTube video of an art installation that consisted of white china bowls floating in a pool of slowly moving water and clanking into one another softly as they drifted in the current. The sound produced by the bowls is reminiscent of heavy wind-chimes, but with a greater resonance due to the nature of their housing. Boursier-Mougenot explains that the piece is called “Clinamen” – a Latin word that refers to the random nature of swirling atoms. The piece is mesmerizing, to say the least, and offers a therapeutic combination of visual and audible art:

In addition to his aquatic art installation, Boursier-Mougenot has created numerous other sound-oriented art installations, some of which utilize foam, vacuum cleaners, or seventy very talented finches.

Boursier-Mougenot’s installation, “From Here to Ear,” is a piece that allows viewers to walk pathways through a room that houses seventy zebra finches and a number of electric guitars and bass guitars that are positioned around the exhibit on stands. As the birds behave naturally in their surroundings, they land on the strings of the guitars (which are connected to numerous amplifiers) and a unique song is produced. The birds are well cared for and have food, water, and nests available to them in the exhibit. Boursier-Mougenot describes “From Here to Ear” as “a piece that’s impossible for humans to play,” a statement that is verified by the heavy reverb of guitars intermingling with the bird’s chatter:

In addition to being audibly stimulating, Boursier-Mougenot’s installations are also visually captivating. The housing for his sound-rich creations adds an additional theatrical element to the display, whether it’s a cave-like setting for “Clinamen”; an open and airy aviary for “From Here to Ear; or in the case of “Harmonichaos”, a luminous sequence of vacuum cleaners outfitted with harmonicas staged a dark room that makes me think of a mashup between E.T. and the Overture from “Phantom of the Opera”. I mean that, of course, with the greatest reverence for the works of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work provides stunning examples of how music and visual art overlap one another. It’s also a reminder of the resourcefulness and versatility of artists and musicians.

The human race, as a whole, has made huge strides in technological advancements when it comes to how we make music. Just looking at the evolution of the piano gives us an idea of how far we’ve come – beginning with harpsichords, which could not sustain tones, and evolving into marvelous grand pianos that have sustain pedals and use hammers to strike the strings.

Our eagerness to make music is nothing new; some of the earliest known musical instruments were wind instruments discovered in Germany. These ancient flutes were made from avian bones and mammoth tusks, and scientists estimate they are between 43,000-45,000 years old. People tend to search for music everywhere regardless of whether or not they play a traditional instrument, and in doing so we have invented – and stumbled across – some very creative ways to produce music in our surroundings.

Leonardo da Vinci’s knack for invention did not stop at flying machines and under water breathing apparatuses; One of his designs was for the Viola Organista, a piano-shaped instrument that combined bowed strings and a keyboard.  Although da Vinci himself was never able to build the instrument, Polish pianist Sławomir Zubrzycki built the Viola Organista depicted in da Vinci’s drawings. The Viola Organista plays a little like a piano, but produces the sound of a stringed instrument :

Of the many different forms of singing, one of the more uncommon styles was developed in Sweden, and is called kulning. During medieval times, Shepherdesses needed a way to share messages over long distances, and they developed a form of song that utilizes voice in a way that increases the sound produced from the normal volume of about 60 decibels to around 105 decibels. Not to be confused with yodeling – which hails from Switzerland – kulning utilizes different tones and pitches, and is audibly different from yodeling.  In addition to being a creative and effective way to share information across the Swedish landscape, it is also beautiful to listen to:

To most, birds perching on telephone wires is a familiar and often overlooked part of daily life, however, to the trained eye, scattered dots across lines can have a curious resemblance to notes on a staff. In 2009, Brazilian artist and musician Jarbas Agnelli saw a picture of birds on telephone wires while reading the paper, and made this very connection. He then decided to turn the birds into actual notes and “play” the music they made:

In keeping with the theme of music inspired by nature, I would like to share with you “Years” by Bartholomäus Traubeck. Traubeck designed and created a record player that plays sections of tree trunks like albums using a camera, programming, and piano tones to depict the rings and blemishes of different trees. The resulting music is haunting, with sustained tones and an eerie resonating sound. For a fascinating interview with Bartholomäus Traubeck, check out Data-Garden’s brilliant interview with Bartholomäus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6Sn_yC3AE

From flutes made of bone to albums made from trees, it is clear that after thousands of years we still have yet to tap all of the musical resources we have available to us.

citations:

Barness, Sarah. “Dream-Like Song Created From Birds Perched On Electric Wires Proves Nature Is Perfect (VIDEO).” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 03 Mar. 2017.

Wright, S. “To Call the Cows Home: A Selection of Swedish Kulning – by Sheila Louise Wright.” Academia.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2017.

This February in Portland, Oregon, Cappella Romana and Director Dr. Alexander Lingas, presented the first-ever festival in North America dedicated to the contemporary composer, Arvo Pärt. The Estonian composer’s music is arguably the most performed of any living composer. It was a slight departure for Cappella Romana best known for their performances of Byzantine, Russian and Greek Orthodox choral music.

The comprehensive festival in Portland gave audiences the chance to immerse themselves in many different aspects of Pärt’s music and his life. They featured a film, a lecture, and concerts of instrumental music as well as vocal works throughout the 8-day festival. I attended two of these concerts on the second weekend of this remarkable, and moving, celebration.

Saturday, February 11 at St. Mary’s: “Odes of Repentance”

There is something about Pärt’s music that is at once powerful, yet also fragile, representing both extrovert and introvert. His music not only reflects the words of ancient texts, but also brings complex expression to the human experience. This is music that is both timeless and timely. One is able to become lost in the music, feeling as though they’ve entered a portal to a thousand years ago, and yet remain completely in touch with the current state of the world. Sunday’s concert at Reed College had this effect on me personally, with both vocal and instrumental pieces performed, but it was in Saturday’s performance at St. Mary’s when I most intensely felt this phenomenon.

The music was not presented in the usual “concert format,” with applause expected between pieces, and an intermission, but in the form of a paraklesis, (a service of prayer intended for the living). The absence of applause allowed the audience to focus intently on the music, which resonated beautifully throughout the cathedral. Pärt’s music was worthy of a space like this, as the “space” between notes and phrases is paramount to the composer’s unique voice. Many of Pärt’s music is based on his compositional principle which he called tintinnabuli (‘Little bells’), some of which is dependent on silence, but also on a reduction of materials to an essential level. That doesn’t mean the music is simplistic at all; it seems to invite the listener in so as to become a participant of sorts, rather than a passive observer, by focusing on the sounds as well as the space.

Most pieces were in Church Slavonic (the conservative Slavic language used by the Orthodox Church in many countries), but some were in English, including The Woman with the Alabaster Box, which relates the story of Jesus’ anointing of oil by a woman whom the other apostles shun. The tempo of the work is slow, which in some recorded performances can come across somewhat muddled. By comparison, Cappella Romana’s diction was so clear, I didn’t need to follow along with the English text, as one often does, even during works written in English.

Saturday’s performance was structured primarily around several movements from the composer’s Kanon Pokajanen which Pärt wrote for the 750th anniversary celebration (in 1998) of Cologne Cathedral. At times, the music was dark and brooding, with dissonance creating significant tension; other times, the music would shift to a major key, and the voices would soar from a hush to full voice, filling the space of St. Mary’s and seeming to bounce off of the glittering stained-glass windows. Alto Kerry McCarthy, who has been featured as a soloist in previous concerts, opened the performance with a voice that rang out with stunning clarity.

While the music played, I considered its source, written in the late 20th century by a composer who is still with us; a composer who grew up in Communist Estonia where his beliefs were frowned upon. I found myself sitting in an American Catholic church as Pärt’s Estonian Orthodox music washed over me, and I realized that perhaps the differences that seem so significant among we humans, aren’t as great as we perceive.

Sunday, February 12 at Kaul Auditorium, Reed College: Festival Finale Concert

Sunday’s concert took place at the comparatively more secular Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, but that doesn’t mean that the spiritual essence of Arvo Pärt’s music wasn’t experienced. This time, Cappella Romana was accompanied by Third Angle New Music, primarily the string quartet element. The principal work of the concert was Pärt’s Te Deum, from 1985. But the concert opened with several recently-composed works, including Da pacem Domine, which was commissioned by early music director Jordi Savall for the victims of the Madrid bombings in 2004; and his Alleluia-Tropus of 2008. Alleluia-Tropus had its U.S. premiere at that concert, and I could sense that the audience was excited about being a part of musical history.

Unlike Saturday’s concert of unaccompanied choral works exclusively by Pärt, the Reed College concert incorporated two of his contemporaries: the Scottish Sir James MacMillan, with a work titled: Who are these angels?; as well as Slow Motion (1990) by Thanos Mikroutsikos for string quartet. Also featured on the program was British composer Sir John Tavener (who died in 2013), and like Arvo Pärt, belonged to the Orthodox church and expressed his beliefs in his many choral and instrumental works. Tavener’s 1996 Funeral Canticle, sung in English, is a large-scale work that Tavener composed in 1996 for his father’s interdenominational funeral. Between each section, bass John Michael Boyer, sang the words “Eternal Memory”, in Greek. This phrase, though repeated four times in the work, was delivered with the utmost precision by Boyer, whose voice, at once deep and resonant, and even gravelly where called for, again created that sense of connecting to an earlier time and place.

The conclusion to the festival was Arvo Pärt’s setting of Te Deum, the traditional and celebratory text that has been set by the likes of Handel, Berlioz and others throughout the centuries. This was my first time hearing Pärt’s setting, and I believe that it will remain in the repertoire for many years to come. Pärt utilized a uniquely 20th century effect most often associated with the American, John Cage: prepared piano. Metal screws were attached to four of the piano’s strings so that Susan DeWitt Smith could strike them at specific intervals. Electronics added an ethereal quality to the piece, as Erik Hundhoft brought up the recorded sound of the Aeolian harp (literally “played” by wind). These techniques created an atmospheric, almost out-of-doors effect: I pictured a young Arvo Pärt, standing on the Baltic shores of Estonia, looking north into a stormy horizon.

Cappella Romana’s celebration of this inspirational composer forms part of the choir’s 25th anniversary celebrations. In November, the choir participated in a performance at Stanford University, where electronics combined the reverberant acoustics of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia with Cappella Romana’s live performance. At the end of March, they perform in Seattle and Portland a “Russian Chant Revival” program; and in April they will perform the works of Venetian masters employed at the Imperial court of St. Petersburg. Dr. Lingas and his choir continue to bridge the centuries, and cultures, with unique and compelling performances. One can only imagine what the 26th season will bring.