Things felt rather than heard: Fear No Music’s “Sounds Like Home”

FNM’s all-Oregonian concert continued last month with Ryan Francis’ “Voynich Transcriptions” and works by Charlie Bruggemann, Andy Akiho, Caroline Shaw, and Kenji Bunch.
Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis' "Voynich Transcriptions." Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis’ “Voynich Transcriptions.” Photo by Joe Cantrell.

After crossing the Blue Bridge on a chilly November 15 night under a bright and baleful moon, I settled into the woody chapel at Reed College for an installment of Fear No Music’s 33rd concert season, styled Locally Sourced Sounds

Sounds Like Home, the title of this concert, featured works by local composers Charlie Bruggemann, Andy Akiho, Caroline Shaw, and Kenji Bunch, as well as the night’s centerpiece, a clarinet quintet by Ryan Francis entitled Voynich Transcriptions.

The Reed College Student Spotlight was focused on Bruggemann, a mathematics student who played a solo clarinet composition called Willow that was meant to “evoke the ancient mysticism and wildness of the woods” near his Massachusetts home. The piece took the form of a toccata, and Bruggemann did indeed have a vast array of techniques from which to draw, as he pushed the envelope of the sonic potential of this instrument. Throughout the work he played strange-sounding two-note chords, wherein one note of the chord was hissing, burry, and quiet. There were many squawks and beeps and dizzying runs, and highly imaginative phrases that employed what felt like a sort of bariolage for the clarinet. This piece had a very self-accompanied feel to it and managed to invoke its pastoral subject matter without resorting to any predictable mawkishness.

Composer-clarinetist Charlie Bruggemann performed his "Willow" at Fear No Music's "Sounds Like Home" concert. Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Composer-clarinetist Charlie Bruggemann performed his “Willow” at Fear No Music’s “Sounds Like Home” concert. Photo by Joe Cantrell.

Akiho’s Portal was also inspired by nature, in this case the landscapes of the northern New Mexico Mountains. According to Akiho, “every hike or run through the hills and mountains felt as if there were mystical forces emitting boosts of intense energy.” The work was designed to be performed by any number of performers on any types of instruments, with performers improvising their own dynamics, articulations, etc. In this case, James Shields played bass clarinet, Keiko Araki and Aromi Park were on violins, Amanda Grimm, viola, and Pansy Chang, cello. 

Before starting, Shields explained that one of the salient features of the work was a pattern of nineteen 16th-notes played by some of the instruments, over a straight 4/4 pattern by others. This of course yielded a constantly staggering beat. A pizzicato ostinato from the cello underlay movement in block chords from the other strings, as the clarinet sometimes mirrored the cello. Displaying Akiho’s trademark emphasis on rhythm, the somewhat monolithic architecture was yet an interesting study in giving a sense of rootlessness amongst the unsettled meter. At the end it felt like getting off a merry-go-round—you think you’re ok, but when you step off, the world is still moving beneath your motionless feet.

Fear No Music performed Andy Akiho's "Portal." Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Fear No Music performed Andy Akiho’s “Portal.” Photo by Joe Cantrell.

Shaw’s work Gustave le Grey was named after an influential 19th-century French photographer. In Shaw’s words the work is “a multi-layered portrait of [Chopin’s] Op. 17 No. 4 using some of Chopin’s ingredients overlaid and hinged together with some of my own.”  Pianist Monica Ohuchi performed on solo piano (see Joe Cantrell’s photo essay here). It opened with a heavy use of the sostenuto pedal to blur the pitches. A repetitive pattern in the upper registers, wistful and pensive in ceaseless triplets, was invaded at times by the bass. One felt the Chopin more as the work progressed. The sudden caesurae in what had been a seamless wall of sound were jarring, interrupting the narrative like intrusive thoughts on a placid afternoon.

Shields and Ohuchi joined forces to play Kenji Bunch’s Industrial Strength for bass clarinet and piano, a kind of ode to a dwindling, yet very much alive manufacturing sector in the upper Mid-West, “from the excitement and optimism of booming production to the heartache and disillusionment of abandoned Rust Belt dreams.”  Opening with a menacing staccato from the bass register of the piano, the movement entire was a dialogue between two equal partners. Burbling and buoyant, the complex rhythmic interplay ended suddenly with a low, flatulent “honk!” from the clarinet that elicited a quiet chuckle from the audience. 

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Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon

The second movement was very bluesy, less egalitarian, and more of a sad, yet saucy soliloquy from the clarinet. Breathy and spilling a lot of wind, it was a fun testament to the great things that can still come out of the blues, now more than a century on from its incipience. The finale was like a fast Detroit muscle-car ride through a scenic, dying city. This movement existed in contradistinction to the abandoned dreams that Bunch spoke of as in inspiration for this piece; here was almost in-your-face defiance in the face of decay. Ohuchi expertly expounded on the difficult, jazzy scalar motives.

Monica Ohuchi and James Shields performed Kenji Bunch’s "Industrial Strength" at Fear No Music's "Sounds Like Home" concert. Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Monica Ohuchi and James Shields performed Kenji Bunch’s “Industrial Strength” at Fear No Music’s “Sounds Like Home” concert. Photo by Joe Cantrell.

Eldritch, astrological things

Ryan Francis’s Voynich Transcriptions, commissioned by Chatter PDX is named after a curious, baffling, early 15th-century codex written in either a constructed language or an as-yet-unbroken code. Whether it deals with “botany, astrology, biology, ritual and medicine” or something else is unknown, but it is a mystery that has inspired much speculation through the years. Francis’ work “responds to the structure and aesthetics of this strange codex,” inspired by the cryptic illustrations and “occasionally the constructed language of the text.” (Quotations are from the composers’ program notes.)

This quintet was written for the same set of instruments used by Mozart for his famous clarinet quintet, including the archaic basset clarinet, which in this iteration contained four additional semitones below the low e-flat of the traditional clarinet. The same ensemble that played the Akiho earlier performed this work. During the performance, images from the codex were projected onto the ceiling above the stage.

Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis' "Voynich Transcriptions." Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis’ “Voynich Transcriptions.” Photo by Joe Cantrell.

Per Francis, the work consisted of “28 short sections.” My efforts to clearly delineate each one from the next were fruitless; I was on about 18 when the work ended, suggesting that some were attacca or nearly so, or that in some cases the shifts were very subtle, and/or I can’t count or am too much a Philistine to be able to tell one movement from another. Or some combination thereof, hence the somewhat seamless structure of the review.

It opened with big, bold, swooning chords, a principal feature of much of the work. Gentility was a watchword; I felt something of the awe of Hovhaness in the treatment of the melodic material: all players moved in unison, slow and ponderous, a true reveling in the texture and mouthfeel of each chord. As the musicians played on, bathed in a halo of other-worldly light from the sphinxlike illustrations above, the music conveyed complex, intense emotions through oft-subtle shifts. Thestrings shifted to warbling, discordant sul ponticello chanting and I felt steeped in the world of eldritch, astrological things.

Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis' "Voynich Transcriptions." Photo by Joe Cantrell.
Fear No Music performing Ryan Francis’ “Voynich Transcriptions.” Photo by Joe Cantrell.

At the beginning of one section the clarinet came in forcefully, strident yet lyrical as the viola scratched away. Then the cello entered, gay and bouncy in a pentatonic modality, or something akin to it. The unison chordal structure began to break apart a bit, and the players moved more independently as a stringendo character took hold. The cello and bass clarinet began ululating together—so subtly and in unison that it sounded like one strange instrument; a magical stop on an organ that does not exist. 

As the music drew toward its end, piercing high notes rang out from the clarinet, which had heretofore been playing principally in the middle and low registers. The music felt like a vehicle for things felt rather than heard, blurring the boundaries between them, expounding upon but never attempting to translate the idiom belonging to whatever strange world whence this manuscript came; it was like trying to articulate an enigma to one who doesn’t understand your tongue. 

Sponsor

Orchestra Nova Reynolds High School Troutdale Oregon and The Reser Beaverton Oregon

The mystery at the heart of the composition was treated with the reverence one might render the codex itself, were one to touch it with trembling fingers. In his remarks before the performance, Francis stated that he hoped no one ever cracked the code, that not every mystery needs to be solved. As good as his word, he did not try to solve it with this composition—merely to bask in it, and convey something of its singularity.

A lifelong musician and writer, Lorin Wilkerson has been a part of the Portland classical music scene as a performer, writer, and non-profit board member for over 15 years. He has performed with the Portland Symphonic Choir, Bach Cantata Choir, and Classical Revolution PDX, and served on the boards of the Bach Cantata Choir and Musica Maestrale. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he has written for Willamette Week, Hollywood Star, Oregon Music News and other publications. An avid birder, he is the Field Notes Editor of Oregon Birds, the journal of the Oregon Birding Association.

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  1. IT Telkom

    What might Shaw’s decision to overlay and hinge together Chopin’s ingredients with his own musical language suggest about the relationship between composer and interpreter?
    Greeting : IT Telkom

    1. Jeff Winslow
      replying to IT Telkom

      I’m sure AI don’t know.

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