VOTD #1

Vinyl of the day #1

    John Eaton: Mass, Blind Man's Cry, Concert Music for Solo Clarinet (CRI)

    Purchased at the Government Center

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There's always discussion each late December/early January about so-called New Years resolutions. Lose weight is always at the top of the list, something that I most definitely must try harder to do.

I find staying disciplined and on-track to be difficult. I guess that's why it's discipline, right? We'll see how effectively I maintain some routines I have planned for the coming months.

I have a substantial record and CD collection. As I've been looking through some of it recently, it occurred to me that I didn't remember buying or owning some of them. It seems to me that I should make a point of sitting down and listening or relistening to many of them.

So why not write about them? I don't expect this to be taken especially seriously by anyone, and it's not a serious musicology project. I did something similar when I bought the 32-CD Messiaen collection during the COVID lockdown, and then later listening to my collection of Morricone vinyl albums after the maestro's death. I started writing about the individual discs in a Pierre Henry box set I bought, but I didn't stay with it. I'll have to return to that.

Writing this now is more an exercise in personal discipline and self motivation. If someone gets something out of it, good for us both then.

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Why of all things would I make this initial blog post about a John Eaton? Truth is, I purchased this LP a few days ago and needed to get around to listening to it anyway. In general I will almost always buy records of historic electronic music, whether studio creations (i.e Schaffer, Henry) or performed on early electronic instruments (this). 

I know little about John Eaton's music, apart from another LP and a compilation track. He is associated with an electronic musical instrument named the Syn-ket. There's more than I know about the instrument listed here: https://120years.net/tag/synket/

I only know of one other place Syn-kets appear outside of Eaton's music, that being in Italian soundtrack music. Ennio Morricone used one in his score for Sacco and Vanzetti, for example. 

Based on the pictures on the site listed above, it looks like a pretty practical device. Not terribly large, clear layout of components, and microtonal tuning capabilities. The first two works on this record use not only Syn-kets, but Moog modular systems. 

The Syn-ket was never intended to be a commercial product, and only about a dozen were ever built. This points out a challenge of composing for electronic instruments. Even when composing for commercially available instruments, what happens when the company goes out of business? How dependent on the particular device is the composition?

I know of no attempts to recreate the Syn-ket, despite the current fashionability of analog-based modular synthesis. Therefor, all we have are these recordings of Eaton's music for the instrument. Strict performance live would at best involve substitutions. 

Mass and Blind Man's Cry both involve ensembles of synthesizers (Moog and Syn-ket), with voice. Mass also uses a solo clarinet (no credit that I can find, in a virtuoso role) and tape delay elements. Both works were written for soprano Michiko Hirayama, and she's a dazzler. I was certain I knew that name, and it's because of her performance of Giacinto Scelsi's Canti del Capricorno. She has amazing range and expression, but does not sing in that broad, European operatic style. And I'm glad. She is well suited to the material here. My easy go-to for comparisons for extreme vocal techniques is Diamanda Galàs. Ms. Galàs is mostly involved with creating her own works, or interpreting old songs. Nonetheless, there is fair comparison to be made here. Hirayama shrieks, sighs, and generally has a wide range of expression. The score must be a complex jumble of notations. 

The record ends with a work for solo clarinet, played beautifully by William O. Smith. It's the sort of work you might expect: ideas darting around, trills, some complicated note passages played fast. I find sometimes there's a question of, if you could improvise something that doesn't sound significantly different than this, why not choose to do that instead? Smith has great, sharp articulation and a big sound, so it is a good feature for his playing.