VOTD 5/16/2023

 Henri Lazarof: Textures/Cadence III/Partita (Candide)

Purchased at Jerry's Records from the Duquesne University collection

There are so many of these records, of then-current composers getting a shot at a record on a respectable label. I don't buy every record on the Candide label I can, but the back cover is an indication of why I always pay attention: in large letters on various covers: Satie, Berio, Alkan, Scriabin, Japan, The Chinese Violin, etc. This is to speak nothing of other Candide releases devoted to Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Gesualdo, and other people of interest.

I've been buying a lot of these records recently. I make no apologies for buying anything (cheap!) of particular interest to me, for example records out of the Duquesne collection by BA Zimmermann, or the 3-LP set by Paul Zukofsky. I'd have paid more but am grateful I didn't have to do so. With so many of these modern composers on various labels, I'm also trying to be choosier. 

I passed this over the first time or two seeing it. I have another Lazarof LP. I don't remember anything about it. The titles looked promising, but did I need to spend another $3 on another LP that will take up yet more space in my house?

Then I saw the magic words. What are the magic words? "...and tape." In this case, it is the "Partita" for brass quintet and tape. 

Given a reasonable price, I will (nearly) always buy an album of, or that includes, early electronic music. There's the content that interests me; how was the technology being used? In a case such as this, does it sound dated?

I like the sweat on old electronic music pieces. It took a great deal of effort for them to realize their works, only multiplied if it's a work for live musicians with recorded sound. 

I have both an enthusiasm and ambivalence to electronic music in general (a term that is antiquated). I like the sonic possibilities of electronics, of shaping sound directly. I'm certain these works and composers have influenced my saxophone playing in significant ways, that I'm often trying to achieve electronic types of sounds on an acoustic instrument. 

So why do I also say ambivalence? Because, even though I actively collection early electronic music albums, I'm not interested in electronic music as a category. It's true that early digital composers put equal or greater efforts into creating their works as people working on analog media. I have a number of those recordings too, but they just don't have the same appeal for me as the analog creators. Maybe the sometime grungier quality of the analog-era creations also appeals to me more. 

And how many of these works for "<instrument/ensemble/voice> and tape" can even be performed any longer, assuming there's the will to perform someone such as Lazarof in the first place? I know the tape-with-live-players works by Stockhausen and Xenakis are well preserved, but they're at the top of the modern composer heap so to speak. Are the materials for "Partita" available should someone want to take it on? 

Works such as these seem so fleeting now. There's someone somewhere in the world who is playing Bach right now; perhaps not on exactly the instrument he intended, but his work has had serious legs. What of "Partita"? What of Leon Kirchner's work for string quartet and tape? And what does this say about current pieces involving acoustical instruments and technology, whether it's pre-prepared recordings or live processing of instruments? The technology updates itself at a startling rate. Imagine you created a work using Mac OS 7. Assuming you were able to preserve the work at all, exactly how could you play it now?

Records such as this feel like an artifact of a bygone age, even though that age is within my lifetime. (The pieces on this LP date from 1970-71.) It's a reminder that this is in fact not new music, it's ancient music.

And all of this said, Lazarof's work isn't really electronic music at all, even if it is technology-based composition. The tape in this case is recordings of more brass quintet performances. Perhaps there was a little manipulation of the tape as he was creating it here and there, but the sounds are generally faithful to their source. With proper scoring an ensemble arranging, and perhaps some sound projection a la Stockhausen, this could have been possibly played by an entirely live ensemble. My favorite parts of the work are these big, long, nasty chords he creates. But it all sounds acoustic.

The pieces in general are all reasonable examples of mid-century modernism. In commenting to me recently about power electronics noise groups, Adam MacGregor said that it's pretty tough to tell many of them apart from each other. I could say the same about so many of these post-war modernists, especially the more academic people. It's often pretty hard to distinguish them, even if I like the music moment-by-moment. While I'm willing to pursue someone's work I don't otherwise know, this attitude leads me to think that I should largely stick with the composers of that era who I already know and love.