Raven Chacon: Voiceless Mass [New World]. What I’d heard of Raven Chacon’s music so far had fallen into two camps, either solemn works for small instrumental ensembles or electronically-processed field recordings that were occasionally harsh enough to make me wonder if the file was glitched. Voiceless Mass compiles three pieces which bring resolve those disparate elements into a clearer but still complex single image. The earliest piece, Biyán for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion from 2011, makes use of repeating patterns with small variations but not in a way that you consciously notice. The effect is one of an everchanging stasis, as when observing landscape: evocation of place is an important feature of Chacon’s music, heard directly through field recording, through evocation in acoustic sound and imbued with the cultural elements of his native American heritage. In the case of Biyán the inspiration comes from singing in Navajo ceremonies and it’s tempting but unsatisfactory to describe these pieces as ritualistic, as rite and repetition are only one strand of thought brought to mind in Chacon’s complex reflections on nature and culture. What strikes the ear immediately is the way he is unafraid to harsh, disruptive sounds into what might be otherwise a mesmerising, lulling structure, sounding natural in a way that is beyond human.
In the two more recent works, both from 2021, Owl Song for sinfonietta and voice with electronics shows just how far Chacon has developed the approach from Biyán, with musical pitch and noise, voice and instrument, natural and artificial all merged into a work whose single purpose for itself is clear even as it may disorient and transform the performers. Unidentified percussive sounds have an uncanny effect, the voice verges on speech before finding greater purity, those ritualistic passages seem to emerge only to be subsumed again into a greater whole. It’s a powerful piece that belies its relatively brief fifteen-minute span. The ensemble on these later works is Present Music, conducted by David Bloom, Ariadne Greif providing the voice; they make the technical demands of these pieces such as the constant timbral changes seem normal, placing the listener’s focus on purely acoustic phenomena and how they build the piece’s overall impact. The title work is also for large ensemble, which spends the first half creating a large, dark space of low sounds before a pipe organ breaks through. With the added electronic reverberation and use of drums, you can now hear Chacon’s flair for the dramatic and how he wisely keeps it in check, only occasionally leaving it to simmer and threaten a wilder escalation before it withdraws. If you dig those old Polish recordings of Scelsi you should probably hear this too. Did you know it won a Pulitzer?
Martin Iddon: Hesperides [NMC]. I’ve perviously described Martin Iddon’s music as possessing vegetal qualities, but also noted that there are layers to his work which take time to make themselves known, and that what has been made commercially available to date hasn’t yet told us the whole story. The three works on Hesperides deliver on this promise, in spades. Coincidentally, there’s also one 2012 piece here plus two from the 2020s. The earlier work in’ei appears on paper to be a fairly simple scheme for a variable ensemble to make their way through a set of changes in timbre and pitch; the musicians of Quiet Music Ensemble focus their attention on low sounds to make their performance a brooding, atmospheric piece of disturbing transformations. It opens the album to set the scene for the larger works. Quiet Music also perform Hesperides, a piece for five musicians with a field recording which plays throughout. It forms a memorial for a deceased relative, centred on silent contemplation beside a riverbank where the subject is present through his absence, while life passes by. The sounds are impersonal but also disarmingly immediate, capturing a state where the senses are exposed. The music itself seems unobtrusive, at times even imperceptible, although close attention may reveal elements of liturgical music. Iddon has composed for Quiet Music Ensemble in a way which pitched notes seem to lose precision and soak into the recorded background, each voice set so transparently that there seems scarecely any artifice in the timing and manner by which each sound lands. The ensemble musicians sound remote, as though part of the distant activity caught on tape, colouring this solitary act of listening into a profound musical experience. They do an excellent job of adding a degree of organic uncertainty to their intonation, without sounding timid. All these pieces are written to be extremely quiet: the sleeve notes recommend setting your volume so the quietest moments are barely audible, but the playing can withstand closer scrutiny.
Between the two ensemble works is Λαμπάδες (Lampades), played by tubist Jack Adler-McKean accompanied by a fixed soundtrack. It’s an impressively chthonic piece, all darkness with occasional flashes of light. Again, Iddon has developed his style to the point where the music seems to have evolved by itself, without direct human intervention, a composition where pitch and timbre are indivisible. I’d hesitate before making any definitive statement on what is played by Adler-McKean and what’s on the soundtrack: solid dark clouds of deep, velvety tones echo back and forth throughout the journey, set about by the distant wailing of sirens amidst an ever-present gauntlet of percussive sounds, somewhere between dripping, ticking and rattles. Adler-McKean achieves the feat of turning in a bravura performance even as his presence dissolves into the sound. It’s an astonishing work, adding another layer to any understanding of Iddon’s music. Did you know it won a Novello?
