sfSound Explores Musical Notation of All Kinds
The sfSoundFestival, July 8–10, has a hugely ambitious goal: to explore and present varying types of musical notation used in experimental music over the past seven decades. Of course, the matter of musical notation systems goes back as far as the first attempts to capture music on paper. Stephen Smoliar writes:
The music notation that we take for granted today did not become generally accepted until the seventeenth century. Convergence on that system was preceded by many turbulent centuries of disagreement over whether and how notation should be used in the acts of making music. Indeed, some of the practices of notation that caused so much controversy could be traced back to ancient Greece (even though it is likely that the earliest Greek forms were probably misinterpreted, at least during the Middle Ages). However, the results of convergence in the 17th century seemed to be satisfyingly robust over the following centuries.
However, the 20th century turned out to be another era of adventurous experimentation, due, at least in part, to the introduction of both electronic and computing technologies in those acts of making music. In 1968 John Cage, one of the most active pioneers in the pursuit of new ways of making music, completed his compilation of a book he titled Notations.
The venue for the festival is the Gray Area Grand Theater, at 2665 Mission St., the reconstructed 870-seat former single-screen cinema, originally built in 1940.
Unlike most music in the classical tradition, works with extended notational elements often require performers to decide aspects of the music usually left to the composer. sfSoundGroup, along with special guests, perform modern and historic compositions throughout the festival, covering a wide range of styles, including the logical conclusion of graphic notation: free improvisation. The programmed works also cover a wide range of ensemble sizes from solo to chamber orchestra, with and without electronics.
This year the festival pays tribute to Pierre Boulez, who died in January, with two large works for soloists — one for violin (Benjamin Kreith) with electronics and the other for clarinet (Matt Ingalls) with chamber orchestra. Both pieces include aleatoric elements where the performers select certain aspects of the music to play from an array of given choices.
Other composers represented at the festival include Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, composer-performer Lucie Vitková, from the Czech Republic, with her Piece for Accordion and Tap Shoes. Music influenced by jazz, electronic music, indie-pop, and psychoacoustics are found in performances of works by Johanna Beyer, Kyle Bruckman, John Cage, Ingalls, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Greg Saunier, Iannis Xenakis, and others.
The festival is produced with support from the Earle Brown Music Foundation, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, and individual contributors.
The Experimental Music Notation Resources site is a good place to see a striking variety of alternative notation systems.
Top Amateur Pianists Compete in the Cliburn
Beginning this past Sunday and running through June 25, Fort Worth is home to the seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition, with performances streaming at www.cliburn.org. The venues are the same as those used for the international competitions: Van Cliburn Recital Hall and Bass Performance Hall. The next international event will be May 25–June 10, 2017.
The preliminary round of 69 contestants took place Sunday and Monday. Thirty pianists go on to the quarterfinals Tuesday and Wednesday. Twelve survive for Thursday’s semifinal, and six finalists will vie for glory on Saturday, when each will perform one movement of a concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
I’d like to add to the previous report here about the competition: a well-known pianist (and valued contributor to SFCV.org) was inadvertently left out of the list of competitors from here, for a “technical reason.”
I missed Ken Iisaka because his name did not appear among Bay Area pianists — he represents Canada and Japan and the listing is based on nationality and representation, not residence. My apology may or may not be in order, but a strong toi-toi-toi to Ken anyway. He is among the quarterfinalists announced Tuesday morning — pianists with a dazzling variety of occupations in the “real world.”
Colleen Adent, 54, homemaker (United States)
Xavier Aymonod, 40, strategy consultant (France)
Saffet Bayka, 57, electrical engineer (Turkey)
Deirbhile Brennan, 46, accountant (Ireland)
Gorden Cheng, 35, systems engineer (United States)
Jeanne Backofen Craig, 46, homemaker/part-time minister of music (United States)
Noah DeGarmo, 38, physician (United States)
Brianna Donaldson, 35, nonprofit director (United States)
Brad Dunn, 43, general manager/sommelier (United States)
Simon Finlow, 60, retired IT project manager/database engineer (United Kingdom/United States)
Matthias Fischer, 42, physician (Germany)
John Gutheil, 59, CEO/medical oncologist (United States)
Ken Iisaka, 47, software engineer (Japan/Canada)
Jane Gibson King, 60, stay-at-home mother (United States)
Gregory Knight, 53, software engineer (United States)
Tessa Knipe, 53, attorney (South Africa/United States)
Yasuo Kurimoto, 55, ophthalmologist (Japan)
Lana C. Marina, 47, stay-at-home mother (United States)
Joseph Mercuri, 56, hospitalist physician (United States)
Michael Slavin, 65, retired ophthalmologist (United States)
Janet Sommerfeld, 53, freelance writer/producer (United States)
Summer Stone, 39, client relations (United States)
Sean Sutherland, 39, entrepreneur/lecturer (St. Vincent and the Grenadines/Canada)
Madalyn Taylor, 66, retail store owner (United States)
J. Spencer Thompson, 55, radiation oncologist (United States)
Jasmin Tiodang, 44, stay-at-home mother (Indonesia)
Clark Vann Griffith, 52, retired database programmer (United States)
Shinji Wada, 40, human resources director (Japan)
Thomas Yu, 38, periodontist (Canada)
Jorge Zamora, 43, sales director (Mexico)
Women’s Struggle for Opportunity and Recognition as Composers
Opinions vary about Norman Lebrecht, whose sensational news stories about music are not always borne out by facts, but he has memorable lines, none better than in his current book review published by the Wall Street Journal:
“A woman may, in 2016, direct the Large Hadron Collider or serve as chief operating officer at Facebook without undue comment, but if she composes an opera it’s front-page news in New York.”
The review is of Anna Beer’s Sounds and Sweet Airs (Oneworld, 368 pages, $22.99), and Lebrecht’s lead for his article is that when the Metropolitan Opera announced that is would be performing L’amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho next season, “headlines blared that this work was the first by a woman composer to be performed at the Met in more than a century. The last, forgettably, was Der Wald by Ethel Smyth in 1903.”
Zoning in on a composer’s gender, the review says, indicates that something is very wrong here:
Anna Beer, an Oxford historian, traces a pattern of gradual exclusion through the lives of eight composers — three in the 17th century, one in the 18th, two in the 19th, and two in the 20th. Although none achieved world renown, it still comes as a something of a shock to learn that women had it much easier in classical times than in modern.
Florentine Francesca Caccini was well employed by the Medicis in the 16th and 17th centuries, but her memory was obliterated by the same benefactors when she moved on. Barbara Strozzi was a courtesan in Venice and a prolific composer. Parisian Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729) composed mostly for the harpsichord, and there was Viennese prodigy Marianna Martines (1744-1812), a contemporary of Mozart’s.
Clara Schumann “was numbed by her husband’s wayward genius, eight pregnancies, and her touring career as a pianist.” Fanny Mendelssohn’s career was “subdued by her parents in favor of her younger brother’s blazing genius,” but she persisted through marriage, miscarriages, and depression.
In 1930s London, women composers Elizabeth Maconchy, Imogen Holst, Grace Williams, and Elisabeth Luytens formed a concert society, supported by Benjamin Britten. Luytens adopted Schoenberg’s serialism; Maconchy’s daughter, Nicola LeFanu, was also composer.
In 2012, Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune — a “dreadful opera,” according to Lebrecht — was produced in Covent Garden, and critics “turned to sexual derogation,” rather than being critical of the specific work.
Beer apparently omitted mention of Galina Ustvolskaya, Czech composer Vítezslava Kaprálová; and any of a huge number of Americans such as Julia Wolfe, Jennifer Higdon, Missy Mazzoli, and Augusta Read Thomas. Both Beer and Lebrecht seem to ignore the much-performed Sofia Gubaidulina and English opera composer Thea Musgrave, whose works have been performed in many places, including the Bay Area.
In Brief: Concert Hall in the Clouds; Sydney Opera House on Film
Concert Hall in the Clouds
Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron have undertaken dozens of major projects — from San Francisco’s de Young Museum to the brand-new addition to the Tate Modern in London — but perhaps never anything as difficult as the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg.
Construction began in 2007 with a completion goal set for 2010. Now it’s seven years later and many millions of euros added, but the phantasmagorical edifice is really, really promised to open in January 2017.
Sydney Opera House on Film
Another famous music venue, controversial at the time of its creation but now a world-renowned building, is about to become a movie star. The story behind the Sydney Opera House and its Danish architect Jorn Utzon is the subject of a film. The documentary’s executive producer is Ole Sondberg, the Swedish producer best know here for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Utzon arrived in Sydney as a celebrity in 1957, but his ambitious design for the building, with its distinctive white sails inspired by his childhood memories of the Aalborg shipyards, was hit by domestic politics, petty jealousies, and budget constraints. The controversies that dogged him and the project for years saw him quit in 1966. He never returned to see his revolutionary concept as a finished building, which was opened in 1973 by Queen Elizabeth II.