Nico MUHLY (b.1981)
I Drink the Air Before Me
1. Fire Down Below [6:09]
2. First Storm [1:03]
3. Salty Dog [6:58]
4. Varied Carols [7:31]
5. Music Under Pressure 1 - Flute [3:04]
6. Music Under Pressure 2 - Piano [3:32]
7. Jagged Pulses [2:05]
8. Music For Boys [2:48]
9. Music For Gino [2:52]
10. Music Under Pressure 3 - Ensemble [8:32]
11. Storm Centre [3:35]
12. One Day Tells Its Tale To Another [5:11]
Alex Sopp (flute); Seth Baer (bassoon); Michael Claville (trombone); Nico
Muhly (piano); Nadia Sirota (viola); Logan Coale (bass)
Young People’s Chorus of New York/Francisco Nuñez
Programming by Valgeir Sigurðsson (Jagged Pulses) and Ben Frost (Salty Dog,
Storm Center)
rec. No date provided, Clinton Recording Studio, New York City.
DECCA 478 2570 [53.20]
Nico MUHLY (b.1981)
A Good Understanding
Bright Mass with Canons
Kyrie [3:25]
Gloria [4:11]
Sanctus [2:46]
Agnus Dei [3:10]
Tamara Bevard (2), Karen Hogle Brown (3) (sopranos); Tracy Van Fleet (mezzo)
(2); Kimo Smith (organ)
First Service
Magnificat [5:20]
Nunc dimittis [2:51]
Lesley Leighton (soprano) (5)
Kimo Smith (organ)
Senex puerum portabat [7:13]
David Washburn, Marissa Benedict, Andrew Ulyate (trumpets); Kristy Morrell
(horn); Michael Hoffman, Alvin Veeh, Terry Cravens (trombones); Fred Greene
(tuba)
A Good Understanding [6:30]
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus; Kimo Smith (organ); Michael Englander (percussion)
Expecting the Main Things from You
1. I Hear America Sing [10:58]
2. A Farm Picture (Interlude) [4:47]
3. Poets to Come [7:29]
Claire Fedoruk (soprano) (9); Drea Pressley (mezzo) (9); Ralph Morrison, Steve
Scharf (violins); Kazi Pitelka (viola); John Walz (cello); Michael Englander,
Aaron Smith, Joseph Mitchell (percussion); Kimo Smith (organ); Los Angeles
Master Chorale/Grant Gershon
rec. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, 10-11 June 2010
DECCA 478 2506 [58.41]
For several weeks, I’ve been listening to these two recent discs and trying
to figure out what to say about this music. Muhly
is a prolific young composer, who has not only written “classical” music,
but has also worked with pop and rock artists, such as Björk and Arcade Fire,
and has collaborated with Philip Glass. His music is part of a new generation
of compositions that cross boundaries, that don’t see classical music as being
“classical”, and that explore sounds and forms that are sometimes considered
to be part of pop music. Decca, on the back of one of these discs, touts him
as “America’s leading young composer”.
Written as a score for a dance piece by Stephen Petronio, Muhly says in the
liner-notes that I Drink the Air Before Me “should relate to the weather:
storms, anxiety and coastal living”, and that he “divided up the piece into
a series of episodes all hinging around spiral-shaped constellations of notes”.
This is all well and good. I don’t hear the “spiral-shaped constellations
of notes”, but I hear an attractive composition that works well as incidental
music, that is mostly tonal and agreeable to the ear. Often, there is an interesting
counterpoint between the piano - which acts as much as a percussion instrument
as a melodic one - and the other instruments. At times the music flows smoothly,
and at times it has rough edges. Muhly is very adept at arranging this music,
and the small ensemble works adroitly as a unit, with each instrument also
standing alone at times. The choir blends well in the sections where it is
used, and provides an interesting enhancement to the chamber ensemble. Some
of the music can be a bit annoying: the droning viola (with tape?) of Varied
Carols is grating, and is about 7 minutes too long, parts of Music
Under Pressure 2 – Piano sound like Muhly is just playing random notes,
and parts of Storm Center are better skipped. But the closing piece,
One Day Tells Its Tale To Another, dominated by piano and choir, is
attractive and moving, and is a fitting end to the disc.
A Good Understanding is a collection of choral works by Muhly and features
a large choir with soloists, organ, horns, strings and percussion. The texts
are biblical, with the exception of the final work, Expecting the Main
Things from You, the words of which are by Walt Whitman.
There’s a blandness in this music; it is less angular or edgy than that of
I Drink the Air Before Me, and, in fact, it sounds as if it is by a
different composer. While Muhly was a chorister in his youth, this doesn’t
ensure that the music he composes for choir is anything special.
Recently, a number of discs of choral music by living composers have had a
certain popularity. This may be related to the faux spirituality that people
hear in this music; that a choir is something people think of in connection
with a church. I’m not especially moved by this type of bland choral music,
and would much rather listen to the originals, be they Bach or plainchant.
One thing that I miss in the works on this disc is any sound of joy. The music
is played at plodding tempi – because that sounds more “spiritual”? – and,
while the sound of the choir is delicious, it becomes, in the end, little
more than an attractive background. Each piece sounds similar, and Muhly’s
approach consists, for the most part, of repeating the same types of harmonies
and melodic fragments. A bit of raucous organ playing in A Good Understanding
provides some spice, but when the choir comes in, they sound just the
way they do on all the other pieces.
The longest work on the disc, Expecting the Main Things from You, at
22 minutes in three movements, is the most ambitious. Taking words from Walt
Whitman, this notably features more instruments than the other works. There
is a string quartet and organ playing behind the choir and soloists. This
piece, which might have been compelling, ends up being overwhelmed by the
sound of the choir. Perhaps with a smaller group of singers, this could be
an interesting chamber cantata.
However, this music in no way suggests Whitman. The poetry here suffers greatly
from the lush, layered choral treatment. These are strong, vibrant words,
those of an individualist poet:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck-hand singing
on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he
stands,
The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at
noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust,
friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
In Muhly’s music, the urgency of Whitman’s words is attenuated into that of
a smooth choir, which is as far from Whitman’s intentions as possible. The
final movement is perhaps the only part of this disc that has character. The
tone is quite different from the rest of the piece, and the from the other
works; it recalls some of Steve Reich’s works such as Tehillim. If
only Muhly had gone further in this direction.
In the end – and this is why it has taken me a while to write about these
discs – I’m left unmoved by this music. I’m very interested in the direction
that young composers like Muhly are taking. I can understand that they can
incite a certain level of enthusiasm among those who see this “new music”
as being something that is divorced from the classical canon, but that also
rejects the long-dominant atonal contemporary classical music that, for many
listeners, is a source of headaches.
This is classical music for those who don’t listen to classical music, and
in a way that is admirable. If these 21st century composers – those like Muhly,
Timothy Andres, David Lang or Paul Moravec – can attract new listeners to
the broader classical genre, then this is a good thing. If they can revitalize
a genre that has, for decades, been dominated by atonality, that is perhaps
even better. But these discs by Muhly, while interesting, just don’t grab
me. I may be wrong, as many others seem to think that this is wonderful. But
I don’t find much here to come back to, and I already feel that I’ve listened
to these discs more than enough.
Kirk McElhearn
Classical music for those who don’t listen to classical music.