Christian MASON (b. 1984)
Zwischen den Sternen
Between the stars, how far… [8:49]
II ...and yet, by how much still farther, what we learn from the here and now
Interlude I [2:05]
III o how incredibly distant [5:59]
Interlude II [1:18]
IV Everything is far… [8:41]
V ...and nowhere does the circle close [2:09]
VI But is there not perhaps a place, where what would be the fishes' language is spoken without them? [7:33]
Ensemble Recherche
rec. 1-3 July 2020, Ensemblehaus, Freiburg, Germany.
WINTER & WINTER RECORDS 910 267-2 [39:09]
Christian Mason's Zwischen den Sternen is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's eponymous poem, and came about as the result of a close collaboration with Ensemble Recherche. Within the first few seconds you can hear that something is going on with the tuning with this music, and Mason works with scordatura to add an effect of disorientation and, at first, discomforting mystery. Six notes of the piano are re-tuned, and there is a string trio that doubles on scordatura instruments from movement IV onwards: a violin with four G strings, viola with 2 G and 2 C strings, and the cello has four A strings. This and the addition of a log drum lends a Harry Partch feel to sections of Everything is far… Further exotic timbres are brought out through the use of a steel drum, which can both colour almost invisibly in the background or explode into the sound of the ensemble with a jack-in-a-box sense of surprise.
Christian Mason’s own comments might help at this point: “It is important to remember the stars because they put things in perspective. For a start, the specks of light we see at night - coming from across the universe - began before we existed. The actual distance between the stars is almost incomprehensible, yet from our faraway earth-bound perspective they appear in close clusters and constellations. The mysterious relationship between proximity and perspective - millions of light years seemingly within the span of a hand! This might induce anxiety, or awe, yet equally the stars offer a comforting sense of constancy (even if they do sometimes explode into supernovae and change the structure of the sky).”
The music connects to Rilke’s poem; number XX of the Second Part of his Sonnets to Orpheus (not printed with the CD), in which Rilke gives a human dimension to the heavens with a series of analogies, for instance comparing it to the distance between two children, and then by the “many spans merely from a maid to a man, when she avoids him and has him in mind.” This mixture of perceptions of scale combines the infinite of human feelings and relationships or lack thereof, against those of physical distance. These simultaneous notions of distance and relationship are a key to comprehending the music of Zwischen den Sternen, but this is a work that can be appreciated without too much supplementary reading. The soundworld here is one that clearly expresses ‘space’ in every meaning of the word you care to apply, and my only criticism of this recording as a whole is the dry sounding acoustic in which the musicians are placed. This would seem to be a work that cries out for a larger, Rothko Chapel kind of acoustic. It is of course essential for the detail of instrumental sounds to be closely audible as they are in this recording, but the dramatic sweep and blend of the whole just needs more room to blossom - at least, that’s my feeling.
Depending on your point of view, there are aspects of this work that discomfort more than de-tuning. Everything is far… for instance, closes with a diminuendo to silence that lasts a good couple of minutes - a striking effect that provides a sense of close. The subsequent hammer blows with which ...and nowhere does the circle close opens have, arguably, the same effect as that one ensemble member in an improvisation group who never catches on that the performance has reached its natural conclusion. Yes, we jump out of our skin like the closing cadence of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, but what we are offered is not much beyond what we’ve already heard: tumult in the penultimate movement, and then a return to the sonorities of the first movement in the last, which then reprises the lengthy fade-out but this time by having musicians moving off-stage and leaving the cello to ruminate pizzicato on its four A strings.
I try to have an open mind with these things, and would never dream of trying to put anyone off experiencing Zwischen den Sternen, but this is one of those pieces that I would have to give the label ‘missed opportunity.’ If I step Zwischen den Sternen I want to feel more than mildly disorientated. I want to feel I’ve had the ground entirely removed from under my feet, to have some kind of memorable ‘wow’ factor to which I will immediately want to return after having heard it for a first time, just to make sure I can believe what I’ve heard. This is a piece that has its moments, but for all its re- and de-tuning and its exploration of some relatively unconventional instrumental timbres, it comes across to my ears as having too much contemporary music cliché content to be really convincing and durable.
Dominy Clements
