In these days of the
Internet and of fairly easy and inexpensive
access to quality recording studios,
many musicians and composers who would
otherwise not be heard are able to get
their material out before the public.
That is the good news. The bad news
is that many people who are not up to
the task are also clogging the market
with less than stellar efforts. Such
is the case of this opera, of sorts,
from the pen of Elodie Lauten, who according
to the program note in the CD booklet
is a major figure in the Manhattan new
music scene. I am not sure that the
news has gotten out much past the five
boroughs as yet.
Again according to
the program notes by Kyle Gann, Lauten’s
music is "perfect" an ideal
Zen Buddhist wedding of text and music.
Sure. Supposedly this music is the grand
synthesis of a dozen or so styles of
music making from the high Baroque to
plainchant to rock and roll to gospel,
all slavishly subservient to the almighty
text. Right.
What we really have
is a mess on our hands and for me, sixty-six
of the longest and most excruciating
minutes of listening that I have ever
forced myself to sit through. Lauter
does not seem to have a tune in her
head, and the banal, weakly orchestrated
rock band meets string quartet ‘orchestration’
is mind-numbingly dull. Texts are misaccentuated,
and the vocal lines are so all over
the place that there is no sense that
the blunt, often humorous and sometimes
shocking poems by Ginsberg have been
given any other treatment than to be
randomly set to strings of repetitive
and trite note-spinning.
Mark Duer is a standout
in the protagonist’s role. His fine
baritone is a pleasure to hear, but
alas, he and all of his counterparts
sing for sixty-six minutes and thirty-two
seconds at one monotonous dynamic level:
sorta loud. One of the sopranos (and
since the booklet does not identify
who is singing what I cannot single
her out) has been given a task beyond
her talent, and her strident, often
over-stretched voice is quite an irritant.
This is a project that
had potential, and there is certainly
ample precedent for a kind of speech
rhythm setting of lengthy and complicated
texts. Janáček, Purcell and Britten
were all masters at this sort of thing.
These long and often wordy poems, often
simple and direct reflections of everyday
life, interspersed with gleaming moments
of transcendent observation,
are deserving of more than this composer
gives them. The overriding sense here
is that Ms. Lauter simply assigned a
pitch to each syllable in a sort of
undefined manner, and when the text
ran out so did the music.
This piece does not
work at any level that I can find. Try
as I may to be generous and find the
good in most pieces, I just do not find
much here. Better luck next time.
Kevin Sutton
Mark Duer, baritone; Meredith Borden, soprano;
Tyler Azelton, soprano; Sherrita Duran, soprano;
Grigory Kalinovsky, violin; Jaram Kim, violin;
Tania Askins, viola; Andrei Tchekmazov, cello;
Rafael Agudelo, contrabass; Ulla Suokko, flute;
Bill Ruyle, drums; Mustafa Ahmed, percussion;
Elodie Lauten, synthesizer. 
