Michael Jarrell
was born in Geneva. He studied with Eric Gaudibert at the
city’s conservatory, and in a number of summer schools in
the States - e.g. in Tanglewood in 1979. He studied further
in Freiburg im Breisgau with Klaus Huber. He already has
a sizeable and varied catalogue, and is now working on an
opera based on Brecht’s Das Leben des Galilei to
be premiered in Geneva in 2006.
I became interested
in Jarrell’s music after hearing his beautiful viola concerto
From the Leaves of Shadow first performed
during the 1992 Ars Musica festival in Liège. Since then,
his music has made its way onto disc, such as GMS 8803 published
in 1988 and one of AEON’s very first releases (AECD 0101).
The present disc focuses on recent pieces, although the
earliest dates from the late 1980s. They impart a fairly
good idea of Jarrell’s compositional achievement and breadth
of vision. All four works have a literary source as point
of departure, although only two of them actually set texts.
Thus, Essaims-Cribles from 1986/8, a “chamber
ballet” for bass clarinet and ensemble, is based on a poem
by Patrick Weidmann, of which each line serves to characterise
each section of the piece. The title of the work - actually
the first line of Weidmann’s poem - also hints at what the
music is about. The “essaims” are swarms or “ribbons” of
notes run together in equal rhythmic values and the “cribles”
or sieves reflect an elimination of certain of the initial
pitches in order to retain specific pitches. These are generally
used in sequences of repeated notes. This is a typical Jarrell
hallmark. It’s also to be heard in Music for a While
and in Modifications for piano and ensemble
composed in 1988 (available on GMS 8803). The piece alternates
“essaims” and “cribles” in a widely contrasted fashion,
including highly virtuosic cadenza-like passages for bass
clarinet. The music is tense and relaxed, forceful and meditative,
and perfectly reflects the various moods suggested by Weidmann’s
words.
Music
for a While, for ensemble, alludes to Purcell’s
eponymous piece, and quotes a few notes from the Purcell.
Globally, this piece is a slow-moving processional characterised
by dark scoring and centred on a low pedal note that helps
hold the music together. This is in spite of brief violent
outbursts trying to disrupt the music’s inexorable flow.
The work ends as it began, by slowly fading away in the
bass register.
As already mentioned,
both Formes-Fragments II b and ... car
le pensé et l’être are real settings of various
texts. Formes-Fragments II b, for solo SATB,
ensemble and electronics, is apparently evolved from an
earlier work, Formes-Fragments for six voices,
brass and percussion composed in 1987. It sets a text by
Leonardo da Vinci dealing with the transience of things,
on movement and on questions of perspective (“Look at the
light and consider its beauty/ Close your eyes and then
look again/ What you see was not there before, and what
was there is no longer”). Jarrell’s setting uses hugely
varied vocal techniques, but always to telling effect and
maintaining the text’s intelligibility at key points, whereas
ensemble and electronics weave a resonating, refined, subtly
coloured and almost timeless aura.
To give the
piece its full title, ... car le pensé et l’être sont
une même chose, is scored for six solo voices, each
also playing some percussion instruments. The text, taken
from some obscure fragments of a philosophical poem by Parmenides,
is set - apparently in ancient Greek - in a freer manner
than that by da Vinci in Formes-Fragments II b.
Words are often completely dismantled and scattered among
the six independent vocal lines. They are used more for
their sonic potential than for their meaning. The text again
reflects Jarrell’s concerns, e.g. in the six and last fragment
(“In time [things] will grow up and pass away...”) that
clearly parallels the opening words by da Vinci. Jarrell’s
setting is remarkably resourceful and evocative, and conjures
again a slow-moving, ominous ritual through its sophisticated
and imaginative vocal writing.
These performances,
recorded live - but you are hardly aware of it - are excellent,
carefully prepared and committed; and serve Jarrell’s complex,
but strongly expressive music well. This young label is
going from strength to strength. This recent release is
one of the finest I have heard so far. My record of the
month.
Hubert
Culot
Ernesto Molinari (bass
clarinet)d
