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MUSIC IS THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEMOF HUMAN CULTURE(a critical approach of

the ECM, A Cultural Archaeology exhibition)

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This is going to be a long review indeed since I would like to write a few words on all the

pieces presented in these six CDs. Afterwards I will add a review of the catalogue of the exhibition.

SELECTED SIGNS – III-VIII – AN ANTHOLOGY FOR THE EXHIBITIONECM – A CULTURAL ARCHAEOLOGY – HAUS DER KUNST – MUNICH –ECM Records GmbH – MUNCHEN - 2013

DISC III

1- Heiner Goebbels & Heiner Mûller, In einem alten Fahrstuhl.The text, the music, the voices create an atmosphere that wants to appear like a serious

work and living environment and it does by capturing the worker on his last day of work in the week

and going home in an elevator, a chair that carries you were it wants and not necessarily where

you want. It is a good opening for the CD. The first voice reads the text in the first person, but a

second voice quickly doubles the text and repeats on a dehumanized tone what has already been

read. One man is never one single voice or personality and the elevator is the metaphor of a fast

changing society. What can a man with that double personality do? Live on, but he gets lost in that

fast going elevator, in that fast changing society. He went too far but is it really too far? We feel

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disoriented. We question the society in which we live. This text is not gratuitous here since Heiner

Müller was an East-German and a member of the SED, the communist Party of the DDR. Was he

doubting what he was serving? Was he trying to differentiate himself from the other great

playwright and poet of the DDR, Bertolt Brecht, who liked to dress like a worker, after work, on

Freiertag, at the end of the week?

2- Steven Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (excerpt).Transposing polyrhythmic patterns into poly-pulsations. Various rhythmic pulsations are

superimposed one onto the other and articulated in some dense universe, an auditory jungle. And

if the world were to end like that? We are reduced little by little to so many pebbles in a hurricane

crossing a tornado. And yet we are able to contemplate the crisscrossing chaos. This chaos starts

reverberating in us, in our minds. Is it our souls?

3- Arvo Pärt, Fratres.A violin and a piano trying to conquer our Lebensraum and fill it with notes that are

separate, detached and yet melodious in a diverted way. The melody of the incongruousness of

the eroding stone in the mountain under attack from some wind or rain. The mountain remains

calm and strong but it will be worn out one day, just like our ears are by these notes that tell us so

little separately and yet so much in their close togetherness with now and then a phrase, not even

a sentence from the violin sort of surfing over the landscape. A sudden asperity in the rock makes

the wind angry and violent. Till we reach a ledge, a plateau, a valley that accepts a slower rhythm,

a cooler breath. The two brothers are sure not that amorous and yet so loving in their adversity.

4- Arvo Pärt, Tabula Rasa I. Ludus.Mesmerizing cycles of harmonious violins opening onto some extensions of aerial, loose,

psycho-distant slow flow of notes. Later in the whirling cycles one opens up on a chaotic

expansion, somber and nearly brutal, where everything gets out of joint, erratic, kind of

uncontrolled, till the end that becomes no game at all but rather a perdition of pause.

5- György Kurtäg, Aus der Ferne.The piano is so detached so deconstructed that a sense of distance is created, or maybe of

depth rather and we let ourselves be carried away or down.

6- Johan Sebastian Bach, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.Charmingly detached from any corporeal weight or material existence. A pure virtual,

mental if not psychic transfiguration. The carnality we know in J.S. Bach has in a way been de-

carnalised.

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7- Togran Mansurian, Testament.Each step is a stumble of shuffling with no vigor, no force but a somber dirge in the ears

like an echo in an empty grave, the echo of the dead person who post mortem tells the survivors

what they have to do. Severe and even more. The atmosphere is bleak and menacing from the

dead to the living.

8- Betty Olivero, Neharôt Neharôt (excerpt).Oriental atmosphere of the singing and very sad use of the viola. A sort of mixture of

Jewish and Bohemian traditions, maybe gypsy, transcended into what sounds like a funeral ritual.

Let’s celebrate these cultures that have suffered so much in history.

9- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Fantaisie fûr Klavier fis-Moll.Surprising music that is so modern, probably since it is not a piano forte as it should

perhaps be. But there is a very modern sound and composition in the piece. This son of Bach’s is

known for what must have sound like avant-garde in his time. Very sad in tone. Very disquieting in

harmony. Provocative in atmosphere.

10- Joseph Haydn, The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross, IV Largo.This work is one of the most sinister in sacred music. The seven words of Jesus on the

cross are like his testament but not post mortem, rather while dying or drowning in his own

suffering. He is writing his testament in front of us with his own pain and blood dripping from his

nailed hands. To also express the hope we must all entertain for salvation, the suffering of the

sacrificial Messiah and the horror we have to feel in front of this horrible terrible terrifying death,

even the guilt we may and should feel since it is our sins that caused Jesus to have the mission to

save us with his death, with his suffering. We should be ashamed in our deeper soul. Just maybe

too long and repetitive in cycles of pain like a wounded animal barking in the night while slowly

dying, abandoned by everyone.

11- River.Just the sound of a river. Today there is no prodigy in such a recording since our smart

phones can do it just as good and as well.

12- Meredith Monk, Scared Song.A humdrum repetitive music and words but yet the singing is in a tone that is more

contemplative than scared. The scare is more in the contrast between the discordant voice and the

whirling music, except at the end when the right hand on the piano becomes light and even

vivacious but the voice then becomes some kind of stuttering opening onto scare. Then it is more a

loss of perspective or reality than scare, but fright might be it after all. A loss of architecture and

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construction. The music gets even corrugated and autistically disoriented.

13- Heiner Goebbels & Heiner Müller, Der Chef.You finish this CD on the same tone and note as it had started. This time there is some

ordering coming from that Chef, no matter what he is the Chef of. He commands and overlooks. A

Chef who wonders why he is only what he is especially because he did not do what he should

have done art school, etc. There is always some kind of a wall these Chefs built with their authority

to support their power and justify their position; But this Chef gets his discourse cut off in mid air, in

mid stream by a storm, a rain storm because all these walls of authority one day fall in a tempest of

some kind. Premonition of the author or our retrospective imposition of a vision that came later, of

a falling wall that fell later? A very good conclusion of this CD that becomes thus a sort of

peregrination in an unstable and unguided changing world in which we have to make do, willy nilly.

Heiner MüllerDer Mann im Fahrstuhl1- IN EINEM ALTEN FAHRSTUHL

Sprechfassung zu „Der Mann im Fahrstuhl“ aus Heiner Müllers Stück „Der Auftrag“

Fahrt nach obenIch (chorisch)

stehe zwischen Männern die mir unbekannt sind,in einem alten Fahrstuhlmit während des Aufstiegs klapperndem Metallgestänge

Ichbin gekleidet wie ein Angestellter oder wie ein Arbeiter am Feiertag.

Ichhabe mir sogar einen Schlips umgebunden,der Kragen scheuert am Hals

Ich schwitze.Wenn ich den Kopf bewege schnürt mir der Kragen den Hals ein.

Ichhabe einen Termin beim ChefIn Gedanken nenne ich ihn Nummer EinsSein Büro ist in der vierten Etage,oder war es die zwanzigste;kaum denke ich darüber nach, schon bin ich mir nicht mehr sicher.Die Nachricht von meinem Termin beim Chefden ich in Gedanken Nummer Eins nennehat mich im Kellergeschoss erreicht,einem ausgedehnten Areal mit leeren Betonkammernund Hinweisschildern für den Bombenschutz

Ichnehme an, es geht um einen Auftrag, der mir erteilt werden soll

Ichprüfe den Sitz meiner Krawatte und ziehe den Knoten fest

IchHätte gerne einen Spiegel, damit ich den Sitz der Krawatte auch mit denAugen prüfen kann.

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Unmöglich einen Fremden zu fragen, wie dein Schlipsknoten sitztDie Krawatten der anderen Männer im Fahrstuhl sitzenfehlerfrei.Einige von ihnen scheinen miteinander bekannt zu sein.Sie reden leise über etwas, wovon ich nichts verstehe.Immerhin muss ihr Gespräch mich abgelenkt haben:Zu weitBeim nächsten Halt lese ich auf dem EtagenanzeigerÜber der Fahrstuhltür mit Schrecken die Zahl Acht.

IchBin zu weit gefahren,oder ich habe mehr als die Hälfte der Strecke noch vor mir.Entscheidend ist der ZeitFak-tor.

DISC IV

1- Heiner Goebbels, Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Horstück II (“Ich möchte Ihneneinen Vorschlag machen…“)/Kleine Passacaglia.

One voice multiplied into a crowd. Not so much the voice itself but in the multiple audience

it implies by its moving in space, in depth, in tone, in color. “Besinnung, Überlegung, Depression,

Aufschwung.” The four steps to the world, or is it hell? The music then is just the door opening on

all these four steps to hell in heaven because hell is the center of the messianic Jerusalem, the

core and heart of heaven and the garden of Eden. Messianic Jerusalem or Messianic Hell in the

heart of things heavenly?

2- Giya Kancheli, Vom Winde Beweinnt, I. Largo Molto.The viola is superb when playing solo. The orchestra behind is the dark haunted forest

whose calling voice the viola is. Get down into this labyrinthine maelstrom of fearful and frightening

prodigies and miracles. Can we go to sleep in the lap of the devil, in the arm of the cruelest wizard,

with the kiss of the most out-spaced or spaced-out witch on our lips, her viper tongue in our ears

telling us stories of eternal nights of fire. Slow viola-cto fermentation of aimless desire in the

sauerkraut of our brains. Is there some hidden powerful dragon in there? Maybe it is only our fear

and expectation. The dragon is in the eyes of the vampire who sees him.

3- John Tavener, Funeral Canticle.Death is eternal quiet and your vampirish eyes can stop seeing dragons and finally come to

terms with the beast in your heart. You can finally yield and entrust it all to your survivors. Who will

make good use of it to frighten the future generation while you rest peacefully in non-existence.

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4- Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet n° 15, I Elegy.More than an elegy it is definitely a dirge to vanishing life in a society that is so

homogenized that there is not one note that denotes any asperity. Let the surface of death in life

be as smooth as the skin of a viper slithering in the grass looking for its daily prey. Will there be a

D.H. Lawrence to fail in killing the venomous poisonous biter? But the cello will never catch the

viola and the violins will go on preaching vanity in vain.

5- Arvo Pärt, Most Holy Mother of God.The four men, three musicians and one countertenor, are like a crucifying quartet of sinners

who want to see a woman, a mother mind you, behind their God who is so unsubstantial that he

becomes an informing mould and his mother is an escapee and escape route maybe, a hole in the

shielding, a window in this air proof ampoule. The deepest nostalgia of Western men: to find the

mother in all male symbols in order for them to be justified in frolicking with these males without

playing homo-subservient homo-holiness. There is something perverse in God being a male, and

there is something meta-perverse in God being invaded by a subterranean mother hiding in his

male body.

6- Tres morillas m’enamoran, Spanish Anonymous.Spanish elevation in that long litany of funeral-istician if not mortuaristicalidocious mystic

pilgrimage. I must admit the saxophone brings some real blood and life in this lifeless death

exploration. Is it the tree of life in the middle of the post mortem messianic Jerusalem? Is there

some life after death or is there some death before life? Are we turning into some Hindu gurus?

Maybe not but surely enough into an elephant in a crystal cabinet.

7- Dmitri Shostakovich, Chamber Symphony, I. Largo.Back to the absence of movement in the frozen Brownian soup of the social society we can

only imagine as a sea that has lost its tidal moon. The only power you can feel in that vast oily

calm comes from what you cannot see and that has been declared terminated. Obsolete class

struggle has become buoyant life struggle, not to survive but simply to live a real life instead of the

hallmark birthday postcard we are dictated to accept for the anniversary of no passing time at all.

They have reached that timeless eternity that is bound to fail but no one knows yet. It is just some

rumbling in your stomach. I told you to stop eating beans and believing time is a divine invention.

Just a plain human caprice in front of unbearable duration, which we can do without. Let’s burn Big

Ben and replace it with a windmill.

8- Valentin Silvestrov, I. Postludium ‘DSCH’.Wake up in the deepest layer of hell, or is it even deeper than that? The third level of the

car park under Hell itself for visiting sinners who want to keep their wheels on the tarmac of the

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infernal runway or is it on the bones of the runaway un-repenting sinners? After that resounding

banging call you can enter the whining of eternity in timeless erratic tempos with no cadenzas. A

few clear notes on the piano are like lost souls in an underground cellar of some paradisiacal

territory that may not exist. Peace can be found anywhere in the midst of the worst war of impulses

and instincts. Poetry can be found in the gloomiest dump and beauty in the darkest blizzard of the

mind. Desolation and inspiration are the two tits of Death, the alpha and the omega of eternal

lifelessness.

9- Valentin Silvestrov, III. Postludium.No danger, boys. Let’s go on conjugating decay in blooming beauty and decomposition in

fruitful fertile budding. The withered old skin of the mummy, of all our mummies, is just skin deep

behind the burgeoning beauty of the rose. The thing in the tomb that has no name in no language

in no world is just under the shiny microscopically thin varnish of the fruit blossoms on the apple

tree. There is no change ever in that. Get to peace with your own eternal aimless non-existing

vacuity.

DISC V

1-14 Eleni Karaindrou, i. Voyage; ii. Closed Roads; iii. Invocation; iv. Tango of Love;v. Tom’s Theme; vi. Laura’s Waltz; vii. Adagio; viii. After Memory; ix. Farewell Theme; x.Seeking Theme; xi. Nostalgia Song; xii. Requiem for Willy Loman; xiii. The WeepingMeadow; xiv. Memories.

What is the world for a modern contemplator or beholder who can see the various gestures,

hear the varied voices, tastes the multifarious fumets of life and yet cannot capture the essence of

this cosmic invention that man is, willy nilly, more nilly than willy indeed, and yet isn’t that man

dreaming of getting his own independence from that cosmos that made him? He even fantasizes

the time when he will control the cosmos.

Oh! Vanity! Oh! Nostalgia! Of what has never been. Some gypsy accents here and there, or

is it a fiddler on some roof, makes us fear that nostalgic dream might be a trap set there by this

outside cosmos to make us believe the cosmos is ours, our battlefield, our frontier to be

conquered, when we are nothing but a dreaming particle of non-existence in the vast flow of all

atomistic equilibrium that has no center, no hub, no heart, the vast unbalanced chaos yet forever

retaining its stance, the chaos of the nuclear soup of fusion and fission at once.

And then a tango lures us with some love. But there is no love in the cosmos. That’s why

this tango is so sad that the violins are weeping the tears of the dew that falls on all flowers when

morning life comes after the night-dark death that triumphs from dusk to dawn with only one

promise that dusk will return because dawn is an accident of divine dimension, a caprice of some

erring god that is not from this cosmos though no one knows, no planet remembers, no particle can

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imagine where he is coming from to play the divider of night and day in the cosmos of his neighbor

he trespasses with great pleasure.

A waltz can whirl and whorl. That changes nothing in this fate. That god is an extra-cosmic

unidentified flying illusion (UCIFY). Let’s believe IT – because IT is neither male nor female – has a

messianic home in another cosmos, if there is such an extra-cosmic cosmos somewhere.

Some adagio may very well try to charm us into falling into the trap of extra-cosmic

elimination à la Hubbard, the scientologist mal-prophet or mis-messiah, but nothing will work

because this adagio is nothing but a memory and we are necessarily living after that memory and

the adagio turns into some sour pre-digested milk. And the adagio gets transfixed into some jazzy

variations on useless, pointless, purposeless nostalgia of the future.

Farewell then. Homo Sapiens is in the Horn of Africa. You have to cross that Red Sea

narrow isthmus to that unknown territory over there that will be known one day in many tens of

thousands of years as the Southern Arabian Corridor. Farewell to the dreaded unexplored. You are

making history by your search for a place where you can survive before sending your children back

on the never ending road or trail of migration. Farewell. The first arrived will be the Gods of

tomorrow. The second arrived will be the Priests of these Gods. And the last arrived will be the

Slaves of the Elders and Priests.

Seek! Seek! Seek! There is still somewhere an unexplored corner in the cellar of your mind.

You will then be nostalgic of what you have not found that you will call heaven, garden of

Eden, paradise. . . lost of course. Nostalgia of the non-existent, Nostalgia of the impossible

inexistent.

So just burry your dream in a leaden casket, in a mile thick concrete urn and imagine there

is a man, a boy, an Ivan of some nature or other essence, who will treasure that urn in his mind

and transmit it to another boy, another man, or maybe a girl or a woman, for further nostalgia of the

future that will not come.

And you will only have your eyes left to cry, to weep, shed or cast tears on the world that

maybe does not exist. Life is a vast meadow of tears. They call it dew in the morning and rain the

rest of the time.

Just waste your time weeping. That will fill the void, the emptiness of a mind that is a

phantasm, of a heart that is a mechanical pump, of a love that is an illusion, of a passion that is a

folly, of an emotion that is auto-erotic self-consumption in onanistic isolation in a self-abusing

padded cell.

Oh! Vast meadow of incongruous absence of perspective!

Just live with your memories of all these ghostlike illusions and try to accept that life is

death and death is life. There is no divide between the two that are not even the two sides of the

same coin. They are exactly the same thing on both side, if there are not one thousand million

sides. Toss the coin of the cosmos and you will always get life and death in one single

body-douche-bag. They may call it a coffin for the dead shadowy no longer living and a coffer for

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the living golden hue of a guinea or a napoleon.

15- Jan Garbarek, Dis.The call of the West. The call of the Andes. The call of the mountains that are the door to

immensity and void. Listen to the flute that floats its notes over the vast empty chasm that spreads

as far as your mind can grasp. Listen to the little devils in the abyss populating in mixed or same-

sex couples the erotic folly of nature.

16-17- Jon Balke & Amina Alaoui, O Andalusin & Ashiyin RaïqinOne of the deepest root of European culture that grew out of the Middle East, out of the

Levant, out of the Semitic World the Indo-Europeans Left behind just to recuperate it with their later

Biblical conversion, a culture that is more Egyptian than European.

Listen to that music of the mind torn apart by the heart that cannot commit itself to

preparing its own death. We all have a soul that has the teeth of a caiman and the voice of a

unicorn lost in mid-universe, lots in hybridization in toothless “caicorn” and horny “uniman.” And yet

no crocodile tears will save us from that lethal fate of ours. The modern world wants us to forget at

least 5,000 years of old roots in the Semitic Middle East Levantine world as if it were only a

temporary distraction of the brain the way the Semitic occupation of the Iberian peninsula was a

temporary entertainment after the bloody circus games with Hannibal rebelling slaves from

Northern Africa and before the no less bloody cleansing of red working class slaves by the Spanish

army led by the general who destroyed the Republic of the Rif in Northern Africa. We have so

many crusades in our history that we have forgotten where we are coming from.

18-21- Rolf Lislevand Ensemble, Early Baroque compositions, Passacaflia Andaluz II;Toccata; Passacaglia cromatica; Arpeggiata addio.

Baroque times were the moment when European music left the old Semitic roots behind,

known more as Biblical traditions going back to King David. Here let us re-Semticize this baroque

music. I just wonder though if this attempt to recapture the Andalusian, the Mauresque, the old

Davidian traditions is not pushed slightly more towards the Bohemian or gypsy heritage that comes

from Aryan roots that are further East beyond Iran.

But that might only be an impression. We mustn’t forget the privileged relation between

Europe and the Ottoman Empire right in our Baroque times. That might – or should it? – have

linked us to the Turkic traditions.

A fascinating attempt nevertheless.

With the constant Lamento d’Arianna by Monteverdi behind it all. So famous that it has

become the matrix of all lamentations even those on the eponymous wall.

Lasciatemi morire!E chi volete voi che mi conforte

Let me die,and who do you think can comfort me

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in così dura sorte,in così gran martire?Lasciatemi morire!

O Teseo, o Teseomio,sì che mio ti vo dir,chè mio pur sei,benché tinvoli, ahi crudo!a gli occhi miei.

Volgiti, Teseomio,volgiti, Teseo, o Dio!Volgiti indietro a rimirar coleiche lasciato ha per tela patria e il regno,en queste arene ancora,cibo di fere dispietate e crude,lascierà lossa ignude.

O Teseo, o Teseomio,se tu sapessi, o Dio!Se tu sapessi, ohimè!, come saffannala povera Arianna,forsi forsi pentitorivolgeresti ancor la prora al lito.Ma, con laure serenetu te ne vai felice,et io qui piango.A te prepara Ateneliete pompe superbe,et io rimangocibo di fere in solitarie arene.Te luno e laltro tuo vecchio parentestringeran lieti,et io più non vedrovi,o madre, o padre mio!

Dove, dove è la fede,che tanto mi giuravi?Così ne lalta sedetu mi ripon de gli avi?Son queste le coroneonde madorni il crine?Questi gli scettri sono,queste le gemme e glori?Lasciarmi in abbondonoa fera che mi strazi e mi divori?Ah Teseo, a Teseomio,lascierai tu morire,in van piangendo,in van gridando aita,la misera Ariannache a te fidossi e ti diè gloria e vita?

Ahi, che non pur risponde!Ahi, che più daspe è sordo amiei lamenti!O nembi, o turbi, o venti,

in such harsh fate,in such great suffering?Let me die.

Oh Theseus, my TheseusI still want to call you mine,cruel one, even thoughyou flee from my eyes.

Turn back, my Theseus,turn back Theseus, oh God!Turn back to gaze on herwho abandonedher country and kingdom just for you,and who will leave her bare boneson these sands as food for fierce and mercilessanimals.

Oh, Theseus,if you only knew, oh god!Alas, if you only knew the terrible fearpoor Ariadne is suffering,perhaps you would relentand point your prow back to the shore.But, you leave with joyon gentle breezes,while I lament here.Athens is preparingjoyful proud ceremonies for you,and I remainfood for beasts on these lonely sands.You will joyfully embraceYour happy aged parentsbut, oh mother, oh father,I will never see you again.

Where is the faithfulnessthat you swore to me so much?Is this how you set me on the high throneof your ancestors?Are these the crownswith which you adorn my locks?Are these the scepters,the jewels and the gold:to leave me, abandonedfor the wild beast to tear and devour?Ah, my Theseus,will you leave to die,weeping and calling in vain for help,wretched Ariadne,who trusted you andgave you glory and saved your very life?

Alas, he doesn't even answer!Alas, he is deafer than a snake to my cries!Oh clouds, storms, winds!

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sommergetelo voi dentra quellonde!Correte, orche e balene,e delle membra immondeempiete le voragini profonde!

Che parlo, ahi! Che vaneggio?Misera, ohimè! Che chieggio?O Teseo, o Teseomio,non son, non son quellio,non son quellio che i feri detti sciolse:Parlò laffanno mio, parlò il dolore;Parlò la lingua sì, ma non già l core.

bury him beneath those waves!Hurry, you whales and sea monsters,and fill your deep whirlpoolswith his filthy limbs!

But What am I saying? Why do I rage so?Alas, wretch that I am, what am I asking for?Oh, my Theseus,it is not I, no, I am not the onewho uttered those terrible words;It was my breathless fear and pain that spoke;my tongue may have spoken, but not my heart.

Of the numerous versions of this Lamento d’Arianna I prefer the poly-vocal rendering of La

Venexiana. “LA VENEXIANA, founded by Claudio Cavina, is today the most important madrigal

group actually in activity. In styling to the anonymous renaissance comedy [after which] it’s

named, LA VENEXIANA aims to incorporate into its musical interpretation the theatrically,

attention to language in all of its subtlety, and exultation of contrasts between refined and popular,

sacred and profane, that characterize our culture today.” (http://www.lavenexiana.net/curr.html)

DISC VI

1-10 – Andrey Dergatchev, Music for the film The Return by Andrey Zvyagintsev,2003, Underwater; In the Bedroom; The Road; Mugam; Japan; Port; Rehearsal; Piano;Georgians; Final Titles.

The music of a film without the film and the images of it is absolutely disturbing from the

beginning till the end. We cannot know what we are supposed to see. We are thus reduced to

seeing what our own mind is going to find or project into at best onto at worst the music. The music

is reduced to its own and sole resources.

The first vision we have is in fact the hearing of some “noise” that might have been music

but is captured through a thick layer of water, supposedly. That deadens and chokes the sounds

into a world that totally locks you up in an airtight liquid cocoon.

Then comes an intimate scene in a bedroom. Whispering and distant long continuo of noise

and a few notes. The Russian language is in perfect agreement with that stifled world. A voice

sings far away and some crashing noise makes the situation more than menacing, frankly

dangerous. The distant bass voice must be some religious orthodox chant. It becomes louder and

louder and the crashing noise more and more menacing. We are surrounded by a crushing

menace that finally moves away.

The Road leads us back to a world of fracas all around and other noises. That road seems

to be a necessary but challenging passage through and through. It does not appeal any traveler.

Even dogs can be heard barking in some hostile way. Don’t stop. Go your way.

We then shift to another world. Strange twinges and pulses and simple barrel organ music

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with a continuous note behind. A world with no depth or rather whose depth – if any – you want to

stay away from. Mugam they call that world.

The shift to Japan has little Japanese reality. A suspended world with long notes floating in

thin air and somber pulsing notes deep down under and even farther some echoing noises like

some turbulence from deep in a forest. Shall we go in? Should we go in?

The Port is reached with sounds of another type: engines, foghorns, and some repetitive

notes with a depth created by the textures of these sounds and their pitches construct a

perspective, a general perspective maybe, or rather the sonorous special perspective you get on a

ship when listening to what is happening under in the lower decks inside the hull. And you thus

penetrate the ship with your ears. Some seagulls, dogs and maybe rain construct the surrounding

sonorous décor.

If there is a rehearsal in the next scene, the musical sounds drown it. Vague weak voices

under the dark and heavy music with some clear but not really structured lighter notes floating on

top.

And the piano is no piano. At first. And then it scatters a few notes on top of a magma of

musical sound. They are so strong and clear that they sound like the hammering of some god on

our heads, on our thick skulls. Then a vague lament surges up in the magma. And the piano

crushed it down.

Georgians bring a voice that introduces another harmony, more Turkic, more Caucasian

probably, that distant other side of the Russian Empire. But at the same time it slowly evolves to

some orthodox-sounding chant and we are getting down deep in the Russian soul.

The concluding music of the final credits is like filling an empty space with noises that may

evoke the past action of the film and some music unwraps itself: percussions with what sounds like

some saxophones – or maybe horns of some other type – in a more amplified musical texture and

style with a continuous note in the background along with dogs.

11- WolfAn extra that could be anything, including wolves, maybe it they are wolves or could be

wolves. Well maybe werewolves

12-18- Nils Petter Malvær, Khmer; Tlan; Access/Song of Sand I; On Stream; PlatonicYears; Plum; Song of Sand II.

Khmer Mixture of Asian music in the back, a jazzy trumpet on the surface and a pounding

rhythm behind becoming crushing, haunting, fiercely mesmerizing. At the same time e metallic

percussion sound, a lot faster in rhythm. Three – at least – rhythms are superimposed, with at

times some more from the trumpet or any of the instruments that all keep their autonomy.

Tlan The Asian layer disappears and is replaced by a very repetitive noise along with a

rather fast pounding that disappears later. Then metallic percussions that could be Asian. The

13

pounding comes back again and a trumpet. It is a mixture and great hybridization by simple

superposition of all kinds of sounds and rhythmic patterns to create an extremely active world with

even a mechanical voice and rhythms that accelerate progressively. The world is becoming crazy

and so multi-rhythmic that we feel like being in a vibrating magma that becomes an indistinct

cocoon of rhythm and sound in which a whining trumpet can now and then tear the fabric that

reconstitutes itself instantaneously though at the end the trumpet conquers a nearly dominant

position.

Access/Song of Sand I Same magma of rhythm, noises, etc., in the background heavily

dominated by drums, and on top, flying over, a musical line that is slow, peaceful, detached. A

nightmarish vision of modern life. With at times frightening loopholes into some unidentified places

or the surging of unidentified objects from some holes in the décor. We can wonder if it is not an

attempt to render the peace of mind Buddhist can experience and construct in the midst of a world

that is by definition changing and erratic if not hectic.

On Stream Some skin drums give a rhythm. A trumpet comes and flies over it with a

constructed melody. The trumpet sound is highly blurred. The melodic line is nearly romantic with a

background that becomes poundingly dangerous or menacing. The trumpet gets into some

western mood. Is Ennio Morricone revisited?

Platonic Years Same architecture. A percussion background and a clear trumpet on top.

Very jazzy at first. It sounds like some jazz of the 70s. The trumpet gets more and more nostalgic

in its repetitiveness. The guitars are rather part of the background, but standing on the side and

around instead of lying under. The trumpet can then jump into the arena. Or is it a cave? Plato’s

cave in which everything including yourself is seen as nothing but dancing agitated projections,

shadows or whatever virtual representation of reality all around you, or maybe an empty core you

call “you.” The rhythm gets hectic but that is nothing but some invisible hand that manipulates you

and pulls the strings. You are not free, you are not part of it. You are a passive dematerialized

observer who will get out of it sooner or later, if you are not already out of it, having left behind you

nothing but a platonic virtual shadow.

Plum On the pudding there is always a plum, or a cherry, to crown it. And picking the plum

or the cherry is a very sanguine game. Here is the plum. The trumpet starts alone at first.

Dominant, Melodious. Very nostalgic of that time when there was a pudding under the plum that

was on top of it and in that distant time the menacing world was far away, was kept at a distance.

This nostalgic tone creates apprehension, a menace hanging over us.

Song of Sand II The drums come back in full force and the trumpet is kind of blurred and

has difficulty standing on top of that maelstrom, chaos, or isn’t it a chaotic flow of incandescent

lava, or simply enough a sand storm? You can always try to escape, or elope, dear trumpet. We

have reached the crazy intensity of today’s insane world.

19- Eivind Aarset, Close (For Comfort).

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The background is unstable and rhythmically moving. A guitar tries to remain abreast. Hard,

hard indeed! When all kinds of musical sounds are dragging the fabric in all directions with big

bubbles of unidentified substances coming to the surface now and then to explode. The guitar will

be drowned. Will it not? And the whole world goes away, disappears like a ship getting out at sea

in front of us and out of our vision to the right or to the left, choose the one you prefer.

DISC VII

1- Stefano Battaglia Trio, Euphonia Ehegy.Syncopated piano most of the time with both the drums and the double bass, or simply

desynchronized. The piano thus follows its own rhythmic patterns that vary from one measure to

the next, and those variable rhythmic patterns are superimposed on a general rhythmic pattern that

itself can vary too. It sounds more chaotic than anything you can imagine. The two hands of the

piano are de-coordinated. Charles Valentin Alkan used that technique though with a unifying

pattern behind. Here only chaos can emerge.

2- Food, Celestial Food.Rhythmic background. The trumpet is high over it with a repetitive sentence intermittently

performed with more or less clarity over the background rhythmic continuo. When the trumpet is

clear and high pitched, it is really heavenly. The pattern is then limpid. The dominant, separate,

individual trumpet over the messy, rhythmic, regular but also constructed chaos of the continuo.

And we are all this as individuals. You can imagine the cacophony of society when everyone plays

the trumpet on the chaotic background of all the others.

3- Tord Gustavsen Quartet, Prelude.Piano dominant. Rotating sentence repeated with modulations. Kind of humdrum.

4- Egberto Giamonti, Memoria e Fado (marron).Very good work of the guitar, clear, aerial, somewhat nostalgic though it gets high into a

minor tone as if there could be room for some hope. But it seems to come to its own end without

any satisfaction, hence back into nostalgia. The hope was some kind of attempt to evade the past,

or to escape in the past or back into the past. Very frustrating tone.

5- Norma Winstone Trio, Like a Lover.It could have been some evolved country music and it is only urban jazz. The voice and the

words amplify the tone and the atmosphere created by the music. A dream, an escape, what it

could have been, what it should have been, but we feel it never was. She could love, she could

have loved, but apparently did she ever love? A deep feeling that it is a dream and nothing else.

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Unreal and nightmarish in that unreality.

6- Norma Winstone Trio, Cradle Song.The piano creates a very repetitive pattern and the voice joins in with humming that is just

as repetitive and turns into words. It sounds American Indian at first but then the melody develops

and the musical sentence expands somewhat making the song more Caucasian, but with the

tendency of merging the humming voice into the saxophone, and that is original? The musical

sentence is repetitive but the words change from one sentence to the next. The music is thus

always the same A + A + A whereas the words change B + C + D. The repetitive music is

American Indian but the changing words are more European. American Indian chants and songs

repeat the same words on the same music over and over again.

7- Jan Garbarek, Egberto Giamonti, Charlie Haden, Carta de Amor.The guitar gives the rhythm and the saxophone plays the “tune” that does not stick to the

dynamic rhythm picked by the guitar. The saxophone is free, a lot slower. That creates the

impression of a vast bird taking off and flying over the landscape, over the city, over the world in its

own time, tempo. We understand then well what James Baldwin explains in Just Above My Head

when he insists on not following the beat (given by the guitar) but instead on following the time of

the song (given by the saxophone), the time there is in-between each couple of notes, thus

following the tempo of the saxophone that has only itself to define it. Happy are the moments when

the beat and the tempo come together.

8- Ralph Alessi, Zone.Purely expressive music. How to make the instrument, particularly the trumpet, speak like

some wild bird in the plain, or the mountains. The piano creates then a décor, a setting that is

surprising at times, that we explore note after note. And that exploration brings the trumpet out, but

a trumpet that wonders what it is looking for, what it is finding. And then it starts running,

discovering in a jiffy what surprises some drums hide here and there behind the piano.

Contemplate the pianistic landscape and then go back to the moving trumpet to find some kind of

satiety.

9-10- Vassilis Tsabropoulos, Trois morceaux après des hymnes bizantins, I – II.The piano brings the rhythmic architecture and the string instrument gives the melody, the

dance or the hymn itself. The piano plays on one hand with rarely one note from the other. Very

repetitive and humdrum. We just wait and expect the strings to bring variety, color, form. But it

does not come in the first piece really because when it comes it is repetitive in its turn. It thus sinks

into tantric or mantric music, exorcising some demon, trying to bring some good out. Repeat after

me.

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The second piece starts at once with both hands. The left hand gives a low slow rhythm

and at the same time adds a richer rhythm too. The strings fly over with a tune that is very sad and

then the right hand on the piano develops a rich discourse that takes over the whole music. We

could feel some syncopated or contrasted effects. The hymn brought up then is tantric in many

ways but at least one important free piano line and string line create a rich discourse about how we

can stand, speak, be original even on the basis of the most humdrum background rhythmic pattern.

11- Colin Vallon Trio, Telepathy.Poor piano, surrounded and even besieged by the double bass and drums, though the

drums seem to be divided, at a loss. But who is telepathically influencing who? Divided and

opposed, contradictory even, influences that lead to chaos with a pattern that remains afloat with

the piano that manages not to drown.

12-13- Christian Wallumrød, Solemn Mosquitoes and Blop.The first piece gives an extremely feverish and trembling music that suspends itself from

time to time to let a more continuous music emerge. And yet the piano comes back with hesitant

vibrations. How can the few notes here and there that want to have continuity and a clear definition

survive against the constant assault and attack from the vibrating crowd? This is totally paranoid

music besieged by fear and probably fictitious menaces. The paranoia is in the listener’s ears as

an echo of real life.

In the second piece the harp opens the game. Clear notes, simple phrases, bits of rhythm,

free wheeling around. But it remains free wheeling to the end in spite of some side noises in the

wings. Is it the Blop? We will not know and we can imagine. Is that blop “The action of taking a

silent but violent shit, where thine ass maketh no noise, but thine shit hitting the toilet water doth. In

other words you may not realize it until it's in the crapper, but it's just the same thing: just another

stinking pile of shit.” Or is it “the sound of jelly when it falls off your knife onto the floor.” Or is it

“Verb- The consumption of alcohol. Every weekend high school students blop and make crucial

moves.” [All http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blop] We will ever know.

14- Tomasz Stanko Quartet, Song for Ania.The piano calls and captures the trumpet that takes over in a way the dance of this duet.

Who is leading? Who is being led? Probably both at the same time. The drums have a hard time at

imposing whatever they try to put on the table. Trumpet and piano just ignore them. The caravan

passes in front of the caravanserai and does not stop in spite of the barking dogs, and it is true the

piano and the trumpet have it beautiful, easy and eager. They are together to stay together and

enjoy their time. The trumpet moves away and the piano has no problem occupying the empty

spot. The double bass tries to get into the dance. The piano condescendingly gives way but not too

much though. And the trumpet comes back. So, get out of the way, you double bass. It would be

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the same if it were a single one. There is no room for the bass. And the piano and the trumpet can

dance the night out for their own pleasure – and ours.

DISC VIII

1- Jimmy Giuffre 3, Jesus Maria.The clarinet leads the dance while piano and double bass have to follow. The clarinet is

very repetitive and the variations, and variety, come from the other instruments on the side though

the piano has a propensity for wanting to take over but the clarinet resists very well. The extreme

repetitiveness of the clarinet makes its song hypnotic. We feel the urge and desire to fly away into

another dimension.

2- Paul Bley, Evan Parker, Barre Phillips, Time Will Tell.A trio again: piano, tenor saxophone, double bass. The piano and the saxophone want to

lead together. The double bass can use its bow as much as it wants it has no chance to step over

that duet. In this case the saxophone does not lead more than the piano and both have more

freedom along their respective musical lines though the rhythm and tempo are very regular and

mesmerizing. This rhythm cannibalistically eats up our propensity for moving away, for thinking.

This piece freezes our mind with its rhythm and yet keeps it alert with its melody.

3- Barre Phillips, Mountainscape V.Some clear glass-like sounds evoke the sounds of bells in the mountain and their special

reverberation in the vast emptiness contained, retained and sustained on both or all sides by hills

and rock faces. And in that vast empty space widely open to the sky the soprano saxophone can

play its own game and go its own way. What is very impressive is how the surrounding mountains

are evoked, propped up, literally created in our ears, in our mind, and the soprano saxophone

sounds as if it were right in the center of this empty space surrounded by forested mountain flanks

with the very special reverberation that sounds open, unlimited, free to fly high and afar.

4- Ornette Coleman, Old and New FDreams, Lovely Woman.The double bass creates the resonance of some cellar, of some deep world sinking in the

ground, underground. And in it the soprano saxophone creates an escaping route for the lonely

woman. The trumpet plays along the same line. And the two together, they make the lonely woman

rise and walk out of the cellar of her submissive past as if from the dead. Don’t believe it is that

easy. In fact it takes all the power of both trumpet and soprano saxophone to rise over the damp

marshy prison they were locked up in along with the lonely woman and to raise this lonely woman

with them. It might have been easier to raise Lazarus from the dead twenty-one centuries ago..

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5- Robin Williamson, The Four Points are thus Beheld.The text is borrowed from William Blake’s Jerusalem as quoted below. This quotation is

essential in Blake’s poetry because it represents the central image, structure, dynamic pattern of

this poetry. It is based on the four cardinal points but they are in a way expanded to six, though it is

at least complex, maybe complicated.

The west is the circumference and the eyes.

The south is the zenith and the tongue.

The north is the nadir and the ears.

The east is the center and the nostril.

We can note one sense organ is missing, the skin. We can note that south, north and east

build a vertical axis around which the west is turning on its circumference. This vision is that of a

spindle and Blake insists on the fact that the skin of this spindle is taken both inside and outside,

the inside is the outside and the outside is the inside. It is considered inside out and outside in.

This dimension is introduced with the second excerpt that brings eternity to the center of

this spindle, or earth, and again as the very “Mundane Shell” of this spindle, or earth. Blake insists

on this eternity to be inner-oriented to the center as well as outer-oriented to the outside from the

Mundane Shell.

We have to understand ”mundane” in the Buddhist or spiritual meaning of the word: what is

concrete, material, objective and can be captured by our senses, whereas the eternity that looks

outside is extra-mundane, supra-mundane, of another dimension, that of the eternal spiritual

existence of man that is both inside at the core of this human being, at its center, and outside since

it enables man to communicate with the universe, with the cosmic energy invested in this universe.

Beyond this vision of the earth and man as a spindle, Jerusalem, I mean the messianic

Jerusalem, is captured with its four doors or gates, and we have to mention here that Blake is

freely using the Book of Revelation because John stated there are twelve gates in this messianic

heavenly Jerusalem. Twelve and seven are the basic numbers representing God in this

Revelation, twelve attached to this city of life in the heavens and seven being the seals, the angles,

the trumpets of God’s call for Doomsday, apart from the four elders sitting at the foot of the throne.

But the text here is shortened to be reduced to the North Gate, the South Gate and the

Western Gate, dropping the Eastern Gate, that is the center of the spindle, of the circumference, of

the earth, of the universe. The vision then has no center and loses its dynamic pattern or

architecture to become nothing but a motif.

And that is regrettable because this is a castration of sorts, an amputation for sure of the

brilliant meaning of the text. Blake is a mythic figure, a poet and an engraver of great genius. Who

has the right to amputate his most significant text and spiritual construction, the spindle?

Life’s very biological matrix (http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v11/n7/fig_tab/nrm2919_F2.html)

as shown underneath.

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At the musical level the use of bagpipes between Blake’s excerpts is a great idea because

it gives to the text an earthy taste, a countryside rural texture, a farming agricultural feel that would

have pleased Blake a lot.

6- Sinikka Langeland, Langt immpå skoga.The voice is very simple, human, female, but not in any operatic pitch in particular: it is the

voice of an ordinary woman. The music is extremely sad and yet when the voice and the music get

up into a soprano pitch there appears some hope, expectation, hope that this expectation may be

fulfilled. This hopeful surmise finds some representation in the trumpet that seems to doubt the

reality of it all with notes going up too high, though we can wonder if it is ever too high, though the

higher you climb the harder you fall. The tenor saxophone is more down to earth and can hardly

20

fall.

7- Frode Haltli, Psalm.A gem of tradition in disturbing gift-wrapping. It tries to domesticate Mr. Larsen and to keep

it within hearing range. That is an unsettling beginning. The traditional tune it uses as its basis is on

the accordion. It is very sad and yet impressively sustained in its solace-devoid sadness. Then

again some Larsen effect parenthesis. The second stanza brings in a humming voice and various

creaking sounds. The third stanza uses the muffled trumpet and the creaking sounds along with

the humming voice and some variations. The psalm thus brings together a popular tune and a

popular instrument, the accordion, and multiplies the depth and force of the prayer with the use of

disquieting and disturbing sounds and music.

8- Gary Peacock, Voice from the Past.A very classic duet of a trumpet and a tenor saxophone on the rhythmic pattern given by a

double bass. Very classic and little innovative though the saxophone becomes a little bit too

lamenting to be true. Boy Saxo, recapture yourself. The trumpet is not in the least trying to help the

poor saxophone. It makes fun of it and no solace is available. You’re on your own, Boy Saxo. The

two lovers are both pathetic and pitiful in their corrugated diet of empathetically shared suffering

and yet the total isolation of each one of them.

9- Steve Kuhn Trio, John Coltrane, Spiritual.Very standard jazz rewriting of a spiritual using a tarogato (a Hungarian traditional

instrument) instead of a clarinet or a soprano saxophone. The interesting element is the

stampeding chase of the various instruments after one another. The piano versus the tarogato. A

real battle of alligators that will reach no solution anyway since the game is in the chase not the

catching of the prey, in the hunting herd or flock or brigade, not the hunting cocktail party

afterward.

10- Wadada Leo Smith, Kulture of Jazz.The trumpet is practically solo since it only has cymbals from time to time and very

intermittently as an accompaniment. Pure jazz trumpet solo that would be improvised in a live

performance, but a recording gets the improvisation out. The cymbals are used to produce isolated

metallic vibrating notes as if they were some light gong.

11- Robin Williamson, Henry Vaughan, The World.A cappella singing, rather banal, the voice is mediocre. An extremely short excerpt that cuts

off the main meaning of the poem and the excerpt means little in itself. That discourse on eternity

reminds us of the text of Blake before, but it could be here Dr Faustus in his Marlowe or Dusapin

21

renderings.

I SAW Eternity the other night, [Like a great ring]Like a great ring of pure and endless light,[All calm]      All calm, as it was bright;And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years                        Driv'n by the spheres [Like a vast shadow] Like a vast shadow mov'd ; in which the world  [In which the world]  And all her train were hurl'd.  

BLAKE JERUSALEM (track eight)

 J12.54; E156|        And the Four Points are thus beheld in Great Eternity J12.55; E156|        West, the Circumference: South, the Zenith: North, J12.56; E156|        The Nadir: East, the Center, unapproachable for ever. J12.57; E156|        These are the four Faces towards the Four Worlds of Humanity J12.58; E156|        In every Man. Ezekiel saw them by Chebars flood. O divine spirit sustain meJ12.59; E156|        And the Eyes are the South, and the Nostrils are the East. J12.60; E156|        And the Tongue is the West, and the Ear is the North.  J12.61; E156|        And the North Gate of Golgonooza toward Generation; J12.62; E156|        Has four sculpturd Bulls terrible before the Gate of iron. J12.63; E156|        And iron, the Bulls: and that which looks toward Ulro, J12.64; E156|        Clay bak'd & enamel'd, eternal glowing as four furnaces: J12.65; E156|        Turning upon the Wheels of Albions sons with enormous power. J12.66; E156|        And that toward Beulah four, gold, silver, brass, & iron:  J13.1;   E156|        And that toward Eden, four, form'd of gold, silver, brass, & iron.  J13.2;   E156|        The South, a golden Gate, has four Lions terrible, living! J13.3;   E156|        That toward Generation, four, of iron carv'd wondrous: J13.4;   E156|        That toward Ulro, four, clay bak'd, laborious workmanship J13.5;   E156|        That toward Eden, four; immortal gold, silver, brass & iron.  J13.6;   E156|        The Western Gate fourfold, is closd: having four Cherubim J13.7;   E156|        Its guards, living, the work of elemental hands, laborious task! J13.8;   E156|        Like Men, hermaphroditic, each winged with eight wings J13.9;   E156|        That towards Generation, iron; that toward Beulah, stone; J13.10; E156|        That toward Ulro, clay: that toward Eden, metals. J13.11; E156|        But all clos'd up till the last day, when the graves shall yield their dead

O divine spirit sustain meThe eyes are the South the nostrils the EastThe tongue the West The ear the NorthThere are the four faces towards the four world of humanityOn every human

These gates of the city are each fourfoldEach within other toward the four pointsO divine spirit O divine spirit sustain me

  J13.12; E156|        The Eastern Gate, fourfold: terrible & deadly its ornaments: J13.13; E156|        Taking their forms from the Wheels of Albions sons; as cogs 

22

J13.34; E157|        The Vegetative Universe, opens like a flower from the Earths center: J13.35; E157|        In which is Eternity. It expands in Stars to the Mundane Shell J13.36; E157|        And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,   

J15.6;   E159|        I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep J15.7;   E159|        And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow. J15.8;   E159|        I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once J15.9;   E159|        Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings! 

THE WORLD. by Henry Vaughan  (track eleven)

1I SAW Eternity the other night, [Like a great ring]Like a great ring of pure and endless light,[All calm]      All calm, as it was bright;And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years                        Driv'n by the spheres [Like a vast shadow]  5 Like a vast shadow mov'd ; in which the world  [In which the world]  And all her train were hurl'd.  

THE REST OF THE POEMThe doting lover in his quaintest strain                        Did there complain ;  Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,                         10                       Wit's sour delights ;  With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure,                        Yet his dear treasure, All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour                        Upon a flow'r.                                             15

2.                The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,  Like a thick midnight-fog, mov'd there so slow,                He did nor stay, nor go ;  Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl                        Upon his soul,                                                  20 And clouds of crying witnesses without                Pursued him with one shout.  Yet digg'd the mole, and lest his ways be found,                        Work'd under ground,  Where he did clutch his prey ; but one did see                     25                       That policy :  Churches and altars fed him ; perjuries                        Were gnats and flies ;  It rain'd about him blood and tears, but he                        Drank them as free.                                    30

3.                The fearful miser on a heap of rust  Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust                His own hands with the dust,  Yet would not place one piece above, but lives                        In fear of thieves.                                        30 Thousands there were as frantic as himself,                And hugg'd each one his pelf ;*  The downright epicure plac'd heav'n in sense,                        And scorn'd pretence ; While others, slipp'd into a wide excess                               35 

Section used. Additions insquare brackets

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                      Said little less ;  The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,                        Who think them brave ;  And poor, despisèd Truth sate counting by                        Their victory.                                              40

4.                Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,  And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring ;                But most would use no wing.  O fools—said I—thus to prefer dark night                        Before true light !                                        45 To live in grots and caves, and hate the day                Because it shows the way ;  The way, which from this dead and dark abode                        Leads up to God ;  A way where you might tread the sun, and be                     50                       More bright than he !  But as I did their madness so discuss,                        One whisper'd thus,  “This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide,                        But for His bride.”                                      55

JOHN, CAP. 2. VER. 16, 17.                     All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.     And the world passeth away, and the lusts thereof ; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.        60

[* Money (AJ Note)]

Source:Vaughan, Henry. The Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist. vol I. E. K. Chambers, Ed. London, Lawrence & Bullen Ltd., 1896. 150-152.

1 John 2King James Version (KJV)

2 […]15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, thelove of the Father is not in him.16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride oflife, is not of the Father, but is of the world.17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of Godabideth for ever.[…]

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GENERAL REMARK

The music we are given here is typical of a trend that may destroy diversity, that may

become a norm managing music at some global level. Jazz is a style, or even a genre that implies

any musical object can be dealt with along this style. John Steinbeck reported a long time ago his

answer to a question someone asked him in the USSR about jazz. He answered that you can take

Any musical piece of any tradition and you just produces it in a jazzy way and you have jazz. This

is genetically modified music and you import into any music that genetic element called jazz. But

then the original music is no longer what it was originally. In our days of genuine fidelity to what the

music was or is in its real context, this rewriting of everything in a jazz style is homogenizing.

What’s more, as we are going to see, it is one criticism the musicians of this ECM label

leveled at what jazz had become in the consumer’s society: a commodity, nearly elevator music.

The danger in jazz is that it becomes, is becoming, always and systematically a standard often

questioned and even rejected by some but to be replaced by another standard. It is obvious with

these CDs that improvisation is non-existent since the music is recorded. They may be the

recordings of improvised pieces but as soon as they are recorded they are no longer improvised.

That’s where the DVD would be a better medium because then we would see the improvisation,

not live but dead alive if I dare say so. On a CD it is necessarily dead by dissection.

I say it is a danger in that procedure, but in these CDs many pieces are really original in

tone or in treatment of the musical objects. But yet the trio or the quartet is a form that comes back

over and over again. Such small “bands” were invented (in fact borrowed even if not consciously)

by jazz because of the small places where they could perform, like churches, and because that

Jazz was born in the poorest strata of the poorest class of the American society: the Blacks just

after slavery and in the midst of segregation. It was practically clandestine at the time, if not

outlawed by authorities and rejected by the white majority as degenerate, like the Black monkeys

who were playing it. After a while, when listening to the CDs I seem to regret the absence of

variations in these three or four musicians and the rather regular processing we have: the cult of

the solo part in the middle of a piece. Rare are the real duets in these records, and when a real

duet appears, it is a marvelous moment. Such moments could and should be multiplied.

The tendency of a chaotic architecture in many pieces is not a real challenge to the rather

dominant formal elements. Chaos is interesting in many ways but it has to get to some kind of

pattern to be meaningful, and that is not always true. Then we have the trumpet for the sake of the

trumpet, or the double bass for the sake of the double bass. As Picasso would say, when you only

use one color to paint with no real shape or form, then you just paint blue. Many pieces are just

that. They play trumpet, or saxophone, or double bass, or drums, with rhythmic patterns that are

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basically always similar. To have several rhythmic patterns superimposed one onto the other can

only lead for us to some beauty if the patterns build together a higher meta-pattern. We are too

often missing that meta-level when we do not have the traditional patterns.

I am all for the use of Bach’s or Mozart’s or Shostakovich’s music in jazz. But it has to be

clearly said it is variations on Bach’s music and not Bach’s music. Many musicians have done that

over the centuries, used the music of someone else, but they never pretended it was that music of

someone else. Actually we cannot even know if it is the real score of the original music performed

in a new jazzy way or if it is a set of variations on the original score.

I have heard some Vivaldi violin piece played in the typical gypsy or fiddler on the roof style.

It was impressive but it was not Vivaldi any more because Vivaldi never thought of his music being

played that way. Ivry Gitlis performed that particular “improvisation” in La Chaise-Dieu as an

encore at the end of a Vivaldi concert in which he had been the violin soloist. Ivry Gitlis can afford

that originality in an encore but that would be very questionable if a whole Vivaldi concert were

performed that way. Anyway it would not be Vivaldi any more but (and I DO NOT say only)

variations on some scores by Vivaldi.

In other words and to conclude this general remark, I find it hard at times, and even quite a

few times, to capture e meaning in the music we are given and when the words or the music of

someone else are used, there is always an iconoclastic approach that bothers me: Blake is not

used to the full meaning of his poetry. Henry Vaughan is reduced to little. The words of Heiner

Müller or Bertolt Brecht are interesting but they are given as such, with little change, and that is

respectful of the words and their authors. This does not concern the style in which they are read or

performed, which is the responsibility of the director who is free to have the words produced the

way he wants, but if he cuts them then it is no longer the original author. Zeffirelli has cut short the

opening poem of Romeo and Juliet in his film adaptation (1968) but he did not cut one word out of

the “pilgrim’s sonnet” tough it has two lines too many.

More and more we see “adaptations” of plays or music works without any mention of the

fact it is an adaptation, as Romeo and Juliet with only two actors could be attributed to

Shakespeare. Somewhere I tend to believe this is cheating on the real work. Somewhere there is a

lack of authenticity. If one wants to produce a Hallelujah it is not mandatory to use Handel’s music.

Too often we are given variations on a plagiarized classic musical work. It is fine with me but what

does it bring as for a new meaning? They may say the meaning is in the pleasure. Is there any

pleasure when you recognize the plagiarized work and necessarily compare the variations with the

original? Pleasure can only come – for me at least – from a really and authentically original work.

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I have had the privilege of watching in 2003 a performance of Berlioz’s Requiem with the

supplementary brass performers making believe they were playing (that was in 2003 during a

harsh social movement of intermittent performing artists in France) but President Giscard d’Estaing

who was present for that performance was clear when he said in the cocktail after the concert that

at last he had watched a performance of this Requiem in which the brass instruments did not crush

the whole work. You cannot dupe someone who has a culture.

ECM A CULTURAL ARCHAEOLOGY – OKWUI ENWEZOR & MARKUSMÜLLER, eds. – PRESTEL VERLAG, MUNICH – LONDON – NEW YORK –2012, catalogue of the ECM, A Cultural Archaeology exhibition, Hausder Kunst, Munchen, November 23, 2012 – February 10, 2013,http://www.hausderkunst.de/index.php?id=132&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=1624&L=1

The first thing we have to say about the catalogue is to enthusiastically mention the

extremely rich iconography. Hundreds of pictures from the time of birth of the company to today.

This gives a visual dimension to the catalogue of an exhibition about a music firm, hence an

auditory firm that could have at best produced audio-visual products. Their business was recording

musicians and music. That rich inside iconography is a great idea.

The second thing is that this catalogue is a luxury product (though easily accessible on

Amazon and other virtual vendors) that can be an enhancement for a personal library but also a

coffee table book for businesses dealing with music and of course a reference book in any musical

library, or the department dedicated to music in any library. Yet there might be a problem here

because of the digitalization of libraries in the world. I am not sure this catalogue, if digitalized,

would be easy to use and pleasant to read on a computer screen because of the size of it which is

in no way adapted to a computer screen. Some might say a book is still an object and its

virtualization by digitalizing it is not to be considered as a priority. I am afraid digitalizing books has

to be taken into account today, and what’s more portable tablets or smart phones are becoming

the rule and the book has to be in the size of the screen, one way or the other, vertically or

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horizontally.

This point is not targeting this particular catalogue, but the fact that in many museums and

exhibitions it has not yet been taken into account that communication is no longer what it used to

be. The audio guide in a museum that is giving explanation as you go is good but expensive when

a simple smart phone could get the same program, with images and hence visual orientation, and

yet contained within the limits of the museum by some kind of protection. It would be really better

to invest on 3D virtual visits for people who cannot come, or for people who want to have an idea

about what they may encounter in this or that museum than on artifacts like printed catalogues that

cannot reach the wide public of the world. The world is changing and any cultural product, artifact,

heritage or creative work has to be available to the whole public in the world, which does not mean

for no cost, but freely accessible within clear protection of the intellectual property concerned.

Note the site of the Haus der Kunst has a slide show about the exhibition. That’s a good

beginning. Then move towards a 3D video rendition of one or two rooms, if not all, of the exhibition.

That would be creative.

We are far from that still.

Now what about this exhibition and the catalogue?

This catalogue tries to explore the “important legacy of the twentieth-century cultural

accomplishment” (page 50) that ECM may represent. It was founded in 1969 and it is very

precisely situated in the vast movement of the 1960s with here and there, but not systematically, a

widening of this period to what preceded, in fact the period from 1945 onwards. Then this project

contained in ECM and coming from its founder Manfred Eicher is considered as a turning point in

jazz music for various reasons we are going to consider here. Three are given as the three

interpretation of the title of Waldron’s 1969 album “Free at Last.”

First the rejection of consumer’s society in which the jazz musician is antagonistic to the

commodity form that has brought jazz to its own death by succumbing to commercialization. It

considers then Jazz has been frozen into a commercial mould, meaning a form that enables the

music to sell in the public, to make a profit. This is implied to be the only interest of the people who

possess the means of production of this music on sellable media and this is antagonistic to the

people who possess the product itself, the music then. Eicher proposes then “the credo of the

relationship between producer and musician” that has to be “cemented” by working with a producer

who believes in this freedom from commodified forms.

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The second meaning is the fact that this new practice of jazz is based on the radical form of

improvisation, “improvisation and group dynamics” being the two sides of this new approach

though it is important to keep in mind that “free jazz does not mean complete anarchy or

disorganized sound. In my vocabulary disorganized sound still means noise. And don’t forget that

the definition of music is organized sound” in Waldron’s own words. But his formulation is clear: it

means anarchy, even if not complete anarchy. Then it means some disorganization even if not

complete disorganization.

The third meaning is the reference to the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King and

the 1963 demonstration in Washington DC and the speech “I have a dream” that ends with the

sentence:

“Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

It is surprising to see that reference in third position. I cannot see how Black musicians

could not be fully part of this struggle for civil rights and how this objective could NOT be the first

and upmost perspective in their life and creative work. This is slightly distorted from this period.

Jazz was originally Black. It became commodified when it stopped being only performed for a poor,

segregated Black audience and when it became a music that was reaching out for the whites

thanks to the radio and the presence of jazz on this medium. Jazz became what it is today, what it

was in the 60s thanks to the emergence of the radio in the 1920s, after the First World War. But we

come here to another point I will develop later.

What is happening after 1945 is not entirely identified when it is reduced to an

epistemological change or transformation. In the 1960s “political, cultural, artistic and intellectual

changes” are taking place, but that is not enough. It reduces the transformation of this period to

altogether only mental, abstract, non material and even ideological elements. In the same way it is

not enough to speak of the revolutions in the third world, the fall of colonial empires and

decolonization to characterize the post WWII period. We miss something if we do not speak of the

Chinese Revolution in 1949 that sent a wave of panic in the USA, the Korean war and the

Indochina war, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the Algerian war that will produce doubt and

even fear in France, and the emergence of the important nouvelle vague that is nothing but the

result of the failure of modern culture to prevent all the catastrophes starting in 1914. One word

has to be brought up here: we have entered a “post-modern” period, a word I have not seen

exploited in this catalogue. In fact we entered it just some time before WWII when the socialists in

France let the Spanish Republic die in 1938, and when Stalin started in 1936 having thousands of

people expurgated just the same way Hitler had similar numbers deported and executed.

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This is reflected in Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech when he speaks of “God’s children,

black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” and does not mention

the Buddhists (including the Chinese), the Hindus (including the Indians) and the Muslims

(including the Arabs, the Indonesians, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, etc). Why wasn’t King more

inclusive though a certain Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam or Black Muslims already existed?

And I will not mention the absence of the communists, the socialists and the capitalists? These

absences are significant and meaningful. And that is the melting pot that produced the 1968 mental

and material revolution as well as the tremendous cultural upheaval and boiling over that started

with the Hippies of Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair or Fritz the Cat, and was to develop for decades

avec Woodstock and is still developing, though we have reached a new stage in this movement.

That is an important historical shortcoming. In this period, in the west we were living

dramas like the Indochina war, the Korean War, the Algerian War, the Vietnam war, and the

emergence of the baby-boom generation that was coming of age and that determined the

emergence after 1968 (a date that is not mentioned with among many other things the Black

Panther massacre in Chicago by the police) of what we dare call today post-postmodernism. But it

also brings up women’s studies, Black studies in universities and before the end of the century it

brings gender studies, colonial studies and so many other domains of liberation like women’s lib,

gay rights, civil rights, abortion, contraception, absolute freedom of expression (far from conquered

and guaranteed in many countries including western countries like France), unhampered access to

all cultural artifacts, goods or works with the great danger this may represent for intellectual

property and its protection. This vast liberating movement is captured too narrowly. We are dealing

here with what I would call an anthropological transformation. Humanity as a whole is getting

beyond a limit and entering new territories thanks to the second industrial revolution that is not

even mentioned though it is essential in music with the emergence of stereophony, FM sound and

a whole new generation of recording equipment, microphones and later on of course computers.

That second industrial revolution is fully in operation by 1985 and will exponentially develop after

this date. ECM recording techniques are not even possible without that industrial revolution. The

new stage we are in is what is called the knowledge economy and knowledge society. That’s a

time when knowledge becomes a direct means of production of added value.

This brings new media to the vast public and for the first time ever mass audiences are

possible all over the world thanks to mechanical reproduction of artistic works. And the Internet had

not yet arrived in 1985 though it had been in existence since 1969 (one more time).

Man is intellectually developing along with new machines.

We must keep in mind that at machine level the hardware develops exponentially but the

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software develops at snail pace, whereas at the human level the biological hardware develops at

snail pace (with minor mutations and totally curbed natural selection) but is vastly underemployed

but the software is developing exponentially with new methods of thinking and discovering new

fields of knowledge. If you associate this mental software’s exponential development to the

phenomenal mechanical development of the second industrial revolution and now the Internet

which is only a new way to reach out for knowledge, then and only then you can understand what

was happening from 1965 to 1985.

Man was shifting, as a species, from a 2D stable blue-print of the world to a 3Ddynamic Technicolor-print of the world and the internet was to bring the 4D rainbow-visible-and-invisible-print of the world.

That’s what is germinating in all fields of human knowledge, imagination, creation, science,

technology, etc., etc. Music is one among them all. Jazz is one music among all the other musical

forms.

The question then is why did this catalogue not go farther than the three elements it pointed

out? Because it got blocked by a double reference to French culture at the time with two French

words that are totally unwarranted but ideologically tricked.

The first word is “oeuvre.” This word is absolutely not necessary even if English does not

have a real equivalent. It is a French conception to imagine the creative work of an artists as an

“oeuvre” and it is even more complex when we know it is oscillating between feminine and

masculine, between the abstract unified singular object and the plural collection of objects: the

feminine “l’oeuvre romanesque complète” of a novelist versus “les oeuvres complètes d’un auteur,”

and the masculine “un chef d’oeuvre,” “le gros oeuvre” in a building project, etc. The concept of

“oeuvre” transported into English freezes the work of the artist and the works this work produces

into a complete, closed, perfect single totality that kills its reactive dimension, necessarily

incomplete and still in the process of changing and being transformed.

But the concept of “auteur” is in a way the reduction of the creator in any art to being a self-

centered and self-interested person who does not take into account the audience at all not to fall in

any commercialized form, any popular form, to remain aloof from society, from the market

economy or whatever could be in anyway popular, meaning un-thought, un-thinking and non-

intellectual. This “auteur” is the absolute antagonistic concept of Pop Art and Pop Culture. The

enemy of this French “auteur” is first and foremost Warhol and all his other acolytes. And today

Warhol is becoming a fad in the new generations in France, but that is snobbish to admire

Warhol’s works, nothing but snobbish.

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The French are still totally congealed in their “auteur’s” culture. And they cannot identify not

to mention understand the Jewish and Christian symbols in the first fifteen minutes of Fritz Lang’s

Metropolis because they are “laïque” mind you, which does not mean supporters of secularism, but

proponents of the idea that freedom of expression is absolute except in the field of religion that

cannot be expressed in public and particularly in public institutions like schools, universities,

kindergartens, city halls, hospitals, etc.

In fact this nouvelle vague culture is decadent since it cuts the author, the artist from the

audience and when it takes the audience into account it wants to drive this audience to a

conclusion that is seen as the only possible interpretation. This nouvelle vague culture is anti-post-

modern in the name of post-modern relativism. And that is exactly what the music we arespeaking of IS NOT AT ALL.

If we widen the approach we could then understand that this ECM musical scene is the

codification, registering, recording of what the evanescent desire to break all rules without breaking

architecture can be: frozen moments of a tremendous movements that is immensely more

important and bigger than what it may look on the surface or may have looked at the time.

This catalogue, in other words, is going to give you tons and tons ort fodder for your own

thinking and that is the best complement I can pay to it. But you will have to use your head and

brain and mind because we are in a post-postmodern time when nothing can exists in one person,

in one group of people or even in humanity without every single person contributing with their

personal and critical piece of intellectual, spiritual and mental work. And there “work” has the

proper meaning of productive work that produces added value with the means of production one’s

brain has received biologically or developed intellectually and existentially within a social

framework and dynamic structured society. And artists are workers like any other workers and the

work their work produces is a lot more interesting and fascinating than I don’t know what “oeuvre”

some desocialized intellectuals may imagine in their locked up ivory tower.

What’s more the catalogue contains a great number of testimonies from a few artists in the

Roundtable it carries. We would have liked a lot more of these testimonies because they are the

proof that the pudding can’t be had (l’oeuvre) and eaten (the work) at the same time. I prefer eating

the work to contemplating the oeuvre kept under a heavy bullet-proof glass protection. I want to

touch the work, not admire the oeuvre. I want to have intercourse with the work, not to practice

onanistic fetishism kneeling in front of the oeuvre.

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