For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to pieces by the ten contemporary composers named in this article, “Ten Young Composers Who Are Redefining Classical Music," HERE. Last week I listened to "Walk, Relay, Marathon, Sprint." the fifth movement of "Five Rackets for Trio Relay" by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, HERE (I couldn’t find the entire piece to listen to). This week, I’m up to the fourth name on the list, Ann Cleare, and I listened to her work “Dorchadas” (the Irish word for ‘darkness’), described by Mic as a multi-instrumentalist exploration of “the primal fear of the dark.” A few weeks ago I listened to “Mosaic” by Elliott Carter. I landed on that piece shortly after watching “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” supposedly “the worst film ever made.” That accolade prompted me to run a Google-search on “the worst piece of classical music ever written.” Of course, many articles popped up, but the one that caught my eye was a piece by blogger Jeffrey Shallit who wrote “one piece that I would nominate for the worst piece of classical music ever written (I added the underline): Elliott Carter’s ‘Mosaic’ for harp and chamber ensemble. It was absolutely unlistenable.” My review of “Mosaic” is HERE, and I ended up rating it a 2 out of 4 (a blue light saber, “okay it was”). To be honest, based on Mr. Shallit’s blog post (HERE), when I listened to “Mosaic,” I expected to hear something more like the cacophonous din of Cleare’s “Dorchadas.” At this point, I have listened to “Dorchadas” once, and I tried to follow along with the score as I listened (HERE). Before the piece begins, there are thirty-two pages of instructions -- including directions to play flat, to play sharp, to blow air, to be "very unstable," to "use breathing points as part of the colour," to remove reeds," to "change from one way of playing to another way of playing," and more. Here are some examples (click on the images to enlarge): I suppose I must give credit where credit is due, as the players were flat and sharp and unstable, and somehow they all made it through the piece together. I plan to listen to the piece once or twice more, so I'll see what comes of that. Stay tuned (LOL -- maybe I should say, "Stay a little flat" or "Stay a little sharp"). Okay, so I've listened to the piece again.
I don’t know where one might draw the line between music and sound effects, but this piece surely fits more into the latter category. If it’s meant to be a piece about one’s fear of the dark, then yes, it has creepy tones, clashes and clatter, though I suspect I could find movie soundtracks that are better at expressing a fear of the dark and the unknown than this piece. Some soundtracks might do so more with sound effects and others might do so more with music (or at least something closer to music); this piece, though, just didn’t do it for me. Hmm. A few years back I went to Busch Gardens’ “Howl-O-Scream” (in Williamsburg, Virginia). I remember going through a haunted attraction that was some sort of futuristic, dystopian work site with sirens, flashing warning lights, bared electrical wires and the like. This piece might work well there. Below on the left: The "long pause" at the end of "Dorchadas " (click the image to enlarge). TBH, that just seems goofy to me. Below on the right: My rating.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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