... no, not the '90s, the 90s: that is, B's compositions with opus numbers in that range. As far as a decade is concerned, it's really the '80s, since that is when (most if not all of) these pieces first started to get performed*; at a certain point not later than 1981, B's releases start to include** the new "Martinelli numbers" - the opus numbers which have been used ever since, and according to a system which B. first devised with the Italian musicologist of that name - along with the graphic titles for each composition.
[That had not yet been standardised: in 1982, Arista released For Two Pianos, the studio performance (played by Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens) of the long-form work now known as Composition No. 95 - but as far as I can see*** there is no evidence that the opus number was used on the release: Arista had previously put out all of their albums under B's leadership using diagrammatic titles only, and might have not have wanted to change that for this release; equally, at the time of the recording in 1980, the numbering system was still a work in progress (or perhaps not even commenced) #.]
In any case, Comp. 95 is not up for discussion today - and neither is the solo series known collectively as Comp. 99; no, here I'm sticking to even numbers, apparently, to say just a few words about a couple of albums I've listened to recently, and one which I've just purchased.
In "M-order", then:
1. Composition No. 94 For Three Instrumentalists (1980) was released in 1999, almost two decades after the music was performed, and I acquired it a good few years after that (by which point it was on offer in a Leo Records sale). I played it when I bought it, and until a couple of weeks ago I'm pretty sure I had not heard it since. Insofar as this album is "well known" at all, it's for the fact that the piece is interpreted twice on the CD, as per the live concert from which the recording is taken: forwards, then backwards. I seem to recall a certain British critical team (who shall remain nameless ##) describing that feat as "incredible", clearly having inferred that the written score was literally read backwards, note by note; but of course that's not what it means at all: the score is in three sections ###, which are interpreted in reverse order the second time around.
The maestro was joined by brass acrobat/Braxton quartet alum Ray Anderson (who may in fact still have been in the working group at this point - April 20th 1980) and guitar wizard James Emery, who had previously played with the star-studded Creative Orchestra in Cologne in 1978 (the "revisited" double-album version of this repertoire), and who here is featured on both electric and acoustic guitars, as well as whacked-out electronics at times. The excellent liner notes by Graham Lock make frequent reference to the Composition Notes, something I have not yet been tempted to do ^, and focus for the most part on how this piece makes much use of B's synaesthesia ^^, it being one of a whole clutch of compositions written around this time in which the groundwork was laid for the polychromatic, semi-graphic scores B. would later develop for his Ghost Trance Music. Examples are provided of fragments from each part of the score, including the third part of Section B (which was not used for this performance), demonstrating the differences between "multiple and symbolic notation", "liquid formations" and "shape formations".
What those terms meant in practice, and how this translates over to the music which we hear, is not something I've even thought of looking into at this stage: I've just listened to the CD a couple of times. It really is a fascinating recording, well worthy of its eventual release despite its inherent drawbacks (the source recording is not of fully professional standard; I don't have a problem with this, but soi-disant audiophiles should take note - and tape deterioration over the years between recording and release rendered the first 5-6 minutes of the second set unusable). The playing by B. and RA is every bit as good as one would expect, and Emery really turns somersaults on both guitars, when he isn't flinging the group into space with his electronics. The instrumentation alone makes this a rather unusual addition to any collection, and the curious compositional strategies make it highly suitable for a more detailed analysis, if I ever get round to it ^.
2. Comp. 96 - famously dedicated to Stockhausen, one of B's compositional touchstones - is something of a cornerstone work in the canon, as well as being at the time the latest in a succession of long-form pieces for creative orchestra; in the mid-eighties and beyond, this opus number turns up again and again in collage form (even if that usually just means in practice that the bassist is working from it while the rest of the group explores other territories). The performance of it which eventually got released was recorded in May 1981, but didn't come out on LP until 1989 - and then had to wait another four years for release on CD. (The latter, at any rate, should still be readily available I think.)
The "composers and improvisors orchestra" which assembled at the Cornish Institute in Seattle is not an all-star affair at all: bizarrely, it does feature one very well-known name - Julian Priester, a seasoned and well-travelled musician who is otherwise completely unrepresented in B's discography, to my knowledge - but of the remaining thirty-five players credited on the recording (B. himself conducted, but did not play), not one of them is familiar to me. This does not, of course, affect the success of the performance one bit; how successful a reading it really was is something that only the maestro could tell us, but one would never know from the recording that these were musicians not already versed in the Braxtonian languages.
Again, it'd been way too long since I'd found the time to listen to this album; something which I had forgotten - but which came back to me when I played it last week - is the phasic nature of the work. Several sections of intense, constantly-shifting ensemble activity (in which the conductor must have been worked almost as hard as the orchestra) are interspersed by extraordinarily beautiful periods of calm, in which long and sustained tones foster the illusion of endless time, since while they are underway one can imagine them being continued indefinitely. One of many superb examples of B's ability to raise a set of collaborators up to a level not too far removed from his own, this is another album I shall be coming back to in the near future. For now, though... enough!
3. Finally, I just bought - but have not yet acquired - a secondhand copy of the CD reissue of Composition 98. I have had a decent vinyl rip of this album (and for those who don't know, this is a rare case of the vinyl containing more music than the CD: originally a double album, it comprised both the studio recording - split over the first two sides - and a live rendition of the piece, recorded a few days later) since the C#9 days, but the temptation to snap up a good copy of the CD (which only contains the studio recording, but without a break) was too much to resist in the end. It wasn't cheap, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel happy with my purchase. It will probably (can't remember for certain) be the first time I've heard the recording in this format. (Various live versions are in circulation; one which I watched on Youtube ^^^ a couple of years ago now is still available here.)
I'm really looking forward to this :-D Happy Easter, everybody...
* Some of them were debuted in the late '70s, for sure (e.g. the solo sax pieces from the 99 series, a few of which turned up in recordings from Milan in January 1979) - and some of them may be hard to locate anywhere in the recorded catalogue. Most of them don't seem to have come into play until the '80s, though.
** I had wrongly said back in November that this didn't happen until 1983, then realised my mistake almost as soon as I had finished the post. I left it there to see if anyone would spot it. Rather predictably, it seems that the only person both thorough enough to notice the mistake and bloody-minded enough to deem it worth mentioning... is me. So there we go: I am belatedly correcting myself. (I wasn't far out, I think: it still seems that 1983 marks the point at which it became a standard thing to list the titles together with their new opus numbers. But Composition 98 is the first one, a full two years earlier.)
*** Discogs lists the album title as being Composition No. 95 For Two Pianos, but I suspect they are mistaken about that. You can clearly see the album cover has no opus number on it. But I have never physically seen a copy and can't swear to its not being on there somewhere.
# By the time of the album's release, Composition 98 would already have been available, so we know that the work for two pianos had now been allocated a number. Whether or not this was communicated to Arista is another matter.
## These two compiled a well-known and well-regarded guide to jazz which ran through a number of different editions. I no longer own the copy I am citing here and I hope my memory hasn't let me down. (If it hasn't, this was a rare laziness even by professional critics' standards, since the incorrect inference in question could be corrected just from glancing at the CD sleeve - you don't even need to delve into the liner notes for it.)
### Actually the completed score runs to four parts: Section A, then three different parts of Section B. Lock explains in the notes that the final section - dealing in "rigid formations" - was still being written at the time of this performance, so no attempt was made to use it. (He does not specify whether any complete performance of the score has ever been attempted; the work was originally toured in Europe with Richard Teitelbaum in the role here taken by Emery, who replaced him the following year for the gruelling seven-date, seven-city Italian tour which gave us this recording.)
^ This would be a pretty intimidating undertaking, and would probably have stopped me from even listening to the CD yet. I do think it would be a very interesting piece to do in (some) detail, at least in principle, but quite apart from the question of my own productivity, I don't have the actual score - and although the composition notes run to a good number of pages for this piece, the two sets run seamlessly on the recording and it won't necessarily be at all obvious where a section ends and another begins. Might still be worth a try though. Don't hold your breath XD
^^ Lock mentions this in the liner notes as if it's something already well known to friendly experiencers; so it's very probably described in Forces in Motion. I read that book more than a decade ago and don't remember all of it (though I did find it a brilliant read, as others have before and since). Due for a second reading perhaps... anyway, evidently it's established that B. actually does see sound in terms of colour and shape, something I either didn't know or (more likely) had just forgotten. I blame all the ganja I was smoking at the time.
^^^ The concert video I've linked to - which includes other material besides Comp. 98, after that piece's conclusion - purports to date from 21st January in Hamburg, i.e. two days after the studio recording. (The official live version is from Bern, on the 24th of that month.)
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