Growth over Time = Movement

 

Sextet (Istanbul) 1996  (Braxton House)

Most of the really early GTM recordings were still unavailable to me until very recently, and when I managed to get hold of them, I promptly set about hearing the very first experiments at last - and writing about them. The intention was always to follow that up in due course...

Ghost Trance Music may very well end up being widely regarded as a highly significant development in western art music. Straddling the final years of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, it really the represents the full expression of an idea which had been itching away at the composer since the early seventies: how to use a melody line with even spacing between the notes as a springboard for something much more open and free: how to generate something fresh, spontaneous and completely unpredictable from within a strictly-regulated framework. It's long since occurred to me that the second phase of Comp. 40f prefigures the development of GTM, but although that piece goes all the way back to 1976, it's not the first time that such an idea was presented. I'd even written in some detail about a substantially earlier prototype; I just hadn't correctly understood what Comp. 23m was a prototype for. But it's surely no accident that in the years preceding the genesis of GTM per se, the Forces Quartet returned to 23m again and again. There was something vital there that the composer's mind couldn't leave alone. So we can certainly trace the germination of the core idea all the way back to 1973, if not any further.

As I mentioned before, the vagaries involved with B's first attempt to launch his own record label meant that the very first GTM compositions to be recorded were not the first to be released: it's only in retrospect that we can experience these recordings in the "correct" order. The second (official*) recording of this important new development was the first to see release, however many people it actually reached at the time: Sextet (Istanbul) 1996. In an early hint of the sort of confusion I recently moaned about with regard to B's second label, the album's title mistakenly gives the year of release rather than the year of recording**: this performance took place on 14th October 1995, at the Turkish AkBank J.F. One more time for the world: this is creative music, not pop, and nobody (apart from a label's promotional staff or accountants) gives a damn about the release date of anything. What we need to know, always, is precisely where in the continuum of the maestro's creative career to locate an individual event. Recording date..!

Anyway... with this type of music being so very new, and given that (presumably) only the composer's immediate circle knew that Comp. 181-184 had already been captured for posterity, what would be really interesting to know is whether or not the festival audience knew anything about the music in advance. Of course, either way, it won't have taken them very long to find out that something different was taking place from whatever they might have expected, based on previous experience; but I'd still like to know if any background information was provided at the time of the concert***. If not, there must have been some pretty confused faces on display after the first few minutes...

... because this is of course GTM, 1st species, and that is above all characterised by unison repetition of the written theme in order to induce (something approximating) a trance state in the listener: as the system evolved, this latter imperative fell away entirely#, even as the name Ghost Trance Music remained, but in the early stages it was an essential aspect of the music - and part of what generated this effect was the simple fact of repetition. If the audience members were not aware beforehand, they must have been getting a bit twitchy as ten minutes of passed with very little in the way of a typical Braxton performance, and practically nothing germane to jazz (free or otherwise); with the studio quartet expanded to incorporate a brass player - trombonist Roland Dahinden, gaining some of the crucial experience he would put to good use later - and a second string player - violinist Jason (Kao) Hwang - the group is well set up for exploration, but there is not much of it in those first few minutes in Istanbul. Some early hints of discordance, of course - nothing very new about that - and a few scraps of what could indicate departure from the theme, although they turn out not to be: for example, within about two minutes there are ascending legato phrases from several players, which the (GTM-experienced) listening ear could pick up on as signs of impending breakout, and around the 4.30 mark Kevin Norton slips out of the basic rhythm completely; but the first real flight away from the thematic material doesn't occur until 10.21 when the leader (on what sounds like bass clarinet) embarks on a solo...

... which still lasts only a few seconds, before folding back into the written theme. Again: if the audience didn't already know that they were in for something completely new and different... they certainly do by now. Of course, there would have been a considerable difference between how the new strategies were received by those who were really listening closely (for whom all these fractional variations would be magnified), and others whose attention was wandering (to whom all this might just have sounded like weird background music) - to say nothing of those who might have (say) strayed in almost by mistake, expecting something good an' jazzy. 1st species: the pulse just keeps going. The performance never becomes fully open and free; instead, what happens is that players gradually take it in turns to deviate slightly (or radically) from the written material in ones and twos, spreading their wings for short-range test-flights while the rest of the ensemble keeps the pulse alive; always, always these flights return to their starting point and resume the theme immediately upon landing. Here, what the (close/conscious) listener marvels at is above all the subtlety of the changes and variations, as different players take up the hypnotic pulse while others leave it, continuously blurring the distinction between foreground and background.

By the time B. and Dahinden take off together##, it could be that minutes or hours have passed; and although gradually more voices join them in the outer regions - until it feels as if there is a whole multitude of them, joining in with what eventually becomes fully wild - Ted Reichman is still holding the fort, so to speak, keeping the pulse alive... it is never lost and sure enough, the others all return to it in due course. 

The phase in which the structure comes closest to complete disintegration is almost the opposite of the wild joys described in the previous paragraph: 26 minutes in, the soundscape has grown much more subdued, and by 27.20 it is almost completely open; but this is a sort of pastoral dreamscape, with B. on flute, Norton on vibes, the most skeletal of backing - and, briefly, almost no discernible pulse, although Reichman is still gently plugging away in the background. At 29.53, B. oozes his way in with the (dearly-beloved) seamonster, and this - at long last, well into the second half of the piece### - heralds the opening of a truly free space, far beyond the pulse; for perhaps a second, at 31.13, there is a total pause and the tiniest fragment of actual silence. - And the next phase of the voyage, beginning at 33.02, takes us somewhere entirely new, B. and Joe Fonda sketching out what sounds like secondary/tertiary^ material - reminiscent of Comp. 136^^ - the leader on a clarinet of some variety; this in turn quickly drifts into a remarkable solo, where B. first seems to be crying through his horn (from around 34.20) in an astonishing manner, then begins (35.40) to issue subvocalised growls with it, really tearing loose and treating us to all manner of extraordinary sounds... and some cathartic applause follows this at 37.06, the audience presumably responding to the visual cue of the maestro switching horns. Dahinden, Fonda and Norton promptly begin moving us back towards something more formal again, and sure enough, the written theme resumes soon after that...

... except that it doesn't: whether or not the audience knows it, we have now switched primary territories, from Comp. 185 to 186, and the fact that this must be as close as possible to a seamless experience for the CD listener - just as it was for the concert audience - explains the otherwise inexplicable way in which the two pieces are split across the album's two discs^^^. Again, I am reminded here of Comp. 136 with its staccato repetition-clusters of individual notes; this second theme has quite a different feel to it, as well as being a few beats quicker. 

It is not necessary from here to do a full commentary on the (longer) second piece; the details above hopefully give some sort of idea of how this fresh new music must have sounded, to an attentive listener, as it unfolded for the first time. The second piece follows a similar pattern - unison theme-repetition succeeded by eventual breakout phases and extraordinary musical occurrences - and the whole experience is really quite addictive after a while. But there are so many variations and moments of magic that I would never want to attempt a full tissue dissection; suffice it to say that everyone gets chances to shine (albeit briefly in some cases), and the more one listens to it, the better it gets. There are nevertheless a couple of special happenings in this second piece which we don't get in the first, and I will describe these.

Starting around 8.50 in track three (i.e. the only track on disc two), and presumably in response to B's cue, the pulse begins to slow down dramatically, almost seeming to reach a total halt at one point; but no, the spacing of the notes remains regular, even as the tempo has slowed to a crawl and the spaces between those notes have lengthened considerably. In turn, around 9.45 the pace starts to pick up again, reaching its full initial tempo by around 10.25 and the ensemble navigates its way skilfully towards a new phase: the flawless way in which this rallentando/accelerando passage is negotiated seems terribly clever, although presumably when the visual cues were available, it made more sense and was less mysterious in its workings. 

The other (quite amazing) standout section occurs around three-quarters of the way through the second disc: approaching 29 minutes, Dahinden and Reichman have been leading a general slow-down, but not of the written theme this time; it's quite possible that this next phase is a type of language music, as around 29.55, following a gradual mudslide into the lower registers of the various instruments (and the corresponding slowing of the tempo to glacial pace), Hwang - playing what sounds like a treated violin - begins to lead the group into a series of queasy slides and squeaks which really have to be heard to be believed. Naturally, this too is left behind as the group inches its way upwards and out of the morass, reprising a section of the theme, and we still have time for another fabulous solo by the leader - among sundry other delights - before the piece winds down to a close. - Perhaps unusually, although the world did not yet have any idea what "usual" meant in this case, the performance ends not in "mid-air" (to foster the impression of a perpetual theme without beginning or end), but with the group subsiding gradually to a stop. 

What the audience was really being shown here, of course - easy for us to understand this in hindsight - is that although this may have seemed a music of surprising strictness, compared with what had come before, it was (is) really one of limitless possibilities for individual expression. As we now know, working through this overarching concept in all its manifold implications would preoccupy the composer for the next decade and more. How exciting must this have sounded, at the time?

* I put this caveat here simply because there may exist unofficial recordings from this period - I just don't know of any

** That is, I presume it was a sort of mistake and not outright perversity. The issue becomes more of a problem with the releases on New Braxton House, or more specifically with the information available for them on Bandcamp

*** It occurs to me that Volkan T. is the man to ask, but I have completely lost touch with him... will I now be able to re-establish it, I wonder..?

# I am far from the first person to notice this and comment on it: I recently read an observation on this exact point, i.e. the way in which the 3rd species, accelerator class pieces had evolved so far (and become so dissonant) that the "trance" effect had all but vanished. (I just wish I could remember now exactly where I read that..! I have heard so much GTM recently, and speed-read so many sets of liner notes, that I can't remember who said this or when. I will update the comment if/when I eventually find out...)

## Knowing what's coming, one can trace the buildup of this part back as far as 16.45 on track one; at 21.20 B. has departed solo, joined then by Dahinden, and by 23 minutes they are all "off on one" apart from Reichman (and Fonda, intermittently). By 24 minutes this phase is over and we're back in unison

### That is, the second half of track one / Comp. 185 - not the second half of the whole performance

^ I have a tendency to use these terms more or less interchangeably, for the simple reason that I never could remember the (proper) difference. I think I am right in saying that secondary material is the use of specified language types, while the interpolation of B's back-catalogue pieces qualifies as tertiary material. Bill Shoemaker says something very similar to this in his notes on Comp. 222 from the album Four Compositions (Washington, D​.​C​.​) 1998 (NB these notes can be found here). I am inclined to think that he probably got this information from a reliable source.

^^ I'm getting slightly ahead of myself here, because I have not yet done the comparative analysis of (the different versions of) Comp. 136 that I've been promising. I do now tend to recognise it when it crops up, mainly due to the repetitions of notes that are present in the first part of its written theme. Dahinden seems to have been a big fan of it; perhaps that began around here

^^^ Disc one of course contains Comp. 185, and the first part (up to 19.09) of Comp. 186. Without listening to the album one would never comprehend the reasoning behind this, as 186 in toto lasts just under sixty minutes and would therefore easily fit on one CD without being broken in two. But the performance saw one piece blend seamlessly into the next, and this must be replicated for the CD listener, as far as possible. Of course, it is not possible to replicate the concertgoer's experience completely: having begun 186 on disc one, it's then necessary to break off (at a relatively quiet moment) and resume it on disc two, and in order to avoid anything at all being missed, a few seconds are in fact repeated. It's a botch fix, but the best solution which the limitations of the format offered...