It is not everyday that you have the opportunity to sit and listen for five and one half hours to one slowing unfolding piece of music. But that’s exactly what was happening at the Music Gallery in Toronto on October 14 as part of their X Avant VIII New Music festival. The piece is called String Quartet #2, quite a nondescript title for something so epic, written by American composer Morton Feldman in 1983.
Undertaking this discipline of mind and body was the FLUX quartet from New York, who perform this ritual about once a year. And what I heard via the grapevine after the show was that the players noted how attentive the Toronto’s audience was, with much less moving around than in other performances they’ve given.
So yes, one could move around, in fact it was encouraged. To facilitate this, the Music Gallery presenters set up a range of listening possibilities. In the hall itself, the church pews were arranged in two semi circles with the performers in the middle, creating an intimacy amongst everyone. At the usual stage end, a large sheet and pillow tent had been created to encourage the lying-down-while-you-listen mode. Another room was set up with couches and candles, while outside in the courtyard there were tables and chairs. The music was being broadcast throughout the whole building, and even if you weren’t physically there, you could still listen in via CIUT’s broadcast.
All these choices designed to facilitate listening. And as I listened, I began to experience in the airwaves what no doubt is going on at a microscopic level within my own body, within all bodies: my awareness gradually attuning itself to this large complex sonic organism, kept alive through an infinite array of processes, interrelationships and connections.
The piece moved forward through a series of short modules, each one a tiny world of repeating gestures with its own unique texture, like a sonic essence. At times one would remember hearing a particular module, now returning with slight changes in pitch or register. The overall movement within the five and one half hours was gradual, a slow morphing, like an evolutionary process. Each change was the next step needed, and completely related to what had preceded it.
To let you in on a slice of this experience, I’ve captured a series of these steps that take you through the night at random moments in time.
TIMELINE (approximate times):
6:15 - The piece begins with daylight still visible through the windows. (Check out the Mechanical Sound Forest blog for pictures, recordings and thoughts from Joe. http://mechanicalforestsound.blogspot.ca/2013/10/recording-flux-quartet.html).
8:00 - Several modules of contrasting speeds and textures, each with short repeating phrases
8:35 – The quartet
9:20 - Primarily modules with alternating chords with a few faster-paced ones in between
An atmosphere of stillness begins to descend. Everything seems to be slowing down with more chordal progressions, silences and sparser movement within the modules..
10:00 -
11:05 - Simplicity. Radiance.
11: 40 – Here’s how the whole thing ended with the last five and one half minutes of the piece. Floating off into the night.
