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NW 80801CD
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"Kyle Gann, voice & electronics, sampling keyboard; Kenneth Patchen, voice; Martha Herr, voice. This recording features three works by Kyle Gann (b. 1955): Custer and Sitting Bull, Scenario, and So Many Little Dyings, from the decade 1994 to 2004. Those familiar with Gann's music will recognize a commitment to just intonation (alternate tunings), paired with a deployment of unexpected meters, often set to frequently shifting tempos. But here we also encounter another side of Gann, a composer preoccupied with texts, the inherent rhythms found within the spoken word, and the dramatic potential of these texts (including poems, interviews, stories, speeches, and even one psychic transmission). A musical reflection on the historic encounter between Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the Lakota leader Sitting Bull, Custer and Sitting Bull (1995-99), presented here in an updated version, is an example of a 'pocket opera,' a kind of one-person opera that blossomed in the unfunded spaces of downtown Manhattan. From 1999 to 2007 Gann performed it live himself, narrating the drama using various historical texts set to a MIDI keyboard accompaniment tuned to just intonation (ranging from 20 to 31-note-to-the-octave scales). While it takes the form of reimagined American history, Custer is perhaps most centrally about the value of sustained, repeated listening. Indeed, Gann's use of just intonation not only rewards but arguably requires many hearings to access certain subtleties. The title of So Many Little Dyings (1994) is taken from the Kenneth Patchen poem 'And What with the Blunders' (from First Will & Testament, 1939). The entire work originates from the pitch and rhythm of Patchen's spoken voice, which Gann sampled and transcribed from a recorded recitation of the poem. Listening to it, however, one might not perceive this borrowing immediately, as the work begins with the sound of a microtonal toy piano imitating the rhythms and contours of Patchen's voice. Very slowly, over the course of the 7-minute work, the piano's melody is taken over by a recording of Patchen's sampled voice. Scenario, for soprano and virtual orchestra, was written between 2003-2004 but wasn't performed live until 2012. The text is taken from a 1932 S. J. Perelman story of the same name, which consists of a non-stop, breathless collage of filmic clichés. On the page, Perelman's text continues for pages without paragraph break and includes dialogue excerpts, Hollywood rumors, and behind-the-scenes film directions. In Gann's setting of it, what he calls 'a surrealist collage opera, the musical analog of an animated cartoon, for theatrical soprano and virtual orchestra,' each collaged portion is set in a corresponding style and character, so the soprano must alternate rapidly between each affect and singing style throughout the 17-minute work."
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NW 80633CD
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"Like many composers of subsequent generations, Kyle Gann (born 1955) was captivated by Cowell's theories and Nancarrow's music. His book, The Music of Conlon Nancarrow, is the essential source for any serious study of Nancarrow's work. Knowing so much about Nancarrow's music, it's hardly surprising that it would occur to Gann to consider the question of how he might make the mechanical piano his own. His answer is the music on this recording. The instrument isn't exactly the same. Nancarrow employed the old-fashioned player piano, driven by paper rolls with holes punched in them. Gann uses the more recent Disklavier, which is controlled by a computer via MIDI data. However, like Nancarrow, Gann employs the mechanical piano for both musical and practical reasons. The musical attraction, of course, is the one Cowell observed: the instrument allows the composer to compose with tempo relationships and rhythmic velocities not readily playable by human performers. The practical appeal is that Gann felt that not enough people were playing his music. So in the do-it-yourself spirit of Nancarrow, Lou Harrison, Harry Partch and so many other American composers, he decided to take matters into his own virtual hands. But although Gann's reasons for working with the mechanical piano are similar to Nancarrow's, the musical results are quite different. Gann picks up where Nancarrow left off, developing his own personal methods of working with multiple tempo layers, and weaving elements of popular and classical music into his vivid and distinctive musical tapestries. Gann's music embraces a wide range of influences but sounds like no other. His fascination with complex tempo structures and microtonal tunings places him in the experimentalist tradition from Cowell to La Monte Young. Yet the directness and accessibility of his music reveal his affinity with American populists such as Roy Harris and Virgil Thomson. In this highly personal blend of experimentalism and populism, Gann's closest musical forebears are Partch and Charles Ives. In the spirit of Ives, Gann's music invokes ragtime, jazz, folk music and Native American music on equal footing with classical music and purely abstract sonic speculations."
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