Recordings

In the mid-nineteenth century, P. T. Barnum built museums in New York City that, according to the liner notes for this compact disc, served multiple functions as “zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theatre, and freak show,” and were visited by upwards of 15,000 people a day. Barry Schrader’s music on this disc is based on a short story by Steven Millhauser called “The Barnum Museum.” Inspired by Millhauser’s elaborate, fictional extrapolations about events that take place in the museum, Schrader extended the story, adding details and scenarios not found in the original. Schrader states that the music on this disc is broadly programmatic, and close to a tone poem in scope. The electroacoustic techniques used by the composer create a viscerally synesthetic sense. The titles in The Barnum Museum describe spaces or rooms within Schrader’s imaginary museum, or creatures or objects found within. He takes us on a sonic journey from room to room much in the same manner as Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition, moves from one painting or drawing to the next. Given the imaginary and freak-show nature of Schrader’s thematic collection of pieces, one is also reminded of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, published by New Directions in 1958.

The Romanesque and Gothic Entranceways, the first piece from this collection, is a suitable introduction to Schrader’s musical and thematic concept. The grandeur suggested in the title is matched, musically, with the loud, octave-laden opening (which returns in different guises several more times). After it quickly fades into the background, a series of soft, modal phrases take over. The sonic palette Schrader uses is richly endowed with a multitude of waveforms and layers of noise, and clearly synthetic. He creates a virtual world in which all the details of sound are carefully presented and manipulated. Using closely spaced echoes, Schrader uses repetition to build to a mechanical and synthetic Devo-like, or Residents-like, dance rhythm.

The second piece, Hall of Mermaids, uses a convolution reverb type of sound, along with crisp, frequency modulation synthesis timbres, to create the impression that you are hearing the sounds from underwater. Schrader slowly develops his materials through the processes of accumulation and repetition. One hears mournful, tonal melodies in the key of A minor, and synthetic female vocal timbres offset with very deep (almost subsonic) rumbling, and upper partials poignantly related to their fundamental frequencies. The liner notes describe ripples in the water before a mermaid sighting, which seem to be musically depicted with downward glissandi. Using flanged sawtooth waves and major second clusters, the piece builds to a climax at about the three-fourths mark. Perhaps this moment is the musical depiction of the vision in the liner notes described as: “Suddenly you hear splashes and watch as flecks of water rise into the air followed by a large aquatic tail.” Whatever the case, the piece quickly fades out from here—the mermaids have re-submerged.

The next piece, The Caged Griffin, begins slowly. The program notes tell us that this beast is large but stuck in a cage that appears too small to comfortably contain it. The music tells us that it moves slowly (at first) and repetitively. Schrader effectively uses filtering and a slow, low-frequency oscillator to move sounds around in the stereophonic field. Toward the middle of the piece the sounds change markedly, getting faster and noisier, and include a few punchy, synth timbres that would not be out of place in a nightclub. Perhaps this portrays the moment, described in the liner notes, when “the griffin’s eyes catch fire . . . remembering some bygone glory, some ancient valorous quest.” However, unlike music that populates nightclubs, Schrader’s sounds keep changing and progressing, refusing to remain still.

After leaving the griffin, the listener comes to a door labeled The Subterranean Levels. The liner...