Alphabet Book (review)

Paul Lansky's compact disc Alphabet Book, released in 2002, is a collection of ten rather "short" pieces, or should I say "songs," that make use of the voice as an integral part of the music. In the liner notes we learn that the inspiration for this project came from the television show "Sesame Street, where the unadulterated (pun intended) celebration of letters and numbers, those atoms of daily life, is often clothed in lively musical garb." This may be one of the reasons that the works on this CD have traits of "songs," perhaps even "pop songs," for the lack of a better description. Songs, not only because there are actually two pieces entitled Alphanumeric Song and Folk Song, and the pieces exhibit the characteristic short duration of songs averaging at about 5 minutes each, but perhaps more so as Mr. Lansky uses many traditional musical elements including repetitive pitch structures and patterns, (often knotty) harmonies, as well as (complex) rhythmic arrangements. By no means are the compositions "songs" in the customary sense of the word (the composer actually credits the vocalists as "readers"), but coupled with some of the fundamental design elements of songs including the voice, melody, harmony, and rhythm, this CD takes an interesting angle on music with voice, leaning towards the more "accessible" electroacoustic music spectrum.

The "musically accessible" quality of Paul Lansky's music is of course nothing new, and I have observed over the years that his pieces usually are on the Top 10 list of favorites in a college class setting. The connection of his compositions with "popular culture" is not, however, just confined within academic boundaries. One rather intriguing example of his relationship and influence on pop culture is his encounter with the popular band Radiohead, or more precisely, Radiohead's encounter with Paul Lansky. In 2000 a portion of his composition Mild und Leise (1973) was sampled and incorporated into a song called Idioteque. The sample, filling eight measures of that song, was not merely a lone occurrence in a single isolated section of the song but was used as the main riff of the song itself. The resulting composition garbed and clothed to suit the mass culture, however, deviates drastically from its original identity, essentially modulating to a new musical work with a different uniqueness altogether. Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Lansky's music seems to have a wide audience ranging from composers and musicians in academia, to the general public and songwriters who are seemingly not versed in electroacoustic music. Although Mr. Lansky's work, especially on this CD, has a welcoming feel, it is an unlikely, although not an impossible, prospect that Big Bird will be dancing anytime soon (or since its release) to Mr. Lansky's Alphabet Book.

The disc begins with ABC, a work featuring the distinctive voice of Hannah MacKay, who beautifully recites the alphabet beginning at A and going all the way to Z, at which point the piece concludes. This is one of the composer's rare pieces where the expectation factor is clearly met by what actually transpires: the sequential nature of the alphabet outlines the global form of the piece itself. ABC focuses on the voice, at least for a while, until one is transported to the background of musical activity then back again to the foreground; the roles of background and foreground are seamlessly interchanged. Although the order of the letters itself is unambiguous, the occurrence of the letters is not laid out in such a predictable manner, thus elegantly working out the problem of keeping the interest of listener, difficult to accomplish with such undemanding and iconic subject matter of everyday life. The composer also keeps the listener's ears tuned to the sound-bytes by utilizing various modulations and changes in harmony and rhythm, thereby addressing the larger musical issue of dissonance–consonance, complexity– simplicity, and tension–release within a...