Conversation Pieces (review)

Conversation in various forms has typified much of Paul Lansky's compositional creation. Spoken word has influenced his work on many levels, from processing and content to structure and timbre. Long-time listeners expecting to hear another series of "idle chatter" works will be surprised at the direction and focus of this 1998 release by Mr. Lansky. Containing compositions "specifically composed, designed and conceived for recording," Conversation Pieces presents a new, abstracted approach for this composer in the use of speech and text. Three of the six pieces are based on recordings with his wife, Hannah MacKay, who has played a central role in Mr. Lansky's previous work, but gone are direct references to speech and/or text. The listener is instead encouraged to "imagine music talking."

And the music itself does speak to the listener. It shares many moods: joyful, reflective, meditative, contemplative. Some works, such as For the Moment and Andalusia, make use of highly contrapuntal and melismatic structures, imitating the flow of speech or conversation. Other works, such as Chords, exhibit the contemplational stasis of solitude in their use of slowly evolving chords.

Conversation Pieces, however, speaks to the listener in ways beyond those emotional or compositional. It speaks of the ever-increasing blur between electroacoustic art music and new age music. It speaks of the possibility that somehow electroacoustic music has lost sight of the simplicity and beauty inherent in instrumental timbres, or in the use of straightforward harmonic vocabulary. It speaks of the breadth of possibilities available to a composer, and to a listener, through seemingly simple means.

Mr. Lansky's deliberate selection of finite timbres (string, orchestral, piano, and vocal sounds) allows the careful listener to choose various modes of listening; one can either "listen in" to the music, following the minute detail and filigree of contrapuntal gestures, or simply allow the pieces to wash over them as a soundscape. A cursory listening might find the disc disappointing in its seeming timbral, harmonic, and structural simplicity. After repeated listenings, however, the disc comes alive, the details take on a three-dimensional scene, and whether for relaxation or study, the works are appreciable.