Liner Notes in the Form of a Suite

LINER NOTES IN THE FORM OF A SUITE ELAINE R. BARKIN Don’t worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn’t matter. We have fallen into the place where everything is music. —Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī ALLEMANDE This Bubble of a Heart, “songs on poems of Gary Snyder,” by Robert Morris, is eloquently performed by contralto Karen Clark, her intense vibrant presence embedded within multi-textured configurations and uniquely Baroque resonances of the Galax Quartet. The constancy of Karen Clark’s focus and that of the Quartet amazes; each utterance, each event, single pitch or phrase, articulated with clarity and depth, 18 Perspectives of New Music ‘brain and heart’ sensory/verbal/auditory imagery stunningly coalesced. The work is suffused with a wealth of imaginative prosody, of tonal languages, of warmth, lucidness, all is under control yet expansive, perhaps no “yet” needed. And while cool restraint also characterizes This Bubble . . ., it’s a perfect match for the imagery and images of Gary Snyder’s, ephemeral and long-lasting poetry — a few words suffice to depict a landscape, a sensation, a thought, a waft of spirit —, poetry that is never overcolored by Bob Morris’s music. In their conjoined spareness you hear fullness, albeit not all-known at a first encountering — what is? Soon enough, the listening experience is clear-cut, I hear it all, I recognize it all, “it” all becomes increasingly familiar, known, to me. Every unknown language is a kind of acoustic mask; as soon as one learns it, it becomes a face, understandable and soon familiar. —Elias Canetti COURANTE This Bubble of a Heart (2008) Introduction: “new seedlings” Quartet * I. “For a Stone Girl at Sanchi” Clark, Quartet * Interlude: “shaman dance” Quartet * II. “Piute Creek” Clark, Quartet Interlude: “in nerve and muscle” Quartet III. “New Moon Tongue” Clark, Quartet * Interlude: “carp biting air” Quartet IV. “second shaman song” Clark, Quartet Interlude: “light flys across it” Quartet * V. “Regarding Wave” Clark, Quartet * [* These movements are on Innova CD 795, “On Cold Mountain.” Bob’s titles are lines of Gary Snyder’s poetry.] Karen Clark, mezzo-contralto Galax Quartet: David Wilson, violin I; Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin Il; Roy Whelden, viola da gamba; David Morris, violoncello. Composers: Track 1: Roy Whelden; 2: Fred Frith: 3: Robert Morris; 4. W.A. Mathieu Liner Notes in the Form of a Suite 19 SARABANDE At times, when listening to Bob’s music, I experience the weird sensation of hearing two works/two worlds simultaneously: the composed work in tandem with a shadow doppel-double, the latter with a fusion of Beethovenian sensuousness, enveloping a, let’s say, ‘softer’, perhaps 1940s-ish pop-tune-standards and less austere backstory, contours of all worlds meshing, not quite palimpsest, rather an inkling of other-Bob back there, Bob who now and then emerges in This Bubble . . . . But then, here and now, Real Bob takes over, doppel-double takes a back seat. Something else is often going on for sure. Milton Babbitt also inhabited two, or more, worlds simultaneously. No surprise there. Or here too, I suppose. Bob’s title—This Bubble of a Heart, taken from Snyder’s poem “Piute Creek”—is fraught . . . fraught with images of the sensory, the frailty of life and love, the imminence and acceptance of death and dying, the disquiet of irruptive bursts and break-ups, of assuaging make-ups, the serenity of Time’s passage and receptivity to living and being human . . . But I stray from This Bubble and wander into solitary thoughts . . . or do I . . . or are they? HEART NEBULA 20 Perspectives of New Music BOURRÉE I Galax-Quartet Introduction, “new seedlings” . . . at first sul pontish, almost always non vibrato, ics 3, 6, 9, diminished-seventh chord-forming, spanning an octave and a half downwards, each interval larger than what has preceded—vln I: Eb6; vln II: C6; vla dg: F#5; vlc: A4* —opening stealthily and unfussily and holding on at the close with a similar harmony, each and all in their own slow time and variously contoured space, motivically allied soundflashes breaking out, eruptive single tones emerging from a fuzzy ever-shifting sustained...