Ereia (review)

Nick Didkovsky: EreiaCompact disc, 2000, Cuneiform Records Rune 126; available from Cuneiform Records, P.O. Box 8427, Silver Spring, Maryland 20907-8427, USA; fax (+1) 301-589-1819; World Wide Web www.cuneiformrecords.com

Nick Didkovsky composes on the cusp between the concert hall and the club scene. His compositions are characterized by repetitive, complex, asymmetrical, computer-generated pulse patterns. They are formalist without being overly "uptight;" rigorous even as they subvert their own structural foundations. Most of his work has been for Dr. Nerve, a New York City-based, avant-rock band he founded in 1984. Dr. Nerve's instrumentation includes two woodwinds, two brass, two guitars, and two percussionists. In his book, American Music in the Twentieth Century, Kyle Gann writes that "Nick Didkovsky is one of the most unusual composers of his generation, with a computer-generated complexity to his ensemble music that goes beyond totalism" (p. 380). Combining complex musical procedures with the explosive energy of rock music, Mr. Didkovsky's Dr. Nerve pieces successfully bridge the gap between "serious" composition and what Michael Bloom has called "dirtyass rock'n'roll" (Afterword to Skin, 1995).

Mr. Didkovsky's first computer-generated compositions used random algorithms to govern value ranges within predetermined processes. He attempted to create an unpredictable mixture of precision and clumsiness using the Commodore Amiga running Hierarchical Music Specification Language (HMSL). This well-known program is an open-ended, object-oriented, MIDI-fluent programming language developed by Larry Polansky, Phil Burk, and David Rosenboom at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College. Mr. Didkovsky created his own program called DrNerve.hmsl to more or less automatically generate pieces for his band. This program produces raw material (via Myhill distributions, Markov chains, etc.) that he copies, pastes, deletes, and permutes as he composes. He filters and eliminates material in order to separate the essential from the unwanted. Only on rare occasions has DrNerve.hmsl produced entire compositions without further input from the composer.

Ereia grew out of a 1993 gig which Dr. Nerve performed with the Soldier String Quartet at the Kitchen in New York City during a festival called Gruppen: Chamber Music for the 21^st Century. The two groups performed a set of conducted improvisations. A year later, at a different venue, Dr. Nerve teamed up with the Sirius String Quartet for another set of conducted improvisations. Then, in 1996, Mr. Didkovsky received a grant to create a new composition for these two groups which was premiered at the Victoriaville Festival (FIMAV) in Quebec during the following year. Ereia, the three-movement version, is now available on compact disc released by Cuneiform Records. The cover features the colorful and humorous design work of Bill Ellsworth. Ereia's first movement is scored for string quartet alone. The second movement is a conducted, improvised commentary on the first and third movements. And the third movement is "fully notated" for a seven-person Dr. Nerve lineup along with string quartet.

Ereia I contains four short, uniquely titled pieces. Mr. Didkovsky often uses a Markov chain-generating program, available on his Web site, to create his titles. The initial musical material for Ereia I was generated by the composer improvising on a MIDI guitar into his RiffGrabber transcription program. The results were then developed (by means of what composer Sever Tipei has termed "compositional decisions") and passed through his Markov chain software to output random variations, after first performing a statistical analysis on the input. The final score was produced after one more "hands-on" stage and a final conversion into SCORE format. She Look He Spit features the violins performing highly syncopated, out-of-sync lines against a clapped pulse pattern. The effect is similar to what might be heard in the work of violinist/vocalist Iva Battova. In much of Mr. Didkovsky's earlier work he utilized foregrounded rhythmic figures that are altered through varied repetition (additive and subtractive processes). In Ereia (especially the outer movements), he fragments, displaces, and buries his figures. There is less...