2/6 Listening

This week I listened to Ruth Crawford Seeger's Music for Orchestra, and Henry Cowell's Tiger, and Banshee. Both carried similar themes, and I derived a more consistent review of each. I found it very odd how they provided the same affect, and wondered if that may not be a part of this genre, but dismissed that thought, deciding that it was more likely happenstance, my own mood, or the composers themselves who might be linked.


Music for Orchestra, by Seeger, is a two movement work which plays off of the slightest differences in tonal color to make a point known. The first movement was just foreboding. It had an eerie, ethereal quality based around the subtle passing of harmony to provide an unstable background for a transparent theme. It sounded designed to blend and meld, interweave itself into a tapestry of color such that the listener could not tell which instruments were coming or going, but just to have enough tonal similarity to sound alike, but let us know they were changing. Building ever so slowly, Seeger pushes this woven sound to a breaking point, pushing the ostinato over increased dissonance. The build never climaxed, however, it simply receded. It began to become repetetive at the end, and lost it's intensity and allure.



The second movement retained that eerie and ominous quality, despite being faster and more intense at the beginning. It sounded a bit like the music of Psycho, unstable and eccentric, even erratic. After the first full minute of this movement, it too lost momentum and just became bland. It was sad to listen to a piece with such promise and energy lose it so slowly through repetition. It was as though they never grew, realized where they were going, and simply lost track or motion.

istening




The theme, of this listening day was lack of direction. Henry Cowell's Tiger just had none, absolutely none. Even though it was an energetic song, it began nowhere and gave the listener no reason to be interested and listening. This piece simply sounded angry and self-involved. As I was listening to it, I found myself wanting, and waiting for it to end. This realization about the music put me into a position of really hating it. It was the worst kind of bad, badly written.

Cowell's Banshee contained sounds I had never heard before, wailing permeated the first half, but what created that terrible, intriguing, and horrific sound? After this exciting opening, it just became static noise. The low piano draws the listener back in, promising intensity and a real push towards something. This intensity that comes with the piano does not build though. The excitement begins to wane, and even though it was extremely mysterious and intense at first, it just stalls and slows the pace down to the point where I totally lost interest when it lost intensity. I envisioned this piece in particular being one that the listener would have to be in the mood for. One would have to be ready to be scared and then intent upon finding out more.