EVAN JOHNSON Forms of Complaint
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EVAN JOHNSON Forms of Complaint Peter Neville Graeme Jennings ELISION Mieko Kanno EXAUDI . James Weeks Mabel Kwan 1999 20 YEARS 2019 © Eugenie Brinkema EVAN JOHNSON (*1980) 1 hyphen (2002) 01:51 Apostrophe 1 (All communication is a form of complaint) (2007 – 2008) 2 I. 19:59 3 II. 03:25 4 clutch (2005) 01:32 5 Colophons (“That other that ich not whenne”) reflecting pool / monument (2006) 08:11 6 Positioning in Radiography (2007) 13:14 TT 48:16 1 Peter Neville, crotales 2 – 3 ELISION: Carl Rosman, bass clarinet Richard Haynes, bass clarinet 4 Graeme Jennings, violin 5 Mieko Kanno, violin EXAUDI: Juliet Fraser, soprano Amanda Morrison, soprano Christopher Field, countertenor Tom Williams, countertenor Stephen Jeffes, tenor Jonathan Bungard, tenor James Weeks, conductor 6 Mabel Kwan, toy pianos 3 is intended to appear as if overheard, ente) follow short bursts of notes that rather than directly listened to. Large are played on the crotales with ei- amounts of compositional and per- ther hammers, knuckles or fingernails. formance energy are directed at out- While the pauses in clutch are stat- comes that barely take place in pub- ic (although unstable because of the lic at all. 1 extreme dynamic level and slow bow speed), those in hyphen take on a The two earliest pieces on this re- character of their own as the reverber- cording, clutch for violin and hyphen ations of the crotales bloom and de- for crotales, were both premiered by cay at different rates, filling the pauses the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, a with subtly changing harmonic environ - group who between 2004 and 2010 ments. Do the notes lie between the commissioned works of just 100 notes pauses, or do the pauses lie between or fewer. clutch uses exactly 100, an the notes? The title, hyphen – a punc- arbitrary restriction that the composer tuation mark that can both join and found inspirational, even a relief: “the separate – points to both the work it- a priori fact of 100-ness meant that self and to its components. a good deal of my work was done for A paradox lies at the heart of Evan me”, he writes. 2 A hyphen sits between. A hyphen is Johnson’s music. When composing he small. Its use implies the presence of often begins with a structure of dura- Most of the notes in these two piec- two more substantial items – words, or tional containers, proportionally relat- es move at high speed, and long paus- parts of words – on either side, which ed. He then follows this by trying to es are used to extend the music’s du- give it its function and meaning. Those squeeze in materials that are too large ration beyond just a few seconds. In words constitute a sort of white or for those spaces. Rather like trying clutch these pauses comprise two negative space, whose presence and to stuff feathers into a bag, bits keep sustained notes of around 30 seconds’ influence can be inferred even if the bursting out and onto the floor: grace duration each – played with “the slow- words themselves are not spoken. It notes, ornaments and other fleeting, est possible bowstroke”, and “assolu- is an image articulated spectacular- incidental sounds. His rational struc- tamente senza espr. e movimento” – ly in a favourite artwork of Johnson’s, tures are overtaken by an irrational, that interject between two passag- self-defeating chaos that obscures es marked “frantico, incontrollabile”. 1 “MEC MusicTalk: Evan Johnson and Daryl Buckley”, Youtube, almost everything, and leaves barely In hyphen, four pauses of different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2mOMbdJkI4. anything behind. The music is erased lengths (plus a fifth after the double 2 Programme note to clutch, to the point of inaudibility; a lot of it bar implied by the instruction l.v. al ni- http://www.evanjohnson.info/solo-instrument-voice/ 4 the pen and ink drawing Der Hafen like detail (and a similar appreciation Colophons is related to Dehiscences, von Antwerpen beim Scheldetor (1520) for fine penmanship). Articulations, Lullay (“Thou nost whider it whil turne” ) by Albrecht Dürer. Dürer’s picture in- rhythms, phrasing and pitch inflection (2005) for piano and cassette, a work verts the normal rules of Renaissance are all meticulously specified. Yet di- that is dedicated to the memory of perspective by becoming more de- rect experience, as player or listener, Johnson’s father. The titles of both tailed the closer one gets to its van- reveals something lighter, more intan- pieces refer to a Middle English lament ishing point. At its centre, where the gible, more unpredictable. Irrationality (although Johnson notes ironically that outlines of buildings and ships collide, and impossibility begin to seep in. in the case of Colophons “this has it reaches a state of almost self-ne- nothing to do with the piece at hand”, 3 gating intricacy, the profusion of lines Like water held between two panes of but simply points to its companion for leading to less, not more, definition. glass, the music’s structure – based piano), and both works build on a dia- But outwards from this point the pic- on those skeletons of proportion- logue between a tentative lyricism and ture tends towards white space, and al durations – breaks up under pres- submersive static. (The words of Col- indeed more than half of the page is sure. The surface tension is broken ophons, two lines from Chaucer’s The completely white, including the large and drops turn into droplets. Continu- Pardoner’s Tale, relate to frailty and old expanse of dockside pavement on ity is replaced by fragmentation. Con- age.) In Dehiscences the white noise which we are standing. Johnson’s mu- sider Colophons (“That other that ich of the cassette player almost com- sic can be understood in large part in not whenne” ), reflecting pool / monu- pletely drowns out the piano; in Colo- response to this picture – and it di- ment, for six voices and violin, written phons, the violin’s sibilant drone is a rectly inspired his 2014 string quartet for EXAUDI. It begins with a densely bed into which the vocal lines attempt inscribed, in the center: “1520, Antorff”. weaving vocal polyphony (reminiscent to sink themselves. When the voices The works on the present recording, of the fourteenth-century ars subtili- stop the drone becomes the “reflect- written before this quartet, reflect al- or ), accompanied by a low violin drone ing pool / monument” of the title: anoth- ternative responses to the dialectic of that occasionally breaks out into a er private memorial. Afterwards, things compression and emptiness revealed brief refrain of its own. And then in the must continue as they were. Yet some- by Dürer. middle of the piece the webs of vocal thing has happened, and the voices’ writing stop suddenly, leaving only the recapitulation soon departs from its At first glance, Johnson appears tied single, scratching violin tone. It hangs model. Small variations – the different to a heavy, European tradition of rich there, precariously, for what – 30 sec- ornamentation of the first alto’s low C, notational determination, formal com- onds? a minute? two minutes? Too a reduction of the two tenors’ entry to plexity and hierarchy. His scores – al- long. Time stops. And then the voic- the notes F–A#–F# – lead to greater most always hand-engraved, in a es start again, as though nothing had ones, until the two halves of the piece beautiful, precise and idiosyncratic happened. At first they even appear to can no longer be laid over each oth- calligraphic style – are full of Dürer- be singing the same music as before. er. Has the container changed, or have 5 its contents? The violin’s pause (sink- This quality of strain – “within a context ed pale grey/brown. Hardly anything ing in – a pool; projecting out – a mon- of lyricism and grace” as the compos- was visible beyond 20 metres; the ument) has done something to the mu- er describes it 4 – is shared by many of edges of the town looked like they had sic. Like the hyphen, it has changed its his pieces. In Positioning in Radiogra- been rubbed out. Objects could only surrounding context. phy for three toy pianos the finely de- be seen if they were held close up. At tailed filigree of the notation, packed a distance they dissolved into the sur- There is a “between” quality also to with grace notes and ornamental rounding atmosphere. His reply was Apostrophe 1 (All communication is a flourishes, is lost in the essential clum- characteristic: “On the rare occasions form of complaint ). In classical rheto- siness of the instruments themselves. I’ve found myself more or less envel- ric, an apostrophe is a moment when a (Its title refers to a medical textbook of oped in fog”, he emailed me, “I’ve al- speaker breaks off from their audience 1939, a favourite of the painter Fran- ways wanted to be more enveloped in to address a third party, often God, cis Bacon, that describes the various fog.” love, death, etc. Its rhetorical charac- ways in which a body may be bent and ter comes not only from the direct ad- contorted against a glass for the pur- Tim Rutherford-Johnson, 2019 dress but also from its surroundings: poses of x-ray imaging.) Even in the it is a “turning away” (Gk: apostrophé ) 90-second hyphen the performer is from something else that is ongoing: forced to play against the pain of strik- an insertion into or out of a wider flow. ing the crotales with their knuckles. It is spoken in spite of its surrounding context.