Bankks Butterley Mealee Werder
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BANKS BUTTERLEY MEALE WERDER Like so many string quartets, the maestoso’, but the music is hard and changes texture in a more flexible manner. pieces recorded here engage with the concrete. These blocks of sound vary The moments when the quartet comes relationship of the ensemble’s four in length – the rhythmic notation is together in rhythmically regular music are players. Some of the works continue flexible – and the performers decide the striking and climactic. the tradition of cohesive playing, and length of each block in the moment of The second seating configuration, ‘far others question that aspect of the genre’s performance. The effect is that both the away’, begins with, is sustained by, and history. start and end of notes are highly charged. ends with clouds of harmonics. If the first In live performances of Meale’s String In some cases Meale further heightens section retains some hint of progression Quartet No. 1 his direct challenge to this idea, and the fourth chord, marked in its procession of variations, this section the performers is plain to see, for the dolce, ends with a left-hand pizzicato as is totally still. Through the harmonics piece is in two sections: in the first the the bow leaves the string. The abruptness Meale traces lines of pitches that lead us performers sit in the usual configuration, of the gesture is not at all what one might across the stage, but nowhere else. These and for the second section the performers think of as dolce, but this is a piece that three sequences are labelled ‘Tropes’. The are instructed to ‘leave their chairs and questions, stretches and extends ideas. term is a reference to the cycles through take new positions toward the rear of In this first section the music is most pitches and the revolutions through the stage.’ Meale writes that: ‘This new varied in terms of texture. The opening harmonics. It is also a technical term for seating position should be as dispersed is solid. The second variation divides the a set of pitches in which the content, but as possible so that there appears to be no blocks into two (violins/viola and cello). not the order, is specified. It recalls ‘Trope’ visual contact between the players. It is The third variation divides the players into in Boulez’s Third Piano Sonata – Meale also necessary for the players to perform four, and in the score four-note chords are gave its Australian première in 1964 – in with their backs to the audience.’ connected with wavy stems, indicating which the performer chooses the order of The typical arrangement of a quartet that strict coordination is not necessary. four sections. leaves an open space for viewing the At the same time, the glissandi and wide Meale’s first quartet ends his modernist interaction of players, and is an invitation vibrato liquify the pitch, which previously period, and it is the last completed work for the audience to enter their circle. But had been as solid as the chords were before Viridian (1979). coordinated. The fourth variation brings here the aim is to ‘create a visually remote The coordination of players also comes and contemplative atmosphere.’ There are the first contrapuntal texture, which without metric notation further presses the to the fore in Nigel Butterley’s String various challenges that come with this: to Quartet (1965). The second of two the string quartet as a forum for discursive players to react to each other to form the music; the lack of obvious coordination movements begins without barlines, and music; to the theatre of performance, according to Butterley’s direction to the the physicality of four people with four in the score heightens the coordination between the players. players, the ‘upper parts are independent instruments cueing each other visually; to of each other, but each player should close, responsive playing. Further variations explore these opening relate his part fairly closely to the cello When the players are in the first textures in greater diversity, and after part’. It is an approach to coordination configuration Meale writes a set of some time the variations themselves that Butterley, if here only briefly, shares variations. The piece begins ‘quasi begin to lose coherence, one overlapping with Meale; in 1963 Butterley performed with another. The remainder of the section in the première of Meale’s Las Alboradas, of the term ‘unfolding’, and Butterley’s and quietness. So while the which ends (save the two-bar coda) with composition ‘develops’ through constant first of the two movements is each performer working through their transformations of a single idea. The rather restrained, in the second material independently. composition is initially serial, with a the music has unfolded enough More generally, Butterley’s quartet hovers row clearly stated at the start of both to contain both the energy of between homophonic and contrapuntal movements. This, together with the the outburst with which the writing. Since both homophony and quasi-contrapuntal moments, are musical movement opens, and the counterpoint involve close working, renderings of ‘unfolding’. So too are serenity of the closing bars. the opening of the second movement the homorhythmic chords, which are Part of the work’s impact is that it is breaks away from the composition’s symmetrical in their harmonic sequence, difficult to tell where serenity, or joy, or formal preoccupations in a moment of and which also unfold, and then fold quietness begins and contemplation ends. exuberance for the performers, forming a again, in register. There is little requirement for the listener representation of the poem on which the The contrapuntal music is based on the to respond to the composition as one work draws. semi-tone, a characteristic interval that might the poem, for the music retains little The poem is Henry Vaughan’s The Butterley’s music shares with his one- of the poetry’s zeal. Revival (1650) and, like the composition, time teacher Priaulx Rainier (this interval Werder’s String Quartett No. 8 (1964) is is in two sections. With the second part is particularly clear in her work Quanta confronting. It rails against tradition, and of the poem comes spring: ‘Hark! how (1962), composed when Butterley was makes Butterley’s composition sound like his winds have chang’d their note | And studying with her). His homorhythmic idyllic pastoralism in comparison. The with warm whispers call thee out.’ This chords are reliant on thirds, an interval work’s subtitle is ‘Consort Music’, which is a realisation of the opening directive: emphasised in the second bar with a begs the question: is this a ‘whole’ or ‘“Unfold, unfold!” take in his light | Who glissando in the cello. ‘broken’ consort? The instrumentation makes thy cares more short than night.’ There is little conflict between homophony suggests the former, and the work’s Unlike Meale’s quartet, which thrives in and counterpoint, or between thirds extreme timbral variations, the latter. The the crises of its day, Butterley’s quartet and semitones, and the row is easily mixed language of the title/subtitle points takes a longer view, with Vaughan’s poem abandoned; indeed, that abandoning is to Werder’s childhood in Berlin and his as the model. In the poem light and dark part of the music’s flow. The opening, time studying in London, but, in any case, are opposed, but they are also forces linear, serial exposition, for example, his lack of regard for English music (he that are tied together through its pastoral is diffused into the first ‘chorale’ of chose to study architecture before being imagery, in which spring is a revivification homorhythmic chords and the music that interned and sent to Australia) suggests of winter. For Butterley this is both a emerges is not strict in any sense, even if that the subtitle is ironic. theological unfolding, and a concept that it is restricted in its colour (for we are still Although Werder ended up in Australia, is musically pregnant. in frosty winter). Butterley describes the and by 1964 had lived in Australia Since the early nineteenth century, two movements as follows: for 24 years, he remained steadfastly a single musical theme developed As the music unfolds it ‘takes independent of his neighbouring throughout a work was one meaning in’ more light and warmth, joy composers. His heritage came with the idea of progress, and in 2012 music’, cutting-up Walton’s concerto because after my ‘lay-off’ I Werder-the-critic died waiting for and saving only the tempo directions is a needed a strict discipline to get Melbourne’s musical life to enter the consistent statement, if a curious one. The the […] compositional muscles twentieth century. The composers who choice of Walton does go to the subtitle, working. he critiqued had largely side-stepped the but to nothing else in the score. The That discipline returned him to earlier philosophical and aesthetic problems collage speaks to Werder’s physical and years, when he was studying with Luigi with which Schoenberg (for example) had musical dislocation, and as chief music Dallapiccola and Milton Babbitt, and grappled. The musical result of Werder’s critic for ‘The Age’, he was politically out when he was close to Roberto Gerhard. situation is a commitment to thematicism of step with Melbourne’s musical circles. The work is broadly serial, and begins – the eighth string quartet is densely The transition he experienced moving with something of a statement of the motivic – and also to fragmentation. The from childhood in pre-war Berlin (with row, though the construction makes combination makes the motifs difficult to Schoenberg as a family friend) to rural this exposition more ambiguous than trace for any length of time, and it means Victoria clearly had a major impact on his for Butterley’s quartet.