Text Andrea Dusio On the edge of sound photography Christopher Payne

M P O E R T A

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112 CONTEMPORARY UTOPIAS Music provides an escape from the darkness of our lives, giving us the possibility to transcend time. But does sound really provide a vehicle with which to attain an imagined Shangri-La?

MUSIC 113 not for its pull towards a which represents a leap in its genre and estab- jungle, and takes a ship to the top of a moun- place that does not exist, towards lishes a scale by which to measure everything tain, in the same way Ernst Bloch’s The Spir- a location that is only reachable by left at its feet. We would be forced to endure an it of Utopia records the decisive moments in transcendingIf the known, music would be — infinite repetition of staid sequences, Haydn’s music history. A history characterized less by like other arts (dance, painting, literature) — frigid symphonies, and we would have to make the progression of technical and formal acqui- buried under an eternal return of ideal canons do with chamber music commissioned by sitions than by the ideas of certain musicians and proportions characterized by an everlast- amateur princelings, inured to their labored that have used music to take man away from ing classicism. Imagine if we were to delete performances. Perhaps we would be allowed the darkness of the moment lived, giving peo- from history the insolence with which Mozart the modest romantic-pastoral temptations of ple a possibility to transcend their time. made fun of traditions, injecting the modes of Weber’s operas. We would have Oberon, Eury- It was intuition that pushed Schubert to Lutheran canons, made unrecognizable, into anthe, and The Freeshooter, but no one would compose Winterreise, when in 1823 he came his works, or Beethoven’s titanic introversion have thought they could combine Freema- across the poems published by Wilhelm Müller that transformed folk dances into allegories sonry and natural-law, mysteriosophy, fairy in the Prussian almanac Urania. Müller was a on nature in his seventh symphony. A little like stories, invocations of Egyptian deities, and poet who had been ignored by critics, a librari- in Danny Boyle’s film Yesterday — in which the Enlightenment into a single opera as in the an in the military stationed in Dessau regarded music of The Beatles vanishes completely from improbable cathedral of The Magic Flute. Like with suspicion by the authorities because of a people’s memories — we would be deprived of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo in which he number of articles praising Byron. However, in the vertigo of that “outside the box thinking” tries to build an opera house in the Peruvian those lines, Schubert glimpsed the possibility

114 CONTEMPORARY UTOPIAS of creating a cycle on the significance of exis- of classical music, but it is intimately related dedicated to those arpeggios, and then he plays tence. Then, leaving behind the fragmentation to In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra, Rain chords that have other chords inside them, of the lieder, he gave shape to the story of the Dogs by Tom Waits, and The Boatman’s Call by and he plays them in 50 different ways, and nighttime winter journey of a spurned lover. A Nick Cave. The backdrop of night and winter he plays them all at the same time.” Ten years lover forced to wander over the symbolic itin- amplify emotions, the pianoforte becomes the later, listening to the Thelonius Monk Quartet erary of a nature that has been transformed tempest, the water that continues to flow be- play at the Five Spot, historian Ira Gitler by romantic sensitivity. Winterreise is a com- neath the ice, the melody heard from afar, like coined the expression “sheet of sound.” Col- plete opera. Far from Wagner’s gargantuan the voice of memory, a little organ, the dialogue trane’s compositions were curtains of sound, productions, it was composed simply on the whose words do not melt into birdsong, the un- sheets of notes played quickly in a continuous pianoforte. Instead of constraining himself gainly cawing of crows. It was Mahler with Das glissando, indistinguishable from each other. to accompany the song — as was traditional Lied Von Der Erde who fused the song of the lied Coltrane would visit Monk in the mornings with the lied — Schubert developed the voice with the symphonic form, but Schubert went to rehearse pieces, discuss music, and look of this mysterious unsettled character forced to beyond this, composing a symphonic poem for new ways forward. Coltrane was said to be walk along snowy roads, whipped by the wind that explored with pianoforte a range of expres- an omnivorous reader, spending his days im- and with no hope of being able to return to the sion which would otherwise have remained mersed in obscure texts about the history of home where he was loved. In this case, it isn’t restricted by traditional compositional forms. religions, oriental mysticism, and astrology. It even a question of leaving a genre behind. Win- described ’s style is said that he did not speak much, loved math, terreise occupies a special place on the shelves in a 1958 interview with The Jazz Review: “He is and applied a mathematical approach to every

MUSIC 115 In Making Steinway, photographer Christopher Payne explores One Steinway Place, a famous factory in Astoria, New York. The kind of manufacturing and craftsmanship that happens there, where people transform raw, often messy materials into some of the finest musical instruments in the world, has nearly vanished from the American workplace. “This concerns me deeply,” Payne says, “not only because I come from a musical family in which such craftsmanship was revered, but because I live in a time when fewer and fewer people make their own music.” Payne has been awarded grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Art, and the Graham Foundation. His work has been featured in publications around the world. © Christopher Payne/Esto

116 CONTEMPORARY UTOPIAS MUSIC 117 part of music. When he played, though, he was chords instead of scales. He redefined the cod- as a song to praise God. Here, we have the first extremely passionate, and when his comet ified system of tonal music, through modal im- synthesis of an idea to include ethnic instru- shot into the sky for the first time, the crit- provisation, and he explored the secret rules ments and tracks in jazz in which a greater ics placed him with those saxophonists who of the world of sounds. Perhaps his problems role is given to rhythm, alongside a simpli- brought anger to the blues, with an intensity with drugs and his marriage also played a role. fication of the harmonic line: fewer chords, unknown until that moment, enriched by a In 1964 Coltrane crossed the ford, breaking a constant beat, not playing rigidly, making strong funky influence, as can be heard in one with jazz traditions in favor of a cosmic music interplay rather than quarters important. As- of his best-known compositions, Blue Train. with substantial harmonic stasis based on a cension is complete improvisation, as was Free Monk pushed Coltrane to coax more than pair of chords, sometimes even without writ- Jazz by Ornette Coleman. Each member plays one sound from his sax at the same time by ten music. Mysticism became his way of find- their solo and the bridges are left to sporadic using harmonics. Revisiting the rhythm and ing an answer to the Afro-American problem, predefined passages, like interchanges on a blues of his youth, Coltrane squeezed whistles transcended through musical expression. railway network, only episodically tonal. The from his instrument, authentic screams that Crescent, , and Ascension are result is an abstract tapestry, polyphonic and became trumpeting in the most confused mo- all pieces from 1964/1965 in which Coltrane cacophonous, where a brief moment of melody ments of his labyrinthine and obsessive solos, learns to resolve tension and distension, an- surfaces before everything goes back to total in which he pulled out everything a theme had ger and love, prayer and shouting. The form chaos. Nothing is the same as in the world we to offer. Studying Indian music and listening of the four-part suite is still recognizable in A used to know, nothing looks like a place, in the to Ravi Shankar led him to think in terms of Love Supreme, even though it was remodeled territory of utopia.

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