Americancomposer

AmericanComposer he orchestral success of Alvin misunderstand. I want him to be ignored undulating between E and G. Above this, managed to keep it within the nuanced works within; there’s no detailed grammar by Kyle Gann Singleton baffles me, for the and underrated so I can knowingly laud enter chords in the flutes and harp: C emotive world of the New Romanticism. to his music (though there are large octa- T same reason that I’m surprised him as far better than the current run major, E-flat major, A major—these His success comes from having combined tonic-scale passages in Shadows and his by the continuing popularity of Sibelius. of orchestral racehorses. But somehow, chords will continue through to the end the best of two opposing aesthetics. 1998 choral work, PraiseMaker). Instead, I consider myself a connoisseur of exotic despite his music’s poignant subtlety, his of the piece, so slowly that the ear doesn’t The soulfulness of Singleton’s music he composes figures—like the patterns of and peculiar tastes suggestive of insight reputation needs no help from the likes register their 20-measure-long repeated doesn’t much stem from jazz influences, staccato septuplets that the winds keep superior to that of the average classical of me. He’s doing just fine. pattern. The music seems more “paced” as one might expect of an African- returning to in Praise-Maker—and dots music lover. I love Sibelius for his quirks, So I am forced to conclude that there than composed, its imperceptible momen- American composer, but he does some- the piece with them. Virtually everything his austere independence, his counterin- are conductors? managers? audiences? tum inscrutable. A trumpet enters with a times tackle social issues. He wrote his you hear, you will hear again, possibly in tuitive gestures, so foreign to all previous out there thirsting for new classical dotted motto; this motto will recur every choral piece Truth on a text about a regular pattern, perhaps more irregularly, orchestral rhetoric. He’s the kind of com- music that is long on substance and short 13 measures for a long, long time. Shadows’s Sojourner Truth written by his composer perhaps not until the end of the piece. As poser I would expect to be a specialty, a on bells and whistles. Singleton’s music is most ravishing feature is the irresistible friend Carman Moore (whom I recently he aptly said in an interview, “I like to maven’s obscure delight, and it dilutes my often slow, at the beginning of pieces gradualness of its crescendo, which gathers wrote about in this column). Singleton’s make the most out of little. That should pleasure in him slightly that he is so almost motionless. American orchestral energy with each new element. Jasper Drag for violin, clarinet, and piano be the goal of all creative artists. How widely appreciated by people who other- composers aren’t supposed to be slow. A continuum of repeated figures recur- (2000) was named for Jasper, Texas, much material do you need to make art? wise savor Tchaikovsky and Grieg. That’s soulful Eastern Europe territory, ring at regular intervals? One finds such where, on a summer day in 1998, three My only concern is the idea of the piece. Likewise, Singleton is hardly the kind for religious types who suffered under processes in John Adams’s music (Lolla- white men chained a black man to their That’s it.” It’s a fairly austere method, somewhat Sibelius-like, but it is generous to the listener with its plethora of identifiable landmarks. Singleton has been criticized for not using the orchestra more idiomatically, and to its full advantage. Yet despite the studied economy of his means and the set character of his images, Alvin the music is never cold (as Messiaen occasionally is) nor abstract (as Feldman Singleton often is). It glows with warmth, it hovers in the air, it paces itself with a glacial but palpably intuitive momentum. It refuses Communism: Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, palooza, for a major example), as well as pickup truck and dragged him to a to pander to either academicism or pop- Henryk Gorecki, Ljubica Maric´. Yet in that of postminimalist composers such painful death. The piece is not pictorial, ulism, but is so honest and self-assured Singleton’s music, for all its Atlanta- as William Duckworth, Rhys Chatham, though some of its elements express that listeners flock to it anyway. based Americanness (though he did spend Mikel Rouse. Yet somehow, Shadows, anger, such as a recurring group of accel- a long, crucial part of his career in and all of Singleton’s music, escapes the erating quintuplets in the violin. Others Austria) is sometimes leisurely to the bouncy, impersonal momentum associated are more static, such as a tentatively syn- point of stillness. An opening gesture with minimalism. His sonorities are too copated melody in the clarinet and an will appear to be a starting point, but luminous, his melodies too tentative, undulating major second in the piano, rather than develop, it will simply repeat. and his music builds up into climaxes of but continuity is built by placing these Often an entire piece can be parsed out conflict and violence. He even uses mul- elements next to each other in a collage- of bombastic purveyor of moto perpetuo in a small list of gestures that occur over tiple repetition of sections at times, but like fashion. The most impressive item in percussion who makes a splash in concert- and over again. with such complex textures that only the Singleton’s craft is that he can create such openers, and even less the kind of highly Take S hadows (1987), so typical yet most attentive listener will notice the cumulatively dramatic and satisfying Composer Kyle Gann is a professor at Bard technical composer faintly praised by special and recognizable that one might device. Somewhat like Morton Feldman, forms with such self-contained, nonde- College. His latest book is Music Down- academics. His music is soulful, with an call it Singleton’s signature orchestral who fused a thoroughgoing atonal pitch veloping elements. town: Writings from the Village Voice, understated simplicity that I particularly work. It begins in a low E drone in the vocabulary with the aimless Cagean aes- Like Messiaen, Feldman, and Ralph and his music is recorded on the New prize and that I would expect the oh-so- double basses that will last for some 271 thetic, Singleton adopted the listener- Shapey, Singleton is ultimately an imagist. Albion, New World, Lovely Music, and superficial classical music world to crassly measures—at which point it begins slowly friendly economy of minimalism, but He doesn’t have a system or syntax he Cold Blue labels. 20 july/august 2008 21.

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