The Rightness of Wrongness

We had our last seminar of the year last week, and it was possibly the best one this term. The composer and pianist James Clapperton and violinist Sharleen Harshenin came in (with piano and violin) to give us an overview of music's place in the avant-gardes of the twentieth century. It is often overlooked, they told us, and some studies of modernism don't even include it.

They played Skrjabin's Black Mass Sonata, so-called because it uses chords people in the nineteenth century referred to as "The Devil's Chords", some pieces by Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Anton Webern's "4 Pieces", Morton Feldman, John Cage and others.



In introducing the "Russian Maiden's Song" from Stravinsky's opera Mavra, James talked about the interplay of the traditional and the avant-garde in the piece, and in Stravinsky's music in general. Whilst famous for the Rite of Spring, he also composed a lot of music inspired by Russian folk-songs. He later tried to deny any folk influence but when you hear this piece (below), it becomes clear how ridiculous a denial it was. James alerted us to the interplay of the piano and the violin. Whilst it may appear at first quite traditional, the two instruments' parts don't quite fit together. There's a tension there, in which the piano sounds simultaneously like it's running behind and in front of the violin. That possibility of it all crashing down at any moment is fundamental, and very exciting! (This is a wonderfully shot video too!)



As a nice comparison, these past couple of weeks I've been listening to albums from Seattle's Sublime Frequencies label. A cornucopia of delights, their back catalogue contains titles such as "Princess Nicotine Folk And Pop Sounds Of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 1", "Ethnic Minority Music of Northeast Cambodia", "Forbidden Gang Funk From Rio de Janeiro", and, my favourite: "Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom". They include field recordings, snatches of old tape and in their "Radio" seriesh a collection of film dialogue, snatches of music and radio run together as if you're scanning stations in Algeria, Morocco or Vietnam. Other albums, like my current faves "Shadow Music of Vietnam" and "Thai Country Grooves from Isan" are a result of trawling road-side trucks and city cassette shops for hidden gems. They come up with folk-pop-rock music that blends country/psychedelic grooves with traditional Thai music and snippets of TV shows and films, as well as great vocals. Often between a man and woman, the voices do a kind of call-and-response thing in which two sides of a story are told and debated. The grainy sounds coming from cheaply recorded old cassette tapes, along with the clashing of Western pop of traditional Thai folk music creates a wonderful wrongness that is infectious. (This vid is a great overview, about 3 mins in the Thai stuff).



After the seminar on monday me and Thom were talking about Instal and our impressions of it, and the topic came round to "wrongness" in music. Serendipitous I'm sure. He mentioned The Shaggs, famous as the world's worst ever band, and then his own music, made with various people under various guises. Like Charles Ives, Thom likes making music with non-musicians, and said how funny/rubbish/exciting it all is.