Contemporary Classics October 13, 2020 The Electric Guitar in Classical Music

Tonight on Contemporary Classics, I am featuring music for the electric guitar in classical music.  Electric guitar you scream – that is for Rock, Blues and Jazz but Classical music?  Yes I calmly reply.  The electric guitar has a rich literature in contemporary concert music.  This show was inspired by the recent released album dynamics of vanishing bodies by the electric guitar quartet Dither on New Focus Recordings

 

Eric Chasalow:  Scuse Me 

Scuse Me is for electric guitar and tape premiered by Tim Brady in Montreal Canada. 

Eric Chasalow writes about this tune    “When Tim Brady asked me to write a piece for electric guitar and tape, I decided right away to use the beginning of Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze as the motive of the piece. Most people will recognize this quote immediately, although it is always far more manipulated than one might imagine on first hearing. In addition to the challenge of integrating such an icon of popular culture into something new and convincing, there was the difficulty of bringing sounds of the live performer and the computer generated together in one acoustical space.”  Well in my opinion, Eric was very successful in doing this.      

Ryan Streber: Descent

Next we have Descent by Ryan Streber for electric guitar and two amplifiers.  In the words of guitarist Dan Lippel, this “work is a journey from a high to low tessitura, and from a clean sound

to one saturated with distortion. The piece is tuned to “cello” tuning plus B-E (C-G-D-A-B-E), and begins with a capo on the eighth fret with material that relies on light Baroque-like trills and embellishments. The capo is removed after the fluid introduction and a slow process of revealing progressively lower pitches eventually leads the work down in register to the detuned lowest

string. As the texture accumulates, the second amp gradually fades in, distorting the sound and emphasizing the overtones of the revealed low C. Select moments in the work were written collaboratively; Ryan provided a skeleton for where a passage was coming from and where it needed to go, and I improvised around those restraints and presented a few options to him

 

Sidney Corbett: Detroit Rain Song Graffiti

Next is Detroit Rain Song Graffiti by Sidney Corbett. In the words of guitarist Dan Lippel “Detroit Rain Song Graffiti for electric guitar calls for the low string to be detuned to E-flat, opening up the harmonic language of resonant voicings on the instrument to a set of less common sonorities. Alternating between two voice textures more typical of classical guitar writing and chordal material more associated with the electric guitar, Detroit Rain Song Graffiti is a tone painting capturing an uneasy calm in one of America’s most fraught cities.” 

 

Julia Wolfe:  Lick    

Lick, based on fragments of funk, has become a manifesto for the new generation of genre-crossing composers. 

Steven Mackey: Physical Property for electric guitar & string quartet

Mackey describes this work as “a libido-driven romp. The combination of the quintessential classical music chamber ensemble and the symbol of adolescent rebellion, work together with consummate discipline in the service of joyous freedom.”  Here is a performance of by Steven Mackey guitar and the Brentano String Quartet from the album Steven Mackey: String Theory

Brendon Randall-Myers:    dynamics of vanishing bodies   

This is an absolutely wonderful piece to listen to and to see live as I did last year at the Bang on a Can LOUD Weekend Festival in North Adams MA.  It just overwhelmed me as a listener.  It was just released as by New Focus Recordings so I had to share it and it is this recording that inspired me to do this

Dynamics of vanishing bodies is a  37-minute piece which deploys the full gamut of techniques, tunings, and six-string strategies at Randall-Myers’ fingertips across five dynamic sections of physically and sonically challenging ensemble playing by his guitar quartet Dither

At the root of Randall-Myers’ piece lies a palpable sense of ‘absence as a felt presence’; the phrase empty and ‘full of memories’ directly informed the emotional intensity of dynamics of vanishing bodies

Interlocking plucks and riffs from some 20 idiosyncratic tunings used between the four guitarists give way to both hanging silences and heavy walls of feedback. The four consistently break off too, moving through precisely improvised re-tunings, at times audible with notes sliding between the melodies of the performance itself. The beautiful final movement, ‘vanishing bodies (lines and loops)’, sees all four guitarists switch to foot pedal and loopers to sustain the piece long after physically playing, reanimating the last remnants of the composition as it vanishes once and for all into an ornamental refraction of its own memory.

Brendon Randall-Myers  dynamics of vanishing bodies:

5            vanishing bodies (lines and loops)             

Steve Reich: Electric Counterpoint