B Harrison - Three Descriptions of Place and Movement
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Label: Huddersfield Contemporary Records
Cat No: HCR27CD
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 8th July 2022
Contents
Artists
Quatuor BozziniAbout
Following the success of their 2017–18 collaboration (Bozzini+, Piano Quintet, HCR19), the Bozzini Quartet is reunited with composer Bryn Harrison.
The title’s three ‘descriptions’ are clarified in the names of the movements. Opening, Clearing, and Burrow – all doubly verbs and nouns – are each embedded with simultaneous motion and stasis. Opening, an unfolding, widening, growing from a single point, as well as the aperture, the crevice, the window that frames the perception of space. Clearing, a kind of purging or scrubbing of materials down to their barren core, or a wide empty space, flat and nondescript, defined by the negative. And burrow, to carve deeper, to dig into, to bury oneself completely, or an underground cocoon, warm, enveloping, home.
Opening is constructed from a complex layering of information that obscures a rather simple harmonic motion: twin chromatic scales, one ascending, one descending, chasing each other in a wrapped double helix that opens, closes, and opens again. Tracing any one pattern, however, is instantly obfuscated by the displacement of successive pitches across octave and player, and by rhythmic patterns that control the speed at which each scale progresses.
After such intense concision and density, Clearing feels dangerously still. The same cross-hatched pitches, once buried by layers of complexity, are now laid bare at a permeating pianissimo. For nearly 25 minutes, the quartet enters in perfect rhythmic unison – two players at a time, six times a bar, at 63 beats per minute – unfolding the same spiral of pitches as before. Once the ear has grown accustomed to traceable consistency, Harrison introduces the first repeats in the work, catching the music mid-phrase, insisting it revisit and review its pathways over and over again.
Burrow, the quartet’s final and longest movement, features the live quartet playing against two pre-recorded versions of itself in canon, repeating the pitches and rhythms from opening verbatim but slowed now to half the original speed. Extensive repetitions, absent in opening, lodge the music further, and what was once a fleeting object becomes a fixated, rotating monolith stretching out in all directions.
The title’s three ‘descriptions’ are clarified in the names of the movements. Opening, Clearing, and Burrow – all doubly verbs and nouns – are each embedded with simultaneous motion and stasis. Opening, an unfolding, widening, growing from a single point, as well as the aperture, the crevice, the window that frames the perception of space. Clearing, a kind of purging or scrubbing of materials down to their barren core, or a wide empty space, flat and nondescript, defined by the negative. And burrow, to carve deeper, to dig into, to bury oneself completely, or an underground cocoon, warm, enveloping, home.
Opening is constructed from a complex layering of information that obscures a rather simple harmonic motion: twin chromatic scales, one ascending, one descending, chasing each other in a wrapped double helix that opens, closes, and opens again. Tracing any one pattern, however, is instantly obfuscated by the displacement of successive pitches across octave and player, and by rhythmic patterns that control the speed at which each scale progresses.
After such intense concision and density, Clearing feels dangerously still. The same cross-hatched pitches, once buried by layers of complexity, are now laid bare at a permeating pianissimo. For nearly 25 minutes, the quartet enters in perfect rhythmic unison – two players at a time, six times a bar, at 63 beats per minute – unfolding the same spiral of pitches as before. Once the ear has grown accustomed to traceable consistency, Harrison introduces the first repeats in the work, catching the music mid-phrase, insisting it revisit and review its pathways over and over again.
Burrow, the quartet’s final and longest movement, features the live quartet playing against two pre-recorded versions of itself in canon, repeating the pitches and rhythms from opening verbatim but slowed now to half the original speed. Extensive repetitions, absent in opening, lodge the music further, and what was once a fleeting object becomes a fixated, rotating monolith stretching out in all directions.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Three Descriptions of Place and Movement: 1. Opening
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2Three Descriptions of Place and Movement: 2. Clearing
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3Three Descriptions of Place and Movement: 3. Burrow
Europadisc Review
At a practical level, all music takes place in and articulates time. And while time is a concern for all composers, it is for some a central preoccupation. One of those is British composer Bryn Harrison (born in Bolton in 1969), who counts among his influences Morton Feldman. Like Feldman, Harrison is fascinated as much by abstract art as by music, and similarly his music plays with recursive elements and frequently long time spans. Harrison’s recent works – such as the 43-minute repetitions in extended time (2008) and the hour-long Piano Quintet (2017) – have pushed his music to increasing lengths. And, although divided into three movements of unequal duration, his first work for string quartet, Three Descriptions of Place and Movement (2021), comes in at just over an hour: an ideal length for a CD, now issued by Huddersfield Contemporary Records.
In his booklet notes to this new disc, Tyler Bouque talks of the ‘subtly shifting repetitions and monolithic textures’ of Harrison’s music, although the nature of the string quartet medium naturally lends a greater textural transparency here, even when the musical material is at its most dense. And the playing of the Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini – tireless champions of new and experimental music since their foundation in 1999 – is remarkable for its clarity in the demanding, subtly changing repetitions fundamental to this work. Recursive music, even when it gradually mutates through time, only really makes its impact if the performers are able to sustain a matching tone and attack throughout the endless cyclic structures, and the Bozzinis bring off this feat with remarkable assurance.
The titles of each of the Three Descriptions are words that are both verbs and nouns: opening, clearing and burrow, and the booklet includes quotes from Harrison himself that reveal further associative elements behind the music. Behind the disarmingly brief opening lie two chromatic scales, one ascending, the other descending, wrapped around one another in a ‘double helix’ structure that continually opens and closes, although tracing this pattern is deliberately made more challenging by various fracturing devices, including dynamics and bowings. The patterns, though palpable, are hard for the listener to predict. In Bouque’s words, ‘Like an overture or prelude, opening creates the aperture through which we are to enter.’
By contrast, the second movement – clearing – is still, quiet, and (at 23 minutes in duration) almost five times the length of opening. Textures are homogeneous, and the gradual changes that are introduced are intentionally difficult for the listener to grasp, so that the effect is one of disorientation of memory. The occasional brief emergence of variegated elements – a sudden plucked note, for instance – seems random, but this is all part of Harrison’s way of ‘testing’ the listener’s perception of time.
The final movement, burrow, lasts just over half an hour. It is a slowed-down and pared-back version of the work’s opening section, given further immersive depth by being played simultaneously with two pre-recorded quartets in canon with the live quartet, and ranged to the listener’s left and right. In the strange sonic landscape of this triple quartet (or, if you will, sedecet), with its asynchronous repeated structures, ‘We stand mired in time, unable to decipher whether our ear or the music deceived us.’ The coordination required in this movement is considerable, the effect mesmeric, with the music finally reaching a sort of closure with the final unison.
The overall sensation is one of a pulsed hypnosis, the listener lulled into passivity only to be nudged – often quite gently – into slow-moving consciousness. As Bouque eloquently describes: ‘This is the beauty of the labyrinth, locally disorienting but globally breathtaking’. This is not music for the fainthearted, but for anyone with an interest in new music for string quartet, and in music that pushes the boundaries not just for performers but listeners too, this is an unusually captivating disc. Brilliantly recorded by James Clemens-Seely at Montreal’s Église St-Joseph de Rivière-des-Prairies in an acoustic that allows just the right amount of acoustic space around this experiment in time, and superbly performed by the Quatuor Bozzini, it’s a thoroughly recommendable album.
In his booklet notes to this new disc, Tyler Bouque talks of the ‘subtly shifting repetitions and monolithic textures’ of Harrison’s music, although the nature of the string quartet medium naturally lends a greater textural transparency here, even when the musical material is at its most dense. And the playing of the Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini – tireless champions of new and experimental music since their foundation in 1999 – is remarkable for its clarity in the demanding, subtly changing repetitions fundamental to this work. Recursive music, even when it gradually mutates through time, only really makes its impact if the performers are able to sustain a matching tone and attack throughout the endless cyclic structures, and the Bozzinis bring off this feat with remarkable assurance.
The titles of each of the Three Descriptions are words that are both verbs and nouns: opening, clearing and burrow, and the booklet includes quotes from Harrison himself that reveal further associative elements behind the music. Behind the disarmingly brief opening lie two chromatic scales, one ascending, the other descending, wrapped around one another in a ‘double helix’ structure that continually opens and closes, although tracing this pattern is deliberately made more challenging by various fracturing devices, including dynamics and bowings. The patterns, though palpable, are hard for the listener to predict. In Bouque’s words, ‘Like an overture or prelude, opening creates the aperture through which we are to enter.’
By contrast, the second movement – clearing – is still, quiet, and (at 23 minutes in duration) almost five times the length of opening. Textures are homogeneous, and the gradual changes that are introduced are intentionally difficult for the listener to grasp, so that the effect is one of disorientation of memory. The occasional brief emergence of variegated elements – a sudden plucked note, for instance – seems random, but this is all part of Harrison’s way of ‘testing’ the listener’s perception of time.
The final movement, burrow, lasts just over half an hour. It is a slowed-down and pared-back version of the work’s opening section, given further immersive depth by being played simultaneously with two pre-recorded quartets in canon with the live quartet, and ranged to the listener’s left and right. In the strange sonic landscape of this triple quartet (or, if you will, sedecet), with its asynchronous repeated structures, ‘We stand mired in time, unable to decipher whether our ear or the music deceived us.’ The coordination required in this movement is considerable, the effect mesmeric, with the music finally reaching a sort of closure with the final unison.
The overall sensation is one of a pulsed hypnosis, the listener lulled into passivity only to be nudged – often quite gently – into slow-moving consciousness. As Bouque eloquently describes: ‘This is the beauty of the labyrinth, locally disorienting but globally breathtaking’. This is not music for the fainthearted, but for anyone with an interest in new music for string quartet, and in music that pushes the boundaries not just for performers but listeners too, this is an unusually captivating disc. Brilliantly recorded by James Clemens-Seely at Montreal’s Église St-Joseph de Rivière-des-Prairies in an acoustic that allows just the right amount of acoustic space around this experiment in time, and superbly performed by the Quatuor Bozzini, it’s a thoroughly recommendable album.
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