ESSAYS

writings//

 

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AFTERTHOUGHTS ON INNERLAND

 

“Each there walks upon no alien soil.”

(Plotinus)

 

 

I write these lines from the Corsican shoreline, gazing out upon the Mediterranean. The equinoctial waves draw me to feel the situational countercurrent of the sharp-cutting performance this recording presents.

 

The language of this music is firmly atonal. It does not deprive itself of any vernacular, any harmonic or microtonal modelling or any texture. It is articulated around a deliberate, irregular and asymmetrical rhythmic complexity. The writing, furthermore, consciously divests itself of substantial allies, which are all too often summoned today as ridiculously grand costuming for unsubstantial ideas ; the use of instruments is sparse, being reduced to two trombones and a single voice. Yet from this purely monodic power of elocution spring and morph animal forms, and all the expressive, sensual, concrete and spiritual potential of the sounds and their meaning are chiseled.

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The flow of what is, by convention, called 'inspiration' but also the body of texts chosen to construct this piece of work, the circumstances of existence and a confirmed and consistent approach to composition dictated this apparent frugality from the very beginning of the venture. I merged the attributes and the properties of these defined elements and, having first examined their assembled and concentrated nucleus, I proceeded to explore it with atomic precision, with the purpose of choreographing the characters of this contrapuntal, timbral and sonic ballet.

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There was, moreover, a need to develop a large unified form of approximately one hour in length, with a structured organisation yet as much leeway for variation and contrast as possible.

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Lastly I formed all the constituents and the elementary groups with the idea that the resulting whole could be used like a music book open to interpretation, a gyre, an infinite circle in which any point in the musical text could be used as a starting point.

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Seven European poems, dating from the 12th to the early 20th century and in six different languages provide syntactical depth and richness which extend to the musical gesture. Clearly the meaning and the tonality of the words constitute a guide to forming the sounds. Yet, and perhaps more importantly, a pre-existing contradictory variety of origins create a vast magnetic field of potent energisation, providing structure to the composition: at either end of the piece a powerful indicator of the world's bloodthirsty roar (an inhuman, unintelligible world) couched in the English language, the lingua franca of our time; and set against this contradiction, a suspended magnetic levitation residing in the very heart of the work, understanding between humans, living beings and nature, the union of two beings, a cosmos which can be understood and read untrammelled by the narrow restrictions of the world. In this central clearing are far more than languages rooted within the place ; there is a tone. An intimate voice, closeness of origins.

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Our age is seemingly being dragged into an inane pursuit of classification and expeditious simplification; criticism of musical works are no exception to this. There is a demand for identifications, references and names – or at least those which are sure to be recognised. The work of art is befogged by the portrait of the artist as a club member.

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Meanwhile, from the strand, once the familiar space has been explored and the topography of musical places has been integrated with all of its most brilliant and complete constellations, composing implies, conversely, that critical moment when one passes through the crashing breakers. Once in the freedom of the open sea, the work can be given direction, in constant motion. For those who wish to see them (and I will not, at this stage, point out the stars as a guide), the flanks of the work's fulcrums are visible for the briefest instant, just long enough to set the helm and voyage into infinite space.

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The work of art is all and the artist simply the vessel. And the work of art will be all the finer when the artist devotes himself entirely to his subject and its demands. And it is in this spirit of communion, with what I feel is the appropriate degree of objectivity and detachment, that I shall now continue sharing my experience of this work with the listener, shedding further light only upon the conscience of connections I feel necessary.

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So let us leave the composer's table, and approach that of the geographer, renewing with our traveller's reminiscence. Do you recall navigating close to a land which you are seeing for the first time and yet simultaneously feels so familiar? It could be this very island whose unfamiliar side, revealed by the voyage, became visible from the ship. We were wondering at that moment which other hidden reality, what life does the place conceal. In the dusk, gleaming lights from that village aloft on a towering coast. The invitation of the sun's rays shining through woodland, blinding our progress with its friendly promise. And what mysterious yet welcoming refuge awaits us behind this alpine pass?

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This singular feeling is at the very core of INNERLAND. The work, in the musical sphere, is an experiment of its description. Ethereal yet so familiar, it draws with broad, confident strokes a parallel life, but a life which strikes us as more real, more authentic and peaceful. The spiritual aspects of this existence are there imbued with a gentle intensity, vibrant in its pure, dusky air.

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Back on the shore, away from INNERLAND now, from its woven and multiple origins and from the piece of work presented here, from the approach work and from its most delicate features, from the cypher of its sounds, from its composition and from the phenomenal fulfilment of its recording by the performers, I cannot help but affectionately smile at the certainty that a simple look, from you listening to this performance or I, hearing in the roar of the waves... a simple look at what is around us, will be enough to recapture that hinterland. How could conscience possibly lose the key in the very place where it was found?

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Stéphane Furic-Leibovici

25 September 2015

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INNERLAND, ICI ET MAINTENANT

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“Personne n’y marcherait comme sur terre étrangère.”

(Plotin)

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J’écris ces lignes depuis le rivage de la Corse, en regard de la Méditerranée. Les vagues d’équinoxe m’invitent à ressentir le contre-courant situationnel de la réalisation acérée, tranchante, que présente cet enregistrement.  

 

Le language de cette musique est résolument atonal. Il ne se refuse aucun vernaculaire, aucune figure harmonique ou microtonale, aucune texture. Il s’articule dans une complexité rythmique recherchée, irrégulière et asymétrique. L’écriture, de surcroît, se prive volontairement d’alliés substantiels, ces derniers n’étant aujourd’hui que trop souvent convoqués pour servir d’habits ridiculement grands à une pauvre substance: l’instrumentation est spartiate, réduite à une voix et deux trombones. De ce pouvoir purement monodique de l’élocution, naissent cependant les formes animales, et la réalisation de toute la potentialité expressive, sensuelle, concrète, spirituelle, des sons et de leurs significations.  

 

Le flot de ce qu’il est convenu de nommer “inspiration”, mais aussi, la série de textes choisis pour constituer l’oeuvre, les circonstances de l’existence et une démarche compositionnelle habituelle et poursuivie, dictèrent, dès le départ de l’entreprise, cette frugalité apparente. J’ai opéré une fusion des attributs et des propriétés de ces éléments circonscrits, et, après examen de leur substance nucléaire rassemblée, concentrée, j’ai exploré cette dernière au niveau atomique, aux fins de chorégraphier ces nouvelles entités, contrapuntiques, timbrales, sonores. 

 

Il fallait, de plus, que ce ballet évolua à la fois dans une organisation structurée autant variée et autant contrastée que possible, et en une grande forme unifiée d’une durée totale d’environ une heure. 

 

Enfin, j’ai fabriqué les formants et les groupes élémentaires de l’oeuvre avec l’idée que le total résultant se déploie comme un livre de musique ouvert aux interprètes, une gyre, boucle sans fin pouvant être débutée en tout point du texte.  

 

Sept poèmes européens datés du 12ème jusqu’au 20ème siècle naissant, en six langues différentes, offrent une richesse syntaxique, étendue au geste musical. Evidemment, le signifié et la sonorité des mots guident la fabrique des sons. Cependant, de surcroît, une antinomie originelle est créatrice d’un vaste champ magnétique aux excitations coercitives multiples, et structure la composition: aux extrémités de l’oeuvre, le signal fort du fracas sanglant du monde (monde inhumain, inintelligible) trempé dans la langue anglaise, lingua franca de notre temps ; de l’autre côté de l’opposition, aimant lévitant, résidant au centre de l’oeuvre, l’accord entre l’humain, les êtres vivants et la nature, l’union de deux êtres, un cosmos sans grille de lecture surimposée par le monde. Dans cette clairière centrale se trouvent bien plus que des langues propres à l’endroit: il y a là un ton. Une intimité des origines.

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Au lieu de saisir les chances qui s’offrent somptueusement à elle, notre époque semble entrainée dans une grande entreprise crétine de promptes classifications et de simplifications expéditives. L’appréciation du travail musical n’en réchappe guère. La demande d’identifications, de références, de noms - pour autant ce devront alors être ceux qui seront connus à coup sûr, est pressante. Du reste, une certaine “sociologie musicale” ne manifeste-t- elle pas son honteux essentialisme, ne vise-t-elle pas à dissimuler l’oeuvre, derrière un portrait de l’artiste en objet sociétal? Alors que, depuis la grève, l’espace familier exploré, la cartographie des lieux de la Musique intégrée avec toutes ses constellations les plus brillantes et les plus achevées, composer implique, au contraire, ce moment critique où l’on franchit la zone des rouleaux. En mer libre, ouverte, l’oeuvre se pilote, en mouvement. Pour qui veut les voir (je ne serai pas ici celui qui montre du doigt les étoiles), elle présente naturellement les flancs de ses points d’appui, juste le court temps nécessaire à pointer, pour mieux aller droit de sa propre course dans un espace infini. En art, seul compte le produit dont l’artiste est l’organe. Il sera d’autant plus réussi que l’artiste s’abandonne à son sujet et à ses exigences. Et c’est dans cette communion, avec je crois la distanciation requise, que je me contenterai maintenant d’interroger la conscience des relations qu’il me faut mettre à jour.  

 

Quittons donc la table du compositeur, pour passer à celle du géographe et retrouver les réminiscences du voyageur. Avez-vous souvenir de ces navigations à proximité d’une terre qu’il vous semblait voir pour la première fois, tout en vous paraissant si familière ? Ce pourrait-être, cette île, dont, depuis le navire, nous voyons le côté que nous ignorions jusqu’alors, et que le périple nous révélait. Nous nous demandions, dans ce moment, quelle autre réalité inconnue, quelle vie, recèle l’endroit. Lumières, au crépuscule, de ce village haut- perché sur une côte montagneuse. Invitation d’un soleil traversant une futaie, et qui aveugle notre cheminement de sa promesse amicale. Et quelle étape à la fois mystérieuse et accueillante semblait nous attendre derrière ce col alpestre? Ce sentiment si singulier est le sujet sensible de INNERLAND, oeuvre-tentative de sa description dans le domaine musical. Toujours étrange et si familier, il dessine à traits pleins le lieu d’une vie autre, et qui nous semble pourtant plus réelle, plus vraie, et apaisée. Les éléments spirituels de cette existence y seraient amplifiés doucement là-bas, vibrant dans son air pur et mat.

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A distance désormais de INNERLAND et de l’arrière-pays plus évoqué que convoqué, le tissage des multiples origines, les travaux d’approche comme les traits les plus affinés, de l’oeuvre qui vous est présentée ici, me semblent ce soir résider au lointain. Le sextant du chiffre de ses sons, le compas de sa composition, sont rangés dans leurs coffrets. Je ne pointe, pour vous, que ce qui est: la réalisation phénoménale accomplie par les interprètes de cet enregistrement. Et je souris affectueusement à la certitude, à la connaissance, qu’un simple regard, de vous qui entendrez, comme de moi dans le fracas des vagues, ... un simple regard sur ce qui nous entoure, suffit pour retrouver l’arrière-pays. Là où la conscience a trouvé la clef, comment pourrait-elle la perdre?  

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Stéphane Furic-Leibovici

25 September 2015

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INNERLAND ON ARPAVIVA

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Victoria Jordanova, composer

Executive Producer

ArpaViva Recordings Inc.

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French composer Stéphane Furic - Leibovici dedicated his whole life to music, with unwavering conviction and artistic integrity. His latest work, the song cycle INNERLAND, is a fascinating neo-modern-romantic contemplation on music and poetry. 

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Although INNERLAND is presented as a fifteen-track gapless recording, the individual tracks (seven poems set to music, seven incises and a final track that transcends them all) can be accessed separately, in any order. The seven poems will be discussed below. The word “Incise” (“Cut”) is used to describe the tracks that consist of the samples of music material extracted from the songs and inserted between them to serve as the connective tissue of the piece. In “Confins” (“On the Edge”), the final track, the composer symbolically steps out of his work in order to comment on it by recording a combination of his instructions to the performers and the summary of the basic vocabulary of sounds used in INNERLAND. 

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The seven poems that Stéphane Furic - Leibovici set to music were written by seven different poets over a period of several centuries, dating from the Middle Ages to our time. The choice of the poetry is the testament to the composer's good taste and to his interest in the powerful romantic lyricisms found in all of the poems. The central motif of the piece is love, understood as both "romantic love" and "being in love with nature." However, INNERLAND is also a story about a journey. The travelogue of this journey reads like a voyage of a fragmented psyche through the paysage of dreams. During his musical travels through this “innerland,” the composer ponders the relationship between the reality and one's perception of reality while he mentally revisits the sentiments and impressions from his past. The poets – who, like Hölderlin’s Wonderer, eternally roam through the inner human landscape – offer their lyrics which both lend the composer a welcoming shoulder to lean on and provide the conceptual underpinnings for his music.  

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With masterful control over every detail and nuance, the composer borrows the exquisite voice of Almut Kühne to tell us an eerie story: a tale of love, perhaps of a great lost love. It is an account of being lost in and wandering through the interior landscape of one's heart, searching for the path that leads back to the outside world. Almut sings, speaks, and whispers to us, and she stuns us with bursts of vocal virtuosity. The piece is lightly scored, for two trombones and a voice - but the music is not “lite.” With masterful economy of means used for the dramatic interpretation of the lyrics, the composer draws us into his world where he melds music with poetry. While listening to INNERLAND, the audience will feel special, like confidants allowed access into an inner sanctum. 

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In “The Tiger” by William Blake (1757-1827) the singer, like an ancient storyteller, describes to her listeners who are sitting wide-eyed around the fire a mythical creature of great power, elegance, and courage. The scary vocal narrative is intercepted with silences full of suspense. When the trombones accompany the voice a major second apart, the song calls to mind eastern European folk music. 

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The “Griechenland” by Friedrich Höderlin (1770-1843) is an ode to a glorious day - a magical journey across a mountain and through gardens above the sea. The composer renders this song as a ballad. The protagonist is a solitary Wonderer, one with nature and yet full of his own inner turmoil. The music follows the elation of the lyrical description all the way to its climax and then, when there is no place left to go, the composer decides to sustain the emotion by making the music stop. The voice breaks into short syllabic repetitions of a single note, breathless - decisively dissonant and lyrical at the same time. 

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In “Per mezzi’ boschi inhospiti” (“Through inhospitable wild woods”), a sonnet by Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), the hero is in love and feels shielded by it while walking through the dangerous woods, where "even armed men fear to walk through." He sings while walking, like a child who sings to chase the monsters away. The interior dialogue between two sides of the self, fear and happiness, is musically beguilingly portrayed by reassuring repetition of the calming motif, played by the trombones, in answer to the anxious phrases of the voice. 

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As in a miniature opera, fragments of action and reflection follow each other in "L'alba" ("Dawn") by Raimbaut de Vacqueryas (1180-1207). The sad irony of the lyrics shines through the music of discord between the instruments and the voice. In this imaginary performance similar to that of the Provençal troubadours, the singer plays the castanets to match her perfectly intoned high staccato notes and shakes the tambourine during her wild trills on one note. She claps her hands at the beginning to "wake up the lovers who, unfortunately, must part at sunrise.” 

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In “Querido manso mio” ( "My Gentle Beloved" ) by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), the atonal phrases of passionate outbursts of vocal virtuosity break up the spellbinding folk-like melody written as an accompaniment to the pastoral and erotic lyrical images of the poem. 

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Charles d'Orléans (1394-1465), another medieval poet represented here, is called a father of the French lyric poetry and was reputedly the sender of the first "valentine". But his Rondelay - "En la forêt de longue attente” ("In a Dark Wood Wandering") is far from being a frivolous courtly love poem. Instead, his hero is a romantic Wonderer, similar to the one in Hoerderlin's “Griechenland.” He laments the loss of youth and his long lost love and now feels lost in the "dark loneliness" of old age. However, he wishes to believe that his lost youth and all the years of his life were not spent for naught, but that the memories of those good times will sustain him in his old age.  

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“Franchissement” ("Crossing Over") is a simple but poignant episode of emotional upheaval composed as one slowly ascending and one slowly descending microtonal glissando in unison. Along the way up and down, the singer invokes a series of single words, extracted from the lyrics, each carrying a portent-message. The graphic score of “Franchissement” is equally dramatic and resembles the upward displacement of a section of the earth's crust. 

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A master of symbolic romantic imagery William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), in his famous “The Second Coming” recalls a gruesome sport of falconry in which the wild avian predator is trained to swoop down in a gyre and hunt small animals. In response to the lyrics, the music is written as the embodiment of "romantic madness," similar to that of Schumann, Beethoven, or Jean Barraqué. In this song, the composer excels in his prowess and through a veritable compositional rampage emulates that "dreadful text filled with the accents of bestiality." “The Second Coming” is a twenty-seven minute long song which can be performed independently from the rest of the cycle. This song is a testimony to Stéphane Furic-Leibovici's compositional craft as well as a proof of his deeply felt artistic concern about the pathology of human cruelty and the destruction and suffering that humans inflict on the contemporary world.  

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We can easily imagine Stéphane at the Alte Nationalgalerie (National Museum) in Berlin, upon his arrival there in 2010, standing in contemplation before the Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea (1810). The painting portrays a solitary figure on the beach dressed in monk robes and silently gazing at the vast expanse of water and the sky in front of him, while the breakers smash against the shore. The atmosphere of this painting is quintessentially romantic, but the painter intentionally compressed the space turning the canvas into an abstract painting in a modern sense. Although Monk by the Sea is not the direct intellectual inspiration for the compositional ethos of INNERLAND, it perfectly matches the spirit of the piece. In response to the extreme romantic lyricism of the poetry, the composer chose atonality as the music language for his work. In this beautifully written composition in a traditional sense, the dissonance is not a surprising gesture reserved only for the moments of dramatic tension, nor is it used as an additional colorful effect; instead, it is always present, it is the thread woven into the texture of the music, the discrete fiber entwined in the cloth of life. The extended techniques are employed for dramatic purposes, and they challenge the performers' virtuosity every step of the way. 

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At the age of twenty-five, after his studies at the Paris Conservatory, Stéphane Furic - Leibovici moved to New York and, from there, toured the world carrying his double bass. He performed with Chris Speed, Chris Cheek, and Lee Konitz. In 1996 he released his critically acclaimed first album, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, on Soul Note label, with music composed in neo-modern-avant-garde-jazz-improvisational style, representative of the downtown New York music scene. Now, twenty-five years later, Stéphane travels light. He carries only a fountain pen, which he uses to write the perfectly crafted music scores.  

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Stéphane lives on a Mediterranean island where one small movement of head can dramatically change the view. On the left is the spellbinding blue sea, on the right the ragged rocky outcrops of mountain peaks. The arresting episodic spirit of his music, which is both elegant and powerful, mimics the nature that surrounds him. 

 

The entire repertoire on this album was flawlessly recorded in one take at the Funkhaus Berlin and is placed here before you as a gift of beautifully composed, performed, and recorded piece of music. 

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Victoria Jordanova

January 2016

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GEORGICA

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 - A Bugonia

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GEORGICA is a ca. 45 min. work in progress for female voice, flute 1 (doubling piccolo, alto), flute 2 (doubling piccolo, bass), oboe, bassoon, violin, trombone, double-bass, and 4 pianos: 1 solist piano , 1 prepared piano, 2 pianos with special tunings (in thirds and fourths of commas). 

 

The work is using passages from the first half of the fourth (and last) book of Virgil's Georgics. The text is being rather utilized by than entirely performed as a "libretto". The text is used for its phonems. It is the purely the organizational process of the instrumental music which organizes rebuilds back the meaning of the text. The music is in parts a commentary on the text, while remaining strictly instrumental. The piece ressembles in its form a concertante opera for sounds / instruments and voice, where the singer is an integral part of the texture fabric. 

 

Georgics' Book IV is a guidebook for keeping bees. At least so it appears at first glance. It is also a very profound reflection on life, on the connections between humans and the earth. This differed dramatically from the suffering from civil war that Romans of Virgil's time had experienced. However, Georgics are above all: Poetry. A masterpiece of prosody, philosophy and emotions. 

 

INNERLAND was partly written for an operatic voice (in the drama sense of the term), in a stringent intimate yet dramatic format, GEORGICA lands on a new compositional and stylistic phase. While greatly expanding the instrumental palette into a chamber orchestra (with the potent presence of four grand pianos), it is choosing a sound realization where the voice is an integral part of the ensemble, and not the main aspect of the composition,. The instrumentarium elects instruments existing (and treated as) way before the classical era and further romantic / modern aesthetics, if only for pianofortes which are acting both as a legato singing piano and as a percussion ensemble (the prepared piano, and the four pianists who are using the piano physical built to produce concreet sounds), while two pianos are being tuned in thirds of comma subdivisions, and quarter-tones, in instances of the keyboard. 

 

Much as Virgil often uses language characteristic of his predecessor Ennius to give his poetry an archaic quality, my composition fosters a sound far from identifiable aesthetics, by using and mixing sound alloys both pre-dating the XVth century (Ancient times and Middle-Age) and post-dating XXth century serialism and electronic music. 

 

Virgil's scholarship on his predecessors, and his mastery at seamlessly integrating poetic and philosophic themes (as Lucretius in De Rerum Natura) produced an extensive literary reaction by the immediate following generations of authors, towards an "easier", "freer" craftmanship. 

 

I gathered compositional strength and control of the development of material and form on different planes, as I am here very concerned by succesfully formalizing and constructing a musical realization which is part of a fight for regaining a sense of responsability in organizing sound in our times. I aim to create an art where orchestration cannot be separated at all from composition, and vice-versa, an art where both subject, content, material and perspective are of the same process, removed from senseless and pointless colouristic effects and collages which plague new music - not even mentionning para-musical false problems and "return-to" impotencies. 

 

GEORGICA is also a musical commentary on the poetry, the actual word sounds as well as the metaphors, the ideas, their confrontations with our point of view two thousand years in the distance. It is a work of music characterized by constant flux and tensions in both object and purpose.” 

 

For a rather "trivial" example, here is dactylic verse from Virgil's Georgics when the words are given their natural stress:

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Quéd fáciat laétas ségetes, quó sídere térram.

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and here is the same verse when the metrical pattern is allowed to determine the stress:

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Quéd faciát laetás segetés, quo sídere térram.

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Possibly the rhythm is a suspense element, making the prosody (music) an insertion of (seemingly) conflicting yet (matrix) unified instances and thickens the plot, until stress and meter happened to coincide (as in "sídere térram" above).

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In the hands of a master poet such as Virgil, however, the natural stress accent may be thought to function as a second rhythm, whose interplay with the quantitative rhythm can even be regarded as a source of unique aesthetic effects.

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Such considerations are used in the composition to great musical effects, rythms of colours (harmonic spectrum, harmonic "progression", "counterpoint" stacks), and form building. 

 

Its larger form derives from an array of references - to name a few: the text, the prosody rhythm, the coalescence of musical language elements, of point against point, into longer durations - much as the world of bees forms from a unified matrice to seemingly disperse, and then to further mutate in honey, the spectral realization of the harmonics contained in the orchestration and in nature life forms as modelization, the sociology of the imagery of the works of the honey producing in the Southern Alps through ages and societies, the craft of composing as beekeeping. More over, as noted, the larger form is complex, yet unified as it is derived from the organization of sounds and modular musical cells, rather than from the text. 

 

An outstanding larger feature of the piece's course itself should be clear to the listener: That course and its form are a reflexion on spontaneous generation. Or rather: A Bugonia. 

 

In the ancient Mediterranean region, and most particularly during Virgil's time, bugonia was a ritual based on the belief that bees were spontaneously generated from a cow's carcass, although it is possible that the ritual had more currency as a poetic and learned trope than as an actual practice. 

 

A similar earlier story of the creation of bees is seen in the Book of Judges, where Samson puts forward the riddle of "out of the strong came forth sweetness," referring to a swarm of bees found inside a dead lion. 

 

And so with this large-scale composition: From the lion mass of our culture, a swarm of bees, yet an organized society of free and concerting sounds, into honey.

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Stéphane Furic-Leibovici

January 2014

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ENSEMBLE JEAN BARRAQUÉ

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 - What's in a name

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The ENSEMBLE JEAN BARRAQUÉ is a chamber ensemble dedicated to the creation, performance, and promotion of the music of our time. The name of the ensemble is an homage to the late Jean Barraqué, whom I consider one of the greatest and most important composers of the second part of the twentieth-century. An inventor and visionary, an intense truth seeker, Barraqué was also, both through his expressivity radical and ever-changing choices and through his masterly architecture, the Romantic of the late 20th century. I do not find in Barraqué's works, even so for a mere seconds, some music which would cater to a lack of rigor or abandon itself to a guiltful simplicism: Barraqué is - in this regard and into our modern era, the quintessence of a man who refused what the philosopher Benny Levy named "L"Empire du Rien". His oeuvre is of limited quantity. Furthermore, it features only chamber vocal music, chamber instrumental and solo pieces. Nevertheless, it is of a consistant highest quality. Barraqué contributed enormously to the development of postwar music. 

 

The ensemble is comprised of performers and composers that began with the goal of developing a true repertory ensemble for new music in Berlin, where it was originally formed. It now assembles itself where and when necessary. It strives to achieve a flexibility and rapport within all realms of contemporary music. It concentrates on world premieres and masterpieces from the last fifty years. The Ensemble's soloists share a passion for 20th-21st century music. This vital mission of disseminating musical works has led the ensemble to perform, premiere, record new music works in our time and for our times. 

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Stéphane Furic-Leibovici

Berlin - September 2010

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THE JUGENDSTIL SERIES

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 - for a handful of improvised music masters

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The JUGENDSTIL SERIES are some the finest conceptual challenges, realisations and recordings in the realm of music for improvisers of the highest plateau. These set a standard in the art of composition for improvisers and chamber music writing and improvising, within stringent settings (a few monodic instruments, very little - if any, percussions or harmonic instruments) and with unique instrumentation in the history of music. 

 

Recordings of the Jugendstil projects, featuring Lee Konitz, Chris Speed, and Chris Cheek, among others, were produced by Jim Black, and released by the the legendary ESP-Disk record label in 2008 and 2010 to a wide critical acclaim.

 

The first installment and the original creed for some of the concepts developed all along the journey that these ensembles would take, was conceived with the music which got recorded for the aptly titled album MUSIC FOR 3, VOL. 1, recorded in 1997.  

 

That album featured a composition named "In the Embrasure", and a preliminary Collins English Dictionary definition printed in the CD package:  

 

Embrasure: an opening forming a door or window, having splayed sides that increase the width of the opening in the interior. [from French, from obsolete "embraser", "to widen", of uncertain origin]

 

Furic-Leibovici told NPR Kevin Whitehead, what we are listening to here, is music concerned with "the inside of sounds". Or how to make a universe, a field of glowing flowers, from a simple petal.  

 

These realisations were deemed as "utterly distinctive" by The Wire, and were further described as follows:  

 

"The epitome of finesse. Effortless and deep at the same time. The music unfolds for the listener in the subtlest of ways. The composer is challenging our very notion of what will come next. Like a mediation on color and space, you begin to let go of your assumptions and allow the forms and structures wash over you."  

 

Raul d'Gama Rose starts to extend a descriptive key to the sounds, in his review of the second installment of the series:  

 

"Everything about this extraordinary album, Jugendstil, is deliberate and attains its own level of perfection. To begin with, there is its name: The word Jugendstil (German for youth style, akin to the French Art Nouveau movement of the late nineteenth century) is so apt, considering that it defines the music contained in this record. For instance just as that art movement was typified by highly stylized and curvilinear forms, so also is the music on this record. Here, the aural replaces the visual form of the art it seeks to represent and the compositions are typified by their stylized phrases that sweep through the senses with notes that create swathes of sound. Sometimes the music is linear and propulsive and at other times it is circular--even like a helix.  

 

Stéphane Furic Leibovici, composes music which is defined by the descriptive grammar of the earth - deliberate and flowing organically and continuously until its imperative dénouement - each time the song is sung by the instruments employed to play it, with a high degree of understanding of dissonant sound and rhythmic complexity. It unfolds as the relationship between sound and silence develops - with dynamic tension - throughout the composition.  

 

There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between the players. Their performances here are beyond the interplay that describes great trios. Rather it is as if the challenging compositions have been given a life all their own by the brilliant interpretations of the improvisers who play them."

 

It turns out that these concepts and compositions were first always meant to be very strong structurally and destined to be interpreted with different instrumentation, emphasizing the versatility of the material. Who'd guess "Feuillage des Gestes" was conceived first as a string orchestra majestic piece? However, one must point out that Furic-Leibovici always wrote the final trios compositions and structures with not only an intimate knowledge (and with such pure… love: he knows his instruments) the final instrumentation for each instance, but even more so: for the individual performers. I.e., different pieces were written for Konitz, or Speed, and yet sometimes, as a show of mastery craft, the same ones were used in different settings (these belong to what Furic-Leibovici call his "Swiss Army knife pieces" stack).  

 

Kevin Whitehead aptly concludes in his notes for the ESP-Disk recordings original first release:  

 

"The composer takes seriously the commitment to organic forms the name Jugendstil signifies. Crucial to the project was the unusual instrumentation, which in effect allowed him to build an ensemble sound from scratch ("I am not interested in styles. What I am after is substance.").  

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In our correspondence I'd called this music austere. He responded, maybe it's just different.  

 

Furic-Leibovici is clearing a space, where he is free to operate outside of specific genres but free to draw upon them. He creates a composer's music for improvisers and with improvisers to bring it to life. In the end, listening to the Jugendstil realisations is like sitting at the edge of the twin cliffs of improvised and composed avant-garde music at the turn of this new century. Peering into the unknown, presumably. Clean slate. Clear space. Begin again."

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MUSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES

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 Art Lange, Editor

Point of Departure

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It’s no secret Lee Konitz has devoted his career to searching for musical challenges; witness the breadth and diversity of his sixty-plus-year discography. And yet, ironically, he has challenged himself most often by continuing to confront the standard jazz repertory of the ‘30s and ‘40s – whether the Tin Pan Alley songbook or paraphrases drawn from its familiar chord structures – in a manner, adapted from his studies with the psychologically-motivated Lennie Tristano, which proposes that an infinite variety of musical solutions to these puzzles are available to be excavated not just from the specific nature of the material itself, but his own imagination. To achieve this, his determination and tactics have been so distinctive that his playing – especially his approach to melodic variation – has affected a powerful stylistic pull such that all but a handful of his collaborators over the years have been swept along in his wake. I mention all of this by way of introduction precisely because this is not what you will hear on this disc.  

 

For Jugendstil II, bassist and composer Stéphane Furic Leibovici has crafted an environment that presents not only the canny veteran Konitz, but the listener as well, with musical and conceptual challenges. Though recorded first (in 2005), this second volume to reference the artistic movement “Jugendstil” (or “Jugend style,” the name of the German response to the late 19th and early 20th century’s Art Nouveau, taken from an influential magazine of the time) shares with its namesake a sense of fluid, sinuous, sensuous shapes abstracted from Nature. As with the earlier volume, Furic Leibovici has composed a large part of the music in a style that reflects his penchant for chamber music – the previous release, sans Konitz, included a sequence of variations dedicated to Elliott Carter, and his CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY (Soul Note, 1996) adapted music of Aaron Copland – which he has opened up for the improvisers in a way that recalls the equally soft-spoken yet intense later Jimmy Giuffre trios. Tenor saxophonist Chris Cheek has been a defining presence in Furic Leibovici’s evolving soundscape since the latter’s debut recording, KISHINEV (Soul Note) in 1990. Bringing a free spirit like Konitz into this pre-designed group dynamic was a calculated risk.  

 

The results are fascinating.  

 

Furic Leibovici’s compositions offer intervallic relationships and melodic contours that point Konitz in unexpected harmonic directions, outside of the modulations found in his usual repertoire, and he responds with typically probing yet surprising embellishment. The interplay between the two saxophonists is remarkable; there is a closeness of intent that makes their phrasing nearly indistinguishable at times, and Cheek softens his tone and reaches up into the tenor saxophone’s highest range frequently, playing above Konitz’s alto as his former partner Warne Marsh sometimes did. Without the impetus of a rhythm section per se, several of the compositions sustain a similar, subdued mood, compelling the listener to notice the nuances that shape the lattice-like lines. Others stand apart – “A Music of Tranquility” where the saxophonists hover above a repeated G in the bass like bees around a sunflower, and the Ornette-ish “Local Heroes” with its tart horn harmonies.  

 

Credit Furic Leibovici with illuminating an Old Master in a new light.  

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Art Lange

2010

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JUGENDSTIL II : NOTES FROM THE PRODUCER

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 Jim Black, composer / performer

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It started with a conversation in Brooklyn between composer / double-bassist Stéphane Furic Leibovici and myself soon to be producer of a special three hour recording session. Armed with a day's worth of chamber ensemble music composed especially for this occasion, we soon went about realizing Stephane's latest and final attempt to pay respect to the history of music by bringing the elder Lee Konitz and the younger Chris Cheek together through the lens of a young composer and enabler.  

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What a special vibe it was... Music with as much space as notes... Leaving room and time for the improviser as well as the listener to absorb every gesture... timeless beauty. Sitting here enjoying this all-over-too-soon journey, I stick to my words I said to Stéphane after the session: This is gold.  

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Jim Black

2006

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JUGENDSTIL II : NOTES FROM THE COMPOSER

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The series of compositions for JUGENDSTIL : II, and their realizations in the album with Konitz, Cheek and a wonderful chamber ensemble, are the only first-degree autobiographical music I have composed. A tale of episodes, some terrible and dramatic, some beautiful and holy, it begins like a storm, with the Homeric legend of Odysseus returning home to Penelope.

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The "Symphonie Fantastique" is possibly the most famous, unabashed autobiographical program music in the history of music, A century later, Berg tightly concealed, within his "Lyrische-Suite" forms and pitch-classes, the story of his passion with Hanna Fuchs. Somewhere between a cypher and an hermeneutic, and at the same time residing on a another plane than the music itself, lays this text I wrote during the same period that this music was conceived. 

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Avec les fresques oubliées, avec les signes ascendants, 

Avec le bleu de la Mediterranée, agile profondeur, 

Avec le rose de Tyr, 

Avec le blanc de La Vierge, 

 

Avec la terre bienveillante, 

Avec l'été qui revient, à son tour, 

Avec la lumière vibrante sur les dunes: 

Les voiles dansent le désert. 

La cataracte gronde 

Et rompt de ses flots 

Le monde et le soumet. 

 

             (il y aura toujours une autre fois)  

 

Avec le clair-obscur du passé, 

 

Avec la porte à tout jamais fermée, 

Avec la fenêtre grande ouverte, 

 

Avec la chevelure sans fin de Pénélope, 

Avec la main qui bande l'arc d'Ulysse, 

And to his honors and to his valiant parts, 

And to his tales of sorrow, and to his storm of fortunes, 

 

Avec le compas qui dérive vers le sud de nos âmes, 

Avec les corps suant le sel, 

Avec les chants sourds du désir, 

 

Avec les astres anciens, 

Avec la nuit nouvelle, 

 

Avec le soleil, 

 

Avec toi, 

 

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C'est la maison où l'on n'entre qu'au crépuscule.

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Stéphane Furic Leibovici

2006

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THE JUGENDSTIL II WAREHOUSE DRAWINGS

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 MP Landis, painter

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Though this series is a part of the larger ongoing WD series, these specific pieces were created while listening to Stéphane Furic Leibovici’s JUGENDSTIL II. In both this recording and the first JUGENDSTIL album, I get the sense of notes moving through water, as in a stream, coming and going, disappearing to emerge again. Though this was not a conscious consideration while making them, I believe that my related WD works took on the same sense of movement and space. In my work I try to create a structure that can allow further creation to just happen through my reactions to my life, as nature happens, without further concept or force of will. This is one reason that these compositions feel familiar to me; they have a sense of nature happening, of unfolding. I feel that Furic-Leibovici’s Jugendstil body of work is a relative to my WD work as they both change and develop through the years while retaining certain structured concepts that allows the freedom of growth.   

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MP Landis

2010

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