Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes / Gradual Requiem (1984)

O tome kako se postupno gubiš u magli.

 
www.ingrammarshall.com/

This is an extraordinarily mellow piece ... a seemingly vast three-dimensional expanse ... sober and reflective.

--High Fidelity

The genesis of "Fog Tropes" is as follows: In 1979, performance artist, Grace Ferguson, asked me to prepare a "soundscore" for her piece, "Don't Sue the Weatherman." I went around the San Francisco Bay and recorded a number of different fog horns. A kind of tape collage resulted, using not only fog horns but other sea sounds, falsetto keenings and gambuh (a Balinese flute). Much electronic processing and tape manipulation were visited upon the raw sounds.

I extracted part of the score, calling it simply "Fog", and began playing it as a tape piece before "Gradual Requiem". The idea of adding brass music as an overlay - or a trope, if you will - came when John Adams invited me to perform at the San Francisco Symphony's "New and Unusual" concert series. He suggested that "Fog" might benefit from some "live" horns.

So, I composed the new version in January, 1982, employing some of the harmonic ideas of "Gradual Requiem" (e.g., ascending minor triads) and it was premiered at the Japan Center Theater on February 18th with members of the San Francisco New Music Ensemble, John Adams conducting. It has since enjoyed performances by other brass groups and seems to have become one of my most popular pieces.

A lot of people are reminded of San Francisco when they hear this piece, but not I. To me it is just about fog, and being lost in the fog. The brass players should sound as if they were off in a raft floating in the middle of a mist-enshrouded bay.--Ingram Marshall

I haven't encountered the work of Ingram Marshall before but this label's last reissue was Arthur Russell so they have my attention here. On this LP is a shortish piece called 'Fog Tropes' and five longer pieces which make up the lengthy Gradual Requiem suite. 'Fog Tropes' combines field recorded foghorns and nautical sounds as well as some weird falsetto vocals  alongside a brass sextet treated with tape delay. It's haunting and evocative, intended to leave the listener stranded in suspension, and is very effective.

Over the course of 'Gradual Requiem' Marshall's delay experiments continue through a series of instruments, beginning with a slow and droney synthesizer before a mandolin joins in, and by the second movement we have a piano plinking away quite energetically, the echoes causing all sorts of accidental shapes to emerge. The remaining three move from breathy gambuh (Balinese flute) tooting to methodically twinkling mandolin and piano to wailing vocal drones and finally a thoughtful closing passage on synthesizer, mandolin and piano which inverts the melody of the opening passage, or so the composer's liner notes explain.

It's a weird and beautiful record that uses tape echo in a very soulful and explorative way. Well worth a listen. - Norman Records

Arc Light Editions, the reissue label curated by The Wire's Jennifer Lucy Allan, have announced the details of their second release, following last year's first ever vinyl pressing of Arthur Russell's Another Thought album. Released on 12th April, it will be a vinyl reissue of American composer Ingram Marshall's 1984 release Fog Tropes/Gradual Requiem, originally released through Foster Reed's New Albion label and not repressed on vinyl since. The two pieces it gathers, 1981's Fog Tropes and 1980's Gradual Requiem, are among Marshall's best-known, drawing together environmental field recordings, brass instruments and voice into extended, exquisitely slow-to-unfold musical movements. You can listen to clips from its six tracks via the embed below.
Originally from New York, Ingram Marshall studied with Morton Subotnick at Cal Arts in the 1970s. He became known in the 1970s and 1980s for his electroacoustic compositions, which incorporated tape manipulation and synthesis, and drew influence from traditions including US minimalism and Balinese gamelan. Both Fog Tropes and Gradual Requiem, for example, involve live brass players alongside electronics, environmental recordings of San Francisco Bay foghorns (in the former), tape loops and the gambuh, a Balinese flute. The former is a single ten-minute long piece, while the latter is split into five parts, and is conducted by John Adams. The press text accompanying the release quotes Adams as describing the music as "the antithesis of the human voice against the vast becalmed presence of the natural world". - thequietus.com/

"These are works so rich in associations, profound in their connection to our time and place in history, and so carefully and subtly made, that when they do sink in, they can very well come to haunt you."
—Mark Swed, Chamber Music Magazine

"Not since Elliot Carter has a composer extended the expressive scope of the quartet medium so meaningfully; a wonderful piece."
—John van Rhein, the Chicago Tribune, on Voces Resonae

"… [Authentic Presence is] a compelling new classic of the piano repertoire…. Marshall proved that as much as he loves his electronic washes, he can also induce ecstasy without them."
—Kyle Gann, The Village Voice

"Marshall is a composer with his own voice. The amalgam of influences on that voice includes Sibelius, Indonesian music, Eastern European folk song, electronics, and most recently, American hymns. The resulting music seamlessly and gracefully combines all these sources into a generally reflective and increasingly elegiac music that is often extremely moving. His recent Kingdom Come, for orchestra and tape, combines many of these sources into a remarkably beautiful work."
—Steve Reich, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award Citation

“Marshall is one of the few widely regarded contemporary composers who has devoted considerable attention to quality music for voices. In the 1990s he was a major force in promoting awareness of the unique singing style of Eastern European women’s choruses, and many of his works find inspiration in choral traditions outside the mainstream, such as early rural American psalmody. This he accomplished in a personal and attractive style that is unmistakably modern while avoiding gratuitous milking of its multiculturalism or appealing to a shallow mysticism.

Sunday’s highlight was the premiere of Marshall’s PsalmBook for male (alto, tenor, bass) ensemble and string quartet. The work, commissioned by Lively Arts, was based on six very early American psalms. . . . His integration of string quartet and voices was masterful.”
—San Francisco Classical Voice, on PsalmBook, premiered by Lionheart and the ACME Quartet, presented by Stanford Lively Arts, March 2012

"I hope my music is remembered for its personality rather than its style or historical position." Ingram Marshall feels that his music emanates from an extremely personal and private source, and that critical attempts to lump him with the minimalists, downtowners, New Romanticists or the "California School" are futile. "Stylistic monikers are handles which make discussion of art easier. I might say I am a minimalist just to let someone know, right off the bat, what I am not (e.g., not a serialist, not a rock n' roll song writer), but usually I regret having said it. I feel strongly now that music always points to something else, has other meanings—even when it means only itself—and in this sense I am an 'expressivist'.

Much of Ingram Marshall's aesthetic was developed in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies when he spent hours in solitude working in the sonic cave of an electronic music studio. Even though he has moved away from purely electronic music, and composes more for instrumental ensembles or mixed media, Marshall's earlier "one-to-one" experience with electronic music seems to have shaped his personal, "painterly" approach to music making.

His earliest encounters with electronic music were in the mid-sixties while a graduate student at Columbia University. Although officially working in the area of historical musicology, he managed to study with Ussachevsky, Davidowsky and Mimarogulu at the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. After leaving Columbia he decided to concentrate on composition and worked briefly at the NYU Composers Workshop in Greenwich Village with Subotnick and Tcherepnin. In 1970 he became a graduate assistant to Subotnick at Cal Arts and stayed on to teach there for several years after receiving an MFA in 1971.

It was at Cal Arts that he became seduced by the dark colors and endless forms of Indonesian music, for there it was possible to study the gamelan traditions of Java and Bali under the tutelage of the master Jogjakartan musician, KRT Wasitodipura. A summer study trip in 1971 to Indonesia, and further work at the ASEA summer schools in Berkeley and Seattle in subsequent years furthered his knowledge and interest.

Much of Marshall's music has a quality of slowed-down sense of time and dreamy evocativeness that is clearly derived from what he heard and played in Indonesia. The gamelan gong forms have also influenced the way his music is structured in some works, but he has not made a major theoretical issue out of this, feeling that form and procedure is largely intuitive and personal.

With his interest in the technology of electronic music and love of the traditions of Asia, it was not surprising that he developed, in the mid 70s, a series of live-electronic performance pieces which employed the Balinese flute (gambuh), and analogue synthesizers with elaborate tape delay systems. Marshall also maintained an interest in "text-sound" composition which resulted in a series of tape pieces based on the manipulation of the spoken voice. A Fulbright Fellowship allowed him several months in Sweden in 1976 to pursue his interest in that area. His most significant live- electronic performance work from this period is "The Fragility Cycles", which combines music from the gambuh series with experiments in the text sound genre. Marshall performed this work widely in Europe and the USA.

His fascination with tape delay systems in the live electronic solo work led him to try similar ideas with instrumental combinations. "Non Confundar" (string sextet, clarinet, alto flute), written for the San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble in 1977 was an attempt to bridge the gap between the immediacy and personality of the soloistic live-electronic medium and the more formalized environment of the fully notated ensemble piece. He has since developed a series of instrumental works which require real time electronic manipulation through tape delay or digital processing. Examples are "Fog Tropes" for brass sextet and tape (1982) and "Voces Resonae" for string quartet written for the Kronos Quartet in 1984. "Fog Tropes" has been widely performed and is perhaps Marshall's best known piece. It was selected as one of two official American entries for the 1985 UNESCO International Composers Rostrum in Paris.

In the early eighties, Marshall collaborated with photographer Jim Bengston on two works, "Alcatraz" and "Eberbach" which combined moving still photography with live electronically processed music. They toured with these works in Europe and the States. The music for "Alcatraz," along with a booklet of some of the Bengston photographs, was released on New Albion in 1991. The music for "Eberbach" appeared on a Nonesuch recording as "Penitential Visions."

Marshall's main focus since 1985 has been ensemble music, both with and without electronics. His "Sinfonia 'Dolce far Niente'", commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony, juxtaposes gamelan-inspired textures and rhythms with music which unabashedly derives its inspiration from composers such as Bruckner and Sibelius. Based on a four-note motif, it uses gradual accumulation and subtle repetition to build up its structures.

The recent "Hidden Voices", commissioned by Nonesuch Records, had its premiere at New Music America at The Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1989. It features digitally sampled voices from old recordings of Eastern European lament singers along with a "live" soprano. One of the main conceits of this piece is the simplicity and purity of the solo voice over the wild, keening, often frenetic choirs of vocal sounds he concocts through his electronic wizardry. Marshall's new work, "A Peaceable Kingdom", commissioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group by Betty Freeman, uses a chamber ensemble in concert with a tape part. Bearing some relationship to "Hidden Voices", it combines multi-layered textures of church bells and a Yugoslavian village band with the peaceable utterances and commentary of woodwinds and strings.

More recent work has been with the Kronos Quartet ("Fog Tropes II") and the singer Paul Hillier for whom "Sierran Songs" was written in 1994 . In 1996 Marshall composed "Kingdom Come" on commission from the American Composers Orchestra. It was subsequently recorded and released on Nonesuch along with the Kronos version of "Fog Tropes II" and the Paul Hillier Theater of Voices rendition of "Hymnodic Delays."

"Evensongs" for String quartet and taped interludes was released on New Albion in 1996 along with his piano quartet, "In My beginning is My End."

"Dark Waters" and "Holy Ghosts" were both written for oboist Libby Van Cleve and are good examples of Marshall's use of live digital delays to create rich tapestries of sound with haunting resonances of other times and cultures. They were released on New Albion in 2000.

Marshall's recent works for large ensembles include "Bright kingdoms" for orchestra and tape (2003—a Magnum Opus commission), "Dark Florescence", a concerto for two guitars and orchestra written for Andy Summers and Benjamin Verdery (premiered by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2005), and a newly commissioned work based on the Orpheus myth for the New York based chamber orchestra "Orpheus" (2006)

- www.newalbion.com/artists/marshalli/

Ingram Marshall: Today’s Music Tomorrow

Interview Videotaped and Transcribed by Amanda MacBlane

1. Tape Music vs. Score-Based Music
2. Musical Boundaries
3. From Fog Tropes to Hymnodic Delays
4. Working with Other Musicians
5. The Orchestra
6. Recordings
7. Promotion and Documentation
8. Excerpts from the Music of Ingram Marshall

• Download the Entire Transcript [44K PDF]

Interview by Daniel Varela
(July 2003)

"Mixing of styles, borrowing from other historical periods and other cultures - these are certainly hallmarks of our current pluralistic times, but I don't think the nail has been hit squarely on the head with that word which indicates, after all, simply the opposite of singular. The fact that many people are doing many different things at once does not constitute a style or trend. The one factor I see clearly evident in much of the new music is that of intense personality. The composer now has the opportunity, to develop a personal art without regard to tradition or anti- tradition." ¹

More than twenty years ago, composer Ingram Marshall wrote the above paragraph regarding the problem of language and style in musical composition. Marshall has been one of the most outstanding voices of his generation, building a very personal work developed under the influences of electronic music, minimalism and sounds from different cultures. His early works are mostly based on electronic treatments of voices ² and, after a travel to Indonesia in early seventies, he has deeply involved in a kind of works using tonal materials in a cloudish textures mixing instrumental, electronic and acoustic resources. During seventies and eighties, Marshall gave us a very consistent body of work in which beauty and construction are not opposite terms. From this period, "Fog Tropes," "Gradual Requiem," "Gambuh I," "Hidden Voices" and "Alcatraz" gained wide recognition as works in which tonal materials are combined with electronic tapestries in a very personal way ^{3, 4, 5, 6}. Remarkably, he is a composer who is interested and committed with a deep sense of music expressiveness, a very special area of creation particularly neglected for many experimental artists ⁷. His attention to these concerns has driven to him to the study of several traditions, technical to spiritual, dating from ancient times. In other words, in Marshall's hands, experimental music can be related to different traditions in many forms.

This interview was done between January and April 2003 and footnotes were added in order to give more references to composers' work.

---

PSF: Many times, your music has been compared to late Romanticism, Sibelius, Bruckner or Mahler. In which aspect are those sources linked to your own work?

 I am especially fond of Sibelius ^8a,b,c and I dont know exactly why. Perhaps its the sound of his music more than anything, although he was a brilliant formalist. He seems to know just how far to go with something.

 Bruckner's ^9a,b music I love, but it doesn't have that much effect on my composing, although I did once base a piece on a theme from his "Te Deum." His relentlessness attracts me. He doesn't know when to stop--very different from Sibelius who, by the way, was influenced by him.

 Mahler ¹⁰ affects me the least of these three. I used to like him more. His strongest works are however unavoidable. "Ich bin der Welt abhanden bekommen" is probably the most perfect song every written ¹¹. But Mahler's sighs, his appogiaturas, are irresistible.

PSF: In what manner have you been influenced by non-western (particularly Indonesian) musics? What is your interest in gamelan?

 In the late sixties we suddenly had all this "new" world music at our disposal, especially for me, Indian and Javanese as well as Balinese. I was lucky to find myself in a situation where I could study in Indonesia with teachers there and really learn something about the gamelan traditions. I sometimes uses melodies and scales that are based on Balinese ones, but they are never the exact same ones because the tuning is so different.

 The long, luxurious, perfumed adagios of the ancient Javanese gamelans still haunt me and will forever. That's an idea in music to which I will always aspire ¹². Regarding Eastern European music, while I never studied it or got involved as I did with Indonesian music, I have always found the folk music of this region close to me, and yes, the lamentations are particularly compelling, also the very close harmonies.
 

PSF: Your use of electronic media seems particularly sensitive regarding its manipulation of treated voices, soundscapes or clearly tonal materials. Could you comment these aspects of your compositions? What do you think about technology used in expressive ways vs. a more intellectual/tech based approach?

 I never worship technology for itself. It's only a tool and one must avoid the pitfall of always wanting the newest, most up to date technology in order to realize one's music, because that perfect technology will never exist. It is better to use what you have, what you find at your disposal and make the best of it- then you are in charge. ¹³
 

PSF: What can you say about your approach to new ways of working with tonal materials? Frequently, its possible to listen your pieces as a kind of tonality "behind the fog," with gradual changes in layers of sound and "shadows & lights." It seems that sometimes there's a kind of impressionist color in which we could find smaller sound particles.

Yes, tonality is almost always there, lurking behind some foggy veil! But what is its function? That is the question. I relate to Debussy in that I find harmonies like mood or colors and the way they relate "functionally" is not so important, although that is always there too.

The reason the 12-tone composers gave up on tonality was that they had seen it reach its limits in terms of functionality, so they abandoned it and came up with a pathetic, artificial construction to take its place. We in the latter part of the 20th Century have realized that tonality was never dead or finished, it just was on the wrong road. There are many "new" ways of dealing with it. It is our common, inherent language ¹⁴. The impressionist cloud and finding particles in it, this is very interesting but not something I do consciously. If that's your take on it, then fine!! I do love Debussy, of course ^15a,b.
 

PSF: And what about the "hidden quotations" of hymns and/or ethnic musics ? I've noticed that in more recent works, like "Evensongs," you've used tonal materials more rhythmically driven.

This is music I remember from my childhood, so it is a very personal ore I mine here ¹⁶. I guess I am a bit like Ives in my use of this stuff, although he is the real master!
 

PSF: Many times, your music has been related to so-called "West coast music" which seems related (or with some family ties) to musicians like Lou Harrison and, departing from the early seventies, Harold Budd or people in the New Albion or Cold Blue catalogues. Certain composers seems connected with the idea of an static/extended ("aimless tonality" or more proper "aimless major" in Tom Johnson's word ) sense of harmony. Could you comment/discuss this point - or about the West coast sound, even when you are living in CT?

Well, I dont know about Tom Johnson's "aimless Major," ¹⁷ I don't know what that means. I would be more likely to be accused of an aimless minor.

But the California environment was very important for me and I still feel a part of it. Where I actually live isn't so important. I don't think I would have developed as the compose I am had I stayed in New York . Except for Glass, all the so-called Minimalists developed in California ¹⁸.
 

PSF: I heard about your writings on 18th century aesthetics doctrine concerning affections and its role where music represents emotions. I'm very interested in this point. Can you tell me about your ideas on this?

Well, my musicological interest in that goes back a long way before I really considered myself a composer. I have always thought the hermeneutics of music (was) very important. What does music mean, what does it convey? What's behind it? Does it just mean itself?

It is not surprising that I was interested in those 18th century writings about the "affections" ¹⁹ because I was attracted to music because of its power to convey meaning and there was little discussion of that in the mid-century. The rationalists of the Enlightenment thought they could codify all the emotions and how they might be conjured musically.
 

PSF: Some of your works are related to special personal/spiritual situations, i.e. "Three Penitential Visions," "Gradual Requiem" and "Hidden Voices." Have you some special consideration about musical creation and some concept on transcendence or are these works more focused on special/particular situations?

The connection between music and spiritual matters is so obvious that it is easy to forget it. I began to understand this more after my father died and I realized that I was composing music to help me deal with the feelings of loss.

Now it is more generalized. I think the divine is always within and creating music is a way of releasing it. Spiritual music connections are too many to mention, or the subject of an entirely different interview! ²⁰
 

PSF: What do you think about composers more overtly related to a spiritual/religious approach to sound like Pärt, Gorecki, Tavener, and the late Goeyvaerts ²¹ ?

Part I like very much, Gorecki is great when he is great! Tavener generally leaves me cold because it seems contrived, although he has written some gorgeous music. Goeyvarts I don't know at all--should I?
 

PSF: Listening to your music, I'm impressed by its sensitive quality, due to "flow / drifting"; more than a "logical" kind of process . How do you compose? Have you some formal plans before you start to write? Have you different strategies in front of a new work or is you composition more related to a relaxed/ flowing process?

I rarely pre-compose, that is, have a formal plan in place, and if I do, it usually ends up all messed up! I tend to let the materials seek their form, although this gets me into trouble and I often revise a lot for balance and structure. I feel most satisfied when the music seems to direct itself. Having some good ideas at the start helps a lot. Overall I seek "harmony."
 

PSF: Could you describe your current creative period? Do you see as related to earlier stages of work? In which aspects?

I can see that I had an early period when I was experimenting but now it all seems like one long flow and I'll leave the categorization up to others!

I am composing a work for "Bang on a Can" (an all amplified ensemble) which is called "Muddy Waters," and has little to do with the blues singer. It takes off from an old American psalm tune, and the psalm (number 69) goes: "The waters in unto my soul are come, God me save/ I am in muddy deep sunk down/ where I no standing have." The music is about being low, slow and stuck--at least until the end when things lighten up a bit. Come hear it in New York in June.

---

Footnotes

1) Marshall, I: "Modernism. Forget it!" Soundings 11, Santa Fe, 1981.

2) Strickland, E: Liner notes to Ingram Marshall/Ikon. New World Records CD 80577.

3) Ingram Marshall: Fog Tropes, Gradual Requiem, Gambuh I. New Albion CD NA002

4) Ingram Marshall: Three Penitential Visions, Hidden Voices. Elektra Nonesuch CD 9 79227-2

5) Ingram Marshall: Alcatraz. New Albion CD NA 040

6) Strickland, E: "Ingram Marshall," in American Composers. Dialogues in Contemporary Music. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991.

7) Johnson,T: "Avant-Gardists Reach Toward the People: Alvin Curran, Ingram Marshall, David Mahler, and Warren Burt." Village Voice, March 7, 1977. Reprinted in The Voice of the New Music, Apollohuis, Eindhoven, 1989.

"Ingram Marshall, a composer-performer from California, presented a somewhat similar continuous solo work in a loft on North Moore Street. This hour-plus work, 'Fragility Cycles,' was largely prerecorded, though Marshall also fed live synthesizer sounds into the mix, and he occasionally played a gambuh, an end-blown Balinese flute. This piece was a veritable panorama of lush stereophonic sound, with more or less continuous reverb, and it came across with a gloss reminiscent of many commercial film scores. The music moved from resonating vocal 'cries in the mountains,' to flute solos, to an electronically distorted Sibelius symphony, to processed speech sounds. Swedish as well as English texts were transformed in the adroit multitrack mixtures, and everything blended smoothly into a big, velvety piece. It was a superpleasant concert, and while a familiarity with Sibelius would have been useful, one didn't really need to know anything about music or avant-garde developments to appreciate what Marshall was doing. As I said, I don't know why avant-garde composers such as these have been seeking wider audiences and moving toward more accessible styles. Nor am I sure I like the idea. On one hand, I keep thinking about Off-Off-Broadway, about how it began around 10 years ago as a vital experimental genre with brilliant discoveries every season, and then gradually became a sort of farm-club system for commercial theatre, and I keep hoping that the same thing won't happen in music. On the other hand, I'm a little tired of hearing long, drawn-out experimental works that explore only one small experimental question, and I'm glad to see composers reaching out to general listeners..."

8a) Layton, R: "Sibelius; Finland's voice in the world." Virtual Finland, November 19, 2001. http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/sibelius.html. An excellent profile written by one of the World's leading experts in Sibelius'music.

8b) Niemi, I: "Ainola. The home of Jean Sibelius." Virtual Finland, April 8, 2002. http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/ainola.html. Interesting picture on Sibelius' house and surrounding landscapes for a better understanding of his musical sense of space and time.

8c) de Bode, P: Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957). A selected bibliography http://home.hccnet.nl/p.de.bode/sibbib.htm#goss2

9a) Engel, G: "The life of Anton Bruckner." Chord And Discord. January 1940. Vol 2. No 1 A Journal Of Modern Musical Progress. Published by the Bruckner Society of America, Inc

9b) Engel, G: Biography of Anton Bruckner, linked to impressive Jason Greshes' Mahler web pages http://www.netaxs.com/~jgreshes/mahler/brucknerbio.html

10) Engel,G: Biography of Gustav Mahler: http://www.netaxs.com/~jgreshes/mahler/cdindex.html with a lot of remarkable readings in the same page (i.e.: Mahler's Musical Language, also by Engel)

11) Edward R. Reilly: Mahler, Rückert Lieder (1901 - 1902) http://www.americansymphony.org/dialogues_extensions/98_99season/6th_concert/mahler.cfm

"The poetic theme of "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," one of Mahler's most beautiful and moving songs, is again unusual. It evokes the peace achieved through the poet's withdrawal from the everyday turmoil of the world and his absorption in the most meaningful and central aspects of his life: his heaven, his life, and his song. (By implication the last is the product of the preceding two). The comparatively long introduction, presented once more by an orchestra of woodwinds and strings, but this time with an English horn, and without the brighter sound of a flute, presents a wonderful expanding melody that moves upward from a simple two notes, to three, and then a more rapid extension to the line's melodic peak, followed by a descent that completes the arc. A variant of this descent is used again to conclude and frame the three stanzas of the main body of the song. The setting of the beginning of each stanza draws on the introduction in different forms, and in each continues differently, with the second moving further afield in order to return more clearly to the opening in the third. In its melodic development, the transparent interweaving of the instrumental and vocal lines and in the subtle fluctuation between inner tension and repose, the song represents one of Mahler's supreme achievements. At the same time it points to a later masterpiece, the "Abschied" movement in Das Lied von der Erde.

12) Strickland, E: Liner notes to Ingram Marshall/Ikon. New World Records 80577.

"In 1971 he spent the summer in Indonesia with Charlemagne Palestine, studying with K.A.T. Wasitodipura, a Jogjakartan gamelan master on the CalArts faculty. After Indian raga, the repeating cycles of interlocking modules in gamelan were the most important foreign influence on Minimalism, and while Marshall did not compose gamelan in any formal sense, it reconfirmed the viability of unhurriedness in the unfolding of the musical process and repetition as a controlling structural principle. His later Woodstone is a gamelanic retake on the Beethoven sonata of the same name, but a more significant Indonesian element in Marshall's music was his incorporation of the wooden gambuh flute into several compositions, employed somewhat in the manner of a rondo in The Fragility Cycles. The delicacy of the instrument proved to be a perfect match for the title."

13) Strickland, E: Liner notes to Ingram Marshall/Ikon. New World Records 80577.

"I could compose directly onto tape as an artist paints directly on his canvas," he explains. "That's the great advantage of tape music, the direct relationship between the head sound and the composer's work-there's no middleman." The painterly quality in his work persists to this day: Most of his compositions, at least from Fog Tropes on, might be called "tone paintings" more accurately than "tone poems" (the Straussian rubric now in its second century). Just as the propulsive music of Philip Glass seems fated from birth for the dance stage it took a decade to reach, so Marshall's often static and profoundly mysterious sonic landscapes led inevitably to a series of collaborative works, "musicovisual operas," with a photographer--his friend from Lake Forest days, Jim Bengston (Eberbach, Alcatraz).

Mention was made above of the later characterization of Marshall as a "New Romantic." His affinities in the perforce-Old Romanticism are with later Romanticism: Bruckner is a favorite for the very weightiness and earnestness that turn most listeners away. Another is Sibelius, here paid homage in the first of Marshall's "tone-paintings"- and his first piece remotely classifiable as "New Romantic" as much as Minimalist. Sibelius in His Radio Corner was inspired by a photograph of the Finnish composer during his "forty years of silence," sitting in an armchair and listening to his own work being performed on the radio. Marshall's composition, in its non-narrative depiction of the scene, complete with an allusion to Sibelius' Sixth Symphony, is an aural equivalent of the photograph. The very fragmentary nature of the symphonic allusion preserves the sense of frozen moment rather than compositional momentum, while a sense of harmonic stasis is retained despite the multiplicity of sonic events.

14) Johnson,T: "Young Composers Series: John Adams, Michael Nyman, Paul Dresher, Ingram Marshall." Village Voice, February 5, 1979. Reprinted in The Voice of the New Music, Apollohuis, Eindhoven, 1989.

"Ingram Marshall lives in San Francisco, where he has taught, written criticism, worked in radio, and directed a concert series. His contributions to the Guggenheim series were 'Cortez,' a prerecorded tape pice, and 'Non Confundar,' a work for strings, clarinet, and flute, with electronic processing. Both pieces are moody, and it is here, more than anywhere else in the series, that I am tempted to use the word 'neo-romantic.' ... Marshall works with pure sounds rather than melodic themes, and electronic reverberation rather than opulent orchestration. Still, the resulting emotions remind me very much of Sibelius, whom Marshall appreciates very much, and Mahler, from whom he borrowed some 'Non Confundar' material. I used to feel it was the electronic veneer that made Marshall's music seem saccharine to me, but I'm beginning to realize that the basic problem has more to do with my own less romantic inclinations. I probably wouldn't be swept away by his lush pieces if he did them with the Philadelphia Orchestra either. But many certainly would."

15a) Lockspeiser, E: Debussy. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd. New York, 1933

15b) Seroff, V: Debussy. Musician of France. (Chapter VIII Bohemian Period -- Debussy's Esthetics) Putnam. New York, 1956.

16a) Marshall: "The all too familiar hymns of my childhood have come back to haunt me... For me the research into memory is an important tool in my compositional workshop. We are, all of us, always searching our past in an attempt to understand the present..."
Liner notes to Evensongs. New Albion CD NA 092.

16b) For a good account on this point, see Strickland, E: "Ingram Marshall," in American Composers. Dialogues in Contemporary Music. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991

17) Johnson,T: "Aimless Major and Other Keys: Pauline Oliveros, Phill Niblock, Julius Eastman, Romulus Franceschini, Harold Budd." Village Voice, March 31, 1980. Reprinted in The Voice of the New Music, Apollohuis, Eindhoven, 1989.

"Some time ago, I devoted a column to 'The New Tonality' (Voice, October 16, 1978). I discussed Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Brian Eno, David Behrman, Terry Riley, and others, and showed some of the ways in which such composers establish tonal centers in their modal music. Without ever departing from a basic scale, and without relying on traditional chord changes, it is quite possible to set up a tonal center or to shift between several tonal centers, and many composers now work that way. But since then, I have begun to notice a number of other new kinds of tonality and would like to define and label five of them. 'Social tonality' was demonstrated in a recent performance by Pauline Oliveros; 'slip-and-slide tonality' is perhaps unique to the music of Phill Niblock; 'slow-motion tonality' is what I think Julius Eastman is currently using; 'static-motif tonality' cropped up in a piano piece by Romulus Franceschini; and 'aimless major' seems to describe Harold Budd's approach.

Harold Budd's "Preludes" are also piano pieces, and they also seem to have quite a bit to do with Satie. Budd played for about an hour at his recent Kitchen concert, improvising on precomposed piano textures that involved major-seventh chords and other harmonies I usually associate with cocktail lounges. But while cocktail lounge pianists follow prescribed changes and orient their music toward particular keys, Budd seems to forget all about key structure and just lets the music drift. Many of Satie's pieces do that, too, but while I sometimes feel Satie was simply trying to be as perversely un-Germanic as possible, Budd's motivations seem quite different. Despite the pop harmonic language and the super-pretty surface, I would say that this Californian composer is actually a fairly extreme minimalist. Essentially, he offers no mood changes, no color changes, no tempo changes, no virtuoso licks, no climaxes, no lyrics, and no references to familiar tunes, and even the harmonic changes can take a very long time. There is something poignant, even philosophical, about the intentional aimlessness of the music. But 'aimless major' and my other categories must certainly make up an extremely incomplete picture. I suspect that tonal centers are being handled in quite a few additional ways, that many such techniques will not be well understood until their non-Western origins are tracked down, and that eventually those discussions about tonality and atonality and bitonality and pantonality and everything-else-tonality will have to be picked up and expanded."

18) Marshall: "There's much a looser environment, so a composer could more easily succumb to his or her hedonistic impulses in California, without worrying about whether he or she were falling into the proper niche of history or whatever. There's less demand to write something that's historically 'correct' and that's the big difference between the so-called East Coast academic music and the West Coast let-it-all-hang-out style. It has more to do with attitude that as actual style... " and after; "You can say there's a California school, I mean, I've given lectures in Europe on the whole 'California new music scene' but I feel in a way I've fabricated it somewhat to make it more a historical reality than it really is" Quoted in Schaefer, J: New Sounds. A Listener's Guide to New Music. Harper & Row, New York, 1987.

19) "The German composer/harpsichordist/ music theorist Johann Mattheson published a book early in the eighteenth century called 'Die Affektenkehre,' The Doctrine of Passions, in which he categorized the various keys and types of melodies according to which emotions they induced to people. Mettheson's writings were highly influential, especially among opera composers at the time" New Sounds. A Listener's Guide to New Music. Harper & Row, New York, 1987. Another interesting references about the subject could be found in Strickland, E: "Ingram Marshall" (quoted above) and for those who could read German there's an interesting Mattheson's theories review; Catenhusen,M : Rhetorik und Affektenlehre bei Johann Mattheson Universität Potsdam, Hausarbeit 12/ 2000 at URL: http://hausarbeiten.de/

20) "To find a great music deeply imbued with spiritualism, one has to look over the great abyss of the twentieth century before coming to Mahler and Bruckner. The vast spiritual emptiness of the twentieth century is well enough documented and well enough felt. Spiritual concerns in modern music are superficial at best, Stockhausen's recent excursions to the Orient not withstanding. Messiaen, the Catholic mystic, seems to exhibit his religious values in music like war decorations. With Stravinsky, religion seems to be another aspect of his far ranging theatricality. Among the Americans, only in Ives have I felt a deeply ingrained spirituality, and then it's always buried under a cornucopia of other concerns. It seems that modernism can reflect deeply felt spiritual values, but it rarely can be involved with them; it rarely can be about them." Marshall in Soundings 11, Santa Fe, 1981.

21) Goeyvaerts is the lesser known of the group for non-European listeners. A good profile of his work is Oehlschlägel, R: "Concept of a New Humanity. On the Death of the Flemish Composer Karel Goeyvaerts." World New Music Magazine No 3, November 1993. MusikTexte, Köln. - www.furious.com/