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Weave : works by Martin Arnold, Michael Finnissy, Jo Kondo and James Tenney

by Eve Egoyan, solo piano

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1.
Herl 23:56
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2.
To Weave (A Meditation) 11:06
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3.
Metaphonesis 09:47
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4.
Erik Satie, like anyone else 22:34
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Introduction / Elissa Poole

These four pieces would not exist without Eve Egoyan, for whom they were written. But that is only a fact behind a larger truth, which is that these pieces would not exist if they had been written for someone else. They were written because it is Eve who has uniquely sought out—and inspired—work of this particular, delicate, demanding aesthetic. She has called her CD Weave in reference to a quality the pieces have in common, but I like to think that the title says something about the relationships among composer, interpreter, and listener here, too. For woven through those relationships— quickening the whole precious matrix—is trust: the listeners’ trust in Eve as a guide to (and through) music she cares about; and the composers’ trust in Eve’s (wondrous!) capacity to understand and convey their musical thought. In Herl, Martin Arnold emerges from the catacombs of tangled polyphony that have defined so much of his recent work into an equally primal homophony, passing from a state of searching to one of receiving, yet remaining unfettered by certainties. An inconstant stream of honeycombed harmonies moves, languid and wanton, while something like a melody glints above it—cockled with trills or a tinseled fillip of ornament, bright as a flash of sunlight through the chinks in a Gothic window. Arnold seems angled towards the numinous, but he has none of Messiaen’s urgent, crystalline mathematics. In the end, an atavistic jig is grace enough.

The three lines of counterpoint in James Tenney’s To Weave (a meditation) look inordinately simple on the page, each on its separate stave and in its own register, never more than one note struck at a time. To get from one side of the page to the other takes 30 seconds, always, although sometimes there are more notes to play within that time frame. When the notes are sparse, we hear each in relation to the other as a kind of slow, haphazard arpeggio. But as the density of notes increases (perceived as an increase in tempo and accompanied with a crescendo), that simple field splits into three distinct lines. We don’t pinpoint the exact moment when one way of listening supersedes the other, though we are swept forward and back with each rush and retreat. But Tenney calls it a meditation with good reason, for we can’t help observing our own desire for (and effort towards) wholeness in the way we apprehend what we hear. Listen hard enough and the ego lets go.

Jo Kondo’s meticulously voiced chords in the incantatory Metaphonesis are percussive and sharp-cornered, conjuring wood blocks, gongs, or wind chimes, and they make no harmonic claims—as if aspiring to a state both purer and more abstract. The sensual occurs out of earshot in the mingling of overtones or in the silence between chords— created, as in Tenney’s piece, out of our own desire. But then towards the end each in a long procession of chords weighs in against the same pristine sound, and each establishes a relationship we immediately embrace. Where, though, do we locate that fixed point? Is it outside, or inside?

Michael Finnissy speaks of and to Satie in ERIK SATIE, like anyone else, to Satie the velvet gentleman, to Satie the iconoclastic (we choose the word because it sounds like breaking glass) worshipper in the Church of One, trudging between Montmartre music hall and suburban cubbyhole, a scribble of gnomic phrases in his manuscript book. Purity and mental static compete before the imaginary conversation begins, a recitative in which the mind loses track, repeats itself, quotes from memory, and waits for answers. Melodic ideas circle back, neither quite modal nor quite memorable and always cryptic, but this music, too, finds grace in dance—a raggy two-step…not like anyone else’s.

credits

released May 5, 2006

Executive Producer: Eve Egoyan
Studio Producer: David Jaeger
Sound Engineer: David Quinney
Assistant Engineers: Dennis Patterson, Charles Katchebaw
Digital Editing and Mastering: Clive Allen
Recorded at Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto
Introduction: Elissa Poole
Notes Editor: Lauren Pratt
Translation: Dominique Denis
Graphic Design: Lisa Kiss Design
Photography: David Rokeby, Patricia Rozema

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