Customer Reviews

HENRY BRANT COLLECTION V1 (2CD)

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I knew the name of Henry Brant - one of the recognized mavericks of American 20th Century music and, now that Nancarrow is dead, possibly the last surviving one - but, other than his "Signs and Alarms" and "Galaxy Two", which I heard long ago on an LP which I have mostly for its pairing, Antheil's Ballet mécanique, I wasn't familiar with his music. But I recently listened to his "Kingdom Come" and "Machinations", recordings from the 1970s first published by the Desto label and reissued on CD by Phoenix, and I was bowled over (see my review of Kingdom Come/Machinations). So I decided to investigate more, and there seemed no better place to start than with this Henry Brant collection volume 1, containing the substantial "Northern Lights over the Twin Cities" composed in 1985 and the shorter "A Plan of the Air" from 1975. I find them fabulously inventive and original.

The first one is a substantial piece, in length (96 minutes) and size, calling for two choruses, soloists, jazz ensemble, symphonic band, symphony orchestra, ten pianos, a large percussion section, bagpipes - and even dancers. It exemplifies the composer's trademark: the spatial dissemination of the forces throughout the concert venue. Much of that, evidently, is lost on disc, but what remains is still outstanding. The texts describe the natural phenomenon of the aurora, and are drawn from National Geographic and various encyclopedias or astronomy magazines, following the composer's view that if you set scientific texts in singeable form, they will sound like poetry. The way Brant has put them to music, they do.

In his compositional method(s) Brant appears as an heir to Ives (in his relish for various cacophonies), Varèse and Antheil (in his preference for brass and percussion, including the tintinibulating-to-clangorous ten pianos, as on CD 1 track 1 at 4:05, and for wild discharges of energy from the percussion, as at the beginning of 1/2), and a distant cousin of Hovhaness and Pärt also in his use of simple chromatic and sinuous monodies, both with the orchestra and the chorus. The texts give rise to mysterious chants, heavily relying on semi-tone intervals, with an intended monotony, somewhere between plainchant and byzantine hymns (1/1 & 3, 2/2). At 9:12 in 1/3 the two sopranos, followed by the three men and chorus intone a hauntingly mesmerizing coloratura - kudos to Sarita Roche, the coloratura soprano, she darts so high in the stratosphere you think her voice is electronically enhanced. They do it again in 3/7, an incredibly beautiful a capella passage (other than a few solo brass interventions), at the beginning of which the tenor sings in falsetto voice, joined by the two sopranos, making it into a quasi soprano-trio. There are other such moments of mesmerizing beauty. Sometimes Brant calls for declaiming and shouting voices (as in 1/5, where Sarita Roche is again quite striking in the passage starting at 3:36, or again in 1/8, 2/2, 2/6). Fortunately the texts are provided in the liner notes, as the composer often has each successive phrase, sung by different singers or choir section, overlap, making (intentionally no doubt) the words into a mass of sound (2/5, described as "choral processions", is particularly remarkable in that respect, and spellbinding). The orchestral accompaniment varies from movement to movement - full orchestra, percussion, percussion-pianos-winds, solo brass, and the incredible bagpipes-antiphonal winds-strings & percussion (2/1). Some movements are purely instrumental (and are supposed to be choreographed). There are moments of bell- or gong-dominated percussion sounding like oriental ritual music, there is a wild jam session in 1/4 and a finale that veers between Big-Band-jazzy and Carl Orff, and the moments of bagpipes, percussion & orchestra (2/1 & 2/3) as well as the finale (2/6) are irresistible in their Ivesian cacophony (if, as I do, you relish Ivesian cacophony). There is a 12-second span of silence which seems to be part of the score (2/4) and there are even, at various points, distant moans or cries that seem to be those of a child, and you don't know if it is an intended sound effect - maybe stopped trumpet, or oboe without reed - or a child actually crying at a distance, on that live recording; given what comes before and after, it could be both, nothing shocks.

Though composed ten years earlier, "A Plan of the Air" is much in the same style. It is scored for a huge symphony band (including four euphoniums) and four vocal soloists (the traditional SATB), set widely apart from one another. The text is by Patricia Gorman Brant (presumably Henry's wife) after an inventory from the Notebooks of da Vinci - in which, besides (drawings of?) various heads, arms, legs, wheels and motley objects, there is indeed "a plan of the air", along with "a drawing of the silence, a drawing of the spirit". The vocal lines have the same kind of lolling chant-like monotony as in "Northern Lights", the music isn't as brutal as it is sometimes in the later composition, it is more subdued and develops, in the course of its 24:30 minutes, soft-sounding sound clusters and ritualistic percussion, with occasionally more violent outburts.

Not that any of this hasn't been heard before in the 20th Century (save the National Geographic of course - and for bagpipes and percussion I'm not so sure), but Brant's own concoction of all these elements, along with his often painfully beautiful melodic invention, sounds to me incredibly original, daring and fascinating.

We are not told when the recordings date from, but involving as they do the forces responsible for the premiere of each piece, they were presumably made on these occasions. CD 2 is encoded in such a way as to display the titles of the individual movements, which is nice - but, incomprehensibly, not CD 1.

Anyway this is major stuff, incredibly original.