Customer Reviews

Any Resemblance Is Purely Coincidental

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I discovered the music of Charles Dodge through two of his Four Etudes for Violin and Tape (1994), featured in a collection of Violin and Piano works played by Miwako Abe and Michael Kieran Harvey on a New World Records CD (Works for Violin by George Antheil; Johanna Beyer; Henry Cowell; Ruth P. Crawford; Charles Dodge; David Mahler, Larry Polansky, Stefan Wolpe). I enjoyed them very much, which prompted me to want to explore more. In view thereof, I am sorry to find myself disappointed with the present disc.

First, I find its musical rewards to be limited. "Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental" is an "etude" on Caruso's 1907 recording of Pagliacci's "Vesti la giubba" aria. The voice is computer-altered and a piano part is added. One of the problem lies in the fact that the piano often just takes the place of the orchestra, playing, as it were, the vocal score. So what? Dodge apparently is trying to comment upon the disappearance of a Romantic, 19th Century style of singing and the birth of the modern age of mechanical reproduction of sound. The altered voice is often "ghostly", which can be interestingly unsettling, but still I can imagine many more imaginative ways to express that message, even on the basis of that very Caruso recording.

Likewise, Speech Songs (1972) is a pointillistic computer-alteration of a speaker's voice uttering lines of non-sensical poetry of Mark Strand. But after a minute everything is said and nothing very original happens thereafter. It is interesting as an "etude" in voice alterations, but its purely musical content, and hence the pleasure derived from it, is limited.

The Waves, on a text of Virginia Woolf, elicits more fascination, thanks to the voice and haunting melismatas of Joan La Barbara. It is slow-moving and undramatic, but quite atmospheric. But the tape "accompaniment" breaks no grounds, it is oftentimes cliched of tape music: high-pitched "windy" sounds and "ricochet" punctuations (I am using here the bowing technique term). I am not crazy of Robert Ashley, but at least his use of voice and synthesizer, even if it is not as sophisticated as Dodge's, is integrated in a theatrical approach that can yield a more lasting fascination effect. The same is true with Viola Elegy in the memory of Morton Feldman: a long viola lament over a dreamy "carpet" of tape sounds (evoking the resonances of bells) that fills in the acoustical space but serves little other purpose, being not particularly interesting or inventive in itself. It dies away after 13 minutes - and one hardly notices.

Then, there is less than 45 minutes of music on the disc, which is unacceptably too short. Granted, what there is doesn't seem to warrant more, but still, New Albion could have fitted 30 more minutes, and who knows? there could have been something of greater value therein, if only the complete Violin and Tape Studies. Many CDs enter my collection and, thanks to available shelf-space, very few exit. This one goes. I find it of no particular interest.

Charles Dodge produces this album in late 70`s. It is a very computerized album for that era. The image on the cover of the album already suggests the concept of granular synthesis: the cover itself is almost digitalized to give an idea of the charming and at the same time electronic themes of the album. Charles Dodge is a lover of speech and distorts the human voices by taking it into a virtual world; therefore there is this idea of time and space that is suggested in the songs of the album such as with " He destroyed her image". His songs seem to tell a story through technology, which is very inviting and intriguing to me. He takes the different timbre of voices in the album and he ads all sorts of effect to them, showing how malleable the human voice can be and how far computer technology can take it. Charles Dodge also uses a lot of resynthesized sounds in this album, which shows how innovative he is. In the song "Any resemblance is purely Coincidental", Charles Dodge uses a combination of piano played by Alan Feinberg and some dramatic opera sequences: the same phrase is repeated over and over by Enrico Caruso and at the same time the song gets higher and higher in pitch and tonality which creates this very mind-altering and psychedelic ambiance, which I find really fascinating; almost sounding like a soundtrack from a circus themed thriller. All of the songs of the album are very experimental and the interpretation of the album is therefore very personal and is subject to one`s appreciation of it. In the "The waves", the woman`s voice seems in a way, to reproduce what James Tenney did digitally in 1969 with For Ann (Rising). Her voice is indeed "rising" and creating again this endless and hallucinatory feeling. "Viola Elegy" is musically a very interesting piece. Dodge combines violin and synthesized low-key sounds which is very elegant and charming but meanwhile also very odd and somehow disturbing and for a musician it is a very challenging piece to understand but in my opinion that`s the beauty of it. It is also fascinating to me to see how well the composer controls his sources and his recordings. Overall, this album is technically very well mastered and it an aspiring set of work for those musicians working with digital sounds. The interaction between the real world and the digitalized world is combined in music, which is a very creative process and gives a great initiation to avant-garde compositions. Consequently, I would definitely recommend this artist and this album: it is definitely a must have classic for those interested in early electronic music.