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The String Quartets

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"I don't think of myself as a jazz or rock artist. I think of myself as someone who's using all of these different elements to create something else. But if I had to pick one line where I came from, it would be more classical than anything else." -- John Zorn

_The String Quartets_ is a collection of his best pieces for, well, string quartets, culled from an eight year span. These are the definitive versions of each, conducted by Zorn and performed by the emphatic Quartet DeSade (that's Joyce Hammann and Mark Feldman on violin, Lois Martinon on viola, and Erik Friedlander on cello). Their performances are uniformly stunning. An interest in Zorn and post-modernist 'classical' is a helpful quality before checking out this album.

"Cat o' Nine Tails" is lots of fun, a humorous piece emphasizing very fast, clean changes between styles from cartoon music to rhythmically energetic Eastern European & Russian informed sections to familiar melodies quoted from a variety of sources. It's almost like flipping through television channels and hearing the musical accompaniment to all sorts of different things, with some very jarring clashes in between. If fun genre-hopping isn't your cup of tea, this might not do much for you.

"The Dead Man" is basically a collection of hardcore miniatures arranged for string quartet -- very herky-jerky, violent, and spasmodic, a la Naked City. There are thirteen of them, averaging somewhere around a minute in length. Most people wouldn't like this kind of thing -- but I like dark, torturous, and savage music like this. "Nocturne", the eleventh piece, is particularly harrowing to me.

The next two pieces are by far my favorites. Zorn himself concedes that "Momento Mori" is baffling to most people, and truthfully it is pretty damn inaccessible. Firstly, it is highly serialist with 'free' inclinations which emphasize the piece's highly dramatic gestures and rigor. The structure sounds completely arbitrary and baffling, and Zorn leaves the listener with basically nothing to grasp as he takes you through continuous episodic blocks for nearly 30 minutes. Everyone is different I suppose, but I find it works beautifully if you think of it like peeking into a strange story -- you move along with the music, at the same level, through the chapters and events. It's like the music just IS, and it doesn't begin or end just because the listener presses Play or Stop...a highly Jungian creative mode of nonidentification and unity, fundamental to objective art. It has an Otherness that is elusive but deeply engaging. Ermmmm....if that all makes sense. I find this piece simply excellent although I probably listened to it at least a dozen times before I started to "get" it...and that was merely the first stepping stone to analyzing it effectively. You may find it very rewarding if you give it the attention it requires. Don't expect anything easy.

"Kol Nidre" is one of the most very beautiful of all Zorn's compositions -- a spiritual, funereal piece enlightened by Jewish expression that he remarkably wrote in 30 minutes. Hazy and surreal, it builds on minimalist drone until its powerful climax.

An excellent purchase for Zorn fans and adventurous classical aficionados, especially for "Momento Mori" and "Kol Nidre".

"The String Quartets" contains (not uncoicidentally) four string quartets composed by John Zorn in the late 80s and early 90s. Three of the pieces ("Cat O'Nine Tails", "The Dead Man" and "Momento Mori") were composed at the behest of the Kronos Quartet between 1988 and 1992 while the fourth ("Kol Nidre") was composed in 1996 without commission. All four are performe by a quartet of Joyce Hammann (violin), Mark Feldman (violin), Lois Martin (viola) and Erik Friedlander (cello).

"Cat O'Nine Tails", from 1988, finds Zorn in a frantic mode. The piece is full of excitement, subtle quotations and energy, presaging the Naked City approach of drifting beteween one style and another, seemingly at random though seemlessly fitting together whilst weaving Zorn's tributes to composers he loves. It is sometimes delicate and beautiful, sometimes playful and exciting, and sometimes frantic and explosive. At all times, it's intriguing and entertaining. "The Dead Man", composed around the same time as Naked City's early records, is related to that band's "Torture Garden", and the audible similarities are clear. Composed of thirteen miniatures, not unlike the tracks on "Torture Garden", ranging in length from thirty seconds to about ninety seconds, each movement is of its own style, but like "Torture Garden", there's a distinct sense of unity to these tracks. They flow together, and they sometimes feel less than whole without the others.

"Memento Mori", dedicated to musician Ikue Mori and composed in 1992, is described by Zorn as "an intensely emotional and complexly hermetic work that continues to defy comprehension by most listeners". Zorn further states that the piece is autobiographical and "largely about lost love and the loneliness of a scholar's existence". At just under thirty minutes, it is an extended listen that is extraordinarily demanding upon its listener-- at times delicate, at times fierce. It is downright captivating and powerful and extraordinarily difficult to describe. I don't think I've totally gotten it yet, but I'm certainly totally intrigued by it, and I'm guessing the more I listen to it, the more fruit it will bear. The album's closer, "Kol Nidre" is a thing of stunning beauty. Let me be very clear that I'm quite enamored with Zorn's classical work (in particular his string trios/quartets), I don't think any of them are quite as moving and powerful as this piece. It's stark presentation and patient development allows the emotive content to come into its own. It caught me off-guard the first time I heard it, and after repeated listens, it still does so.

Zorn's classical work can be difficult to digest, but more often than not they prove a rewarding listen. "The String Quartets" ranks among his finest work. Highly recommended.

well, i got the zorn and elliott sharp quartets at the same time, to get an understanding of the downtown nyc scene.

the cat o nine tales has been reviewed just fine...no need to add. i mean, it seems to be the definition of post modern- snippets of this, snippets of that, put em in a pot and stir....

the dead man "suite" seems to perfect the scraping sounds that allude to zorn's fascination with s/m. it has a bit of the kagel quartets in it, and so far...zorn strikes two home runs in the extremist camp....

still...compare ANY outre quartet against what i consider the behemoth gigantor of experimental quartets, the one by heinz holliger of 1973.

i think i was starting to get too obsessed by the lachenmann, sciarrino, penderecki, kagel, glokobar type NOISE...and all of these composers have worked very hard to make musical sense of brute sound....mixing and matching

the other reviewers expressed a question mark concerning memento mori...and i feel flattered that it posed no difficulties for me, there are a lot of grey dreary dope-sick chords punctuated by various violent outbursts....half way through there is a break followed by a very long elegiac chord punctuated by nine plucks...and then it continues...
it does have that nono/feldman feel with splatters of violent tense scraping and hysterical outburst, but overall the 30min. quartet poses no real listening problems to the seeker. in all, this seems to be the kind of statement that came out of the eighties, especially in nyc....just watch one of the andy warhol bios when listening to this and it might all make sense...basquiat...dope....gritty nyc 1970s-80s art sense....this seems no different than john cale to me, velvet underground...midnight cowboy...very dreary yet comforting in a creepy way.

and maybe i should mention zorn's penchant for explicit graphics....there is quite a pornographic drawing on the inside cover...rear admiral, sir....and it makes me wonder about morals and "art" and such forth...i mean the music is there, but it IS a brutal, raping, s/m, assaulting sound, with surgical sounds...i mean it's not exaggerating to say that this is classical music for a japanese snuff film

the kol nidre...well, it sounds EXACTLY like the arvo part piece...another indication of the 1980's...yea, it's beautiful an all...i have really nothing to say about this piece...it's definitely the "spiritual minimalism" that is sooo in vogue...but hey, no criticism

by the way, the elliott sharp disc is a hundred times more brutal than this album. it almost makes zorn sound homey. the sharp disc is verrry rough listening...take it piecemeal- however lumen from 1996 sounds a little like donatoni meets the terminator!!!

so i DO recommend getting both albums at the same time....currently i have no real further need to seek out more lachenmanns and zorns..has the string quartet reached its limit...if we include the electronic aspect by saariaho and jonathan harvey? have all the sounds been exhausted? what about the different ays of putting these sounds together?

i mean...what OF the helikopter quartet by stockhausen????
where DO we go from here?
ahhhh......

zorn rules. everything I hear from this guy blows me away. he has made me realize that music is in everything. this recording is great, especially hearing how zorn can take any medium (in this case, the string quartet), and make something completely his own.