Scott Morrison wrote:

>In the May/June Fanfare, Robert Carl goes nuts over a new recording of
>music by Yale Professor of Music, Martin Bresnick (CRI 868 - a 2CD set),
>a collection of orchestral and chamber pieces under the umbrella title
>of 'Opera Della Musica Povera.' ...
>
>My question: has anyone heard this music, and what do you think?

Many of the people here have, they just don't know it.  Bresnick scores
films - particularly documentaries including "WCW: William Carlos
Williams", "Man Made Out Of Words: Wallace Stevens", the Cadillac Desert
series: Mulhollands' Dream, An American Nile, The Mercy of Nature, and The
Last Oasis.

As with many film composers, he begins with the expanded chord vocabulary
of the 20th century, including the gestural language of suspended dissonant
chords found in composers such as Ligeti, and places it within tight frames
that fit well with movie cues - effects establish themselves boldly, and
then allow a quieter or secondary idea to develop - he is fond of chord
washes with a melody built out of expanding fragments.  Another feature of
his music which fits in with film composing is that he chooses effects that
are simple to play and easy to rehearse.  While this facility sometimes is
at the expense of musical substance, it gives the surface an easy lucidity
- there is seldom an idea which does not stand out with the kind of
brilliant clarity that people expect in music that accompanies visual
images.

Bresnick speaks of his work in visual terms, and there is indeed a highly
colouristic transmutation as part of his work - one section changes to
another the way a time lapsed film does - each frame yields only a small
change, but ends with the entire landscape reworked.

Thus colour, clarity, facility are the hallmarks of his style, and a
striving to maintain a tonal richness, even in sections which, technically
speaking, have no tonal chord.

Stirling Newberry
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http://www.mp3.com/ssn