Eighth Blackbird

* Kellogg: Divinum Mysterium (2000)
* Crumb: Vox Alaenae (Voice of the Whale) (1971)

Eighth Blackbird.
Cedille CDR 90000 076  Total time: 56:20

Eighth Blackbird has become the "new" new music group, in the tradition
of Tashi and Speculum Musicae.  It consists of six members, most of whom
play more than one instrument, including the ueber-percussionist, Matthew
Duvall.  I heard them recently on NPR's St. Paul Sunday Morning.
Apparently, Duvall has two vanloads of instruments, each van stuffed to
the metal.  Eighth Blackbird doesn't confine itself to a sliver of the
contemporary-music spectrum.  On the other hand, I've never heard them
perform junk either - astonishing when new-music ensembles, including
this one, take chances as a matter of course, practically as their raison
d' etre.

The program typifies their range: a contemporary classic and a special
commission.  The classic is the Crumb, and I find it hard to accept the
piece as more than thirty years old.  Ned Rorem once wondered aloud why
people so loved Crumb's music.  Clearly, Rorem did not.  He put it down
to the deplorable state of music at the time, and concluded audiences
grateful for any sign of emotion from a new piece.  I can think of lots
of legitimate reasons why someone would like Crumb.  For one thing, the
sounds still glitter.  Crumb has always had a very precise creative ear.
Furthermore, one gets more than just a sign of emotion.  Crumb's music
sings with intensity, perhaps at times (though not here) with too much.
On the other hand, the piece is definitely of its time - the early
Seventies - when whales briefly became pop superstars.  Also, the music
paints pictures rather than tells stories.  That is, there's little
forward impulse or interest in the process of transformation, as there
had been in music from the Baroque era on.  Crumb risks losing your
attention, one reason why he must increase the "typical" emotional
intensity.  As ever, the composer faces the question of when to change
tack.  Perhaps Rorem's complaint stems from this.  At any rate, the piece
holds *me*.  I especially like Crumb's resistance of the temptation to
realism.  Although one hears a refined balenean slide or thump here and
there, the music makes no attempt to give you actual whale sounds, any
more than Mahler's First gives you real cuckoo song.  This is music that
poetically evokes rather than describes.  It also strikes me as prophetic
of people like Gorecki, with its sense of the power and depth of the
individual moment, although I greatly prefer Crumb's original to what
came after.

The commission, Daniel Kellogg's Divinum Mysterium, may well become
a classic.  Like Paul Schoenfield, Kellogg draws from many sources.
Inspired by his faith, Kellogg bases the work on the plainchant "Corde
natus ex parentis" (in English, the hymn "Of the Father's Love Begotten"),
which he had sung from boyhood.  After an initial statement from voices
(in this case, Chanticleer), the chant appears in various guises throughout
five movements.  Kellogg elicits from the chant a great range of expression.
Where Crumb plumbs deep and narrow, Kellogg casts wide.  He shows no
fear of eclecticism.  The work brims full with references to other
composers -- Stravinsky, Bernstein, and Copland the most obvious -- while
maintaining its own integrity.  That is, Kellogg doesn't "do" these
composers.  He uses them for his own purposes.  The music often comes
off like Charles Ives's "Hawthorne," from the Concord Sonata -- a Van
de Graaff generator that throws sparks every which way, moving your
attention to one thing and another.  The overall effects are depth and
brilliance.  I must confess that the titles of the movements -- "Beginnings,"
"The Spirit of God Moved on the Face of the Waters," "Light," "Rest,"
and "Rejoicing" -- initially (that is, piece unheard) made me a little
antsy.  But Kellogg never does what you think he's going to do, just as
his religious sentiments stand at the opposite end of the conventional
and genteel.  This isn't standard Artistic Piety, but the expression of
a particular person.  I can't recommend this work highly enough.

Come to think of it, I'd say the same for the performers.  This is one
exciting group, and it has already achieved some big things.  They're
young dynamos and come without the New Age baggage of at least some
contemporary specialists.  I expect their careers to last a while.  The
sound quality is good, and the balance is amazing, when you consider the
recording problems posed by both Crumb and especially Kellogg, where the
music suggests a band far larger than a mere six.  One of the more
interesting and exciting CDs I've heard this year.

Steve Schwartz