Alvin Curran's Moving "Crystal Psalms" For Large Ensemble(s)

In the context of another review on these pages I believe I wrote that I considered Alvin Curran a key figure in the avant garde music scene of the past 50 years. I continue to believe that and I continue to believe posterity will bear me out on that point.

I wont re-rehearse the argument here. I will however talk about one of his gems, the 1988 work for multiple choruses, instrumentalists and pre-recorded tape, Crystal Psalms, which is available if you look for it on a New Albion CD release (NA067CD).

The piece was first performed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a horrifying night in 1938 when the Nazis began the pogram-holicaustic violence against Jews in (deadly) earnest.

Curran's work is disturbing, of course. How could it not be? But it is much more than that. The work was designed to be broadcast live in most of the major European cities. Six radio stations scattered across Europe handled the simultaneous six-way performance of the piece, each with a moderate-sized chorus, a string or wind quartet and an accordionist. None of the groups could hear what the others were doing, but the realization was coordinated (via a time track) so that all six musical groups played their parts in synch. Complementing these musical ensembles were taped sounds of glass shattering, Cantors, a shofar horn, praying at the wailing wall, percussion barrages and other evocative sounds. Radio audiences heard a mix of all six audio feeds which represented the score in its totality.

It is a long, sprawlingly gigantic, enormously moving work. It should not be missed.

Alvin Curran's Remarkable Musical Collages

Alvin Curran is one of those composers-performers-improvisers that should be heard by anyone with designs on a complete understanding of modernity (whatever that will turn out to be when looking back 200 years from now).

He was the co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva, one of the very first (and best) groups to combine live electronics and improvisation. They did things then that were so influential that improv groups are still trying to follow in their footsteps. He's since done a great deal of improv per se with some of the luminaries of the field.

It's his solo collage-like work that we look at today. The John Cage of "Fontana Mix" and "Variations IV" is a precursor, certainly. Sliced, diced and transformed snippets of sound, noise, musical excerpts of high. low, middle, folk, jazz, electronics, vernacular and what have you form the raw material. Where Cage had a kind of anti-structural, aleatoric stance, Curran perhaps is more sensitive to dramatic impact, the audience if you will, and there is more of a sense of structure and immersion in the distinctive sensuality of sound to what he does.

Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden was one of his earlier masterpieces in the collage idiom. If you haven't heard it, you should. Today, though, we're concerned with his work Toto Angelica in its realization released in 2005, I believe (i dischi di angelica). The CD release has this fascinating version of the piece, plus several shorter works. It is a continuous barrage of various vocal, instrumental and extra-instrumental sounds, and if you listen a number of times it really starts to make sense. Well, more than that. Mr. Curran is one of the most creative musical minds at work today.