Listen
How They Talk Chamber Music 1998-2001
by Hilda Paredes
Performed by Arditti Quartet
Mode Records, New York, 2005
Audio CD, mode 149, $14.99
Distributors website: http://www.moderecords.com.
Reviewed by Eugene Thacker
School of Literature, Communication &
Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
It has become a truism that the string
quartet can be likened to a conversation.
The instruments are voices, the notes
words, melody becomes communication, and
so on. Each instrument violin,
viola, cello has a particular sound
to its voice, be it in terms of register,
range, or the more obtuse qualities such
as breathiness, richness, sonorousness.
Each voice not only has a particular kind
of sound, but it also "sounds"
(talks, converses) in an equally particular
kind of way. A violin may be adept at
firing off a rapid sequence of notes,
or a cello may be adept at long, continuous
lines of melody. All of this has a technical
language within musicology of Western
classical forms, from Haydn and Mozart,
to Beethoven, to Bartok, and beyond.
But it is the trope itself of conversation
that makes chamber music forms such as
the string quartet interesting. If the
string quartet can be likened to a conversation,
what kind of a conversation is it? Is
it an equal dialogue between mutually-respected
participants? Or is it in fact a monologue,
in which one voice is always louder than
the others? Furthermore, our actual conversations
also depend on our relations with each
of the conversants is it a parent,
a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a lover,
a co-worker, a colleague, a stranger,
a client, a teacher, a student? Finally,
our conversations may vary widely, from
high-brow discussions on culture and politics,
to the guilty pleasures of gossip, to
the white noise of chit-chat.
Which of these describes the string quartet?
We would like to ask the question to Haydn,
who may very well give us a different
answer than Mozart (and this may be different
still from Webern or John Zorn). This
question, naïve as it may seem, is
at the core of Hilda Paredes chamber
works. Hence the title of the recent Mode
CD of her work: "Listen How They
Talk." The CD features four pieces:
the title piece (for string quartet),
"Cotidales" (for piano quintet),
"Ah Paaxoob" (for ensemble),
and "Can Silim Tun" (for vocal
and string quartet). The Arditti Quartet
performs on three of the pieces, and other
performers include pianist Ian Pace, the
Ensemble Modern, and the Neue Vokalsolisten
Stuttgart. In each of the pieces Paredes
meditates on the nature of conversation,
whether linguistic or musical.
While classical chamber music that
highest of high-culture musical forms
has traditionally aimed for a "conversation"
that is likewise of high standing, Paredes
hybrid musical influences show us the
form of conversation (musical or otherwise)
as it really is polyvalent, scattered,
sensuous, frenetic, and quite often interrupted.
Raised in Mexico, Paredes moved to London
in the late 1970s, there studying with
composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies.
But the Mexico she left (and that remains
in her compositions) is a particular kind
of Mexico, that of the traditional Mayan
cultures, as well as that of more modern
folkloric influences. Paredes music
is not simply derived from the post-war
British school of Davies or even Eliot
Carter; it "interrupts" this
tradition, or this conversation, with
the everyday magical element of traditional
Mexican culture.
One of Paredes works featured on
the Mode CD is from 1998 and entitled
"Uy U Tan" (translated
from the Mayan as "Listen How They
Talk"). Performed by the Arditti
Quartet, the piece starts with frenetic,
jagged bursts and sheets of sound, musical
lines or fragments of conversation pitched
in here and there. The violin is prominent
in this phase. But then, about halfway
through the piece, the pacing suddenly
shifts, and long, sinewy, more silent
lines are heard. Here the viola is prominent,
the other voices almost silently listening.
The exchange nearly becomes silent itself,
punctuated by those uncanny silences one
suddenly hears among the din of a café
or restaurant. It then builds up again
near the end, this time driven more by
the cello. The bits of conversation rise
and fall, one voice is started, another
continued.
Paredes has often been included as part
of a new generation of Mexican composers
eschewing any division between northern
and southern hemispheric musical cultures,
focusing on the often tension-filled relations
between them. And while it would not be
inaccurate to compare Paredes chamber
works to those of Ligeti, Xenakis, or
Tristan Murail, it is her attention to
the relationship between communication
and miscommunication, conversation and
noise, that sets her work apart. In thinking
about Paredes chamber works, we
can borrow a phrase from the philosopher
Michel Serres, "the miracle of harmony."
As Serres notes, the amazing thing is
that conversation or communication occurs
at all: "they neither hear one another
nor listen to one another. And yet, sometimes,
there is agreement. The most amazing thing
in the world is that agreement, understanding,
harmony, sometimes exist." But this
is, of course, the exception, not the
rule; in fact, the conversation, as a
complex system, is predicated on this
noise, this chatter, that is attempts
to expel but that it cannot do without.
In a sense, then, Paredes chamber
works set themselves the challenge of
conversing about the entropy of conversation
itself.