ACO Underground Program

THURSDAY 5 NOVEMBER, FROM 8PM THE FACTORY, MARRICKVILLE SATU VÄNSKÄ DIRECTOR, VIOLIN AND VOICE

RICHARD TOGNETTI VIOLIN

GLENN CHRISTENSEN VIOLIN

CHRISTOPHER MOORE VIOLA

JULIAN THOMPSON CELLO

MAXIME BIBEAU DOUBLE BASS

JOSEPH NIZETI ELECTRONICS

WITH GUESTS

JIM MOGINIE GUITAR

BRIAN RITCHIE BASS GUITAR

TIMOTHY CONSTABLE PERCUSSION

STEREOGAMOUS DJ’S JONNY SEYMOUR & PAUL MAC

LOST BOY VISUALS

The story goes something like this: on the one hand, we have our daily lives full of secular activities with all of the associated worries and stress, while, on the other hand, there is a “higher” sphere, which somehow transcends and is separated from the quotidian. Of course, music is an example of this second sphere par excellence.

Completely abstract, it seems to speak a language that can be understood only when we manage to free ourselves from our everyday reality. All of this feels very natural to say, but the very fact that it feels natural indicates that we are dealing with ideology at its purest. What Satu Vänskä & ACO Underground want to achieve can be understood in terms of undermining this ideology: music should be knocked down from its heavenly heights, while at the same time demonstrate that it is always already a part of this world. The goal is not, however, to eliminate the seductive dimension of music. On the contrary, the trick is that music can have its “idealistic” transcendence only when it is “materialistically” grounded. Tonight’s concert will itself provide empirical evidence of this. Is there anything better than drinking beer while listening to good old Bach?

Not only does Bach sound better, the beer tastes better, too!

They say that you have to close your eyes while listening to music, but if you want to get the real deal out of Kaija Saariaho’s …de la Terre you have to keep them open. Of course, this is astonishing

music on its own, combining amplified violin with musique concrète electronics, but it becomes even more powerful accompanied by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which is perhaps one of the best cinematic examples of how materialism and spirituality go together. The same can be said of the aforementioned JS Bach: his musical genius, of which mankind brags to aliens (Bach is on the famous Voyager Golden Record, which was sent into space in 1977) did not emerge from solitary study, but from a dialectic with concrete social practice: every week a cantata had to be composed for the Sunday service. Thus, for Bach, hard work and musical divinity coalesced completely.

In this way, Bach’s music exposes another false opposition between “grey rationality” and “freedom of true feeling”: the first movement of his Sonata No.3 in C major is a great example of how the most rigorous compositional control goes hand in hand with the greatest depth of expression. (By the way, this leads us to Slavoj Žižek’s point about how good sex is all hard work… and again back to Bach, who had 20 children.)

Another “classical” ideological opposition is that of “high” versus “low” art. This one was crushed by New York’s downtown scene from the 1960s by renouncing the imported “highbrow” tradition of European classical music, as well as the strains of the pop music industry. The result was heretical, but this was precisely the raison d’être of its artistic success.

One of the followers of this heresy is Bryce Dessner, and his wild Aheym provides confirmation of just how powerful it still is. Yes, there are strings playing, but this is not a polite string quartet for a bourgeois banquet; it is rather a rock song freed from its threeminute radio mould. There is another rebel against well-mannered orthodoxy, only in a slightly different way: the one and only Richard Tognetti.

He simply does not care about good manners, and it is in this light that we can understand the lyrics of his Transfiguration. Tognetti is not afraid of having his music stained by the “low”; on the contrary, it is exactly his radical eclecticism (his Visitation resonates with Aphex Twin, Giacinto Scelsi and Brian Eno, to mention only the most obvious associations) that makes his music alive, as opposed to composers who still live in some dream world with Don Quixote.

We should, however, avoid a crucial misunderstanding: the tradition of European classical music is great.

The problem is that when you tear it out of social context it soon becomes boring and empty l’art pour l’art. This is why ACO Underground chooses to recontextualise these masterpieces. This is, in a way, achieved through Tognetti’s daring arrangements, but an even more ingenious manoeuvre is to put this kind of music “where it does not belong”: in a venue such as The Factory, enabling it to gain a new impetus through what Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt.

It is true that in this way the enchanting simplicity of Bach’s Canons on a Goldberg Ground is not “authentic”… but who cares! Bach was a great arranger himself, so he would certainly agree with us when we say: “f*** authenticity, it is itself one big lie!” We must be true Hegelians at this point and turn things around: “one comes to itself only through the Other”. Not just Bach, but also Jean Sibelius’ “Philip Glass beautiful” Scene VI from Kuolema, as well as Anton Webern’s haunting miniature from Five Movements for String Quartet remain true to themselves precisely through this Verfremdung.

This effect is further enhanced by the pieces that elitists would regard as “not serious”. These pieces serve to loosen the up-tight German spirit of the “serious” compositions, while at the same time

themselves gaining new meaning from this juxtaposition. If we are a bit evil, we could say that they gain a certain dignity, but we could just as well ask ourselves which “serious” composer would be able to capture the straightforward “expensive sadness feel” of Friedrich Holländer’s Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte. As far as “pop” music is concerned, we tend to forget that writing a major hit is in fact “high” art. If the tables are turned, it is fair to say that Anton Webern would never have been able to write a song like Into Temptation

by Crowded House. This is because “pop” invention operates on a completely different level: its paradoxical goal is not to elevate the listener above everyday life, but to show the poetic dimension of the nakedness of everyday life itself. Things are a bit different with punk. It also deals with the world as it is, but it does not see anything beautiful about it; rather than poeticising everyday life, it screams at it. This is what Tognetti’s Heston “living in wastepaper” is all about, with its catchy punk chants embedded in electronic riffs. Besides Heston, we also have a “punk song without words”, the sidviciously schizophrenic An Island off an Island off an Island by Anthony Pateras, sounding like Niccolò Paganini on drugs.

Then again, what has all this punk to do with Arvo Pärt? Is there a single atom in the Estonian composer that would potentially turn punk? No way José, My Heart’s in the Highlands!

Aljaž Zupančič © 2015 (Translation by Neville Hall)

PROGRAM

KAIJA SAARIAHO ...DE LA TERRE

JS BACH ADAGIO FROM SONATA NO.3 IN C MAJOR, BWV1005

BRYCE DESSNER AHEYM

RICHARD TOGNETTI VISITATION

RICHARD TOGNETTI HESTON

RICHARD TOGNETTI TRANSFIGURATION

JS BACH (ARR.TOGNETTI) CANONS ON A GOLDBERG GROUND

HOLLÄNDER WENN ICH MIR WAS WÜNSCHEN DÜRFTE

NEIL FINN (ARR.TOGNETTI) INTO TEMPTATION

SIBELIUS SCENE VI FROM KUOLEMA

ANTHONY PATERAS AN ISLAND OFF AN ISLAND OFF AN ISLAND

WEBERN SEHR BEWEGT FROM FIVE MOVEMENTS FOR STRING QUARTET

NINE INCH NAILS (TRENT REZNOR) SOMETHING I CAN NEVER HAVE

ARVO PÄRT MY HEART’S IN THE HIGHLANDS

GOVERNMENT PARTNERS