Booklet for Frank Denyer's 'Screens'

Booklet for Frank Denyer’s double CD 'Screens'
 

An Unfamiliar Terrain  by Christian Mason

Frank Denyer’s music is full of questions, but never pretends to easy answers. Rather, it offers us a fluid space for imaginative reflection on the nature of music and the fragile condition of human culture more generally. Sometimes these questions are -  or appear to be - benign ‘compositional questions’, such as how to create a particular blend of colour within an ensemble (as in Unisons), or how to effect subtle timbral changes through spatial disposition (as in Screens), but behind such particular questions, which give their creative spark to individual pieces, there lurks a bigger and more troubling question, strikingly exemplified on this disc by the seemingly incongruous array of instruments that comprise Broken Music, Screens and Five Views of the Path.

It is a question of how to meaningfully cohere the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, raw elements of our contemporary awareness into an authentic - one might even say truthful - musical expression, in the midst of a world where the very context of our artistic and cultural experience is so heavily mediated by coercive commercial and political forces that we can never be quite sure whether quiet/individual voices will even be heard, however urgent their message. This artistic quest is informed not only by Denyer’s sense of historical crisis within the tradition of Western composition (see, for example, his brief article ‘New Music needs more than a get-well card’ from 2013 in Tempo 68), but by his extensive ethnomusicological fieldwork through which he has been in close contact with, and documented, traditional cultures which have since been largely obliterated by so-called ‘progress’. Such first-hand experience of barely-noticed cultural loss has undoubtedly strengthened Denyer’s resolve to continue the quest. As Bob Gilmore put it in 2003: “His whole concern with musical instruments, new, modified, or nearly extinct, can perhaps be seen as a metaphor for the larger question of what can be salvaged, artistically, from the chaos of civilization as we begin a new century.” The century may not be so new now, but this need to re-evaluate the essentials of music-making through the lens of atypical resources continues to define Denyer’s ever-searching artistic attitude.

These ideas are embodied most directly and emphatically in Broken Music (1990), which was commissioned by and dedicated to Musica Practica, Japan. In retrospect it can be seen as a preparatory study for Denyer’s largest work The Fish that Became the Sun (Songs of the Dispossessed) (1991-96) (at149), but it is a powerful work in its own right with a kaleidoscopic quality in which myriad fragments of distinct colour and grain seem to continually reconfigure themselves in search of solid relationship. The ensemble itself is an expression of unlikely kinships, which nevertheless complement, as well as contrast with, one another - a broken consort. In the opening bars the music calls us to attention, the recurrent, ever-frustrated do-mi-re motif heard in a shattered sequence of composite sonorities: banjo, harp buzz and scraper - piccolo, melodica, bassoon and marbles - high double-stopped cello with banjo and crow-call… All these in quick succession with a variety of wind and scraping sounds generating momentum between the erratic attacks. There is clear a preference here for plucked and percussive sonorities, which seem to erupt with violence - or is it desperation? - but behind or beyond this, glimpsed for fleeting moments, there is also a tender quality in the wistfully sustained chords - a glimmer of hope or merely nostalgic memory? At one point a wild duet for cello and contrabassoon, both in their upper register, grabs our attention with its display of intensely idiosyncratic virtuosity quite unlike anything in the usual repertoire of these instruments.  The rhythm is precisely notated, although the sense of ‘ensemble’ frays at the seams, the texture blurred by the melodica, and punched in place only by percussive interjections. Further on, tempo does break down, as the musicians play independently of one another. The cello returns to the foreground, now somewhat subdued - certainly more introverted - with a beautifully pensive melody of high artificial harmonics, accompanied by the intermittent rattle of tin foil and the contrary whooshing interjections of a fishing rod; at the same time, further in the distance, we hear another world: the shrieks and squeals of off-stage rabbit calls, lip whistles and fox calls. While these calls occur at precise moments in the score their execution is improvised, with the performance instruction “gradually becoming more animal-like” suggesting the importance not only of a world beyond the stage, but of a world of communicative sounds beyond human or compositional control, yet equally valid contributors to this Broken Music.

The works collected here span almost fifty years of creative activity, and a wide sonic palette, yet they are connected by a thread that has remained constant at the heart of Denyer’s music since the early 1970’s, namely melody. Denyer’s insistence on the primacy of the horizontal dimension of music was in stark contrast to the prevailing musical environment when it first became a compositional preoccupation, as he explains: “Following some leads that came from writing and re-writing A Book of Emblems and Songs I found with the Unison set that I had somehow strayed into, what seemed at the time, an unfamiliar musical terrain. Remember that at this stage I was just an innocent, tentatively trying to absorb this new situation and find my way about.” (email interview) This attraction to the possibilities of ‘unfamiliar terrain’ conveys itself, in the Unisons, through the timeless freshness of the melodic language, which eschews any sense of pre-determined structure in favour of an intangible quality where the melody seems to discover itself as it ebbs and flows, and occasionally - for brief moments - splits in two. Listening to them now, Unisons 1 & 3 seem to float in a state of perpetually unresolved expectation, as if they might go on indefinitely. The sense of resolution - though that’s not quite the right word - comes from beyond, in the way that they connect so seamlessly with the surrounding works, which sometimes seem to grow into/out of them.

This sense of connectedness between pieces comes not only from Denyer’s melodic sensibility, but from his penchant for particular timbres and archetypal gestures which recur in varied guises throughout his oeuvre. The fragile and hard-to-identify instrumental/vocal blend that defines the Unisons is among these, and as the disc progresses we hear glimpses of it in both Screens and Five Views. In these pieces however, it exists in relation to a wonderfully varied and contrasting palette of percussive sonorities which can be understood to fulfil a range of musical functions not available in an exclusively melodic idiom. The most instantly recognisable of these is the bass drum, which undoubtedly holds a special place in Denyer’s imagination, despite its comparatively conventional associations. Sometimes rolled and sometimes struck, the bass drum often serves to ‘clear the air’ or signify, with its portentous resonance, a change of some kind in the musical situation. It is the deepest and darkest member of a family which also includes many less familiar personalities.

The literally and figuratively striking sound of the staff-on-a-tree-stump, which calls us to attention in no uncertain terms at the opening of Screens, is echoed across the time and space of the piece by varied knocks and taps (played by all members of the ensemble on chopping boards, cigar boxes and table tops) which convey, despite their rhythmic precision, an air of tentative uncertainty - perhaps because ‘no two knocks should sound the same’. Another recurrent sound-category is the rattle, described by Denyer as ‘a continuous sound without pulse’ and produced variously by resonant seed pods, ankle bells, or rattles made ‘from goats toes, or moth cocoons’, the vital consideration being that - as with the knocks and taps - ‘each rattle should have an individual identity’ such that when passed between members of the ensemble there is a subtle transformation of sound-colour around the space. These sounds bleed back into the realm of pitch -  melody and occasionally even harmony - through the tremolandi of the jaltarang (precisely tuned porcelain bowls) and Indian santūr (a struck zither), played by the percussionists, as well as fragile vocal oscillations and occasional flutters in the flute. No one sound matters more than another, and they seem to exist as parts of a carefully balanced ecology.  

Such insistence on the uniqueness of each and every sound is the essence of Denyer’s compositional voice, demanding the utmost attention and dedication of performers. This is heightened in Screens by the actual presence of four dressing screens (one each for viola, voice, flute and violin), which serve to transform the performance space, emphasising the subtly theatrical aspect of Denyer’s work. As listeners (and observers) we feel as though we have stumbled upon a secret ritual, but the dressing screens, with their precise spatial disposition, also have implications for the sound. Denyer notes that “It is important that the placing on stage of the four screens […] is slightly asymmetrical insofar as no musician then commands stage centre. This helps to give them equal weight. At precise points each individual player appears from, or retreats behind, their particular screen. Their onstage positions are clearly replicated on the recording. The dialectic is partly between the sounds of musicians when they are seen and those when they are not.”  

At the beginning all four players are out of sight behind their screens, along with their subsidiary instruments (which are never seen). The two percussionists, facing away from the audience and towards the screens, command centre-stage. The singer is the first of the four hidden musicians to emerge, following which varied combinations of visual presence/absence occur, though on the whole these four musicians are more unseen than seen. This subtle but significant variation of sound qualities becomes the subject of the composers spoken reflection when, somewhat unexpectedly, he emerges from the shadows, coming to the front of the stage to speak, while the ensemble add their own unexpected interjections, from behind their screens. However, this structural dislocation is itself just another stage we pass through, and now there is no way back.

When the spoken text finishes, we find ourselves in a new musical situation. An increased sense of interconnectedness, maybe even unity, is indicated by the unprecedented arrival of harmony and the coalescence of parts into a strange almost chorale-like texture - albeit with contrary interjections from the staff. Before long though, this dissipates, and the voice is left alone sustaining a high tone, following which the bass drums (on- and off-stage) portend yet another transformation: the majority of the ensemble now take up crotales, blending with voice and violin to express an alternative commonality as they weave fine melodic threads through the space… Finally the voice (again behind a screen) is left alone and we hear two pure unadorned notes, intimately surrounded by silence. As at the beginning all that remains visible are the two central percussionists with their backs to the audience.

Intimacy and fragility are heightened at the start of Five Views of the Path, where the voice finds itself entangled with three Baroque traverso flutes, bringing with them the colour of another time. The extreme delicacy of the violin too, arriving towards the end of the movement, has a hauntingly antique quality. Melody here becomes heterophony, as the sounds shimmer and slide around one another with ever-varied nuances of light and shade, illuminating and obscuring the extended, sinuate arcs. The inner ‘views’ are more cyclic, their gentle rituals leading the music to different places with each repetition. The raw statement of the bass drum (four loud strokes and a roll), clears the air at the end of the first movement, hailing the entry of mandolin and percussion in ‘view 2’. This radical change of perspective - emphasising ‘attack’ over ‘sustain’, as well as rattles and tremolandi - transforms our hearing of the flutes when they re-enter, though the presence of the heavily muted high violin melody remains like a memory of what had gone before. A delicate ensemble klangfarbenmelodie ensues, though the voice is notably absent until the last two bars of the movement, where a single note - an ever-so-fragile ‘A’ - appears like a question, once again shifting our perspective. An array of precisely tuned twangs (berimbau), pops and knocks (marbles, pebbles, ceramic pots), and scraping sounds (sandpaper blocks and clothboard), define ‘view 3’ which arrives with a sudden impulse of playful energy. As the musicians ‘play off’ one another rhythmically, they pass the pitch ‘B’ around the ensemble, in variously opaque and translucent forms. This is the most extrovert music on the disc since Broken Music, and with its array of intercutting tones and colours it reminds us of the kaleidoscopic quality that earlier work. There are instances of silence too, but only the most fragmentary glimpses of ‘melody’, such that the return of sustained tones in the female voice and muted violin - now working together for the first time - feels completely fresh in ‘view 4’. The close association of voice and violin grows closer still in ‘view 5’, now often in literal unison. Yet, the heterophonic textural variety of the other parts - defined by frequency beats, oscillations and tremolos - sets this smooth otherworldly timbre in stark relief.

As in Screens, there is a sense of abstracted theatre to Five Views. Each ‘view’ offers us a fragmented glimpse of a journey or world that we cannot know in its entirety. If the narrative remains mysterious, elusive and ambiguous, that is also part of the charm.

Christian Mason,   August 2023