Very old and very new

Over the past two nights I heard two completely different concerts at the University of Colorado: Music of the High Baroque and the Pendulum New Music.

Elizabeth Farr played harpsichord in the first. Two Bach pieces preceded by a suite by D'Angelbert from around 1689. I've listened to a lot of Bach, but only during the Bourée did I remember hearing any of it before -- and that, I believe, was sung by the Swingle Singers years ago. While Farr's playing was wonderful, I found the D'Angelbert hard to digest. While I tried to follow or find a melodic line the ornamentation threw me. I was listening to 300 year old music with ears tuned to the 21st century.

The Pendulum New Music project has been a favorite of mine over the years. You hear stuff you've never heard before - some good, some not so. I had never heard the D'Angelbert harpsichord suite, either, though. Last night's concert was at the CU Atlas Black Box Theater which is equipped with lots of high-tech sound and projection systems. Multimedia music was interspersed with live soloists playing with computers and projections. I was particularly impressed with multimedia presentation of Hunter Ewen's Elements. One section which I think of as "Birds" but which he called "Staccato" was particularly clever. The black and white projection of bird shapes first appeared to be bi-laterally symmetric but I realized as I watched more closely there was more more going on and things were not symmetric, even though the music did seem so. Fun. It would seem to me that Mr. Ewen has a future in TV commercials, at the least.

The "known" composer on the program was Steve Reich. His "Pendulum Music" was, how do I say it, "performed". Three microphones were swung back and forth over special spherical speakers on the floor, generating feedback as they moved back and forth. Music? I think not. I like some of Reich's works and I'm listening to his Music for 18 Musicians as I type this. Unlike the earlier D'Angelbert which hid the theme behind ornamentation, Reich's theme is repeated over and over and over, with small ornamentation or variations. "Pendulum Music" apparently has no relationship to the Pendulum New Music program, only a shared word.

I also enjoyed the combination of a live performer playing alongside taped electronic music. We had two tubas and a violin in 3 separate pieces. Michael Dunn, from the faculty and who gave his own concert the prior week, played well again, this time in a minimalistic "Tapestry for Tuba and Tape" by James DeMar. In the second tuba piece, Ryan Wurst's "Flow II for Solo Tuba and Live Electronics", the tuba player Ed Wagner used something to tap on the bell. To me it sounded as if he was using two different things -- there appeared to be two completely different sounds. However, when I asked Wagner after the performance he said it was just a penny.