To Know And Not To Know

Album review

Noah Creshevsky, professor emeritus and former director of the Center for Computer Music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, describes his electro-acoustic musical language as "hyperrealist." It's realistic in that it uses samples of acoustic instruments and voices, and while they may be minimally electronically modified, they are never changed to the point that their sound source is unrecognizable -- a trumpet is always clearly a trumpet and a soprano is always clearly a soprano. It is "hyper" in the sense that Creshevsky's combination of the samples creates music that would be beyond the capabilities of human performers, either in speed, rhythmic complexity, or register. The results are solidly in the tradition of the sound collages of musique concrète, but are unique in their exclusive use of traditional instruments as sound sources. ("Traditional" does not imply Western; Creshevsky uses a culturally diverse instrumental palette, and several of these pieces are largely based on non-Western samples.) The use of familiar sounds fragmented and combined into inhumanly complex ensembles and patterns owes something to Nancarrow's exploitation of the mechanical capabilities of the player piano, but Creshevsky's instrument is the computer.
The CD includes works with instrumental samples, with both instrumental and vocal samples and unaltered vocal solos with sampled accompaniment. The vocal solos are generally less interesting, because the melodies are largely mundane, but Psalmus XXIII holds the listener's attention with its eccentric juxtaposition of erotic moaning with a liturgical-sounding Latin setting of the text. The other pieces, particularly Red Carpet, Chamber Concerto, and Independence Day, are entirely successful: quirky, fragmented, and wildly inventive. Free Speech, consisting mostly of vocal samples, sounds something like Ligeti's Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures on steroids; the vocalizations are never quite complete enough to have clear semantic meaning, but they are hugely expressive nonetheless, and often hilarious. Creshevsky's music should have strong appeal for fans of genre-stretching new music.

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