{"id":425,"date":"2016-01-13T15:55:54","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T21:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/?page_id=425"},"modified":"2016-01-13T15:57:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T21:57:09","slug":"beat-furrer-drei-klavierstuecke-2004","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/beat-furrer-drei-klavierstuecke-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Beat Furrer, “Drei Klavierstuecke” (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PTDC0001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beat Furrer (b. 1954<\/a>) is a contemporary Austrian composer who writes carefully constructed,\u00a0technically demanding pieces\u00a0that are not in line with\u00a0 recent\u00a0styles a such as Post-minimalism, New Simplicity, Spectralism, High Texturalism, New Complexity, and so forth.<\/p>\n

The IRCAM website<\/a> has one of the few assessments of his work:<\/p>\n

Les arts plastiques, la litt\u00e9rature, le jazz forment l’arri\u00e8re-plan d’o\u00f9 naissent les premi\u00e8res \u0153uvres. Certaines techniques s’apparentent par analogie aux proc\u00e9d\u00e9s plastiques : superposition de couches qui cernent progressivement un objet en revisitant une m\u00eame structure (Retour an dich<\/i>, trio, 1986), effets de clairs-obscurs (Streichquartett n\u00b0 1<\/em>, 1984). Ce travail de diff\u00e9renciation extr\u00eame entre les sons, les gestes et les textures se ramifie par endroits en des trames tr\u00e8s denses ou se tient, au contraire, au bord de la dissolution (Studie 2 – \u00e0 un moment de terre perdue<\/i>, pour ensemble, 1990, Nuun<\/i>, concerto pour piano et orchestre, 1996).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This corresponds with some of Furrer’s titles,\u00a0but it is at best a schematic notion of the some of the metaphors he\u00a0uses to think about the works. The detailed effect of Furrer’s\u00a0works is an entirely\u00a0different matter. I think what matters in his music\u00a0is a\u00a0tense unremitting control of self-imposed limits, and an\u00a0accompanying vigilance regarding the danger, both psychologically and to the structure of the music, of letting those limits go. For me the work is a compelling answer to several tendencies\u00a0in recent music precisely because it is so tightly bound by self-imposed constraints.<\/p>\n

There are a number of pieces for solo piano. Some are short; here is\u00a0Melodie<\/em> (2003) in its entirety:\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is the opening of\u00a0Voicelessness: The Snow Has No Voice\u00a0<\/em> (1987). The performer plays the first two staves, then the second and third, and so forth, so that either the left or right hand repeats what’s been heard before:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Phasma\u00a0<\/em>(2002) is a major piece, too difficult for me to play. It \u00a0can be heard along with the score on YouTube<\/a>. The opening is comprised of\u00a0ppp\u00a0<\/em>staccato<\/em> forearm clusters of notes in an irregular rhythm:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

These clusters are like muttering, so Furrer’s indication “sprechend” (“speaking”) is appropriate: but because these are clusters, they\u00a0also conjure a group of speakers or performers “speaking”\u00a0in perfect arhythmic synchronization: the effect is tense and uncanny.<\/p>\n

This page shows\u00a0one of Furrer’s signature textures: a staccato voice, interrupted by broken chords and single notes in a different rhythm. It also occurs, for example, in Studie f\u00fcr Klavier<\/em> (2011).\u00a0\u00a0(Incidentally, it is not clear to me why the clusters are groups of five, considering the 3\/8 time is never audible, and the bar lines are only a convenience: why not notate it in 5\/8?)<\/p>\n

The piece I am considering here,\u00a0Drei Klavierst\u00fccke<\/em> (2004), begins with a version of that same texture. This time the notes are in groups of three and five. I find it necessary to make penciled tick marks for eighth note beats; it would be possible\u00a0use a\u00a0metronome or click track for the same purpose.<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0002\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Initially there is no counterpoint except for the shifting quiet overtones\u00a0produced by the silently depressed notes in the bass.\u00a0The first contrasting notes are two\u00a0long sustained c#’s on page 4. They are only single\u00a0pp<\/em> notes, but in this\u00a0“muttering” context of staccato clusters,\u00a0they sound as loud and full as bells.<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0003\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the end of this scan is another of Furrer’s characteristic textures\u2014rapid running notes and arpeggios. I call these “textures” because they tend to be sharply differentiated from one another, with no segues.<\/p>\n

The second of the Drei Klavierst\u00fccke<\/em>\u00a0is very short. Here it is in its entirety. (Sorry, one scan is grayscale and the other is color.)<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0004\"<\/a>\"PTDC0006\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first measure continues the spare staccato manner of the first piece. But then there’s an anomaly in Furrer’s music: a page that sounds like a quotation or fragment from a romantic piano piece. For me this is almost like a page of Rochberg, except that instead of being heartfelt it is emotionally uncontrolled and, I think, sarcastic or bitter. On the second page the dotted rhythm\u00a0evaporates into a version of the same\u00a0martellato<\/em>\u00a0texture as at the beginning\u2014single and double notes up at the very top of the keyboard. The evaporation is analogous to what happens in\u00a0Melodie<\/em>\u00a0(see the scan, above), except that here the\u00a0fragment of romantic music\u00a0goes out of control upward rather than downward.<\/p>\n

It’s as if Furrer cannot control classical melodies: they burn up, they crash\u00a0into the bass or fly up\u00a0to the very end of the keyboard. What he controls is rhythms, textures, and timbres. He is very careful about nuances of timbre;\u00a0some piano pieces have special instructions for producing unusual, but sensitively judged effects. It almost seems that he\u00a0needs<\/em> to work with a restricted range of tools, because otherwise the work would become suddenly wildly emotional.<\/p>\n

The third Klavierst\u00fcck<\/em>\u00a0has some running figures, and\u00a0also a third texture: staccato repeated notes. Passages like this sound like minimalism, but somehow gone wrong: it’s obsessive-compulsive minimalism, too tense and tightly wound to modulate as in Reich or Glass. The repeated notes are repetitive and mechanical (these are marked “very regular!!”), and the scales and arpeggios are very\u00a0fast, too high or low or blurred to hear properly. (In other pieces, such as\u00a0Studie f\u00fcr Klavier,<\/em> the running figures are chords and octaves, which can be just as hard to hear distinctly, and also much more\u00a0difficult to play.)<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0007\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Those pages give way to a fourth texture that also occurs in other pieces (including\u00a0Phasma<\/em>),\u00a0<\/i>an open framework of rising figures:<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0008\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Phasma\u00a0<\/em>figures like these are interrupted by isolated chords and notes.<\/em> Here the interrupted chords come a page after these arpeggio-like figures, in a separate section:<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0009\"<\/a>These juxtaposed,\u00a0disjunct textures, many repeated in varied forms\u00a0across several pieces, can produce a kind of nearly hysterical intensity. I find Furrer is at his best when he is working within one texture, or when one alternates with just one other. Pieces like\u00a0Drei Klavierst\u00fccke<\/em>\u00a0that use four or five textures in succession can seem inadequately realized or provisional. In this case the weird romantic dotted figure in the second Klavierst\u00fcck<\/em>\u00a0is so different from what comes before and after (even within the short second Klavierst\u00fcck<\/em>)\u00a0that it becomes\u00a0hard to hear\u00a0the Drei Klavierst\u00fccke<\/em>\u00a0 as a\u00a0coherent or deliberated whole.<\/p>\n

What’s fascinating about Furrer, I think, is the tremendously intricate and complete control he forces\u00a0on his carefully curated material. In the pieces where he permits himself to write more freely, as in the second\u00a0Klavierst\u00fcck<\/em>, or in the ensemble piece\u00a0Linea dell’orizzonte<\/em><\/a> (2012), the music can seem to go suddenly out of control\u2014very loud, very high or low, with inappropriately or unexpectedly grand\u00a0rhetorical gestures like the dotted rhythms in the second Klavierst\u00fcck<\/em>, or else long fermata, or violent\u00a0crescendi <\/em>(as in\u00a0Linea dell’orizzonte<\/a><\/em><\/em>).<\/em><\/em>\u00a0Apparently wild passages are of course fully notated, but they suggest that the muttering or\u00a0martellato <\/em>or\u00a0ppp<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/em>15va or staccato arhythmic passages are the ones in which the music really speaks. This is exemplary music, some of the best being written.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In terms of performance: Drei Klavierst\u00fccke<\/em> is playable, although the third piece is difficult. The shorter pieces I mentioned are easier. Unfortunately Studie\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Phasma<\/em>\u00a0are very difficult in parts, but for a pianist more skilled than I am they would be\u00a0excellent choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beat Furrer (b. 1954) is a contemporary Austrian composer who writes carefully constructed,\u00a0technically demanding pieces\u00a0that are not in line with\u00a0 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}