KRONOS DISEASE
NORDLINGER, JAY
Music KRONOS DISEASE By Jay Nordlinger Unlike its sister disciplines, classical music has been spared a fixation on politics. Paintings and sculptures may be more political than artistic,...
...Hoover laments that “more young people appear to know the words of popular soap jingles than the meaningful words of “The StarSpangled Banner,” and here the composer has his excuse to ride the national anthem all the way to the end...
...But we know who the real criminal is, of course...
...is an atypical recording of atypical music performed by an atypical string quartet...
...Nonesuch, 79372-2...
...Scott Johnson’s “Cold War Suite” has a speak THE QUARTET ENTERS DARKLY, AND IT IS CLEAR THAT THIS IS GESTAPOMUSIK: MARTIAL AND INTENSE...
...The piece is different from the first two in that there is less—in fact, no—doctoring of tape: The poet reads his work straight (if that’s the right word...
...The recording begins with “Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover” by Michael Daugherty...
...The charge is murder,” a voice says, and this is the composer’s charge, really, against the Bureau...
...With the politics-choked Howl, U.S.A., Harrington and his partners seem to have reached their limit...
...Paintings and sculptures may be more political than artistic, and novels and poems more political than literary...
...Except, that is, for the other pieces on the album...
...As a musician, I trust my ears, and this book definitely has the ring of truth...
...Is it a work of music...
...A radio announcer cuts in: The Director is to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...The piece opens with Hoover’s unaccompanied voice, stating the composer’s purpose: “I hope that this presentation will serve to give to you a better knowledge and a deeper understanding of your FBI...
...The noise-pastiche is meant to suggest chaos, a society out of control...
...The quartet responds with little upward glissandi, annoying and intended to be...
...The music is simply accompaniment— not more or less—to the poet’s recitation...
...The Kronos is among the most famous chamber ensembles in the world, concertizing on all continents and garnering near-universal critical praise...
...But it doesn’t take long for the music to seem an interference rather than an enhancement...
...Hoover exhorts, and what can the common man do...
...Composers can make their work shapeless, banal, or perverse...
...A lot...
...there is a work christened “The Peace Piece...
...The quartet enters, menacingly, and it is clear that this is Gestapomusik: martial and intense...
...Here are arrangements of Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa...
...Nonetheless, it’s a pity that the Kronos Quartet should descend into the fever swamp, because it plays extraordinarily well, and while the world has more than enough political ideologues, it does not suffer from a surfeit of first-rate chamber groups...
...But they are hard-pressed to render it explicitly political...
...Stone, and he is uttering his holy words: about “the secret network” that makes honest Americans afraid, the iniquity of Reagan-administration policy in Central America, the danger of nuclear weapons (particularly those owned by the United States...
...but the recitation, without the quartet, would be liberated...
...Fragments of Hoover’s testimony are heard, the key Scoundrel Time epithets highlighted: “communism,” “the enemy,” “Nikita Khrushchev,” “deadly menace,” “Communists and their dupes...
...Shostakovich may have inscribed “A Response to Just Criticism” on the title page of his fifth symphony in 1937—Stalin’s government had been offended by his previous work—but the score that follows is only ignorantly construed as a tribute to the Soviet state...
...The quartet, without the recitation, would be purposeless...
...1 “The AIDS Symphony,” but it remains for the listener to determine what the piece is “about”—if it is “about” anything, since music need not have a recognizable program, and seldom does...
...We are as close to you as your telephone,” Hoover is saying, and we are trapped in Amerika...
...The quartet aims to imitate, or collaborate with, Stone’s voice in pitch, intonation, cadence, and rhythm...
...You want to holler, “Hey...
...In the days of silent movies, the larger houses employed organists who improvised accompaniments to the action on screen (minor keys and tremolos for the black hats, bright, triumphal odes for the white hats, soupy melodies for the kissing...
...Daugherty has taken tapes of Hoover’s speeches, extracted choice sentences and words, toyed with them mischievously, and apposed them to other sounds, some of which emanate from a string quartet...
...With that, citizens are put to work spying on one another, and no one is safe...
...The time has come for Americans to wake up...
...The letters “F-B-I” are chanted over and over (by whom...
...Asked to recommend a book to the public, founder and first violinist David Harrington cited The Managua Lectures by totalitarian academic Noam Chomsky, “so amazingly riveting that I can hardly tear myself away from it...
...Robert Mapplethorpe, and no image ever more accurately portrayed an album’s contents...
...They are indeed a magnet and boon to the contemporary composer, commissioning generously and receiving thousands of unsolicited manuscripts in the mail...
...The Kronos-ers are routinely described in the press as “risk-taking” and “avant-garde,” meaning that they (a) eschew traditional (i.e., great) repertoire, (b) dress informally, and (c) champion new music that is charitably dubbed “experimental...
...If the Kronos-ers were merely a bunch of radicalized mediocrities, coasting on the arts dole, their obsessions would be simply risible—instead of sharply disappointing...
...And the Kronos-ers are no garden-variety left-liberals...
...as Hoover continues to intone “your FBI, your FBI...
...The photographer...
...It’s as though you’re listening to some atonal string quartet composed by a promising high-school senior for a college entrance exam, and someone has inadvertently left the radio or television on...
...For all its lunacy, “Sing Sing” is a rather brilliantly conceived, surprisingly effective . . . creation...
...The album concludes with Lee Hyla’s “Howl,” which uses the famous poem of Allen Ginsberg, one of the most important in recent American literature...
...ing voice, too, but it is far from a villain’s: It belongs to the late leftist journalist I.F...
...At the climax, it is “Fear...
...Look at your watch this morning,” Hoover tells an audience, illustrating the frequency of crime...
...Hyla attempts to do much the same here for “Howl,” but Ginsberg’s recitation is already complete, unimprovable...
...What it is is fodder for the Kronos Quartet—commissioned by Lincoln Center—and unlike much of anything else...
...If you happen to be hungry for the Stalin-era spirit expressed in music, you have to turn to the Kronos Quartet and its latest recording, Howl, U.S.A...
...John Corigliano, for example, is free to nickname his Symphony No...
...Musical life is not immediately threatened by the infection of politics, because most musicians are still more interested in music than in the extramusical, or the anti-musical...
...But music, dwelling in its otherworld of notes and modulation and rhythm, has been able to sail on...
...It is startling and shocking and all the things that go into a major experience...
...the quartet joins in, first straightforwardly, then lapsing into mocking disharmony (a technique perfected by modern Russian composers like Prokofiev...
...The quartet insinuates a distorted quotation from “My Country, ’tis of Thee...
...fear...
...and “Fear...
...If you think the late FBI chief has been sufficiently demonized, you haven’t seen anything yet: Lillian Hellman’s harshest indictment is child’s play by comparison...
...According to Billboard, it sells more recordings than does any other string quartet...
...Allen Ginsberg and Annie Sprinkle, meet Ward and June Cleaver...
...It can therefore be dismissed— or enjoyed—as anomalous...
...Hoover’s phrases—commonplace in their natural settings—are repeated endlessly, thickening an Orwellian fog...
...The piece was commissioned for the Kronos-ers by the National Endowment for the Arts “in partnership” with the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund...
...An old typewriter clatters—tappety, tappety—as a file is prepared on some innocent...
...Apparently the suspect is not cooperating...
...Next there is ticking—relentless, maddening—along with piquant strings...
...Howl, U.S.A...
...An old-timey crowd sings it (perhaps at a ballgame), the quartet provides sinister counterpoint, and all the while Hoover cries “Brainwashed...
...Suddenly, the FBI is making an arrest: “Get your hands up...
...A military band plays a patriotic march, on a crackling old recording...
...The cover of the album features a photo of a tattered American flag...
...The phrase “home of the brave” is presented as a terrible irony...
...Could you turn something off—preferably the stereo...
...royalties are sent to the trendiest foundations...
...It is agitprop, certainly, but is it music, too, or a political diatribe garnished with musical commentary, or a Fantasy for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, and Hoover Splicings...
...The music is crude and dissonant and crazed—like that heard in movies when horrible, incomprehensible injustices are being done to heroes...
...Then phones ring and ambulances wail...
...fear!,” then more gunfire— bang-bang-bang—then Hoover: “I thank you” (probably the close of his HUAC testimony...
...There is gunfire, and the music ceases...
...With every year and every trip to the studio, the group endeavors to get avant-garder, and its politics are increasingly worn on its sleeve...
Vol. 1 • September 1996 • No. 49
