i saw my mother ascending mount fuji incorporates two of my previous compositions:
Chimyaku (1968) for alto flute, performed by David Gilbert (May 1973)
and Michi (1972) for violin, performed by Linda Cummisky (August 1973).
Tape part by Harley Gaber (June-August 2009)
Special thanks to Anna Dolan whose interest in Michi helped get this work made.
www.harleygaber.com
innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation.
Philip Blackburn, director, design
Chris Campbell, operations manager
www.innova.mu
A WORK FOR MULTI-TRACK VIOLIN, PROCESSED ALTO FLUTE AND TAPE
It was the on the morning of Saturday, 20th of
June 2009 that I began working on ÒMount Fuji,Ó some eighteen years since my
mother died from cancer. She went into a coma on the 20th and died
in the early evening of the 21st of 1991 (the Summer Solstice). The
coincidence of the dates of both her death and of my reviewing older music from
new digital transfers that might be issued on CD in the near future, was one of
the factors that eventually pointed me in the direction of imagining a piece
that would address her death and my past and present reactions to that event.
In thinking back to that time eighteen years ago, I concluded that I had not
dealt with her death in an open and conventional way, which is to say I didnÕt
mourn or grieve her passing. She
had been diagnosed with terminal cancer almost a year earlier. Her death, then,
came as no surprise. It happened, as everyone knew it would, and then she was
no longer there. As it has turned out, the piece that has become ÒMount FujiÓ
gradually revealed itself to me as an opportunity to both deal with the past,
and at the same time, begin to create a new musical language for myself that
would be more accessible to the listener and more inclusive with respect to
dealing with the human condition in a more direct, less abstract manner than my
music did in the past.
The process
of listening to these new transfers of music I had written in the 1970Õs had begun
earlier in the week. The transfers had been made for the consideration of
Edition RZ in Germany who had expressed an interest in issuing two or three
pieces of mine that pre-dated my ÒWinds Rise in the North,Ó which was
remastered and reissued by them on CD at the end of 2007. Two of the three pieces, ÒSovereign of
the CentreÓ for four violins and ÒThe Realm of IndraÕs Net,Ó a work for solo
violin made into a four track tape piece, sounded very good after some minor
sound shaping in the computer. The third piece, ÒMichi,Ó a solo violin piece
written in 1972 for Linda Cummiskey, and heard in a performance she did of it in
July of 1973 as part of Madnadnock Music—a summer festival in southern
New Hampshire—was a different story all together. There was absolutely no
possibility that the piece as heard on this tape could be released on CD due to
excessive tape noise, which by and large obliterated the workÕs intensely
still, meditative quality that was so important its effectiveness. The long,
silent pauses between individual sound events, to cite the recordingÕs most
obvious shortcoming, were no longer silent and therefore did not function as
the integral and crucial stilled moments between sound events that they were
meant to be. The absence of the workÕs clarity and stillness, due to the amount
of noise on the tape, made me even question the ÒcorrectnessÓ of the sound
events themselves. It was
difficult for me to believe this was the same piece I had remembered so
differently.
Nonetheless, I began working on the sound quality of the
recording in the computer trying to salvage what most people would consider a
lost cause, (even St. Jude would have walked on this one). I first worked at
reducing the noise on the tape keeping in mind that I could go only so far
before those adjustments would alter the violin sound itself, reducing it to
sounding like a poorly synthesized version of a violin rather than the real
thing. Eventually, having gone as
far as I could go with those adjustments, I still was not satisfied with the
overall effect of the piece. I hit upon the idea of layering or collaging two
iterations of the solo violin part so that overlapping notes from one or the
other layered iterations of the piece covered most of the long
silences—in musical parlance, rests—that exist between the notes of
the pieceÕs original version. By covering many of the silences I was then able
to go back and readjust the violin sound back to a version that that was closer
to where it had been before I had begun working on it so as to make it warmer
and more ÒrealÓ sounding once again. The compositional problem of ending up
with something that resembled a protracted, literal and repetitious sounding
canon between the two parts was solved in part by cross fading the volume
between the two parts and by editing out certain notes in one part or the
other. In fact, what came out of these manipulations—the layering, and
collaging of the solo version—was, to my current way of hearing, far
richer harmonically and more interesting because of its new sense of harmonic
unpredictability that sounded more like an elaboration of the tightly controlled
harmonic vocabulary of the original work rather than a nullification of
it. I was pleased with the
outcome: I felt that I had successfully created a new, multi-layered version of
ÒMichiÓ without sacrificing the pieceÕs original intent or character.
It was about eight in the evening—I had been
working since early that morning—that I finished this new, layered
version of ÒMichi,Ó which in
Japanese means road, but when used in
the context of Zen, is metaphorically translated as path or way. As I have
already mentioned, the new version worked well for me, but at the same time, it
raised an issue that I had never considered, nor even been aware of when I
wrote the piece in 1972: A path to where? An outlook to what end?
Had I really thought back then that it was simply enough to say, in effect,
ÒThis piece is an expression of Zen thinking,Ó or ÒThis piece is an expression of Zen itself?Ó I must have, because that is
what is suggested by the inclusion of various quotations relating to Zen and
Taoism that can be found in the printed, published score dating from that time.
I must admit that I had no answers to any of those
questions. I was faced with the simple fact that the thinking that had served
me so well when I composed the work in 1972 was no longer working for me. It
was not consonant with my current thinking, which is far more focused on issues
dealing directly with the myriad aspects of the human condition than on the
more abstracted world of physical phenomena. That major shift in my focus
perhaps explains why my thoughts about what I wanted from this new version of
ÒMichiÓ (apart from the merely practical consideration filling out a CD) turned
to my mother and the last few days prior to her death. I thought just about
her: who she was, what her life had meant to her, and finally how she might
have experienced her oncoming demise. These thoughts led me to consider, once
again, how the last ten years of her life had been affected by my younger
brother DannyÕs suicide in May of 1982. It seemed that her interest in Nature,
one that predated his death, became more and more important to her as a ÒplaceÓ
where she could go—in reality and in her mind—to deal with the loss
of her youngest son.
As her primary care giver during the last month of her
life, I spent a great deal of time with her and had the general impression she
was more or less at peace with herself with the passage she was now going
through. I got a rocking chair for
her so that she could sit comfortably, looking out the windows at the trees
that surrounded the house. One of the last things she said was ÒI never thought
it would be like this.Ó Maybe it was the chair, the view, or the drugs, but
whatever it was, she seemed more peaceful than I had ever seen her in my entire
life. I would like to think that she had reached an understanding and
acceptance of life in general, and her life in particular. With that in mind, I
began to think about her last two days not as the ending of something, but
rather as the beginning of a uniquely different journey, returning, so to speak, to Nature.
Turning back to the musical issues of the piece with
these thoughts in mind, I made a (quantum) leap of sorts that allowed me to
think of her as the violin, thereby enabling me to imagine and experience her
ÒjourneyÓ through the violin(s)Õs sound; the notes it was playing, the pacing
of the notes and the purposeful ÒpurposelessnessÓ of how these notes, when
taken in aggregate, suggested an action that could and would never cease. A strange mapping—the violin and
my mother—even for me, but one nonetheless that had become very
real. It wasnÕt that I was
abstractly imagining her wandering aimlessly and eternally, or for that matter
that she had literally become the violin. In my mind, I was experiencing the
energy that had been her, a force of energy that ebbed and flowed—as all
energy does—with seemingly no end to its motion.
Despite the newness and challenging nature of these
insights and thoughts, and the satisfaction of making a ÒnewÓ piece out of the
old one, there was at the same time, a not so satisfying feeling that what I
was now calling ÒMichi DuetÓ was, in and of itself, of no particular interest
to me. Out of necessity (and curiosity), I had created a hybrid work that did
not accurately reflect who I was in 1972 when I composed
it nor who I am now, in 2009. I think all the work and thinking I have done
throughout all the intervening years, especially my involvement in film making
over the past six years, had something to do with my sense that this
re-composed piece in its current form could not stand alone. It was as if I had
made a film with no narrative, with no images; only a character set in motion
within an undefined context.
So, thinking both as a composer and a film maker, I began
late Saturday afternoon to imagine the possibility of creating a ground and/or
a space with volume and Òa life of its ownÓ over which and/or through which the
layered violin elements could move in and out of; sometimes becoming part of
that Ò(back)ground,Ó sometimes being autonomous, sometimes
even existing in opposition to it. To make this piece work, I knew I had to go
beyond my past thinking about musical composition, beyond the purely musical
boundaries that I had consciously and rigorously adhered to in the past. I saw
that what I wanted could be thought of as either a piece of music that was, so
to speak, Òfilmic,Ó or, from the reverse perspective, a film that had no
images. From either perspective,
the key element that would make or break the piece I was beginning to imagine
was the inclusion and the delineation of a human struggle or human spirit,
which in this case was embodied in the image of my mother and the journey she
was about to embark on. It was at that point—like a screenwriter placing
a filmÕs action—that I began thinking about the setting of her
journey. My very first (and only)
thought was Mount Fuji and that was it. I spent remainder of Saturday night
trying to find and organize the material for the soundscape I wanted to create. I assembled older music of mine that
had already been digitized, sound effects used for my film making, and importantly,
so-called ambient sound material I had recorded in various locations on a
portable digital recorder during a recent trip to visit my brother Steve, in
Santa Fe, and my old and dear friend Eric Richards—our friendship goes
back to the early mid 1960Õs at Mannes College in New York—in
Albuquerque.
After a few hours of sleep Saturday night I began early
Sunday morning to assemble, order, and transform all that material into what
would become the soundscape that
would eventually function as both a foil and complement for the violin(s). I
felt inexplicably pressed to have everything finished by late Sunday afternoon
or early evening, the time I recall my mother actually died. Why this piece
took the direction it did and why I linked it so literally to the time of my
motherÕs death, and finally, why I felt so compelled to finish it at the hour
of her death is something I really canÕt explain. In any case, that is how it
happened. I was more than pleased with the overall result, and to be perfectly
honest, I was stunned by how the pieceÕs evolution seemed somehow preordained:
It seemed, in retrospect, that it was merely waiting for me to figure out how
to bring it to life. The image of my mother ascending Mount Fuji and the
exactness of the experience I wanted to convey regarding her ascent came to me
sometime Sunday afternoon as I was working on the soundscape. Having that concrete an image come to me at that
particular moment was as serendipitous as it was inspired: It guided me toward
making what I would like to think were the right compositional decisions as to
how the piece unfolded, and how it had to end.
Talking specifically about how the
piece works will have to wait till some other time. One part of that
explanation that I can address now relates to my feelings about Mount Fuji itself,
which unlike most mountains, seems to exist for many people as an icon and an
idea as much, if not more than, the real volcanic mountain it actuality is. I
think of it—unlike any other mountain that comes to mind—as being a
poetic metaphor for itself. By that I mean there is almost no gap between the
actual mountain and the image(s) and idea(s) of it. Its significance seems to
transcend both its reality and its iconic status. Over the two days I worked on
this piece I came to see the ÒvoiceÓ of the violin in a similar manner. The
music that emanates from that voice seems to step outside itself and becomes,
in its own way, not dissimilar to Mount Fuji, a metaphor for its own unique,
real identity. The intertwining of the metaphoric and the real is one of the
central characteristics of the piece as it wends it way Òup the mountain.Ó A
path is found without taking a step. A journey is begun and continues with no
need to leave or arrive. Ascending Mount Fuji is not an act of faith or a
belief for me. It is as real as a
post card, a snap shot taken along the way; an image, one that gets put in a
box with other ÒrealÓ images either under the bed or on the closet shelf, (or
on the Internet these days) to be looked at sometime in the future without a
certainty that the map, so to speak, is not the territory, or, as in the case
of this musical composition, that the territory is not the map.
No gate stands on public roads;
There are paths of various kinds.
Walk freely throughout the Universe.
NOTES FOR THE REVISED VERSION (AUGUST 2009)
It is now the second week of
August; so much has happened since I finished the work on the evening of June
21st. The rush to complete the work was followed by writing the
liner notes, designing the cover, designing the disc, and finally mailing
copies to friends, colleagues, and especially to Robert Zank so that he could
begin thinking about possibly releasing some or all of the music through
Edition RZ. I sent out the CD of
this piece—to get the process going—despite certain reservations I
had about the work regarding how the first half of it unfolded and specifically,
how that unfolding was not quite right. In my rush to get it to Robert,
however, I more or less convinced myself that the unfolding—which seemed
not directional enough and therefore sounded too repetitious in a way that made
me feel uncomfortable—could somehow be justified by looking at in a
similar light as one might view the process of sitting meditation. By that I
mean that it might take a long time during any given sitting for someone
meditating to reach the level of focus that they are attempting to attain
through their meditation practice. Unlike a piece of music that tends to engage
one immediately (think BeethovenÕs Òda-da-da-dum . . .Ó), it would seem highly
unlikely that any person meditating would find him or herself immediately and
instantly at the level of meditative focus and engagement they were attempting
to eventually reach. Deep down, however, I felt I was pushing things with that
analogy because I felt that even I, myself, wasnÕt being brought into the flow
of the music quickly enough, even after having given it more than a fair chance
with multiple listenings. The
experience of listening to music might be meditative in its own way, but it is
certainly not the same as practicing the discipline of actual meditation.
Two friends—both composers
who know my music—let me know how it went for them. They both
corroborated my reservations about the first half of the work. Half heartedly
defending what I had done, I explained to both of them my analogy to
meditating, especially as it might relate to the indeterminate period of time
it might take oneÕs focus, so to speak, to come into focus. I half-heartedly
argued my case but in the end, accepted the workÕs problem for what it was,
i.e., a temporal miscalculation: It took too long for the violin(s) to
initially integrate with the soundscape,
leaving the listener either confounded or simply worn down.
It also became clear through the
conversations with these same friends and through my own subsequent thinking
about what they had said that the problem was not that the piece was too long
in Ògetting to the point,Ó but rather that there was some crucial element
missing from what amounted to more than the entire first half of the piece.
That missing element seemed twofold: Firstly, it needed to be
something—not something added to the electronic Ò(back)groundÓ—that
would work with and against the violin thereby giving it (the missing element)
an ever-changing role or presence (vis-ˆ-vis the violin and the soundscape) and secondly that whatever that
element might be, it had to have a sense of continuous harmonic directionality
and forward motion that would stand in direct contrast to the violinÕs more or
less circular path and its lack of any obvious sense of striving to reach some
structural, harmonic, or ÒemotionalÓ goal. IÕm not sure what I can say in
defense of my overlooking that obvious aspect of striving to reach a goal given
the final premise (and the title) of the work. WittgensteinÕs remark—ÒThe
aspect of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their
simplicity and familiarity.Ó—is as good an
explanation as any for my failing to fully understand that I had failed to
musically convey the experience I had thought in my head.
But putting aside my miscalculation
of the workÕs general trajectory or arc for a moment, there was the very real
problem of my not having a large selection of my own musical material in a
digitized format that I could use to solve the problem. (The thought of my
writing something new and having it recorded was, for many reasons, not an
option.) I then remembered that I had an old digital transfer of my piece
ÒChimyaku,Ó written in 1968 for solo
alto flute that I had used as part of a soundtrack for one of my films some
three years ago. As I have already
mentioned in the notes for the other CD—ÒSovereign of the CentreÓ and
ÒThe Realm of IndraÕs NetÓ—ÒChimyakuÓ
was my first slowed-down (or maybe slow motion) piece that marked a change
in the direction my music eventually took. I listened to it a number of times
and imagined that with some work, I might be able to incorporate it into ÒMount
FujiÓ to resolve the problem of workÕs first half. Most importantly, it had the quality of striving to
reach some undefined, but fulfilling goal. It accomplished that by moving
slowly but continuously toward a musical climax going from a slow and
ÒpeacefulÓ beginning to a more agitated state that eventually culminated in a
complex configuration of compound multiple lines—not unlike some sections
of BachÕs pieces for solo violin—that interrupt each other with greater
frequency and intensity, thereby achieving a structural and emotional climax,
which, importantly (for ÒMount FujiÓ) does not then lead to a conventional
dŽnouement in the trailing off of its final notes. ÒChimyakuÕsÓ final gesture
ends with an intense high note that suggests a willful assertion that it has
had Òit sayÓ and is ending the conversation on its own terms.
Another aspect of ÒChimyakuÓ that led me to believe that it would
fit into this piece so well was its reliance on breath control accomplished
through its very specifically notated use of vibrato. (I do not mean to be heavy handed when I say that I imagined
the flute would literally and figuratively Òbreathe some lifeÓ into this
piece.) In the printed score of the piece, the rate of vibrato is indicated in
a graph-like manner that appears above the musical staff. Lines with numbers
connecting them indicate the number of vibrato pulses per beat; the vibrato
pulses can remain constant, speed up or slow down. They, in effect, become the inner pulse of the sustained
note, at times either driving a phrase forward or bringing it to an end. All of these structural attributes of
ÒChimyakuÓ combined with its breathy, shakuhachi-like sounds and inflections
appealed to me as the perfect sound that might bring the listener into the
piece from the outset, rather than so much farther into the piece.
At the same time, I realized that
that for ÒChimyakuÓ to work in this piece it would have to be slowed down to at
least half the speed of its original tempo, and that the register of the
pitches had to be proportionally lower. So, through a multi-step process I
dealt with the tempo issue while working on specific pitches so that not all
the pitches would be lowered in a one to one mapping with the slowing of the
tempo. Beyond that, I made some further changes to its overall sound so that in
its final form it had a ÒfeelingÓ and timbral quality located somewhere midway
between the purely acoustic sound of the violin and the electronically
manipulated sound of the soundscape.
The flute, in a very real sense, not only becomes a mediation of sorts between
the violin and the soundscape, but
also functions in the dual role of ÒnarratorÓ and ÒguideÓ of the climb up Mount
Fuji. My feeling is that I made the right choice with its inclusion in the
piece. It brings a greater sense of a human experience to the piece—the
difficulty and striving of the ascension—by demonstrating a similar
striving in its own musical and ÒemotionalÓ structure. That particular
emotional quality, so evident in the piece played at its original tempo is
still apparent in the manipulated version I made for this piece. In a totally unexpected and unimagined
way, I feel that I have come full circle with ÒChimyakuÕsÓ inclusion in this
new piece: It was a watershed piece for me in 1968 and it has now become part
of what I hope is another watershed work in my evolving, musical thinking.
I see ÒMount FujiÕsÓ structure as a
reflection of my general attempt to reconcile the seemingly conflicting states
of cyclical and non-cyclical movement. The repetitions in the soundscape are kept to a minimum; it
basically moves forward through a series of gradually changing moods and levels
of intensities, which help move the ÒnarrativeÓ of the work to its conclusion.
The original, solo violin part was doubled, as I have already mentioned, by
overlaying the original solo version at different intervals. There are also
sections of the work where I have added yet another track of the doubled
version of the original solo version so as to create an even greater density of
sound and harmonic variety. The flute part is repeated twice throughout the
piece with different intervals of spacing of its material. The final shaping of
the work—in both musical and experiential terms—was achieved in the
mix-down process by the constantly changing volume levels in each of the three
separate parts.
The ending of ÒMount FujiÓ reveals
and encapsulates the ÒtextÓ of the entire work. The soundscape simply fades away. (It ends with the ending of the final
clip I had collaged into the piece.) The flute has already dropped out even
earlier in the piece when it came to its conclusion. The violin(s) continues,
doing what it has been doing throughout the piece, except now there is a
feeling that it is entirely exposed and on its own: It continues to alternately
turn in on itself while moving forward, not seeming to understand that the
piece Òshould be over.Ó What occurs finally is that the overlaid solo versions
of the original ÒMichiÓ reach their respective original ends, and what remains
in the last two notes of the work is one (solo) violin. The ascension is
completed, so to speak, on its own terms. I sensed that I should leave well
enough alone and not make the ending more ÒperfectÓ and balanced. It was the
moment I completely understood that I had to let go of my role in deciding how it should be.
It goes without saying that any
so-called meaning one might draw from the work will vary from listener to
listener. What I would hope for,
however, is that the listener will at least grasp my overall intentions with
respect to what is meant to be heard as an intentional, cyclical repetition as
opposed to that which is non-cyclical and only coincidentally repetitious. That particular distinction goes to the
very heart of the work: At what point, and through what logic, can we determine
with any real certainty that an act of will has imposed itself on the organic randomness
of nature, or is it possible that the reverse has taken place, or even, that
both have taken place simultaneously and are therefore, for all intents and
purposes, one and the same, (notwithstanding our need to see them as being
categorically different.) Recently, I half jokingly asked my brother Steve, who
has been a practicing Buddhist for almost fifteen years, ÒWhy be a practicing
Buddhist, Steve, when you can be the Buddha?Ó We both laughed and smiled at
each other, and I imagined that somewhere, wherever he was, Wittgenstein was
smiling along with us.
H.G. August-September 2009