OK Computer

The Portland String Quartet dabbles with electronics

By Doug Hubley

The Portland String Quartet perform October 15 at 3 p.m. at Woodfords Congregational Church. Call 761-1522 for more information.

ELECTRONICA:the Portland String Quartet perform a new work for computer composed by Jonathan Hallstrom (inset).

Like many classical musicians, the Portland String Quartet is acknowledging the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s demise this year. The Portland concert series that the quartet starts Sunday is titled “Bach & Beyond,” and every program has a Bach connection, if not always a Bach composition.

But unlike most other classical musicians, the PSQ is also acknowledging music’s electronic tradition, which goes back a respectable 80 years. Searching For Blue, a piece for string quartet and computer-generated instruments by Maine composer Jonathan Hallstrom, shares Sunday’s program with Bach and Mozart. With a glorified CD player as virtual guest artist, the quartet premiered Blue to a warm reception last month at Colby College, where both Hallstrom and the quartet teach.

Searching for Blue’s local premiere is certainly exciting. But it also points out the classical world’s stubborn and self-defeating conservatism. After all, in a world where at any given moment a million people are dancing to techno and electronica, why should it be news when chamber musicians go electronic?

“That’s been a big issue and one of my primary interests as a composer, trying to cross that gulf” between electronic music and mainstream classical, says Hallstrom. “I don’t do pop music, but I am interested in music that is more widely appealing than some contemporary music, and computer music in specific.”

Sunday’s concert begins at 3 p.m. at Woodfords Congregational Church, and Hallstrom talks about his work starting at 2. The concert starts the 32nd year for the quartet, which has kept the same members since its founding as part of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. They are Julia Adams, viola; Stephen Kecskemethy, first violin; Ronald Lantz, second violin; and Paul Ross, cello. Individually and as a group, the four perform and teach statewide.

Sunday’s program features two pieces by Bach. Lantz and two guest artists, harpsichordist Shirley Mathews and flutist Pamela Guidetti, perform the Trio Sonata in C Minor, “Sopr’il Soggetto Reale,” from the Musical Offering, BWV 1079. The Offering, which Ronald Lantz calls “one of the major works of humanity,” was a collection of music Bach wrote around a melodic theme contrived by Frederick the Great, the Prussian king. (The Italian title means “on the royal theme.”)

Mathews and Guidetti also join the quartet for Cantata No. 209, “Non sa che sia dolore” (“He knows not what suffering is”). Portland soprano Christina Astrachan is the vocalist for this cryptic tale about a young man’s travels. The Mozart, which kicks off the program, is the Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K. 546, composed in part when young Wolfie was studying Bach’s fugue technique.

Connections exist between Bach and Hallstrom, as well. “One of the greatest attributes of Bach is the incredible logic with which his music spins out,” says Lantz. You often don’t know where Bach is taking you until you get there — at which point the journey makes perfect sense. Blue does the same thing, Lantz explains.

Its title inspired by a children’s story, Lion in Blue, Searching for Blue totals three movements and about 20 minutes.

Emphasizing strong rhythms and lush tone colors, Hallstrom set out after an accessible piece of music. Many contemporary composers say that and still crank out stuff that would crack your eyeglasses, but Hallstrom has apparently succeeded. Lantz recalls the quartet’s rehearsals of Blue at an inn in Boothbay Harbor where they hold annual workshops for adult amateur quartet players.

“We thought, since a lot of these people are retired people, ‘They’re just going to run as fast as they can,’ ” he laughs. “But by the time we finished rehearsal, both of the times we rehearsed there, the room was full of people, and everyone just loved it.”

The computer-generated material in Blue combines the sounds of standard instruments, notably percussion and piano, with sounds Hallstrom created. He uses a Macintosh to sample sounds, alter them, plot them on a timeline, render them into standard notation, and burn them onto a CD. To manipulate sampled sounds, often beyond recognition, Hallstrom works with a graphic representation of sound waves on the screen, shifting and shaping them, a process he likens to sculpture.

It’s to the quartet’s great credit that they went after this piece at all, although it’s no surprise, considering their long history of championing new music. After 31 years, Blue is their first foray into electronic music, a field that dates back to 1920 and the invention of the theremin (that “ooh-wee-ooh” sound in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”). If that seems late in the day, remember that most classical groups never make that jump at all.

“In defense of the traditional classical players, they’ve got to eat,” Hallstrom adds. “People want to hear a certain kind of music” – i.e., not abstract contemporary music, and especially not electronic music, which is not only abstract but seems dehumanized.

But Hallstrom, who’s a fairly big name in the tiny computer music ghetto, feels a sea change in composers’ attitudes. More and more are willing to leave the university music lab and meet audiences halfway, striving for a balance between accessibility and faith to their principles. “I do want to have a situation,” he laughs, “where an audience is going to go away from the performance not pissed off at me.”

 

Doug Hubley can be reached at doug.hubley@worldnet.att.net..