It's about time we return to the catalog of Media Press, Inc., the Champaign, IL. company that gave us the work of James Cuomo among others. A native of Wisconsin, Raymond Weisling (b. 1947) was fascinated both by electro-acoustic music and Javanese Gamelan, the latter of which led to him moving to Indonesia in 1980 and never looking back. Before he decamped for water-locked pastures he had four pieces published by Media, and the most alluring of them is scored for a unique wind septet and paints a tone-picture of the story of Poon Lim:
(Click for larger view)
On 23 November, 1942, the British merchant freighter Belmond was torpedoed in the South Pacific. The only surviving crew member, Poon Lim (born 1918), was rescued after spending 133 days and nights upon the waves in a small life raft.
Poon Lim...a Night Upon the Waves is an impression of the marooned night - no light but stars, no sound but waves. While the score baffles at first, an instruction page is included. The instruments enter in the order specified by the dotted arrows, and each note is held for the duration of a slow lung of air. After the note is finished the player takes a slow, full breath, aligning tge music to biological processes. The players continue at their own pace, and the texture is one of quiet, naturally asymetric pulses, like the swelling of waves beneath your back. The ensemble is unusual, bottom-heavy and inwardly resonant, and one can imagine distant ship horns or whales. There's no recording, but the effect can be easily reproduced at a piano and it's an easy piece to perform. If you've got seven winds and a spare half hour Poon and I would love to make your acquaintance, but it may take a bit to scrape up a makeshift liferaft to attend the performance.
~PNK
No comments:
Post a Comment