On Disc
- Still
Image
CMCCD 17412, 2012
- À chacun sa
miniature
CQB 1113, 2011
- Aberrare
CQB 1112, 2011
- Sens(e)
Absence
CQB 1111, 2011
- Le mensonge et
l’identité
CQB 1110, 2011
- Michel Gonneville:
Hozhro
CQB 0907, 2009
- Arbor
Vitæ
CQB 0806, 2008
- Le livre des
mélancolies
ACD 22552, 2008
- Und. Ging. Außen.
Vorüber. Stücke 1992-2005
WER 65612, 2007
- Canons +
Hoquets
CQB 0704, 2007
- Jürg Frey: String
Quartets
EWR 0410, 2006
- Steve Reich:
Different Trains
CQB 0502, 2005
- Portrait
Montréal
CQB 0401, 2004
- Hardscrabble
Songs
IS 238, 2002
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On Disc >
Aberrare
(CQB 1112, 2011)
- Prix Opus 2011-12: Disque de l’année — Finaliste
Description
I think of my fundamental activity as a musician as listening, especially to
music. And any music I might take part in making flows out from listening. So what
can I say about my compositional practice listening to the music on this CD? It’s
clear that I care about melody. I love melody: one on its own or two or more combined
in any imaginable manner-monody, homophony, polyphony and heterophony. I love melody;
but I’m not concerned with themes, subjects (first or second), motifs (especially of
the leit variety), or phrases (at least when they display their Greek root-phrazein:
"to tell, express, declare"). I am not at all interested in tracing narrative onto
the movement of music and so I’m not interested in melodies that assert themselves as
characters that develop. I care about continuation, not progression. I love music
that continues; but, as my listening imagination moves through this continuum, it’s
the detail that engages me, the specificity of how the melody meanders within the
perpetual, continuing present; present because I’m not concerned with where things
are going to go, what they’re going to become. And melody here isn’t just a
succession of pitches; it’s texture-intentional and indeterminate-folding and
unfolding. But I don’t want the detail to be declared-no quotation marks around
anything, no underlining; I want to stumble on it on my sonic dérive. I think my work
openly evinces the influence of other music I listen to in this way: various
traditional folk musics, late 14th century polyphony (the ars subtilior; the subtle
art); pre-Elizabethan consort music. But I listen to a lot of slow Mahler this way as
well (and I hear a lot of Mahler subtilior in Liquidambars). I also hear the music on
this CD as dance music. Dancing is one of my favourite forms of co-creative listening
and fortunately I don’t need to compose most of the dance music that powerfully moves
me-it’s well taken care of by others. But my body does move to this music; it
staggers and slips and lightly slews (though only rarely hops) and sometimes waltzes.
Dancing is also a form of listening that doesn’t need to embrace the concept of
understanding. In response to my music Wandelweiser
composer/theorist Antoine Beuger sent me a link to
Walter de Maria’s essay Meaningless
Work. There’s a productive connection there so I’ll pass it on to you:
artnotart.com/fluxus/wdemaria-meaninglesswork.html. "Whether the
meaningless work, as an art form, is meaningless, in the ordinary sense of that term,
is of course up to the individual." In 1987 visual artist Barbara
Kruger said: "How can we encourage work that is not exemplary but merely
different?" That encouraged me. And in eschewing the exemplary I listen for little
differences, subtle differences, the kind of difference I hope you find here.
— Martin Arnold
Track Listing
Reviews
“Le travail des quatre musiciens du Quatuor, en variant notamment la sonorité et
les approches de leurs instruments respectifs, apporte les couleurs nécessaires à
la transcription de ces partitions entre monophonie et polyphonie.”
Revue & Corrigée #94 (France), December 2012
“Bozzini Quartet is a very special quartet. They have
built up a varied and extensive repertoire.”
Vital #840 (Netherlands), July 2012
“… mélodies d’une simplicité enfantine, toujours tempérées et profondes.”
Le son du grisli (France), February 2012
“Our verdict is in: This was the year’s best music”
The Globe and Mail (Canada), December 2011
“… this reading by Quatuor Bozzini of Martin Arnold’s work is equally brilliant, articulating his amblingly
weightless melodies with clean precision.”
Musicworks (Canada), July 2011
“We are more interested, always, in the infinite detail of the present moment in
Arnold’s music… — a state of mind that is enhanced by the
delicacy and conviction of the Bozzini Quartet’s
interpretations. 4 stars”
The Globe and Mail (Canada), May 2011
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