Sony G90 manual Are so new that we all need orientation, Emic equivalent of a Bronx cheer

The first music DVD with full 5-channel capability: The composer is a special- ist in electronic music. A pairing made in a virtual heaven, or…?

attention only if you care to give it some. I admit I’m skepti-

cal about the need for so much commentary. Shouldn’t the

music speak for itself? But then maybe the techniques really

are so new that we all need orientation.

Still, I knew we were in trouble when Reynolds tells us,

with all the emotion of a librarian reading the phone book,

that “meaning” will “arise” in his music from his “syntacti-

cal” use of space. There it is, that old fallacy of music as a

language, with not just grammar, but syntax (a collection of

rules that can turn languages into well-developed logical

systems). Reynolds’ statement – I’m not going to be shy

here – is utter, total bilge. For one

thing, notice that we don’t talk

about painting as a language. We

don’t look for “syntactical” rela-

tions between green and orange

splotches in Jackson Pollock, or

between the breasts of dancing

women in Matisse.

In music, talk like this arises

only because (and forgive me for

getting technical) harmony –

chords and chord progressions –

can be talked about as if it fol-

lowed rules. From a music theorist’s point of view, what I’ve

just written is a laughably simplistic statement, but these

theorists, if they have even the lightest mist of compassion

in their blood, will forgive me for sparing you the full com-

plexities of their theories. What readers should understand,

though, is that Reynolds is way too impressed with the

mathematical explorations of music common among acade-

mic modernists, and has forgotten something very basic.

Yes, theorists can find all sorts of relationships among

chords, but any attempt to find something similar in other

areas of music – rhythm, loudness, and tone color, for

instance – has essentially been laughed away with the acad-

emic equivalent of a Bronx cheer.

So when Reynolds says he can create “syntactical” rela-

tionships from the spatial placement of sound, he’s whistling

in the dark. All he means is that he can create patterns of a

reasonably elementary sort – you know, like saying, “Hey,

wow, Kenny dies in every South Park episode.” Anyone can

understand that this might give the show some continuity;

nobody claims it’s any kind of South Park syntax.

To me, the comments by Reynolds and his colleagues

are badly sunk in jargon. “Instantiation” (meaning the way a

sound begins), and “sense modalities” (meaning ways that

we perceive things) are two examples. When Schick, the

sober, well-meaning (and certainly skilled and sensitive)

percussionist referred to his “practicioning,” I was ready to

throw the DVD out the window. “In the course of my prac-

ticioning,” he said, “I’ve found…”

(or words to that effect). What he

means is not much more than

“When I play my percussion gigs,”

or, to stretch things as far as pos-

sible in his favor, maybe “When I

play a wide variety of percussion

gigs.” The benefit of all this jargon

is all too clear. It serves, con-

sciously or not, to inflate the

importance of Reynolds’ music.

And by distancing the conversa-

tion from everyday life (and, in

fact, from any kind of human emotion), it enables all con-

cerned to sidestep what seems quite plain to me, the unre-

markable mediocrity of Reynolds’ work.

There are four works on this DVD. The first, Eclipse, a

1980 piece for computer-generated sound, originally “spa-

tialized” on seven channels, is a collaboration with video

artist Ed Emshwiller, and it’s his contribution that makes

the time spent watching it worthwhile. Reynolds, ever the

conscientious modernist, evades direct comprehension of

his meaning by swirling shards of poetry around us in sur-

round-sound space. His processing of human voices leads

to wonderful moments, especially when the voices blend

together in an unexpected chord. But these are only

moments. To me, at least, the whole thing feels old-fash-

ioned, stiff, and, to use the word again, too conscientious.

Emshwiller, meanwhile, unfolds images that range from

gongs and cymbals shimmer from the depths beyond.

Within the piece Eclipse is a poem comprised of multiple

voices that move in time and space to form shifting patterns of

comprehension:

Female voice :

On the night of the quiet moon He would be awakened

By the fleeting train music

Of thunder dawns

That brought on ruinous floods

And left a desolation of tattered gowns Of dead brides

On the branches of the almond trees Of the quiet moon

(repeats)

(repeats)

At the former Dutch lunatic asylum!

Male voice:

Her luminary reflection

Her constancy under all her phases Rising and setting by her appointed times Waxing and waning

Her power to enamour

To mortify

To invest with beauty

To render insane

The tranquillity

Of her visage

Her omens of tempest

And of calm

Male voice : The admonition of her craters,

her arid Seas, her silence silence

silence silence Silence!