Meany Center for the Performing Arts began its New Year programming Tuesday night with the JACK Quartet, a group devoted to the performance of contemporary music.
Contemporary proves to be an elastic word, however: Ruth Crawford Seeger’s String Quartet was composed in 1931 and Morton Feldman’s “Structures” in 1951, a bit closer but not really of today. Nevertheless, both works fit well with the overall choices, the other three works being Julia Wolfe’s “Early Last Summer” from 1993, Iannis Xenakis’ “Tetora” from 1990, and the Seattle premiere of Derek Bermel’s “Intonations” from 2016.
Much of the music composed during the last half of the 20th century explored structure, rhythm, and different sounds that could be elicited from instruments, but while intellectually stimulating, they could lack warmth or emotional appeal. Often it might include harmonies which don’t “sing,” or cannot easily be remembered as melody, i.e., music which challenges the brain but doesn’t speak to the heart. Other compositions combine warmth successfully with modern idioms so that the music is unmistakably of today, but carries emotional heft as well.
Tuesday’s concert, while impeccably played by a group which has made it its mission to bring brilliantly performed an understood contemporary music to audiences, contained music from both sides of the spectrum. Feldman’s “Structures” reminded this listener of some of artist Paul Klee line drawings where just a fraction of a line suggests the rest of it, where less is more but packs impact. “Structures” is seven minutes of barely audible sounds of briefly touched notes, some bowed, some plucked. In its own way fascinating, there were quite a few in the audience with even just slight hearing loss who could not hear it at all.
Seeger’s work was way ahead of her time. From a decade when Copland, Gershwin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and more were creating large scale melodic works, Seeger’s quartet would be considered avant garde even now. It’s not easy to listen to, despite the lively rhythms in the second movement. Even so it is less dry than Wolf’s work, which was sometimes intense or unnerving, sometimes with crashing dissonance or a like a murder of crows complaining together. And while a richer sound—truer harmonies without vibrato—and welcome syncopations in Xenakis’ work made some difference, these three works barely spoke to this listener, or to many others, a hefty proportion of whom left at intermission.
Unfortunately, they missed the Bermel, the first work with emotional content, quirky, impudent, and sassy at times, with swoops like strings unwinding, or sudden attacks dropping to extreme quiet and growing from there. Sometimes a bluesy influence would creep in, or others like an enormous sneeze growing and exploding, even stamping feet or cello plucking going boing, boing, boing. Above all it appealed to the senses, with rhythm, fun and warm harmony. It was surely as much fun to play as to hear.
New music is by its nature a more mixed offering than programs of works that have found their audience. Yet if people had eschewed Beethoven performances because they were new, or those of any other famous and loved composers of the past, we wouldn’t have their music now, so we need pioneers to go and hear what’s out there. And at least one elderly woman who spoke to me was enthusiastic and exhilarated by the program.
