Name: Not Yet by William Lang (composer)
Duration: 9 min 23 s
Description: a live recording by the wonderful Mivos String Quartet from Symphony Space

a live recording by the wonderful Mivos String Quartet from Symphony Space

Not Yet

Flower is a piece for male voice, bass clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. As set on different locations in a performance space, the four performers imitate sound materials to each other, which are repeated multiple times in various ways. By doing so, Flower creates auditory confusions, in which boundaries of where/when/how the musical gestures take place is collapsed, questioning how we perceive the sound.
 The composition is written for, and premiered by Loadbang in New York City.

Flower (2017, re-written)

Jeff Siegfried, alto saxophone

World premiere performance. McIntosh Theater. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. March 26th, 2019.

Program Note

In 1923, György Lukács published History and Class Consciousness, a book in which he introduced an influential analysis of the Marxist notion of “reification.” For Lukács, reification (German: Verdinglichung; “making into a thing”) is a process that takes place in modern capitalist societies, whereby living, dynamic properties of human interaction become static, alienated objects. Lukács argues that the commodification of social relations under capitalism is such a ubiquitous phenomenon that one can end up wrongly assuming that the capitalist organization of society is an eternal condition of existence. Reification, as a number of leftist thinkers have argued, leads to a significant issue: imagination, trapped in such a reductionistic human experience, is largely unable to project alternative forms of existence
outside of the prevailing political economy.

Since the publication of History and Class Consciousness, critical thinkers have argued that art can operate as a means to counteract reification and provide an aperture for manifold phenomenological possibilities. Along this line, the philosopher Martin Heidegger writes that art is capable of “un-concealing” new “worlds.” For Heidegger, this type of disclosure can lead to the establishment of an ontology through which humans understand themselves in relation to their world. According to the philosopher, this is representative of “truth” or “aletheia.”

The intersection between Lukács’ notion of reification and Heidegger’s “aletheia” is the starting point for Λήθη - επιβεβαίωση - ἀλήθεια [Homage to C.P.]. This music hopes to foster unknown modes of aural consciousness, not only through the creation of rare sonic structures and materials, but also by engaging the performer in a unique performance practice derived from the particularities of unconventional notational procedures. It is an exercise in “counter-reification.”

Three sources from different musical and literary traditions are employed:

1. An original transcription of Charlie Parker’s solo from the 1953 studio recording of Confirmation 
2. The “Kyrie” from Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum
3. Aeneas’ travel to the Underworld as described by Virgil in The Aeneid       

Parker’s transcription of the Confirmation solo operates as the central artifact of the piece. It is treated as an “aesthetic truth” that has lost much of its potency due to the commodification that bebop—a groundbreaking genre originally created by working-class Black musicians—has endured over the past decades. Pitch-set transformations and original contextualizations of melodic trajectories embedded in the solo are the most prominent compositional procedures that stem from the transcription. In this context, Parker’s “confirmation” (επιβεβαίωση) represents the foundation upon which new aesthetic truths may be built. Nihil novi.

Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum and Virgil’s The Aeneid are secondary sources of inspiration. They both suggest antiquity and the relentless pursuit of truth that humans have sought through music, mathematics, and poetry. In particular, the mensural relationships from the Kyrie of Missa prolationum provide an excellent source of numerical data for the development of virtually endless temporal proportions. Furthermore, the use of Virgil’s description of the Underworld in The Aeneid emphasizes the etymological connection between the Heideggerian notion of “aletheia” and Lethe, one of the five rivers of the Underworld. As told by Anchises, Aeneas’ father, the dead who are meant to return to earthly life must drink the water of the Lethe in order to forget their past lives.    

One would humbly hope that this piece leads to the attainment of a modicum of freedom, perhaps so that the collective disorientation we endure vanishes and is replaced by the disclosure of new, fairer worlds.

Λήθη – επιβεβαίωση – ἀλήθεια [Homage to C.P.] (2017-18)

check out my performer page at www.soundcloud.com/williamlangtrombone

Not Yet

William Lang (composer)

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Zachary Seely

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