NOAH CRESHEVSKY - Hyperrealism: Electroacoustic Music (2003)

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging – or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging – or should that be the other way round?


Creshevsky says of his work that 'moments suggest musical environments of indeterminate ethnicity – simultaneously Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar,' but in fact his music could hardly belong more specifically to its time and place. It's obvious that it could only be realised in a technologically sophisticated society such as our own, but one feels also that it could only be conceived in an urban-industrial society. Somehow it's no great surprise to find that the composer is a New Yorker.
Creshevsky (born 1945) studied with Boulanger and Berio, and is the former head of the Center for Computer Music at CUNY. He has been exploring 'hyperrealism' (his own term) since the early 1970s. He mentions Conlon Nancarrow and Pierre Schaeffer as antecedents; one might also hear textures reminiscent of Philip Glass and some of the more experimental popular genres (techno/electronica), though without their insistent beat. The Matrix also comes to mind, but perhaps more for its alienation from the natural world than for any specific references.

The sounds the composer has chosen to work with (on this disc at least) are all familiar from the Western European musical tradition. The vocal production is 'European classical' and so are the instruments – piano, electric guitar and orchestral woodwinds prominent among them.

One aspect of hyperrealism is the creation of virtual super-performers from the recorded sounds, 'instrumentalists' and 'singers' who can perform higher, lower, louder, softer and (especially) faster than is physically possible. The effect is both liberating and unsettling

more-or-less continuous chant-like vocal line helps to make Jubilate one of the more approachable compositions on the disc, by serving as a reference point for the listener. Jacob's Ladder achieves something similar with a calm instrumental ostinato, but the listener must work harder to follow other pieces. The effort is repaid, however, as one begins to apprehend unifying structures underlying the restless surface.

There are eight compositions on the disc, for a total of some 56 minutes. Ossi di morte is the longest (at 11 minutes) and most dramatic of them. Like Jubilate and others, it is primarily vocal, but if Jubilate looks back to plainsong, Ossi di morte looks back to grand opera .

The modernist tradition within which Creshevsky composes has always demanded more from the listener than other styles but often, as in the case of these works, deserves and rewards the attention it demands.


Tracks
1. Canto di Malavita
2. Jacob's Ladder
3. Vol-au-Vent
4. Hoodlum Priest
5. Novella
6. Ossi di Morte
7. Jubilate
8. Born Again