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2222; 2200; 2 perc (bass drum, side drum, glock, xylophone, sus. cymbal, strings (87652 approx)

The Double Concerto was designed to explore the unusal combination of solo instruments, extend the soloists and, at the same time, be performable by regional orchestras.

The opening movement has a lilting quality and is based on the Brahms’ lullaby, which only appears (abridged) at the end, played on glockenspiel. The three themes that appear in this movement are related, in some way, to this lullaby. The movement is dedicated to my daughter Annabelle, who was born some months before the composition of this work. A short melody based on letters from her name (A-A-B-E-E) is played by the soloists in the coda.

By contrast, the second movement is fast and jagged, with a somewhat playful second theme shared between the soloists and woodwinds. The main theme has a toccata-like quality, and builds up to a strong conclusion.

Whereas birth was the theme behind the first movement, it is death that concerns the third, and in particular the sudden death of a close friend and musician, Angela Campbell, at the time of writing this concerto. It is an intimate piece for the two soloists only, and based on letters from Angela’s name (A-G-E-A) which are heard at the beginning as a recurrent bass line. The cello melody at the start is a variation on a melody from the first movement, suggesting birth and death are inextricably linked.

The mood lightens in the finale which is a slightly bizarre waltz based on two contrasting themes. Near the end, the soloists have a cadenza which flows into the coda uninterrupted.

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music on tape, for a live performer and optional interactive control of sound files, and projected imagery mixed in realtime. Equipment required for performance includes two Macintosh G3 computers, a Silicon Graphics workstation, MIDI interfaces, a video camera and a video projector.

Sarrasine takes a pragmatic approach to so-called real-time interactive music technology. The environments I am using to perform this work, BigEye (video to MIDI) and Image/ine (real-time control of video processing), were developed at the Studios for Electronic Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam.

These programs produce no sound themselves but offer a myriad of control possibilities and in doing so ask the question: what is a musical instrument? A computer keyboard, a mouse, a video camera?

Matthew Suttor’s multimedia theater piece, “Sarrasine”, is comprised of eight sections, and is based on Balzac’s “Sarrasine”. Balzac’s work takes place in the 1830’s at a party in Paris as two lovers discuss the tale of Sarrasine, a frightful old man, believed to be over 100 years old, who is seated in a corner. Though the narrative of Balzac’s “Sarrasine” is difficult to discern from a first listening, the major themes of Suttor’s work are conveyed through a pleasantly overwhelming barrage of sound and video, enhanced and enriched by the live performance of Suttor. This collage of richly variegated of sounds and images, collected from across centuries, challenges the audience to weigh the world of Balzac’s latent tale with Suttor’s “Sarrasine”.

In the beginning of “Sarrasine”, the text projected onto a large video screen directly behind Suttor invites the audience to, “Imagine you are sitting in an opera house. Somewhere in France. Nowhere fancy. Provincial even. In 1999.” And later, Balzac’s texts recounts, “Sarrasine left for Italy in 1758.” Henceforth the audience is invited to dispel the notion of chronological time and geographical place, and imagine a landscape which fuses past and present worlds as the work draws upon references across centuries.

The sonic world of the opera is a blend of the recorded speech of the Suttor’s voice reading from Balzac’s text, recorded and processed mbira, harpsichord, flutes, and other electro-acoustic samples. Despite their possibly disparate features and implications, Suttor combines these sounds, and successfully forges a unique sonic world which at once suggests the Eighteenth century of Balzac’s piece as well as our own time.

Though Suttor remained mute throughout the performance, allowing the recorded music and text to speak for him, his reserved, yet precise, performance maintained a delicate balance such that he could step in and out of the pre-recorded video world. The video often contained images of paintings from the earlier time periods, including one recurring image of Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Suttor at one point assumed the pose of Venus, and their striking resemblance was as provocative as amusing. At another moment, Suttor stood such that a portion of the video was projected onto his body as well as onto the screen. In the most complete union of the video and live performance, the screen contained live video footage of Suttor writing and drawing as prerecorded video images were superimposed on the screen.

As the audience watched Suttor literally step in and out of the video, and listened to his pre-recorded music and voice tell the story of Sarrasine, the audience was compelled to draw parallels and conclusions regarding the juxtaposition of the two distinct yet delightfully mergeable worlds of Balzac’s and Suttor’s Sarrasine.

Report written by David Birchfield, Producer of the Movement and Sound Concerts

flute (piccolo and alto flute), E flat clarinet (A clarinet, bass clarinet), bass clarinet; horn, bass trombone; percussion (1 player: friction drum/lion's roar, vibraphone, low tom-tom, bass drum, percussion cluster, piccolo snare drum); violin 1, violin 2, cello, double bass

“The “Tower of Babel” does not figure merely the irreducible multiplicity of tongues; it exhibits an incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalising, of saturating, of completing something on the order of edification, construction, system and architectonics."
Jacques Derrida

“Babel is the sign that every utterance or every text is riven by faults and fissures…rushing away into the vacuum formed by its own notes”
Gary Shapiro

The two quotes above were found after I had already started work on this piece, and decided on a title, but their relevance to the actual composition of the work gained exponentially as the première approached. The piece as it now exists is incomplete as far as my original plans are concerned, but I hope it isn’t entirely incoherent. In any case as I’m the only one to know what those original plans were, who’s to know? And isn’t this the case with virtually any work? So perhaps I should have kept quiet instead of fessing up…

Back to the music. In keeping with Breughel’s two paintings of the Tower of Babel, in which builders are shown “hewing architectural rationality from the ancient rock” the piece opens deliberately with what one critic pejoratively referred to as the “frantic agglomeration” of some of the music played at a 175 East concert in 2000. The texture does clear however, and the piece proceeds through a number of phases of ensemble independence and unity. And if you really think I’m going to give away the plot…

some other plots for Babel was commissioned by Mark Menzies with funding from Creative New Zealand, and is dedicated to the extraordinary performers at the premiere and to Glenda Keam, all of whom, through their enthusiasm, commitment and encouragement, brought the piece to life.

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• James Gardner: Some other plots for Babel; audio 

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• 175 East Vol. 6 

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