from "the green is either" (2003-4)
|
"Wolfgang Schurig, who curates the yearly Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemäßer Musik, called Aaron a composer 'whose works are so over-structured that all structure dissolves and can not be recognised any more'. Just to make sure: This was meant as a compliment to a composer whose oeuvre, despite being as far from the mainstream as could possibly be, has gained international esteem at a still young age. Cassidy certainly has a uniquely personal approach to justify the attention. The finished result is no 'easy listening,' but calling it academic would also be wrong. Instead, many of his compositions actually have a distinct lightness to them and never weigh heavy on the soul. And if all structure does get lost, then maybe that's a good thing indeed."
|
|
|
"[Carl] Rosman delivered a bravura performance of Aaron Cassidy's I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips. As Cassidy explained in his (inimitably) lengthy and obscure programme notes, the piece takes three different vocal strata and constructs a sort of dialectic on the idea of translation. ...[T]he work posits a musical delineation of argument, of idea, based around the limits of language. Here, however, the structures of language remain largely intact, the interpellations of different languages rather than language itself being the object of investigation. Cassidy's piece uses a Max/Msp patch to generate live pitch materials for the vocalist, but apart form these glissandos constantly weaving in the performer's ear, the technical requirements are of an emotional intensity rather than any speciality of technique required. Rosman's concentrated and passionate delivery of the dizzying, novelistic sound textures ensured the brief but potent work came off with flair."
"You will wait in vain for long (or, for that matter, short) themes in Aaron Cassidy’s String Quartet (2002). Mr. Cassidy’s piece had the virtue of compactness. His quartet lasts only seven minutes, and though he avoided letting its stream of pizzicatos, slides and invitingly peculiar string timbres coalesce into shapely lines, he created a web of compelling rhythmic effects that left you wanting to hear more when the music suddenly evaporated."
"Aaron Cassidy was the youngest
composer to feature here. Though his works deal equally in complex extended
techniques in performance, they are cut from rather a different cloth to the
others on the programme [Richard Barrett and Roger Redgate]. The Crutch
of Memory, for indeterminate solo string instrument (here performed with
flavour and commitment by Graeme Jennings on violin), notates the body's
contact with the instrument, its precise movements up and down and around
the fingerboard. Exactitude of pitch is foregone in favour of an explicit
engagement with the ergonomics of performance, and with the theatre that
brings. It is thus something of a different thrill one feels as a spectator;
visceral feelings corresponding to the embodied intensity of the performance
characterised my experience.
"The first of Cassidy’s pieces,
The Crutch of Memory, was played impressively by Graeme Jennings. The
level of detail and notational complexity in Cassidy’s music has to be seen
to be believed, and seeing it performed live is something else again.
Remarkable on this occasion was the speed with which Jennings negotiated the
score, practically sprinting from one end of the obligatory row of stands to
the other. For all the impressive fireworks, however, I found it difficult
to penetrate much beyond the surface of the music on this occasion and hard
to grasp many details or local gestures within the piece. This may have been
my mood at the time: a private recording of Jennings playing the same piece
didn’t present the same difficulties when I listened at home. ... Part
of me idly wondered, since Crutch is scored for unspecified
four-stringed instrument, how differently it might sound on a more resonant
instrument like the cello. But then, to impose such a sonic preference
deflates the tension between sound and performative action that is central
to much of Cassidy’s music.
"Both composers also make reference to parametricism, though where Barrett’s work encourages listening that seeks orientation along vectors of morphology, Cassidy’s music demands drastic skepticism. The Crutch of Memory uses tablature to prioritize the ‘physical, choreographic elements of musical performance’. The programme note states that ‘I am interested here in the ability of these corporeal actions to be present as musical material in their own right and not simply as a means to an end’. Including this music alongside Barrett and Dillon poses some significant challenges: Cassidy’s music presents a sound score that is more austere than Barrett’s, devoid of tricks and ciphers towards orientation; Cassidy’s music is less visually choreographical than Dillon, who is able to deploy movement as a purposeful element; Cassidy’s music denies any heuristics for tracing levels of virtuosity, such that his string writing posits a bleaker version of the performer as virtuoso. Of course, this may well be the music’s greatest strength, and its manner of highlighting memory/memory loss disturbs easy statements about the ‘muscle memory’ of ‘hyper-virtuosic’ performers. Instead it provides a model for music where the unification of elements through paradox is turned inside out: this is neither the fracturing of an object taken apart, nor of objects thrown together."
“I liked the witty and slightly narcissistic vocal miniature I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips by Aaron Cassidy. The piece twisted itself, transformed, and slipped out of the composer’s control like a mannerist 'figura serpentinata.' The work is full of Renaissance-like floridness, mannerist surfeit, multimedia poetics. Cassidy gave the proof of his aesthetic maturity.”
"Two knockout works were those in which Rosman exercised his vocal showmanship: Aaron Cassidy’s I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips, another premiere, and Richard Barrett’s Interference. Cassidy’s piece, for unaccompanied high male voice, requires the performer to monitor a computer-generated random pitch line through an earphone and sing that line while pronouncing fragments of words derived from texts by Arthur Rimbaud and Christian Bök. Cassidy’s work addresses their translation and, in the absence of conventional verbal meaning, Rosman’s declamatory voice delivers a powerful emotional impact, extending the consideration of verbalisation and sound poetry since Kurt Schwitters and the Dadaists. The randomness of the pitch line ensures the work is never rendered the same way twice. "...The new works from Karski, Lim, Dench and Cassidy are terrific, and contrasting them with the more established Ferneyhough and Carter works identifies some current directions in composition, Cassidy for example incorporating unconventional performative techniques and Karski devising elaborate formal structures."
"[175 East artistic director James] Gardner ferrets out recherché scores from across the globe and presents ear-tickling programmes, which can at once entrance and irritate, delight and bemuse…as they should. And the inner city ambience of Hopetoun Alpha fits the spirit perfectly. When a plaintive siren from the adjacent fire station accompanied the soprano sax’s primeval wailings in Aaron Cassidy’s hypertensive asphyxia it merely sharpened our attention to the silence inherent in the sparse writing of the ensuing Morton Feldman miniatures."
"Richard Haynes opened 175 East's The Sleep of Reason concert with a fierce, virtuosic rendition of Aaron Cassidy's asphyxia, his soprano sax scrambling, diving and looping in waves of insinuating melody."
"I couldn’t believe the variety
of sounds [Richard Haynes] was getting from his instrument [in Cassidy's
asphyxia], and he was required by the composer to not necessarily play
the notes but suggest two notes at once, to play the spaces in between, to
kind of … suggest the notion that the music is written on two staves,
inhabiting the space in between, and creating a whole world of conjecture in
the process .... The physical choreography of the movement and gesture
in that musical realization was wonderful.
"... Cassidy’s String Quartet takes itself extraordinarily seriously. As an exercise into what a string quartet means as a string quartet, it succeeded. As for his further goal of deriving musical material from the players’ physical motions, it looked as if they were needlessly conducting with their bows as their comrades played, and had I not read that their movements were part of the score, I would have guessed that violinist Ari Streisfeld was having a seizure as he almost fell off his chair near the Quartet’s conclusion."
"Left to their own devices, the
composers have taken upon themselves the enormous task of 'deconstructing'
and rethinking every aspect of what music is, without too much analysis of
what they are deconstructing and without a language to replace it. They
expressly reject the idea of 'mimicking the methodologies found in the
"hard" sciences', but lack of data and analysis of existing music has not
stopped them from catching on to the self-important phraseology and special
obscurantist terminology employed by professionals. Their forest of
footnotes are nothing but self-references leading back to previous
unverifiable assertions made by themselves in long-inaccessible
publications.
"It was good to hear again Aaron Cassidy's intricate ten monophonic miniatures, inspired by Ian Pace's research into 'key noise'. This employs amplification to render audible 'a variety of muting techniques which create unpredictable results'; they had been more effectively demonstrated by Pace, and experienced by the composer and an all too small audience of devotees, at St. Cyprian's, London, together with Cassidy's metallic dust (Ian Pace & Carl Rosman, BMIC, October 2002).
"Aaron Cassidy, a young American composer from Buffalo, explored a plethora of unusual playing techniques as an integral compositional parameter. His virtuosic bass clarinet piece was intensely physical with a visual counterpoint arising from separation of fingers from breath, the outcome created by the interaction of the two decoupled layers. The result was exhilarating, and it was followed by deceptively listener-friendly monodic piano pieces (in the tradition of Alain & Evangelista).... I was astonished to find (as recently with the delightful piano music of Richard Emsley) that although pretty on the page, their complexity is absolutely daunting for ordinary mortals, which you’d never guess from hearing alone. "
"This work is, of course, very unusual. How good to encounter something completely different to anything I have encountered before! How rare! The Ferneyhough connection looks of course the closest, but the dislocation is here far more extreme, stretching towards a challenge to what we mean by 'musical.' Ferneyhough, however complex the interwoven actions, however convoluted the negation of purposeful effort, always produces results that affirm a statement 'in' music, which is expressive and even gesturally theatrical. Cassidy is far from this and seems nearer to the chance of Cage inasmuch as a field of action is carefully set up, and then unpredictable movements across that field are evoked .... However one views the work, I think it deserves merit for its complete originality and striking successfulness in sound. The sonic result is not naive, as is sometimes the case when caused by notations of 'complexity.' It is interesting and rather inscrutable. Forms appear fleetingly and then are covered, buried under the discrepancy between the two hands. The sense that meaningful forms are present but buried is tantalizing."
"...radical, convulsive, ... conceptual, and exceedingly complex."
|