Listening Response: Alvin Singleton (10/19)

This week, I listened to the contemporary solo piano work “In My Own Skin” by Alvin Singleton, as it was performed by Blair McMillen in a recent virtual performance by the Locrian Chamber Players. The Locrian Chamber Players are a group of musicians who perform only contemporary “classical” music, abiding strictly to the rule that no repertoire may be performed that is older than 10 years. As such they explore a range of repertoire unfamiliar to many audiences of classical music, including myself.

As an infrequent listener to this style of music, I really wasn’t sure how to best enjoy to it. I wasn’t sure how to follow its organization. This was especially challenging before I looked at the score. My ear struggled to find thematic material that connected the music across the approximately ten minute performance. On looking at the score, I decided that the piece was organized mostly in two sections, which alternate frequently–one is the use of lyrical sustained notes in both hands and the other is the more angular and perturbed clusters of sixteenth notes, which seem to cascade across the keys without regards to meter or key signature.

Although the composition is indebted to notational practices which emphasize meter and key signature, I don’t believe these are the best lenses through which to understand and appreciate the music. That is, I don’t believe conventional Western tonality and form are the underlying organizing principles of this work. The organization is looser, which brief energetic bursts amid long sonorous lulls. In concert with the title of the piece, it produces an image of blood coursing through one’s veins–surges of momentum betwixt long static pauses. With few specific instructions for dynamics and acceleration, the piece seems to call on the performer to make decisions which most sincerely reflect the experience of being in his or her “Own Skin.”

Because I was particularly compelled by the first page, I decided to analyze more carefully the musical language in this section. I was surprised to discover that the chords are mostly triads; it might be the particular succession or harmonies the composer uses or else the rhythmic displacement that gives this passage its otherworldly aesthetic. I also chose to do the same for the following page of the score, which gives the first “energetic burst” of sixteenth notes. Equally, I was surprised by the economy of Singleton’s harmonic language. With few exceptions, the notes in the right hand are simply doubled in the left hand. Evocative as this moment was, I expected to find more complex counterpoint here.

While I’m still not entirely sure how to best enjoy Singleton’s music, I can certainly appreciate it. Like Wallen, whose music I reviewed last week, Singleton manages to achieve wonderful and emotive effects through relatively simple means. The craft is in placing these devices under just the right musical contexts to produce these effects.