Rarefactions
Jon Forshee · Perspectives of New Music · 2006
Rarefactions L- m JONFORSHEE Situated throughout metropolitan Tulsa are sirens which, according to pitch, timbre,and rhythmindicate approaching thunderstorms, flashfloods, or tornadoes. The most striking sirens are the tornado alerts. Standing outside at night (given theright time ofyear), it's not uncommon to suddenly hear a high 440Hz sine-tone tocsinmaterialize in the sky. Apparently the sirens spin since the loud sound slowly descrescendos and re-crescendos in the air. Long distance-listening reveals the interplay of other sirens and resultant ring modu lations, harmonic distortions resonating just below normal earshot. At these times theveryaether seems filled with the sound and, ifyour imagination is tingedwith paranoia, you half-expectto lookup into thepink city-lightclouds and witness a leviathan spacecraft descending upon the plain. * * * Rarefactions 339 When I listen to themusic of Ben Boretz I often become an ambitious musician. Because: when I listen to themusic of Boretz I want to drop what compositional projects I'm presently concerned with and write expansively momentous music. I imagine sonic canvasses with miles and miles between events, and time enough throughout for each. This thought really points to (1) a fear that the projects I'm concerned with are not expansively momentous and (2) a desire to justify thework I do as expansive and momentous (in thisway identifyingmy work with what I hear #_ expansive and momentous in themusic of Boretz). If I believe I amwhat I do,what this all gets at isme wanting to respect me. Listening to Boretz's music addresses that sense of me which needs to feel at peace with the creative work 7 do, a sense of me which aims for respectability as amusician, as a composer. A DUBIOUS AIM!: because: within the interior spaces I inhabitwhen really engaged with thework I do often forget about me, and I forget about my involvement with some thing. Overcome-with-need obscures primal musiccreative energy; the need for self-sensed respectability engenders an ignominious creative mission; ignominious to me since the initial impulse reflects a desire toward pride through musical activity, and not musiccreative action from primal musiccreative energy. AND YET: Amplified awareness of an inner need to feel proud of creative work reality-checks consequent musiccompositional endeavors setting afloat alongside them evaluative random-access backtracking which worries such questions as "what were my criteria for this passage, this voicing, this piece?" It is in this way I become a more mindful musician when I lis ten to the music of Ben Boretz. * * * At the corner of 4th and Houston1 streets in downtown Tulsa is thegarage for the Tulsa Convention Center. If you walk along 4th Street next to thegarage you'll hear a great commotion ofbirdsound, a loud ongoing birdsound ofmany kinds of birds. This isa loopedrecordinginstalledbythecityofTulsa toaddresswhatFve been told was a pigeon problem on that corner. The recording features birds of prey, and is played nonstoptoscareoff pigeons from thatarea. Obvious question: what birdsdoes the recording attract? A genuine assertion about the work Ben Boretz does is easy: I listen over and over and over to the music Boretz writes. What's more, the more I listen to Boretz's music, the more I find things to listen towithin it. I listen over and over to Boretz's music so that Imay continue to listen to it. The pieces on CD I have listened to the most are his UN(-), for orchestra;2 O, for piano; (cc. . . my chart 340 PerspectivesofNew Music shineshighwhere thebluemilk's upset. . .*), forpiano;3 and his Divertimento,4 though I know this work less well than the others. Ben has written more music than I am familiar with, and howevermuch my unfamiliarity may be due to a lack of possessions on my part, mainly my unfamiliarity is due to obsessions I've pur sued, even cultivated, with those pieces listed here. working presumption: I know a person in termsof how I interact with him or her. It iseasy to say I listento themusic Ben writes because this is true. While this iseasy to say I do not thinkit is a simplething to saybecause, by listeningto the music Ben writes, "music" now means more than what I have assumed it to mean; "music" is a...