Asymmetry Music Magazine
Chrysopée Electronique-Bourges
Ferreyra is that rare composer whose output can be genuinely
described as protean. This can be most convincingly heard on the Chrysopée
Electronique-Bourges cd, also called “the green album.” Two pieces are from the
seventies (1972 and 74); three are from the eighties (1985, 86, and 87), and
they couldn’t be more different from each other.
Souffle d’un petit Dieu distrait opens with some microtonal
weaving, which broadens out into a very quick oscillation, over which a variety
of gestures begin to orbit. That gradually changes into descending figures,
which are replaced (smoothly and gradually) by spacious dark swoops of sounds.
Not until almost halfway through are there silences separating the sounds—a
change that’s quite startling, even though the sounds are the same as we’ve
been hearing for the past five minutes. It’s a simple effect that’s simply
effective: you cannot help but start to listen more closely to each event when
they’re separated by silences. Even after the music goes back to a continuous
flow, you still feel very much on the qui vive, so that the last few minutes,
which reverse the opening minutes of the piece, sound much more dramatic and
engaging, even though the music is getting quieter and simpler. The very ending
is simply perfect.
The opening of The U.F.O. Forest moves quickly, and the changes are fast and startling. Even the (relative) calm that follows the turbulent opening is, at first, full of things that startle. Most of the piece, however, is quiet, full of chirping, twittering sounds (even, eventually, honking and quacking sounds)—all calm and calming as it slowly descends into silence.
The child who relates the story of Tom Thumb in Petit Poucet magazine is so charming and full of personality, you may forgiven for forgetting, at least for the first couple of hearings, that this is a very sophisticated and carefully constructed piece of music, in which the voice is subordinated to the music, even when it’s not being taken up and broken into purely musical gestures, in which the overriding logic is clearly musical and not narrative—even though the piece is full of illustrative effects. So strongly are these presented, that I had to force myself to use the word “illustrative,” which, however accurate, gives a false impression of the sound world of this piece.
From seventies come Canto del Loco and Siesta Blanca. The former a crazy little song made up of voice-like sounds that go in and out of sounding fairly natural and extremely synthetic and the latter a delicious piece that opens with a snappy little Piazzolla accordion bit that’s brutally cut short by a sharp, metallic sound. Follows several minutes of drone over which there’s some long, isolated tones that almost make a tune but not quite. After about four of this, there’s a moment of increased tension, produced almost entirely by rhythm—only after then tension’s been wound up sufficiently does the music get loud. (There is a bit of crescendo, but not much. It’s a remarkable passage.) Then after a long (genuine) crescendo is the first of two accordion eruptions. A most engaging piece, the one on this album I return to most frequently.
Le chemin du vent des glaces
Written for a four cd collection of pieces inspired by the seasons (Les Saisons--LCD 2781126-27-28-29),
Le chemin du vent des glaces
is one of two pieces by Ferreyra on this set, Siesta Blanca being
the other. Le chemin du vent des glaces covers a lot of ground in its only eleven minutes of rich and varied
sound, so much so that I’m always taken aback when it ends so soon.
From its dramatic opening, great explosive sounds in the distance with short fragments of hiss in the foreground, to the various overlapping wind sounds mixed with all sorts of clicks and clatters and rumbling, and some of the sounds from the opening, to the shocking sound of a cork pulled out of a bottle and a drink being poured—over ice, of course—which introduces a section of people talking and laughing, and then back to the austere beauties that characterize the bulk of this piece, it’s a thrilling excursion, one you’ll want to take over and over again.
Demeures aquatiques
The date for
Demeures aquatiques
which makes it early (earliest?) in Ferreyra’s career. It does not promise great things to come, as many composers
early pieces do. It is simply a great thing that’s already here. The shifting from channel to channel, so easy to be
gimmicky, is so adroit and so musical in this piece, that that one thing is almost worth the price of admission all
on its own. But it’s not about technique that I want to talk, though that’s certainly impressive enough, but of the
music. The piece moves slowly and gorgeously and naturally, the sounds and the motives unfolding out of each other
so organically that listening to this piece move through time is like experiencing a cycle of growth and decay out
in nature somewhere. In only seven minutes, this piece creates an incredible sense of spaciousness. Unbelieveable.
Le Riviere des Oiseaux
La Riviere des Oiseaux is the album name and the name of the first three pieces,
Rio de los Pajaros,
Rio de los Pajoros Escondidos,
and Rio de los Pajaros Azules.
Rio de los Pajaros builds from a single “call,” repeated several times at the beginning and recurring throughout
in many guises, into a piece as complex and interesting and various as one could wish for. Rio de los Pajoros
Escondidos opens with a great rush of sound and is altogether darker and more spacious sounding than its
predecessor, at least for the first three minutes. At that point little licks from Rio de los Pajaros enter in and
you realize that La Riviere des Oiseaux isn’t just some fanciful title for a collection of related pieces but a
designation of a three part piece, tightly and intricately integrated. Each part distinct; each part part of a
whole, as Rio de los Pajaros Azules announces in its opening, which combines the dramatic opening of Rio de los
Pajoros Escondidos with music you know already from the first two pieces. If it weren’t for the palpable beauties
of those two, I’d say that Rio de los Pajaros Azules is the most varied and interesting of the three. Best to just
say that La Riviere des Oiseaux is a most satisfying piece of music and leave it at that!
The rest of the album consists of four pieces, two from before La Riviere des Oiseaux— Medisances (1968) and L'Orvietan (1970) —and two from after— Vivencias (2001) and Cantos de Antes (2002). Medisances has a long, slow introduction that takes up almost half the piece and yet doesn’t make anything seem imbalanced or disproportionate. I don’t know why. I often play this for friends new to electroacoustic music, one because it’s short and two because it’s sweet. And three because it never fails to win new friends for new music. L'Orvietan explores various possibilities of a buzzing sound, possibilities so many that I almost didn’t use the word buzzing. But there it is. However far from that it gets, that’s where it starts and that’s where it comes back to. Vivencias and Cantos de Antes, while only a year apart, could not be more different (c.f. the remark about protean for the green album). Vivencias uses all sorts of sounds, including some very tasty drums near the beginning, and weaves them all seamlessly. Until about halfway through, when the routine is broken up by several pauses. Or perhaps, the routine becomes the pauses. Cantos de Antes, on the other hand, consists largely of voices, broken up into musical lines, so that there’s no speech left, as such, but still recognizably humans. Perhaps there’s one similarity—Cantos de Antes is just as active and mercurial a piece as Vivencias, and certainly more amusing.