See that Bach. He's not the Messiah.

All of these people talking about Bach like he’s God’s left hand… you know what it is, right? He wrote the book on tempered keyboards. It’s like, before Bach, composers just did what they liked, any old scale will do and hey, if I want a harpsichord solo right now, I’ll have one. It’s the birth of the age of the enlightenment, innit, the time when art decided it was more important than religion, and science was the only game of truth in town…

Yeah, I like Bach in small doses, like a  Ricercar à 6 as part of a well-balanced menu. You know, maybe to cleanse the palate before I tuck into some meatier fare. Maybe some romance, maybe Three Pieces for Piano and String by Piazzolla. Give me some of that tango-influenced swing, baby, and hammer on the bass and piano like they are percussion.

You know what we forget so often? That classical music is a story. That the movement from polyphony, through opera to the massed orchestra of Mahler and then into Matthew Whiteside working to get his compositions out on the street: it is history made visible through flashes of lightning… or a rattle of thunder… and events like South Atlantic Crossings or Sound Thought tell the story from a different perspective. And the story is that people keep moving, only finding places now and again to stand and grasp at solid ground.

Those people who say Bach is special: they’re only talking loud and saying nothing. Without history, with context, it just some sounds. In a good sequence, but it is this sequence that matters. And it won’t stop with the last note.

In my dreams, I am talking to Plato, and when he is not talking about Aristotle being a total ass, he’s like: you gots to listen to the right kind of music man. All that rock’n’roll going to destroy your soul man and I know you thinks that’s cool…

But have you seen the state of the world lately? Sure, we didn’t treat the slaves and the foreigns right in fifth century Athens, but I didn’t see any nuclear bombs in the hands of a maniac when I went on my holiday to Syracuse. I’m not saying Donald Trump is stupider than Pericles, but I am saying that the worst thing Pericles could do is head-butt someone.

He did have one hell of a forehead.

Anyway, I don’t think Trump will bomb anyone. It just comes across as an ass-hat to show off in front of his new mates. Get him in the Oval-Office, and it’s going to be like the end of The Candidate all over again.

“What do we do now?”

“Well, The Donald, why don’t you take Little Donald to the opera? Music soothes the savage beast after all. From the way you’ve been carrying on, I don’t think you’ve had your hole lately. Abstract sounds sculpturing air into architectural orders might assuage that raging boner for death.”

It’s like having Thanos standing for election.

Well Well Well

Mildred Pierce reporting...

In the autopsy of Aristotle, I cut away the surrounding flesh to reach the organs in which were contained the biles of tragedy... in the adjacent ward a similar operation was performed on the still living body of Plato. His screams disturbed the sleep of Reason and bought forth monsters named Fundamentalism and Common Sense (the latter roared in a Scottish accent). 

Tattoos on the scraps of skin cast away described music in cursive script. Dr Benway, reanimated solely to overlook our procedures proceeded to pick up the bloody tatters and intoned over the rhythmic ripping of our scalpels. 

"All the skills gone out of theory, these days. Why, I remember the time I performed a deconstruction without footnote one... but that was in a different narrative and besides, post-modernism's dead."

Benway determined that our investigation gambles on the wrong horse. Neither Aristotle nor Plato cared for tragedy in itself, even if the pair of them wandered and wondered in the Pure Land and nobly rejected the practical use of philosophy. The aesthetic genealogy that we hope to describe deliberately denies their intentions, grinding up techne and ousia into a mush that can be feed to the toothless.

"You want to understand an idea, you gotta chew it, swallow it whole then regurgitate it like a cow on the cud.Cut and paste works for a computer, but you need to cut up to expose the hegemonic thought."

At this point we reconsidered our employment of the good doctor Frank and his lightning machines.  

McCoy gently gathered the disparate and broken flesh, spreading it out across the gurney and categorised each piece. The Phoenix applied fifty shades to the assemblage, offering it a monstrous parody of reincarnation. 

"Music... music... that's what they understood. It isn't the (redacted) (expletive deleted). If poetry is closer to philosophy and therefore better than history, then music when it dispenses with the word is closer again to Universals because more abstract and (at this point the text is broken or lost)."

In the office next door a single tone for six hours - that's all it took to recognise a twinned truth. The body responds to sound, or women respond to bass, and experimental soundscapes are really fucking irritating. Especially if the frequencies are not pure and have been downloads in less than 320. 

Weaponising music is an adaptation of Plato's belief that sound can be used to train the spirit. The music of the age of enlightenment addressed the potential spiritual benefits of order and scale. It follows on from the Renaissance's rediscovery of classical texts via the Islamic diaspora (diaspora or empire or da'ar al-islam). If music be the food of love, will be please turn it down. We don't need cross-infection in the operating theatre...

Footnotes:

Well, Well, Well: a composition by Matthew Whiteside, which resolves into a minimalist motif of Irish music, two forms Whiteside has denied, previously, as influences. The title refers to the artist's surprise at their emergence.

Let The Music Move You

Both Akbar Ali Khan and Matthew Whiteside present their music to a seated, relaxed audience: Khan turns the Strathclyde Suite of Glasgow's Concert Halls into a subdued, meditative chamber while Whiteside's collaboration with Emma Lloyd makes the white, clean space of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket into a laboratory of experimental sound. Hector Bizerk, however, cram their experimental hip-hop into the sweaty upstairs of King Tut's, and get the crowd bouncing. But it's all music, innit?

On record, Hector Bizerk have sounded pedestrian - the clarity of the production often leaves Louie's raps exposed as doggerel. Live, they are a ragged, belligerent presence: twin drummers pounding beneath ferocious rapping, the bass grinding out funky flurries against wisps of melody. Perhaps because of the electronics that Whiteside uses in his compositions, the gap between live and studio performance is less marked: using his tour to introduce his first album, he selects Ed Bennett's Ghosts and Grisey's Prologue from Les Espaces Acoustiques to give a context for his scores for Emma Lloyd's viola and viola d'amore.

Bizerk's relentless energy sucks up reggae and hip-hop, with shades of new wave and funk, into a distinctive sound that escapes easy references, finding a tempestuous backing for Louie's raging words. The live instrumentation adds an immediacy and dynamism often lacking in hip-hop that relies on turntables - or backing tracks - and the rapport with the crowd is direct. 

While Whiteside exists in a more respectable musical genre, the same sense of urgency fills his Ulation and work for viola d'amore. The melancholic strings are forced towards a vigorous attack, Whiteside's own humming electronics twisting the acoustic sounds and conjuring a warm depth. The resonating drone of the viola d'amore echo medieval song, but Solo for viola d'amore and electronics is a restless, contemporary piece, never quite falling simply into minimalism - Whiteside has an interest in timbre rather than repetition - despite passages of minimal eloquence.

Akbar Ali Khan's qawwali relies on his voice, shaping sculptures into the air, although, like Hector Bizerk, he sits back at times to let the drummer have some. The approach of qawwali is based on repetition, but also vocal gymnastics, the story-telling of the songs evoked as much by the lyrical line and the lyrics. There's the same sense of virtuosity found in Emma Lloyd's viola playing, but while her reading of Grisey's Prologue is an erudite journey into the edges of musical possibility, Ali Khan finds a sensuous spirituality.  

Dichroic Light: Matthew Whiteside

Although Dichroic Light is Matthew Whiteside's first CD release, it covers a considerable amount of the composer's work: the title track is his earliest piece of electro-acoustic music, while the collaboration with Emma Lloyd (featuring her on the viola d'amore augmented by Whiteside's electronics) was only completed this year. Yet throughout the release, Whiteside's fusion of electronic and classical instrumentation expresses a consistent and confident identity.

By turns melancholic and aggressive - his scores for viola and cello both have a waspish attack - and even surprisingly playful (Well, Well, Well almost resolves into a jolly jog), Whiteside's sensitivity to the acoustic instruments is matched by a subtle and responsive electronic accompaniment. 

Allowing the viola d'amore to lead, or the cello to set the tone, the electronics escape the predictable crackle and squelch that frequently passes for experimental. Rather, the effect conjures up an acoustic space that warps or enhances the musicality, as if the recording - done by Whiteside himself alongside Timothy Cooper and engineer Jimmy Eadie - is capturing the ambience of diverse recording locations. 

This atmosphere - notable in Three Pieces for Bass Clarinet and Electronics ensures that the 'classical' is not lost in the contemporary. While Whiteside evokes minimalism - although more suggestively than in a rhythmic connection to Reich or Glass - the influences of baroque, romantic and spectral composition are melded into a striking and distinctive sound.

Surprisingly for an album that could be seen as 'the greatest hits so far' (The World in an Oyster... and Well, Well, Well are already signature compositions for Whiteside), the journey of the twelve scores across the CD suggests a continuity of style and intention. Whether working with The Red Note Ensemble or Emma Lloyd - who kicks off the album with Ulation, a savagely mournful introduction on viola - Whiteside is not just exploring the range of electro-acoustic music, he is finding a rare musicality and accessibility.

GEORGE CLINTON BRINGS THE FUNK TO GLASGOW: MATTHEW WHITESIDE BRINGS THE ELECTRIC TO THE VIOLA D@AMORE

www.matthewwhiteside.co.uk

www.emmajanelloyd.com

Viola D'Amore Meet Electronics

Matthew Whiteside has been composing electro-acoustic music in Glasgow for several years, first of all as part of the Said Ensemble and now Edit Point. His current project, however, maintains his use of modern technology, but also looks back to the baroque period.

In collaboration with Emma Lloyd, more usually known as a violin and viola player, Whiteside is writing a piece for the viola d'amore. This instrument, as Lloyd admits 'is not often used nowadays, and it is hard to find out what music has been composed for it!' First made during the baroque era, Lloyd adds that 'it is a peculiar instrument - it's interesting sounding. It has seven bowed strings and seven sympathetic ones. The non-fretted string instruments that you meet nowadays - violins, cellos and so on - usually have four strings.'

Given Whiteside's enthusiasm for a wide range of music (previous compositions have drawn on glitch electronica as well as contemporary classical styles), his composition is not purely about this obscure instrument.

'The new piece is for viola d'amore and motion sensors – of some sort,' he explains. Aware of the danger that electro-acoustic music can lose any sense of liveness in performance, Whiteside suggests that introducing this baroque curiosity can provide a further dimension to the composition.

'The instrument is already extended by the fact that it has sympathetic strings,' he says. 'The electronics are another thing to

play with. I'm toying with the ideas of cybernetics, and the relationship between the performer and the audience.'

In the early stages of the project, Whiteside and Lloyd have been experimenting with 'incredibly delicate sensors, which are usually used for testing movement in bridges.' Attaching these sensors to the musician, which then respond to her movements, brings a more improvisational, even random, element into the composition.

'In much performance of electronic music, the audience just ends

up looking at the back of a laptop, wondering whether the performer is just checking his emails,' Whiteside continues. By working with a stringed instrument, and applying sensors to Lloyd's fingers, Whiteside's composition uses both the traditional performance activity of the classical concert, and integrates contemporary technology. And while the project will see a CD release, the fullness of the piece will be revealed in the act of performance.

At the same time, the process of composition is an adventure, challenging Whiteside and Lloyd to find a compromise between the demands of a baroque instrument and electro-acoustic complexity: while there are limited scores for the viola d'amore (despite a recent fashion for rediscovering similar idiosyncratic baroque instrumentation), this is a unique fusion of the old and the new.

Edit-Point: Sight/Sound/Place

Sound competes with vision. Sense competes with  non-sense. Edit-Point presents three audio-visual works in which various kinds of chaos are brought to order.

In Lexicon, a poem by Tom, age 12, is the source for a poignant visual and sonic meditaDon on dyslexia. Words, image and text, distort and reform. There is at once a sense of kaleidoscopic brilliance and thwarted progress as the child’s poem slowly unfolds.

Vanishing Point describes the moment when abstract images pivot on the point of becoming tangible. They fleetingly become real and then collapses back into the unknown. The soundtrack, based on the noise of an old valve radio, glues everything together.

Taking an almost entirely different approach, Are You Everybody distils the chaos of the Kosova war into moments of quiet reflection.

The films are framed by a series of six, new, sonic postcards based on field recordings made in Scotland. Just as the photographer can tweak an image on a computer, there may be digital sleights of hand here too. Less than two minutes each, these sound pieces reveal as much as any photograph: capturing a place and a moment.



Andrew Lewis: Lexicon / John Young: Are you Everybody? / Jo Hyde: Vanishing

Point. Sonic postcards by Timothy Cooper, Nick Fells, Diana Salazar, Pete Stollery,

Nicholas Virgo and Matthew Whiteside

7.30pm Wednesday 25 September, Recital Room,

City Halls, Candleriggs, Glasgow G1 1NQ Tickets £6

(£3)






sound lab:

Drums. And Tape. And Drums. And Drums.

Matthew Whiteside is a regular co-host on  The Vile Arts Radio Hour: bringing a touch of intelligence and knowledge to my usual vague understanding of contemporary classical music, he is a tireless supporter of new composition. He's part of the wonderful Said Ensemble, a group committed to bringing classical music into unfamiliar places, like the pub, and he has been known to compose a cheeky electro-acoustic number, or two. In fact, he is prolific. 

His entry into the next Edit-Point show explains why he is a good match for the Vile Arts ethos. It's called Sanshen and early indications suggest that it is going to be a big drum solo. Edit Point have got young percussion Glynn Forrest on board to bash some bits - six new compositions, and the full range of percussion, from maracas (Javier Alvarez’s  Tamazcal sees the instrument made popular by Bez face off against tape) to a rock'n'roll style kit.

Edit-Point are in one of those marginal areas that I love so much: not purely classical composition, not purely electronic and intrigued by the possibilities of sound in specific spaces. Of course, every experimental musician likes to say something like that, but Edit-Point back it up by having a constant programme that challenges emerging composers to think about sound as "cinema for the ears." 

It might be said they are John Cage's children, in their fascination with the complete listening experience. Then again, maybe Cage had an affair with Stockhausen, because these kids like to get plugged into the machine. 

Edit-Point are performing as part of the Sound Lab series: 7.30pm, Wednesday 27 February, Recital Room, City Halls, Glasgow

Vile Arts Radio Hour (22nd October)

From our secret base near the River Clyde, The Vile Arts prepares for the latest episode. Eric's in the corner, checking out music, Vile is wondering around, doing his special voice exercises, Margaret Kirk is typing up a playlist, and Producer Harry broods, silently, communicating through the magic of telepathy.

Three guests are lined up so far, making the top five events for the week easy to pick. Joining Vile at the start of the show - and then chatting to Eric, in the hope of intelligent conversation - are Tranny and Roseannah from Frock On, Frock Off. 

A new strand within Glasgow - and coming from the same stable as Buzzcut, Glasgow's own alternative performance promoters - FOFO is all about the Live Art, and is spreading across Rose and Grants with a series of idiosyncratic performance.

 Highlights include a solo from Foxy - a guest on the show last year, and currently lamenting the absence of partner Husk - and Lucy Hutson mending herself through the magic of the W.I. before ending on Sunday with an all day party at The Glue Factory.

24th + 25th October @ Rose and Grants, 7.30pm: Foxy - Fox Solo and Dame Fanny Day Glow - The Angina Monologues

26th + 27th October @ Rose and Grants, 7.30pm: Tom Wells - Engage and Lucy Hutson - Make Do and Mend Myself

28th October, The Sunday Bizarre @ The Glue Factory, 3pm - late

Following Tranny and Roseannah, Michael John McCarthy - sometime of Zoey Van Goey, and one of the two most versatile and hard-working musicians in the theatre community - pops into chat about... well, as usual, the man has plenty of projects. Expect conversatin about Grid Iron's latest play, Govanhill Baths and his limited edition online release of music for theatre

Last, but far from  least, regular co-host Matthew Whiteside gives the lowdown on classical happenings this week - the rumour is that the composer will be talking about some of his own work - an opera that deals with something a little more contemporary than Italian lovers... he will talking about a special weekend up in Aberdeen, and the connection between Scottish Opera and the mighty Said Ensemble...