Peter Gena Beethoven in Soho et autres œuvres De Mare Kubera Chudzik - NW80841 - Contemporain

It could be said that Peter Gena’s (b. 1947) music has been a combination of three primary influences: Feldman, with his emphasis on sonority and non-linear continuity; algorithmic computer composition; and later, the minimalism of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and others (Julius Eastman included), which swept through the new-music world in the 1970s. The present disc documents all three of these influences, the dominant one being the algorithmic sonification of data. That is, some outside source is translated numerically into musical notes. Having previously employed other types of data, in the 1990s Gena started working with DNA as a result of his friendship with geneticist/pediatrician Dr. Charles Strom. Four of the works here—Chopin’s Catarrh, Dihydrotestosterone, Red Blood Cells, and Vaccinum—are based on DNA chains, fed into formulas (through the object-code language MAX/MSP) which convert the genetic material into long melodies. John Henry (1986) is based on the oft-recorded eponymous folk song about the mythical figure who died after successfully competing with a steam-powered rock drilling machine in building a tunnel. The piece opens by additively building up the theme of the folk song and then going into a motoric continuum of repeated notes (reminiscent of a machine) based on the notes of the tune. Then the process starts again, leading to thunderous repeated chords that run through the blues harmony in slow motion. Beethoven in Soho (1980) resulted from a conflict between two opposing ideas in music of the 1970s: information theory and minimalism. There was much excitement at the time about what information theory could help theorists understand about musical style. In a class, Gena was given an exercise to go through Beethoven’s Op. 31/3 Piano Sonata and edit out repeated (i.e., redundant) phrases and sequences to see what was left. Several years later, he decided to make a similar attempt with the second (final) movement of Beethoven’s Op. 54 Sonata and turn it into a quasi-minimalist piece by delaying expectations through repetition. For Morton Feldman (1988) is a memorial to Gena’s teacher, who had died at only 61 of pancreatic cancer the previous year. The floating chords and slowly changing sonorities make a clear reference to Feldman’s musical style with one crucial exception: Feldman’s pitch language was almost always dissonantly chromatic, while Gena’s draws a more restful atmosphere in E-flat major, with (at first) only the pitches E-flat, F, G, B-flat, C, and D.