I have been very vocal in my criticism of contemporary classical music on this blog. But there is some new music out there that I do like, very much. Most of it falls under the minimalist category, made by Steve Reich and his followers. The coolest new thing I’ve heard in this idiom is “Timber” by Michael Gordon.
The piece is played by six people on wooden planks, using mallets and fingertips. I thought at first it was a conceptual thing — “look what we can do with ordinary lumber” — but in fact this is an actual instrument called a simantra, used by Eastern Orthodox monks and, later, Iannis Xenakis. You can take a look at part of the score.
So why do I consider this to be good?
It’s accessible.
The raw musical materials are simple. A casual listener can get the general idea in five seconds of listening. The structure is repetitive and groove-oriented. The idea of slowly evolving timbres over a strong beat is familiar to anyone who has ever heard electronic dance music, but this piece is most certainly neither electronic nor dance music. Or maybe it could be dance music; not in a club, but I could easily see modern dancers finding rich inspiration in it.
It’s deep.
The planks produce an extraordinary variety of overtones and timbres, especially in combination with one another. The piece sets off endless associations: to rain or hail falling on a roof, to stone age people drumming on logs, to geometry, to a hundred thousand bored people drumming their knuckles on a tabletop.
It’s homely.
My son has a set of blocks made out of some especially nice, resonant wood, and every time he knocks one against another I think of “Timber.” (And vice versa.) Same goes whenever I absent-mindedly rap my knuckles on a wall or table or cabinet. We have an unusually resonant metal bed, and we enjoy banging on it with Milo. We’re thinking of collaborating on a piece called “Bedframe.”
It’s exotic.
Here’s a nice paragraph from the New York Times review of a live performance:
Beyond the ever-shifting rhythmic crosscurrents that give the music its vigor and hypnotic intensity, “Timber” also plays on tones unique to each plank. (Not for nothing did Mr. Gordon choose a title so close to timbre.) Amplified in performance, overtones hover and fuse, conjuring eerie moans and radiant coronas.
It’s eerie, for sure, but never so much so that it stops being fun. Composers! Write more stuff like this.