Menage a Trois - for tuba, percussion, flute (and voice)

It is a rare marriage that occurs between pornography and contemporary classical music and yet in this piece, they seem very happily related.

This piece marks an early stage in the evolution of "Isolde, the composer" towards her demands that her performers use words, sing and act as well as playing the challenging and atonal, arrhythmic and genuinely chaotic score.

There is - as one would expect - much slurping, squelching and wailing in this piece, both scored musically and in terms of the erotic poem which acts as a seemingly impromptu libretto. It parodies the porn genre quite successfully, with liberal cries of "oo, yes, harder, faster" after which the velocity and energy in the music yields to those demands. But the main point of the poem is that it is entirely concocted of fantasy and is quite dreamlike: It seems more about watching pornography and imagining oneself in the midst of it, than about actually partaking in desires of the flesh.

There is the difficult challenge handed to the performers that of course the words are scored accurately and at times (particularly for the woodwind instruments) the ability to transform from erotic performer to perfect embouchure is problematic. But perhaps it is deliberate: a general wrestling, writhing, struggling embarassment plays centre stage and the performers are merely catalysts for this.

The threesome are often at odds with each other; at times there is much interplay between the tuba and the flute, at other times between the tuba and percussion, but never between the flute and percussion. This seems to reflect a decided sexuality; the tuba gets all the attention whilst one or the other are left to their own desires and fantasies.

It doesn't feel particularly voyeuristic. Despite the composer's will to make "difficult" music accessible to all through the common motive of sexual desire, one is entirely aware of the fact you are listening to music which has little to do with perceived notions of pleasantness and this means you are unable to lose yourself fully in the themes and ideas.

Is it erotic? Yes. Is it arousing? no.

7/10

Revised Consciousness - an epic poem

Why an earth would one even attempt to read or write a stream-of-consciouness, free-verse epic poem? Why not just call it a novel and extend the language to incorporate more of a narrative flow and a more thorough plot? Or shorten it to a pleasant little poem and distill the essence?

I don't know why Isolde thought this would be a good idea. But it is an interesting, though difficult and often impenetrable work. The basic setting is a woman alone (very alone, without any outside interference or necessity to perform the day-to-day) in her thoughts and the thoughts fall freely onto the page as little cadences. What happens to her is all delivered in this way as if the author has indeed recorded each and every thought that she might have over a period of time in the situation that she was in.

There are "rushes", where the thoughts about something come so fast and are so streaming you read - as it is written - almost too fast to keep up with the pace and you are made to feel excited and jittery yourself. One senses that the protagonist is moving physically at the time and blood is flowing freely. Then there are quiet, sad moments when the lines are a few brief words that seem stifled as if (though you are never told such information) she may be crying. And the over-worked, over-stimulated madness of thoughts darting in all directions and not really making any sense at all.

The main theme is an unravelling of the mind which has been hurt and shaken and is stretched to the limits: perhaps it has not had the opportunity to self-reflect for a long time or perhaps it has been avoiding doing so for fear of the darkness that it will encounter. There is certainly lots of darkness; a oft-returned to semi-dream-like state throws up fear and hallucinations and painful memories. But there is hope and optimism as the protagonist finds peace. In fact she finds  peace so deep, she begins to find the concept of peace rather cloying as thoughts circle and settle and "peace" is the only word in her head. It is used and over-used in self-parody an almost hysterical "peace" is shattered time and again and returned to. You begin to believe as the poem draws to its conclusion that it is time for her to leave her hermitage and re-enter the world, for you fear for her sanity.

The other most prominent feature is the growth of the naturalistic leaning; she feels far more attached to the natural world than to the human world and this is were she derives much of her learning, stripped as it is of fantasy and wild-imaginings and closer to an alpha-state of just being.

Overall, the most interesting thing is the extent to which the author uses linguistic device to portray mood and energy. Because of the subject matter - and perhaps because it is poetry - there is much repetition, so much that you hardly feel like reading passages which you have already a couple of times. But it quite important to do so,  because on further inspection, there is an extension, a slight twist which discloses some slight progress.

 I'm not sure the reader feels much empathy with the protagonist; one is essentially a voyeur to often hysterical and over-worked thoughts which are infuriating a lot of the time. But it is not really that important; if we looked inside the heads of the people we feel most fondly about, we would probably not discover much that wasn't infuriating. It is - I presume- intended to reflect the human experience, the human condition and the most frightening and successful thing is the way it reflects back to you.

6/10

"No, Mr Oesophagus, I am not going to swallow."or "Wrongholitis" for mixed ensemble and audience.

Something smelled fishy when the audience was handed paper and a choice of pens and were politely asked to doodle throughout the music. One was led to believe that it was some experimental way of seeing how the audience interpreted the music in drawings, so as to see what it invoked. But the audience participation didn't stop there.

The music itself started out reminiscent of a Strauss waltz on acid, very rigid and tight but slightly insane with nasally high trumpets and squeaky violins and all performers required to play at the very highest and lowest register of their instruments. Yes, but no, nothing particularly challenging.

The real fun began when an audience member creaked very loudly on a chair and this was echoed throughout the ensemble almost mocking the sound. A loud yawn from another audience member yieled a similar result.  After the over-loud rustling of sweet papers tickled its way through the registers of instruments in a similar way (all these motifs supplanted fragments of the waltz which carried on regardless), one became suspiscious that there were plants in the audience (of course there were). A few people crumpled up their doodle paper and tore it to shreds.

The formality of the usual performer/audience roles began to slip; people started trying to make subtle noises to interact with the ensemble, at first self-consciously, then more and more deliberately. One became ever more suspicious and confused that you weren't the only member of the audience not in on the joke as whatever happened in the audience was echoed again and again on the stage. The interminable - and by now grating - waltz continued over and again, refreshed only by what the audience gave it.

Then the trombones began to appear disgruntled with the conductor. At first it was just frowns and glances and then they deliberately tried to destroy the order in the waltz, playing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, loud and obnoxiously. Eventually, one stood up and eloquently shouted over the music how utterly fed up he was and walked off. And the other two followed him off the stage. Anarchy erupted throughout the ensemble, and in the audience too. People were starting to get up and dance manically and sing along etc.

Eventually, a grey haired man walked up to the conductor, tapped him on the shoulder and told him he would sooner die than listen to any more of this hullaboo and produced pills from his jacket. The music stopped abruptly. The applause was not forthcoming.

This was billed as a piece of music rather than musical theatre, and although it was an uncomfortable and hysterical experience, it certainly did much to parody the lack of ownership that an audience has of the performers. Barriers were broken and you were forced to look at the players not just as sentient machines producing sounds for your enjoyment, but as real personalities. Of course this is not the case with audiences of other musics - rock, jazz, folk etc musicians all have a relationship with their audience. But classical music is so restricted by its formality, it was both unnerving and euphoric to see an interaction between the two camps.

On leaving, there was a further joke. What had appeared to be a sleeping or dead statue in the foyer had got up and walked out, leaving a note smeared in cement, "left, in disgust" and a trail of concrete footprints behind him. That'll take some cleaning in the morning!

7/10

Ojos - A novel in two parts.

A 20 year old Isolde wrote this. The immaturity shows, although the language is vast and unrelenting and it shows a promise of what is to come in her later works.

The plot of the first half of the story is basically the classic, terrible tale of woe of the desperate woman, Luna. Lost in a wilderness of bricks and mortar, the child-woman wanders through the smog searching desperately for anything she can call kindness. She encounters a pair of eyes through the fug in a bar which are focussed on her. Luminous eyes which she is bewitched by and can't stop gawping at. Rather foolishly, she follows the eyes to their owner and then a torturous affair is commenced in which she loses much of self and self-belief and identity. Of course, the villain is a cliche; all arrogance and affairs and harsh punishments. A child is born in this madness. Unfortunately he has inherited his father's eyes. Although they eventually escape from the terror into the countryside, Luna feels forever trapped by the sorcery of her child's eyes and cannot bond with him and eventually - rather predicatably - kills herself.

The second half of the story is a somewhat more painful. The child - Sebastian - cannot ever look at his own eyes in his reflection and spends his time trying to escape himself. The foster carers into whose gentle and loving care he is placed, despair as they see a beautiful and tender child loathe himself. Through careful love and compassion, they gently manage to mould an almost happy child. At the age of eleven, he begins to blossom and enjoy pre-pubescent female attention. But this is all thrown into total disarray when his father shows up. The child - under the tutelage of his father - grows into a man with psychopathic tendencies and self-loathing and eventually develops a taste for murder.

Although the themes in this novel are quite well-developed, the occassional over-flowery and romantic language are quite anachronistic; it seems best placed somewhere between Jane Eyre and the works of Lynda La Plante. Although there is a general lack of understanding of the human psyche, the author attempts to make sense of it through her own limited understanding of the world. In terms of Isolde's later works, the most important feature is the reliance on stream of consciousness as the main narrative element.

5/10

"Bluebells" for string ensemble.

Isolde writes: "Someone once told me that when you walk through a bluebell-carpeted wood, you 'hear them tinkle' as your brain struggles to compute the information of the over-whelming colour and fragrance and believes it it hearing sound even when there is complete silence.
I have no idea if this is true or if he were ineptly trying to describe synaesthesia, but I adored the concept."

"Bluebells" is a very quiet piece. Although the work is fully scored and the performers are required to finger many complex passages, it comes with the dynamic instruction "pppppppppp or attempt to keep your bow half a millimetre away from the strings at all times". However, there is an inevitable leakage of sound: a few notes slip out and the harmonics created by simply fingering resound as you strain to listen. This is entirely neccessary, else it would be simply "pretending to play". But the ensemble play diligently, following the conductor.

All of this changes in the last fragment, as if tunnelling into the bluebell-insane brain we begin to hear the music being played. It crescendos to a very audible and suddenly very loud ppp. The music is seemingly chaotic and naturalistic, yet effortlessly evokes the colour blue.

Is this just another pretensious re-working of silence? Does it offer anything new to a tired and already over-worked theme? You find yourself longing to hear the notes that are being performed and are almost bent double, leaning in to listen. When the music actually arrives it is quite surprising and cacophonic, strident, even, after straining to hear the few strands that have escaped.

Luckily, it was a very small and contained audience, else the spell may have been broken. The performers and audience alike looked exhausted after the performance.  I rather feel that this was Isolde grinding her old axe again: including the suffering of music and a life of music in performance. But it was intriguing, nonetheless. And I slept deep that night and dreamt of spring.

7/10