Verisimilitude: Hugh Livingston's "Sound and Place: Minnesota," a New Music Composition

by Jefferson Hansen

(On Sunday, July 7, Zeitgeist New Music Quartet performed Hugh Livingston's "Sound and Place: Minnesota" at Caponi Art Park in Eagan, MN.)

“Verisimilitude.”

Life like.

The key to this word, for me, is “similar.” Similar implies not the same, not “as”— a gap between the thing and the representation. The representation hints at the thing.

An art park carved in woods. Bird sounds on small audio players in bird cages spread around the area. A toy piano. Many different sorts of percussion instruments, from clavinets to tubes to chimes. A clarinet. The percussionists and clarinet player wander about the crowd, around trees, on a chalked out path.

The random—

> Many people brought their kids to the performance. They did their usual did: cries, questions, just talk. The parents bustled. Part of the piece.

>“Real” birds.

>Traffic from nearby Diffley Road.

>My friend Jonathan saying, “It might be better if we follow them.” A park worker toward the end beckoning us to climb a hill to hear the final sounds—of the composed piece, considered narrowly.

The improvised—

>A clarinet walking and winding among the kids and parents and people. Sometimes playing directly to specific individuals. A wide variety of percussionists, sometimes darting from tree to tree, like birds, and appearing to hide, face to the bark. Like woodpeckers?

>To what extent was the toy piano improvised?

The composed—

>Directions for movement for the musicians—like choreography. (The chalk line).

>Various keys and other foundations. "Faith in good musicians," Livingston told me.

The prerecorded—

The bird songs in the cages.

All four elements—the random, improvised, composed, and prerecorded—bumped, interpenetrated, overwhelmed, commented on, responded to each other. Engaged in polyphony, harmony, call and response. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. Does it matter? The random is part of the piece.

The piece ended with all the musicians sitting atop a hill and gently tapping large, tubular chimes. One by one, the musicians dropped out, until one tapped quieter and quieter, until he was below hearing. A man coughed. The traffic. A child asked for something. I heard “real” birds.

Verisimilitude creates counterpoint.

The art of this piece will reverberate with me next time I go hiking. The bird sounds will bounce against what I heard in those recordings in cages, I will see the “wild” birds framed by their not being in cages, I will hear their songs against the quiet tapping of those long chimes. I will see them dart from branch to branch as the percussionists darted from tree to tree, and then leaned against them like woodpeckers.

Art is nature is art.

Art is not nature is not art.

Art like nature like art.

The night was hot.

_________________________

Livingston Sound

Zeitgeist

Heather Barringer, percussion; Patti Cudd, percussion; Pat O'Keefe, woodwinds; Shannon Wettstein, piano

Zeitgeist is one of the leading New Music quartets in the world, and we in Minnesota are blessed to have them.