Wandered by HMV yesterday and noticed they had a sale on, so 1hr later came out 120 quid lighter, but 20 CDs heavier :shame: . Anyhoo...one of those on sale was Karl Jenkins' "L'homme arme" mass (<£10), and another was Philip Glass' Satygraha (<£13). I've heard a fair bit about Satyagraha but never heard any of it, and lordsummit has mentioned the Jenkins a couple of times - so HMV don't have them any more. Well, I'm still a bit undecided about the Jenkins. Nice, approachable, tonal, classic FM fodder. Starts very well (nice variations on the L'homme arme tune), and the Kyrie and muezzin call stuff's pretty good. "Save me from bloody men" is nice plainsong - but with some chomaticisms that really jarred. The Sanctus really started losing me though - it's the most doom-laden hymn in praise of God I've ever heard. It's quite simple but catchy, in similar vein to "Carmina Burana", but it goes on at least twice too long.The music then gets more and more like themes to a mini series - laden with oodles of reverb that I found increasingly offputting - and the strings either ended up playing either typical pop accompaniments or simply doubling the soprano line in a rather tedious way. The last movement is a rather irritating patchwork of the L'homme arme, a melange or bits of Walton (influences from Belshazzar) morphing into "Superman" and "the Virginian", and a final a capella English choral anthem (a la Stanford or Balfour Gardiner) :confused: . Following that I put on the Satyagraha. This is pretty hardcore minimalism - but gripped me in a way the Jenkins didn't. There's probably less tune in the Glass, the words are in Sanskrit and set in a very stylised way and in some places are virtually unintelligible even if you're concentrating on them written in front of you - but there's just so much more interest than in the Jenkins. Possibly the last act is gets a bit too much - he drops the tempo a lot from the high energy stuff in the first two acts, but there's rather too much high volume reciting on a monotone for comfort. That may not be helped by the very hard recording (Sony 1985) and inflexible metre. Apparently it was recorded track by track in pop style because the music is so difficult to play (which I can well believe), starting with two different click tracks because of the intricate polyrhythms going on. The 2nd act is quite interesting in that it's obviously the basis for the outer movements of the Violin Concerto, and also for the internal opera in the 2nd act of John Adams' "Nixon in China". So is my reaction simply bias against the more obviously easy-listening piece, or is the Glass that much higher musical quality? I know of plenty who would call it mindless repetitive tedium. There was actually one review of some other Glass pieces that was estimating how much brain power/attention you required to listen to different musics, and this was down with pop music as well below 50%. Actually I think minimalism is something that only really works if you DO pay close attention - otherwise you miss the inner intricacies of subtly changing rhythms or harmonies, in which case it then does appear as unchanging tedium. I've actually listened to both a second time now and appreciating the Jenkins a bit more - although primarily by listening to that less hard and letting it wash over me as I half dozed, and the 3rd act of the Glass has come alive (although the recording is still a bit insistent) That last scene is quite captivating - just a simple rising Phrygian scale repeated about 30 times, but it's absolutely enchanting. There is actually quite an extra-musical connection between the two pieces as well. The words for Satygraha are all taken from the Bhagavad Gita, which is also used for some of the verses in the Jenkins, and the subject manner of the opera is the birth of Ghandi's non-violence movement in South Africa, whereas the Jenkins was written as a paen for peace at the time of the Kosovo war. (And just for a bit of contrast, Renee Fleming's Marschallin, Arabella and Countess Madeleine and the Emerson's recording of the Art of Fugue have also been spinning - wonderful!)
