This is the final feature of composers/artists performed at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival this year. It’s taken a while longer than anticipated to get all the features finished, but we got there in the end. We hope you have found this series interesting. As always, you can let us know your thoughts about this by posting a comment…

Stef Conner’s piece, Still Sky Bells was performed alongside Edward Caine’s work (see previous feature) by the Nieuw Ensemble on Monday 22nd November at St Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield (for details about the rest of the programme, click here).

An audio recording of that performance is not available at this point in time, but we do have one of Stef’s other pieces, Laments of the Gorges which you can listen to:

Stef’s programme note for this piece:

“This piece is a setting of short fragments from an anachronistically experimental and uniquely surreal poem by Meng Jiao (751-814 AD). Although there are no voices in the piece, the language of the poem is present throughout, often in indiscernible and occasionally in discernible forms. Intelligibility of text is obviously limited in instrumental music, but certain elements of language, such as prosody, can be retained. In a ‘tonal’ language like Chinese, the potential for meaning to be discerned from prosody alone is greater than in most European languages. Much of the melodic material in this piece is derived from the contour of the spoken poetry and some of the harmonic progressions and timbral techniques intuitively emulate the sound of Chinese phonemes. I have also incorporated some spectral analysis of the human voice into the piece by tracking variation over time of frequency content in various vocal sounds, and then re-synthesizing them using instruments. These experiments in generating musical material from language provided me with a palette of sounds which I was able to drawn on to create an orchestral atmosphere inspired by the eerie sonorities and turbulent cascades of sound in Meng Jiao’s poem.”

Excerpts from the poem:

Xiá āi kū yōu hún, jiăo jiăo fēng chuī lái.
Laments of the gorges, shadowy spirits mourning. Winds howl.

Sān xiá yī xiàn tiān, sān xiá wàn shéng quán.
Triple Gorge one thread of heaven over ten thousand cascading thongs of water,

Shàng zì suì rì yuè, xià zhì kuáng yí lián
Slivers of sun and moon sheering away above, and wild swells walled in below,

Pò hún yī liăng diăn, níng yōu shù băi nián
Splintered spirits glisten, a few glints frozen how many hundred years in dark gorges

Xìng mìng rú făng jì, dào lù suí suŏ yuán
here, your life like fine-spun thread, its road a trace of string travelled away.

Diàn lèi diào pō líng, pō lĭng jiang shăn rán
Offer tears to mourn the water ghosts, and water ghosts take them, glimmering.

Shàng tiān xià tiān shuĭ, chū dì rù dì zhoū.
Water all heaven-above, heaven-below, a boat leaves earth entering here.

If you would like to find out more about Stef Conner, visit her info page on this site: Conner, Stef – Info

You can also see/hear more of Stef’s work by visiting the following:

Stef Conner’s website: www.stefconner.com
Stef Conner on myspace: www.myspace.com/stefconner

At this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mauricio Kagel’s work was performed on three occasions. This is testament to the remarkable work of a sorely missed artist. The three works performed were Streichquartett I & II (1967), Les Inventions d’Adolphe Sax (UK premier) and Kantrimiusik (1975).

Kagel is perhaps best known for his work in music theatre (such as Match (1964)) although he worked in many mediums. One of my favourite pieces by Kagel is the Ragtime-Waltz from the 41 pieces that make up Rrrrrrr… (for further information google, “Aeon AECD 0311″). I have a recording of the version for piano for two or four hands. Sadly I couldn’t find a version of this piece for piano online to embed in this post* but I did find a recording of Ragtime (1993) which is (I think) similar in nature. Hope you enjoy it!

For more information about Mauricio Kagel, please visit the artist entry on this website: Kagel, Mauricio – Info

* there is a version for accordion on YouTube.

This Friday, the UK’s biggest festival of contemporary and experimental music will launch for 2010. Over ten days it will consist of approximately 50 events spanning a variety of music/sound forms. The festival programme combines work by established figures such as John Cage and Mauricio Kagel with that of emerging composers such as Juste Janulyte, Patrick Allison, Edward Caine, Stephanie Conner and Johnny Herbert.

Huddersfield Festival is an important event for this art-form and almost certainly the largest collection of contemporary music works in one place over a given time span in the UK. What is worrying is that in comparison with the currently ongoing exhibition for The Turner Prize*, a comparable event in terms of credibility and standing for contemporary art, Huddersfield Festival is not very well known. This contrast in popularity is indicative of a wider issue concerning the place of contemporary (experimental) music within contemporary arts as a whole.

Lots of theories about why this may be the case have been proposed. In fact, in researching this article, I came across a post on The Wall Street Journal by Paul Sharma which points to a new theory on the matter in the form of a short book by David Stubbs entitled, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen.

Irrespective of the reason why, contemporary experimental music does not seem to enjoy the same popularity as other contemporary arts forms and The Medium of is keen to at least redress the balance a little bit. We will be giving the same level of coverage to HCMF as we do to The Turner Prize. During the course of the festival we will be featuring some of the composers whose work is appearing at the festival. We will be featuring both established and emerging composers and hopefully bring you some contemporary arts that you may not have heard of before!

Please check back over the next few weeks to find out more.

And if you have any thoughts or opinions on the issues touched on within this post, please do let us know. This is a debate we’d really like to open on this site.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival runs from Friday 19th November to Sunday 28th November. For further details, please visit Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s official website

*For further details regarding The Turner Prize, you can visit the official Turner Prize website and/or check back here over the next few weeks for details on the 2010 nominees.