Listen to This (19 page)
Authors: Alex Ross
“It’s sigh, it’s nostalgia,” Gyorgy Ligeti said of the lamenting figure, at the outset of a virtuoso analysis of the G-Major Quartet at the New England Conservatory, in 1993. The old pattern is woven through the first bars of Schubert’s work like a slender thread. A soft G-major chord leads by way of a rapid crescendo to lashing G minor, which in turn subsides to reassuring D major, the companion chord of G. That chord then blackens to D minor before giving way to A major, with a diminished seventh and a dominant seventh on D ensuing. From these chords you can extract the chromatic fourth (G down to D, step by step). In the next section—a more subdued episode, with tremolos buzzing softly all around—the lamenting fall recurs, except that it now appears plainly in the cello, assuming its traditional bass function. But the harmonization is different: around the note F-natural there materializes not a D-minor triad but a trembling chord of F major, foreign to the home key. “A total shock,” Ligeti said of this moment. “You cannot understand [it] in the tonal context.” Musical language is almost torn apart by memories of its past as well as by premonitions of its future.
The song cycles, too, blend convention and revolution. Their tales of unhappy love, set in archetypal, not quite real places like the Mill, the Village, and the Inn, shift from a Romantic here-and-now to an interior plane.
Winterreise
casts a very cool gaze on despair: it has something in common with Wallace Stevens’s “mind of winter,” contemplating “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” and even more with the skeletal lyricism of Samuel Beckett, who nursed a deep love for Schubert’s work and for
Winterreise
in particular. Indeed, the cycle unfolds like a Beckett play, in a landscape as vivid as it is vague. A young man who has been spurned by his beloved goes walking in and around the village where she lives, apparently fading into nonexistence in the process. Feet crunch in snow, ice cracks over a river, a post horn blows, a leaf flutters down from a tree, a crow circles in the air, dogs bark, clouds scurry across the sky, and, in the “Leiermann” epilogue, an ancient organ-grinder enters, playing a tune for no one. To an uncanny degree, you hear those sounds in Schubert’s piano writing, down to the rattling of the chains that hold the barking dogs. Yet there is something abstract about the aimless journey, which keeps circling back to the same places and the same motifs, the walking rhythm entering time and again. By the end, the young man seems to have merged with the figure of the hurdy-gurdy man, as if he has grown old in an hour.
Winterreise
casts a very cool gaze on despair: it has something in common with Wallace Stevens’s “mind of winter,” contemplating “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” and even more with the skeletal lyricism of Samuel Beckett, who nursed a deep love for Schubert’s work and for
Winterreise
in particular. Indeed, the cycle unfolds like a Beckett play, in a landscape as vivid as it is vague. A young man who has been spurned by his beloved goes walking in and around the village where she lives, apparently fading into nonexistence in the process. Feet crunch in snow, ice cracks over a river, a post horn blows, a leaf flutters down from a tree, a crow circles in the air, dogs bark, clouds scurry across the sky, and, in the “Leiermann” epilogue, an ancient organ-grinder enters, playing a tune for no one. To an uncanny degree, you hear those sounds in Schubert’s piano writing, down to the rattling of the chains that hold the barking dogs. Yet there is something abstract about the aimless journey, which keeps circling back to the same places and the same motifs, the walking rhythm entering time and again. By the end, the young man seems to have merged with the figure of the hurdy-gurdy man, as if he has grown old in an hour.
The six Heine songs of 1828 take up where
Winterreise
left off, in a world of self-alienation and derangement. Schubert’s powers of suggestion now extend to the musicalizing of literary abstractions. In “Der Doppelganger,” the narrator sees his “double” and feels he has become a ghost himself, watching his own ridiculous life. Setting the scene, Schubert writes an acutely unnerving progression in B minor in which each chord has been lobotomized by the surgical removal of one essential note. These chords draw a picture of a walking corpse.
Winterreise
left off, in a world of self-alienation and derangement. Schubert’s powers of suggestion now extend to the musicalizing of literary abstractions. In “Der Doppelganger,” the narrator sees his “double” and feels he has become a ghost himself, watching his own ridiculous life. Setting the scene, Schubert writes an acutely unnerving progression in B minor in which each chord has been lobotomized by the surgical removal of one essential note. These chords draw a picture of a walking corpse.
Listeners often have the idea that Schubert in his late period is looking into the face of death. The String Quintet and Sonata in B-flat, both of which were finished in September of 1828, do sound like a conscious farewell and summing up. The sequence of events of the Quintet’s Adagio—a halting, nearly unbearably wistful principal theme; a vehement central section; a return to the first theme, enfeebled but ever more lovely; the briefest flash again of anger; then a passage into silence—might show an awareness, a defiance, and then an acceptance of death. But this is the story
Schubert told from the beginning: the going-forth of beautiful melody, a crack-up or collapse, a recovery of peace. The B-flat sonata, so vast and calm and mysterious, refines this story to an extreme of subtlety. Its principal theme bestows grace for seven measures. Then a trill rumbles ominously in the bass. Then the theme resumes, as if nothing has happened.
Schubert told from the beginning: the going-forth of beautiful melody, a crack-up or collapse, a recovery of peace. The B-flat sonata, so vast and calm and mysterious, refines this story to an extreme of subtlety. Its principal theme bestows grace for seven measures. Then a trill rumbles ominously in the bass. Then the theme resumes, as if nothing has happened.
It remains to mention the Great C-Major Symphony, which both the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra played in New York on the occasion of the young man’s two-hundredth birthday, on January 31, 1997. We call it the Ninth, but Schubert probably considered it his First—his first “grand symphony,” his first utterance worthy of Beethoven’s mantle. Sketched during an 1825 trip through the Austrian Alps, it seems to document the overcoming of morbidity, of all Romantic fascination with death. The force of the effort is both exhilarating and frightening. In the finale, the composer returns to a scene of innocence—a huge rustic dance, heralded by fanfares. By the end, the ceremony borders on violence: in a clear reminiscence of the hellish climax of
Don Giovanni,
the note C is repeatedly slammed down in the bass regions of the orchestra while a wild sequence of chords pivots around it. For all the world, it sounds like the stamping of a man reaching for the stars.
Don Giovanni,
the note C is repeatedly slammed down in the bass regions of the orchestra while a wild sequence of chords pivots around it. For all the world, it sounds like the stamping of a man reaching for the stars.
EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPES
BJÖRK’S SAGA
I first met Björk in the lobby of the Hotel Borg, a funky Art Deco palace in the center of the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. The Borg opened in 1930, the dream project of a noted wrestler who hosted swank parties for American military officers and the odd movie star. Eventually, the wrestler died and the hotel fell on hard times. In the early 1980s, it became the gathering spot for a group of aggressively bohemian teenagers, who theorized punk-rock anarchy at the hotel bar. One of the gang was Björk Guðomundsdóttir, the daughter of an electrician and a feminist activist. She sang in a band called Kukl, which means “black magic,” and she outraged older Icelanders with her antics. Parents shuddered when the singer bared her midriff on television while visibly pregnant. Even in her late thirties, she still looked as though she could fall in with a group of fashionable delinquents. She walked through the door of the Borg wearing a ladybug cap and white shoes with red pompoms on the toes.
It was a pale, mild morning in January 2004. The day before, an ice storm had rendered the city impassable, but some shift in the Gulf Stream had warmed the air overnight. We took a taxi into the suburbs, where Björk was working on a new album. She held in her hands a program for the play
The Master and Margarita,
which she had seen the night before. She read Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, on which the play was based, when she was young, and it remains one of her favorite books. “The book is very popular with Icelanders,” she said. “It has a very Nordic feeling to it, even though it is Russian. It ridicules bureaucracy, it has black magic and Arctic magic realism. You could say it is Alice in Wonderland for the Arctic grown-up.” I nodded, and glanced at a snowcapped mountain ridge in the
distance. “Of course,” she added, “you have to watch for the Nordic cliche. ‘Hello! I am a Viking! My name is Björk!’ A friend of mine says that when record-company executives come to Iceland they ask the bands if they believe in elves, and whoever says yes gets signed up.”
The Master and Margarita,
which she had seen the night before. She read Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, on which the play was based, when she was young, and it remains one of her favorite books. “The book is very popular with Icelanders,” she said. “It has a very Nordic feeling to it, even though it is Russian. It ridicules bureaucracy, it has black magic and Arctic magic realism. You could say it is Alice in Wonderland for the Arctic grown-up.” I nodded, and glanced at a snowcapped mountain ridge in the
distance. “Of course,” she added, “you have to watch for the Nordic cliche. ‘Hello! I am a Viking! My name is Björk!’ A friend of mine says that when record-company executives come to Iceland they ask the bands if they believe in elves, and whoever says yes gets signed up.”
Björk is probably the most famous Icelander since Leif Eriksson, who voyaged to America a thousand years ago. Vigdis Finnbogadóttir, who served as the country’s president from 1980 to 1996, once compared her to the women of the national sagas, like Brynhild and Aud the Deep-Minded. Björk has spent much time abroad in part to escape this monumentalizing attention, which makes her uneasy. Instead, she has ended up with a global sort of fame: as the creator of eight solo albums, involving British, American, Indian, Iranian, Brazilian, Danish, Turkish, and Inuit musicians; as a sometime actress, who in 2000 won the best-actress prize in Cannes for her performance in the film
Dancer in the Dark
; and, more recently, as a denizen of the New York art-world circles frequented by her partner, Matthew Barney. Her appearance at the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics, singing an ornate new song called “Oceania,” confirmed her status as the ultimate musical cosmopolitan, acquainted with both Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Wu-Tang Clan. Though she now spends much of her time in New York, she keeps coming back to Iceland, where she lives for several months of the year. The relative simplicity of the place is reassuring to her. Once, she translated a local news headline for my benefit: TIRE TRACKS IN FOOTBALL FIELD. A look of pleasure crossed her face as she studied photographic evidence of the catastrophe. “This is so Iceland,” she said.
Dancer in the Dark
; and, more recently, as a denizen of the New York art-world circles frequented by her partner, Matthew Barney. Her appearance at the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics, singing an ornate new song called “Oceania,” confirmed her status as the ultimate musical cosmopolitan, acquainted with both Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Wu-Tang Clan. Though she now spends much of her time in New York, she keeps coming back to Iceland, where she lives for several months of the year. The relative simplicity of the place is reassuring to her. Once, she translated a local news headline for my benefit: TIRE TRACKS IN FOOTBALL FIELD. A look of pleasure crossed her face as she studied photographic evidence of the catastrophe. “This is so Iceland,” she said.
In my talks with Björk, which began in Reykjavik and continued in New York, London, and Salvador, Brazil, she mentioned the “Nordic idea” several times, although she was never too specific about it. Some sort of Nordic idea is plainly at the heart of her album
Medúlla,
which appeared in the summer of 2004. The moment you try to put this idea into words, however, the glacier of cliche begins to advance. Asmundur Jónsson, the visionary manager of the Icelandic record label Bad Taste, once said that her earliest solo recordings made him think of a solitary figure standing in an open space; but there is nothing inherently northern in that. Whatever is Nordic in Björk’s music is filtered through her own creative personality, which is all-devouring by nature, taking in dance music, avant-garde electronic music, twentieth-century composition, contemporary R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and almost everything else under the winter sun.
Medúlla,
which appeared in the summer of 2004. The moment you try to put this idea into words, however, the glacier of cliche begins to advance. Asmundur Jónsson, the visionary manager of the Icelandic record label Bad Taste, once said that her earliest solo recordings made him think of a solitary figure standing in an open space; but there is nothing inherently northern in that. Whatever is Nordic in Björk’s music is filtered through her own creative personality, which is all-devouring by nature, taking in dance music, avant-garde electronic music, twentieth-century composition, contemporary R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and almost everything else under the winter sun.
When it becomes known that you have met Björk, people tend to ask, with an insinuating grin, “What’s she like?” She is expected to be a cyclone of elfin zaniness; she is, after all, the woman who showed up at the 2001 Academy Awards with what looked to be a swan carcass draped around her body. She does have her zany moments—I won’t soon forget the image of her dancing down a street in Salvador shouting “Bring the noise!”—but it is not the first word that comes to mind. She is warm, watchful, sharp-witted, restless, often serious, seldom solemn, innocent but never naïve, honest and direct in a way that invites confidences, shockingly easy to talk to on almost any subject but herself. Teresa Stratas once said that Lotte Lenya was “an earth sprite, a Lulu, at once vulnerable and strong, soft and hard-edged, child-like and world-weary.” Much the same could be said of Björk, except that she is rather nicer than Lulu—and far from being weary of the world.
Early work on
Medúlla,
whose name describes the inner part of an animal or plant structure and, more appositely, the lower part of the human brain, was done at Greenhouse Studios, which belongs to the producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. Valgeir, a mellow, soft-spoken guy in his early thirties, had been working with Björk since 1998, when the two collaborated on the soundtrack for
Dancer in the Dark.
The studio is at the end of a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Reykjavik. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary home, which it partly is: Valgeir lives with his family on one side. The main recording console is in a long room with cathedral-style windows and gleaming beech floors. Downstairs is a small performance space, with an adjoining kitchenette. The place is cool, spare, and abnormally neat, Valgeir’s T-shirt-and-torn-jeans style notwithstanding. By the time we went upstairs, the midwinter day was already ending. An hour later, a full moon was hanging uncomfortably close. The white-capped mountains glowed in the distance.
Medúlla,
whose name describes the inner part of an animal or plant structure and, more appositely, the lower part of the human brain, was done at Greenhouse Studios, which belongs to the producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. Valgeir, a mellow, soft-spoken guy in his early thirties, had been working with Björk since 1998, when the two collaborated on the soundtrack for
Dancer in the Dark.
The studio is at the end of a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Reykjavik. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary home, which it partly is: Valgeir lives with his family on one side. The main recording console is in a long room with cathedral-style windows and gleaming beech floors. Downstairs is a small performance space, with an adjoining kitchenette. The place is cool, spare, and abnormally neat, Valgeir’s T-shirt-and-torn-jeans style notwithstanding. By the time we went upstairs, the midwinter day was already ending. An hour later, a full moon was hanging uncomfortably close. The white-capped mountains glowed in the distance.
Björk sat down to listen to sketches and partly finished versions of the songs that she wanted to put on the album. She had written many of them at the end of the previous year, during a trip to Gomera, in the Canary Islands. “I am at the point where I can let it out for other people, hear them through other people’s ears,” she said. “There is a point where you are very secretive, but then you become confident enough that you can hear criticism, and not
become discouraged.” I nodded sympathetically, as if I, too, were an Icelandic pop star who has erased boundaries between genres. Björk often uses the second person to close the distance between herself and others.
become discouraged.” I nodded sympathetically, as if I, too, were an Icelandic pop star who has erased boundaries between genres. Björk often uses the second person to close the distance between herself and others.
She’d laid down the initial vocal tracks in a spontaneous rush, standing over the mixing board with a handheld mike—“a big old 1950s thing,” she said—while electronic mockups of the harmonies and beats played on Valgeir’s computer. “The album is about voices,” she said. “I want to get away from instruments and electronics, which was the world of my last album,
Vespertine.
I want to see what can be done with the entire emotional range of the human voice—a single voice, a chorus, trained voices, pop voices, folk voices, strange voices. Not just melodies but everything else, every noise that a throat makes.” She mentioned as possible collaborators the avant-garde rock vocalist Mike Patton, the Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq, the “human beatboxes” Dokaka and Rahzel, and the R&B superstar Beyonce. “The last album was very introverted,” she said. “It was avoiding eye contact. This one is a little more earthy, but, you know, not exactly simple.” She stopped to answer a phone call about school fees for her older child, Sindri, who is of college age.
Vespertine.
I want to see what can be done with the entire emotional range of the human voice—a single voice, a chorus, trained voices, pop voices, folk voices, strange voices. Not just melodies but everything else, every noise that a throat makes.” She mentioned as possible collaborators the avant-garde rock vocalist Mike Patton, the Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq, the “human beatboxes” Dokaka and Rahzel, and the R&B superstar Beyonce. “The last album was very introverted,” she said. “It was avoiding eye contact. This one is a little more earthy, but, you know, not exactly simple.” She stopped to answer a phone call about school fees for her older child, Sindri, who is of college age.
Björk started playing the tracks and commenting on each. Some were full-fledged four- or five-minute songs, with verses and a chorus; others were briefer, more atmospheric, more elusive. Most immediately gripping was a song called “Who Is It,” which Björk had started working on during the
Vespertine
sessions. This version began with two minutes or so of vaguely medieval-sounding choral writing, a misty mass of overlapping lines. Then big bass notes began to growl, and in a matter of seconds the song transformed itself before one’s ears into the kind of quirkily ebullient anthem that Björk specialized in earlier in her career: “Who is it that never lets you down? / Who is it that gave you back your crown?” I thought of
The Master and Margarita,
of the midnight carnival erupting in a Nordic place. As it was, “Who Is It” was something between a pop song and a choral meditation by Arvo Part. Remixed with a few more heavy beats, it could rule every dance floor in the world.
Vespertine
sessions. This version began with two minutes or so of vaguely medieval-sounding choral writing, a misty mass of overlapping lines. Then big bass notes began to growl, and in a matter of seconds the song transformed itself before one’s ears into the kind of quirkily ebullient anthem that Björk specialized in earlier in her career: “Who is it that never lets you down? / Who is it that gave you back your crown?” I thought of
The Master and Margarita,
of the midnight carnival erupting in a Nordic place. As it was, “Who Is It” was something between a pop song and a choral meditation by Arvo Part. Remixed with a few more heavy beats, it could rule every dance floor in the world.
Not yet satisfied with her creation, Björk sat down at a keyboard and worked out new vocal lines to add to the swell of sound at the beginning of the song. At least half the time I was with Björk, she was hunched over a keyboard or a computer, building her synthesis one piece at a time. She seldom sits absolutely still, and is constantly crossing or uncrossing her
legs, squatting in a chair in various yoga-like positions, or getting up to twirl her body this way or that. Yet her gaze stays fixed on whatever is engaging her attention; her body seems distracted but her mind is not.
legs, squatting in a chair in various yoga-like positions, or getting up to twirl her body this way or that. Yet her gaze stays fixed on whatever is engaging her attention; her body seems distracted but her mind is not.
At around 6:00 p.m. the next day, sixteen singers arrived at the studio to record the choral parts that Björk and Valgeir had been working on for several months. In the past, Valgeir told me, they had printed out string and orchestral arrangements directly from the computer, using the Sibelius music-notation program, but in this case they engaged a copyist to produce clean vocal parts. Most of the singers were members of a group called Schola Cantorum, which has appeared on several recordings of the music of the furiously original Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. Björk heard the Leifs recordings and liked the chorus’s sound. In recent years, she had worked with professional choruses and also with a group of large-voiced Inuit women, who came along on her
Vespertine
tour. (She found them while on a vacation in Greenland, by putting up ads in a supermarket.) These singers, she hoped, would be classical in technique but flexible in their approach. “I want a little bit of a pagan edge, a bit of Slavic,” she said.
Vespertine
tour. (She found them while on a vacation in Greenland, by putting up ads in a supermarket.) These singers, she hoped, would be classical in technique but flexible in their approach. “I want a little bit of a pagan edge, a bit of Slavic,” she said.
The session was on the late side because most of the singers have day jobs. They congregated in the kitchen, looking nervous but game. Valgeir placed the vocal parts in piles, and the singers picked them up in a shuffling line. If you had walked in off the street, you might have thought that this was a gathering of procrastinating Christmas carolers, not a major-label recording session. Björk offered bowls of chocolate-covered almonds and raisins. Valgeir’s son practiced in-line skating in the hall. After an initial run-through, five Domino’s pizzas arrived, and the singers began devouring them. Valgeir hovered in the background, chatting about Brian Eno and keeping an eye on the pizza situation. Fifteen minutes later, there was no trace that the pizzas had ever existed.
To convey her ideas to the singers, Björk sang, danced, conducted, gestured, talked, and joked. She is noted for using extravagant metaphors when she talks about music. “I say, ‘Like marzipan,’ and they say, ‘Oh, you mean dolcissimo,’” she told me. Since Valgeir was upstairs at the mixing board, Björk also took care of some technical matters, fiddling for a while with a malfunctioning Wurlitzer piano and unplugging some unused headphones that were lying on the floor. She was unfailingly, elaborately polite.
In several months of recording, I never heard her raise her voice or deliver anything like a firm command. Criticisms were prefaced with phrases like “the only thing I would say is …” and “the one thing I’m not so crazy about is …” If one of her collaborators sought specific guidance, she might say, “Whatever hits your fancy. I just like to hear whatever you do with it.”
In several months of recording, I never heard her raise her voice or deliver anything like a firm command. Criticisms were prefaced with phrases like “the only thing I would say is …” and “the one thing I’m not so crazy about is …” If one of her collaborators sought specific guidance, she might say, “Whatever hits your fancy. I just like to hear whatever you do with it.”
Yet Björk does put forward some specific instructions. Most of the parts for the Icelandic singers consisted of wordless vocalise, but she asked them to apply different syllables to the notes—“hoo” instead of “aah,” for instance—and had to rein them in when they started inventing faux-African mumbo-jumbo. In some cases, she changed the parts on the spot, either to clarify a texture or to make it richer. She got very excited when the basses kicked in with Mephistophelian tones; she was depending on them to take the place of the big, low electronic beats that had moored so many of her songs in the past. She assigned them to sing along in the middle section of “Where Is the Line,” an aggressive song in which Björk lays down the law for someone who has been abusing her patience. “More of a rock feel,” she said happily. Valgeir looked on with a quizzical smile, scratching the stubble on his face. “We’ve been talking about the choral arrangement for so long,” he said. “It’s such a relief it’s actually happening.”
Later, in the upstairs recording room, I noticed something remarkable about Björk’s voice. The singers were in a circle, with a microphone positioned in front of each. Björk was usually in the center of the circle or on the outside, with no microphone within reach. Yet whenever she was singing or talking her voice was at the center of the sound. You could pick it out in a second from the Icelandic chatter: the dusky timbre, deep in the mezzo-soprano range; the tremor in it, which occasionally takes on the rasp of a pubescent boy’s voice; the way it slices through the sonic haze, as if a few extra frequencies in a given range are being twanged to life. It carries without effort, like those Mongolian voices that can be heard across the steppe. Somehow, the mere fact of her voice became a creative magnet, pulling the music in the right direction.
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