100 Electric Guitar Page
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (1989)
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (version française)
Crimson Grail (2005)
Guitar Centet (2007)
(Under construction, but here is some text and image from the various concerts.)
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See
Rhys playing guitar in Angel in Rouen, France.
AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FAST TO SEE (1989) for 100 electric guitars, electric bass, and drums
By Rhys Chatham, with Ernie Brooks on bass and Jonathan Kane on drums
Sections:
Prelude
Intro
Allegro
No Trees Left: Every blade of Grass is Screaming
Adagio
Guitar Centet
In 1988 I moved to France after living in New York all my life. Soon afterwards, I decided to write an ultimate work for guitar ensemble entitled AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FAST TO SEE, which I scored for 100 electric guitars, electric bass and drums. I had hooked up with a manager in Paris named Francis Falceto, who fell in love with the project and was pivotal in helping me to realize it. After a somewhat extended search for a sponsor, Agence Acacia of l'aéronef in Lille, France bravely decided to commission the piece in 1989.
To mount a performance of ANGEL, the producers of the concert recruit 100 guitarists, who must then learn the music in five rehearsals led by the members of my regular working ensemble, which is based in Paris, Poitiers, Toulouse and New York.
The 100 guitarist are divided into six groups with three separate and special tunings and string gauges.
I first had the idea to work with a truly large number of electric guitars back in the early 80s. I made a list and realized that I personally knew 100 guitarists in New York at the time, so I didn't think it would be a problem to stage a performance. However, I hesitated because I didn't want the piece to rely purely on the visual and visceral impact of massing so many electric guitars in one place; I felt that I had some more exploring to do. I wanted to make a piece that would truly exploit the compositional possibilities of such a gathering - a literal wall of electric guitars on one stage!
In 1989, I gathered the various notes I had been putting together over the years and began to write the piece.
At that point, I had been composing for ensembles of multiple electric guitars for twelve years, and this piece was obviously going to be the pinnacle of my long love affair with the instrument. Rather than relying on a single idea or process (as I might have done in the 70s or early 80s), I drew entirely on my musical voice and raw gut to come up with An angel Moves Too Fast to See, which owes as much to my roots as a NY minimalist as it does to serious hard rock.
An Angel Moves Too Fast To See was my first evening-length piece for truly symphonic forces.
From: www.rhyschatham.com web site:
RHYS CHATHAM
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See: Selected Works 1971-1989
Table of the Elements
3xCD BOXED SET
street date: MAY 6, 2003
At first glance, New York-born composer Rhys Chatham might have seemed unlikely to alter the DNA of rock. A classically trained musician, Chatham was piano tuner to Glenn Gould and La Monte Young, student of Young and Morton Subotnick, protégée of Tony Conrad, and in 1971, while still in his teens, founder of the highly influential experimental music program at the Kitchen in lower Manhattan. Nevertheless, it was Rhys Chatham who first applied multiple electric guitars to the extended-duration, overtone-drenched minimalism of the 1960s. This amalgamation -- of the intellectual experimentalism and textural sophistication of the avant-garde with the rhythmic brashness and visceral punch of punk rock -- produced a raucous, ecstatic new type of urban music that energized the downtown New York scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a music whose influence can be heard in the subsequent work of the many luminaries who participated in Chatham's ensembles, including Glenn Branca and members of Sonic Youth, Mars, Band of Susans and Swans.
A comprehensive 3-disc retrospective, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See includes all of Chatham's major "minimal" pieces, ranging from the thunderous "Two Gongs" (1971) and the No-Wave tumult of "Guitar Trio" (1977) to the brass-based "Massacre on MacDougal Street" (1982) and the epic, previously unreleased "An Angel Moves Too Fast to See" (1989), scored for an orchestra of 100 electric guitars. The accompanying 140-page book features dozens of never-before-published photos plus essays by Chatham, Tony Conrad and Lee Ranaldo and artwork by famed visual artist Robert Longo. Together they present a portrait of a city and a milieu where, for a moment, the raw, the sophisticated, the meditative and the danceable merged.
"Rhys Chatham's music is too loud and too exciting to be academic. The excitement's partly physical -- from high volume and a rock and roll beat -- and partly intellectual: Chatham's fusion of rock and new music is so uncompromising, so elegant, so simple, and still so new that it takes my breath away."
-- Gregory Sandow, Village Voice
"Then it came, the first chord. For a moment you forgot you ever had a name and came from somewhere; this was louder than anything you had ever heard, louder than you had prepared yourself for, and there was no reality other than this. You dangled in a tidal wave of sound."
-- London Daily Telegraph
"Black and Decker classical."
-- Guitar Player (USA)
Kent Condon and Jean-François Pauvros conferirng at Angel performance in La Reunion.
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (version française)
Rhys pendant répétition des 100 guitares - Rouen, France.
LILLE, L'AÉRONEF 23, 24, 25 NOVEMBRE 1989
AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FEST TO SEE est une composition d'une durée de 70 minutes écrite par Rhys Chatham pour 100 guitares électriques, une basse et une batterie. Cette pièce marque à la fois le point culminant et le renouveau de 14 années consacrées à des compositions pour guitares électriques.
Tout a commencé en 1971, l'année où Rhys Chatham fonda le programme musical du Kitchen Center, salué par le New York Times comme le lieu privilégié pour la musique expérimentale à New York. Rhys et un ce tain nombre de musiciens plutôt issus de la musique contemporaine (Frederic Rzewski, Garrett List, Philip Glass, Steve Reich) cherchaient alors à rendre leur musique accessible à un public plus large. Ils décidèrent d'intégrer à leurs techniques d'écriture contemporaine différentes formes de musique ethnique ou populaire. C'est ainsi que Steve Reich étudia avec un maître tambour de Guinée, influence bientôt sesible dans sa propre musique ; Philip Glass travaillait les rythmes de la musique classique indienne et les confrontait aux réflexions du plasticien Richard Serra ; Frederic Rzewski et Garrett List, alors très impliques dans la mouvance « loft jazz », allièrent à leurs opérations aléatoires les techniques d'improvisation développées par les musiciens de jazz ; Rhys Chatham quant à lui décida d'explorer l'instrumentation rock. Sa première tentative en ce sens fut GUITAR TRIO (1977), une composition qui inaugurait un vocabulaire exclusivement à base d'harmoniques et associait les techniques minimalistes des années 60 et 70 à l'énergie du rock.
Encouragé par le succès de GUITAR TRIO, il continua son travail de compositeur expérimental dans un contexte rock, un peu à la manière d'un agent infiltré.
En 1983, Rhys Chatham épouse Isabelle marteau, chorégraphe française installée à New York. En 1987, attirés par la révolution en cours dans la jeune danse contemporaine, ils décident de s'installer en France. Rhys Chatham partage depuis lors son temps entre la France et les Etats-Unis. En février 1988, il confie à son ami producteur Francis Falceto son projet de réaliser une pièce pour grand ensemble de guitares électriques. Dès ce moment, il reprend les notes et brouillons rassemblés au cours des années en attendant la réalisation de ce rêve. Leur élaboration allait donner naissance à AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FAST TO SEE. Après quelques faux départs, la production put enfin être montée, grâce à l'apport déterminant de Jean-Pascal Reux, directeur de l'aéronef - un lieu sans gravité installé à Lille. Les premières se sont déroulées les 23, 24, et 25 novembre 1989. AN ANGEL MOVES TOO FAST TO SEE est évidemment un aboutissement du travail de Rhys Chatham sur les grandes masses sonores : un plein usage du son bien réel dégagé par le rassemblement inédit de 100 guitares électriques ; une juxtaposition de moments tonitruants et fragiles. Un pianissimo de 100 guitares électriques n'a rien à voir avec une surenchère hard rock de volume ; ; ; En termes de recherche formelle, AN ANGEL...Aborde les solutions (problèmes communs aux compositeurs contemporains européens et américains des années 80, en cherchant à intégrer aux limites musicales les données du monde dans lequel nous vivons. Ultime élaboration d'une aventure musicale s'étendant sur 14 ans, dont les racines plongent aussi bien dans le minimalisme, le sérialisme, la musique improvisée et le rock expérimental. Non pas comme une juxtaposition superflue ou un pastiche, plutôt comme une composition aux idées si ramassées que seul un critique particulièrement tatillon pourrait les démêler.
Un des intérêts particuliers de AN ANGEL...réside dans le fait que les musiciens sont engagés sur place. Nécessité fait loi. Seul un noyau de 13 musiciens et techniciens étroitement associés au travail de Rhys Chatham fait le déplacement, depuis Paris, Poitiers, New York ou Toulouse. Le reste des musiciens est recruté sur place. Les guitaristes s'accordent en fonction de la partie qu'ils ont à jouer : soprano, alto ou ténor. Chacun de ces trois groupes se subdivise en deux pour les répétitions, dirigées par les guitaristes du groupe noyau du Rhys. 4 répétitions, 1 répétition générale dans les conditions du concert. À la fin de la répétition générale à Lille, on peut dire que tout le monde était totalement ébahi du résultat, après seulement 4 répétitions pour 70 minutes de musique. Applaudissements spontanés de tous, les musiciens, célébration d'une réalisation collective hors du commun.
Ce qui advient lorsque tous ces musiciens sont ensemble est beau à voir. Imaginez : 100 personnes de tous âges, très différents, d'allure autant que par leurs origines musicales, concourant tous ensemble à la réalisation d'une oeuvre originale autant qu'inédite. En une semaine, nous sommes devenue une sorte de communauté, nous avons partagé une expérience, une musique, des idées. Les Répétions et les concerts ont permis à ces musiciens que ne se connaissaient pas auparavant (quant ils ne s'excluaient pas du fait de leurs partis pris musicaux) de nouer des relations personnelles ou musicales.
for 400 eletric guitars
(site under construction, text on Crimson Grail to follow soon, in the meantime here are some photos from the concert)
Briefly, Crimson Grail was especially comissioned by the city of Paris for the Nuit Blanche Festival, to take place at Sacré Coeur in the 18th district of Paris, right near where I live.
Sacré Coeur is a MASSIVE space with a delay time for more than 10 seconds, so I had to write a composition specifically for it. Whereas Angel deals to a large extent with questions concerning counterpoint and rhythm, Crimson Grail is more concerned with sonority and slow harmonic movements. Indeed, it had to be, given the acoustics of Sacré Coeur.
Nuit Blanch lasted from 7 pm to 7 am. We played outdoors from 7 pm until 11.30 pm due a mass that was going on in the cathedral. then all the musicians went indoors to spend the rest of the night playing inside.
The composition was composed in two parts of a half hour each. The mission of Sacré Coeur is to have prayer going on there 24/7. So the deal I made with the bishop was to play for a half hour, and then the idea was that people could pray for the next half hour. So we performed the two sections of Crimson alternatively throughout the night. I'm not sure how much praying was accomplished over the course of the evening, but it certainly was a spiritual experience for many.
The cathedral was packed throughout the night, I had never seen it so full, except at Christmas. The ways things worked was an audience would catch a half hour, then they would be asked to leave so the next group of 2000 people or so could get in to see the next part. I'm told that a total of about 30,000 people showed up to see the outdoor and indoor portions. It was often emotional quite an emotional experience for people, I had full grown men come up to me afterwards with tears in their eyes. The CD captures the music, but one kind of had to be there to get the full emotional impact.
Outdoor portion (30, 000 people saw the show...)
Rhys preparing for the opening chord...
This is a work in progress that I am composing. In Angel and Crimson, the musicians get together for a week of rehearsals to learn the music and the music is taught by a my team from Paris and the States.
I started writing for 100 electric guitars (and as many as 400...) in 1989. Since then, 10 years after my original composition for a symphony of electric guitars, I am delighted to say that other composers such as my colleagues and comrades-in-musical adventure such as Glenn Branca and Kasper Toeplitz have followed my lead.
However, my colleagues in music have been proposing pieces for 100 electric guitars that take less time to learn than Angel or Crimson, which they can do because of the minimalist nature of their work. Angel, alas, though influenced by minimalism, is not minimalist at all, if anything it is maximalist, and takes a bit of time to learn... Each of the sections of Angel are in drastically different musical styles, thus offering the musicians playing it a wide range of new techniques and sounds to learn and discover.
Additionally, it is a lot more fun for the musicians if they have 5 days together, rather than only two.
Aside from musical considerations, the social experience is different working for four days in the evenings after work in relatively small groups of 25, only getting together on the fifth day with all 100 musicians. On the other hand, it is true that it is a LOT less expensive for producers if the piece only takes a couple of days to learn, so I have been obliged to meet these new conditions by writing a new work, which I am calling Guitar Centet.
Guitar Centet will not be about brutal intensity, but rather about the fantastic sonority that only an ensemble of 100 electric guitars can achieve, which I have been working with for almost 20 years now. It will be about the sheer beauty and sensuality of the electric guitar.
The first performance is due to take place in Pennsylvania in May of 2007.
Hope to see Guitar Centet in a city near you!
(More to follow on this piece soon!)
(This page was last mucked about with on 24 October 2007)