Search - Phillips, Wiegold, Composers Ensemble :: Six of Hearts

Interesting historically

P. Micocci | Houston, TX USA | 11/19/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"... but not so much musically. This collection is a good illustration of the critique once made by musician/producer Brian Eno (at one time an art school student of Phillips) that in the `60s and `70s, what he termed the "process art" faction of British Avant-Garde composers were often more concerned with how intriguingly intellectual the processes they used to compose their pieces were than with how interesting the results were to listen to; as he expressed it, the less intelligible a piece was, the higher its intellectual value was thought to be. Of course, that's a philosophy that goes back decades earlier, at least to the days of Schoenberg's development of twelve-tone serialization. An advantage of "process music" is that one doesn't necessarily need to have any particular musical or compositional skill, just raw material and a process. I don't mean that as a criticism of Phillips or any other particular composer - I say it from personal experience. That doesn't mean the results will necessarily be either good or bad; sometimes they can be surprisingly successful, other times, excruciatingly dreadful.



At any rate, after listening to this CD a couple of times, I found the booklet more interesting than the music itself. A couple of the pieces are so-so, but most of these pieces don't do much for me. I had hopes for this CD when I ordered it because I really like some of Phillips' other work, especially his masterpiece, the altered-text/graphic novel, "A Humument". As for his music, the only other piece I was previously familiar with was his opera, "Irma", itself developed out of selections from "A Humument", as were some of the pieces on this CD, according to the booklet. I used to have a wonderful realization of "Irma" by Gavin Bryars on Eno's (aptly named) Obscure Records label, which was issued by Polydor or Island back in the `70s. I wish someone would reissue those albums on CD; as far as I know, the only one available is Eno's own "Discreet Music". The ten albums of that short-lived label were an excellent selection of British (and, in one case, American) Avant-Garde music that was as interesting to listen to as were the ideas behind it; Phillips' "Irma" (as realized by Bryars) was itself a very listenable and charming work. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for "Six of Hearts". At best it stands as a historically interesting demonstration of a certain period and a certain philosophy of the Avant-Garde arts movement in Britain - not really that bad, but not really that good, either.

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