Partitas For Long Strings

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After Ellen Fullman's Change of Direction, which is built on linear forward movement and in that sense has a fairly conventional musical form, Paul Panhuysen's Partitas For Long Strings, the first studio-produced example of his work in this area, occupies far more radical territory. On initial encounter I found the single grinding, disorientating metallic sonority of Partita for 16 long strings of equal length had a somewhat unnerving effect, but the rewards of this elemental music were vastly multiplied by repeated listenings and the aid of background information amply supplied in the fascinating 30-odd page booklet which accompanies the CD. Here, Panhuysen's aesthetics, the construction of his installations, his methods of choosing component materials, and the mechanics of tuning and preparing the strings are all detailed, illustrated through eye-popping photographs like that of the lop-sided grand piano on the cover, which, utilised as both a weight and a resonator for the strings, is tied up and left dangling precariously, to quote Panhuysen, "like an elephant in a circus standing on one leg". For Panhuysen, long strings are a means to a conceptual end of combining sonic, visual and spatial art in a single form that is wedded to the environment for which it is conceived by every detail of its design and construction. Each long string instrument is therefore unique, with the added distinction of instrument and installation being one and the same, making it feasible for the listener to be able to actually stand inside the instrument itself. The most challenging aspect of the music arises from Panhuysen's attempt to capture in sound the "frozen moment" represented in painting or sculpture, in effect "stopping the clock" by holding that moment in a kind of suspended animation (interestingly enough, a concern which links him to a fellow Dutchman, the composer Louis Andriessen). Yet this is not direction-less music; rather than music that goes somewhere, we must hear it as music that already is somewhere. With this in mind, the first partita becomes more and more spellbinding: pure, uncluttered, webbed with ephemeral melodies generated by the undulating overtones of the harmonic series. Partita for 16 long strings equally diminishing in length is saturated in crunchy dissonance, redolent with the sonorities and timbres of music which straddles acoustic and electronic media (Kaija Saariaho's orchestral textures spring to mind). The ear can even be persuaded by this increased harmonic complexity that some kind of forward movement is taking place, therefore it lends itself more easily to conventional listening, although in truth the only pattern is gradual change itself rather than change with dramatic intent. Indeed intent is, in Cagean fashion, altogether absent from this music. The dense third and final Partita for 16 long strings proportionally tuned gives rise to more consonant harmony than its predecessor, evoking a different sense of familiarity: that of the massive authenticity of the organ, another instrument melded inextricably to its environment. Which returns me to the installations themselves with a desire to experience Panhuysen's long strings at first hand, though noting with disappointment that neither of the countries I call home (the UK and Finland) are included in the otherwise extensive list of more than 200 installations past worldwide. Could Kiasma, Helsinki, join the list of installations future, please?

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