Spire: Organ Music Past, Present and Future

St. George's Church, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

May 13, 2006

The organ is the oldest, and least-modified, musical instrument in the Western canon, and unlike others with a lengthy history still in widespread use, its notes can be sustained indefinitely, rather than fade with the decreasing vibrations of a string. Such characteristics have obvious tangential links with much of the avant-garde laptop music of the past decade, and it is precisely this connection that Spire addressed through its radically dichotomous line-up.

About half of the three-hour bill is taken up by compositions from three of the Touch imprint's heaviest hitters-Philip Jeck, BJ Nilsen, and Fennesz-using turntables and laptops to present their own material sourced from organ scores. The other performers (Charles Matthews, Marcus Davidson, Robert Millner) came from the classical or religious tradition and presented their work directly on the vast, immobile organ built into the unusual venue, a Victorian church in a prosperous Newcastle suburb. Rather than composite sets from each performer, the running order was meticulous, Jeck, Nilsen, and Fennesz taking the stage at specifically prescribed times (Jeck at 6:37pm; Nilsen at 7:55; Fennesz at 9:07) between renditions of both classical and original material from Matthews, Davidson, and Millner.

The choice of setting furthers the holistic qualities of the event. Even the calendar date was taken into account, the orange sunlight cast through the stained-glass windows diminishing as the event progressed, complete darkness falling as the final act (an ensemble of all the participating musicians) reached its conclusion, transforming the spatial qualities of the building in the process.

The evening began with a stark rendition of Bach's Komm, Heiligier Geist by Matthews, with Millner providing operatic tenor, before Jeck took to the venue. His turntable work converted the thunderous cacophony of sustained organ chords into decaying vapor trails in which the solid, uniform timbre of the instrument underwent disintegration and softening (much like the material of his Stoke album). Matthews then returned to offer some more classical ruminations before Davidson performed Henryk Gorecki's brutal 1968 modernist hymn Kantata for Organ op. 26, the drawn-out, punishing chords translating as resistance to Jeck's earlier deconstruction.

BJ Nilsen began his own set with a lengthy, low-end drone with no ostensible reference to the organ whatsoever, using the acoustic space of the venue to create the impression of a storm raging beyond the walls. Beyond this, he introduced a growing cluster of increasingly contorted organ notes that offer temporally disruptive commentaries on the preceding pieces. The cacophony of the instrument was thus replicated and expanded into a more general wall of eviscerating brute noise that climaxed in sudden silence, much like the organist removing his fingers from the keys.

Fennesz offered the most clearly beatific piece of the evening, replicating the general tenor of Venice through the use of organ material rather than guitar noise. Although his piece became very loud, it was never oppressive, tapping into the theological ramification of the instrument's history more than the work of any other performer tonight, classical or otherwise, and was a staggeringly accomplished, powerful piece of music. Appropriately, the sun had sunk below the horizon, greatly emphasizing the lighting of the performers at the front of the church.

Following more stark renditions from the classical performers, the final piece, "Organoise," is the most interesting, both conceptually and musically, of the night, as both the electronic and classical streams merged into one composite piece that toned down the bombast of some of the traditional pieces in favor of a fluid, peaceful and low-key conclusion to the evening, an attempted act of reconciliation between the two themes.

In the end, the desire for dialogue between traditionalism and the contemporary electronic avant garde was somewhat lacking due to the separation of the two main performative aspects, the final ensemble piece lasting less than 15 minutes. Further, the audience remained resiliently tribal: the reaction of the considerable contingent of church-going organ recital attendees to the electronic pieces was clearly one of confusion when confronted with the unknown (and vice versa with the contingent of laptop fans during the traditional pieces). If the holistic quality of the event was not quite as successful as intended, still the desire to explore tangential links between radically different musical schools was a powerful affirmation of the desire to explore truly critical musical conversations in an era where crass forms of cross-pollination dominate more orthodox discourses about music.

John Gibson