1. The Tuning Path
(Riley)
2. The Pipes of Medb Medb’s Blues
(Riley)
3. Song Announcing Dawn’s Combat
(Riley)
4. The Chord of War
(Ochs/Adams)
5. Ferdia’s Death Chant
(Riley)
6. Chanting the Light of Foresight
(Riley)
1994 - New Albion (USA) NA064 (CD)
St. Stephens Church, Belvedere, CA, April 15-16; May 9-10; July 21, 1993
Bruce Ackley: soprano saxophone
Steve Adams: alto and sopranino saxophones
Larry Ochs: tenor and sopranino saxophone
Jon Raskin: baritone saxophone
The Taín Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Road of Cooley) is a central part
of the eighteenth century Ulster cycle of heroic tales and is Ireland’s nearest
approach to a great epic. It tells the story of a giant cattle-rai, the invasion
of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, and their
allies, seeking to carry of the great Brown Bull of Cuailinge.
Following an abandoned collaboration with the playright Lee Brewer that was centered
on the Thomas Kinsella translation of The Tain, I found myself under a spell and
so began the work for Rova. The wonderful rhythms and colours of the ancient names
and places; Badb, Bricriu, Conchodor, Cúchulainn, Finnabair, Galeóin,
Scáthach, and Daire mac Fiachna must have floated their way to surface in
some musical line or other.
Although extremely difficult to accomplish, I wanted to have part of the quartet’s
movements in “resonant intonation” with pure intervals combining in the
saxophones radiant timbres. After composing the music, I made a tape on the Prophet
5 synthesizer of the tuning so that the players could match the intervals in their
rehearsals. Rova has taken this challenge seriously. The result is sounds that I
have not heard previously coming from saxophones and is right in the tradition of
Rova cutting an alternate groove in contemporary music. When we originally conceived
of the project we wanted to leave room for lots of improvisation. This not only
takes place in the Pipes of Medb and “Medb’s Blues” but in addition
Rova created the Battle Music section which is one of my favorites and points to
their strong compositional abilities.
-Terry Riley
Pipes of Medb contains the tuning path or evolving relationship of each
set of pitches. It unwinds systematically from simpler relationships to the more
complex areas of the tuning. It represents the deep night on the fields where the
armies of Queen Medb are gathered, the only sound being the wind blowing through
giant organ-like pipes to signal time’s static passage. The opening ends with
“Medb’s Blues” which is in the form ofa 6 bar 10/4 blues tune in
which members of Rova take turns holding down the cantus firmus and blowing freely.
Song Announcing Dawn’s Combat concerns the story’s main adversaries,
Cúchulainn and Ferdia, who are foster brothers. The intricate 7/8 rythms
and pulsing drones within hindustani scales tip my intention to link the Irish epic
with that of its more famous brother, the Bhagavad Gita, a similar tale of war and
moral duty. In a moving plea, Cúchulainn tries to. convince Ferdia that he
has been tricked by Medb into fighting him and that it is certain he will be killed.
Ferdia ignores the warning. The hand to hand battle lasts several days with both
warriors retiring each night to lick their wounds before resuming the next dawn’s
battle. Cúchulainn, after many days of fighting with various weapons, finally
slays Ferdia with his secret weapon, the gae bolga.
Ferdia’s Death Chant is lamented hy Cúchulainn as he removes
the gae bolga from Ferdia’s lifeless body. It is performed in the same tuning
as the Pipes of Medb and is in simple 4 part chorale form.
Chanting the Light of Foresight. The gift of prophecy is enacted as the
imbas forasnai or Light of Foresight in a scene where the hero Cúchulainn
has completed his warrior and shamanistic training under his guru, Scáthach.
She chants to him his future through the light of foresight. The chant is composed
in sets of repeating phrases that couple 8/8 and 7/8 measures that undergo continual
variation towards more impassioned and frantic statements before ending much as
it begins.
-Terry Riley
When Terry Riley first gave us the music in 1987, he had provisionally titled it
Sketches from the Tain. For Rova, learning this music-hearing it musically
and at microscopic levels-presented very special and compelling challenges. The
difficulties involved in mastering the altered tunings (requiring false fingerings,
jaw manipulations, superhuman lungs, and lips of steel) more than adequately filled
our time and imagination. But the music in the sketches were also meant to tell
a story. Terry had suggested we perform the sections in different orders to see
what felt best, but no matter what we tried over the first couple of years, the
piece always felt out of balance.
In 1989, listening to one of our performances on tape, I began to hear what was
missing from the “story.” Here was a tale of meditation, grief, combat,
and loss; here was a tale of reconciliation and reaffirmation, with balance restored
and possibility open again. I could hear the order dictated by the story. I heard
a section preparing for battle and a section that was the death chant following
the battle.
It occurred to me that there was no section relating the battle itself.
I was understandably nervous about calling Terry to suggest that the piece was incomplete;
few composers would take such criticism kindly. But Terry is not an ordinary composer
nor an ordinary man, and he was immediately interested in the idea of adding battle
music. What surprised me was his suggestion that we in Rova write it.
I frightened myself by agreeing. The members of Rova, together and separately, write
a great deal of music, and some of it can be said to narrate stories, but these
stories are ours. Writing a section in the spirit of another composer, and of one
who is so dauntlessly visionary, was a very real challenge.
Steve Adams and I studied Terry’s score separately, and we each wrote out some
sketches for the battle, using chords and/or modes consistent with those Terry used
in the rest of the piece. We combined our respective ideas (collaborative composition
is habitual to Rova) and we created what is now section 4 of the CD.
Only the very first chord of the section is nowhere else present in the piece. When
I played the section for Terry and pointed out this fact, he said, “Well-that’s
the chord of war.”
-Larry Ochs