The Score

“Lean on the upbeat!” Hungarian composer György
Kurtág urges, coaching soprano Tony Arnold on a brief
but compelling video included in the CD/DVD set Kafka Fragments (Bridge). He knows what he wants. Requiring a momentary embellishment
of a line, he requests in fractured English “a little bit
yodel.”

Written for violin and soprano, Kafka Fragments collates
stray tidbits and diaristic epigrams by the most (or at least the
first) neurotic writer of the 20th century, Franz Kafka. Some seem
clipped from a screenplay (“The seamstress in the downpour”) while
other snippets are gnomic (“My prison cell, my fortress”) or read like
compressed novellas (“Leopards break into the temple and drink the
sacrificial jugs dry; this is repeated again and again, until it is
possible to calculate in advance when they will come, and it becomes
part of the ceremony”).

Where most songs trace a visible (and predictable) landscape of
verses and choruses, the Fragments hover skyward, closer to
poetic free verse. Kurtág inlays each line and every word with
intense, jewel-hardened expression: Violinist Movses Pogossian
might play a shivering tremolo or whinny in the distance while Arnold’s
voice croaks or stretches a word. A longtime répétiteur
for singers performing with Hungary’s national orchestra,
Kurtág offers Arnold wise advice: “For each register, you must
find out where to live.”

Most of the 40 Kafka Fragments last two minutes or less.
Heard whole, Kurtág has fashioned a skeletal opera, bleached
of plots and sets. Taken singly or in pieces, the Fragments shoot little lightning bolts that worm right into your psyche.

For a respite from the intensity of Kurtág, I’ve been
savoring the live EP One Day in Brooklyn (Kinnara) by Jacob
Fred Jazz Odyssey (Sun Sept 20, High Dive, 8 pm, $10). JFJO distill
the best of 1970s jazz-rock: up-tempo bashing drums, a little bit of
funk, and crafty licks from keyboardist Brian Haas and Chris
Combs on lap steel guitar. I love how the trenchant cadences of the
aptly named “Drethoven” stiffly repeat only to collapse into a lovely
Keith Jarrett–ish piano solo. Such unpredictable segues
make JFJO a treat. Longtime compadre Seattle saxophonist Skerik joins the fray, too.

Anticipating next week’s dual (and perhaps dueling) electronic music
events, Decibel Festival and Debacle Fest, I’ve been
digging into Institute of Sonology 1959–1969 (Sub Rosa),
an astounding and essential compilation of Dutch electronic
music. I adore the funny, spastically pounding pianos of Dick
Raaijmakers‘s “Piano-Forte,” while “Studie im Lagen Impulsen” by
Frits Weiland glowers with thunks and rumbles that trump most
sci-fi-movie scores. Gottfried Michael Koenig‘s prophetic
Funktion Orange twitches with knocks, pings, and brutal smears
that sound like it was fashioned in 2008, not four decades ago in
1968.