Uncovering the Mystery Behind Bryce Dessner’s St. Carolyn by the Sea

Album cover for St. Carolyn by the Sea; Deutsche Grammaphon/Universal Music 2014.

Since Deutsche Grammaphon/Universal Music released conductor André de Ridder and the Copenhagen Phil’s St. Carolyn by the Sea–a collection of orchestral compositions by both The National’s Bryce Dessner and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood–on March 4, Dessner’s seemingly nonstop schedule has shown no signs of slowing.

The composer and guitarist has since contributed to the Kronos Quartet’s 40th Anniversary Celebration at Carnegie Hall on March 28, and  a reunion with the quartet for a world premiere at Barbican Concert Hall in London is scheduled for May 13. And while his “Murder Ballades” will be performed in the states of Oregon, New York, and Ohio throughout the month of April, Dessner has a full slate of tour dates with The National through August.

In a recent interview, Dessner spoke at length about writing orchestral music, the lesson that rock music teaches, and what ultimately attracts him to contemporary classical music over pop.

 Daniel J. Kushner: What influence did your orchestral song cycle “The Long Count” have on your progress as a symphonic composer and the trajectory that led you to the compositions on this new recording?

Bryce Dessner: Part of that experience really  gave me a real appetite for this music and for developing–you know, further–my own voice, and so, out of that, “St. Carolyn by the Sea” is in a way a much more, I think, developed composition. It uses some of the same techniques that I was using in “The Long Count”, specifically the mirror, kind of canonic behavior in the guitar writing….in “The Long Count” some of the guitar behavior is more sort of riff-oriented, whereas in “St. Carolyn,” the guitars are sort of treated as a section of the orchestra, so they sit timbrally like in the orchestral color, like the winds or the brass or the strings.

DJK: What relationship, if any, does the piece “St. Carolyn by the Sea” have to the concerto as a form? It doesn’t feature the guitar in a conventional means for a concerto, but I’m curious if there’s any correlation.

BD: I think a lot of my favorite electric guitar playing actually behaves that way, where the guitar is used as a kind of shading or a color, and less the kind of rock-driven tendency,  rock tropes. Playing pentatonic scales over orchestral music is not something I want to do or listen to. That tends to be what you think of for an electric guitar concerto, so I really didn’t want to write a traditional concerto in that sense.

I think that [in] orchestral music, there’s a mystery–the communion you get of so many musicians working together, [there’s] a kind of elusive energy about that that to me is one of the great human aspects of art, in the orchestral tradition. Where else in modern art do you see 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 people making something in real time? The mystery and the magic of that to me feels much more exciting than playing out my solo lines over the top of it. But I would say that doesn’t mean I don’t want to write a concerto, but I don’t think I’d do it for the electric guitar first. –Bryce Dessner

DJK: Is there a particular  instrument that you would be keen to explore in a concerto first?

BD: I think that writing for solo violin, [there are] just so many incredible players nowadays, and young people who are doing really exciting programming, so that would probably be my first. I would say violin or cello.  I’ve really developed as a string writer in the last four or five years, and I think I have enough to say now with those instruments that writing something like a concerto would be a really exciting goal for me.

 

DJK: In comparing your collaboration with Kronos Quartet on the album Aheym, this new recording St. Carolyn by the Sea has that intense, mesmerizing rhythmic quality that seems characteristic of your work. But here the compositions seem to expand and take shape at a slower, perhaps more brooding pace. Is this in part a result of writing for different instrumentation, or because there are different musicians involved?

BD: The larger pieces are slightly less anxious I think, they have a little less of that driving energy about them. I’m not sure if I made a conscious decision about that or if the instrumentation led me to that. I think specifically in the case of “Lachrimae”, it has to do with the musicians I was working with–so the Amsterdam Sinfonietta commissioned that piece. You know, I often try to think about–when I write instrumental music, the hardest thing is finding an idea. Once I have an idea, the music kind of comes. But I try to find a way into the piece, is what I always say. That may be these kind of non-musical references that I make, but more often actually, it’s who I’m writing for. So in the case of the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, they’re a really great conductorless ensemble and sinfonietta in Amsterdam–really , really phenomenal players. Really, It’s probably one of the best groups like that in Europe. And they play beautifully–they can play Renaissance or Baroque music, but they also can play new commissions and they’re just really good at both. So I think that’s part of what led me to “Lachrimae,” is I wanted to do something that kind of sat in between those two spaces. And so, the piece itself, being based on the John Dowland “Lachrimae”…there is something kind of peaceful about it, you know, and I think that I wanted to write a piece of music that was breathing a bit deeper in a way and less sort of hurried.

DJK: How do you feel that your music and that of Jonny Greenwood’s compliment each other on this album?

BD: I think Jonny does some really inventive things with harmony, and maybe my music is sort of more centered around what’s happening rhythmically…People ask me, ‘Does the rock music experience benefit at all, writing these kind of longer-form, more ambitious concert pieces?’ And I think that there’s something you learn as a rock musician about the immediacy of sound. That doesn’t mean poppiness, catchiness. It means actually just the kind of primary element of material and keeping things focused in a way, and I hear that for sure in his music, and I hope that it happens in mine.

DJK: You’ve been very successful at balancing your work as a composer with your very busy schedule as guitarist in the band The National. Do you think you’ll have to choose at some point to focus on one more than the other? If so, does one feel closer to your heart?

BD: My life in The National is really about my relationship to my brother [guitarist Aaron Dessner]. We’re twins….The National is a place that we really thrive together, and that relationship is kind of fundamental, the most fundamental thing. I’m basically a born collaborator being a twin, and if you look at pretty much all of this music you can see it in that light…I call The National my family, and I’ll be doing that as long as I want to.

That said, the reason that I do this other music….I find the kind of adventurous spirit of contemporary music–audiences, ensembles, composers, whatever it be–I find there’s a real open-mindedness that you don’t find as much in the kind of pop world or whatever. I think there’s an adventurousness and a kind of  excitement about taking risks that is what draws me to it. I think ultimately, for my life, I see myself doing that forever. I can imagine myself as an old man writing music for choir or orchestra. I don’t know that I’ll be touring six months out of the year in a rock band when I’m 60.

For more information about composer Bryce Dessner and St. Carolyn by the Sea, visit http://www.brycedessner.com.

 

The Social Network: Exhibit A on How Movie Trailers Can “Creep” In Through Music

 

Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network

 

So like so many out there, I saw the The Social Network in theaters recently.  And also like so many others, I thought it was excellent: artfully done with an impeccable cast, an unassailable script by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing fame, and of course inspired direction from David Fincher, whose past work includes the chilling Se7en.

But for those of you interested in the movie itself, you most likely knew much of that already.  And actually, I’m not interested in talking about the movie, per se.  (To get it out  of my system, however, I have to applaud Fincher and particularly Sorkin for what I believe to be the most important overarching decision they had to make concerning the movie: using a true story as a base from which to build a screenplay that creates an alternate reality of what really happened–a version that is most definitely embellished, exaggerated and at times wholly fabricated–in order to communicate a larger truth.  That’s art as far as I’m concerned and I love this film for that fact alone.

And speaking of facts, the real reason for this post is for a decision David Fincher and co. made outside of the film itself.  I’m talking about the movie’s main trailer–not specifically the teaser promos–which utilizes a cover of Radiohead’s “breakthrough hit” “Creep” performed here by a Belgian girls’ choir named Scala and led by the Kolacny brothers.

This ensemble has made a career out performing rock and pop songs in a clear, minimalistic yet classically rooted choral sound.  As a stand-alone cover tune, this version really warms the cockles of my heart.  (And no, despite how it sounds, I don’t mean that in a sexual way.)  To be honest, I was never a big fan of the original Radiohead version.  I don’t know why for sure, except that the album of theirs that got me hooked was The Bends, and “Creep” doesn’t appear on that record.

An obvious adjective  like “haunting” comes to mind quite easily, and while it’s indeed apt here, it doesn’t go far enough in describing how the music serves to drive home the potency of the movie–or perhaps more accurately the allure of the movie–in conjunction with the trailer.

The trailer begins.   Immediately as images of Facebook screen captures and in-progress status updates appear, the distinctive sound of a unified voice–the girl’s choir–emerges,  accompanied by a solitary piano, somber yet penetrating.  The vocal performance is already immediately arresting, eight seconds in.  Part of the reason  is that the instruments and combined sonic texture is not commonly used in movie trailers, but what really makes it “click” (truly no pun intended) is the Kolacny Brothers’ ability to command–nay coax–fluid, driven phrases that are always moving toward the something, whether it’s the crusis in the next few bars, or over the entire length of the song.

The trailer proper quickly enfolds  as  we see Jesse Zuckerberg (that’s how good Eisenberg is here) explain the initial idea of Facebook, and the truncated version of the interpersonal technological,and strictly  litigious whirlwind that ensues.  The song builds in perfect synchronicity with the ratcheting up of  tension we see on the screen.  The charismatic yet ethereal voice of the choir, along with the undulating piano chords do not distract us from what we’re watching, but rather they transfix our minds to the spot.  Add to it the subconscious element of hearing lyrics like “I want you to notice when I’m not around/You’re so very special/I wish I was special” [ the original word fuckin’ was omitted for obvious reasons in the trailer version]–and additional lyrics that function like the autobiographical words  of Mark Zuckerberg, the movie character–and you’ve got some real mystical cinematic hypnotism going on.

But I’m a creep/I’m a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here/I don’t belong here…I don’t care if it hurts, I wanna have control/I want a perfect body/I want a perfect soul

And so, at about the 1:49 mark of the trailer when Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield) destroys Zuckerberg’s laptop  in complete anger and futile frustration just as Scala hits the chord suspension on the word “run,” –damn.  I’ve been blown away.

An addendum:  I seem to remember another movie whose promo trailer was also startlingly effective for very similar reasons:  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by one David Fincher and set to a song called “My Body Is a Cage” by Arcade Fire.

We should all be taking copious notes from this Fincher guy.  He seems to understand this whole movie music thing.

Comments are totally welcome and definitely encouraged. Let’s talk it out.