In the Continuous Mode

I'm listening to a minidisc onto which I've recorded some solo piano music by Lubomyr Melnyk, a composer and virtuoso performer of what he characterises as music in the continuous mode, a species of contemporary classical music with a somewhat ’ambient’ feel to it which he plays very rapidly and without interruption or respite, but also without apparent exertion, given that his compositions often exceed forty minutes’ duration. It’s somewhat like some of Steve Reich’s work in texture, but with more of an emphasis on melody than on pure pattern and rhythm.

I discovered a double LP of Melnyk’s 1979 Lund-St. Petri Symphony (a release on the Toronto-based Apparition label) in a foray through a particularly musty junkshop last summer, and, intrigued by the eccentric cover notes, and the rather intense-looking Rasputin-like photograph of the composer on the back, I took it home, only to be more than pleasantly surprised by the quality of the recording. This Symphony is an idiosyncratic work which comprises three pieces for solo-piano (or organ - indeed the work was originally conceived for performance on a church organ) each of equal (c. forty-five minute) duration. The performer decides which of the three movements to play first, and arranges for his performance to be tape-recorded. Then, the next day, say, the performer selects one of the two reamining pieces, and plays it simultaneously with the recording of the first piece. The second performance should likewise be recorded, and this recording played in conjuction with the third, and, last piece.

I was interested enough to search the internet for more information about Mr. Melnyk, discovering that he is of Ukranian émigré parentage, was born in Germany, grew up in Canada, and now lives in Sweden, an hour or so southwest of Stockholm. Unexpectedly, I found his home address detailed on one newsgroup post, and, from another post learned that recordings of his work could be ordered, in some cases, directly from their composer, being otherwise scarce and obtainable only with difficulty.

I decided to write him a letter, expressing my admiration for the recording I had stumbled upon, whilst tentatively inquiring as to what else of his oeuvre was available to buy. I suppose this is the closest thing to a fan letter I’ve yet penned. I was delighted to receive a reply from him the following week, warmly thanking me for my interest, and listing a dozen or so titles, described as available on LP or cassette, or CD upon request, despite Mr. M’s professed aversion to digital recording in general: I find digital sound to be very inferior to hi-fi recording in respect to the higher frequencies where the digital process cheats abominably, he wrote.

I ordered three more LP titles, including the Song of Galadriel, perhaps the least obscure of his releases, whose inspiration springs, as one might suppose given its title, from Tolkien, albeit abstractly. These arrived after a few more weeks' delay. I still listen to these occasionally, marvelling at the man's singular technique. The one adverse criticism I might offer is that these continuous works, whilst like almost nothing else, sometimes seem to resemble one another a little too closely, although not so closely that to have heard one piece is to have heard them all.

The following is a fitting summary of Melnyk's work, in the composer's own sonorous words:

I disavow the so-called 'avant-garde' tendencies of contemporary music, because these are far too programmatic to permit pure music to surface, and because I remain in awe of the fabric of beauty which permitted Chopin, Mozart and others to let loose a fountain of harmonic splendour with just two notes. Modality and tonality are both as modern as dissonance. Still, even though my music's structure might slide between atonality and consonance, much of the music's path is given by the very technique of continuous music, i.e., incongruent patterns in each hand. Piano technique, involving the ultimate balance between the Left and the Right. The body and instrument become the Voice, the two parts forming a harmonic choir of activity.