“You might believe these things you say!” Gen­er­ally, one hopes peo­ple mean what they say, but there are cer­tain times when gen­er­ous think­ing would mean hop­ing that peo­ple don’t nec­es­sar­ily do so. Take Matt Fried­berger, of the Fiery Fur­naces. It’s one thing to con­fuse Harry Partch with Harry Patch, and when I first saw the news about the new Radio­head song, I did a double-take myself. But ye gods, lad, just say you don’t like Radio­head and quit while you’re ahead. The inco­her­ent, ram­bling com­plaints and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions reveal a pretty pro­found igno­rance of Partch’s work and an inse­cure, infan­tile antag­o­nism to the band. But then, musi­cal inco­her­ence, lim­ited aes­thetic hori­zons and a kind of smug igno­rance about the voices who came before and are around are sta­ples of a lot of indie-rock (and indie-cinema). And since musi­cally inco­her­ent bands like Fiery Fur­naces and Dirty Projects gar­ner praise and admi­ra­tion, these must be qual­i­ties to admire and aspire to. I pre­fer knowl­edge, ambi­tion and musi­cal coher­ence, so I’ll stick with Radio­head (per­haps Beck does too, but his musi­cal response is the most inco­her­ent thing of all in this dumb dispute).

Think of it as a debate, for­get the facts, and focus on the rhetoric. Rhetoric is an essen­tial tool and can con­vince on its own, but it must be as coher­ent as pure logic. Even if the rhetoric is disin­gen­u­ous, it must make sense. Look at Sarah Palin, des­per­ate to please every­one she speaks with, to tell them what she thinks they want to hear. She’s com­pletely disin­gen­u­ous, but doesn’t have the skill to run for Pres­i­dent, much less win and gov­ern — she can’t think and speak coher­ently, she can’t make any sense. Politi­cian as indie-rock front-woman, it’s a curi­ous phe­nom­e­non. Mak­ing sense, com­mu­ni­cat­ing clearly, is a mat­ter of craft, and craft may go out of fash­ion but it never goes out of style.

The craft of Ralph Shapey, the lat­est com­poser feted in the Com­poser Por­traits at Miller The­ater, is an exam­ple of this. His art is brac­ingly crusty and uncom­pro­mis­ing and com­pletely sin­cere, and it’s never been in fash­ion (a Pulitzer Prize was, amaz­ingly, over­ruled). Lik­ing or not lik­ing his music is a mat­ter of per­sonal taste, but he unques­tion­ably wrote good music. The works on the pro­gram were a fine rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his career; con­cen­trated in size, ambi­tious, chal­leng­ing for musi­cians and audi­ences, extremely well crafted and always coher­ent. Agree or dis­agree with what he says, but what he says is always clear.

Shapey began his musi­cal life play­ing the vio­lin, and his writ­ing for the instru­ment is almost impos­si­bly fine. Two of the strongest works on the pro­gram, “Etch­ings” for solo vio­lin (fin­ished when he was in his mid-twenties) and “Five,” for vio­lin and piano, are works that show an inti­mate famil­iar­ity with what is pos­si­ble on the instru­ment. These are works at the edge of playa­bil­ity but are never showy. The chal­lenges are not end­less runs of notes and chro­matic scales but imme­di­ate, broad inter­vals and quick shifts to and from har­mon­ics. This is vir­tu­oso vio­lin music like that Stravin­sky wrote for his Con­certo, demand­ing more speed from the mind than the fin­gers, and empha­siz­ing quick­ness of the bow from string to string rather than dra­matic twirling of the left hand fin­gers. The early work takes a grace­ful, ultra-Romantic, melody rem­i­nis­cent of the grip­ping open­ing of the Bar­tok solo vio­lin sonata and repeats it through sev­eral vari­a­tions of tempo and rhetor­i­cal qual­ity — grander, sweeter, syn­co­pated — com­plete with a sur­prise authen­tic cadence. The sur­prise is because Shapey’s work, while mostly not atonal, is highly dis­so­nant, and although that nec­es­sar­ily means that there is con­so­nance and dia­tonic melodies and chords to be found in his music, the empha­sis is on a craggy, con­fi­dent and very Amer­i­can dis­so­nance. His sonori­ties, espe­cially for com­bined winds, are astrin­gent to the point of peel­ing paint. “Five” is a real mas­ter­piece, a work that seems effort­lessly vir­tu­osic in per­for­mance but which clearly demanded a great deal of blood, sweat and tears. An explo­sive, breath­tak­ing open­ing state­ment con­sol­i­dates into a more intro­verted solil­o­quy in the vio­lin, and then the ideas begin to come with a speed and den­sity which rivals Beethoven, and there is a sense of an ongo­ing, con­struc­tive debate between the two instru­ments. There is almost con­stant activ­ity between the two and a bit of rhyth­mic con­flict, espe­cially in the Scherzo move­ment where the vio­lin bick­ers with short, punchy dia­tonic phrases from the key­board. The work says more in ten min­utes than many sym­phonies do across an hour. Vio­lin­ist <a href=“http://www.artistsinternational.com/miranda_cuckson.html”>Miranda Cuck­son and pianist Blair McMillen played with the com­mand and ease that comes from ded­i­ca­tion to the music and under­stand­ing what it is they want to say; coher­ence in com­po­si­tion breeds coher­ence in performance.

Shapey shares a some­thing with Elliot Carter, in that good musi­cians are drawn to the qual­ity and chal­lenge of his music. The spirit of his music is seri­ous, rig­or­ous, clear-eyed, far less play­ful than Carter but with a greater ten­der­ness and human­ity, both in spe­cific moments and as a con­sis­tent under­ly­ing his voice. There’s a sense of the indi­vid­ual declar­ing them­selves to the uni­verse, then explor­ing the ter­ri­tory around them, speak­ing up for and defin­ing their own exis­tence. He’s a Roman­ti­cist who writes in a highly Mod­ern lan­guage, a sort of gen­er­a­tional prog­eny of Samuel Bar­ber. Even in mus­cu­larly atonal works like “Move­ments” for wood­wind quin­tet and “Con­certo for Clar­inet and Cham­ber Group” (fea­tur­ing the New York Wood­wind Quin­tet and the Argento Ensem­ble), there is a quiet lyri­cism in the mid­dle of the stri­dent, high E’s blast­ing from the flute and the roil­ing Roman­ti­cism of the clar­inet. The “Quin­tet” is full of dis­ori­ent­ing wide inter­vals, which are fod­der for good wind play­ers, and since the music makes such sense to the musi­cians it quickly makes sense to the ear. Shapey does famil­iar things in extreme ways; he favors rondo forms and pas­sages, and so music that first seems like neu­rotic chat­ter­ing soon reveals itself as a fas­ci­nat­ing chase. The “Con­certo” has parts for two per­cus­sion­ists, play­ing bass drums, and the soft but full bod­ied sound of their stub­born rhythms is both a mys­te­ri­ous echo of the ensem­ble and a musi­cal response and ground its own right, like the ‘druids’ in Ives’ “The Unan­swered Ques­tion.”

The per­cus­sion writ­ing is sur­pris­ing and usu­ally effec­tive. The sec­ond half opened with the weak­est piece on the pro­gram, his later “Inter­change” for per­cus­sion quar­tet. His scor­ing for metal instru­ments is attrac­tive, the sonori­ties of tubu­lar bells, orches­tral bells and vibra­phone sounds great, but here Shapey is locked to true atonal­ity, a 12-tone row he described as his mother lode, and the row seems to lead him around, rather than vice-versa. There’s an inter­est­ing eeri­ness to the sound, but the over­all effect is mechan­i­cal, and that’s enhanced by a par­tic­u­lar dotted-eighth/sixteenth/triplet rhythm (which sounds very much like Partch) which appears too often with too lit­tle vari­a­tion. The piece doesn’t breath with life and spon­tane­ity like the other works, includ­ing the con­clud­ing “Three for Six,” with it’s lively, demand­ing wood­wind writ­ing and provoca­tive tim­pani phrases. It begins with a famil­iar tac­tic, and explo­sion of sharp sounds and force­ful fig­ures, a com­bi­na­tion of announce­ment and march. The ensem­ble seemed slightly stiff at first, but then found their way to an unforced pace and really began to speak the music. There is a lovely, haunt­ing viola solo in the mid­dle move­ment, daz­zling clar­inet solos, and always the music is answered by the tim­pani, sup­ported by the piano, ask­ing “is that what you mean to say? Is that what you mean to say?” Shapey, as a com­poser, clearly asked him­self that ques­tion, and answered “yes, I mean to say exactly this.”

The next Com­poser Por­traits con­cert is ded­i­cated to the evoca­tive music of Kaija Saari­aho, on Sun­day Novem­ber 22 at 8PM.