Stephen Pope

Ritual and Memory

EMF Media

The Electronic Music Foundation label adds to its consistently excellent catalog with the release of this two-disc/DVD combination from West Coast composer and programmer Stephen Travis Pope. Arranged programmatically, the music spans 25 years of compositional activity, and the results are as fresh as they are varied.

Each of the two discs comprises a recital of sorts, the journeys’ scopes reflected in Pope’s descriptive liners. I return most often to Ritual Places, the first disc, simply because I find the text settings extraordinarily effective. Pope’s realization of Helmut Heissenbuttel’s poetry serves as a stunning opener to the collection, the text chopped and channeled in ways ranging from whiplash-inducing speed to intense syllabic elongation. It is impossible to ignore the heritage of Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie II when reading Heissenbuttel’s internally dramatic text, and Pope’s work plunges headlong into the depths with powerful directness. “Leur Songe de la Paix” also moves and shakes mightily, Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech excerpted and set to a backdrop of ghost whispers; they seem to rise in ascent as King’s voice builds, the opening bell a clarion call to action. As various media carry the message, from the crackle of vinyl, the whispering masses, and what sounds like Morse code as the third movement opens over a tolling bell, King’s exhortations stand stark against the confusion, rendering the piece all too appropriate in the face of current events. The “Day” excerpts provide needed and well-placed contrast following such harrowing listening.

The second disc, Dunkelkammergesprache, further demonstrates Pope’s interest in matters of spirituality, cross-cultural symbolism, and the intricacies of human speech. Originally conceived as a graphical score for solo organ, the present version of “Wake” is a further and even starker examination of the human voice, slow penetrating tones filling portions of the sound spectrum only to disappear suddenly and be replaced in a completely different register. Sporting an entirely more humorous garb, yet engaging similar textual and musical issues as other works in the set, is “Paragraph 31: All Gates are Open.” The poetry veering from spiritual and political pronouncements to the kingly command to eat porridge, the tone is more conversational—as with Pope’s MLK transformations, voices swell and fade, but they’re strikingly detached, alternately jumpy and declamatory against a backdrop of near silence.

While the voice-based pieces are the most effective, all of the works are of interest, with the microtonal bell pieces as rhythmically engaging as they are tonally nuanced. Pope recommends that the music be heard with headphones, but it translates well to many listening environments. Expertly conceived and executed, Ritual and Memory pays fine homage to inner exploration and its relation to social awareness: We need as many listening experiences of this nature as can be afforded.

Marc Medwin