Catherine Lamb/JACK Quartet - aggregate forms (2021)
Catherine Lamb studied under James Tenney, Michael Pisaro-Liu and, surprisingly, मणि कौल [Mani Kaul] (the filmmaker was not a performer of Hindustani classical music, yet he taught and theorized it). "divisio spiralis" is a gorgeous, sometimes astonishingly beautiful work that brings to fruition these influences (she's also fond of Éliane Radigue and Maryanne Amacher).
However, it shares the bill here with an early String Quartet piece which doesn't really stand out - except perhaps in possessing a slightly more intricate structure - from the mass of microtonal pieces that have been composed around the same period - and ever since Burkhard Schlothauer's "Organic Microtonal Polyphonia" - by Wandelweiser composers and associates. Out of all the Wandelweiser music I've listened to over the last 10 years, this is my least favorite strand, one that nearly triggers me on a visceral level, the brooding drones now being associated in my mind with times of depression... I wasn't exactly eager right now to revisit this field, and over forty minutes of it was a bit too much to stomach.
However, I'm glad I had the patience to sit through all of this, as "divisio spiralis" truly poses, as violinist Christopher Otto describes in the booklet, "radically mind-expanding challenges", where "imagining and creating the sonic relations yields an integration of number and sound, offering a pathway toward ultimate oneness." Lofty discourse, yet well worth for once, I'd say - but who am I to say?