It’s impossible not to begin with the fact that this is an 11cd set of acoustic ambient sound, which should make you wonder who would warrant such an exhaustive collection of sound. Harry Bertoia was a renowned Italian born, American sculptor and architect, who in his rural Pennsylvanian barn created a series of unique and complex sound sculptures in the last 20 years of his life, which he paired with gongs to create these quite remarkable long form improvisational pieces. You can view his sculptures online, and you definitely should, as the visual element is important, demonstrating the uniqueness of his creations and his mastery on his self made instruments. Yet whilst there is no doubt the audio recordings alone only capture half the story, there is something about removing the visual, allowing you to experience his work as a composer, or to experience the pieces as compositions.
Ironically the first thing you think is how is he doing this -how did he manage to capture these sounds? They’re highly resonant, so you think about heavy reverb and perhaps some digital processing, yet he was doing this between 1958 and his death in 1978, so in some way his recordings drew on experimental sound art, and used acoustic means to achieve what today would be attempted inside the box. The other thing that becomes apparent is the diversity of sound, from shimmering metallic tones to warm drones, to harmonic overtones, to metallic plinks that decay over time, to reverberations and percussive thuds.
He termed his music sonambient, and he created 100+ tonal sculptures. Their sizes varied from a few inches to 20+ feet. He used various metals for the rods, “the most common being beryllium copper known for its wide range of color variations. Some rods are capped with cylinders or drops of metal, which, by their weight, accentuate the swaying of the tonal rods.”(http://harrybertoia.org/biography.html)
His work takes on a near mystical feel, primarily due to his compositional decisions. He often plays his sculptures then stops abruptly, using the reverberations and decay as part of the music, approaching his instrument with a subdued, solemn gravity. He experiments with volume and texture, building from out of earshot or periodically allowing his sounds to dip, before they are resurrected. Many of the sounds you’d swear couldn’t be acoustic, couldn’t come from a metallic instrument, yet that is the beauty of this project – as the sculptures interact with both the player and the space they are played in.
Depending upon your persuasion this is either for deep listening, or not listening at all, as there is no doubt the harmonic tones posses a kind of magical quality, altering the feel of whatever space they occupy. You can draw links to musique concrete, ambient music, and ritual music, whether it’s the gong music of south east Asia or Tibetan spiritual music. Yet it’s kind’ve all of the above, all mixed in together, and none of the above, as it’s very much Bertoia’s distinctive vision.
Bertoia died in 1978, at age 63, and was buried beneath a giant gong behind his Sonambient barn. This is his legacy.
It comes in a heavy duty box for the 11 discs with a 100 page book containing an historic essay, a Smithsonian interview with Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn as well as reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia’s children. Important have pulled out all the stops with this release. All you need to do is listen to one of the pieces and you’ll understand why.
