by Edward Tatnall Canby
Black Box #1 (audible poetry). Assorted poets reading and singing their own works. Two C60 cassettes. (Black Box, 3735 Jocelyn St., N. W., Washington, D.C. 20015.)
The implications of this relatively modest new venture in recorded sound via cassettes are of interest to us all, whether we are attracted by contemporary poetry and its relatives or can leave it to others. Black Box is a "magazine," six issues a year. It accepts contributions like any other mag, publishes some, rejects others; it has a subscription rate, $20 for six issues (institutions pay more), $5 a single "copy" (2 cassettes in a black box). It is devoted to spoken poetry and to the music of various sorts, sung and played, which now often accompanies, or constitutes, what is still called poetry.
What is unusual is that for the first time, I think, Black Box publishes 100 percent in the audio medium. There is no printed text, only liner notes, as in an LP release. The magazine has deliberately put aside the age-old idea of poetic expression in print in favor of a new medium that is, of course, even older than print-the actual sound of the voice. That is where all poetry began.
This uncompromising decision goes further than you may think. Most people, and plenty of poets, still think of the printed or written word as the "original" of their expression, even if the words can on occasion be read aloud or recited from memory. Black Box, on the other hand, refuses flatly to accept manuscripts. All contributions must be recorded. The tape is the original. (How many times I have been asked for a "script" of my broadcasts in New York! There is no script. Only a semi-typed memory-teaser, to keep me on the track as I speak. My "originals" are also the tapes themselves.) As might be expected of a first issue, the content of these cassettes is wildly varied and uneven (if my un-poetic viewpoint may be taken), both aesthetically and technically. But the stuff is interesting and you will not be bored. There is challenge in plenty.
And four sides of C60 cassette is a lot of material, let me tell you. Most of the stuff is youthful, very determined and far-out-though this is a matter of viewpoint. A good deal is pretty naive, I say, though that idea admittedly comes from an ancient poetry listener, who has heard the Greats and the Littles in his day. If this were a movie it would get a qualified X rating, maybe, for a few items such as Edmund Skellings' "Ultra-red: an Electronic Love Poem." I will not try to describe that one in words.
Music is inevitable and frequent, as is natural today. Why stick to the voice alone in this flexible medium? It comes via electronics, instruments, and the singing voice itself. I'm sorry to say that I found the electronic music pretty primitive (heavy tape-echo rhythms, for instance) and the all-too-frequent guitar songs of minimal interest, to put it mildly. In the folk and rock areas and elsewhere there have been much more cogent and original things done.
There seems to be an idea going around that if the words of your song have significance, the tunes and harmonies don't really matter. In any case, why such abysmally conventional musical settings for supposedly new and far-out verbal expression? As a musician I can only deplore. Music also speaks!. Sound quality varies from good to not good at all. The poets for the most part are obviously not familiar with the prosaic needs of the lowly mic. They are used to live performing, by the sound of it, and they tend to punch, shout, and do all those things you don't do before the mic no matter who you are. Having tried for years to record non-mic-type voices, I sympathize with the Black Box editorial staff, which has done wonders under the circumstances.
One cassette is in mono, the other stereo. Hopefully, all will be stereo in future issues. It does help in getting over presence and personality, even for the solo voice. I make one big suggestion: Black Box should go Dolby B, and quick. All the arguments for Dolby apply with a vengeance to this sound poetry medium.
Performances: B to D, Sound: C + to D
John Blow: Venus and Adonis. Margaret Ritchie, Margaret Field-Hyde, Gordon Clinton et al., L'Ens. Orch. de l'Oiseau-Lyre, Lewis. L'Oiseau-Lyre OLS 128, synth. stereo, $5.95.
Mr. Bach at Vauxhall Gardens. Elsie Morison, Jennifer Vyvyan, sopranos, Thurston Dart, organ, Boyd Neel Orch. L'Oiseau-Lyre OLS 103, synth stereo, $ 5.95.
All of a sudden, a vast release of these famous L'Oiseau-Lyre recordings of the fifties has arrived, all beautifully packaged in lavender gray with a flower reproduction in the middle and the lyre bird top left. I'll be into them on and off for months to come. Do I remember most of them! Life passing by anew, repeat show. But times have changed and so have the values of the originals, here given a modest stereo spread for modern equipment.
John Blow was the great Henry Purcell's mentor, his predecessor as organist at Westminster Abbey and his successor too, after Purcell's tragic early death. This is an astonishingly moving little opera, for all its restoration styling, the leading roles being Cupid, Venus (his mother) and her lover on earth, the handsome Adonis.
Adonis is killed by a boar while hunting--he dies at Venus' feet. Awful.
Really heartrending in Margaret Ritchie's unforgettable performance.
She was one of the great singers of the past generation, and the other Margaret, Field-Hyde, matches her in power and in style of delivery. If you are onto Purcell, if you know "Dido and Aeneas," you will respond to this remarkably appealing music, less vigorous than Purcell but on very nearly an equal of expression. An old-fashioned performance already (it dates from 1953), but splendid of its British sort. The sound, for its time, is nothing to boast about; a bit edgy in the vocal parts throughout, but it will not bother a musical ear.
"Vauxhall Gardens," a recording of music by J. C. Bach, youngest son of the Bach and a genial, long-time resident of London, was the subject many years ago of a Canby broadcast which has been repeated periodically every since. I populated the Gardens with the sound of people, to make a more realistic background for the music. Nice to have these charming works, for one and a pair of sopranos and for organ, in a renewed release-it is a memorable album. Same slightly edgy sound, from 1956. (It really ought to be better.) The two sopranos are two more of the great English singers of recent times, Morison and Vyvyan.
By all means, if you are musically inclined in the right direction, browse through the many titles in this reissue series. It was a pioneer collection, unprecedented in its day.
Mozart: Suites from the Great Operas, Delightfully Arranged for Wind Ensemble. Members of the London Symphonic Band, John Snashall. Columbia M 31310, stereo, $5.98.
"Delightfully"--yes. even though the term is Columbia's self-pat on the back.
In Mozart's day, the equivalent of the "original cast" album was an arrangement of show tunes, for flute and piano perhaps, or violin, or for the popular wind groups that played all over town, indoors and out, in Vienna. Mozart himself did a wind arrangement of tunes from The Seraglio only a few days after its successful premiere, when the demand for the music in some form outside the opera house was acute. That wind suite has vanished, but somebody has had the bright idea of doing the same all over again, plus suites of tunes from other well known Mozart operas--Don Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro, Magic Flute.
What's nice about this disc, then, is the genial, well-played wind sound, wonderfully pert, lively, well-phrased.
It is the sound of the wind quintet or quartet amplified to orchestral breadth with something like 46 wind players, immersed in a big, golden liveness which makes the music fairly shine.
Maybe you won't want to play both sides all at-a sitting; the wind sound gets monotonous after a while, here as elsewhere. But a side at a time is glorious Mozart background stuff, and most tastefully arranged. too, without a trace of anachronism. Mozart could have done the job himself.
Performance: A, Sound: A
(Audio magazine, Oct. 1972; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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