Windmill by Stephen Whittington

This album presents two of Australian composer Stephen Whittington’s stunningly beautiful string quartets: his elegant, eclectic seven-movement …from a thatched hut, which embraces, sometimes obliquely, the composer’s deep interest in Chinese poetry and his frequent travels in China, and his evocative, haunting Windmill, which draws sonic references to the small metal windmills commonly found in rural areas of Australia (“pump[ing] up life-giving water in the often desolate landscape,” the composer notes) and much of the rest of the world. Both works are performed by Australia’s celebrated Zephyr Quartet, the group that recorded Whittington’s earlier Cold Blue release, Music for Airport Furniture (CB0038).

The composer writes:

“…from a thatched hut draws upon a particular strand of Chinese culture: the Chinese scholar who withdraws, temporarily or permanently, from society. The thatched hut was the place where the great Tang dynasty poets Du Fu (Tu Fu) and Li Bai (Li Po) withdrew from the world. Their example was followed by many others, including the poet Bai Juyi (Po Chu-I), author of Record of the Thatched Hut on Mount Lu, and Xia Gui, the Song dynasty painter of Twelve Views from a Thatched Hut. The scholarly recluse cultivated poetry, calligraphy, painting, chess, and music—arts in which the hand is directed by the mind, thereby revealing the true character of the individual.…

“There is one short quotation in this quartet (at the start of the fifth movement) from a Chinese musical source. For the rest, the musical language of the quartet owes as much to modern Western music (notably Satie, Webern, and Cage) as it does to Chinese musical traditions. In my search for the musical means to create this quartet, I was influenced by the forms and sentiments of classical Chinese poetry, which attempts to express the inexpressible through words, and by Chinese philosophy, which holds that the extremely diverse and constantly changing appearances of the world are all emanations of a single ordering principle—the Dao (Tao). ‘Looking at the objective world’ and ‘looking within’ are the twin foundations of Chinese art; this closely corresponds to my own approach to music. The seven movements are conceived as a cycle, like seven poems on related themes. There are apparent differences in style between movements, but over the cycle there are parallelisms that emerge between movements and parts of movements.

“My interest in classical Chinese scholarly arts is primarily in the way they express ideas and sentiments that are still relevant today. ‘Though times and happenings alter and differ, may men in what moves them be brought together.’ [Wang Xizhi (303–361), Lantingxu (Orchid Pavilion Preface)]”

Windmill: “Australia’s indigenous inhabitants survived for 50,000 years on what their ‘country’ had to offer them. When Europeans arrived, human relationship with the land changed. European settlers often displayed ignorance and arrogance, but also stoicism, courage, and a fierce determination to survive in an inhospitable climate. Given the frequency of long periods of drought, farming ventures that began with high hopes often ended in despair. Without a supply of water, agriculture is unsustainable; fortunately, deep beneath much of the continent lie vast, ancient waters. The distinctive steel windmills that dot the Australian outback pump up life-giving water in the often desolate landscape. Many are now rusting away, replaced by solar technology. If you get close enough to one you can hear its distinctive creaking sound, stopping occasionally, resuming as the breeze picks up.”


REVIEWS:

“If Australia has produced a classic piece of musical minimalism, [Windmill] is it.” —Graham Strahle, The Australian

“Stephen combines a certain Brit-Aussie whimsy and humor with a sharp critical mind, a deep knowledge of the American and international avant-garde, and an increasing awareness that Australia, being a pacific nation, looks to Asia as its closest neighbor.” —Peter Garland

“Whittington weaves together musical influences from many different musical cultures…. His compositions have significant depth to them.” —Ralph Graves, Finding Beauty in Ephemera

“Australian composer Stephen Whittington writes that his interest in Chinese philosophy is most apparently manifest in the dichotomy between the objective world and that within. Not really a dichotomy at all—maybe better to call it a continuum—it can be heard in both pieces comprising this second Cold Blue Music release dedicated to his work. Windmill renders the process of multiplicity and unity easiest to hear. Inspired by the creakings and silence of Australia’s windmills, maximal impact is generated from a limited series of pitches, all in higher registers. If this comparatively brief work has what I hesitate to call “Minimalist” repetitional procedures as part of its dialectical motion, its rate of change is ironically quite rapid, encompassing timbre and space. The introduction of what is either a G-sharp or A-flat is both magical and monumental, especially over a G-major sonority. Somehow, the work’s concluding silences conjure shades of Haydn’s joke quartet with added mystical flavor.

“…from a thatched hut raises the stakes. Its subject matter is the reclusive ancient Chinese artists and poets who create introspectively self-revealing works from the thatched huts of their alienation and meditation. While the dynamic world of Windmill is fairly narrow, at least within its own parameters, Thatched Hut opens with a whimper and then a bang as a single tone radiates out into crescendoing microtones. Think of one gesture from the second movement of Shostakovich’s fifteenth string quartet stretched, magnified and amplified, and you’re in the proper orbit. However, vast changes in timbre, articulation and dynamics are unified by the kind of recurrence that brings elements from Nietzschean, Hindu and Chinese philosophy together. Small and large-scale revisitation, both intra and intermovemental, forge and govern the quartet’s circuitous path. While Whittington points out that only the fifth movement contains direct quotations from traditional Chinese music, the whole is informed by it, thriving on slides, pentatonic motives and a certain central stillness, despite constant motion.

“The playing of the Zephyr Quartet is as miraculous as the recording is superb. No strangers to Whittington’s music, the group is immersed in every detail, every hairpin dynamic shift and every overtonal unison. They embody perfectly the unity and diversity so important to Whittington’s compositions. This is one of the finest string quartet discs I’ve heard since the Kronos Quartet waxed Terry Riley’s Salome Dances for Peace, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.” —Marc Medwin, Fanfare magazine

“The playing by the Zephyr Quartet here is mesmerizing and completely convincing—Windmill is wonderfully vivid musical image that completely captures its subject.” —Paul Muller, Sequenza21

“The title of the new album is Windmill, which is also the title of the second of two compositions on the CD…. Both pieces may be said to be based on impressions; but only Windmill derives from the visual. The impression of …from a thatched hut is more cultural in nature, dealing with Chinese scholars of the past that lived as hermits (anchorites without any of the Christian connotations).

“The windmills that Whittington had in mind are those constructed in isolated areas in order to bring underground sources of water to the surface. When farming first began to be practiced west of the Mississippi River, just about every individual farm depended on such a windmill. Any number of movies captured the haunting qualities of the creaking sounds made by both the rotating blades and the pumping mechanism.

“Whittington tried to capture those sounds in Windmill; and, allowing him the benefit of artistic license, he did a pretty good job. However, what makes the piece particularly compelling is what might be called its rhetoric of isolation. The suggestion is that, on any given farm, it is often the case that the windmill is the only source of sound; and, once Whittington establishes the nature of that sound, he punctuates it with extended periods of silence. Those silences blur the boundary of when the piece actually ends, an effect that is even spookier when one is listening to a recording than when one is watching the piece being performed.

“The title of …from a thatched hut comes from two of those hermits evoked by the music. The first of these was Bai Juyi, who was a successful politician until a change in the balance of power forced him into exile. Since he was a devoted practitioner of Zen, he saw exile as an opportunity to think on less worldly matters; and he documented his thoughts in the book Record of the Thatched Hut on Mount Lu. Whittington’s other source is the Song dynasty landscape painter Xia Gui, known for painting hand scrolls of prodigious length. One of these was called Twelve Views from a Thatched Hut.
“Those familiar with Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, a book compiled by Paul Reps from a variety of sources of Zen and pre-Zen writing, will probably be familiar with the sorts of hermits that inspired Whittington to compose …from a thatched hut. (Those who do not know the book may still know some of the source material, since John Cage appropriated many of the anecdotes for “marginalia” in several of his books.) In many ways Whittington’s suite makes for excellent music to accompany reading Reps’ book. Indeed, Cage’s own autobiographical statement mentions the Indian singer Gira Sarabhai as one of his sources of inspiration: “The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.” It is not unreasonable to approach …from a thatched hutthrough its capacity “to sober and quiet the mind,” resulting in greater susceptibility to the Zen teachings that Reps documented.” —Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio

“Familiarity with Australian composer Stephen Whittington’s background engenders certain expectations about what awaits on Windmill, his Cold Blue follow-up to 2013’s Music for Airport Furniture and played, like its predecessor, by the Adelaide-based Zephyr Quartet. Also a pianist, Whittington performed works by figures such as Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, George Crumb, and Morton Feldman in the ’70s, but it was a 1987 meeting with John Cage at CalArts that proved pivotal. Upon returning to Australia, Whittington began incorporating elements of minimalism, polystylism, and chance procedures into his composing style. Subsequent to that, works of varying kinds were created, among them 2003’s multimedia show Mad Dogs and Surrealists and live music for classic silent films at the Sydney Opera House three years later. Cage’s impact on him persisted beyond that initial meeting, as intimated by the directing role Whittington assumed for 2012’s John Cage Day, which featured ten hours of performances honouring the provocateur, whereas the recent AV installation Hallett Cove—One Million Years (2015) involved custom-designed software operating on video footage and sound to explore the area’s geological terrain.
“All of which might lead one to expect experimentalism and chance operations to be part of the compositional design of Windmill and …from a thatched hut, the two works presented on the thirty-six-minute recording. Yet while it’s certainly possible that such aspects have been incorporated into the material, the pieces are more conventionally tonal and melodic than anticipated. They’re very different, however: the seven-movement …from a thatched hut draws heavily from Chinese musical traditions, even if the composer declares that its musical language is as much indebted to modern Western composers, specifically Satie, Webern, and Cage; Windmill, on the other hand, is a single-movement ten-minute setting that sonically evokes the hydraulic movements of the structure.
“With respect to …from a thatched hut (whose title alludes to the idea of the Chinese scholar who withdraws from society for purposes of contemplation, study, or otherwise), Whittington identifies one brief quotation at the start of the fifth movement as an explicit reference to a Chinese musical source, but to these ears the tradition’s influence extends further than that, even if subtly. So while there’s no denying the erhu-like character of the strings in the fifth movement, a plaintive quality is evident elsewhere that’s also reminiscent of Chinese folk music. One hears that clearly during the lovely second part, ‘Gazing at the moon while drunk,’ for instance, where the vocal-like cry of glissandos lends the music a mournful character. By comparison, the expressive fourth movement, ‘Scratch head, appeal to Heaven,’ adheres more closely to Western musical tradition, yet its staggered layering of vibrato-heavy string tones is as elegiac in effect. Conceived by its composer as a seven-part cycle that allows for stylistic contrasts and parallelisms between movements, …from a thatched hut is rendered by Zephyr Quartet with the sensitivity of a Chinese brush painting.
“Written with the steel windmills of the Australian outback in mind, Whittington’s delicate title composition evokes the rusting wheeze and creak of the apparatus as it dredges water from beneath the sometimes barren land surface. A breezy sing-song quality asserts itself as the patterns rhythmically see-saw in hypnotic motion, such lightheartedness rather ironic given that solar technology now threatens to render the time-honoured technology obsolete. In presenting two works, the release offers an admittedly small sampling of Whittington’s oeuvre, yet it’s a nevertheless satisfying one that whets the appetite for more.” —Ron Schepper, Textura

“…from a thatched hut was written in 2010. Zephyr plays the seven-movement piece with attention to detail. The piece forms an arc. It begins and ends with the same haunting 440 hz. tutti tremolo. The composer claims the influence of Cage, Webern, and Satie, but I’m basically hearing Satie. His essay on Satie’s Vexations for me almost describes this piece: ‘Vexations,’ he writes (and I would say this also applies to his own work …from a thatched hut), ‘lingers in the memory as a vague impression, the details effaced as soon as heard…static, undramatic…reinforced by repetition…a sound object…a two dimensional surface.’

“Graham Strahle describes Whittington’s Windmill (1990) as ‘classic…musical minimalism.’… I can say that G major flat ninth set up throughout the 10-minute one-movement work in tutti harmonics is beautifully realized and delicately bowed.” —Andrew Violette, New Music Connoisseur

“A really beautiful discovery is the music of Australian composer Stephen Whittington that is featured on this Cold Blue CD of two compositions for string quartet, performed with great sensibility by the Zephyr Quartet. In the first piece, …from a thatched hut (in seven movements), long chordal passages sketch vast natural scenes, which become animated when modal-flavored melodies suddenly appear, then mysteriously disappear. In Windmill, insistent and irregular repetitions of a single terse phrase suggest the uncertain journey of a traveler, lost in desolate lands. The constructive use of silence, the reference to Asian culture, the relationship to visual arts, and the poetic ambience, recall composers like Peter Garland, Peter Sculthorpe, and Kevin Volans, with whom Whittington shares the search for arcane beauty, pure, but at the same time aware of the turmoil of our time.” — Filippo Focosi, Kathodik (Italy)

“It is easy to get lost in Stephen Whittington’s minimalist music. His unhurried works on this release are hypnotic, drawing in the listener with short repetitive shards of material and longer phrases that continuously circle back on themselves. From a thatched hutcaptures the intensely introspective atmosphere of the scholarly recluse of Chinese culture. The texture is sometimes silky, sometimes brittle, but always delicate. V, ‘Journey of an Immortal,’ is the best movement, with melodic phrases spontaneously flowing in and out of the foreground. My favorite piece is Windmill, inspired by steel windmills of the Australian outback. The music seems to exist on two different planes of listening: while the music eerily resembles the actual sound of creaking metal in the wind, there is no attempt to disguise the string timbre. The listener is left acutely aware of both the apparent reality and the illusion. It is an entrancing piece, one that I find myself revisiting again and again.” —American Record Guide

Composer and pianist Stephen Whittington is noted for giving the first Australian performances (in the 1970s) of music by Christian Wolff, Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Howard Skempton, James Tenney, Alvin Curran, Peter Garland, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, and many others. “If Australia has produced a classic piece of musical minimalism, [Whittington’s ‘Windmill’] is it.” (The Australian)