On June 8 I took a train on the Marmaray line to Söğütlüçeşme, the station in the valley behind Kadıköy through which the Kurbağalıdere Stream passes on its way to join the Sea of Marmara. Söğütlüçeşme actually means ‘Fountain with Willow Trees’, and Kurbağalıdere means ‘Stream with Frogs’, but I saw no willow trees, and heard no frogs as I ascended Söğütlüçeşme Caddesi towards Altıyol (‘Six Ways’). I was, however, acutely aware of the dense crowds thronging the pavements and the intensity of the traffic noise.

In the middle of the crossroads at ‘Six Ways’ stands a statue of a bull in fighting stance – one of the 12 bronze and 10 marble statues of horses, deer, lions, bulls and other animals commissioned by Sultan Abdülaziz during his visit to France in 1867 and later brought to Turkey by him. Here I followed the tramlines round a corner into the long shopping street formerly known as Bahariye Caddesi but recently renamed Orgeneral Âsim Gündüz Caddesi after the man (a classmate of Mustafa Kemal’s at the Military Academy) who played an important part in planning the decisive attack by Turkish forces that resulted in the expulsion of the Greek army from Anatolia in late August and early September 1922. He very sensibly spent his retirement in a now-demolished villa – situated opposite the Aya Triada (Holy Trinity) Greek Orthodox Church – in Bahariye, the quarter at the far end of the street.

So much gratuitous information in the above paragraph! But then, my English teacher at school once described me as a ‘learned footnote’, and I have treasured that put-down, and done my best to live up to it, ever since. It’s all down to my Saturn in Virgo, which loves to burrow down into every detail and pull people up on their minor linguistic transgressions. No doubt my English teacher was getting his own back for the time when I publicly corrected his pronunciation of the word ‘dissect’, which many people think rhymes with ‘bisect’. It doesn’t. Clue: the ‘dis’ part is the same suffix as we have in the words ‘disappear’, ‘dissolve’ and ‘disinformation’. In any case, a vowel before a doubled consonant (in this case, the ‘i’ before the ‘ss’) is normally given weak, rather than strong, pronunciation. I could go on like this for hours...

Arriving at the Süreyya Opera House, situated halfway between the bull statue and the site of Âsim Gündüz’s former residence, I found that thanks to the good offices of Ms Ayşegül Öneren at the İKSV (Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts), I had been given a seat with a good view of the stage. The first half of the concert I had come to attend – one of those organised within the framework of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival – consisted of two string quartets in vastly contrasting compositional styles, both of which were to be performed by the Borusan String Quartet. Knowing the technical excellence and professionalism of this outfit, I settled down to enjoy some quality string playing.

The first work on the programme was the four-movement String Quartet No 2, subtitled ‘Company’, by the contemporary American composer Philip Glass (1937–). The background to this piece is described by Wikipedia as follows:

This composition was finished in January 1983 in New York City, and was expected to be a piece of instrumental music for Fred Neumann’s adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s 1979 novella of the same name [i.e., ‘Company’ – Ed.]. ... After withdrawing his first sketch of a string quartet in 1963, Philip Glass composed his String Quartet No. 2 seventeen years after his first quartet, even though it was not initially conceived as chamber music, but for theatre. This work was composed as a result of Glass’ collaboration with the Mabou Mines quartet, of which he married JoAnne Akalaitis, one of its members. Glass himself decided to extract the music he had written for Samuel Beckett’s Company, and wrote a score thought to be a concert work on its own.

I hate to call into question the veracity of so impeccable a source as Wikipedia (sardonic grimaces permitted), but in the grammatically somewhat clunky sentence ‘This work was composed as a result of Glass’ collaboration with the Mabou Mines quartet, of which he married JoAnne Akalaitis, one of its members’, there are two factual errors. Firstly, Mabou Mines was not a string quartet: it was an experimental theatre company founded by a group of five people (among whom were Glass and his wife JoAnne Akalaitis) at the aforementioned couple’s home near Mabou Mines, a settlement on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Secondly, JoAnne Akalaitis was not a musician but an avant-garde theatre director. And I’m afraid I just can’t resist correcting that sentence: it should be ‘This work was composed as a result of Glass’s collaboration with the Mabou Mines quartet, one member of which – JoAnne Akalaitis – he married.’ Nothing rocks so much as defining relative clauses, especially when complicated by prepositions!

Leaving these curmudgeonly carpings aside, let us pass on to the piece itself. (Another grammarfest coming up in the next sentence!) The work of which Glass’s quartet was intended to accompany a theatrical adaptation – Samuel Beckett’s novella Company, first published in 1979 – consists of the musings of a man lying on his back in the dark. The man asks himself fundamental questions about the nature of the self, and especially its location, in a world in which life is perceived to be no more than a series of meaningless repetitions, devoid of purpose.

Before commenting on Philip Glass’s String Quartet No 2, I will present a recording of it. Here it is being played by the Spektral Quartet on what is described (in the notes under the YouTube version) as ‘an appropriately bleak day in Chicago’.

Well, now ... Firstly, an apology. It is not my fault that this work is so unrelentingly monotonous, mirroring as it does the meaningless repetitions of a life lived without purpose (as portrayed in Beckett’s novella), but nevertheless I feel obliged to offer my sincere apologies for the distress that listening to it will have occasioned in all those who, like me, find it painful to listen to. This piece by one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century sounds like a perfectly acceptable accompaniment to some modern melody – a melody that is, however, unaccountably absent.

Wikipedia’s description of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No 2, a piece greatly revered in our day as an icon of the inconsequential, contains some highly revealing uses of language:

The main theme of this work is subjugated to arpeggios in minor keys all along the four movements. All of the movements of this monochrome work are highly and closely related to each other.

I particularly relish that verb phrase ‘is subjugated to...’, a form of words that is being resorted to here in order to disguise the fact that the work has no theme at all, consisting rather of accompaniment figures – in this case, repeated arpeggios. Secondly, the description of the piece as ‘monochrome’ is an expertly-contrived attempt to deflect any criticism that might be made of this string quartet on the grounds that any accurate depiction of a bored and supinely hopeless state of mind must needs be, in and of itself, witheringly tedious. Thirdly, the statement that all the movements are ‘highly and closely related to each other’ is not a compliment to the composer’s ingenuity in following Beethoven’s practice of structuring his symphonies in such a way that all the movements are thematically related to one another. It is an admission that all the movements consist of arpeggios and nothing else.

Devotees of post-modernist deconstruction à la Jacques Derrida will no doubt object that I am missing the point: the negation of meaning is fashionable, and whatever is fashionable is ipso facto good and admirable. (Also, of course, tossing the norms of Western culture on the trash heap is deliciously politically correct, so that is another box ticked.) In response, I will climb onto my fuddy-duddy hobby horse and say that music is essentially the creation of meaning through the medium of sound, and that music without meaning is not music at all. The creation of a musical texture that is pleasing to the ear may indeed compensate – to a limited extent, and for a limited period – for the absence of meaning, but here the composer is at pains to create a texture that conveys ennui rather than endorphins. What pleasure would you derive from an art exhibition that consisted of empty picture frames of different shapes and sizes, each one surrounding blank space? So... thanks but no thanks for the experience, Mr Glass!

Having said all this, I will willingly admit that there is one piece by Philip Glass that greatly impresses me because it exhibits a zany sense of humour and a genuine feel for the dramatic. Einstein on the Beach – Knee Play 1 is a digital divertimento that could equally well be performed by robots. In the recording below, however, it is being recited (and, from 26:07 onwards, sung) by real human beings of the Théâtre du Châtelet group. Note that the ‘Train’, ‘Trial’, ‘Dance’, ‘Night Train’ and ‘Building’ sequences of Einstein on the Beach are also worth watching; ‘Spaceship’, meanwhile, is totally bizarre – and for that reason, highly recommended. In my view, the addition of a theatre element to Glass’s work makes all the difference. Not for nothing did he marry a theatre director.

Here is an account of Einstein on the Beach by Mark Swed on the LA Times website.

Having complained about the lack of content in Glass’s String Quartet No 2, I find myself in the oddly anomalous position of having to disagree with Mr Swed’s comment that Einstein on the Beach is ‘all container and no content’. I think the visual and movement elements harmonise perfectly with the robotic character of the music, thus creating a meaningful and internally consistent whole. Indeed, I find this work highly original in conception, richly humorous (in an ironic sort of way, of course) and satisfying as a piece of theatre.

As an aside, I will point out what an interesting coincidence it is that three of the most famous composers of our time are either from, or have links to, the Baltic republics: Arvo Pärt is Estonian, Pēteris Vasks hails from Latvia, and Philip Glass (who married a Lithuanian lady) is partly Latvian.

I will now pass on to the next item on the programme, which was as different from the preceding one as rich fruit cake is from thin gruel: Mozart’s String Quartet in C major, K 465, popularly known as the ‘Dissonance’ Quartet. In his day, its composer was criticised for writing music that was ‘over-rich’: it was claimed to have ‘too many notes’ in it, and it is true that this work contains a superabundance of thematic material. No greater contrast to Philip Glass’s style, therefore, could possibly be imagined.

The String Quartet in C major, K 465, was the last in a series of six quartets, all dedicated to Haydn, that Mozart wrote between 1782 and 1785. As none of them had been commissioned, they are widely seen as having been the composer’s tribute to ‘Papa Haydn’ (as he was known by the musicians who worked for him in the resident orchestra at the Esterházy family’s elegant but mosquito-ridden country residence on the border between Austria and Hungary, as well as by his admirers – a group that included Mozart). But there is another reason why Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was seen as a father figure by fellow-composers. Wikipedia tells us the following:

Another sense of the term ‘Papa Haydn’ came from his role in the history of classical music, notably in the development of the symphony and string quartet. While Haydn did not invent either genre, his work is considered important enough that the labels ‘Father of the Symphony’ and ‘Father of the String Quartet’ are often attached to him. Even in his own lifetime, this perspective was prevalent.

Oh, dear! Saturn in Virgo strikes again! That part in the second sentence of the above paragraph should actually read: ‘... his work is widely considered important enough for the labels X and Y to be regularly used in describing him.’ But let’s get serious: what we are dealing with is a major turning point in the history of classical music. The following video presentation – which is couched in fairly simple terms for the uninitiated – tells of the emergence of the string quartet as a medium, focussing on Haydn’s quartets. It is entitled ‘How the String Quartet Evolved – Music Appreciation’.

For the more academically-minded, here is an essay by Kathryn Louderback (on the ‘pianistmusings’ website) entitled ‘String Quartet Part 1: The Development of a New Genre’.

But it’s time we returned to the subject of Mozart. Kai Christiansen, writing on the ‘earsense’ website, has this to say about the ‘Dissonance’ quartet:

It is also fair to say that, within this set of Mozart quartets – about which no praise could possibly be hyperbolic – the sixth and final quartet is arguably the most noteworthy. Ever since its innovative, foreboding, dark shadow of an introduction was first heard by rapt if not shocked listeners, it has borne the nickname ‘Dissonance’. The music begins as if it arose from a probing development section by Beethoven filled with brooding anxiety, pulsing, accented, distorted and evasive, eschewing harmonic resolution by drifting ever farther off course. As legend has it, the first publishers initially sent it back to Mozart, believing it was riddled with mistakes. But this two-minute dramatic feint becomes the foil for one of Mozart’s most radiant and beneficent sonatas, bursting forth as a bright triumph of consonance in the natural key of C major.

Here is a link to the full description, in which an account of each movement is given.

Now, a recording in which Mozart’s String Quartet in C major, K 465, is being played by the Auryn Quartet. Each movement is a separate video. I would not normally countenance listing a performance bittily (is that a word?) divided into four like this, but in my opinion this is a superlative rendition with a lot of subtle touches. (They do a mean sudden diminuendo, for instance.)

I: Adagio – Allegro

II: Andante cantabile

III: Menuetto

IV: Allegro molto

After a somewhat shaky start in which the first violin’s intonation was ever so slightly off colour, the Borusan Quartet soon recovered, giving us a polished performance of the Mozart quartet in which the precise coordination of the entries was a joy to behold (and to listen to, of course). The cellist swayed in time with the music, and I particularly enjoyed watching her constantly-changing facial expressions. As always, the viola-player impressed with his one-hundred-percent efficiency – how on earth does he manage it? All the members of the quartet deserve praise for their rich, vibrant tone, especially in the second movement. In fact, their rendition of the whole piece was a tasteful and fully professional affair.

During the interval, a long series of scrapings and bangings behind the curtain announced the rearrangement of the stage for a much-anticipated performance of a new work entitled Jacob’s Ladder by Steve Reich (1936–). In the opening sentence of his Wikipedia entry, he is described as ‘an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s’. That initial description seems to me to do less than justice to his later pieces, especially those he has produced since the 1990s. I have no problem with the rest of Wikipedia’s description, however. In it we are told the following:

Reich’s work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ by stating: ‘I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.’ For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go ‘out of phase’. This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow. ...

Reich’s style of composition has influenced many contemporary composers and groups, especially in the United States. Writing in The Guardian, the music critic Andrew Clements suggested that Reich was one of ‘a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history’.

I will not list any examples of Reich’s earlier works – such as his minimalist Music for 18 Musicians (1974–76) or his Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (1979) – as to my mind they are unbearably tedious. (Self-advertising insert: in my search for Steve Reich compositions worth presenting, I forced myself to listen to both of these musical Chinese tortures. What a self-sacrificing music critic I am!) Not for nothing does Wikipedia refer to this composer’s fondness for ‘slow harmonic rhythm’ (‘harmonic rhythm’ being the frequency with which the underlying chords change). What the phrase ‘slow harmonic rhythm’ actually means in Reich’s case is that except in his more recent pieces the same chord continues unchanged throughout. I would hazard a guess that it was only when he realised that something more than endless repetitions of the same thing (albeit with slight variations) was needed to maintain listener interest that he began writing pieces in which the mushy wallpaper soup was spiced with some variety of timbre, and even – just occasionally – seasoned with some new thematic material.  

My first impression of Jacob’s Ladder was that especially with regard to the ‘Oriental-sounding’ scale it used (incorporating the minor third that occurs between the sixth and seventh notes of the harmonic minor scale), it bore a strong resemblance to gamelan music; I have since discovered that Steve Reich studied Balinese gamelan in 1973–74. In fact, he had earlier spent five weeks in Ghana learning from a master drummer by the name of Gideon Alorwoyie. Tehillim, a work composed in 1981, has – perhaps unusually for a Reich composition – a good deal of rhythmic interest. The word ‘tehillim’ actually means ‘psalms’, and in it Reich draws on his Jewish heritage. The piece is the result of his extensive research into modern Hebrew speech, ancient Psalmic prosody and Jewish cantillation traditions (‘cantillation’ meaning ‘the ritual chanting of prayers and responses’).

Here is a recording of the first of the four parts of Tehillim, which is scored for four female voices and a selection of instruments plus occasional clapping. To my mind it sounds as though it is drawing upon an ancient musical idiom of some kind.

The sung text of Jacob’s Ladder is once again a religious one, being taken from the Book of Genesis – where (in 28:12) we have the following: ‘And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels [or ‘messengers’] of God were ascending and descending on it.’ (If I may be permitted the indulgence of another learned footnote, the word ‘angel’ is derived from the Greek word for ‘messenger’.) The text is in fact sung in Hebrew; the idea of a ladder, meanwhile, is represented in the music by means of a constant succession of rising and descending figures.

The Boosey & Hawkes website reproduces a quotation from Steve Reich in which he describes Jacob’s Ladder in the following terms:

The instrumental music interprets the movement of messenger/angels going up, down, or pausing on a ladder (or ladders) between heaven and earth; a musical interpretation without words. Probably as a result of thinking of the ‘notes as messengers,’ I ended up with a little more than half the music purely instrumental. The voices return at length, however, in the final section.

After the work’s first performance at the David Geffen Hall, New York, in 2023, a critic writing in The New York Times offered the following opinion: ‘The 20-minute new piece burbles with a steady, propulsive rush... brightly etched... lilting vividness’. A piece in the New York Classical Review, meanwhile, focussed on the impression Reich’s work often gives of being a throwback to what I described earlier as an ‘ancient musical idiom’, saying: ‘As new and sharply defined as Jacob’s Ladder was, it had perhaps the strongest early music feel of anything from Reich.’

The performance of Jacob’s Ladder in Istanbul, a Turkish première conducted by Sibil Arsenyan, involved (in addition to a vibraphone, a piano and a number of woodwind instruments plus a small string section) the four singers who make up ‘Synergy Vocals’ – Tara Bungard (soprano), Micaela Haslam (soprano), Benedict Hymas (tenor) and Ben Alden (tenor). Synergy Vocals took shape in 1996, when Micaela Haslam (who at that time was a member of the celebrated Swingle Singers) was approached by the London Symphony Orchestra to sing in Tehillim. She then formed a group, and her association with Steve Reich continued with performances by this outfit of his Three Tales and other works. In fact, at the concert on June 8 we heard very little of the singers, who were ranged at the back of the stage, behind the orchestra. In recordings of the work, their voices are much more prominent. Perhaps their microphones at the Süreyya Opera House should have been turned up a little higher.

To me, Jacob’s Ladder came across as a piece with a complex and interesting texture in which the voices, especially the soprano ones, blended in well with the instruments (Mr Reich seems to be good at vocal settings), and in which variety was provided by changes of timbre. On occasion, there were even changes of key – quite a radical departure for a composer who relies so heavily on constant repetitions of the same chord. The function of the piano seemed to be to firm up, if not actually to be the main provider of, the bass line, while in the parts where the vibraphone came to the fore I found similarities to the music of the late Frank Zappa, whose compositions achieved something of Reich’s brightness and vividness of tone.

Without further ado, I will allow you to form your own judgement of Jacob’s Ladder. In this performance from February 2024 we hear L’Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of George Jackson, accompanied once again by Synergy Vocals.

The piece was co-commissioned by a number of institutions: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Festival O/Modernt (an event held in Stockholm whose motto is ‘Invent the Past; Revise the Future’), Fundação Casa da Mùsica (a foundation from Porto, Portugal), Radio France, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the İKSV Istanbul Music Festival and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. It was perhaps thanks to the involvement of these last two bodies that at the Opening Concert of the İKSV Festival a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ was made to Steve Reich, who was unfortunately unable to be present in person owing to health issues. (I wish him Geçmiş olsun.)

So I congratulate the İKSV and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra for choosing Steve Reich as a contemporary composer to highlight at the Istanbul Music Festival. Jacob’s Ladder made an appropriate conclusion to a programme consisting of stark contrasts, and is variety not the spice of life? I did not hear any frogs as I redescended Söğütlüçeşme Caddesi towards the station, and although feeling uplifted by the concert, did not feel at all like an angel going down a ladder. A few days later, however, as I walked along the road that goes from the station towards the lower outskirts of Moda, running parallel with the Kurbağalıdere Stream, I thought I heard one croaking valiantly despite the intense pollution in the waterway. (I mean a frog, of course, not an angel.) That frog should have a statue erected in its honour, I thought to myself.