NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Children giggle and recite poetry. There‘s the sound of something burning from which a melody arises like smoke from ashes. A lonely voice recounts a failed attempt to visit a relative‘s gravesite. Sudden jolts of sounds of undetermined origin startle.
These are some of the ingredients of In Amber Shadows: Electro-Acoustic Music, released by Albany Records . The album by Vanderbilt University‘s Stan Link is an hour-long meditation on time and mortality.
The term “Electro-Acoustic Music” is the musical description of his sonic mélange that combines music, ambient noise and sometimes the literalism of a voice delivering a straightforward story.
“It has a lot to do with the attempt to create musical experiences out of not necessarily musical sounds,” said Link, assistant professor of the composition, philosophy and analysis of music at Vanderbilt‘s Blair School of Music.
“There‘s a drama in these pieces that has to do with the sequence of things that happen, from imaginary events to real soundscapes. Even though it‘s not always played out in notes or themes, it is to me still very musical in the way that it unfolds.”
In some ways, In Amber Shadows opposes how music is often heard and sold in 2006.
“I had a composition teacher who said, ‘Do the opposite of what everybody else is doing, and you won‘t be far wrong,‘” Link said.
Downloading has revived the single as the standard listening experience; In Amber Shadows is meant to be taken in as a whole. In an age where catchy hooks are so important they are being frantically recycled via sampling, Link‘s work rewards a stouter attention span from listeners.
And in a world of silly love songs and much exploitive popular art based on sex and violence, In Amber Shadows addresses deep questions about the significance of our lives and accomplishments in light of the vast scope of time that eventually wipes it all away.
“This is the dust of nine cities, royal as the poppy, each grown over the sediment of the last,” Link quotes John Balaban‘s poem “Hissarlik” in his selection of the same title. “Here the dust of Achaeans and of Priam‘s songs mingles with the shards and stones, the bones – remnants of slaves and lords.”
The poem is about the many layers of ruins above the legendary city of Troy. In another selection, “Terra Alta,” Link himself tells a true tale of searching and failing to find the grave of an aunt. He realizes that he‘s probably the last person who will ever attempt to find it.
“Ultimately, I guess my fascination with time is about death,” Link said. “It‘s about coming to terms with mortality. There‘s this kind of fading that happens, where at some point the last person who remembers you is going to be gone, and then you‘re not even a memory any more. It sounds very morbid. I think of it as very human.”
For Link, these thoughts don‘t prompt existential angst about the pointlessness of life.
Just the opposite.
“I think it makes it more precious, the fact that it‘s not repeatable and there‘s no going back,” he said. “The value of life is more precious because it is a very short span, but it‘s yours.”
Link first composed computer music as an undergraduate in the early 1980s, but didn‘t particularly like it. For one thing, the technology of the time was unwieldy, slowing progress. But after returning from three years of studying composition in Vienna, he found that exponential developments in technology had made it possible to compose computer music using a desktop computer.
An album by composer Paul Lansky called Smalltalk was an inspiration, as was the music and friendship of Alistair Riddell and Christopher Penrose.
Link, who continues to compose more traditional music, believes that computer-based music is expanding notions of the definition of music.
“There‘s nothing inherently musical about a violin over the sound of a bird or a taxicab or a whale or anything else,” Link said. “Music is not a type of sound. It‘s a type of attention that you pay to a sound. This kind of music is an opportunity to pay attention to different sounds in a way that will transform them into music.
“And because that change from sound to music happens through the power of listening, thoughts and wishes, it feels like a kind of magic.”
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu