DRAM News

Released by New World Records in 1998, Mary Jane Leach's Ariadne's Lament (NW 80525) draws on several sources of inspiration. The music reflects her love of early music—particularly its polyphony and modal harmonies. However, Leach's modal writing is adapted to a twentieth-century aesthetic: melodies and harmonies are treated more freely; focus is on the prolongation of a fixed collection of notes; and while the traditional treatment of consonance and dissonance is largely maintained, dissonances are permitted to float and persist in ways once unthinkable. So while she pays homage to the past, Leech's music has a freshness that is unmistakably modern.

Two of the pieces take their musical material directly from Renaissance works: Ariadne's Lament from Monteverdi, and Tricky Pan from the fourteenth-century poet and composer Solage. In Ariadne's Lament, Leach uses and elaborates upon fragments from Monteverdi's Lamento d'Ariana. The influence of early music is also evident in other ways. Like scores of the Renaissance, Leach's scores are free of dynamic and expressive markings. Her connection to the past is apparent even in her choice of languages—early Italian and French, ancient Greek and Cretan.

Inspiration comes from more modern sources as well—for example, Leach's early experimentation with 8-track tape: "I'd written a number of pieces for me to perform using 8-track tape, and someone suggested I could get eight singers to perform the pieces (hence so many pieces for 8-part women's choir), and voilà, I became a "choral" composer." It was her fascination with multiple tracks that led her to adapt this medium to live players: The choral pieces on Ariadne's Lament all divide the chorus into eight independent parts.

Leach's music also reflects a long fascination with the acoustic properties of sound and how sound interacts with space, "I work more with sound phenomena, and combinations of tones that produce them." In many of her works she creates a sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are not tones actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities. "I also work with rhythm, but not in the traditional sense (note by note), but in the rhythm of the resultant sound, the frequencies; so the tempo is important, and should change according to the space performed in." Leach's harmonic language, which draws from traditional consonant harmony, "creates a lot of sound phenomena" (but, she adds, "not all—i.e., fourths don't work as well"). "Polyphony plays a part—with horizontal emphasis, rather than vertical, which helps when working with sound phenomena, since it helps to have staggered entrances, so that the sound phenomena don't stop, or drop out." In Ariadne's Lament this vocal layering creates a seamless fluidity of movement and sound.

Here is Leach's own description of the development of her style:

"In the late 1970s I was listening to a radio interview with Steve Reich, and a remark that he made stuck in my mind. Its gist was that composers couldn't rely on traditional venues and groups for performances, and that it was up to composers to arrange performances and/or perform themselves. About that time I was practicing playing or singing with tapes that I had made of myself performing. It had started out as an exercise in intonation, and ended up with a fascination for sound phenomena: difference, combination, and interference tones, especially with like or similar instruments. With Reich's advice in mind, along with my new interest in sound phenomena, as well as my interest in exploring the timbres of instruments, I began to write for instruments that I could play myself, primarily voice and bass clarinet.

"Since that time, my work has been concerned with exploring sound phenomena. Initially this was done in rather direct, almost linear, ways—writing pieces for multiples of instruments, or similar instruments, that I could perform myself, taking advantage of 8-track tape machines to make the pieces. My approach has been to work very carefully with the specific sound properties of the instrument I was writing for, qualities that change from instrument to instrument. Two developments that helped me to expand my approach were working with vocal ensembles that could perform my multitrack vocal works, and using the computer to write music. Using the vocal groups freed up the music, releasing it from the constraints of click tracks and the rigidity that resulted from making pieces on tape, opening up the sound of the pieces. By using the computer, I was able to start writing for instruments that I didn't play. Midi playback enabled me to hear the resulting sound phenomena of various instruments. Not only did this allow me to write for instruments that I didn't play, but it allowed me to write for combinations of instruments."

For many years, Mary Jane Leach has been involved in the "Ariadne Project," which focuses on the myth of Ariadne. In addition to the title work, three other works on this recording are part of this project: O Magna Vasti Creta, scored for women's chorus and string quartet; Song of Sorrows; and Call of the Dance.

Recently, Leach's tireless efforts on behalf of the late composer Julius Eastman led to the release of a three-CD set of his work on New World Records entitled Julius Eastman: Unjust Malaise.

Her music can also be found on the two discs Celestial Fires and Downtown Only. Leach's website also includes a wealth of information about her music, including sound clips, score excerpts, as well as a complete list of works.