Philip Glass’ early compositions from 1969 – «Music In Similar Motion», «Music In Contrary Motion», «Music In Fifths» and «Two Pages» – were written after Glass travelled to North Africa and India. They all employ the same process: the repetition of simple musical phrases that become more complex. Their extended length allows the sound to open up and take over the space – literally – until reaching a hypnotic sense of trance. Glass wrote these iconic minimalist compositions for solo musicians or chamber orchestras but they work much better when the music is played by richly timbered instruments combined with drones, like bagpipes.
French highland bagpipes master Erwan Keravec comes from Breton where bagpipes music is local traditional music. He is known for his duo Luft with Swedish reed master Mats Gustafsson and as a musician who established a repertoire of contemporary music for solo pipes like his incarnation of minimalist classics like «In C» of Terry Riley. He happens to be the first musician who imagined that Glass’ compositions are perfectly suited to bagpipes – Scottish bagpipes, bombards and binious. 8 Sonneurs pour Philip Glass proves he was absolutely right.
Keravec arranged the four compositions in a reversed order described by Glass, and for eight pipers, from the most complex to the simplest. The album opens with the most orchestral piece, «Music In Similar Motion», ornamented and phrased like a traditional dance, but devised like it can be played endlessly, with transformative successive instrumental entrances. Keravec’s arrangement begins with a pair of pipers, evoking traditional music, but when the whole pipers join the layered and repetitive, hypnotic-trance essence of this composition intensifies and occupies the whole space. The following «Music In Contrary Motion» was originally performed by Glass playing two continuous notes on the organ, alternating with each half-pattern. As the patterns become longer and longer, these notes grow progressively longer. Keravec’s arrangement contrasts the first note, played continuously by the bass C drones of the biniou and bagpipes, and the other six pipers who build a G note that gradually overwhelms the ensemble with its drone effect.
«Music in Fifths» uses two parallel voices, in F and C. Keravec split his ensemble in two to have this tricky movement of fifths at three different pitches: biniou, bagpipes, and bombards, that serves its continuous flow of trance-like effect. The last piece, «Two Pages», is arranged for bagpipes in C, biniou in G, bagpipes in G, and biniou in Bb. Each set of bagpipes swells the unison with its melodic phrase and develops the sound envelope by adding its drones. The ensemble recorded this composition in motion to highlight how its drone envelope changes and reveals the harmonics differently.
8 Sonneurs pour Philip Glass takes the work of a visionary, contemporary composer into an arresting journey, arranged by another visionary musician-composer who stresses that Glass’ music has deeper roots in the past.
Eyal Hareuveni
Erwan Keravec (bagpipe), Gaël Chauvin (bombard), Mickaël Cozien (biniou), Gweltaz Hervé (bagpipe), Erwan Hamon (bombaed), Guénolé Keravec (bombard), Vincent Marin (bombbard), Enora Morice (biniou)
