It’s only natural that wonder violinist and sonar poet Malcolm Goldstein should have pieces written especially for him. Here is a bunch of them, composed with him in mind, and as you can see, by some of the foremost personalities in contemporary art music.

This was, I believe, the first CD out with Goldstein, who until then only had to vinyls out on his own label.

Let me first state that the layout of this CD is one of the finest I’ve seen, so an appreciating nod is headed in the direction of Randal Hunting!

The recording of the material was done at honorable Bregman Electro-Acoustic Studios at Dartmouth College under the direction of Jon Appleton and Larry Polansky, so it’s plain to see that everybody felt this was an important release, to chose a recording place and a recording staff like that!

Goldstein has been active many years, and has participated in many different activities since the 1960s. He soon became well known in avant-garde circles, but I imagine it took a while before he was more widely acclaimed. Personally I was acquainted with his art as late as the late 1980s through Swedish composer, musician and radio producer Folke Rabe, who knows them all, from Terry Riley to Malcolm Goldstein to Pauline Oliveros and knew late composers like Robert Erickson, Frank Zappa and Edgar Varèse.

I heard a piece by Goldstein in a radio series that Rabe produced and hosted, and my attention was immediately caught. I asked Rabe how to get hold of the music, and he gave me Goldstein’s address and told me to write. I did (an analogue letter, since this was before Internet and email!), and received the two vinyls from Malcolm Goldstein in Vermont. This keen interest that Goldstein evoked, and the contact I took with the producer of the show – Folke Rabe – to find Goldstein’s music, opened a crack for me too to sneak in, enabling me to do some art music radio shows myself, with works by for example Terry Riley, Om Kalsoum , Gilius van Bergeijk – and of course Malcolm Goldstein, plus a wild erray of electroacoustics.

This CD gets a head start on track 1, with a piece by John Cage; “Eight Whiskus”. Cage says that “Eight Whiskus” was based on a poem by Chris Mann, which Cage used to write eight mesostic haikus. Goldstein imagined the arrangement for solo violin, and Cage wrote the pieces in collaboration with Goldstein.
Goldstein adds that Cage had indicated bow articulations, pressure and bow positions on the string as well as wood of bow, harmonics, vibrato etcetera.

Cage has written some very tough pieces for the violin, like The Freeman Etudes, which have been recorded in their entirety by Irvine Arditti on Mode Records and János Négyesy on Newport Classics, and in part by Paul Zukofsky on Musical Observations. Malcolm Goldstein has recorded “Eight Whiskus” on another CD too, on Wergo, teaming up with Matthias Kaul on glass harmonica.

“Eight Whiskus” appears like sharp figures of lines in the surface of the deep winter ice of a Vermont lake that a skater has left to the afternoon dusk to play with. It’s shrill, sharp, jolly! “Eight Whiskus” in this winter ice vision is a good environment for little Kinglets (Regulus regulus), and I can see them pop like little peppercorns in consecutive little arches across the lake, to dry and frozen reeds on the other side. As so often with Cage, there is an Eastern touch here too, Zen-like, very meditative, like a completely focused and rested mind which realizes that life isn’t all that important, and his mind hovers hypnotically just above the ice out there, where these left-over skater signs in the ice take shape in Goldstein’s violin, slowly scraping the surface of the ice and the mind…

Malcolm introduces a composition of his own as track no. 2; “Sounding the Fragility of Line”, and the title is a good description of what you hear – a long fragile stretched out line, a little wobbly, again having something to do with an ice-skating vision, where a skater moves on his spare speed on one leg across that same Vermont lake, dragging his other foot toes down, so as to draw a sharp (and wobbly…) line with the tip of his skate. I recall another CD with these long stretchy sounds, almost Giacinto Scelsi-like, with the violinist Christina Fong from Grand Rapids in Michigan, where she interprets, with skill, John Cage’s “One 6” and “One 10”, a couple of his late Number Pieces.
Goldstein eventually gets more trance-like here, more frantic, more intent on cutting right through that damned ice, so he presses the bow right down, almost to the point of breaking, until he eases off again and slowly disappears into no-sound in the dusk at the farthest corner of the lake. I suspect he has a thermos flask with hot strong coffee hidden there…

I am fortunate to have another version of “Sounding the Fragility of Line”, recorded off the radio in Sweden, from a performance Goldstein did at Fylkingen in Stockholm back in 1991, which I now preserve on a private CD-R. That is also a top notch version, comrades!
Goldstein says about the piece that he wrote it in memoriam Morton Feldman. It is built around a series of pitches out of the letters in Feldman’s name. I have no idea how my Vermont Lake visions fit into that context, but then again, the mind as well as the music is endless (probably), and so scraping the ice or having a smoke with Morton might be equally relevant… And the title could as well be “Sounding the Fragility of Life”…

Pauline Oliveros’ contribution is track 3, titled “Portrait of Malcolm”.
Now this has a beginning more in line with some of the stuff on Malcolm’s first phonograms, the vinyls I talked about. We hear little prickly twists and turns of the bow, and shuddering thuds when the bow sort of bounces in a vibrating manner. However, sudden classical violin parts break in, or rather parts in the style of classical, romantic violin. Don’t settle down, though, comrades, because portrait (self-portrait, as it turns out…) of a person as diverse in thought and arts as Goldstein will pop a somewhat schizoid sounding object in your face. The typical, Goldsteinesque minuscule fractions of broken violin sounds – as if cut up by a computer software but actually performed live – immerse every tiny fraction of a second, until a sparse whistle seep out of the corner of the room, allowing another romantic artifact to dance around – only once – center stage… and so it goes on.

So, it’s called “Portrait of Malcolm”, but is a self-portrait of the man, and shows that he has some self irony, anyhow… Seriously, this is a frantically wonderful piece!
Here is how Oliveros describes the “composition”: “Portrait of ______ ” is performable as either a solo or ensemble piece. The performer’s own given name is entered in the blank for the title. Each performer receives the same set of materials for the performance except for the pitch material, which is unique for each performer. Each performer then renders a self portrait guided by the Portrait Mandala and instruction”. So be it!

Ornette Coleman’s piece is “Trinity”. Coleman reports that Trinity is the river that flows through his hometown (Dallas, maybe?). Goldstein adds that “Trinity” (the music) is a suite of many pieces, and that six of them appear here. The sequence in which they are played, and which ones are chosen, is up to the performer. “Trinity”, says Goldstein, is a collage of many melodies, notated in a traditional way, but embellished with harmolodic inferences, bending of pitches, extended bowing techniques etcetera.
It’s a very pleasurable piece to hear; somewhat in a sentimental or historically contemplating mood. You can sit on your front porch, wiggling your toes, as you listen, even maybe scratching your skull for dandruff – that’s ok. The music fits right into that. You name it, we like it!

“(gamelan) The Gold Stone” is the title Philip Corner chose for his piece for Malcolm. He has composed a series of “gamelan” pieces, taking off from his interest in Asian instruments, in a free-structured way, that at least I cannot deduce back to gamelan, but it may be the atmosphere the guy is talking about, or some other frame of mind that isn’t actually audible. The music is truly Goldsteinesque, though, with wonderfully nauseating glissandi, seasicking you all the way to some Asian port, I’m sure. Great stuff!

The concluding piece is “Koan” by veteran James Tenney. It starts up like “Viola” by Walter Fähndrich; i.e. in short repetitions of sounds, moving along in a slightly ascending motion, in a repetitious game bordering on the vile edge of minimalism. It is a moving piece, beautiful in its minuscule variations and microtonal progression. If you’re a jogger or a biker – I mean really devoted – this is what it feels like out on the round, after a few kilometers, when you’re in style, floating on by on your breath! Magnificent!
“Koan” was composed for Malcolm as early as 1971, to be included in a series of compositions called “Postal Pieces”, to be printed on postcards.

Holy smoke, folks, this CD is a great investment in adventurous and gratifying sound worlds. I hope it’s still accessible somewhere out there on the line…