When Innova instituted its The Henry Brant Collection,
Brant had amassed a library of more than 300 compositions, some stretching back to the 1920s, but had achieved practically no presence on CDs. A composer who wandered from campus to concert hall, assembling one-time compositions in vast, multi-spatial dimensions that often left behind an impression of confusion,
Brant went for the most part largely unrecognized as a force of contemporary music. Innova's series for the first time made clear that
Brant scored some impressive achievements across the broad span of time in which he worked and he was consistent in the quality of his work, remaining true to his heritage as an experimental composer. Not long after the eighth and ninth volumes of the series appeared, its subject passed away. The Henry Brant Collection, Vol. 9, was never intended as a summary or tribute; no expectation was made of
Brant's demise, as it was not apparent. It is another installment in the continuing series, though it contains three very strong pieces -- one early-middle period and two late -- that speak eloquently of
Henry Brant's gifts.
Ceremony (1954) is a striking, and probably historically important, work in the annals of American modernism. It is a quilt stitched together from phrases owing to 1920s-styled "big city" modernism, neo-classic gestures, a wordless vocal quartet straight out of
Darius Milhaud, and homegrown methods of pitch organization; in short, old-school American modern music summed up rather nicely in a single, 12-minute movement. This was right about the time the big push toward serialism began among American composers, and Ceremony is sort of a last gasp of the eclectic, idealistic period in American modernism when composers felt confident about going their own way and absorbing no more than what they liked from European modernism. The recording, from Santa Cruz University and featuring its resident symphony under Nicole Paiement, is a little quiet, but the performance is very good, even managing to capture some of the French-influenced performance style endemic to vintage 1954 ensembles.
Dormant Craters (1995) is hardly "dormant," being written for 16 spatially separated percussionists and designed for an outdoor summer concert at Lincoln Center. It is a true battery of percussion; many different things going on at various times in varying spatial locations. One wishes the recording, from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, under
Brant himself, preserved a bit more of the distance between instruments. However, Dormant Craters is a loony, lighthearted piece that your kids might even like, and percussionists will really love it.
Brant delights in percussion sound and even manages to work some steel pan into the mix, probably a first for a concert work. Homeless People (1993-1997), on the other hand, is a masterpiece, but definitely one intended for adult listeners. It is essentially a piano solo augmented with a string quartet scattered to the four ends of the hall; occasionally a lone accordion can be heard grinding away in the far distance. Homeless People is an intense, uncompromising, gut-wrenching experience that definitely evokes the aura of living in a cardboard box or under a highway overpass; it is almost as if
Brant personally identifies with the plight of the homeless indicated in the title. The recording, from the fourth Other Minds festival, is excellent and does manage to capture the spatial dynamics of
Brant's concept.
That The Henry Brant Collection, Vol. 9, fails to sum
Brant up, despite his death, is a good thing;
Brant is not ready to be summed up, and this volume contains some of the finest music in the series. While the composer may be gone, with any luck Innova's series will just continue on, as it should.