Eric Richards: The Bells Themselves

Spike Jones had a rank of chromatically tuned cowbells as part of the elaborate assemblage of junk and spare parts that made up his expanded drum kit. Most folks used to think Jones was a nut and that his music was the ne plus ultra of corn; but in the twenty first century, it isn't the least bit unusual for an ace percussionist to have a set of chromatic cowbells on hand; some instrument companies will even make you a set. This only goes to show that what one generation thinks is nutty can turn out to be part of the main course for subsequent ones. Experimental American composer Eric Richards has been plugging away at pursuing his particular muse since Jones was still alive and active, and yet New World Records' Eric Richards: The Bells Themselves appears to be the very first disc-length offering of his work to the public at large. He also uses a set of chromatically tuned cowbells in his piece finalbells (2002-2004), but in this case they are played -- struck, and in a sense bowed -- by plectra not available in Jones' day. There is nothing whimsical about the result, though -- finalbells is an eerie evocation of the dead, howling from the beyond. Right off the bat, this is one of the striking things about Richards' music; the end does not -- at least immediately, anyway -- betray the nature of the means.
Take for example Conch Music (1983-1984), which is scored for 11 oboes, played here by one oboist, Paul Schiavo, through means of multiple overdubs. The conch shell is one of the oldest instruments and oldest tools for long-distance communication. Not many of us would readily associate the reedy sound of the oboe to the breathy tone of a conch, but here Richards does achieve a kind of extended choir of conches through overlaying sustained oboe tones. The album's title is shorthand for The Bells Themselves: Jonathan Edwards and the American Songbook (1997-1999), a work for three pianos in which fragments drawn from popular Tin Pan Alley songs collide against one another in a bell-like, ringing sonority. "Jonathan Edwards" does not refer to Paul Weston's nom de guerre as accompanist to singer "Darlene" (actually Mrs. Weston, Jo Stafford), but to the Puritan of yore. Chicken Pull (1989-1992) utilizes 72 overdubbed clarinets and 4 whistles -- provided here by the composer -- to evoke a ceremony of the Keres-speaking Pueblo in the Southwestern United States. All of the seven pieces included stand as examples of Richards' interests in pulling a musical sleight-of-hand, even with the human voice; taking something simple and making it so that we can only barely recognize what we are hearing, but that it also corresponds to his personal vision.
Richards' music is somewhat compromised by recording technology, at least in an experiential way -- the oboe is upfront, so the sense of hearing the "conches" at great distance is only partly conveyed; to add artificial reverb to gain such effect would truly be corny. Listeners should experiment with listening to New World's Eric Richards: The Bells Themselve, listening to it very quietly or playing it back in the next room. While it is anything but conventional, Richards utilizes his little instruments and novel concepts to achieve pieces of uncompromising strength and no small amount of beauty -- something that might not have interested Spike Jones, but just might interest you.