In due course, when her music has finally been disseminated and explored properly, and begun to be understood, i’m convinced Gloria Coates will be revealed not only as one of the most fascinating and unique musical voices of modern times, but also as one its most prolific recyclers. In the months before our unfortunately not-to-be Dialogue, i got more and more embroiled in the tangled labyrinth that is her oeuvre, painstakingly learning (or, at least, trying to learn) how one piece actually began life in another – or, just as often, several previous iterations – all while having to sidestep the vast amount of inaccurate information about her work that continues to proliferate online and in print. Coates was always seeing future opportunities for past music, one example of which is today’s Advent Calendar piece, Rainbow Across the Night Sky. Composed in 1991, the work originally featured a line-up of upper voices with a curious ensemble comprising string trio, musical saw (or flexatone) and timpani. A few years ago, EXAUDI’s James Weeks – seemingly one of the very few contemporary figures to recognise Coates’ importance – requested an a cappella arrangement of the piece, which was completed in 2022.
The piece features three ‘Cantos’, each of which eschews text in favour of constructed words exploring vowels and plosives. They’re clearly related, and one way of reading the piece is to regard it as following an ever more extreme behavioural trajectory. In the first Canto, Bisema Tuwamoh, those syllables are articulated haltingly, their pitches slowly smearing outwards, in the process occasionally alighting on conventional consonant chords (often 7ths). It’s mesmerising, and to my ear keeps bringing to mind illusions of early choral music. Halfway through, this is joined by the startling rasp of what sound like kazoos, merging with the singers to form a complex supra-vocal timbre with equal parts purity and impurity of tone (in its similarity to the hard, nasal edge of older instruments – particularly the crumhorn – this also strengthens its evocation of early music). A sense of movement reduces toward the end, as if all parts were coalescing from different angles to form an unusual but convincing cadence.
The second and third Cantos shift from careful shifting pitches to the glissandi which feature in so much of Coates’ music. In Canto 2, Vah, Voh, Batami, this feels like a contination of sorts from before, as the sliding notes again briefly form quasi-consonant chords en route, instantly moving away. The intensity increases significantly, the sopranos in particular sounding rather extreme, and partway through the buzzing sounds again make an appearance. The nature of the network of glissandi, as they always are in her work, is fascinating, with the balance of rising and falling continually in flux, along with their individual and overall dynamic weight. It’s especially engrossing near the end, when it appears as if every voice is caught in a downward spiral. The final chord is just as ambiguous as in Bisema Tuwamoh, a mid-register cluster that does and doesn’t convey finality simultaneously.
Canto 3, Tereje, Famara, takes the process to its limit, with the glissandi faster and more vertiginous than before. The singers are transformed into sirens in a primitive display of raw, wild sound. At least, they are for a time, yet the texture clarifies into something more nuanced, a curious mix of slow-moving lower layers which seem sombre, while the faster-moving upper layers continue the wild oscillations. The final moment captures and freezes this bifurcation in a widely-spaced, polarised chord that in this context comes as a cry of frenzied elation.
The world première of the a cappella version of Rainbow Across the Night Sky was given in December 2022 by EXAUDI conducted by James Weeks.
