6 December is Finland’s Independence Day, so today’s Advent Calendar piece is by Finnish composer Lauri Supponen. Continuo (which i briefly discussed earlier this year) is a short ensemble work, composed in 2021, that’s rooted in much earlier music, Frescobaldi’s Recercar con obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla. Supponen’s title can be read in various ways. There’s the obvious allusion to the Baroque basso continuo, though as the Frescobaldi is an organ work, it doesn’t require a continuo part. The word therefore more strongly indicates both the role of the Frescobaldi, acting as a foundation in which Supponen’s music is grounded, and, more significantly, the way the ensemble behaves, seeking doggedly to continue in what seems to be an ever more arduous process.
Continuo begins and ends in noise. At the start, it has no more substance than simple ambience, into which infinitesimal traces of pitch can be made out. A sense of pulse slowly materialises, along with indications of melody and harmony, though held in check by a mid-register drone that renders movement somewhat static and progressions moot. The echoes we hear of the Frescobaldi are confused, they overlap and intermingle, and perhaps as a response to this there’s a demonstrative increase in intensity, as if the ensemble were strenuously trying to straighten things out. Things get more noisy as a result, and while there’s a short-lived moment of genuine clarity (~3:34), this strain (in every sense) breaking through is surrounded by detritus and mess. The clarinet squeals in a final, laboured effort at staying true to the Frescobaldi, whereupon the piece collapses back into noise, closing in a series of not so much blasts as enervated shrugs of blank sound.
It’s important to note that Frescobaldi’s piece is fascinating; its title translates as “Ricercar with obligation to sing the fifth part without touching it”, the implication being that a non-notated, fifth part can be deduced from the work’s notated four-part texture. He adds to the mystery by writing the phrase “Intendami chi può che m’intend’ io” (“Let him understand me who can; for I understand myself”) at the start of the score, perhaps indicating that only a few will be able to understand the music sufficiently to figure out that fifth part. This bestows on Supponen’s Continuo an additional layer of intrigue – a possibly doomed attempt by the ensemble to get to the heart of that secretive fifth voice?
This performance of Continuo was given by Defunensemble at the Estonian National Museum, in Tartu, on 1 May 2024.
