Gavin Bryars

Gavin Bryars es un músico y compositor británico, destacado miembro del Colegio de Patafísica. Habiendo iniciado su carrera como contrabajista de jazz formando el célebre Joseph Holbrooke Trio junto a Derek Bailey y Tony Oxley, es a partir de 1966 cuando comienza a trabajar como compositor. Tras su paso por Estados Unidos y su trabajo con John Cage, aparecen las primeras influencias del minimalismo y la Escuela de Nueva York, que estarán presentes en toda su obra posterior.

A Man In a Room, Gambling | 25'
Gavin Bryars & Juan Muñoz (1992)

A Man in a Room, Gambling es un conjunto de composiciones de igual duración basadas en trucos de cartas, concebidas junto al escultor español Juan Muñoz. Originalmente encargado como programa de radio en 1992, se interpretó en directo en Madrid en 1996 y en los estudios Maida Vale de la BBC, Londres, en 1997, con Muñoz como lector y el Gavin Bryars Ensemble como intérprete.

La versión original fue escrita para cuarteto de cuerda, sumando un total de diez partes de cinco minutos cada una. La versión que presentamos ha sido compuesta especialmente para los cinco intérpretes actuales del Gavin Bryars Ensemble, seleccionando del total las siguientes cinco piezas:

Gavin Bryars acerca de A Man in a Room, Gambling:

«En 1992, Artangel me planteó la posibilidad de colaborar con el artista español Juan Muñoz en la creación de una serie de piezas para radio. Naturalmente, la idea de trabajar con un escultor en un medio no visual resultaba interesante y estimulante, sobre todo cuando resultó que lo que nos proponíamos era la idea de describir acciones, que en sí mismas implicaban ilusión visual y engaño, situándolas en un marco radiofónico.

Nuestra conversación sobre la radio reavivó mi interés por la obra de Glenn Gould, cuya particular visión en torno a las posibilidades creativas de las técnicas de grabación en la producción discográfica coincidía también con la concepción de la radio como medio creativo, la radio como música.

Para nuestro proyecto, que finalmente se tituló A Man in a Room, Gambling (Un hombre en una habitación, apostando), Juan escribió diez textos, en cada uno de los cuales describía una serie de trucos de cartas. Parte de este material fue extraído de los escritos del extraordinario canadiense S. W. Erdnase y, en especial, de su libro The Expert at the Card Table (El experto en la mesa de juego). Decidimos que cada uno duraría exactamente cinco minutos y se emitiría antes del último noticiario radiofónico de la noche, de modo que el programa, al menos en Gran Bretaña, tuviera una experiencia similar a la del boletín meteorológico de la BBC Shipping Forecast.

Por su parte, Juan imaginó a un oyente conduciendo por una autopista de noche, desconcertado por esta curiosidad fugaz y quizás enigmática, que es precisamente la forma en que la mayoría de los oyentes se enfrentaron al mencionado pronóstico marítimo.

Durante la grabación de la voz, Juan leyó cada uno de los textos a su propio ritmo y naturalmente cada uno tuvo una duración diferente, que varió entre 3 minutos y 4 minutos y 30 segundos. Por lo tanto, cada uno de los textos tuvo que ser manipulado de cara a ajustarlo al formato de cinco minutos establecido, así como para poder incluir la voz de Juan al comienzo y al final del programa diciendo “buenas noches” y “gracias y buenas noches”.

Asimismo, la música, como elemento fundamental, acompaña cada uno de los textos al mismo tempo, lo que confiere una textura unificadora tanto a cada pieza individual como al conjunto completo. Dicho conjunto se dividía en partes estructurales: un preámbulo descriptivo, la acción de coger las cartas, el desarrollo de la manipulación de las cartas y la conclusión de lo que se había logrado.

La música en este caso contribuía a intensificar el doble juego del estafador. Pese al esfuerzo del oyente por seguir las instrucciones descritas por Muñoz, ciertas frases melódicas contribuyen a una sutil distracción. El objetivo consiste en ofrecer al oyente una vaga impresión de lo que pudiera ser una acción dramática, creando durante estos cinco minutos la sensación de un cierto espacio imaginario…»

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet | 25'
(versión de cámara)
Gavin Bryars Ensemble (1971)

Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, considerada su obra seminal, está basada en una grabación que recoge a un vagabundo desconocido cantando una breve estrofa improvisada. La pieza está compuesta por cuerdas y metales que se superponen gradualmente y ha sido interpretada y adaptada en numerosas versiones, algunas de hasta doce horas de duración. Originalmente compuesta para su uso dentro de un documental, fue publicada en 1975 junto a The Sinking Of The Titanic por Obscure Records, el sello discográfico de Brian Eno.

Gavin Bryars acerca de Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet:

«En 1971, mi amigo Alan Power estaba rodando una película sobre personas sin techo en los alrededores de Waterloo y Elephant and Castle, en Londres. De entre todas las grabaciones realizadas durante el rodaje, algunas naturalmente no fueron incluidas. Por alguna razón, las escuché todas antes de que fueran desechadas. La gente hablaba de sus vidas, cantaban canciones sentimentales de borrachos, fragmentos de ópera a todo volumen.

De entre todos ellos me impresionó la conmovedora voz de un hombre, que casualmente no bebía, y cantaba “Jesus' blood never failed me yet” (“la sangre de Cristo no me ha fallado aún”). Además su voz coincidía con el tono de mi piano. Grabé un loop con este fragmento, escribí un sencillo acompañamiento y lo arreglé para un pequeño conjunto con una orquestación simple y gradualmente evolutiva. A lo largo de los años he hecho muchas versiones diferentes, desde para unas pocas personas hasta una orquesta completa y coro.

La finalidad de este acompañamiento no fue simplemente la de servir como apoyo a la voz de esta persona, reconociendo su dignidad y su fe sencilla. Más bien, sirve como un testimonio humilde de un espíritu optimista ante tal situación.»

Gavin Bryars is a British musician and composer, as well as a prominent member of the College of Pataphysics. Having begun his career as a jazz double bass player, in the celebrated Joseph Holbrooke Trio alongside Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley, he began working as a composer in 1966. Following his time in the United States and his work with John Cage, he began to show the first influences of minimalism and the New York School, which would be present throughout his later work.

A Man In a Room, Gambling (1992) | 25'
Gavin Bryars & Juan Muñoz

A Man in a Room, Gambling is a set of compositions of equal length based on card tricks, conceived together with Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz. Originally commissioned as a radio programme in 1992, it was performed live in Madrid in 1996 and at the BBC's Maida Vale studios in London in 1997, with Muñoz as narrator and the Gavin Bryars Ensemble as performers.

The original version was written for string quartet, comprising a total of ten parts of five minutes each. The version we present here has been specially composed for the five current performers of the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, from which the following five pieces have been selected:

Nº 1 Bottom Dealing | 5'
Nº 5 Sorting 3 Cards in a Pack | 5'
Nº 8 Getting Rid of Extra Cards | 5'
Nº 9 The Three-Card Trick — The Mexican Row | 5'
Nº 10 Dealing from the Bottom (reprise) | 5'

“In 1992 Artangel asked me to speak with the Spanish artist Juan Muñoz about a possible collaboration to create a series of pieces for radio. Naturally the idea of working with a sculptor in a non-visual medium was interesting and challenging, especially when it emerged that what we would be dealing with was the idea of describing actions which themselves involve visual illusion and trickery and to place them in a broadcasting framework.

Our discussion about radio resurrected my long-standing interest in the work of Glenn Gould, whose highly original approach to recording techniques in record production was paralleled by a vision of radio as a creative medium (Radio as Music). Radio is a beautiful medium for many reasons. It stimulates the visual imagination; the listener can move between casual and attentive modes of listening; it moves inexorably through time, as well as being used as a way of measuring clock time (timing an egg to the duration of a medium duration news bulletin). It can also function as ambience, and indeed for a great deal of the time this is the preferred mode of attention for the listeners of radio. On the other hand, everyday life can equally serve as an unfocused (ambient) activity while the radio itself is playing - the preparation of a meal during a radio play for example.

For our project, which was eventually called A Man in a Room Gambling, Juan wrote 10 texts, each one describing the manipulation of playing cards - dealing from the bottom of the pack, avoiding failure in the Three-Card Trick, how to palm a card and so on. Some of this material was culled from the writings of the extraordinary Canadian S. W. Erdnase and especially his book The Expert at the Card Table which contains some of the most perfectly constructed sleights of hand in card manipulation. We decided that each would last exactly 5 minutes and would be designed to be placed before the last radio News of the evening so that the programme, in Britain at least, would be experienced like our encounters with the Shipping Forecast, which is broadcast at four precise times during the day by the BBC.

For his part, Juan imagined a listener driving along a motorway at night being bemused by this fleeting and perhaps enigmatic curiosity, in fact precisely the way in which most listeners encounter the Shipping Forecast.

In recording the speaking voice, of course, Juan read each of the texts at his own pace and each one lasted a different length of time, varying in length from 3 minutes to 4 minutes 30 seconds. Each text therefore had to be manipulated both to make it fit the 5 minute format in terms of the overall duration and to establish precise conventions whereby at the start of the programme Juan would be heard to say Good Evening and at the end Thank you and Good Night.

In addition, and perhaps crucially, each of the texts is accompanied by music, at exactly the same tempo for each, giving an overall unifying texture to each five-minute piece and to the whole set. Like an apparently strict musical form the five minute whole is broken into structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.

The presence of the music also serves the additional function of intensifying the trickster's duplicity in the following way. When a listener is trying to follow the instructions he may encounter a passing melodic phrase in the accompanying music which takes his attention away from the description for a moment and once this happens he may be lost... The aim remains, as with the Shipping Forecast, to give the listener a hazy impression of what can be quite a dramatic activity and to generate in these five minutes a sense of an imaginary space….”

Source: Artangel * This is a modified and shortened version of the article that Gavin Byars wrote on Juan Muñoz for Parkett Magazine.

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971) | 25' | (Chamber version)
Gavin Bryars Ensemble

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, considered his seminal work, is based on a recording of an unknown homeless man singing a short improvised verse. The piece consists of gradually overlapping strings and brass and has been performed and adapted in numerous versions, some lasting up to twelve hours. Originally composed for use in a documentary, it was released in 1975 alongside The Sinking Of The Titanic by Obscure Records, Brian Eno's record label.

“In 1971 a friend, Alan Power, was making a film about people living rough in London, around Waterloo and Elephant and Castle. While filming he made a number of tape recordings, some synchronised with the film, he didn't need for his film and which were to be discarded. For some reason I listened to them all. People talked about their lives, sometimes they would break into drunken songs ‐ sentimental songs, loud operatic extracts.

One man, who didn't drink, sang "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." I was struck by his singing, which was very touching, in tune and musical, and also happened to be in tune with my piano. I made a loop from his singing, and wrote a simple accompaniment and arranged this for a small ensemble with a simple, gradually evolving orchestration. Over the years I have made many different versions ranging from just a few players to full orchestra and chorus.

The accompaniment, though, does not seek to draw attention to itself but forms a support to the old man's voice, respecting its dignified humanity and simple faith. It remains an understated testimony to (in spite of his situation) his optimistic spirit.”