Gerald Barry (b. 1952) is well known for his theatre music; his latest opera, Salome, will premiere in 2024. His chamber music has also proved pivotal, in terms of reception and in developing language for larger works. The pieces collected on In the Asylum range from piano solo on up to piano quartet, and there are both miniatures and a hefty violin and piano duo. Barry's penchant for quotation, including self-quotation, is in full force, as are the surprising twists and turns of genre, texture and dynamics that typify his music.
Repeated chords and single notes provide a knotty texture in 1998 (1998). Barry describes it as ‘explosive’, and the ostinati are certainly that. The harmonic language overlays dissonant collections with a strand of early Romanticism. Barry even sneaks in a few sped up Beethoven quotes. This hybridisation of harmony and gestures provides music in which there is an uneasy tension between different demeanors that eschew conventional development for constant morphing of gesture within the aforementioned boundaries. The music speeds up and slows down like an errantly timed music box. As the piece progresses, the texture thickens and explosiveness is foregrounded.
Barry plays All day at home busy with my own affairs (2015), which has a primarily duo texture in dissonant counterpoint with chordal accents. The music is in moto perpetuo, taking on a pedestrian quality. In Salome, the same music is interpolated but played with far greater menace. It ends with a puckish minor-third gesture that is then picked up in the next piece. Barry proves to be an eloquent interpreter of his own music.
Violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea perform Midday (2014), with its own inexorable ostinati of minor thirds and repeated notes interspersed with rests. Two thirds of the way in, bass clusters and repeated unisons appear and announce an entirely different texture, in which disparate chunks of material are played between even longer rests. Instead of minor thirds, fourths and minor seconds abound, accompanied by low-register chords. Minor thirds, in a lower register than before, and repeated notes return in the final section and the texture once more thins out. The repetitions are not concluded with any sort of cadence point; they simply stop. Morgan and Dullea have a keen sense of pacing and allow the rests to spaciously resonate.
In Le Vieux Sord (2008), Barry allows his mischievous streak full reign. A solo piano piece, it is a manic, polytonal traversal of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Searing clusters and stretched out versions of the melody alongside a boisterous accompaniment make for an ironic setting of this golden oldie. There is an Ivesian cast to the clusters and bumptious demeanor. Dullea plays the piece both for humour and virtuosity with a muscular approach entirely in keeping with the material.
Baroness von Ritkart (2010), for violin and piano, consists of three minute-long miniatures of a far gentler demeanour than the surrounding music. It takes until the third movement for the piece to rise above piano. Once again, little cells of repeated material are interspersed with rests – an aphoristic, but fetching, little triptych. Morgan and Dullea shift gears seamlessly.
The title work, written in 2000 for violin, cello and piano, adds cellist Adi Tal to the proceedings. It begins with a hushed, wayward violin melody that soon rises to forte and is accompanied by a cello countermelody and chordal stabs from the piano. Disjunct intervals of an expressionist character are the order of the day here, with Barry exorcising his Bergian impulses. A brawling welter of clusters interrupts, only to be followed by the opening's soft music. A compound-metre dance is next, with the three instruments connected in a lockstep rhythm. A slow, lyrical passage succeeds this, only to be thrust aside by a brusque series of violent eruptions. The dance, delicate again and at half speed, with regular interruption from sforzando piano chords, is ultimately overwhelmed by a boisterous double time of the dance and then a brief kaleidoscopic presentation of the various shards of music to close. In the Asylum uses juxtaposition to illustrate the emotional challenges of psychiatric patients. Its sharp formal shifts create a paradoxical intent: violent music that elicits compassion. Morgan, Tal and Dullea enact this emotional juxtaposition with fervent playing and strongly articulated dynamic contrasts.
Ø made a positive impression upon its premiere in 1979 and was a piece, alongside ‘____’, that brought Barry to the attention of audiences and the musical establishment. Here in an arrangement for viola, cello and piano, it begins with a long section of slow, winding melodies and pregnant silences. Suddenly, a modal, angular melody in stentorian octaves in all three instruments replaces this music. A gigue using the same melodic material provides a flourish at the end of the piece. Ø's shocking conclusion is likely what drew many listeners to the idea that his was a distinctive voice willing to explore unconventional formal designs to craft pieces of compelling individuality.
The Fidelio Trio play the final work on the recording, Triorchic Blues (1990). Heterophonic motives are taken at a brusque dynamic and galloping pace, with lines ascending at the beginning of each phrase, only to be succeeded by still others in motoric fashion. There's nothing overtly bluesy about the piece, but once again Barry uses his minor-third motto (G–Bb, frequently transposed) as a little doffing of the cap. All of a sudden, everything pulls back to a soft incarnation of the ostinati, doing a final build to an abrupt conclusion.
In the Asylum demonstrates the versatility, interest in form and, above all, imaginative sense of play that typify Barry's music. In highly detailed performances that highlight contrasts in the music, the recording provides a compelling collection of Barry's chamber music.
