Contre Plongée [six cuts for string quartet]

CD – Creative Sources Recordings - CS011, Lisbon 2003

There aren't many string quartets (named as such) in the world of free improvised music. Offhand I know of two - the Emergency String Quartet and the Quatuor Accorde, and unfortunately the latter has (temporarily?) disbanded, after one amazing release three years ago (Angel Gate, Emanem 4050). Ernesto Rodrigues, Gerhard Uebele, Guilherme Rodrigues and José Oliveira have deliberately chosen to avoid the quartet moniker (though "CS String Quartet" might have been nice, as a friendly nod maybe to Dominic Duval's CT String Quartet - itself now renamed), for the simple reason that Oliveira plays guitar - a stringed instrument, though not normally featured in a classical string quartet - but also the inside of a piano, which, as any school kid will tell you is technically a percussion instrument. The instruments of the conventional Western symphony orchestra have traditionally been divided into four categories: wind, brass, percussion and strings, but to quote a famous phrase of Steven Stapleton's, "categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided." The music on this album is a fine example of musicians doing just that: the sheer variety of playing techniques used here effectively puts paid to any meaningful differentiation between instrumental families as hitherto defined. On the violin, viola and cello, the actual area in which the bow is normally supposed to come into contact with the strings - between the bridge and fingerboard - represents but a tiny fraction of the total area of the instrument. Bowing slightly over the fingerboard is standard technique (sul tasto), as is bowing near the bridge (sul ponticello), but these musicians bow on and behind the bridge itself, behind the fingers, not to mention on the pegs, neck, tailpiece, back and sides of their instruments. Playing with the back of the bow (col legno) has been a special effect known to classical music since Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique", but here the frog of the bow and its metal binding are also used. And if that's not enough, the strings themselves can be prepared with any number of extraneous materials. It's as if these venerable instruments have been discovered anew, approached from an entirely different direction - hence the album title, borrowed from the world of photography - "contre-plongée" translates as "low-angle shot", and the associated expression "en contre-plongée" means "from below". What is equally clear from the music is that such a radical reappraisal of the possibilities of traditional instruments is not possible without an in-depth knowledge of their entire repertoire, including not only contemporary classical key works but also the brief but eventful history of free improvised music - including electronic improvised music. To quote another musician who redefined - reinvented, almost - his instrument, Keith Rowe: "Today there's an acoustic school influenced by electronics, [by] the way that electronics can be translated to an instrumental context. How could a trumpet player break through into something new? And suddenly, since Axel Dörner, they've done it! There are four or five trumpet players around who are really doing interesting stuff. Violin is yet to make a breakthrough. But I'm sure it's going to come. Someone will crack it."
With contre-plongée, Messrs. Rodrigues, Rodrigues, Uebele and Oliveira have not only cracked the violin, but exploded the whole concept of the string quartet. Check it out.

Dan Warburton

1. Cut 2 – 12’09’’

2. Cut 5 – 03’51’’

3. Cut 1 – 10’24’’

4. Cut 4 – 09’30’’

5. Cut 3 – 03’45’’

6. Cut 6 – 08’56’’

Ernesto Rodrigues – Violin, Viola

Gerhard Uebele - Violin

Guilherme Rodrigues – Cello

José Oliveira – Acoustic Guitar, Inside Piano

Recorded in October 2003, Lisbon
Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/contre-plong-e-six-cuts-for-string-quartet

Reviews

Admirável... é o adjectivo que demarca toda a acção deste quarteto de cordas protagonizado pelo violinista Ernesto Rodrigues (violino e viola); Gerhard Uebele (violino); Guilherme Rodrigues (violoncelo) e José Oliveira (guitarra acústica e interior de piano). Concentrado fortemente na penetração de espírito, muito por culpa dos momentos silenciosos entre as seis “precisas” peças que compõem este trabalho. «Contre-Plongée» coloca o ouvinte numa zona espaço-temporal neutra, tanto pelas referências imaginárias (por vezes complexas), como pelo sentido inesperado que os sons chegam a assumir. O paralelismo com o cinema aqui expresso (mais precisamente com a técnica fotográfica contre-plongée), faz com que a “acção vista pelo ângulo inferior” dos instrumentos crie inúmeras possibilidades sonoras emitidas através das cordas. Conseguindo fazer com mestria qualquer coisa de novo neste campo, Ernesto Rodrigues respeita enormemente a sua identidade musical cada vez mais determinada e apurada. Carlos Lourenço (NewJazzImprov)

Not taking its instrumentation into account, this album lands squarely within Ernesto Rodrigues’ average -- a demanding, intriguing and fascinating studio session, but not as gripping or involving as his previous release, the wonderful «Cesura». But as a new proposition for the string quartet format, it makes a much more powerful statement. This is not a string quartet in the traditional sense: there are two violins, one viola and one cello, but Rodrigues plays both violin and viola. The fourth player is José Oliveira, usually a percussionist in Rodrigues’ projects, but here playing acoustic guitar (often prepared) and occasionally scraping the strings of a nearby piano. «Contre-Plongée» is a French photo/cinema expression meaning “low-shot angle” or, within a sentence, “from below.” “From within” would have been more appropriate: surrounded by the scratching, tapping, brushing and -- yes -- occasional bowing, the listener has the distinct impression of sitting within one of the instruments -- or at the very least in the middle of the quartet, with the musicians sitting very close. The fact that the six pieces are titled “Cut1”, “Cut2”, etc., that they are presented in non-chronological order and that a graph at the back of the booklet puts them in sequence all imply that the music comes from a single 49-minute improvisation, broken down into six cuts and reassembled in a different order. If that is so, the editing job is seamless and the resulting “piece” makes as much (if not more) artistic sense than the original (and by programming the tracks in their namesake sequence, one can easily make the comparison). The whole piece is dense despite its ample use of silence, abstract and mysterious [...] François Couture (AMG)

I've always thought that most music including Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues - here exchanging sounds with Uebele's violin and Oliveira's inner piano and guitar - has a very definite "nocturnal" feel. Crawling and silently morphing into multiform spirits, this is a reproduction of what your mind and body experience during those moments when you revolve around yourself without finding a solution for anything. The vibration of metal and wood according to canons of unexpected aesthetics is lightly touching and concretely nerve-stimulating. The air is carved via those instrumental oddities that one wouldn't even expect to be used; instead, they reveal all their magic precisely at the due moment. It's like a rheumatic fever - bones crackling and all the rest - but the very same cause of discomfort rapidly becomes a much desired presence in the room. This quartet manages to reduce everything to a dire need of something, without knowing what that "something" actually is. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

O mais recente título do violinista/violista Ernesto Rodrigues, com os repetentes Guilherme Rodrigues e José Oliveira mais um segundo violino, Gerhard Uebele, é decididamente uma pedrada no charco. E isto porque o que aqui se faz é redefinir todo um padrão, o do quarteto de cordas de câmara. Não só devido à circunstância de uma guitarra acústica preparada e de o interior de um piano serem chamados a intervir, tocados por um percussionista (Oliveira), o que desde logo introduz um elemento perturbador na equação, mas sobretudo por se reduzirem as funções do quarteto e de cada um dos instrumentos (e instrumentistas) às suas parcelas mais essenciais. «Contre-plongée» apresenta-nos uma música celular, diminuta (apesar de extraordinariamente tensa, pelo que não deve ser confundida com as actuais práticas reducionistas) e como que feita de estilhaços, e só não a podemos anunciar como a comprovação da morte de uma instituição histórica como é o quarteto de cordas porque, na verdade, é esta que celebra, ampliando-lhe a natureza e levando-a, quiçá, para o futuro. Todos os aplausos são devidos, portanto. Rui Eduardo Paes (JL)

Nel gioco di incontri, collaborazioni e interscambi, il caso (o per meglio dire: la volontà del boss Ernesto Rodrigues) ha voluto che questa fosse la volta dello string quartet; non pensate, però, al classico quartetto d’archi perché gli artisti della Creative Sources dimostrano con questo lavoro di non voler seguire la tradizione, tutt’altro. Gli ‘strings’ di cui parliamo vanno infatti intesi propriamente come strumenti a corde e quindi non solo gli archi rappresentati da violino, viola o cello, suonati rispettivamente da Ernesto e Guilherme Rodrigues e da Gerhard Uebele ma anche la chitarra e l’inside piano (perché non di tasti si tratta, ma appunto delle corde all’interno del piano) di José Oliviera. Ha ispirato questo lavoro, la tecnica del ‘contre-plongée’; le inquadrature dal basso (è questo il riferimento del titolo) danno del soggetto un punto di vista diverso, uno sguardo quasi deforme e chissà se per questo disco i quattro portoghesi non abbiano voluto applicare questa tecnica alla musica e offrirci quindi la loro visione deviata dello string quartet. Punto di partenza ancora una volta l’improvvisazione nel suo l’approccio regolato sulle coordinate che dai AMM porta ai nmperign e a tutti coloro i quali cercano nuove soluzioni sonore tramite l’uso non canonico degli strumenti. Siamo alla presenza di sei tracce, sei tagli, come li chiamano loro, sei sequenze fotografiche realizzate e poi montate in ordine non numerico (ho provato ad ascoltare seguendo l’ordine ma non mi pare che cambi granché l’ascolto). Le strutture sono precarie, si reggono quasi per miracolo, il suono è secco, ruvido e stridente, le corde vengono pizzicate, percosse, grattate e tirate al limite; non solo AMM ma anche Cage e Bailey, soprattutto nella parte conclusiva. Una musica concreta che gioca più del solito col silenzio, in certi passaggi quasi fosse non amplificato e quindi al limite dell’udibile ed è ancora una volta un bel disco targato Creative Sources. Per chi ne avesse bisogno nel libretto vengono riportate le attente note di Dan Wanburton, ennesimo attestato di stima per una nuova prova di maturità di questi interessanti artisti portoghesi. Alfredo Rastelli (Sands-Zine)

On «Contre-Plongée», Rodrigues (violin, viola), Uebele (violin), Rodrigues (cello) and Oliveira (inside piano) continue the radical reinvention of music for strings that has dominated most of the releases on Creative Sources to date. As one component of their exploration of the possibilities of their instruments, the group bring into play extended playing techniques whose exploitation of new gestures and surfaces will doubtless chill the blood of any listener whose notions of musical probity remain defined by the dusty residua of the classical and romantic eras. However, what makes this and other recordings by the string players grouped around Creative Sources especially interesting is the combination of an avant-garde instrumentalism that embraces and develops the innovations of such figures from the world of new music as Helmut Lachenmann with a thoroughgoing repudiation of any element of control by documentary scores, the imperatives of indeterminacy, or other compositional devices. This use of advanced techniques (and a few more conventional sounds) in a free improvised context is seen to good effect on «Contre-Plongée». I suspect that the musicians have produced more extreme performances in their time; however, the quartet is alert, engaged, and responsive, and over the course of each of the six improvised "cuts" the collective interactions and constructions that comprise the group's extemporised dialogue prove consistently subtle and invigorating. «Contre-Plongée» is an excellent release that deserve a wide hearing. Wayne Spencer (Paris Transatlantic)

Time for some ass kissing. I’m an Ernesto Rodrigues fan. He is one of the only artists out there who can use minimalism in music and still paint an audio picture that I can understand. Yes, this is one of those recordings where you need to turn the volume up a little and wait for the sounds to come in when they feel like it. On this one, Ernesto joins a very unconventional “string quartet.” Unconventional because the instruments are not played in the fashion that they are traditionally employed. Not only that, but the inside “strings” of a piano are played as a string instrument. Neat aye? Well, add to that an improvisational session with all of these oddities just screeching and clawing their way in and out of existence in seconds flat, and you got yourself a real winner. (Neo-Zine)

Na sua obra “A Linguagem Cinematográfica”, o crítico e teórico de cinema Marcel Martin advoga que os ângulos de filmagem podem adquirir um significado psicológico particular. Segundo este autor, o plano contrapicado ou contre-plongée “dá em geral uma impressão de superioridade, de exaltação e de triunfo, porque engrandece os indivíduos e tende a magnificá-los, recortando-os no céu até os aureolar nas nuvens”.
Salvaguardando as devidas distâncias, não será de todo descabido estabelecer-se um paralelismo entre esta elucubração de Martin e estoutro “contre-plongée” que nos é proposto por Ernesto Rodrigues e seu quarteto. Com efeito, e mesmo correndo o risco de passar despercebido ou mesmo incógnito na vasta galeria que é hoje a oferta discográfica na área da improvisação, é um plano de destaque que esta nova etapa de Ernesto Rodrigues merece. Estamos perante uma proposta estética arrojada, actualíssima e palpitante, onde se abre um leque de possibilidades verdadeiramente livres e infinitamente variáveis.
Sendo esta música improvisada, somos no entanto remetidos para alguma da produção erudita dos últimos quarenta anos, em particular para a obra de compositores que escreveram quartetos de cordas, como por exemplo Penderecki, Nono ou Scelsi.
O espectro de Penderecki é-nos sugerido neste trabalho nos métodos inovadores de processamento de sons e profundidade de expressão dramática que caracterizam os seus primeiros quartetos. De Nono, “contre-plongée” reporta-nos às construções agrestes, rarefeitas e etéreas do único quarteto de cordas do compositor veneziano: “Stille-Fragmenti”. Quanto a Scelsi, sentimos no ar o ascetismo e intensidade que pautam não só os seus quartetos como a generalidade da sua obra.
Não obstante a heterogeneidade de referências que podemos encontrar na música erudita, a proposta estética de Rodrigues e seus pares preserva intacta a aura própria da criação espontânea. E, nesta perspectiva, encontramos uma certa correspondência com o que tem feito ultimamente um Chris Burn à frente do seu Ensemble, não tanto pelo registo ainda próximo do “near-silence”, mas essencialmente pelas ricas propriedades microscópicas desta música.
É certo que “contre-plongée” é uma obra de difícil audição, e que exige o máximo de concentração por parte do ouvinte. Mas não é menos certo que o esforço é, sem dúvida, gratificante! João Aleluia (All Jazz)

The musicians here hail from Lisbon, Portugal -- and are all trained traditionally enough to know of the regard followers of so-called classical music hold string groups, especially if they’re playing say, Beethoven or Schubert. Yet the unorthodox explorers aren’t content to have this major contribution to musical culture shoved into a sound museum.
Non-standard instrumentation helps the cause on the CD. The Portuguese quartet is led by Ernesto Rodrigues on violin and viola, who has played with local flautist Carlos Bechegas and Italian saxist Gianni Gebbia among others, and who cites electronic music as an influence on his acoustic violin playing. The other group members, violinist Gerhard Uebele, cellist Guilherme Rodrigues and José Oliveira on acoustic guitar and inside piano, have extensive playing history with local and international improvisers.
When the penultimate cut of CONTRE-PLONGEE is “Cut 3” and the disc begins with “Cut 2” you figure there has been some rearrangement after the fact. However the four musicians possess such a communality of improvisational thought that no awkward fissures are apparent. What is conspicuous by its absence, though, is the sort of virtuostic clamor that longtime experimenters [...]. Instead, the Lisbon installation is organic, with even the extended techniques such as col legno and sul ponticello used subordinated to pointillism rather than displayed for histrionic statements. Call this a symphony of scratches.
Like most reductionist music, of course, there are many instances when particular timbres can’t be attributed to specific instruments. On “Cut 2”, for instance, wood banging resonation is heard, and at the end of “Cut 3” there’s a basso voice that could come from a tugboat whistle, though no oral instruments are cited. Similarly “Cut 4” features cymbal-like resonation from something other than percussion, and throughout the CD, a spreading mechanical glissando shimmers in the background.
All during the program, prolonged silences give way to insect-like plinks, squeals and scratches, often as the result of pizzicato as well as arco activities. Oliveira, who works frequently with Ernesto Rodrigues, may feature his guitar here, but the suspicion remains that some of the flailing flat picking and rasping come from one of the other strings or internal piano wires.
Other favorite tones include a pizzicato continuum that backs rotating bottom tones, wood rending scrapes, spiccato raps on the lower strings, intermittent plucks and single fingertip prods on a string instrument’s necks for split-second sound-making.
All of this cumulates in “Cut 6”, where solo flat picking and what sounds like paper being crumbled meets motorized cylindrical tones and the internal ruffling of piano strings. Bell-ringing touches from beneath the guitar’s bridge and high-pitched, tinkling piano notes meld polyphonically with the col legno bowed instruments until the piece concludes with silence.
Traditional chamber music followers probably would deny that designation to this CD. But the committed musicians here are giving that old form new life, or is it lives? Ken Waxman (One Final Note)

El cuarteto de cuerdas representa una de las cumbres de la expresión musical en la tradición musical europea (la “música clasica”). Ese mismo formato, en la libreimprovisación electroacustica, poco tiene que ver.
La nueva entrega del clan Rodrigues pone de nuevo de manifiesto que la onda portuguesa va más acelerada que la minimalista berlinesa que es la que ha marcado estilo e indicado la dirección. Para entendernos, lo de los lusos sería algo asi como el minimal barroco.
Carente de discurso lineal, los temas-improvisaciones toman cuerpo de la yuxtaposición-interacción-superposición-encadenado… de los frotamientos-roces (accidentales o deliverados)-deslizamientos… que sufren las cuerdas y los soportes de estas (ya que se trata de un cuarteto de cuerdas).
De lo anecdótico al caos pasando por momentos dignos de documental. Otra experiencia de los Rodrigues. Jesus Moreno (TomaJazz)

Since Ernesto Rodrigues started his Creative Sources label somewhere in the mid-90s he put a very clear stamp on improvised music. Each new record illustrates his specific approach of improvised music and is a further enrichment of his musical world. His improvisations are very much about exploration of sound and texture, always in the context of groupimprovisation. Because of this, unconventional playing techniques in order to create new sounds are a common factor by all musicians involved. Of course they not working on a catalogue of sounds that can be draw from the violin, etc. First of all we have to deal here with delicate improvised music.
The soundworlds created by him and his mates are always more close to the abstractness of electro-acoustic music or John Cage then to improvised jazz music. This is also the case for the CD I want to introduce now.
[…] The same can be said for "Contre-plongée" that was recorded in the same month as 'Dorsal": october 2003 at Tcha Tcha Tcha Studios in Lisbon. Again we hear Rodrigues on violin and viola, accompanied by Gerhard Uebele (violin), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello) and José Oliveira (acoustic guitar, inside piano). It is subtitled as [six cuts for string quartet], so I’m inclined to think that the cuts are taking from one session. According to information on the cover the cuts seem not to be in a chronological order on the cd, for some reason that I cannot determine. So if you want you can “restore” the original sequence. The dynamic third part is originally the opening piece of their session. Compared to 'Dorsal' the music is darker and more introvert here. Allthough I experienced a lack of tension at some moments, at other moments the four built something fascinating and beautiful together. It may seem a paradox, but in spite of their radical approach the music is 'unspectacular' at
first hearing and wants to be good friends with silence. But don't let this be misunderstood, because both cd's as also his earlier work proof that Rodrigues is a very interesting improviser and creator of a very human music.Dolf Mulder (Vital Weekly)

The Portuguese label Creative Sources has been releasing a formidable array of CDs of late – since 2004 alone, a dozen and counting. The titles are teasingly cryptic, the cover-art spare and beautiful; the music itself is ultra-minimalist improv, of a kind that, even though it involves acoustic instruments rather than laptops and the like, will probably appeal more to followers of the electroacoustic improv scene than fans of “traditional” free improvisation. Contre-Plongée is a “string quartet” album of sorts, featuring the father/son team of violinist/violist Ernesto Rodrigues and cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, plus violinist Gerhard Uebele and – no, not another fiddle, but José Oliviera on guitar and inside-piano. An earlier CS release was entitled Cesura – meaning both “cut” and “scar” – and the theme continues on Contre-Plongée, whose improvisations are dubbed “cuts.” The aesthetic is austere rather than lacerating, however: uneasy assemblages of rustles and whimpers and langorous rubbings, the musicians faintly grazing the surface of their instruments rather than penetrating further inside. Very rarely, a gesture sticks up out of the musical fabric – the little mew that pops up several times on cut 1, for instance – but for the most part the music is persistently quiet and undramatic: nothing really happens, yet something’s always happening. [...] it’s nonetheless an intriguing release that, as its title suggests (“en contre-plongée” means “from below,” as in a low-angled camera shot), offers a fresh perspective on string-quartet language. Nate Dorward (Bagatellen)

Avec beaucoup de patiente, les quatre instrumentistes transforment le silence en résonance et font jaillir d'elle des éclats qu'ils nouent plus ou moins lâchement. Tous les types de jeu et d'action sur l'instrument sont envisageables, le passé instrumental a perdu son évidence, l'instrument est abordé comme un nouveau-né. Les quatre instruments se trouvent donc transformés en caisses résonnantes qui réagissent à des ébranlements en réalité ou dans l'imaginaire, ces jeux conservent une part des capacités mélodiques des instruments; les trames musicales obtenues, à la fois percussives et mélodiques sont donc passionnantes, comme un violon qui posséderait une batterie: loin de la lettre, quelque chose de l'esprit de Max Roach. Noël Tachet (Improjazz)

Tout un monde de cordes triturées dans tous les sens pour faire découvrir une autre palette sonore autour d'une orchestration classique. Et tout cela dans une tension permanente. Jerôme Noetinger (Metamkine)

Ernesto Rodrigues (violon & violon alto), Gerhard Uebele (violon), Guilherme Rodrigues (violoncelle) et José Oliveira (guitare acoustique & intérieur d'un piano) forment un quatuor un corde qui n'en est pas vraiment un. Même si les informations inscrites sur le disque précisent qu'il s'agit d'un quatuor et que la musique est composée, l'instrumentation ne correspond déjà pas à la norme (généralement deux violons, un alto et un violoncelle), et rien ne semble rapprocher cette musique du quatuor en tant que forme musicale (composée généralement de quatre mouvements en forme sonate, rondo et scherzo).

Ceci-dit, on a bien quatre instruments à cordes, quatre voix équilibrées qui dialoguent entre elles de manière indépendante et peu hiérarchisée comme dans un quatuor orthodoxe. Après, il s'agit d'un quatuor résolument contemporain, autant inspiré de la tradition écrite que de l'improvisation libre non-idiomatique ou de la musique électronique encore. Car ce quatuor explore avant tout les instruments de manière abstraite et très étendue. L'archet frotte les cordes, les cordiers, les chevalets et les tables d'harmonie de son crin et de son bois, et les cordes sont frappées, pincées, raclées, tendues, détendues. Peu de préparations mais beaucoup de techniques. Le résultat: une profusion de textures qui s'imbriquent les unes dans les autres de manière souvent unifiée, des textures calmes mais abrasives, granuleuses, tendues. Un quatuor à cordes comme on en a rarement entendu donc, un quatuor qui verse dans l'abstraction sonore et recherche les sonorités les plus profondes de chaque instrument. Un quatuor rude, grave, dur, et assurément non-idiomatique. Julien Héraud (ImprovSpheres)