Cris Forster
Song of Myself and Ambisonance
Cris Forster belongs to the first generation of microtonal composers to emerge in the wake of Harry Partch. Based primarily on the West Coast of the United States, he has built his own orchestra of acoustic instruments to realize his musical vision. He is regarded by his peers as by far the most exceptional builder of just intonation instruments to date. His monumental book Musical Mathematics: On the Art and Science of Acoustic Instruments (2010) has become a major contribution not only to contemporary instrument design but also to the broader history of tuning systems, serving as a practical guide for instrument builders.
The first thing that has to be made clear about Cris Forster is that he is not a Harry Partch clone. Once you penetrate beyond this surface, it becomes evident that the strongest features of his music and instruments are those that stand at a distance from that point of departure. A few instruments resemble those of Partch but in Forster’s work they most often function in supporting roles to his own unique instrument designs. They seem more like offerings to an ancestor from which his own new direction blossomed. In fact, Forster’s instruments surpass their models, and to the ear one would not mistake them for Partch’s original attempts.
The two CDs under review document a substantial portion of Forster’s compositional and performance output. Together, they present not only his music but the instrumental ecosystem that makes it possible. Each release includes an extensive booklet detailing the instruments, biographical context, and the personal and artistic circumstances surrounding the works, complemented by numerous photographs of the instruments and individuals related to the work.
Song of Myself: Intoned Poems of Walt Whitman
I still remember vividly Forster’s performance, a decade shy of a half century ago in the house of Erv Wilson. One of the oldest wooden houses in the area, built in the 1890s, it provided a fitting frame for this song cycle. It was also an environment in which the poet Whitman might have felt at home. The composition demonstrates deep respect for the text and its sonic quality. The music ultimately honors and supports the poem’s spirit.
Patch’s idea of corporeality might be the one part of “the dream that remains” here. The performance is an up-close encounter. The work is exceptionally bare; the performer is naked without the veneer of any fashion. There is no distance for the performer to hide. Thus, the work is courageous in demanding the performer’s full, vulnerable presence.
Whitman’s Song of Myself was a suitable vehicle for Forster’s own journey. Written while he worked as archivist, curator, and performer for the Partch Foundation, he nevertheless embarked on his own path. The first song opens as a statement of presence, of being, and of the condition in which we all find ourselves. Although Forster uses the voice, he does so quite differently from Partch: less theatrical, less inebriated. The opening invites the listener through repeated notes and familiar intervals, then blossoms into joyful optimism as the path ahead reveals itself.
The next song opens with a haunting theme on one of Forster’s own inventions, the Chrysalis, a large harp arranged as a wheel with off-center circular bridges. This design allows for strings in a range of lengths, tuned in various sets of unisons within small, predetermined melodic configurations. Tetrachord-like fragments provide an ideal background for the text that explores the mysteries of nature which are always incomplete. A child asks about grass, but the adult knows no more than they do. Grass becomes the hair of the dead, including those taken too soon.
What follows musically is a drone that sets up the framework for a repeated descending melodic line on text that expresses the idea of birth and death as being equally up to chance. This leads into a musical bridge, with the text claiming immortality for all who live and have lived. Like a manuscript that has fallen apart, the opening does not return but is barely hinted at. The intervals grow tenser and the song ends with a unique half cadence.
The subject of war emerges in the next poem, where the fallen are given equality to those that win. In the last sections, the unresolved descending motive from the previous song returns as a surprise.
Longer silences punctuate the text in the fifth song, an offering of a meal to all, with no status too low to be excluded. It feels ritualistic, allowing time for the offering to be received and consumed.
The music quickens as the text affirms the speaker as a poet of women as well as men. The affirmation is akin to the “I Am” sequences found in The White Goddess. A freely intoned section on the Alamo massacre appears, portrayed in an uncharacteristically unromantic light.
The Chrysalis returns once more, now with greater aggression and dissonance. The massacre continues to linger throughout. The poetry shifts between subjects in ways that resist summary. The music deepens texturally, with techniques recurring like displayed gems. The Chrysalis emerges as a complete and self-contained entity, its apparent understatement nonetheless exposing and expressing itself fully. There are times that the technique resembles that of the Japanese wagon, an instrument whose strings are played in succession starting from the same point: the more strings played, the more dissonant the music becomes. This work demands focused attention, but engaging with it in this way is deeply rewarding, an experience rarely offered in a world dominated by shallow simplicity.
Ambisonance: Instruments and Music by Cris Forster
Ambisonance represents Forster’s newer work, both in terms of instrumental compositions and the development of new instruments, often combined in inventive ways. The CD includes detailed descriptions and welcome photographs of these instruments. It spans a broad range of his output, incorporating pieces also found on Song of Myself, including two newly recorded versions. These serve to break up the collective work Ellis Island/Angel Island: A Vision of the American Immigrants.
“Blue Nights” opens with dark rolling figures on the Bass Canon, before unfolding into a melody on Forster’s Glassdance instrument, accompanied by the Bass Marimba and Just Keys. The Glassdance is constructed from brandy glasses—heated and cooled to strengthen their acoustic properties—mounted to rotate and played with moistened fingers, much like wine glasses. The melody is joyful; although it is night, the sky is blue and cloudless. Here, we hear hope in a new location.
“Dream Time” for Diamond Marimba II stands in restless contrast to the previous work. It moves quickly, beginning softly and rising to greater intensity. The dream it portrays is filled with bewilderment, an uncertainty of direction.
Excerpts from his earlier Song of Myself follow, their mood serving as a logical parallel. “Good-Bye,” on the Just Keys, is a melancholic departure. The timbre of the piano evokes familiarity, with hints of Chopin, Satie, or jazz, but the image painted remains unmistakably Forster’s. “Farewell” continues with unresolved tonal colors that propel the music forward, capturing the hesitation inherent in parting.
It feels necessary to interject that much just-intonation music seems to have a relationship to homelessness, a concept that applies doubly to Forster, who was an immigrant from Brazil and Germany before settling in the United States. Partch’s experiences are well known, but both Erv Wilson and I also experienced homelessness. Stephen Taylor’s film score addressing homelessness is also worth mentioning. There is something about constructing large acoustic instruments to create one’s own environment, structures that become like monuments to a culture drawn from inner necessity. These instruments function as architectural perimeters as much as musical creations.
“Far Away” becomes a conglomeration of simultaneous states: a gentle looking back, continuous forward motion, and fragments of the song America. A solo Glassdance returns with a “Lullaby”, one that is restful and joyful. “Wild Flower” is a playful blues between Bass and Diamond Marimba, its variations spontaneous and faintly humorous. The final trio, “The Harbor,” sounds like a haunting first glimpse of a new home. It is still foreign, and perhaps always will be so.