“The Crimson Grail” is a large-scale work designed to be performed live. It was composed and recorded in 2008 and is composed and conducted by Rhys Chatham (Beewus, 2013). This work was chosen because it contains a deep emotional charge, which is associated with a sense of transcendental, that is, going beyond the standard rational understanding of the world. “The Crimson Grail” conveys the feeling of a religious mass overwhelming those present with grandiose superhuman sensations. Personally, Chatham’s music evokes special emotions for me, because his works are not intended for regular listening, but each time they require patience, dedication, and deep listening immersion.
This work is stylistically located between two spheres of modern music, academic and experimental. From the point of view of academic music and the history of its development in the 20th century, this work belongs to the trend of totalism, which has become increasingly prevalent since the 1980s. The peculiarity of totalism lies in the monumentality of the arrangements and the ambitiousness of the conceptual tasks set by the composer. Totalism implies tightness of the sound range, closeness and contact between neighboring notes, the absence of dottedness in the name of fullness and massiveness of the sound flow. Often works of a totalist direction develop dynamically in one direction – a crescendo, constantly increasing in volume and intensity of performance.
The second direction to which this work can be attributed is drone, the direction of experimental ambient music. Drone is an extremely minimalistic style that actually demonstrates the meditative atmosphere of a solid and continuous sound space (Drone, 2022). The combination of these two genres from different musical fields prompted us to take the Crimson Grail for the current analysis. This composition combines the characteristic features of both genres, hanging in limbo between academic, experimental, and rock music.
A feature of this multi-part epic composition is its instrumental component. An orchestra of 400 electric guitarists is required to play this piece live. The rock guitar was of particular interest to representatives of totalism as an instrument with brute force and emotionality. The ringing sounds of the electric guitar were used by Glenn Branca in his totalist works for the depth and completeness of the emotional impact on the listener, being aimed at manifesting a force capable of resonating not only with the mind but also with the listener’s body (Scotto et al., 2019). The works of totalism should be perceived at high, if not at maximum volume. This guarantees the absorption of the listener by the composition, dissolution of consciousness within the work.
However, the difference between the “Crimson Grail” and other totalist compositions with the use of guitars lies in the unique and penetrating sensitivity to harmony. This composition builds melodic cascades of sound with a slow and confident attack. Guitarists predominantly produce sound through a playing technique called tremolo, which involves fast and rhythmic strumming with a gradual increase in pressure on the strings. This creates a feeling of gradually rising waves of sound like tidal waves, steady and majestic, gradually becoming stronger. Melodic constructions replace each other with massive shifts, each of which is aimed at evoking in the listener a sense of contact with the sublime. Harmoniously, the instruments support each other by sounding both in the high and in the middle and low registers. It is necessary to indicate the importance of the acoustic environment for the perception of this work.
The recording under consideration in this analysis was done outdoors, but it also lends itself well to the circumstances of a philharmonic society for performance. The acoustic features of the space contribute to the cathedral sound, with strong reverberations and reflections. This leads to mutual diffuseness of sounds, which are smeared with each other in a continuous legato. Such an approach, for all its abstractness, evokes impressionistic associations, where the layering of strokes of paint was supposed to create not a dotted, but, on the contrary, a completely immersive impression for the perceiver’s eyes. The layers of notes in this piece work according to a similar principle, gathering into large-scale expanded chords with stable steps and additional harmonies. In general, this work strives for tonal harmony, keeping the basics of tones in balance but planting additional notes for the mystery and mysticism of the musical material. For Chatham, the electric guitar is an instrument of soft power, not brute force; the resonances of this instrument in space are metaphors not for pressure on the listener but for their sacred communion.
The composition is not provided with text, but its title tells a lot to the listener. “Crimson” evokes associations with the thick color of blood, which enhances the physicality of the perceived music, its focus on capturing not only the mind but also the physics of the listener. The allusion to the Holy Grail accordingly gives a sense of sacred interaction, especially considering that the work is built on the principle of a crescendo, enhancing the emotional experience of the listener. The very dynamics of the work evokes analogies with ascension into the higher astral planes of existence, which is emphasized by its monumentality and ambitious instrumental set. The tempo is extremely slow, but persistent due to the constant dynamic sound production through the tremolo technique. The work is not provided with a melody as such, but is extremely harmonious, being in constant tonal interaction of instruments. The reverberating timbres of the guitars, their circuits in the echo chambers create a feeling of contact with the unattainable and sacred. Moreover, the tightness of the sound range and multiple layers of guitar textures create the illusion of listening to a symphony orchestra, due to the Wagnerian majesty of the proposed material.
References
Beewus. (2013). Rhys Chatham – A Crimson Grail (for 400 Electric Guitars) [Video]. YouTube. Web.
Drone. (n.d.). Web.
Scotto, C., Smith, K. M., & Brackett, J. (2019). The Routledge companion to popular music analysis: Expanding approaches. Routledge.