Scott Blasco: One Day as a Thousand Years
Irritable Hedgehog

Whereas Scott Blasco's 2018 Irritable Hedgehog release, Pentecost, presents fixed-media electronic works realized by the composer himself, his latest for the label, One Day as a Thousand Years, features R. Andrew Lee playing the Richard Cass Memorial Steinway at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's White Hall. As dominant as piano is, electronics and other elements again play a pivotal part, with chants, chimes, cathedral bells, manipulated piano samples, synthesized drones, and live signal processing used to augment the acoustic instrument. The composer's in the best possible hands here, of course, given the sterling readings Lee's given to many another composer's material on the label, among them Eva-Maria Houben, Adrian Knight, Randy Gibson, and Bryan Christian.

One Day as a Thousand Years draws for inspiration from, in Blasco's words, “the cyclical structure of the liturgical year and offers a meditation on the exultation and sorrow in this march of time.” While the work is structured into two parts totaling forty-five minutes, each one comprises five sections that correspond to the stages of Incarnation (Part I) and Resurrection (Part II) within the Christian liturgical calendar. In the first, the waiting period “Advent” is followed by “Nativity” and “Epiphany”; in the second, “Lent” is followed by “Tridium,” “Resurrection,” and “Pentecost.” Differences aside, the parts symmetrically align with Jesus's birth in the first, Christ's resurrection in the second. Parallels between the parts' sections were devised by Blasco, with the central “Nativity” and “Resurrection” sequences, for example, both featuring slow, pulsing chords but with the former gentle to reflect the holiness of birth and the latter emphatic to convey the drama of death overcome. Further to that, dissonant harmonies are heard in the background of the “Advent” and “Lent” sections, and other connections between the parts arise elsewhere. The chants, naturally, have direct ties to the different liturgical seasons, with Blasco having the hymn “Herzliebster Jesu” (known in English as “Ah, Holy Jesus”) appear just before “Resurrection.”

Awareness of such details greatly enhances one's understanding and appreciation of the project. A repeating chord at the outset might suggest that One Day as a Thousand Years will be an exercise in classical minimalism, but the work quickly distances itself from the association with the addition of a background chant and patterns that assemble into an elaborate construction. The movement from one section to the next is easily tracked when the label's Bandcamp page includes temporal markings for where the transitions occur, though the music itself indicates changes audibly too. In the first half, “Advent” conveys anticipation in being pensive and still; a sense of wonder permeates “Nativity,” the mystical character of the section bolstered by the chant faintly intoning behind Lee's repeating chord; after chiming bell patterns introduce “Epiphany,” joyful folk-dance melodies add to the celebratory mood. A foreboding tone infuses the eventually clangorous opening of the second part, after which even greater darkness seeps into “Tridium” before meditative calm instates itself in readiness for the mystical wonder of “Resurrection.” Mirroring the first part's “Epiphany,” insistent rhythmic patterns emerge in “Pentecost,” though now noticeably darker-hued, before “Ordinary Time II” concludes the work with chiming chords similar to those at the outset.

January 2022