Three Movements from How It Happens (The Voice of I.F. Stone)

It Raged
Perfect Weapon
What Would Have Happened

The sorely missed voice of the great progressive journalist I.F. Stone brings both meaning and melody to Scott Johnson's How It Happens. Written for the Kronos Quartet, Johnson's major work has been excerpted on two Kronos discs of the last decade, Short Stories (1993) and Howl, U.S.A. (1996). Now ten years on from the work's completion, and a full 20 years since Stone delivered the lecture sampled by Johnson, the three movements presented in this program seem paradoxically tailored for our own times, evoking themes of war and religion, and of the dangers inherent in their meeting.

Finding the music within the spoken word would seem to come naturally to Johnson, whose career since the 1980s has been heralded by bold acts of synthesis. An influential catalyst in bringing together the once fiercely separate traditions of classical composition and popular culture, Johnson has championed the use of rock-derived instrumentation in traditionally scored compositions. He has also incorporated taped, sampled, and MIDI-controlled electronic elements into the framework of instrumental ensembles.

Of his collaborations with Kronos, Johnson writes, "Although most of my work has involved electronic or amplified materials, my first composition for the Kronos Quartet (Bird in the Domes, 1986) was for an unaltered string quartet. In How It Happens, I have combined the two sound worlds using a process which I first developed in my 1980-82 composition John Somebody, in which the transcription and analysis of a recorded speaking voice provided the musical materials for its instrumental accompaniment.

"When David Harrington suggested I.F. Stone's voice (in both senses of that term) as a topic, I was at first uncertain that I would find enough points of contact with a life devoted to the world of policies and politics: a field which often strikes me as a peculiar combination of hardball and air guitar. As a little reading soon proved, my vague notion of Stone had been little more than a few adolescent associations from the turmoil of the Vietnam era, and I was quickly won over both by [Stone's 1989 book] The Trial of Socrates and by the sound of Stone's recorded voice.

"Stone's often expressive and animated voice immediately brought to mind some of the early observations which, in the late '70s, led first to my habit of transcribing the pitches and rhythms of speech, and eventually to John Somebody. The desire to convince someone of something seems to create a clear musicality in human speech, both in moments of personal persuasion and in public rhetoric. The speech contours of anyone engaged in oratory, anger, wheedling, or witticism generally show a wider pitch or dynamic range, or more consistent low pedal points, or all of the above. For example, listen to a sales person, your favorite newscaster, or better yet, a preacher. The low notes at the end of sentences will tend to be within a few semitones of each other, as if these people were singing with a rough inclination towards a tonal center, resolving to some fundamental tone at the end of a phrase.

"In his work as a Washington journalist/polemicist/political philosopher, Stone was the insider's outsider, able to discuss the state of the emperor's clothing while still commanding the respect of those who preferred not to. His idealistic and democratic vision of the advancement of the human race as a whole was kept sharp by a no-nonsense reporter's eye and an intellectual's sense of history. Add a delight in humor, outrage and hyperbole, and the combination is as irresistible as Sam Spade casing a Supreme Court justice. To me, Stone seems to have been cut from the same cloth as that strain of maverick American composers who turn conflicting feelings of love for, and disappointment with, their parent culture into an engine driving their efforts."

Clearly, Johnson has also translated his own cultural ambivalence into forward momentum as a composer and performer. Drawing extensively in his scores on musical elements and other sounds generally associated with the American vernacular, he has premiered many of his own works performing on the electric guitar. He has appeared at festivals, concert halls, and art museums throughout Europe and North America: first with self-performed compositions for solo electric guitar, tape, and electronics; later with an octet modeled on the American big band and rock traditions; and most recently with an electric quartet of violin, cello, electric guitar, and piano/synthesizer. His many honors include a 1999 Koussevitsky award, three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous grants and commissions.

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