Though confined to a single disc, Chalant – Memento Mori is a sprawling work itself, a collection of memories garnered from a slew of answering machine messages left by friends, relatives and colleagues, tracing his own roots and timeline, from when his son was just a boy to the news that he had just made him a grandfather.
[Release page] Roger Doyle is a composer of modest fame but great repute. According to the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland, Doyle (b. 1949) received scholarships to study in Dublin and at well-known Dutch and Finnish experimental institutes before embarking on a career of electro-acoustic composition which has produced reams of music for dance, theatre and film. Doyle worked all through the nineties on a gargantuan piece entitled “Babel,” which consists of one hundred and three pieces over five compact discs.
Though confined to a single disc, Chalant – Memento Mori is a sprawling work itself, a collection of memories garnered from a slew of answering machine messages left by friends, relatives and colleagues, tracing his own roots and timeline, from when his son was just a boy to the news that he had just made him a grandfather. His elderly parents call Doyle up to congratulate him on receiving a prestigious French award—tempered by his mother’s humbling comment, “I don’t know how they knew about you.” Concerned friends ring to hear if he needs anything after coming home from hospital. Insight into his professional life is revealed in a flurry of conversations about the debut of a 1988 production of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in Dublin, featuring his new score.
The acoustics of tape recorded messages are never pleasing and would have benefited by being treated, unless the composer saw this as some sort of break with integrity. However, the brogue of journalist Jonathan Philbin Bowman’s long poem Coat-Hanger Kisses manages to transcend the tinniness. In stark contrast, the muddiness of the message medium is contrasted with the absolute clarity of Doyle’s music, the lion’s share of which is performed by the composer on the piano—baby grand, upright and prepared, if I’m hearing right—and features occasional string and electronic arrangements both mighty and delicate—and scary, as in the electronic rhythm fluster of “It’s Very Serious” accompanying an anonymous threatening call.
About three-quarters of the way through, we are inexplicably jerked away from the family album by two tracks in collaboration with one Ahmad Alkaran. Doyle is said to be consciously cosmopolitan, but how these operatic melismatics and olive oil-can percussion figure in this scenario is difficult to grasp.
Covering thirty-odd years in the life of the composer, it feels very honest. Like all good autobiography, it also gives us pause to reflect upon ourselves.
Chalant – Memento Mori is available on Psychonavigation (3/23/2012). [Release page]
