Pretty Music, Odd Concept
Edinburgh-based pianist Max Richter's latest album is an experimental work consisting of 24 classically composed ringtones due to be played in gallery spaces in an installation which will see pre-registered audience members receiving SMS messages that playback one or more of the tunes. It's an intriguing idea challenging the way we think of the short snapshots of music that make up our lives, but with ringtones so often now just recordings of popular songs, rather than individual pieces of work, one wonders if Richter isn't a little late coming out with this.
Synonymous with the word ringtone would perhaps be the idea of something twee and irritating, but the 24 tracks here are elegant classical reveries from the fragile, 'This Picture Of Us' to the sweet, 'In Louisville' with a mishmash of spoken word and street noise on its backing track. Although it is rather hard to imagine anyone having such delicate and beautiful music as a ringtone designed to interfere with his or her activities. The longest track is just under 3 minutes in length, while others seem to rush past in the flutter of an eyelid like ambient, 'When The Northern Lights/Jasper and Louise'. There are tunes led by strings such as, 'A Sudden Manhattan of the Mind' with a glittering backing and sighing solo violin, ambient pieces and those led by piano, like, 'Cradle Song For A' and the dreamy lullaby, 'from 553 W Elm Street'.
The tracks all fit together like the pieces in a jigsaw, despite their brevity, which classical listeners will be far from accustomed to. As Max Richter asserts that, "Thinking about how we listen to music today, I wondered why it is that ringtones have so far been treated as unfit for creative music…Who says ringtones have to be bad?…It's like saying LPs or CDs are bad - its just a medium", one wonders how he hoped to impress the importance of individual ringtones on an album, which consists of 24 pieces of music flowing into one another. Whether the album serves to advance the validity of the ringtone as a valid form, it's a calming collection of creative classical snippets that's far from charmless. The one criticism, and it's a fundamental one, is that it would be so much nicer to hear extended versions of the tracks where you would really have time to be moved and engage with the tracks. So much for the ringtones…