19. Godard

John Zorn (originally on Godard ça vous chante? (VA – Nato, 1986), later reissued on Godard/Spillane (Tzadik, 1999);
composed by John Zorn

A lot of people have notions of “montage” that are no less quaint than the most gemütlich notions of “harmony” – the question being whether these strategies just smooth over natural fissures in the material or rather allow you to hear a lot of disparate bits of information more vividly than you would otherwise? This 18-minute piece John Zorn assembled in 1985 for an obscure multi-artist tribute to Jean-Luc Godard is strangely anomalous in his massive discography as it answers both questions at once. Working from a number of composed sections on randomly assembled index cards, Zorn conducts (while playing and occasionally barking in French) a small group of improvising (and sight-reading) musicians, including Christian Marclay manipulating turntables, one narrator (in Chinese), one narrator/singer (in Japanese), and Richard Foreman reading snatches from Bruno Schultz’s “The Street of Crocodiles” (which here sound a lot like his own plays). Bursts of noise and deliberately jarring exclamations notwithstanding, it is the prettiest as well as the most disquieting Zorn piece I have ever heard in a way none of his other (terrific) game pieces are. His estimable and more visible Mickey Spillane tribute a couple of years later could not turn the same trick.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).