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Review from Percussive Notes (2021):
Continuum II
Michael Ranta
Composer Michael Ranta has an eclectic musical past that includes studying percussion with Tom Siwe in the early days of the University of Illinois percussion department, working with Harry Partch in the mid 1960s, working with Stockhausen in the early 1970s, and teaching music history and percussion in Taipei, Taiwan in the late 1970s. With this work for mixed ensemble, Ranta has drawn on those influences to create a piece that combines woodwind voices with atmospheric percussion gestures produced on not only traditional percussion instruments (concert toms), but also instruments from other cultures and countries. Additionally, the electronic accompaniment reinforces the atmospheric nature of the work by adding feedback hums, background rattling sounds, and blurs of tones that wash over the soundscape created by the instrumentalists.
While individually the percussion parts are not challenging by themselves, the true artistic test comes from being able to perform these figures with enough sensitivity so that the bass clarinet voices are experienced on equal sonic footing, and not treated as an afterthought. From a rhythmic standpoint, there are only a handful of instances where the players line up “on the beat,” while most of the piece relies on the performers keeping track of the clock, as the manuscript is sectioned off by 15-seconds intervals. The amalgamation of these forces combine to create a 39-minute work that is on par with avant-garde music of the 1970s, even though it was written decades later.
—Joshua D. Smith
