The title begs the question, of course. When can a melody meaningfully be described as “rational”? Are the passages of (in retrospect) textbook species counterpoint in Palestrina rational? The mad twitchings of Boulez’s Structures Ia? The self-similar patterns of John Luther Adams’ air-raid sirens? The additive processes of Glass’ Music in Fifths?
A good deal of Tom Johnson’s compositional history has been devoted to posing that very question, and British clarinetist Roger Heaton’s performance of this selection from the ever-growing set of Rational Melodies does so in particularly beguiling form. These are pretty, songful little tunes, most under two minutes in length, generally consisting of patterns that repeat according to simple and immediately comprehensible schemes of addition, subtraction, or step-by-step transformation. Heaton, recorded in a beautifully resonant acoustic, plays these little tunes innocently, like lullabies or improvised little childrens’ tunes.
As always with Johnson, though, the overt rationality of these pieces—their transparent dependency on logical systems—is more complex than it seems. As was the case with another disc of Johnson’s music I reviewed recently, the extremely strict formal constraints still leave room for a lot of conscious, intuitive, “creative” decision-making, and here those decisions are made in a way that complicates things significantly. Almost all of these melodies are simply conjunct or triadic, and most of them have tonal implications. “Tonal implications,” of course, is shorthand for a whole universe of implications, tendencies, expectations, weightings of possibilities emanating from every pitch. Even the smallest musical event presents a welter of little arrows pointing to a universe of subsequent options, each with their own reasons and consequences, none of which have anything to do with the ostensible “rational” method of construction.
In the tenth selection here, for example (the Rational Melodies may be played as any subset of their complete number, in any order), a simple arpeggiated figure in A flat major is transformed through a simple nested pattern of downward semitonal shifts, but jostling for the listener’s attention alongside that self-similar pattern is a whole kaleidoscope of tonal relations, a complex harmonic structure rivaling anything in Wagner or Strauss, that bursts forth unbidden purely as the result of Johnson’s irrational choice of pitches.
These are unanswerable questions. They are asked here, though, with a dainty sort of gracefulness. Rarely are such profound critiques of the nature of human creativity asked in a way that is so easy on the ear.
The rest of the disc is filled by Bedtime Stories, for clarinet and a narrating clarinetist. This piece has had a colorful history on radio, including productions involving recordings of the composer snoring and a young girl counting (sheep, presumably). Here we have a set of twelve of Johnson’s absurdist narratives, the sort that occur again and again in widely varying contexts in his work, from the Four-Note Opera to Failing: a Very Difficult Piece for String Bass, with simple little clarinet figures interspersed that have a broadly abstract illustrative function. The various ways of seating guests at a dinner party, for example, are illustrated by different permutations of an eight-note whole-tone set; one story consists entirely of a man trying to put together a “Chinese puzzle”; the words “but that didn’t work, so he tried it another way” are repeated over and over, followed after each repetition by another arrangement of a small set of widely spaced pitches. It ends when “he finally gave up.”
This is wonderful stuff. Not only should Bedtime Stories be played by young clarinet students the world over—it would be an absolute smash in student recitals, and is easily playable by those with limited technical abilities; it, along with the Rational Melodies, highlight the whimsical nature of Johnson’s intentionally naïve approach to music. His methods of composition are those of a wide-eyed child, innocent and delighting in every “accidental” discovery, and nowhere is that clearer than in these utterly charming pieces.

(Evan Johnson -Sequenza 21)

According to Tom Johnson, music already exists, it's just a matter of finding and organizing it. Yet, affirmations like this are better supported by this composer's most "extremely mathematical" works, notably the much hated (not by me) "The chord catalogue", of which various dissonant chord sequences can be hard to swallow for regular "leisure time" listeners (and a lot of reviewers, too). Instead, both "Rational melodies" and "Bedtime stories"- here splendidly played and narrated by clarinettist Roger Heaton - are a tad more accessible, mainly due to the monodic character of their score and their ever-perceptible irony, which transforms even the less "cantabile" segments in something nearer to a children lullaby than to a minimalist configuration. Heaton's fabulous tone endows this music with a light transparence, corroborated by the short duration of the large part of these, er, songs. A good method to enjoy this CD (although it probably doesn't make any sense if we had to respect Johnson's compositional rigour) is listening to it in "random" mode, thus shaking all the ingredients for an even more palatable, all-mixed-up version. Compared to the previous release by Tom Johnson on the same label, the not unforgettable "Organ and silence", this album ascends several steps.

(Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes)

For me the composer Tom Johnson is not well-known as a composer, but as an author, of the book: 'The Voice Of New Music', a collection of pieces he wrote for The Village Voice in New York from 1972 to 1982. Writings about new music, from Steve Reich to Charlemagne Palestine to LaMonte Young. It's a book I still consult if I want to know something about Minimal Music, or just re-read for fun (and it's now free to download from www.tom.johnson.org). But as said Johnson is also a composer, since 1983 living in Paris. He has written a couple of Operas, an Oratorium and pieces for ensembles and solo performers. These two releases deal with the latter. Roger Heaton on clarinet performs both 'Rational Melodies' and 'Bedtime Stories'. It's probably no surprise with Johnson's writing about minimalism, that his own music may sound alike. But there is a big difference: Johnson doesn't play on sustaining notes, working the overtones that so many old and new minimalists do, but each note is there, alone and naked without sort of process happening. In 'Rational Melodies', the clarinet plays short wonderful pieces, twenty-one in total, mostly sounding a bit desolate, but no doubt that has to do with the character of the instrument. 'Bedtime Stories' have, as the title implies, stories, which are sometimes very funny, read by Tom Johnson. The clarinet makes perhaps too much sound to sleep too, but it's very fine: short swirling melodies, often apart from the voice.

(Frans De Waard - Vital Weekly)

È sicuramente una grande passione quella che Giovanni Antognozzi della Ants nutre per la musica di Tom Johnson, uno dei minimalisti storici più importanti della seconda generazione, dato che questa è la seconda pubblicazione che gli viene dedicata in un catalogo che brilla, oltre che per il suo stile ineccepibile, per la scelta di effettuare un numero limitatissimo di produzioni (questo è il 12° CD in circa 4 anni). Pur non condividendo con Antognozzi l’entusiasmo per la musica di Johnson, o più precisamente condividendolo solo in una certa misura, devo comunque ammettere che il musicista merita ampiamente lo spazio che gli viene dedicato dall’etichetta romana. Il CD contiene due lunghe composizioni, suddivise in brevi capitoli che raramente superano i due minuti, la prima delle quali è suonata al solo clarinetto mentre la seconda alterna brevi parti recitate (le Bedtime Stories) con motivi strumentali affidati ancora al clarinetto. L’interprete non poteva essere scelto in modo migliore: Heaton, uno dei massimi esperti contemporanei dello strumento, ha infatti già interpretato / collaborato con numerosi autori ed esecutori contemporanei ed ha fatto parte di alcuni fra i più blasonati ensemble che ci sono in circolazione (Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta…). Esecuzioni inappuntabili, quindi, per una musica talmente leggera da far pensare al suo autore come ad un Mozart del minimalismo. Inappuntabili, come sempre, le note allegate alla confezione. Il disco è particolarmente consigliato, oltreché agli amanti del genere musicale proposto, a chi è particolarmente attratto dalle calde sonorità lignee del clarinetto.

(Etero Genio - SANDSzine)

Conocido particularmente por sus óperas ('The Four Note Opera', 'Riemannoper', 'Trigonometry') y su 'Bonhoeffer Oratorium' (1988-92) para orquesta, coro y solistas, el compositor Tom Johnson (1939- ) es además autor de numerosas obras radiofónicas y uno de los máximos exponentes del minimalismo norteamericano. Editada recientemente por el sello italiano Ants, esta grabación incluye dos originales creaciones instrumentales escritas por Johnson durante los años ochenta. 'Rational Melodies' (1982) es un excelente ejemplo de como el autor, haciendo gala de su particular estilo, aplica metodología racional a la composición musical. Se trata de una colección de veintiuna melodías, interpretadas aquí por el famoso clarinetista Roger Heaton, y compuestas a partir de combinaciones, permutaciones, operaciones aditivas y otros pocesos lógicos y matemáticos. Asimismo interpretada al clarinete por Heaton, 'Bedtime Stories' (1985) contiene doce atractivas miniaturas musicales acompañadas de narración. En ella, Johnson viaja de nuevo a su estimado mundo de los números sugiriendo breves y amenos relatos: ¿Cuántos peldaños debe tener una escalera?, ¿cómo sentar a cuatro invitados en una cena?, ¿qué extensión debe tener una melodía?, etc. Ambas obras fueron grabadas el 31 de agosto de 2002 en St Silas' Church de Kentish Town, Londres. "Rational Melodies / Bedtime Stories": 'Rational Melodies' (I - XXI); 'Bedtime Stories' (I - XII). La carpetilla e inlay del CD reproducen respectivamente dos obras gráficas ('Project drawing with prime number series spiraling out from 19,000,041' y 'Prime numbers spiraling out from 41') realizadas en 2006 por la esposa de Johnson, la artista Esther Ferrer.

(Ferran Cuadras - Modisti View)

There are records and there are records, and then there are wonderful records. This is a VERY WONDERFUL record. I feel completely at ease with this music, but not only that. I feel at home and I feel I’m on a great adventure, all at the same time. I feel emotionally, aesthetically and intellectually uplifted, and the view from the vantage point of this music is inspiring.
I listen a first time lying on my back in the gravity of the planet, flat out on my bed after a busy day at the police station with interview after interview in a hectic case of repeated thefts from old people at an old age home.
I listened as my body disappeared down into the sea of gravity while my mind disconnected from the anatomy and soared upwards, sailing like a seagull above the white-capped waves, circling effortlessly in the sound of this clarinet in the clean air.
Right after this first experience of Tom Johnson’s music, I watched a TV program on Dag Hammarskjold, which kept me up there soaring the expanses of human dignity and the stubborn strength of the uncorrupted will.
Then I began listening to this CD over again, realizing that I’ll return to Tom Johnson’s music often in the future, as it nourishes me and elates me in a new and quite unexpected way.
Stockhausen and Riley. Karlheinz Stockhausen and Terry Riley. Somewhere at the crossroads of these composers, of these spirits, I meet Tom Johnson – and Terry and Karlheinz have no idea they’ve intersected!
Bach looms too, or, rather, spiritually immerses the music, in a transferred sense, revealing himself in the orderly, architectural, geometrical clarity! Wow!

(for the complete review follow this link http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco24/ants/johnson.htm)

(Ingvar Loco Nordin - Sonoloco)