One thing I keep returning to as I’ve listened to Osnat Netzer’s new album, Dot : Line : Sigh, is how the whimsical nature and physicality of this music combine in a way that leaves me feeling off-kilter. I like it when music confuses me because it keeps me returning, seeking some sort of understanding. But where Netzer’s debut stands out is how the movements, intersecting tone structures, and cadences work to bewilder my physical body in conjunction with my mind. It’s a trip, and it’s kept Dot : Line : Sigh in my thoughts (and on my stereo!) for weeks. Experiencing this, I had to know more.
Dot : Line : Sigh is out now on New Focus Recordings. Osnat can be reached via her website HERE.
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I always like to start at the very beginning and would love to hear about some of your earliest memories and experiences with music. Was there a lot of music around you growing up? What are some of your first memories?
My parents noticed that I was very musical since I was very little – at 4 or 5 years old, I could sing in tune. Around age 6 I became fascinated with pianos, and always wanted to improvise when I saw one. I remember I always had a “schtick” when I did my little improvisations – I would start in the middle of the piano and move outwards.
When did you start gaining an interest in playing music and creating your sounds? And what was the impetus to actually start writing your own work and playing?
Starting to learn piano at age 8 with a teacher never stopped me from continuing to improvise. My first compositions were little improvisations that I memorized and could play back. I wish my parents had recorded those. As soon as I learned how to notate I started to write my compositions down. I never thought too much about it identity-wise, I was always composing and playing. I didn’t notice the fact that all of the composers whose music I was playing were all male.
In 2014, you mentioned a shift in your creative research toward principles of cognitive linguistics and music cognition, specifically focusing on the concept of motion. Could you delve deeper into how this shift has influenced your compositions and the creative process?
I started to get curious about the possibility of cause and effect in music around 2009 as I was writing my opera. I remember I was writing a prolonged percussion bit and started to feel that I needed a strong dramatic motivation for the use of percussion. The idea of Cause and Effect felt right for that motivation. A couple of years later I heard [French composer] Philipe Leroux speak in a lecture about physical gesture, energy, and gestural substitution, and I knew that I found the thing I was looking for! Leroux was talking about the energy profile of a musical gesture, and comparing it to the actions of a tennis player: throwing up the ball, swinging the racket, hitting the ball, then the trajectory of the ball in the air, and finally the ball bouncing on the ground. As I was reading more about similar concepts I discovered that there was a sub-category of cognitive linguistics that dealt with music and embodied cognition. This helped me continue my research and find more readings on the topic.
Motion in music seems central to your work. How do you perceive the relationship between the body producing sound and the acoustic instrument as a vibrating body? How does this perspective inform your composition process?
When I compose, the metaphor of motion helps me govern large and small-scale ideas of tension and release. When I think of the potential energy of a musical gesture, I can take into account everything about that gesture: how much energy is exerted by the player when playing that gesture, how tense is the string or the air column, whether the gesture will gather momentum and lead to greater energy, or whether its energy will transform into something else. The body and the instrument as an extension of the body are always guiding me, and reminding me that dots on a page all have energetic, vibrating consequences.
The title of your new record, Dot : Line : Sigh, is described as a creative representation influenced by cognitive linguistics. Can you elaborate on how these linguistic principles manifest in your musical vocabulary and compositions?
I am fascinated by how metaphors are a transference of meaning from the physical, embodied world, into the abstract. A favorite example of mine is the word “discover.” Discover literally means to remove the cover to see, which connects to the linguistic schema SEEING IS KNOWING. Music is all abstraction, so humans have historically always used metaphors from the physical and embodied to discuss musical phenomena. A dot or a point is a single musical note, as in “counterpoint”, which is a derivation of punctus contra punctum, or point against point. A line is a word we often use to describe a melody, and a sigh is a word we often use for a specific affect of musical gesture.
So many moments on the record stand out to me, but one piece in particular, I keep returning to – “I won’t be outrun by a cavalry of snails.” What a tremendous title, first of all! Can you talk a little about the surreal atmosphere of the piece and, in particular, what role Doppler effect-esque passages play in enhancing that aspect?
I think the surreal aspect of the piece is probably the result of writing the piece during the surreal time that was the Covid lockdown.
The Doppler effect is something that is completely mysterious to me! I often listen to this piece and ask the same thing – what is the Doppler effect doing here, why is there a weird European ambulance siren coming and going throughout the piece? There were so many things I was thinking about while writing it: form as different kinds of containers, with porous or semi-porous walls; counter-intuitive musical gestures; characterizing musical materials through specific tempi; and I was thinking deeply about the attributes of the voices of Carrie Henneman Shaw and Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, as I spent many hours analyzing recordings of theirs that we made together. The piece is so multi-layered, that it doesn’t surprise me that there are even more layers for me and others to discover.
And on the closing piece, “away dream all away,” you adapted text by Samuel Beckett. How do you approach setting texts to music, particularly by such renowned authors like Beckett?
I have been drawn to Beckett probably since I was a teen. “away dream all away” is a complete poem by Beckett. I don’t really know what it means, but I love how it is circular, and being that, it does not have a beginning or an ending. Its vagueness allowed me to take the song into different directions while still using the same text. Text setting for me is almost sacred. I aim to set a text-only if I think I have something to add to it, and the meaning of the text (my interpretation of it) becomes the main driver of musical metaphor for me.
How did you maintain a cohesive thread throughout Dot : Line : Sigh, especially with all the diverse undercurrents in the music?
This ties to the title itself. Assembling seven pieces of mine that I thought were strong pieces, I was aware of their varying musical languages. What I was not aware of until I started recording them all, is that I used a similar trope in all of them – a punctuated sustain (Dot-Line) and many forms of pitch bends, glissandi, and stylized portamenti (Sigh). In addition, I do believe that with a similar attention to energy potential, cause-effect, directionality, and other such metaphors, that even when using differentiated musical languages, there is a “Netzer” style throughout.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome with Dot : Line : Sigh?
This is my first solo album, so despite working with the best performers and engineers, I was learning on the job. I really knew what I was doing by the time we recorded, edited, mixed, and mastered the seventh piece, They bury their dead with great ululations. I think that’s why I put it first on the album – it ended up feeling the most polished, alive, nurtured recording.
And what surprised you the most when making this record?
When I moved to Chicago in 2019 I was surprised by how welcoming the new music community is here. Three pieces on the album are the result of collaborations that started just as I moved to my new home – with Ensemble Dal Niente, ~Nois, Michael Hall, and Marianne Parker. It is their warm welcome that enabled me to write some of the most evocative music I’ve ever written, and I’m delighted that they also became part of this recording project.
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