For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
— R. M. Rilke: Duino Elegies (tr., Edward Snow)


Music that combines equal measures of beauty and grit. Moody, elusively shaped textural music that is compelling in its power and grace from its very first violin note to its final shimmer of decaying cymbals. For an ensemble of violins and cellos, percussion and electronic/sampled sounds.

Reviewing a live performance of the work: “A Temperament for Angels demonstrated…a complex system…producing dense, slowly changing sounds…. [A]tmospherically gloomy and harmonically quite subtle.” —Keith Potter, Musical Times (London)

This recording features two of Los Angeles’s most noted new-music specialists and members of the celebrated chamber group The California EAR Unit: violinist Robin Lorentz and cellist Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick , each tracked multiple times.


REVIEWS:

“An impressive, beautiful CD single offers up a seamless, elegant ‘cloud’ of sound….The idea of music transporting the listener is an old-fashioned one, yet here is another beautiful Cold Blue single of new music that takes us to another world. Michael Jon Fink impresses with his ability to straddle electronic and acoustic, free and structured, new and old…. Ecstatic pedal tones often anchor the music far below the other voices—and can sound like chord roots as they pull the piece toward tonality, only to draw it away again…. Fink’s mingling of acoustic and electronic creates a truly seamless, elegant continuum of sound—helped no doubt by the mixing desk, not to mention the warmth and general high quality of the recording.” —Arved Ashby, Gramophone

“Music that…feels as if it could go on endlessly…music that comes from the classical tradition, but that feels like it belongs somewhere other than the concert hall…texturally rich, meticulously crafted and delicately beautiful.” —Dusted

“A miniature masterpiece. The cymbals, the sampled keyboards and the strings combine to form a continuum, like waves in oscillation, side by side, superimposed, overtaking one another. The composer…is confirmed as a master of sensitivity and good taste. In his personal interpretation of historical minimalism, there is a warmth, a presence and a deep involvement, which is extremely rare.” —Sands-Zine (Italy)

“Michael Jon Fink’s A Temperament for Angels is much darker than its title might suggest—informed, as it is, by the harsher concept of terrifying beauty written of by Rilke in the Duino Elegies. Violins, cellos, cymbals, and sampler keyboard create a steely sonic environment well suited to the text that inspired it.” —Molly Sheridan, NewMusicBox (American Music Center)

“From its arresting opening event—widespread intervals, sombre colors, grainy textures—the piece mutates very slowly, ebbing and flowing, gaining or shedding notes, emphasis on complexity. The timbres evoke images of some enormous, natural instrument, whose pipes and contours are sounded by the wafting of random breezes. Another comparison…is with the extraordinary Chas Smith, composer of a number of gloriously colored ‘texture’ pieces, rendered mainly on formidable metal instruments of his own making. Fink’s procedure and aesthetic here are very similar; but his quite different sound sources inevitably produce outcomes that differ in being grittier and more diverse.” —Christopher Ballantine, Int’l Record Review (UK)

“Clouds of rhythmless, sustained sound move through space. The effect is ethereal and at time threatening…. Reminiscent of many early purely electronic pieces, it is amazing how much texture this small ensemble can generate. Hearing this performed live must be quite an experience. In 29 minutes it bathes you is lush spectra of sounds where you may lose all bearings of place and time.” —Richard Friedman, Shuffle Boil

“Beautifully recorded music with suitably artistic packaging…A Temperament or Angels envelopes you in shifting textures, drones, and environments…. [T]his is definitely music worth spending time with.” —Randy Raine-Reusch, Musicworks (Canada)

“This music has been designed to stimulate the active mind and touch the spirit. Fink has created an intense transitory work, akin to something large and enigmatic moving through twilight.” —Chuck van Zyl, Star’s End

“The music has a mysterious character, oniric, surreal. The richness in texture of quite a number of ethereal passages makes it difficult to distinguish where the natural sound of a given instrument finishes and where the electronic sound begins.” —Amazing Sounds (Spain)

“Throughout its 28-minute length, this music catches the ear with its juxtaposition of extremes, particularly low versus high, and rough versus smooth, yet its overall texture is metallic.” —Raymond Tuttle, ClassicalNet

“The piece evolves around sustained pitches…played with some pastoral touch…. Over the course of the piece, sounds are added by means of sampling until towards the end they make a crescendo and fall back into quietness. Nice piece!” —Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (Netherlands)

“The 29-minute composition is a slowly but ever evolving dirge…moody and layered throughout, its atmospheres passing from gloomy to meditative and solemn to almost serene. Yes, there are short glimpses of peace in its awe-inspiring strength. A very powerful and evocative work, A Temperament for Angels sounds to me as an ideal bridge between Feldman’s quiet ensembles and harsher, louder forms of string-based minimalism (Maranha, Organum, early O’Rourke…).” —Eugenio Maggi, Chain D.L.K. (Italy)

“Abstract and atmospheric…this brooding soundscape eschews melody for elusively morphing textures and chromatic harmonies until it ends with spectral cymbal shimmers.” —Ron Schepper, Textura and Stylus

“If suggestion is a property of goddesses who wake you up only in the abyss of dreams, Michael Jon Fink has heard these sirens’ singing, levitating in a crystal goblet of divine wines and inebriating perfumes. What kind of mysterious secrets of acoustics have been revealed to him? That’s what you will decipher by immersing in the shimmering tones and frequency beating of A Temperament for Angels.” —Marcelo Aguire, ei magazine

“Start with mists of sound which are mostly acoustic but which have a slight electronic ambience. Hone all this down for maximum plaintive impact. Add harmonic richness with subtle gradations and clear detail. It reminds me a little of bowed piano playing but with more somber moods than you usually find there. A Rilke poem in the liner notes has this to say about what this CD is getting at: ‘…beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror…’ The music here does indicate the combination of beauty and terror that angels have, but the landscape this CD occupies is more the place where angles are on the horizon, before the point of actual contact with humans. All of this may not sound so mystical if you play this record. It is an awe-inspiring effort.” —Richard Grooms, The Improvisor

“A Temperament for Angels shows that Fink has learned to practice his compositional art fluently. Enjoy this stately, dignified work. —Exposé

“28 minutes of moody tonalities…. Wafting on a delicate breeze, pensive cello and solemn violins generate an ethereal drone that is astutely boosted by gradually emergent sustained keyboards. These textures remain steadfast, unhurriedly swarming like a friendly fog that hangs overhead with serene conviction. The calmly trembling resonance sways ever so slightly, remaining aloft through determined moderation. While the notes are minimal and elongated, a mood of underlying reverence is laced with an anticipation of celestial affairs, as if heaven is using this tuneage as a conduit to survey earthly endeavors. The music conveys the distinct impression that no judgments are being made, that this heavenly regard is impartial despite its intimacy.” —Sonic Curiosity

“An exaltation of the concept of the music of silence. This is not meant in its literal sense, but in the context of physical, mental, and emotional abstraction.” —altriSuoni (Italy)

“Fink builds an ambient world of gradually evolving harmonic blocks, using multi-tracked violas, cellos, digital sampling and mallet-sustained cymbals. It results in a soundscape that builds and shifts in harmonic content over time, then decrescendos in the end to poignant silence. It is of a piece with many of the Cold Blue single releases in its singular devotion to tonal atmospherics. And so it too has a definite appeal and impact on the listener in the way it constructs a slow moving, ever-changing, ever-present musical world of its very own…. A Temperament for Angels has a Zen kind of focus on the nature of complex tone clusters that has genuine merit and holds up well after many listens. Nice! —Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review