To avant-garde composer Glenn Branca, a symphony that requires audience members to wear earplugs is no paradox. That’s because it takes 100 electric guitars to perform his Symphony No. 13, “Hallucination City.”
“The problem with my music right from the beginning is that I use a lot of dissonance,” he says. “Although the music isn’t any louder than a rock concert you would go to, people perceive it as louder. I recommend bringing earplugs just in case, but you will miss a lot—the entire high range is not even there.”
The 60-year-old guitarist visits The Pageant on November 13 to oversee the concert, which also features the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra playing music by fellow mavericks Frank Zappa and Edgard Varèse. “This is the first time I’ve ever been on the bill with a symphony orchestra,” he says, “much less a world-class symphony orchestra.”
Branca recruits local guitarists to perform his sweeping, brain-blanching, 70-minute work. The guitars—80 electrics and 20 bass guitars—are restrung to the composer’s specifications and divided into alto, tenor, baritone and bass sections. Then they’re further divided into 20 subgroupings of five. “It’s very similar to the way a symphony string section is broken up, to get a kind of symphonic sound,” he says.
The result? “For people who aren’t used to listening to experimental music it sounds like ‘God! Where did this come from? Is this music from another planet?’” he admits. “You’ll hear a whole lot more going on than you can imagine going on. It’s a tornado of sound.”
