Preface
"Perpetually expectant of the transcendent musical revelations that great performances of great masterpieces are supposed to supply, the music-loving populace submits happily to endless rehearings of that handful of works which constitute the institutional canon of performed concert music. While this constriction of hearable literature contributes to the high visibility of the concert performer as the prime hero of serious musical artistry, it also cultivates a fundamental misapprehension of the essential nature of the "great" works themselves, and of the qualities which actually distinguish a meaningful musical performance. [. . .] For when music is regarded nostalgically, as a pre-fixed collection of "masterpieces" whose "inner meanings" are uncoverable only by inspired "interpretation" under the hands of an authenticated maestro, what is lost is the awareness that every meaningful musical artifact is part of a continuing chain of compositional discovery, that a "masterpiece" is a "composition" too, and that its particular qualities derive from unique orderings of cogent ideas, from its invention of significant solutions to urgent musical problems."
Benjamin Boretz "3.17.62 About Performance" from "Music Columns from The Nation 1962-1968"
Texts
Live
July 13, 2019
Gradus for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler (Three Rungs) [351] - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
no lights
just windows
doodles follow
the mind in beginning
memorizes tangle
holds it
my face is in my hands
shadows are an evidence of an interaction of forces and ideas
intermittent shadowfall throughout the evening
sirens mockingbird
into the distant landscape
brick wall from below
new
as earth shatters
your e-guide cannot help you here
Recorded
July 14, 2019
Sonata in G minor, K. 30 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
that opening sequence of pitches, redolent in reverse of J. K. Randall's Gap First Batch pieces
a lovely descending suspension sequence framed by crossing hands
Hava Na Gila - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon
I'm remembering JoAnne, Mom's longstanding accompanist and friend, and the fruitful cooperation in music that was theirs.
Fish 'n' Chip Paper - Elvis Costello [from Trust]
of tomorrow, for the news of yesterday
playing with keyboard toys
Assembly Rechoired 5 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [August 1986]
were we back in Seattle by then? quite possible. given the instrumentation, so probably still the half house. [N.B. Karen says we moved into the big house on Labor Day weekend, which makes sense]
you strum the dulcimer I clack the sticks
And what is that hymn tune Karen is strumming back there? That hymn tune that Karen is strumming back there is Hyfrydol - the Rowland Prichard hymn tune we had chosen to sing congregationally at our wedding in a very few months, to the Charles Wesley text "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling." It means cheerful in Welsh.
bells! tintinnabulating! tintinntabulating!
What harmonic language does the music of clacking sticks speak? Waxing Hendrix there on that dulcimer back there dear.
or rock
or boan
rok
ore
bone
I must have tried to sing and play ocarina at the same time. Then I imitate an eloquent hound at great distance and in fine detail (wag!) (it!)
that muttering in tongues thing we do
hummingbirdyippiedog
listen up Siegfried
Klangfarbencontrapunctus
K&I fit together like Love Divine and Hyfrydol 8 7 8 7
Gota Let Your Nuts Hang - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]
instructions for patriarchal business majors
Bogoroditse Devo - Serge Rachmaninof - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]
a kind of Royalist
bliss pill
well sung though
Frozen Eyeballs - Love Princess (Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K) [September 2006]
Smidgen (a nibling) and me
they strum a mighty sound
The Way It Was - J. K. Randall [from Milton Babbitt: a Composers' Memorial]
conversants transcribe competitively
then it gets down to business
to the point where one is unsure which of what one is hearing is pitch and which is partial
Volunteer Park - Keith Eisenbrey [August 2016]
still as amazing as anything as an accident
back then I wrote:
"Karen and I got to the park early for Steve's guerrilla music session, so we hoisted ourselves up the stairs to the top of the water tower. While we were enjoying the view and the space we were surprised and delighted to be suddenly serenaded by four young women singing Bulgarian and Croatian folk(?) songs arranged in parts. By their second number I had my recorder out and captured this mini flash performance. Hoorah Seattle! - If any of the performers happen upon this, please let me know who you are so I can give you proper credit."
July 16, 2019
There is a typical flavor of relation between the minorish harmonies within a key and the majorish harmonies. These types are here utterly eschewed. Scarlatti, as a composer, is the righteous shit.
A Well Known Fact - Harvey Schmidt - Robert Preston [from I Do! I Do!]
a convenient patriarchal misapprehension
The show is a staged picture book of Modern Marriage 60's style, as though each stage of a marriage was lived through in the 60's. Time never passes, the characters, though, age throughout time's never passing.
I Am the Owl - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]
sneeritude
uppity contempt
content free!
Crazy Love Vol II - Paul Simon [from Graceland]
light touch brushing a texture of sheen somehow at odds with something
don't want no part of
Black - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]
not a wide tessitura
but lots of tonal and rhythmic control within it
I'm not sure what this is about, as a text, but it could be the idea that one way to get over a breakup is to pretend you helped the other to grow - letting them go was (is) in their best interest. hm. Might have been, but was it really you that let go?
Dies Irae - Giuseppe Verdi - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]
God's Wrath makes great theater.
OK
we know what it's about, but what does it say?
does the subject overwhelm the statement?
weirdly curtailed for this best of album
Just Like a Woman - Bob Dylan [from Key Arena October 13, 2006]
O Holy Night slow compound rhythm rocking (rock-a-bye baby not rock out) arpeggio guitar figure
Bob may not have much voice left, but he does as much as it can
takin' care of business
The Day I Heard Shelby Sing - Your Mother Should Know [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]
8 years ago. Imagine.
Charge - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]
optimizing presence electroacoustically
melody and rhythm (together "the beat") hothouse collaboration
cymbal sibilance
not just loud
but tuned loud
July 17, 2019
Sonata in D minor, K. 32 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
now let's be logical and stepwise
oops that yarn is disentwined
not binary form, but nearly only almost just a theme
Don't Look Away - The Who [from A Quick One]
no moment without eyes on me sound begging attention
In This House That I Call Home - X [from Wild Gift]
the party's downstairs
keep your arms out just enough
to balance
July 18, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 102 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1986]
 |
| your blogger and his fiancee tip hats to you |
dulcimer
clavichord
Aaron was up for a visit, so we made two tapes, this being the first, these two being the last we made in the Half House of Greenwood, Outpost of the Tintinabulary, Department of Banned Rehearsal.
clacking sticks and funmaker
an unmistakable impendingness of Aaronsbundler
deflected
but then
around the corner there it is
but we overshot
we infiltrate and explode from within
we shut it down
start again
bone fragments all over the rock
Aaronsbundler back again from the Bickleton organ (see #100 from back in June)
calling card
Leitmotif
idée fixe
ritornello
obsession
touchstone
in joke
slogan
battle cry
standard
then our National Anthem
Take Me Out To the Ballgame
An attempt may be made to play the Bestiary through the Speaker of the House.
We shall hear or not.
We shout hellos to Neal and Anna as though they might hear them. {Hey guys, if you listen to this you will! hellos from the past.}
Birthday greetings
happy happy sad
A beast of some kind snores in the undergrowth.
How far away you seem to us.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
July 15, 2019
Gradus 352 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
working the high D into position, like tuning
lower D tolls quietly
Postscripts
sweet spouse who is substance saying now past
the rains has been heard this voice of may sing
speaks with her arise make haste my friend and
as threatened
the wizard
inverts
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