Playlist

Preface

"BUT: if our Spiritual Exercise strikes you as Unseemly, or Silly, or Mere Sentimental Wallow;

if nothing Clicked;

Then I'm Concerned For you:

Then it's You, above All, who Need it Bad.

Then it is You who should Not Engage in a wildlife issue Quite Yet:

You're Not Ready."

- J. K. Randall "Statement to the NJ State Assembly Environment Committee, 8/5/93" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.

- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

September 19, 2020

Dave Knott

Requia

a dial-twiddler, but a carefully listening and rewarding to listen to dial-twiddler 

testing a signal
looking at it with filters and lenses
better at
1 or 2
A or B
now with this set of
A or B
1 or 2 

writing language out by hand has a rhythm to it
and there it is 

a moment when a quiet out door sound with occasional splatter drops is jump cut to
an unending industrial sound cavern
 train brings us near the surface
a mass of ape mutterings
roadside sounds like rain and bowing a ukulele
bass ukulele
or a banjo guitar
what is that? 

patient transition processing

September 20, 2020

Amelia Love Clearheart

laying a music bed down
to stand on
and kick out from under 

loop procedure becomes looped 'form'
or having an idea on my end about how it is accomplished
 and knowing that
finding myself
surmising the kinds of thing it might produce
and what might be done with that 

cyclic pulsing overlapping
once established
 might be renewed
refreshed
or allowed to flow undisturbed 

but it isn't just that the notes repeat or loop
the signal loops
all of it
we put music in it
another way of thinking
about assembling something
from its sound out 

threading it through signal
each loop sample
once laid down
has potential for processing 

up to a point

Recorded

September 20, 2020

Variatio Fvb5 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the slow note tune
is bent gently by the running figures

Philou - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

plausible orchestration
or plausible enough to pass
where no instructions are to be had

Suite in C Major - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

focus has shifted to the singing tune
and its ornate accoutrements 

the slower tune remains
but is structural,
subservient 

opera did that

Sonata in C Major - George Frideric Handel - Michala Petri, Keith Jarrett

harpsichord splits time
between supporting and answering
the recorder 

this one is getting somewhere 

concerning a ceremonial family life
a place for amusement
and games
a place for careful thinking
and stiff decorum

Onzieme Ordre (do) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

a toymaker magic act
don't sit on a cadence
breathe quick and off you go 

 chirpy tunes 

we have been pulled into a longer story
wake up call at the end of it 

brutal keyboard toccata battles among the villagers

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

in being ultra clear about the details of the smaller meter
a much larger meter still
is revealed

a phalanx of stretto entrances

Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

straight flutes sure produce a lot of acoustic weirdness
they happen within hearing
but aren't heard as a sound 

floaters 

excellence in playing
please the king

Sonata in E minor Wq. 49/3 -  - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi

sonata form
as a type
a story frame
as incantation

September 22, 2020

Apollo et Hyacinthus, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Arleen Auger, Edith Mathis, Cornelia Wulkopf, Hanna Schwarz, Salzburger Kammerchor, Rupert Huber

recitative:

the continuo is a fascinating idea to have had
and it had such a long life in music
the naturalism of dialogic drama
held up by a few touches of notes
and sketchy harmony 

the duets, arias, choruses, etc.
among other things
allow the music as logic
to control
so drama holds still
for now
which supports which? 

in Latin no less

Symphony in E minor, Hob. I:44 "Trauersinfonie" - Franz Joseph Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

multiplicity of figures used
the tonal framework was necessary
or seemed necessary
to hold it together 

an actual fact based verifiable structure
invisible thread 

but does it actually hold it together?
really? 

nothing ever finishes
a thought about coherence being tested 

symphony: the music everybody plays together

Sonata in G minor, op. 7#2 - Muzio Clementi, Howard Shelley

pushing affective disjointure into attention
hints of Eroica figures in the 1st movement

September 23, 2020

Sonata in F Major, op. 10#2 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm Kempff

stubborn adherence to a thread
never loses track of what he's about 

the social space his music creates
in which it arises
is bigger than a piano can be 

Mass in A-flat Major (#5) - Franz Schubert - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek, Helga Terner, Kristine Rohr-Bach, Vladimir Dolezal, Klement Slowioczek, Prague Radio Chorus

thin ice above the dark places
it could go
but might not 

lots of contrapuntal busywork
(not his strongest suit) 

some presumably effective spatial effects for which a cathedral space is required

September 24, 2020

Etude in C Major, op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Cecile Licad

the bass line is a red herring
all the fancy voice leading and counterpoint is in the arpeggios

Fantasiestücke, op. 12 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

leads you out
so simply
goes
so logically askew
the thread leaps
escherically 

the steady balance of answering phrases
is not the norm here
but lengths and sizes are a thing
as is balance
a reference
seen askance
through several darkling glasses

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 20, 2020

Rain 200920 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Rain 200920

there was rain and our drainpipe gurgled

September 21, 2020

Wallace Book 10 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1010 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1010 200921

The rain and dark has arrived, so back indoors we go.

September 22, 2020

Chorale 9 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 23, 2020

Wallace Book 11 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 10 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 11 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 24, 2020

Wallace Book 12 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 25, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

The Epilogue is a bear - slow, polyphonous, hefty, and requiring exact articulation and dynamics. I'll get it for sure soon, then I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace." 

Postscripts

should have known the which passed between was mad

enough was one little smiling good-humoured

sidling begged compliments i never way

the world is a figment of music
pitch in a swamp is a bird on a cattail
an embodiment of the absence of itself

Playlist

Preface

"But the trickiest case - since it pervades the cultures of popular music, especially the culture of rock - is the self-identification by members of one cultural subgroup with the traits of another - or even not only with its traits but its actual texts; alternatively, an extreme symbolic sentimental valorization surrounds the traits and texts of the exogenous subgroup in the discourse and body language of the indigenous group. The issue arises acutely in the adoption by the American white middle class adolescent subculture of the musical (and linguistic) manner of African-American groups as well as other "outsider" groups (as, Native Americans, Asian Indians, British proletarians, Appalachian rustics, cowboys, Latinos, etc.) - sentimentalizing them much as high-culture groups appropriate and sentimentalize (and try to identify with) exotic peoples and phenomena which express their self-image and aspirations (as, emulating, displaying, admiring, advocating the manners, appearance, taste, and cultural artifacts identified with British aristocracy and Continental sophisticates, a process in which "great literature", the correct beverages, and appropriate etiquette such as behavior at a concert or a cocktail or dinner party or classroom discussion are all indiscriminately valorized as indivisible components of a seamless cultural texture)."

- Benjamin Boretz "Crossover Issues: A response to Angela Gilliam" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.

- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

September 12, 2020

Blessed Blood (Rachel LeBlanc)

Intention Setting

Speaking

Folly, parts 1, 2, and 3

Speaking

Nothing Knows Me 

Liquid Bodies

acoustically, the music portion hangs above where the fundamentals would be found
making pitch play

intention setting vocals
variously looped
marching bass
buzz
bi-labial trill

electronics play with those aspects of sound files that electronics understand [signal, envelope, ranges of frequencies (bands) of], while our traditional music tools* are by and large designed to play with notes, not bands, except by pretty fancy collaborations with architecture 

unten roar
the magmatic rumbleth under

*pre- wave-form transcription of frequencies 

September 13, 2020

Neal Kosály-Meyer - Gradus: for Fux, Tesla, and Milo The Wrestler

the open windows air sound
open the windows air sound
open windows the air sound
open windows sound the air
open sound windows the air
open sound the air windows
sound the open air windows
windows open the air sound
windows air the open sound
etc.

the language in play

a distant slow low flute

open windows

open air

open sound

the key could be the pattern of shift of part of speech within the language in play

lay them out there 

put them in piles 

move them from pile to pile 

sound of empty space within peopled space
the filmy sphere of peopled space

the bit in the third rung
the bit after the first long empty space in the third rung
is awful pretty, Neal 

low in pitchclass 

low in pitch 

not just two different things 

but two different complexions of the word low 

distant flute 

procedure 

clear results 

order 

explodes results

September 15, 2020 

Nat Evans - Still Just Sitting Out Back - Elise Blanchart, flute; Evan Smith, bass clarinet; Nat Evans, field recording & shruti box

We don't need to make music of it. Even the music doesn't need that. Breathe into pipes measured by pitch. Hearing only from within. From above it is inaudible.

Recorded

September 12, 2020

Chaconne for Solo Violin in D minor - Johann Sebastian Bach, transcribed by Ferrucio Busoni - Wolf Harden

effective use of octave doubling
Busoni doesn't modernize
but opens us to what was modern in it
or to what isn't modern in us 

a little Lisztian sparkle dust sprinkled into it
to bring those violiny figures to life 

Bach's Hammerklavier Sonata 

what Busoni wanted Bach to have meant it to sound like
kind of a reverse Lisztian maneuver
instead of reduction to piano
an explosion into

2 Pièces Froide - Erik Satie - Frank Glazer

could imagine a problem with the accompaniment pattern
but it isn't that
it is its
pliability 

another figuration freak 

proto neo-classical 

Bombast be gone! 

I will not be bothered by the likes of you, mister bombast

September 13, 2020

Turkey in The Straw - Billy Golden [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

those laughs are composed and jammed with intent
percussive
an act that has been worked up
who was this for?

Gladiolus Rag - Scott Joplin - William Albright

a correct type of voice-leading operates within a narrow and self satisfied harmonic universe

Florida Rag - Fred Van Eps (or Van Eps Trio?) [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

rhythmic derring-do to do duettically

{Van Eps Trio in the book's index, Fred Van Eps in the book's text]

Sonata in G minor - Claude Debussy - Arthur Grumiaux, Istvan Hajdu

formally: this goes like hanging out with folks who just do this sort of thing
they set each other off
just drop a couple of notes in there
and listen how they sing
telling a story they've told before

Der Dämon - Paul Hindemith - Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Lothar Zagrosek

Cosmopolitan Germanic Satie
but with straight lines 

nothing that isn't effective
or he certainly had heard Rite of Spring by then
but translated into plain German
theatrical like film cues
pre-talky
Foley artist doing an imitation of himself 

I'd always heard that pre-theory Hindemith was pretty great. This is a winner! He pays his mind to number, count, meter. 

another picture book
a Gothic Horror

The Crowing Rooster - Walter Rhodes [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]

the parts jam themselves together tightly in places as though they were jostling each other while performing 

the firm evenness of the beat allows metrical offsets

Klavierstuck, op. 33b - Arnold Schoenberg - Paul Jacobs

perfectly understandable as a tonal type sequence of counterpoints, broadly understood 

really lovely
no wonder these pieces seduced me so successfully when I was in High School.

Mass in G Major - Francis Poulenc - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw

Enter with an idea that is less musical than architectural.
The chorus that sang Berlioz's Requeim for Berlioz has had a long retreat
and after 100 years they have come out with this. 

2. more friendly not so scary as 1. was. 

demon progeny of Balzac
the secret of this music is that it only exists within architecture,
secret within secret
blueprint of our understanding
it dives behind Haydn to see the older secret
clutched tight to sternum
solidifies
frozen
a bit flirty even at the end
temptation to conversion

September 14, 2020

Der Weise der Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke - Frank Martin - ORF-Symphonieorchester, Lothar Zagrosek, Marjana Lipovsek

no room for decoration
or no stomach for it 

diary entries set in minimally hued Debussian continuity scoured out by Weill 

long tones or groups of simultaneous tones accented off pitch
very short
a snap almost
were it not so grim
more like a composed pluck of string 

war dark winter bleak
becomes bleaker and bleaker
long enough to show there is no end to it

September 15, 2020

Toccata Concertante - Irving Fine - Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Joel Spiegelman

marbled with business between notes in their groups and places where they kick off their shoes briefly

American Neo-Classical
feeling pretty darned good about itself.
Like a smarter Ruggles, if Ruggles had ever played as a child.

I'll Never Go Back - Louvin Brothers [from Goodbye, Babylon]

Is this the same bunch of blood harmony guys who did Rank Strangers? Nope, those brothers were Stanleys.
Cousins perhaps

Day In, Day Out - Billie Holiday, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Ben Webster, Jimmie Rowles, Barney Kessel, Red Mitchell, Larry Bunker, Alvin Stoller [from Songs for Distingué Lovers]

opening piano plunge not only acts as a feint as to the eventual key sense but is also neatly echoed by some of Billie's melodic ploys. Her vocal seems to be getting more verse in than there is proper room for, but the music behind her is always right there to catch her.

September 16, 2020

Music for Four Pianos (part 1) - John Cage - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Lise Mann [April 1985]

Neal assembled this crew and produced this performance at the Meany Studio Theater, on four pianos, with four headlamp clad pianists. Stu Dempster wandered the stage, as did much of the audience, as we played, and recorded us using a binaural stereo microphone. Each piece that each of us played was assigned to one of the four pianos by a chance procedure. The overhead lighting was determined by yet another chance procedure (hence the headlamps). Above us a dance class in progress commented.

the thunder dance from above jumps right in 4 pianists 4 pianos assigned by some chance method lighting above each piano on or off by some chance method head lamps on each pianist with no care taken to avoid conflicts of any kind a theater of an attempt to follow instructions

 I don't recall how we timed it. 

Ben says once more or less: the subject matter of John Cage is Western Concert Music (as opposed to extra-Western-culture musics to which it might apply) were they not so irrelevant to its discourse. 

It could be something of a scuffle when we all had lots of notes to play on the same piano at the same time span - truly contemporary musicians.

Break On Through (To The Other Side) - The Doors [from The Doors]

The only words that matter are in the hook - the title - so you remember the song to buy it after you heard it on the AM radio.

Sing Me a Song - Vecchi-Harris - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [April 1972]

old (renaissance?) arranged for modern ensemble and in English to sell

Mess with Love - The Rumour [from Max]

message for mix tape
fade out for DJs to play with

September 17, 2020

Pastorale: "The Color of Water" - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Keith Eisenbrey [at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, December 1982]

the first chord and a few after, as they accumulate in unvarying sequence, are recognizable as part of a specific order of chords until at some point their track is lost. Proliferation, even ordered proliferation, unmoors us.

What's In It For Me - Bonnie Guitar [from Dark Moon & Other Country Favorites]

the backup plan song with backup singers!

Banned Rehearsal 282 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1992]

is this good playing? irrelevant to what the playing is for and what it accomplishes. It is listening playing. It accepts the baby and the phone call message

cassette tape ghosting: the medium relies on magnetized particles, which by long nearness in storage will imprint themselves onto a field of like particles on the span(s) of tape adjoining in the cassette: Mesmeric Ghost Signals.

Keep Your Eyes Closed - Serotonin [from The Carlos Compilation [a Rescued Record]]

vocals with "REM" nasal projection, but it is the rhythm section that is advertising here. Hire this bass & drum duo! It has a feel like rushing as it goes along.

Track 2 - (Betty) Eisenbrey 2002 [a private recording my mom had]

a slower string quartet movement, believably Haydn, or at least -esque.

September 18, 2020

Swampled - The Tom Baker Quartet [from Look What I Found]

It is jazz because (or if Jazz is) a dynamic social construct concept created collaboratively so that as a concept it can be shared - designed biologically to be held in common. Ineluctably, no one mind can hold it. It only exists at all by being a shared concept among many minds.

Sonata - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded by Steve Kennedy at Seattle Composers' Salon, March 5, 2014]

What is strange is that it doesn't look that strange on the page. 

Rhythm is a trick played upon the meter at the behest of the trickster composer. Unwittingly, the pianist acts as the trickster's mule. Fragmented counterpoints of counterpoints or fragments. 

To the extent that any of its figurations come across as original Haydn figurations, or something like them, the composition here shows just what odd things those Haydn figurations were, or are. 

All these tempos are alarming

One On One - Benjamin Boretz - Hideo Kikuchi [from Open Space 39]

Hideo plays this, understanding that in playing it they are composing it. The composition (of the notes on the paper) is made exactly to allow that. The tempo-jumps between the sections,  are not dramatic. That is, their intervals of tempi are not dramatic intervals. There is not any drama, exactly, about them. Something else. Way old school.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 12, 2020

Aku 200912 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Aku [200912]

In 1981 I made an electronically realizable composition called Aku. There exists on my hard drive several versions of this made by several electronic methods. I squeezed one of them to fit with the others and then piled them all on top of each other, tweaking the balance and pan. Here is the result.

September 15, 2020

Wallace Book 8 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 16, 2020

Chorale 7 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 17, 2020

Wallace Book 9 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 18, 2020

Chorale 8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

A few more weeks and I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace." 

Postscripts

dark night and its happy traits
 about which it begins to sing in the second verse
fired with love's urgent longings 1 of the

muffled
oblique voice
circle voice

Playlist

Preface

"So my social-ideological problems with musical theorizing really arise entirely in the mistaken ascriptive use of texts whose coherent relation to musical experience is, on my account, descriptive. This problem is probably at its most lurid and blatant in the music-devastating ontological transference that typifies traditional ear training, and most other forms of traditional music-learning, music-studying, music-understanding, music-theorizing practice, all of which lead inexorably - and familiarly - to musical expression-destroying experiential reductiveness: hearing analyses, hearing serial structures, hearing complex time-pattern relationships, hearing motivic transformations, hearing adumbrations internally and inter-textually and historically, hearing ideologies, hearing anything which is ontologically in the verbal - or symbolic - referential-linguistic domain rather than hearing music in its own fully ontologized experiential-intellectual language, is not only to freeze and paralyze the cumulating evolution of a person's inner music-experiencing history, but threatens to annihilate the entire intuitive music-experiencing history a person may have already accumulated."

- Benjamin Boretz "Experiences With No Names" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere." 

- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

September 5, 2020

Steve Barsotti

being in many places at once
feeding back within their orbital cross references 

[[child's play is unselfconscious being, retrievable fitfully as adult socialized citizens in: music, war, dance, sports, inebriation, dalliance, theater]] 

heard space is the apparent whereness of a sound moment,
the perception of a sound moment's immediate surrounds
or the perception of the immediate surrounds of sound moments. 

we come, we go.
gather, disperse.
retire to the nest. 

distant door slams shut.

September 6, 2020

Stephen Fandrich

The Water Way: Variations on Artii-Sayir, a folk melody of Central Tyva

Improvisation

there is a call
to join one by one
they arrive
and one by one
they groove in 

what are we ringing about today fellas? 

an organized activity
synchronized motions
comfortable sociability
continually adjust
to be
social wellness 

[in the thicket of repeating metrical geography hallucinatory reminders of other musics entirely arise such as here Rock Island Line] 

he brings out the piano's inner dulcimer orchestra

September 7, 2020

Keith Eisenbrey

16 Clavichord Improvisations

irregular proceeds
variants accumulate accelerations
and likewise
peopled 

takes itself apart by putting parts together 

a clown march for Aaron
thinking to myself out loud
(let's evaporate) 

subject matter: our music ear as pitch in a playhouse full of sound

Recorded

September 5, 2020

Symphony in A Major, K. 134(134) - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

winds (flutes and horns) provide body to the sound 
but body that can be re-haunched
with clever fingers to emphasize in the inner vocals
but the strings are what plays the piece
{experiment: play just only the wind parts of this} 

cheerful and competent stage manager
has got it all together
as though having it all together
were show business

did his competence come across as insolence
to the thems that might have hired him?

Sonata in B-flat Major, op. 8 #3 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

cooking on all the burners at once
stirring each pot as needed
quite clever

Sonata in G minor, op. 49 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Emil Gilels

Emil takes a fascinating slow tempo. 

it does breathe
inhabits
settles down for a long pipe. 

emphasis on resolution elsewhere than where resolution became required. 

It is interesting to hear these two (Clementi and this early van B): one can hear the affinity. As with each, the melodies are only what they need to be, and often that is not a song-like melody (operatic) that they need to be.

Symphony in B minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert - Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Münchinger

1
an upheaval has heaved things over
the orchestra breathes a new air
we can sing
we wish
eternally returning
for good or ill
they do not fight it out
they fester
its battle scenes insist on unfinishment
rather than fragmentment
round and around
there's a dramatic tale
even of how it finally ends
a Dramatic Overture 

2
cloistered serene machine
pompous puffed chest march
its those long held notes you gotta watch out for
they'll suck you right into their own drama
here comes bed check 

shh passion anguish
strange doings in this convent
so picturesquely déshabillé
lights down
curtain drawn in slowly
no swish

September 6, 2020

Nocturne in E minor, op. 72 #1 - Frédéric Chopin - Claudio Arrau

pitch class voice leading between those arpeggiated accompaniments
notes are ornamented twists on the tune
they don't just happen

Symphony in D minor "Reformation" - Felix Mendelssohn - Vienna Philharmonic, Christoph von Dohnanyi

picture book drama
the news spreads far and in secret
I'd watch this movie 

sneaking around under cover of night 

everybody loves a dance
such happy peasants
bucolic
beatified
Ein feste Burg
takes over
occupies  
the music
describes
the picture

Davidsbundler Dances, op. 6 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

about the problem between 16 and 12:
16 ? 4 ? 12 |
| 16 - 4 = 12 |
| 16 = 4 + 12 |
| who are you 4 ? |

counting beats won't cut it
it's a whole body thing
like Scarlatti
he is about the particulars of direct repetition
and dis-sequiturs that hold
how strong is this music's lock?
four squares off against three
(the succinctifier) 

when a Schumannian sound world ends
(movement over)
how far into the next new thing
does
the exact moment at which
that followed thing
extending
end?

how far distantly
does (it) persist?
[it, (the former Schumannian sound world)] 

we to sleep now in peaceful arms

September 7, 2020

Roméo et Juliette "Dramatic Symphony" - Hector Berlioz - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa

always so much better than remembered it ever was
Berlioz, like Dickens, brings his entire stage machinery along with him
right into their respective elsewise stageless medium
sound and poetry 

Berlioz saw the play as a literature of scenes and situations
not words necessarily 

how much of the English did he pick up,
and/or which translation was he familiar with,
and how good is it really
in comparison to Shakespeare?
and so he came up with what a symphony would need to be like
if it were like the play
Romeo and Juliet 

(what Wagner and Berlioz had in common: desires about the theater and the symphony) 

a new kind of musical experience

aural IMAX 

saw himself in a very large stage
melodies and instrument groups are his characters
is really into his special effects

off stage
back stage
scrim stage 

something Tim Burton about the glee in the macabre
pantomime peace
between the houses
lots of sermon 

turns it into an uplifting tale of political alliance
laying down the law on it too
with spear pounding no less 

"Your sacrifice has been accepted.
It is with gratitude that we (not you) triumph."

September 8, 2020

Pensees des morts - Franz Liszt - Stephen Hough

every thing is presented as though already fallen apart - shattered

Isoldes Liebestod - Richard Wagner transcribed by Franz Liszt - Michail Rudy

captures the sense
in which it is a duet at heart, partner unseen. 

barely captured, through the side of the ear

Symphony in C minor, op. 17 "Little Russian" - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Seattle Symphony Orchestra - Gerard Schwarz

It is all there, but it has been subdued, not let loose.
Is its notes but not its liveliness nor its urgency.
Not among Maestro Schwarz's better moments.

September 9, 2020

Les Eolides - César Franck - Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra - Jean-Marie Martin

a mere glance removed from Debussy or Ravel
detailed orchestration
the effects are made of figures,
figures in counterpoint,
nothing under-composed. 

French "Nationalist" pride is not an aspiration, they treat it as simply due.

Quintet in F Major, op. 88 #1 - Johannes Brahms - Budapest Quartet, Walter Trampler

We are Germans, we balance, everything can be counted. 

Its pleasure is in insinuating itself through tiny cracks in the created pitch space (which is pretty darned dense, but not dense with apparent cracks)

[my Sarabande! used in a very early piece of mine: Variations on a Theme by Brahms] 

contorts itself in passage through
so indoors it is
step by step
further and further
afield

September 10, 2020

Symphony in E Major (#7) - Anton Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden - Eugen Jochum

we have been taught that the first period establishes the key - as Haydn intended. 

If this does that then that is a subtle key of E indeed that is thusly so established.

(establish? is that what happened there?)
Is this modulation?
Or are we stuck in a dark room?
Is there a door
or do we just go on
as though we had gotten somewhere?

stop.
do not proceed.
peril abides here. 

the first movement has an end but not one we got to, but one that came upon us 

:: 

diminished 7th harmony as both barrier and portal
can't get through
but find oneself
elsewhere
dis-postured
re-posed 

then again to glorious breakthrough 

meanwhile here on earth 

:: 

this scherzo doesn't dance or scherz, 

it adventures forthright
girded of loin
and accoutered of spear
and shield forthright
and brave
but in circles
or gently veering spirals 

:: 

we are lifted slowly
through descending and side stepping figures
or shed them
as we are lifted
the goal is not to arrive at
but to break through
as arrived, 

without taint of cadence

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 7, 2020

Banned Rehearsal 1009 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1009 200907

This may be our last in-person Banned Rehearsal session until it is safe to meet in person or until the weather and light returns in the Spring. Karen has a Bodhrán which she activates (at first) by a windup robot. I have a washboard, some cans (one of which has rattle stuff in it) and a kitchen implement. Aaron has a keyboard-activated glockenspiel shaped like a toy.

September 8, 2020

Wallace Book 6 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 9, 2020

Chorale 5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 10, 2020

Wallace Book 7 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 11, 2020

Chorale 5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

A few more weeks and I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace." 

Postscripts

the sprung based as we have certain conditions

must be industry sinks the rapidly

to impose him sink state that it has no

the white knight

doomed in the forest

the crank in the roof

Playlist

Preface

"Let me here go into a certain depth in the matter of descriptive discourse; the questions are about what is the relation between what is predicated of music and what is experienced as music; and, in particular, of the relation between structure-surface imaging and expressive-surface imaging: are they images of the same thing? - which, musically thinking, means, are they generative and/or descriptive of the same music-experiential "determinate feel", or is the essential music-ontological totality expressed in their union?"

- Benjamin Boretz "Experiences With No Names" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

August 29, 2020

Susie Kozawa

the thought speaks in the tongue that happens by 

(as (then) it rolls across the floor) 

singular thought with gathered tongues. 

Susie shares as she enjoys what she has gathered to hear. 

listen,
now,
to here.

August 30, 2020

Naomi Siegel - Gestation

in ample progression
arriving then going
effort is a part of this making sound 

sound must be done
you must do it
for it to be done
and done it must be
so get to it 

monitor the beat
tangle the bells
find the floor 

intoning chorales
blow belly bubbles 

transitions from one area of sound to another are simply done and for being so simply done are stunning moodtimewarps to a many roomed home 

we will have been there and heard the whole
do not hurry
get to all the places fully
for if fully
then no need to return
having been fully there
there is no there left
it has been been in fully 

humor illuminates, lightens, clarifies.
time happens here
sleep sound

September 1, 2020

Beetlebox

effects (reverb, etc.) (patches, filters) in electronica are an acoustic functional equivalent or counterpart to the physical box and the mechanical interaction and inter-resonances of acoustic instruments (instruments for which the sound is the sound of their whole physical body, untranslated through electromagnetic signal) 

:: 

muddying the waters with waters
befouling the pristine with pristianity
folding the performer and instrument builder / designer collaboration in from a single source
and drifting the focus of apparent compositional intent 

signal patch pristinity

Recorded

August 29, 2020

The Flood - Igor Stravinsky - London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen, Peter Hall, David Wilson-Johnson, Stephen Richardson, Michael Berkeley, Bernard Jacobson, Lucy Shelton, Soloists of the New London Chamber Choir

a strange version of the story (paraphrases of paraphrases (where a story begins and ends are arbitrary choices (full of meaning because they are arbitrary) elisions also) certainly not your typical televised event. I wonder though how it sounded on a television of the era. 

"and ferret" 

a midrash
most peculiar

August 30, 2020

24 Preludes (1 through 8) - Lockrem Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey [in recital "Continuity in Small Things" at University Temple United Methodist Church, February 2002]

At least the first two are played too quickly
fancy composing with unfancy figuration

Powder Blue Mercedes Queen - Paul Revere and the Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

Who was he imitating here? Not David Bowie nor Elton John, though both of them, at times, imitate a similar sound.

"...such words as it were vain to close..." - J. K. Randall - Keith Eisenbrey [in recital at Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, April 2016]

I may not play it right but I play it true 

the difficulty is that each strike of key(s) must be exactly weighted
and you'll have plenty of time
or none at all
to overthink it
and you've got to be counting like a fiend to get the exact timing of the weight of them exactly
plenty
or exactly
none at all

all one will ever really need to know about pitch-time correlation can be learned by learning to play this piece true

Do You Wanna Hold Me? - Bow Wow Wow

the 80s never nailed themselves
as nearly as Bow Wow Wow nailed them here
the top of pop
spinning off

Seeds - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded September 2006]

a little collection of collected examples of thoughts (that might be) central to music taken apart by their conceptual parts  

1. a perfected vexation
2. a tender gesture
3. chaos nuanced (for Ben?) the question is about repetition
at the extreme does one recognize self?
4. startle a stare 'em down
5. alter and join altered figuration (a list)
6. for Neal: a long polyrhythm crosses the ocean of my attention. pulses rebound in slo mo

O Fortuna -  Carl Orff - Robert Shaw Chorale, Robert Shaw [from World's Greatest Choruses]

OR: (World's Greatest): all the stuff you've heard somewhere that we've done gathered here 

and yet the terror is real

Anti-Solos - Banned Rehearsal - Isaac E, John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

our family dynamic
(the toy wouldn't work)
I don' wanna make a tape now
stressful times
age of chaos
(must have broken a string a banjo string)
Bad Man Mr. Punch.
It is a strange tape Mr. Punch.
confessional banjo tunin'
as we speak up
tension in the air 

"overstrew" (word of the day)

Father and Daughter - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

watch you shine
goin' fishin'
with the constancy of mathematical certainty
(number theory)

Whether The Word Be Preached or Read - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded July 2015]

Keith Eisenbrey · Whether The Word Be Preached Or Read 2007 (150715&23)

a parody of a hymn. so Anglicanized!

You Want Me to Live (Forever) - Broken By Clouds

you make me want to live (forever)
you want to make me live (forever)
you make me to live (forever) 

voice of a distant voice
among the hypersurreal foreground chatter

August 31, 2020

Banned Telepath 53 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Neal Kosály-Meyer

constancy in pushing against imperturbababble 

rehearsal is banned for good reasons 

inscription upon the
mnemonic membrane
is forbidden

September 1, 2020

Pavana Fvb 4 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

points mark attention nodes
lines of points diverge
at points of divergence
startling attention gently

Bransles de Villages - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

bring out the buzzies! and drones! 

not far removed in effect from fiddle tunes and dance calls

Suite in D minor - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

conceptual size relations: note, contrapuntal line, ornaments - they are sized to each other in unfamiliar ways (to our ears) in an environment where the tiniest difference of balance is vast 

it doesn't look that big on the page 

DB composes with a microscope

Sonata in B-flat - George Frideric Handel

off it goes! doesn't look back eyes forward light and frothy

September 2, 2020

Septieme Ordre (sol) - Francois Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

melody catechized by counterpoints
questions split and shared
dancing on a surface that rationalizes
but also reflects the dance 

the learned discuss amongst their kind 

2 or 3 play around meter sense
resolves toward 3 as meter
with 2 as color commentary

or that's how it appears on the surface
this water's deep though

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Sviatoslav Richter

prelude clarifies the bewildering
fugue concerns the lengths of short things, or the exact place at which the short things turn into other things 

movements of overlaps

September 3, 2020

Sonata in G minor - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

identity games
between the partners
(and us)

which plays what?
(as related to our voice tracing analysis or intuition) 
(our educated) : its deeper meaning is its interaction, play. 

It expresses its play.

Sonata in B-flat Major, Wq. 49/4 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi

can't go back just yet, unfinished business. where were we now? 

1. a model "sonata Allegro" format early in that formats' career, when it is still material thinking about itself, not yet fighting its format's limits nor wallowing in formal self satisfaction
2. doesn't let on right away that it has started over or elsewhere or didn't
3. --

Sonata in A Major - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

expressing the exact lengths of
(not durations of)
where we are
then turn , turn,
in measured angles. 

It ought to compute.

Sonata (Partita) in D Major, Hob. XVI:14 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

within a never look back continuity
a play of keys
key parts
what was I doing anyway sequences  

an amalgamator 

also:
Haydn doesn't seem to be alone in there
it's a puppet show
with multiple personae interacting
with only the presumed singularity of puppet string puller

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 2, 2020

Wallace Book 5 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 3, 2020

Wallace Book 5 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 4, 2020

Chorale 4 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

I continue recording pieces for a virtual recital of recent music by Aaron Keyt and me. It will be a few months before I can get it all put together.

Postscripts

it into little shouldn't give does tell

i'll show you minister into orange

crates he nailed bookcases aside all the

turning through the window

the bird exterior

flitting about