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
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
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.
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
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
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