Playlist

 Preface

"A score is a stimulus. to specific expressive events. to, that is, experientially realized creative activity.

There are primary and secondary creative activities. depending on the depth of expression elicited from you.

A stimulus to creative activity you value for its specificity. The greater its specificity as a stimulus the more potent its capacity to engender and participate in an episode of creative activity associated with it.

Stimulus specificity. which, liberates ideas in direct ratio to its distinctness. is easily confused with coercive specificity as to literal detail. If a stimulus has the effect in a given episode of creative activity of being coercive as to literal detail to some extent: to that extent, its stimulation is specific, but of something other than primary creative activity. at most of some form of secondary creative activity.

To the extent that a quest for 'correctness' ('compliance') replaces a quest for the maximum awareness of specificity of stimulus in the interest of specificity of response: primary creative activity is unavailable."

- Benjamin Boretz "(1/81)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

October 28, 2020

Jazz: The Second Century - Night Two - Watch Party
Earshot Jazz

Cha - Carol J Levin, Heather Bentley, and Solvej Noa (Amelia Love Clearheart)

Ray Larsen

EarthtoneSkytone - Kelsey Mines, Carlos Snaider

Rae - Abbey Blackwell, Ronan Delisle, Evan Woodle

the river
is wide and level 

smooth
up to the brush
that crowds the banks 

the ancient bed
is unknowable
its depth unspecifiable 

bright sky
bright water 

equidistant

Recorded

October 25, 2020

Variation, Fvb 7 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo  [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the running notes
float weightless
among
the pillars of homophony 

I want
to refocus
my attention
to the pillars 

one could think of Chopin's C Major Etude as being similarly configured - running notes and slower melodic/contrapuntal spine - but not as gracefully accomplished

Bransle de la Torche - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

these old courtly dances
I presume they are courtly
else why would they have been kept at all
are derived
from even older courtly dances
(we presume or I do) 

the act of writing down
or transcribing
music  
from the demotic
to the aristocratic
becomes composing
it throws cultural grit into the machinery of demotic, unwrit, tradition  

Suite in E minor, BuxWV 237 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

moves in all directions at once
all the time 

a devious cabinetry

Huitième ordre (si mineur) -  François Couperin - Rafael Puyana

voices playing peekaboo games among the keys
hiding in the tetrachords 

spider silk macramé 

a flattering portraiture
each of his subjects is dressed
in all the fancy gewgaws
and latest doodads

those are some ferocious chords down there Frank! 

keep to the straight way
of manly virtue
and rejoicing shall be yours

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

a lovely duet
the prelude is 

ingenious
sequences of  
multiply chromatic
approaches to the structurally penultimate
threshold 

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

is this about scales
I think so
then tonguing

Sonata in A Major, Wq. 48/6 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi

tiny monkey hands
taking music apart from the inside 

no dramatic necessity here
necessity here
is geometric

Adagio in F Major, Hob.XVII.9 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

he flings flowers
in a down the wedding aisle flower flingy way

Sonata in D Major, K. 381 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Keith Eisenbrey, Chris Vincent [recorded during service at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, September 30, 2018]

Mozart is alive here
to the theater
of the mechanism
that two people making this happen
make happen

Sonata in C Major, Op. 20 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

charming and full of tricks
fully engaged entertainment
he's showing all this to us 

now see what you can do

Sonata in G minor, Op. 49#1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

a sonata for playing in tempo never veering 

how many times has this been rescued from vinyl?
presumably some or all of:
from 78 rpm dubplate to 78 rpm master
from 78 rpm master to 78 rpm production
from 78 rpm production to 33 1/3 rpm master
from 33 1/3 rpm master to 33 1/3 rpm production
from 33 1/3 rpm to indexed memory locations

and more intermediate steps than that no doubt

October 26, 2020

Symphony in B minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert - The Met Orchestra, James Levine

a quicker tempo than to which I am accustomed
it misses something important
vastness 

sounds great
but the moments don't sink in 

now appropriate for the small screen
Il Commendatore

October 27, 2020

Etude in C Major, Op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded in 1942]

there is a quartzy hardness about this music
it wants to sing
but is only capable
of etching the surface
on rare moments
when it glances
at just the right angle
so that the light
might just catch it
at it

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41#3 - Robert Schumann - Quatuor Via Nova

melodies spill off the ends of melodies into the framework
the opening section
exposition to those who insist on music appreciation lingo
has no stable metrical locations
anywhere 

advantage counterpoint 

statements are answered by forked tongue questions 

poly-chambered in that
the walls hold them in space
they don't always agree
where they are
all at the same time

Elijah, Part I (beginning) - Felix Mendelssohn - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney, Henriette Schellenberg, Florence Quivar, Marietta Simpson, Jerry Hadley, Richard Clement, Thomas Paul, Reid Barteleme

what stands for piety?
oratorical structures developed for the stages and orchestras and choirs of a previous century
in bloated Romantic modernization 

Elijah champion of the old order 

reasonable expressions
appropriate for the occasion
gussied up Enlightenment fan fiction

October 29, 2020

Ein Faust-Symphonie - Franz Liszt - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Beecham Choral Society, Thomas Beecham, Alexander Young

relay
baton pass
progression
traces the logic
brick upon brick
tissue upon tissue 

Faust opening and Gretchen opening
have similarities in procedure 

as in
how the batons pass

motives are sequences of ordered pitch intervals
slotted into segments of metrical and key function locations
all parts and slottings are malleable
linear melodic thinking
the melody is making this music as it goes
as a listener we are right in there with it in 3rd person audiential

Postscripts

will be years and a half and boughs and trunks

and stumps of possible brief open country

some bright lake or pool broad river so

open olive lakes

nascent arid tactics

everything cold

Playlist

 Preface

"Academe has two equal and opposite problems, both life-threatening, and together virtually terminal: academe cannot survive into the contemporary world and its contemporary predicaments without coming up with genuinely new ways of thinking; equally, academe (at least in its liberal-arts/humanities aspects) is structurally incapable of either engendering or supporting or even tolerating truly new ways of thinking."

- Benjamin Boretz "The Responsibility of the Arts in the Dialogue About Educational Reform" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

October 23, 2020

Seattle Modern Orchestra - Julia Tai and Jérémy Jolley, Co-Artistic Directors

Clarinet Sonata - Edison Denisov - Deanna Briggs, clarinet

Air in G minor - Lou Harrison - Paul Taub, flute

The Moon and Sun Are Eternal Powers - Jarrad Powell - Paul Taub, flute

Simultaneously Solitary (Shendos No. 14) - Tom Baker - James Falzone, clarinet; Raymond Larsen, trumpet; Maria Ritzenthaler, viola; Abbey Blackwell, bass; Bonnie Whiting, percussion

In Memoriam Muhal Richard Abrams for Violin and Glockenspiel - Tyshawn Sorey - Eric Rynes, violin; Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Julia and Jérémy assembled a handful of Seattle's finest performers and presented an hour of flawless magic both in spite of and in recognition of these horrid times, secluded as we are from the simplest pleasures of playing music together. As always, the local composers, represented here by Tom Baker and Jarrad Powell, held their own just fine with their peers from elsewhere.

These are strange times indeed, when many of us, myself included, find ourselves suffering from emotional stresses of which we are often only dimly aware. Even in the past these can find sudden and unwitting outlet - music might move us to tears or leave us flabbergast and waste in a heap. One never really knows the whens or the hows nor the whats nor the whys. Last night I was moved - and I hesitate, here, to admit it, because I'll need to qualify it immediately - to unremitting fits of joyful and giddy hilarity. Was something about the concert funny? I suppose from a certain point of view I could point out aspects I could analyze that way - and some (by now ubiquitous) connection issues during the after gig chat certainly fed into it - Tom (and you know I love you dearly): you could get a side-gig going - think "Tom Headroom", just sayin' - but in the end my reaction was just that, mine, and its specifics had little to do with the specifics of what I was hearing or seeing. My best guess is that I was so happy at how well it was going and in how "all in" everybody was, that hilarity overcame me.

Be all that as it may, and on top of the spectacular performances all around, the show itself was put together with obvious love and care. SMO wears its institutional and professional aspirations proudly. When they do something they do it right, sharing it for us with joy and fervor. I loved the way the whole thing flowed, sound and video both - and I would like to extend my personal congratulations to the production team. Seeing and hearing five performers in five locations, hearing with each other in real time, arranged so beautifully on the screen, was deeply moving. Thank you all, you are part of what makes Seattle a blessed place.

Recorded

October 17, 2020

Creole Bells - Metropolitan Orchestra [from Allan Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

bandstand band
gets that piccolo calliope sound
that Stravinsky picked up a few years later in Petrushka

Sonata, Op. 1 - Alban Berg - Alfred Brendel

some pushing and shoving going on between and among the various musics crowded into this counterpoint 

one of them went sulking off 

an opera scene
a brawl some if it
in graceful slo mo

October 18, 2020

Jeux - Claude Debussy - Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, Louis De Froment

cells that repeat
spans that don't
attention isn't drawn
obviously
to a larger framework
but is held
within a few moments to either side 

the sense of now is narrow and mercurial
the repeating of a cell
is what defines
the cell
a mesmeric trick

The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan - Charles Tomlinson Griffes - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa

twice or thrice exotic:
francophilic treatment
of an English opium dream
of the east
in the past 

the purpose of this music is
to portray
to be about something
to evoke images
and lead one through those images
as a docent might

Variations on a Noel - Marcel Dupre - David Di Fiore

organ
in its close ties to architecture
building and instrument
are one and same
and because those buildings are for the most part liturgical spaces
organ music  has been more closely related and tied to that music appropriate to Western Christian hymnody et al
this has limited the range of its repertoire 

if the medium is the message
then a large part of the message of organ music
has been tied to the uses of sacred space 

but darn it he plays well 

youwza! 

and no other instrument
no ensemble
has the same capability of dissociating
meter
figuration
and voice
into regions of the room

Five Sacred Songs for voice and small ensemble - Anton Webern - Halina Lukomska

syllable to note correspondence keeps it atomic
if it's not a note it isn't a part of music

Home Sweet Home - Frank Jenkins [from Allan Lowe's  Turn Me Loose White Man]

variations on a theme
in a pattern
marked by figuration

Just a Closer Walk With Thee - Stuart Hine - Prospect Choir

each beat
an accent
brings
out
the barbershop

Kind Hearted Woman Blues - Robert Johnson

casual consideration of the downbeat
held together by structural lyrics and timbral echoes between guitar and voice

Four Norwegian Moods - Igor Stravinsky - New York Philharmonic, Igor Stravinsky 

I could imagine this the soundtrack of a National Geographic newsreel
in which direction do these exotic pictures query?
east to west or west to east?
who commissioned this?

Violin Concerto in D - Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Willy Mattes, Ulf Hoelscher

come see the view from here
isn't it lovely 

lifts itself to see
or steps up
then sinks back
into warm fine happy home 

plays between scrubby scrubby violin playing and singing singing violin playing
throw some sparkly dust around to make it swoony 

slow movement
I hear now how he echoes the sound of a violin within similar sounds in the orchestra ties colors together
halo 

scrubby finale ends 7 times over in quick succession

Night Train - Jimmy Forest [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

the sax pitches lift into brightness
!honk! in your ear
train's air horn I suppose
happy party sultry blues

Farther Up The Road - Bobby Bland [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

nearly a duplication of the ensemble in Night Train above if voice and sax could be counted as 

equivalent 

Four French Songs - [unknown composer(s)] - Betty Eisenbrey, Ronnie Martin

from a private tape
I must presume she was practicing these at home when I was little
so I've heard them before
but it has been some time since then

Everybody Loves a Winner - William Bell [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

arranged to perfection
back up singers are brilliant

Breakers Off Baranquilla - Lake Washington Singers

from a private tape
the layers of its (that prior tape's) former medial states as they push stop and go off air in sequence

"...such words as it were vain to close..." - J. K. Randall - Lana Anikina Suran [from Open Space 40]

the logical and lyrical extremes of Debussyan clarity

Pastorale: The Color of Water - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Neal Kosály-Meyer [recorded October 4, 2010]

we discuss slowed down prepping for the next major performance in Snohomish
we talk about Gradus
I was using "my 'drothers"

Ain't Got You - Bruce Springsteen [from Tunnel of Love]

wooing the other
channel love
the subdued orchestration
probably didn't even need
as much as he used

October 20, 2020

Banned Rehearsal 283 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Marilyn Meyer, William Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 283 920131

we are in a small room together
a busy infant is making busy infant sounds
while we strum bang pluck and blow
conversations cross intersect
and rebound in the room
from in and from out of the room
volitional? and not so much?
resplendently cruddy
when musicality is not a favored thing
neither input nor output
patience is required
musicality in some new form
may emerge someday
we finish with Stein
a reading

October 21, 2020

Explosion! - Shonen Knife [from Brand New Knife]

by the book maximum generic in your generic face corporate fabricated for genericness

F r AgMe Nt(s) - Marcus Oldham - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded March 11, 2007]

this was the last recording I made on the Yamaha 6' my folks bought for me in high school 

gesturally expressionist 

tightly coiled pitch work 

nothing is let go 

pulled back 

into 

close 

quarters 

clutched

Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen [from Magic]

his vocal is buried deeper in the mix than is his usual custom
as best I can tell he's advertising the songishness of the song - not his best and only half finished at that

October 22, 2020

Sonata - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded April 12, 2014]

removing tonal function and leaving only what?
common tone relations?
or not even that?
at least strong motivic gestural cross relations
the things that are going on together
may have difficult relations between themselves
but they are each
clearly
things going on
and it is together
that they are going on 

I dropped a lot of notes

Ranjana Phillauri - Diljit Diosanjh [from Bollygood Volume 2]

reverse exoticism
or succumbing -
(I want a portmanteau for succumbing and subsumption)
- to the powers that pay?
evidence that the sheer sound of pop is meaningless, empty.
the flavor of meaning only
#sincere

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 19, 2020

Banned Telepath 64 Lake City Messages - Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Banned Telepath 64 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Banned Telepath 64 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1012 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1012 201019

Aaron played drum at Toad Hall, Anna and Neal phoned from Lake City while Karen and I were playing in the Tintinabulary. Anna and Neal had also left some long messages so we added those in also 

Postscripts

no sign of years ago grill had but as

teddy buying the glass but nothing you

could call a name and on a dark night when

more than one

monologue in the world

the ground wind sees

Playlist

 Preface

"3. Fetishizing the machine: in western classical music playing and singing are not projecting imagery of peoplesound (or for that matter godsound or creaturesound or spiritsound) but powersound - impersonified mechanismsound - the cosmos imaged not as person but as machine, not anthropomorphic but mechanomorphic - the person empowered by appropriating the puissance of the superpersonal Mover, Fabricator, Generator . . ."

- Benjamin Boretz "Thoughts on a Transcontinental Train, Thanksgiving 1989" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Recorded

photo by Karen Eisenbrey

October 13, 2020

Galiarda, Fvb 6 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo

the ornaments are measured, not quickly to impress with skill, but to clarify their place within the metrical layers, integrated

Ballet des sorciers, - des Princesses, - Incerti - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

for old music, prior to the ossification of ensembles, plausible is OK. rule 1: no instrument known to have not been in existence then; rule 2: no inflation beyond the scale of social events reasonably to be expected from the household in question.

Suite in D minor, BWV 234 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

skill at the keys has become a real thing
and learnedness 

this keyboard music isn't an imitation of any other ensemble
it is native
specific to the instrument's intimacy

Onzieme Ordre (do) - François Couperin - Rafael Puyana

These pieces sing, pushing at the small corners of rhythm with its ornaments, like socks crammed into the backs of drawers, playing long games with balance

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

each falling
falls through
different wafts
each rising
rises on
different rungs
moments of sweet clarity

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

recorder duets are displays of practical acoustics
creating the impression
(correct)
that sound is a configuration
of some medium
in the room
although what we actually hear
is a mental image
made from
two sensors
and wetware

Sonata in A minor, Wq. 49/1 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Richard Egarr

no element in any sequence is without specificity 

by the time you've caught on
he's lost you

Magnificat - Francesco Durante - University Temple Chancel Choir - Chris Vincent, Howard Wolvington

the choir I am in, small, full of mostly old folks
(now in lockdown)
every week we would pull off a miracle
but we could also pull of something ridiculously ambitious
such as this.
Yes we have some great soloists to help
but there we are doing our miracle

Thine Is The Glory - George Frideric Handel (arranged by Robert Hobby) - David Di Fiore

flattery gets you nowhere
unless you're flattering the English

Allegretto and Presto in G Major - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

acceptable but unremarkable
a study

Symphony in D Major, K38(38) "Apollo et Hyacinth" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

energetic vibrant too short to show much, all for the best at that age

October 14, 2020

Sonata in G minor, op. 7#3 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

no completion
without interruption 

shimmed up
balanced but skew 

now where did I leave that?
how did it get over there? 

the intricate ornamentation of an earlier age has been pushed aside for shiny passagework
without the fancy clothes there is room to move ones limbs

Sonata in G minor, op. 49#1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

Mozartean in lyricality, but quite modest and correct.
One senses someone looking over his shoulder

Symphony in B minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Böhm

the splayed spirit
holding together
more or less 

Interior Man has become fodder
for public psychodramatic display
to be judged on the cruel turmoil of soul index

Etude in C Major, op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot (recorded in 1933)

Raw display of personal prowess as aesthetic image is part of the cult of personality
Napoleon syndrome

Fantasiestuck, op. 12#9 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

striving to understand what repeating this thing means
is it about where it ends?
is it about its length?
is it about its registral vector?
what? 

String Quartet in F minor, op. 80 - Felix Mendelssohn - Quatuor Ysaÿe

they are keeping a secret
(who us?) 

music for the players mostly, we are peripheral enjoyers. 

demonstrably respectable musicianship
nice but hardly revolutionary

Sonata in F-sharp minor, op. 2 - Johannes Brahms - Julius Katchen

brash and mal-shaped
the parts fight each other
in unseemly seams
the overflow last movement wanders off in denial of its own world beating ambition

October 15, 2020

Eine Faust Symphonie - Franz Liszt - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, Kenneth Riegel

1 

in the 19th Century
symphony and opera swallowed each other
each became the whole of each

but also like a triptych 

into each
painting
movement
character
of which
we enter as it were a virtual reality 

that must be Leonard jumping around on the podium making that pounding sound

2 

a woman's place is within
the setting is interior
internal looking past the world
no sudden leaps of imagination
no thought that isn't holy

3 

trickster Mephistopheles clown
let the audience leave cheering the devil
sure!

how did she get in here
ah
so we could have the moral of the story 

the eternal womanliness
(sung by men)
nice tenor soloist though

Selections from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Richard Wagner - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

step through here please
you will forget
where you have ever been
what you have ever seen 

Wagner has in common with cats
an inability to dance
there is no party downstairs

Boris Godunov, Act I, Scene I (1872 version) - Modeste Mussorgsky -Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Semkow, Martti Talvela, Leonard Mroz, Nicolai Gedda, Bozena Kinasz, Andrzej Hiolski, Aage Haugland, Halina Lukomska, Polish Radio Chorus of Krakow, Boys Chorus from the Krakow Philharmonic Chorus

entombed dead of night
barely flickering 

another combination of solo male voices and chorus
(as in the prologue) 

the past instructs the future
the camera does not move

October 16, 2020

Sonata in C Major - Ethel Smyth - Liana Serbescu

important to remember that the composer was only 19 at the time this was written. 

the how it is done school of composition
the Clementi-Songs-Without-Words-Album-For-The-Young academy.
(but 19). 

the thinking is clear and unfussy
quite likable
but one senses a pedant over her shoulder

1812 Overture - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Philadelphia Orchestra - Riccardo Muti

This has been reworked as a hi-fidelity show recording (the money shows).
Why did I find myself rooting for the French?

Capriccio espagnol - Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Philadelphia Orchestra - Eugene Ormandy

He does not seem to be particularly interested in what the music is doing
beyond being pleasing
but Nicolai sure can make what he's doing sound great

No wonder he was so alarmed by Mussorgsky. 

See all the pretty costumes! It's like we were really there.

Sonata in F minor - Alexander Scriabin - John Ogdon

1 

scraps of a sonata
overheard at a party 

scraps of a revolution
overheard in a crowded tavern 

sweeping with wide-screen emotion.

2 

Gretchen?

3 

Mephistopholes? is that you too?
Is this literally based on Eine Faust Symphonie?
Well, it seems likely

we are back at what could be Gretchen at the end
the bitter end
(that's a coffin for sure, and a hymn.) 

I can't think the mapping with Liszt is an accident.

Poeme - Ernest Chaussson - Luxemburg Radio Orchestra, Louis De Froment, Patrice Fontanarosa

strangely recorded. Old? not so much: 1973 if google is to be believed. It might a bad transfer at some point.

the music goes like somebody's dream ballet moment

ravishment is the clear intent

Postscripts

begins with comparison at the most
background structural 28
limited is measurement for some p such

oblique voice
circle voice
more than one

Playlist

 Preface

"Is rationality a description of the real or a resistance to it? Does rationality make claims about the real, or claims against it? Is rationality in compliance with the real, or in revolt against it? Is rationality explication or is it denial? Is it justification or condemnation? Is the real world that which is rational, or is the rational the attempt to create the real world? Is real equivalent to rational or incompatible with it?"
- Benjamin Boretz "Fragment from "The Purposes & Politics of Engaging Strangers: (a sociomusical occasion)"" 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/.

October 3, 2020

La Sonora Clandestina

reedy multi-pitch-classed sustained sonority 

breathing in chord
breathing out chord
(constants)

presence emerges
and further fluctuations are discerned
beneath the husk
densely wound
huge 

temple grounds
water feature
rushing calm 

tiny articulations where the turning bands are tied together
deeper within
or further without
out deeper
with
in further
breathing in
with out
with in
the husk
the heart
whelming
engulfing

Recorded

October 3, 2020

Quartet in F-sharp minor - Arnold Schoenberg - Ramor Quartet, Maria Theresia Escribano

regressing to look behind
moments of voices together at such granularity one can't ignore the details nor let it slide
you'll be hopelessly lost
in the blink of an eye 

if a segment has a direction then something can follow it
rather than just come after it 

closely bound voice clusters composed so as to hear each interval within
the counterpoint pulls apart the voices 

intensity of strenuous intention

October 6, 2020

Scott Joplin's New Rag - Scott Joplin - William Albright

variety is in:
which harmony/figuration follows 

chords treated as objects
irreducible 

a harmony is, it doesn't become

4 Lieder, op. 4 - Anton Webern - Heather Harper, Charles Rosen

voice and piano respond to each other in kind
expression without word painting
voice and piano each responding to the text
as rhythm and statement 

statements have structure
as to how words build things to say.
the songs are tied strictly to their original language

Teasin' the Frets - Nick Lucas [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]

ragtime? to keep the dancers unconfused
set piece modulations
ready made
in their pockets
interchangeable parts

Sadie Lee Blues - Peg Leg Howell [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

I don't think he was properly done with that song when the 78 master ran out of space

Concert for Chamber Orchestra - George Anthiel - Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Spalding

friendly modernism
chamber music
in that each player
can hear the part they play in the whole
and enjoy it
following the whole is not a problem
for us
nor for anyone 

neo-classical:
the music parts are music parts 

I was mostly through it before I noted the absence of stringed instruments

October 8, 2020

Nice Work If You Can Get It - Fred Astaire [from Allen Lowe's That Devlin' Tune]

the song as a dance
sings with his feet
dances with his voice

Music for Movies - Aaron Copland - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Aaron Copland

formal challenges:
must be capable of comprehension
on possibly substandard sound systems
even when no one realizes it's there
:: nothing fancy enough to draw attention to its inner workings
:: a frame around or within the experience
he goes for bright and clear
static harmonic areas
immovable bass tones
never modulate
as such
stay put

My Little Brown Book - Al Hibler [from Allen Lowe's That Devlin' Tune]

forced quantitative verse?
the syllables he sits on
and those he cuts short
partition the meter
and where they sit
in how the key refolds itself

Concertino for 12 Instruments - Igor Stravinsky - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Igor Stravinsky

this is Stravinsky's ear thinking, pay mind here kids

Please Say You Want Me - The Schoolboys [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

echo set to POP! on AM radio
piercing 

pay off:
the pitch
the poise
the swing
the shattering air

and off it sails
out of the park
into the yodelsphere

in Session at the Tintinabulary

October 5, 2020

Banned Telepath 63 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Anna K and Neal Kosály-Meyer (phoning from Outpost Lake City)

October 6, 2020

Banned Telepath 63 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1011 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1011 201005 - 06

we gather sound together for you.

Postscripts

known nor possible obtained to john pater

volo ut ubi sum ego illi

sint mecum ut maybe also may work

my shadow on the down road

sliding through the splash

a striking music

Playlist

 Preface

"What John Cage is about is not Zen; it is experimental existentialism. It profoundly uses onsite trashing conventional ritual occasions and forms and systems through which social substance is infrastructurally bolstered to force pitiless confrontation with out-there voidness. Listeners composers performers undergoing extreme exertion or even more extreme nonexertion under the unyielding imperative of strenuous rigors meticulously detailed, stringently demanding, random-processually generated, globally undecipherable. Anticulture not alternative culture. Sound you have to hear, that you can't exactly hear; sound that you strain to grasp and that leaves you coming up poignantly empty. Once you know the reality of silence, content is up to you. Existence is not a career opportunity. If you escape from that, what is it, precisely, you are escaping? Nice is not what John Cage is about; what John Cage is about is more like the real-life sense of what you might mean by Serious. Probably John Cage would not have said any of these things, so maybe they're completely wrong."

- Benjamin Boretz "An Epigraph for John Cage" 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 26, 2020

Jenny Ziefel

In Memoriam (for Bill Smith and Ruth Bader Ginsberg)
Uncertainty and New Realities
Clarion Call
Prayer and Hope for the Future

strategy:
start at bottom
- open and explore spaces above it
- keep the pitch work lively
- modules of durations and internal tempi/rhythm
- touch base stretch to the side
- open all the little drawers
- touch the buttons
- density variable

the mechanism is loopish
diaphragm
center of body
breathes out
through trachea and mouth cavern
resisted and controlled in shape
by throat tongue
embouchure activating reed vibrations
on pipe length
by finger wiggling
down by the diaphragm
released into the acoustic and atmosphere of outside
body making color
body
shape of body
at the center of the space filling it
standing on it
all to ask 

how does the shape of the body communicate through the reed into the shape of the sound in one room?

September 27, 2020

Ted Poor and Cuong Vu

what cycles measure to measure measures a reference span with internal spans its harmonic content and sequence link spans to melody like rocks in a stream bed any of which can be taken apart shifted along without compromising its essential immobility steady purpose each finding a way to play duets within their respective parts.

Recorded

September 26, 2020

Symphony in A minor, op. 56 (#3) "Scottish" - Felix Mendelssohn - Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

wisps lost in dark forests follow traces that might become
but hope not
a regular symphonic first movement
there's the cadence . . . yep there it is

proto Dvorak
Scottish like an opera
set in Scotland
an exotic locale
pre-nationalist 

Ben sometimes opined about one thing or another (not this) that it was at its best when it wasn't trying to be a Symphony, in this case when it isn't trying to be Haydn.

here's the scene set in the quaint village
the costumes are great
doings in a castle
uh oh
stern majesty
proud dark deeds 

spirits are afoot
best to keep them occupied with counterpoint exercises
repeat
how old fashioned
rondo-id 
rather nice when it gets going
definitely rondo-id

hymn time!

Soirees de Vienne - Valse Caprice #6 - Franz Liszt - Vladimir Horowitz [from Horowitz in Moscow]

the floor's going to shake if everybody dances like that
and delicate inner parts
magic visions 

like an homage to Schumann with a bit of Liberace twinkle

September 27, 2020

Beatrice et Benedict - Hector Berlioz - Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim, Yvonne Minton, Placido Domingo, Ileana Cotrubas, Nadine Denize, Roger Soyer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, John Macurdy, Genevieve Page, Choeur de l'Orchestre de Paris, Arthur Oldham

melody emerges from character and creates it
or might be something that's running around in the streets 

orchestra tracks and amplifies and mirrors the emotional structural rhetoric of the dialogue of the words within the tune 

a narrator in this recording tells us
in meticulous French
the story between the musical numbers 

redolent of Lelio or Manfred down to the elaborate choral numbers
duet soprano & alto to die for
complete with internal orchestrated recitative
a mark that allows modulational freedom 

how might the diegetic non-diegetic concept play out within an opera?
more layers to work with actually 

sometimes the orchestration talks back
it is us
it abandons us
for the chorus
join the chorus
we are the chorus

Prelude to Die Meistersinger - Richard Wagner - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy

The Glorious Soviet of Singers of Nürnberg

September 28, 2020

Boris Godunov (1872 version), Prologue - Modeste Mussorgsky -Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Semkow, Martti Talvela, Leonard Mroz, Nicolai Gedda, Bozena Kinasz, Andrzej Hiolski, Aage Haugland, Halina Lukomska, Polish Radio Chorus of Krakow, Boys Chorus from the Krakow Philharmonic Chorus

a political instability presented without explanation
presented:
the antagonist and the antagonized
focused power
sullen resentment
no characters
just the masses
and power 

bitter piety 

Slava!

not triumphal

Fünf Gesänge, op. 72 - Johannes Brahms - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen

September 29, 2020

ultra concentrated contrapuntal convolutions
nothing escapes

Trio in A minor, op. 50 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eastman Trio

each step is prepared and made
then unmade step by step
all roads lead to stormy exclamation of passion let loose
or dark despair 

how much is this intended for the enjoyment of the players
and how much for a distanced audience 

at a distance and in a crowd a listener might have a more difficult time finding their way inside the part work as it coalesces in a large space 

at that time symphonic was the norm of expression
big big big
at such a state all the time and for what 

back where we started but louder

Italian Serenade - Hugo Wolf - Berliner Philharmoniker, Semyon Bychkov

at play with how it puts itself together to be itself 

tipsy tippy toe
no histrionics
for Hugo

Sonata in F minor, op. 13 (#1) - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

September 30, 2020

sliding from grasp

Symphony in D minor, op.13 (#1) - Sergei Rachmaninoff - Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin

adventure! danger!
full of compositional detail,
skillfully arranged 

but doesn't stay with any topic long
the order of 20 second groups doesn't seem to have any particular reason behind it, tonally or narratively
- so what then 

full of ideas about what could go in a symphony
a parade without reason

October 1, 2020

Pelleas et Melisande, Act I - Claude Debussy - Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, Charles Dutoit, Collette Alliot-Lugaz, Didier Henry, Gilles Cachemaille, Pierre Thau, Claudine Carlson, Francoise Golfier, Phillip Ens, Choeurs de l'OSM, Iwan Edward, Denise Masse

where is this music
in relation to the story
to the stage
to the voices
to us 

a constant mute chorus
it can observe paint react
but is invisible to the characters
it is an invisible mirror surrounding them
inhabiting the stage with them
our stand ins
up close

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 27, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 28, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 29, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 30, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

October 1, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

October 2, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

I'll check back on this shortly, but I think I finally managed to get it. I would have been more frustrated had my concept of how to play it not been developing so nicely.

Postscripts

the sprung based as we have certain conditions

must be industry sinks the rapidly

to impose him sink state that it has not

within this field somewhere the sun

a small road in the nether regions

an edge more or less complicated