Preface
"For this contrivance to be the pillar, the very foundation, of my aesthetics, I have to enter a very strange platonistic world, a world of reified properties. Within such an aesthetic, crucially, metaphors are entirely absent; they are, indeed, categorically nonexistent; their places are occupied by haecceities which do inhabit this world, though in an oddly relativistic way: as abstract entities in one-time-only manifestations: one world-moment, one music-moment, one reception-moment, the entire contents of a momentarily materializing universe instantaneously dissolving into retrievable memory, into past-time, leaving nonetheless a transformative trace on the whole of consciousness: a state of being whose own haecceity is the identity of the conscious whole."
- Benjamin Boretz - "Fourth and long in Baltimore" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
Texts
From Recent Arrivals
October 3, 2021
À quelle heure commence le temps - Gilles Tremblay - Aventa Ensemble, Bill Linwood, Vincent Ranallo [from Wanmanshu]
a door opens to a large room
delicately furnished
fully prepared
for us
we are greeted formally
with sung text stuttering into
chromatic leaps
fading into the door hinge
be wary
we will
be shown
de rigeur modernist gestures
aims for Erwartung
from a
position to the side of late 50s Stockhausen
with a pinch or two of
Berio's Visage
Composition No. 12 - Guillaume Gargaud [from 17 Compositions]
solo guitar
lyric
dense
Death (XIII) - Julia Shapiro [from Zorked (pre-order)
heavy drama
beast voice
buried in the folds
A Photograph of You - Laurel Evers [from Music from the Left Hand]
early evening with wine
bass
guitar
clarinet
comfortably social
a right pleasant hang
Full Shadow - Neil Welch [from Sonic Tide]
baritone sax
(with electronics?)
((reverb for sure))
mountain grotto
Pushing Back - Steve Layton & Improv Friday [from From the Vault 2011]
a slow parade
with floats and puppets
solemn
If You Wake in the Morning - The Foghorns [from Turn to the Moon]
small town social pressure
conform to an unspecified doom
country
feel
with fiddle and acoustic guitar
If I Should Lose You - Aretha Franklin [from Unforgettable: a Tribute to Dinah Washington]
an alarming entrance
(for the ages!)
after a gentle piano riff
and a soft as satin string cadence
full out voice
up high in
her ping
it transforms the entire rest of the song
walloped with
an invisible club
Encore for the Fans "Listen" - Beyoncé [from B'Day]
the role of female hero
for fellow women
I will be
what we
can be
you can be
after all
here I am
also demands that old Aretha
R word
though not in so many words
Recorded
October 3, 2021
Raar - Bruce Hamilton & Friends [from Mash Hits Volume 1]
the barrel
in this gravity
rolls slowly
through a viscous
medium
it eases to rest
Ghosting Doubles (Second Sighting) XY - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded with the stage directed microphones at Seattle Composers' Salon on July 7, 2017]
chapel chat before I play
when thoughts collide
they fuse
it occurs to me
that one could treat any of the three lines
as the
primary line
and move through them
with a similar pattern of
sharing
(here:
Middle,
Middle/Bottom,
Middle/Top,
Top/Bottom,
Top/Middle/Bottom)
October 4, 2021
Salvator Mundi, Fvb 45 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
the undisturbable cantus
wherever it flows
it remains
steadfast
earth is solid
and does not move
Symphoniae Sacrae II, Op. 10 #23 "Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
3 voices
if I count correctly
TBB
though perhaps ATBB?
voices cycle
and build density
step by step
the
reading has lines
and the setting sets those lines
in distinct
manners
less about the meaning of the statement
than its structure
focus on the external
structural
aspect
can free the
aspect that conveys referential meaning
Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor (Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band 1) - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet
separate chapels
in the same building
big sound
full chords
slide down the hill
slog back up
twice
Sonata in C Major, Wq. 53.5 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
transparent
all is laid out in plain sight
nothing is lost
5 Variations in D Major, Hob. XVII:7 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
themes for variation
are valued for their directness
and for a
clear establishment of key
best if they don't stray far internally
so that its contours can be recognized
in the variations that
follow
October 5, 2021
Don Giovanni, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, Sherrill Milnes, Walter Berry, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Peter Schreier, Teresa Żylis-Gara, Edith Mathis, Dale Duesing, John Macurdy
the underworld
of the afterworld
sees all
rumors fly
good clean fun
(rape and murder)
(the habitual crime
and the one he gets taken down for)
pacing
(he also stiffs
his servant)
does the music ever settle
or is it always moving forward
in and
out of recitative
and full on singing
Ottavio does try to pull it together
calm things down
just like a
man
husband and father in one
creepy as that is now
was
as I understand it
the ethical understanding of the times
his attempt is only partially successful
two fiancees
hm
the only married man
is murdered in the
first scene
Ottavio
the voice of righteous machismo
his music is utterly
static
calm paternalism
the noble dude
comforts the
noble woman
the peasant woman
comforts
the peasant dude
matched moments of musical
stillness
tune voice
bass voice
but the one in the middle
when it
appears
devious
playful
but there's something sinister about this reading
lurking
dangerous
not so much for the last two movements
nothing to
see here
just happy country folk
Etude in C Major, Op. 10 #7 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [1933]
the voices vie for attention
as they arise from the figures
Selection 15 from Selections from The Nutcracker - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
and it ends with the sumptuous imperial ball
all sensuality
all
the time
nothing to fear here
everybody's rich
and beautiful
complacent triumph
October 6, 2021
Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 - Arnold Schoenberg - Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, Robert Craft, Anja Silja
does
not begin
does
has begun
the singer
has
a chamber orchestra
of agile hands
to make their meaning
clear
gestural participation
they
the chamber orchestra
are also
their
(Pierrot's)
face
stagy?
hell yes!
you can smell the greasepaint and sweat
small dingy stage required
the setting doesn't paint the text with
madrigalisms
it is the embodied character that sings
as in Debussy
and the incarnation of the stage from which they sing
parts flit
from instrument to instrument
Ross' Juba - Black Face Eddie Ross [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
see above
music becomes the body
Symphony #1 - Roger Sessions - Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Akeo Watanabe
1
motorized
urban
not deviously friendly
jumpcut
a lonely café
in the wee smalls
fierce
2
American Sehnsucht
gets all twisted
as it festers
remembrance
of those back home
3
new job
fresh resolve
fresh face
go get 'em
so easy and relaxed
open and clear
room to be fancy
without
hurry
Ramblin' On My Mind - Robert Johnson [from The Complete Recordings]
this is the second version of the song on the album
seeming easy passage
between the guitar's registers:
bass chunkahunka
treble whine
October 7, 2021
Winter Weather - Peggy Lee [from The Complete Recordings 1941-1947]
case study in
how to underline the structural rhymes
the
songwriter wrote
with rhythm and timbre
and Benny's band doesn't
have a slouch in it
It's Only a Paper Moon - Ethel Waters [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
a fancy enough tune
on its own
Ethel takes it through several
other worlds of levels
yeah!
Walked All Night - Charlie Booker [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
an urgency to the tempo
as if it is trying to get ahead of itself
solid blues
as fine a record as is
From the Ballet - Berthold Goldschmidt - Kolja Lessing
a 1950s revision of a 1930s piece
and old fashioned at that
nice
clean harmonies though
played with sensitivity and clarity
chromatics descending through a key feel
Down in the Forest - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [April 10, 1962]
Hollywood tone-picture
all sheen and costume
from the first phrase
nostalgic
for the prewar paradise
pretend high class
Symphony #6 - Howard Hanson - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz
opens with a cinematic scene
atmosphere
wherein a drama might be
progressing
dire and solemn
how many times
the opening motif is repeated
verbatim
2nd movement picks it right up
same motif
in new tempo
the journalists
will be amazed
if the program notes writer
writes about it
one damned thing after another
no fraternization among the parts now
everybody in line
Dance With Me - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [December 1972]
for a small vocal ensemble
I may be mistaken but I believe this was part
of an attempt to be inclusive of Hanukah on a winter holiday concert.
October 8, 2021
Missa Hilarious - P.D.Q. Bach - Peter Schickele
the choral clock in the K-k-k-kyrie is pretty nice
truth be told
Intermezzo 1 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [from Songs Concert, University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, November 6, 2004]
I like this tempo
slow but not protracted
I also like how
lyrically I discover each register
I was treating the quarter notes
as just long enough
and the whole notes
longer enough than
that
so that
they would clearly
be longer
than the
quarter's
just long enough
I Wanna Live - Ramones [from Halfway to Sanity]
rather a sordid tale back there behind the hook
In Session at the Tintinabulary
October 4, 2021
Gradus 372 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
does there come a threshold
in pitch accumulation
at which we
seize upon the possibility
of a familiar musical rhetoric
and
cling to it?
can we narrow our focus sufficiently
to avoid hearing
familiar sonorities
as dredging up their familiar contexts?
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
and loving language God speaks within them
must think account his we life and the
Samaritan the and the water pot
Reality Check::
too) I'm going to eat you
the sound
stopped
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