"I don't quite recollect how many tumblers of whiskey toddy each man drank after supper; but this I know, that about one o'clock in the morning, the baillie's grown-up son became insensible while attempting the first verse of 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut;' and he having been, for half an hour before, the only other man visible above the mahogany, it occurred to my uncle that it was almost time to think about going, especially as drinking had set in at seven o'clock, in order that he might get home at a decent hour. But, thinking it might not be quite polite to go just then, my uncle voted himself into the chair, mixed another glass, rose to propose his own health, addressed himself in a neat and complimentary speech, and drank the toast with great enthusiasm. Still nobody woke; so my uncle took a little drop more, - neat this time, to prevent the toddy disagreeing with him, - and, laying violent hands on his hat, sallied forth into the street."
Charles Dickens, from "The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club"
Texts
Recorded
Symphony in A Major, Op. Posth. 90, "Italian" (#4) - Felix Mendelssohn - San Francisco Symphony Herbert Blomstedt
1
the living of others can seem picturesque from outside its daily grind
a fantasy of Italy seen from the dour North
2
we turn from our ideas of what we see
to our gracious living on
top of it
3
we bring back our pleasant memories of travel
and spread them
around our homes as décor
this movement is over-stuffed and occasionally
tedious
4
everybody loves a Tarantella
even one as obsessed with its
correctness as this one
there are no clunky moves in this world
Traumerei (aus Kinderszenen, Op. 15) - Robert Schumann - Vladimir Horowitz [from Horowitz in Moscow]
brief subsidence in the harmonic stability
a passing cloud
Sonata in D-flat Major, Op. 730 - Carl Czerny - Martin Jones
1
we are traveling from our comfort
to a new comfort
a storm sweeps our path
wind and rain
but we have solid homes
able to shield us from such troubles
2
again we open in a secure feeling
bring in drama to provide
contrast
all will be well
3
a bit of vigorous exercise for the constitution
4
difficulty of execution is treated as a positive good
wanders
about the typical paths without particular aim or wild imagination
everything by the book
Prelude to Lohengrin, Act III - Richard Wagner - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
frenetic strings
brash brass
pleasant reeds
Germanic
self-mythology
March 3, 2024
Romanze in A minor - Clara Schumann - Susanne Grützmann
this melodic figure has a top (first) segment
and a bottom (next)
segment
the key of this piece is defined by the gap between them
it should be noted
that the two segments are quite near in
register
but there is no mistake between them
the dimensions of
that gap arise in the ear-mind
a solid chunk of music
the Avenger God Psalm
in the person of one who pictures vividly what the
words are saying
as one reads along with the Psalm
the
soundtrack to the inner reader's imagination
(love those low pipes)
a cantata without words out loud
victory in battle as a sign of divine favor
a pernicious notion
goes way back
we love our battle scenes
Symphony in F (No. 00) - Anton Bruckner - Orchestre Symphonique Minstre Cultre D'URSS, Gennady Rozhdestvensky
clearly this argument has been raging long before we got here
the most
big R Romantic of his neck of history
Wagner was something else
entirely
not even Bruckner faced off two dolce flutes against a wall of fortissimo
brass
because it was a good idea
for him
it was part of the
full working out of an idea
a necessary move
a composed-in virtual echoic chamber
this is a strange sounding symphony
Brucknerian non-sequitur
a pesky sprite such as a cat can be
takes
on fiendish proportions
no balance or tedium avoidance
the
Brucknerian fake-to-the-tight-end modulation
picks himself up off the
dirt
listens to the forest birds
modulation as a matter of soul
survival
Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 - Johannes Brahms - New York Philharmonic, Westminster Choir, Bruno Walter, Irmgard Seefried, George London, John Finley Williamson
from the center of the chest
house of convictions and social cohesion
moral bedrock
a grim march from cradle to grave
words of
comfort ex machina
back to the grim march to meet thy doom
fortissimo junction
alternative
a choice to be made
this requiem is mostly an extended theological dialog
has a choral
"I"
were Brahms to have composed an opera
I'm sure his characters would be
given ponderous tomes of lines to sing
throwing figures around like confetti
everybody loves a good day of judgment movie spectacular
heroic cadence
righteousness-er counterpoint than yours
writes
this stuff because its the morally correct thing to do
The Tempest, Fantasia after Shakespeare - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., Antal Dorati
takes its time (marvelously) to get things going
nice bit of
orchestration too
I guess he didn't want to open with the storm and blow
his wad all at once
this seems to me like it needs a dance to complete
it
costumes dancing around without inhabitants
a strange puppet
show
no one but Tchaikovsky ought to feel competent enough to wield the
tune bird
kind of a strange take on the play if you ask me
Andante maestoso "Vexilla Regis prodeunt" (from Via Crucis) - Nederlands Kamerkoor, Reinbert De Leeuw, piano
plain
unadorned
uniform
every note a monk
Etude "Allegro Deciso", Op. 16 #1 - Ferruccio Busoni, Wolf Harden
a composer-instrumentalist can approach the composition of an etude
from
any or many of several standpoints
it might even just be a quick sketch
of an idea for something else
Suite for Violin and Orchestra - Frederick Delius, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, Ralph Holmes
like a floral arrangement
a Suite is a less fraught genre than Sonata
absolvement
moments not movements
for years
as a child
this recording
of this symphony
was half of what a symphony was
the other half was Shostakovich's
9th
the peculiar clunkiness of these transitions
were what stood for
composition
no wonder I grew up so confused
Dvořák as an unwitting identity warrior
English Horn stands for pastoral
sylvan
in the lap of nature
prayer rises to bliss
we have entered the wilderness of contrapuntal disintegration
time to
pull out the magic pan pipes
a vigorous horse ride
will help you
feel better
what's this
a forest naiad on loan from Europe?
Old Black Joe - Thomas Craig [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
body in the lower pipes
loose jointed piano playing
unrepentantly
elastic pulse
Madama Butterfly, Act I - Giacomo Puccini - Coro e orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Alb erto Erede, Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe Campora, Nell Rankin, Giovanni Inghilleri, Piero de Palma, Fernando Corena, Gianna Diozzi, Melchiorre Luise, Michele Calvino, Luigi Pizzeri
busy bowing
officious administration
colonizers eroticize the
exotic from a distance
effective moment
after effective moment
as if these folks were caricatures of passionate Italians
youth
and beauty arrive on the clamshell of an other civilization
the problem with modeling the going of your opera
on that of spoken
drama
is that one is held in check by the dramatic weakness of the play
you are working with
situations that are believable in the artificial
world of recitative and da capo arias and set pieces
fall on their face
in naturalistic declamation
based on the rhythms of stage acting
Pinkerton arrives with a whiff of the Star Spangled Banner
Saga-Drom (The Dream of Gunnar), Op. 39 - Carl Nielsen - Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt
in the north
tales begin in dim morning twilight
clues are sparse
first farm chores occupy the landscape
a study in lighting
The Land of Cotton - Hedges Brothers & Jacobson [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
each line has its own tempo
vaudeville locution
The Tales of an Old Grandmother - Sergei Prokofiev - Nathan Milstein, Georges Plademacher
establishing a remove from the listener
we observe within the frame
provided
Variations on a Noël - Marcel Dupré - Douglas Cleveland
variations concern themselves
with the structures of the theme
as
they might be discovered or imagined
in different lighting
identical pose
the theme
remains unchanged
even if
hurried along
now and then
the theme is the structure of its
melody
for a piece that really is about tone colors
this recording is a a bit
murky to my ear
Z mrtvého doma, Act 1 - Leoš Janáček - Vienna Philharmonic, Charles Mackerra, Jiri Zahradnicek, Ivo Zidek, Vaclav Zitek, Dalibor, Jedlicka, Antonin Svorc, Jaroslava Janska, Vladimir Krejcik, Richard Novak, Beno Blachut, Zdenek Svehla, Eva Zigmundova, Zdenek Sousek, Jaroslav Sousek
comes apart as it comes together
pushes the characters around
excellent writing for timpani back there
film score music
nothing below the surface immediacy
affects
anything on screen
String Quartet, Op. 28 - Anton Webern - Juilliard String Quartet
a pitch indexes a moment in music space
a matching pitch indexes a
matching moment in music space
distances can be calculated within
different frameworks
within or across music spaces
Ode (Triptychon for Orchestra) - Igor Stravinsky, London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas
doings in the background amid the lower voices
could be street scenes
elaborate caper plots going down
Sonata I (from Sonatas and Interludes) - John Cage - Adam Tendler
prepared piano is a solution
to the itch to have an instrument
just like the piano
but with different sounds
a
pianistically regimented virtual orchestra
proto-midi
There Is Only One - Four Leaf Clover Quartet [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
love the sloppy piano player back there
Moscow, Cheryomushki, Act 1 - Dmitri Shostakovich - Residentie Orchestra The Hague, Russian State Symphonic Capella, Gennady Rozhdestvensky
a windup puppet opera
complete with circus parades
or a play
in which the characters stop for a moment
to be in an opera
and sing a song
get stuck on a word
or take the stage in the
local pub
or on a stage where the audience is right there to sing to
clear the stage for a big dance number
everybody gets a few lines
to fill with couplets
one does not expect the sound of an explosion
nor I suppose of a motor car
music to back the spoken dialogue
cinematic
non-diegetic music
as a description of a social situation
Prisoner of Love - James Brown [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
I presume that in concert this went on considerably longer
Voice of the Bard (William Blake) - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]
the melody he sings lurches around to the lengths of Blake's syllables
Seaside Bar Song - Bruce Springsteen [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo and the Beat]
desperately seeking California
Three Songs - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Kenneth Jaffe [recorded live at The Studio Theater, Meany Hall, University of Washington, May 16, 1979]
the texts are by Walt Kelly
for which I neither asked for nor was I
granted permission to use
but
I think I did a rather nice job of
setting them for a 20-year-old
attempting songs for the first time
Untitled - Joe's Smokin' Pals [form Bard Sampler 82 & 83]
a story of sorts
with guitar on top
Sonatina - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [from Purple Stripe]
this is the original recording I made on clavichord
somewhat the worse
for dubbing among tapes
otherwise a solid performance
included as
part of a cassette album for limited distribution among correspondents
A Matter of Life and Death - Steven Mackey - Elizabeth Di Felice [from Open Space 4]
morse-ic rhythms slicing through
once again the urge to have a piano
but differently sounding
pulling the attention toward the sensual
Minute Etudes - Emily Doolittle - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, June 23, 2012]
this was the first time I had worked these up
I gave them another try a
year or so ago
a bit sloppy here and there
some finger puzzles
only partially worked out
possibly a bit too tricky and exposed for me
to be able to accomplish live
with any reliability
as I understand it
David is attempting
among other things
to
use analog means to generate a sound world
that might be the kind of
sound world understood by non-human critters
and broadcasting that sound
into an ongoing natural environment
in hopes of eventually
establishing a basis for inter-species communication
Like a Bird on the Deep - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at the Tintinabulary, Seattle, June 14, 2015]
the hymnodic "me"
of 19th Century American hymnody
a relic of The
Great Awakening
"of shreds and patches" - Elaine Barkin [from Open Space 34]
what stands for cyclic
is poked and prodded apart
its shreds
surround it widely
Grumpy Toad is my favorite
Greenwood 180101 - Keith Eisenbrey
at New Year's Moment
in one of Seattle's minor downtowns
we hear
the fireworks
while waiting for our bus
locked out of my own phone
Mississippi John Hurt Tribute - Jeremiah Lawson - Jeremiah Lawson
mixing my metaphors
just like they're cookie dough
rhymes "-phors" with "dough"
works with the tune
O Pulchra Facies (De Virginibus, Antiphona) - Hildegard Von Bingen - Sequentia [from Spiritual Songs]
springs from a deep slow music
in droning viols
Madonna, Io Ben Vorrei - Carlo Gesualdo - Delitiæ Musicæ
statements begin with imitation that can be followed
until you can't
to come together at the cadence
it's a rhythm of the melodic color
of the cadence points
in sequence
David sent me this more recent recording of these pieces
this time
with percussion
what the sound lacks in fidelity it makes up for in how
much fun they're having
Jubilate Deo omnis terra - Peter Philips - The Choir of Royal Holiday, Robert Gough
each shift of note within the polyphonic texture
a new sense of the
vowel
as a structural node within the poem-music
O Lieber Herre Gott - Heinrich Schütz - La Chapelle Royale, Philippe Herreweghe, Agnes Mellon, Greta de Reyghere, Monique Zanetti, Howard Crook, Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, Herbe Lamy, Renau Machart, Peter Kooy, Peter Lika
rising in stepwise sequence
perfect clarity
Erhalt uns Herr, bei Deinem Wort - Dieterich Buxtehude - Stella Simone
trills and mordents
provide a pitch with an explicit context
on
top of its implicits
a twisted two minutes
David et Jonathas, Act II - Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Pinchgut Opera, Antony Walker, Orchestra of the Antipodes, Dean Robinson, Paul McMahon, David Parkin, Andrei Laptev, Anna Fraser, David Greco, Cantillation, Anders J. Dahlin, Simon Lobelson, Richard Anderson, Sara Macliver, Ashley Giles
chess moves in the plot
matched by intricate and vigorous part
writing
tune strands
conglomerated meters
deceptive moves into false
hemiolas
La Logiviere - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
close attention and memory might get us through
Invention in D Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Edith Picht-Axenfeld
allows the figures to create what meter they might
or
letting the
written meter guide
a contrast to be exploited
Noel Suisse - Louis-Claude Daquin - Marie-Claire Alain
rhythmic head rhyme
a binding tool
How Excellent Thy Name - George Frideric Handel - University of Puget Sound Chorale - Thomas Goleeke
the English hire a German to flatter God for them
an interior space
we'll take the slow tour thank you
check out all the nooks and cupboards
half cadence through the side door
his downbeats modulate on the spot
into elsebeats
meter
inflected by figurationally implied
alternate meters
La de Vatre - Jacques Duphly - Christophe Rousset
this garment is lavish with fine textiles
hoops and coiffures
Symphony in C Major, Hob. 1 #9 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Ádám Fischer
now where have we landed?
quick bowing
second movement is a
location
circumscribed
controlled access
the lines in this
period
all rhyme at the head
so we know where we are in it
In Session at The Tintinabulary
March 3, 2024
Costellow - Keith Eisenbrey
March 7, 2024
after Halt in Gedächtnis Jesum Christ - Aaron Keyt
Postscripts
Drops
Keith Eisenbrey 15: 2014
Early 2014 found me completing the first part of Études d'exécution imminent - the project that would keep me busy into 2021. Another was written for Ben Boretz, in celebration of his 80th. J was composed while thinking about the late J. K. Randall. The six movements of Another are Sphinxes, Scarabs, Pools, Potions (first batch), Potions (second batch), and Smoke, which movements can intermingle in performance and sometimes do, and so I include here three quite different versions for your enjoyment - two on clavichord and one live version on piano.
J and the second version of Another were recorded live at The Chapel Performance Space, The Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, in 2016; the other tracks were recorded at my home in 2015.
Prior volumes are available at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com
All are free for download.
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
listening journal doodles from 2021
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