Preface
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| Karen, Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Herman Melville, from Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale.
Texts
Recorded
January 31, 2026
Madrigals, Book IX: Sù, sù, su, pastorelli vezzosi - Claudio Monteverdi Concerto Italiano - Rinaldo Alessandrini
longer notes
hang and drop
into short notes
short notes
bounce
into long notes
hang
drop
bounce
Te Deum Laudamus, BuxWV 218 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
the voices chatter
as they gather themselves
into their assigned
places
for the fugato
if one were to describe
a fugato passage
without using the word
fugato
how might one do it?
a series
of tonally charged
staggered
imitative
polyphonic entrances
this music has a whole bagful of them
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
reue dich, erlöster Schar BWV 30 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Ton Koopman
wherever one turns
something is going on
analyze the tonal motions
under a melismated single syllable
(a
rhetorical study)
a double cantata
articulated by middle chorale
how fluently
the continuo's basso
moves
bookended by chorus
Sonata in B-flat Major, Kk. 311 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
this music loves the last bits of phrases
to turn aside upon
figures with hinge points
designed in
Kinderszenen: Fast zu ernst, Op. 15 #10 - Robert Schumann - Florian Uhlig
the melody
leaves a wake
of harmony
Tscherkessenmarsch aus Glinka’s Oper: Russlan und Ludmilla, first version, S406 - Franz Liszt - Paul Williamson
Liszt enjoyed the music around him
so much
he transcribed it
so
he could play it
with fingers
would make a fabulous encore piece
2 Morceaux: Caresse dansé - Alexander Scriabin - John Ogdon
fairy tale finger puppets
Knee Drops - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]
color
percussion
in front of the microphone
for the novelty
of the sound
it has
recorded that way
imitating tap dance percussion
the music and the tech
learning to use each other
The Yellow Rose of Texas - Stan Freberg [from The Very Best of Stan Freberg]
one of the loveliest parts of the whole
Texas is the only place for me
so help me Mitch Miller
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Old Mother Hubbard - Lake Washington Singers [April 16, 1963]
to a Baroque aria
or the like
Embraceable You - Bill Evans [from Another Time: The Hilversum Concert]
an able jazz pianist
in accompaniment mode
must catch the solo
without fail
a juggling partner
this cut is all about the bass player
Where Have All The Good Times Gone - David Bowie [from Pin Ups]
a complaint to the past
Back Streets - Bruce Springsteen [from Live at The Roxy]
all the epic moment
all the epic time
he does an awful lot of swearing he's done stuff
or will do stuff
for ever
and shouting
The Prisoner - The Clash [from Nancy's Mix]
sound of the disaffected
propagated among the college crowd
of
with its
Hawkmoon 269 - U2 [from Rattle and Hum]
stadium fillers
inflate songs
to fill the stadiums
they sprawl
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Violin Concerto in D Major - Jean Sibelius - Itzhak Perlman [from The Art of Itzhak Perlman]
a lament is heard
in the mist fields
firm resolve
answers back
heroic Romanic concertos
allow a sympathetic listener
to fantasize
being the hero
of something
practically coerce it
orchestra stands in
for the greater world
ones proper sphere and
stage
we'll have a vigorous ride across the plains
coat tails streaming behind
They'll Never Take Her Love From Me - James King [from Bed By The Window]
awshucks sincerity
Sweet Possession - Keith Eisenbrey [from Summer Songs/Winter Mix]
fascinating
how the regularity of the drum machine's tempo
wants
to shape the original song parts
into their own lockstep
we hear the freely flowing
in terms of the applied grid
Your Cuplets Brimming - Christian Asplund [from Viola]
zeroed in
on the point of contact
the vibration
at the
tangent
of bow string
and viola string
Delicados - Sage [from Forked]
a movie scene song
with a bit of underworld camp
Love - Paul Simon [from In The Blue Light]
the chords form a weary descent
but the the title floats above
Sterling - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [October 1, 2023]
added lines
stubbornly
go about their business
Yes Indeed He Do! - Bessie Smith [from Empty Bed Blues]
I'm his shepherd
he's my sheep
two clarinets and a piano
Rock Me My Baby - Buddy Holly [from The 'Chirping' Crickets]
teen bandstand naiveté
with a wink
I Wanna Be Around - Aretha Franklin [from Laughing On The Outside]
revenge so sweet
from a front row seat
Memories of You (take 1) - Thelonious Monk [from The Complete Columbia Studio Solo Recordings]
we just watched Straight No Chaser last night
how tall was he?
he
seemed to play crowded in toward the keyboard
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Drowned - The Who [from Quadrophenia]
quatrains of lines
on a psalm tone
with distinguishing tails
Fatally Beautiful - T Bone Burnett [from Proof Through The Night]
the singer's attitude
about the subject of his song
gets in the
way
of the image
of the subject
can't be seen
behind all that sneer
Banned Rehearsal 165 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 30, 1988]
pluck and toots
reeds and lamellophones
a bird call
pan
pipery
harmonica hymns out the end of the year
cats and birds
and party noisemakers
gently
late evening
I Will Arise - The Robert Shaw Festival Singers [from Amazing Grace]
no sound
that isn't
an exact sound
one of my favorites
as a church-choir tenor
I Learned From the Best - Whitney Houston [from My Love Is Your Love]
another revenge fantasy
is there a difference
between a recording of a music
having been
made
and
a recording
manufactured
to be a music?
when was this
a music
being made?
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
this here
is a recording
of a music
having been made
no mistake there
it is
in the middle school raw
no
manufacture involved in that music
it was made from scratch
Raga Ahir Bhairav-Vilambit Tintal - Anjuman [from Rumba Meets Raga]
a manner of scrollwork about a drone
writhing smoke in a column of
light
interwrithing wraithes
Can't Take You Anywhere (feat. Charlie Smith & Lena Simon) - Dawn Clement [from Tempest Cobalt]
mothering blog-post poem
Banned Rehearsal 970 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [November 19, 2018]
a new device
a zaphoon
an eloquent reed
between thumbs
it speaks with the taps and rustles and clacks
in the room with
it
Banned Rehearsal
as a mode of listening out loud
that has
developed
over the last few decades
a mode
distinct to us
and over our shared history
I hear the Otamatone
in pipsqueak register
Long Ago and Oh So Far Away - Star Anna [from Love Shades, streamed February 14, 2023]
the shoutouts
have no connection to the songs
beyond the hat
and the set list
the dogs are also singing
that's Forest
a sad left-alone song
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
in the coming round a bend in the distance tempo
with whistle heard
across the audible distance
parallax
Candy Man - Roy Orbison [from For The Lonely]
a bragging come-on
implied swagger
Candy ManNUH
3 Olden Style Pieces: II - Henryk Górecki - Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, Zofia Kilanowicz
country dance weight study
music of vigorous stomping
too many
endings for what it was
takes too many bows
Little Latin Lupe Lu - The Kingsmen [from The Very Best of The Kingsmen]
with raucus drunken mayhem energy
All The Girls Love Alice - Elton John [from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road]
titillating the youth of the 70s
with tantalizing transgression
so
grown-up
The Back of Love - Echo & The Bunnymen [from Porcupine]
scrawls firmly
gouging the page
knuckles clenched
You Gots To Chill - Strictly Business [from EPMD]
guys talking guy
to guys
armor on
The More I See You - Nina Simone [from Strictly Business]
an unplaceable voice type
broadway alto perhaps?
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Sincerely Yours - Goodness [from Goodness 1995-1998]
we create fantasy lives
out of our lived lives
riding along in
songs
fantasizing things
we might say
or which we could say
or wish might have been said
Someday - Keith Eisenbrey [from Summer Songs/Winter Mix]
that mindless midi harpsichord lick
betrays its composer's hymnodic
background
Plastic Phones - Courtney Marie Andrews [from Urban Myths]
doesn't believe in phones
introvert confession
Snohomish Mashup Piece #2 - S. Eric Scribner [from Odds & Ends]
whatever else Steve's musical endeavors might be
they are never exactly
business as usual
Peach - Slothrust [from The Pact]
genres in music marketing
preconceive an audience
with a common
cultural attitude
'country is white and southern'
for instance
but our cultural attitudes
are widely varied
Five Movements - Keith Eisenbrey - Matthew Crain, Keith Eisenbrey [from Keith Eisenbrey #4: 1983-1984]
I love the way
the big bangs
upon the oil drum
have leaked
through the tape reel
fore and aft
the first movement's chords
echo them
and echo their leaking
through as well
finding movements
that arise
from groups of notes
arranged
analytically on a page
the fourth
is a list of notes
to be
played
in particular ways
from which
melodies might be
constructed
melody
is a way of conceptualizing sound items
horizontally
harmony
is a way of conceptualizing them
vertically
it ends by having stopped going a while back
Take Me Back - Frank Stokes [from Really The Blues]
some fantasies
are closer to the dirt than others
Let Me Love You - Blossom Dearie [from Give Him the Ooh-La-La]
buy you the dawn
and the first of May
tomorrow i'll send you
merrily on your way
Solitude - Ella Fitzgerald [from Love Songs: The Best of the Verve Songbook]
what a lovely size for this song to be
exactly right
nothing
overdone
exquisite
Sister Ray - The Velvet Underground [from White Heat/White Light]
a long form poem
scrawled on vacant walls
canvas of commercial
architecture's surfaces
and infrastructures
its grit
stands
for its honesty
goes around in long looping stanzas
we have come
loose inside its cycles
and float on upraised arms
acceleration on a curve
to a limit
crossed over
into a new
equilibrium
Elite Syncopations - Scott Joplin - E. Power Biggs
fluidly flowing measures
full of 'em
Lucky Star - Madonna [from Madonna]
the image
is of a recording
of a stage act
believably
accomplishable live
80s cleanliness
not overbearing
though certainly there
I Ain't No Half-Steppin' - Big Daddy Kane [from Long Live The Kane]
the placement of the rhymes
within the lattice of line length
and
cyclic accentuation
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
stanzaic
as a background conception of
how sounds and figures
arrange themselves
Don Juan - Tingstad & Rumbel [from American Acoustic]
it sometimes astounds me
what folks will do
in order to do music
engaging in culture creation
or
that this was made
astonishes me
but
what it really is
is a small society social music
Hello To You I'm Certain - Steve Kennedy [from State's Exhibit]
like a cryptic
creepy
message machine
message
Yugo a Go-Go - The Tiptons Saxophone Quartet [from Laws of Motion]
eurocabaret circus clown orchestra
Hair - Lady Gaga [from Born This Way]
a dance song sound
that embraces everyone on the floor
Banned Rehearsal 971 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [December 3, 2018]
a song is sunged
over the puttering critters
they transform
we peer carefully
into the tiny crevice
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Totem 25 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Totem VI]
we associate the sound
of broad bands of pitch spectra
with
the air waves
of radio broadcast signals
here
we interact with them
as we would tune with dials
as in
the olden times
pre-digital
so
I immediately hear some of these sounds
as having been pulled
from the air
as they went by
rather than
as created from
scratch
as I listen
sounds imply untraceable histories
Canned Heat Blues - Tommy Johnson [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
guitar string sounds
in their various registers and harmonies
inflect the words being sung
as much as any aspect of vocal
delivery
an additional rhyming
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man - Morgana King [from Morgana King Sings the Blues]
devotion no matter what
helplessly passively
I Like Men - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joann Deacon [April 16, 1963]
signals its tongue-in-cheekiness
a humorous doggerel
to fill a bit
of column
Sisotowbell Lane - Joni Mitchell [from Song To a Seagull]
return to ground
to mark the end of a statement portion
Believe in Humanity - Carole King [from Fantasy]
an accompanimental figure
on the bass for example
is a pattern of
patterns
that cycle with the stanza's line and rhyme scheme
Let Me Count The Ways - Yoko Ono [from Milk and Honey]
the purpose of a love song
is to make it impossible to write a love song
in real life
and measure up
Last Night - Traveling Wilburys [from Traveling Wilburys]
star studded
porch-perched
dad band
they've practiced
My tocher's the Jewel (Ruubra) - King's Singers [from Chansons d'Amour]
hummed parts
beneath the song
for a drone
Track 10 - Richard Rorex, Reid Merryman [from Mood for Rochelle]
congenial pleasure music
transgresseth not
the bounds of congenial
pleasure
Amazing Grace - Keith Eisenbrey [from Summer Songs/Winter Mix]
this music
transgresses those bounds
it's ironically congenial
and meta-pleasurable
I like it again
Duwamish River - True Bugs
my home
Pigmalião - Camarones Orquestra Guitarrística [from O Curioso Caso da Música Invisível]
perturbations pronounce the beat
a specific funk wiggles in its middle
parts
Dreamtime 1 - Nat Evans [from Flyover Country]
sound must be approached respectfully
Seven Cues Without Film - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [from Keith Eisenbrey #4: 1983-1984]
after having reduced material to its proper parts
I began to put it back
together
as tiny scenes
question:
does any set of three notes
within a major-key
collection
cross paths
with at least one other major-key
collection?
brother to the opening eight pieces in my imminental etudes
O Lord, Remember Me - The Jubilee Gospel Team [from Goodbye Babylon]
harmonic intervals
sung tough as twine
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
as harped briefly
cut off in her reverie
Lay Down Your Weary Tune - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]
playing by the rules
for the time being
waiting for a better
megaphone
once taken up
difficult to abandon
Little Bit Slow to Catch On - Dolly Parton [from Just Because I'm a Woman]
big sister
to all the cheated upon
String Quartet in F-sharp minor, Op. 142 (#14) - Dmitri Shostakovich - Tanayev Quartet
evasive maneuvers
cloaked
possibly daggered
what was seen
must be forgotten
by the light of a single candle
the sad chronical is written
with
a weary hand
pressure upon the bow
must be steady and constant
be watchful
of gentle daydreams
they betray distress
look busy
keep going
faster
the machine demands it of
you
slipping away
from every arrival point
the old dream returns
from better days
unresolved
all that is happy
is sadder now
In Session at The Tintinabulary
February 1, 2026
Canton - Keith Eisenbrey
February 2, 2026
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| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
all
right up to the top three G-sharps
by the time we're
finished
the combination of notes in play
is like a de-syntacticized key
conceptualized
as a closed system of pitches
if there is a syntax
we bring it upon ourselves
so
we follow the thought
as presented
by listening
to
what the thinker of the thought
is hearing
as though
it
were a physical embodiment
of that thought
Postscripts
Drops
Music of Kosály-Meyer, Verrall, Palmer, Baker, Oldham, Osborn, and Cobb
This album is a selection of music by various Seattle-area composers, composed between the 1940s and 2010 or so.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
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