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

Live

January 10, 2020
Why All This Music?
Karin Stevens Dance
Velocity Dance Center, Seattle

Kauai: Sky, Lava Rock, Palms, Sand, Woods, Ocean
Dancers: Micaela Gonzales, Hazel Morris, Ben Swenson-Klatt
Music: CHA - Carol J. Levin, Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart

Ecology of Wonder
Dancer: Maeve Haselton
Music: Heather/Dio Duo - Heather Bentley, Dio Jean-Baptiste

Llandover Woods
Dancers: Anja Kellner-Rogers, Emma Klein
Music: Crows at a Crosswalk - Leanna Keith, Daniel Husser

A Small Space of Wildness
Dancers: Maeve Haselton, Robert Moore
Music: Kin of the Moon - Leanna Keith, Heather Bentley, Kaley Lane Eaton

A truly enjoyable evening all around. Karen and I had dinner at The Tin Table before the show, and the glory of the sound of the old wooden plank Odd Fellows Hall floor of it as activated by the wait staff in their working was worth the visit even without the lovely dinner itself.

Social composition among the groups of dance performers and the groups of music performers is similar, or rather, the social composition of the music performers, in that each group contains at least one member in common with another, is echoed economically in the social composition among the dance performers in that one dancer is shared among just two of the pieces. Among the music performers numerous sharings, among the dance performers, just one.

I was digging the care and clarity with which ideas propagated through groups of dancers, from unfussy unison motions (I don't know dance-lingo - what I mean is when the dancers are dancing the same movements at the same time, but (unfussy) not overdoing the precision of it) to exchanges and conversations and arguments and lovings.

Recorded

January 4, 2020
Gradus 199 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2011]

After noting the broad empty expanse of it
and the pitch repetition
after noting all that
one might at first wonder, then guess, then surmise, then theorize, then test, then provisionally affirm
the pitch class set size and composition.

It counts as one of those facts about it
one of those red herring facts
as to what is it about it.

Music artifacts are syntheses, every last one of them.

That particular A is chosen because it modulates the moment just so,
not because a decision was made to only play A's
and this happens to be one.

The una corda mechanism had a squeak.

OR

The coercive sense in which errant notes of stray pitch classes hardly matter since the power of their suggested dis-inclusion as a possibility overcomes the fact of their purported wrongness.

We perfect music as we listen to it.

For me, Gradus is a thought experiment, and a welcome consistent presence as an object of consideration.

Tidal Waves - Lunas [from Over Me]

sloshes back and forth in the beat
and a cut short coda
perhaps a segue to the next track

January 5, 2020
Sonata in F-sharp minor K. 67 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

lots to do
hustles along doing it
not time to waste

Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 (end) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2019]

. . . no applause please

whisper so the message does not travel
any number of ways can be devised to fail to tell

the farce of dustiny
primum mobilisque

deviation from meaning
telling to hear what is meant

one must mind what is never said

pure lyricism of shame brot
(an ethel)
appears to be about cheese

possibly twelve:: :: answer ----.

Land of Hope And Glory - The Who [from A Quick One]

sounds like my generation (baby)
with a pound out to pound it out

Under Pressure - Queen, David Bowie

ultra discrete production
game knows game
no sound need touch another

Banned Telepath 7 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1986]

Big Red Bag of Fun
and Aaron's Epic Sneeze
AhCHOOO

definite buzz in the equipment system that's for sure

nothing has ever sounded as good as the funmaker nor will ever

Aaronsbundler fight song

Karen brings me tea (present listening back day)
tea in this hullaballoo!
woo!

how many is we?
Back to take me out to the old root root rot (attenuating circumstances)

sounds in your face
like hawkers at a bazaar

taxonomy of climate
atlas designated regions

among the more ornately wrought of the telepath projects, personnel-wise and geographically
several fine repeated versions of the music box innards from whomever arrived I know not but what has been among us throughout though now sadly broken up about it

:: INFORMATIONS::

a telepath is an improvisation session with a subset of the band (often including guests), made in conjunction with other subsets of the band making each their own telepath in a different location, all to be mixed together later to make a full Banned Rehearsal.

In this case Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, and Yvonne Meyer made a session in San Diego in November of 1986; Karen and I made a session in Bickleton (also November of 1986); then Karen, Aaron Keyt, and I made this session in Seattle. The far flung tapes were gathered together in April of 1987 and became Banned Rehearsal 107.

::OUTFORMATIONS::

the persistent dulcimer
((buzz: the sound of the sound of the mechanism of sound capture))

the shrills hold sway
tamed by the holler

own worldly dissonance proudly

I am reading from an early volume of this book from which this blog I write is lifted

We seek to buzz the space
like a house-sized kazoo

an opera, as is Book of Windows, for that matter

Untitled (Slow Waltz) 5th Version - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

I was early told to think vocally. I do.

Gradus 109 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2006]

a valedictory session, the lowest A again
just because
before launching into the final A-nat
song of teapot past

January 7, 2020
Shine - Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

ample room in the meter
for weighty sighs

Selections from Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

(theoretically): the same pulse
but different relations of duration ratios
as much as pitch and pitchclass scheme
distinguish pieces from other pieces
(within this set of Second Thoughts pieces)

what binds a piece as a piece?
a regularity among its parts?
including a regularity that only emerges in comparison with other pieces (within this set of Second Thoughts pieces) exhibiting similar relations among their parts

the sensual experience of thinking

This was my performance at Seattle Composers Salon in January of 2018, and includes the Q&A.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 6, 2020

Gradus 361 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a chord dire and splendent
regions are created

thought path
or trace

Improvisation as real-time composing works
when we can allow ourselves to follow each thought of another in constant recalibration, building on before and kicking away the scaffolding.
while kicking away
but kicking away
or kicking away
if kicking away
if and only if kicking away

further on we go
farther back we reach

polyvalent relations to memory

Postscripts

taste good he said and took it i've asking

time one has a spoilt i can't understand

it usual breakfast do you think it is

the dragon

is language itself

the risen throne

Playlist

Live

Like it is

September 2, 2018
CHA Trio - Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart, Carol J. Levin
Cafe Racer, Seattle

Such a beautiful time this was
CHA Trio is a chemistry found, a rare and precious thing

after their set other threes of us rode their sparkly wake
(thank you for allowing your blogger to join in progjazz keyboardist guise)

Recorded

September 1, 2018
Duetto "Pace e gioia sia con voi" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

conflict is a structural interaction

Rabbit Foot Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

"bisquits are a little thin"
light quick strummelo

Do blues guitarists often play in A-flat
or has this recording been sped up?

Your Promise To Be Mine - The Drifters [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

The vocalist needed a pop guard.
(sweet sax track in the back)

The Great Airplane Strike (remix) - Paul Revere and The Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

spy sound with a power blues heft to it

Jenny Nettles - Harry "Pappy" Wells [from The Art of Field Recording Vol. 1]

fiddle scribblin' with left hand pizz!

followed by the obligatory "I made some mistakes like I thought I would but that there Jim Davis used to play that awful nice" nuanced self-deprecation

It sounded pretty fine to me.

Strict Time - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

gamelonic flow

Banned Rehearsal 81 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Tad Pole - Kosály-Meyer - we continue sudden singing
slip rattle backbeat

several false starts stacked in sequence onto the end bone of it

microtonal study - some people likes a beat

goes on too long in a most peculiar way
part two with vocals and funmaker sneaking in there
quite the sham man there chant there

Kyrie eleison - my vocal plus 'du

more of the sorts of microtonal thinking that only liberated intonation would allow
whipping flames out of that tambourine back there karen!
the between bits composed as to be uncertain for a good long whether one is in which bit of what song

". . . to pick up where we left off" (more stuff under the seat left back there)

one is in or not static stuck but tugged

Karen lofts the date into the epistolarisphere
the rhythm of the pace of writing read as improvised textual crosspointed 3-dimensional poetry

September 3, 2018
Fear Bitterness and Hatred - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

we hear in excruciating detail some venerable genre of psychedelic surf parking out in a moralizing 60's message board

Duet in D - Haydn - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Evenings With The Captain]

a pleasant breakfast in the sun room
its own costume drama parody
playing for its fellow wizards

Lakeside Summer Home - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

its tense: past telling present subjunctive had now been past narrating the present as though from the future

"...woe my road is spoken..." - Keith Eisenbrey [midi draft of June 3, 2006]

disparate times in a row of chained pitch worlds

Great White - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

coloristic active composite arranged patterned

Something of Mine - St. Rage (Your Mother Should Know) [mix of April 19, 2016]

And we're going to go give blood today too! waddayaknow!

September 6, 2018
Concerto in B-flat BWV 1051 - Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

reveals what is admirably small and transparent
allowing maximum differentiation, the play among individual strings isn't washed out in box resonance
inner overlaps each distinguished

portativ continuo? interesting and quite successful!

not played as THE SIXTH BRANDENBURG CONCERTO
but keyed down so that its intricate address is made plain
its hocket phrases are allowed to remain made of parts made by individual players

no big deal here move along

we can't

See, The Conqu'ring Hero Comes from Judas Maccabeus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

played for dreariness and all it doth not add
rah!

Aria "Contra un cor che accende amore" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

every moment a theater
a stage made of dynamic moments

High Fever - Coon-Sanders Orchestra [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

patterned sequence of time spans similar
but made not so
by each's display
watch me!

Symphony 1 - Samuel Barber - Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin

comes on like movie credits of the 30's
must grab NOW
moments of being must be ultraexperienced
in big screen passion

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 3, 2018
Gradus 338 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

shows its hand as the better idea
recomposed from the ground up

the color of water
protesting singularities

a discussion about wealth
among friendly climes

playful
glittering