Preface
"Listening is the primal expressive act;
listening is primal
composition;
the music we hear, the sound we hear, moves us to the core
not because of the external things and persons it expresses, but exactly
insofar as it expresses us, ourselves,
the listeners.
To
listen tangibly is to be mobilized, as a total consciousness, to be present to
an occasion of sound experience.
Listening is primal composition"
- Benjamin Boretz "music/ /consciousness/ /gender" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"
Texts
Streaming
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/.
December 26, 2020
one feature of much processed sound:
the gap between the perp and the
crime - a finger twitches and oceans engulf
does this isolate the body performing the act
alienating it from its
result
or erase it
ridding the self of ego
by hiding behind
a maximized ego shield?
but:
that presumes we're not involved
and that the perp isn't
listening
as we are
and:
the above is, here, only a background of general thinking,
the music here is quite lovely and approachable
Here:
like some of what Neal does
in Gradus
on occasion:
playing an evolving sonority
by telling figurational touches
balancing the reverberant roil
like a finger painter
ages ago, after a session with Ben
I admitted that I couldn't see myself
playing all those jazz-stacked Bill-Evans-spaced chords
- his response: but those are some of my favorites
- (like this)
who am I to complain about a figure?
so they're plain?
they still
each have their particular effect upon the roil
December 27, 2020
L.A. Lungs - Nathan Markiewicz, Lori Peterson
1.
our hero emerges in detail
at the bottom,
where they sank
to
slowly we circle
shining such lights as we have with us
vast ocean
floor Buddha
no part of the bass pattern
can be in a different tonal space
than
any other part
they are all in the same bubble
enclosing it
womb desire
floating
umbilicaled
little pulses wiggle
2.
humming blocks
we tend them
have always so
hygiene
is crucial
for humming blocks to hum
patient entrance
all the time in the world
nursery for humming blocks
child's play
L'enfance du humming blocks
December 29, 2020
China Faith Star & Arrington de Dionyso
Hindsight 2020
an incident
might be an entrance
of a new voice
into the
jumble pile
or
it might be an inflection
of that voice
ripe with incident
active
bracing
tonal qualities raucous
in a salutary way
medial storm
Recorded
December 27, 2020
Boris Godunov, Act III- (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
female voices duet
worried minds
their melodies
circle back
around
let's try singing
silly old songs
old tales
game songs
uh oh
a man
takes over the sound entirely
the female voices
have vanished
man has words to say
no wonder the worried voices
man goes all spooky
gets nightmarish real fast
as a National Honor composer MM stands out as an original creative mind
not content to fold folk material into otherwise unsullied high art
the peculiarities of his material permeate everything
down into
the functions of harmonic practice
(why it alarmed NR-K so much)
ends in pathetic whimper
instantiates a space
builds its corners
a new space
disconnect
gapped
a third space
related to the second
like its back wall
might
be
idyllic for ever
isolated cadences
question
as much as
complete
find space 1 hiding
dramatic sequence
not in any Mahlerian sense
but baldly structural
it is there
as it is
as doing what it does
not what it
means
in some mind or other
but its doing
what it does
is its meaning
dramatic in that
these tonalities
burn against each other
these descend on us like sleep
enclosed shapes
icons
images
very strange thin place
but it would be
confession
comfort
brother and sister themes
if so
sister is kept within
furtive nocturnal terrors
cavalry storms in
sink like sleep again
more secretive
but still furtive
still terror
such chaste keys
fighting evil from inside
scariest damn C Major chord I is ever heard
Gesang der Parzen, Op. 89 - Johannes Brahms - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw
heavy bodies shove each other around
no Odes to Joy for this puppy
parental warning
causes depression
December 29, 2020
Slavonic Dance in B, Op. 72 #1 - Antonín Dvořák - The Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi
completely forgettable
Sadko (A Musical Picture), Op. 5 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Milton Katims
like a short at the picture show
nothing particularly challenging
colorful
I presume he knew his audience
December 30, 2020
Polonaise in B-flat minor - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti
restless stasis
full of nervous fidgets
goes nowhere
with
great energy and bravado
from my journal entry of August 17, 2004:
Chopinesque, but with an
explosive clotted rhythm in the figurations, and a stutteringly decorated
tune-sense
of historical interest (only)
for the banjo playing style
and
flexible tempo
otherwise just awful
- though Mr. Lowe feels that
if one takes the time to actually understand the lyrics (good luck) it's more
than a little subversive in a sexual-political way.
trigger warning for numerous racial slurs
When You Aint' Got No Money You Needn't Come Around - May Irwin [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
ain't the only poodle in the pound
- flex temp
- mostly steady
except when the stagy presentation calls for emphasis
see trigger warning above
Valses nobles et sentimentales - Maurice Ravel - Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon
The orchestration is wonderful, and it probably has a larger audience in this form, but the piano solo version is more subtle, with a wider apparent dynamic range - what was sharp and clean as a solo becomes, for orchestra, atmospheric and merely pretty.
Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute (Orchestral Suite No. 1) - Ottorino Respighi - Philharmonicia Hungarica, Antal Dorati
clearly the neo-classical was an immediate reaction
or pre-cursor
to modernism
or to the general insanity of 1917
but the question remains
aside from lifting these pieces to a larger
audience, does expansion into orchestra do them any real favors?
rescue from oblivion?
or: neoclassicalism before Stravinsky got hold of it
but: also offering an alternative to the increasingly dense contrapuntal chromaticism that sprang from Bach Beethoven Brahms and Co.
January 1, 2021
Symphony No. 5 - Carl Nielsen - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein
I stole the minor 3rd tremolo
or quoted it in transposition
for my
Sonata 1980
the lingering nationalist school of North Europe
especially trending
eastward
or leaking West from the Revolution
post WWI toxic
nationalism
tambourine stuff is weird
music from a land of stone fields
we follow the wiggly critters into grim weather
now we follow a figure from the high strings
Shostakovich employs a
similar method of stitching a long movement together, using a constant
messenger wave figure that morphs, but is recognizable, as it moves into new
territories.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
December 28, 2020
Banned Telepath 68 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K*, Neal Kosály-Meyer* - *telephonically from Outpost Howth
Banned Telepath 68 Outpost Humble - Steve Kennedy
Banned Telepath 68 Outpost Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 1017 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
We gather once again, by Telephone and Telepath, from four locations, to make noise for you.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
origin of the others to be means
of the dark night persons many of which
can be called through the dark infirmities
Reality Check::
the white knight
doomed in the forest
the crank in the roof
