Preface
"BUT: if our Spiritual Exercise strikes you as Unseemly, or Silly, or Mere Sentimental Wallow;
if nothing Clicked;
Then I'm Concerned For you:
Then it's You, above All, who Need it Bad.
Then it is You who should Not Engage in a wildlife issue Quite Yet:
You're Not Ready."
- J. K. Randall "Statement to the NJ State Assembly Environment Committee, 8/5/93" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"
Texts
Streamed
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/.
September 19, 2020
Dave Knott
Requia
a dial-twiddler, but a carefully listening and rewarding to listen to dial-twiddler
testing a signal
looking at it with filters and lenses
better at
1 or 2
A or B
now with this set of
A or B
1 or 2
writing language out by hand
has a rhythm to it
and there it is
a moment when a quiet out door sound with
occasional splatter drops is jump cut to
an unending industrial sound cavern
train brings us near the surface
a mass of ape mutterings
roadside sounds like
rain and bowing a ukulele
bass ukulele
or a banjo guitar
what is that?
patient transition processing
September 20, 2020
laying a music bed down
to stand on
and kick out from under
loop procedure
becomes looped 'form'
or having an idea on my end about how it is accomplished
and knowing that
finding myself
surmising the kinds of thing it might produce
and what might be done with that
cyclic pulsing overlapping
once established
might be renewed
refreshed
or allowed to flow undisturbed
but it isn't just
that the notes repeat or loop
the signal loops
all of it
we put music in it
another way of thinking
about assembling something
from its sound out
threading
it through signal
each loop sample
once laid down
has potential for processing
up to a point
Recorded
September 20, 2020
Variatio Fvb5 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
the slow note tune
is bent gently by the running figures
Philou - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]
plausible orchestration
or plausible enough to pass
where no instructions are
to be had
Suite in C Major - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
focus has shifted to the singing tune
and its ornate accoutrements
the slower
tune remains
but is structural,
subservient
opera did that
Sonata in C Major - George Frideric Handel - Michala Petri, Keith Jarrett
harpsichord splits time
between supporting and answering
the recorder
this one is getting somewhere
concerning a ceremonial family life
a place for amusement
and games
a place for careful thinking
and stiff decorum
a toymaker magic act
don't sit on a cadence
breathe quick and off you go
chirpy tunes
we have been pulled into a longer story
wake up call at the end
of it
brutal keyboard toccata battles among the villagers
Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet
in being ultra clear about the details of the smaller meter
a much larger
meter still
is revealed
a phalanx of stretto entrances
Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin
straight flutes sure produce a lot of acoustic weirdness
they happen within
hearing
but aren't heard as a sound
floaters
excellence in playing
please the
king
Sonata in E minor Wq. 49/3 - - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
sonata form
as a type
a story frame
as incantation
September 22, 2020
Apollo et Hyacinthus, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Arleen Auger, Edith Mathis, Cornelia Wulkopf, Hanna Schwarz, Salzburger Kammerchor, Rupert Huber
recitative:
and it had such a long life in music
the naturalism of dialogic drama
held up by a few touches of notes
and sketchy harmony
the duets, arias, choruses, etc.
among other things
allow the music as logic
to control
so drama holds still
for now
which
supports which?
in Latin no less
Symphony in E minor, Hob. I:44 "Trauersinfonie" - Franz Joseph Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner
multiplicity of figures used
the tonal framework was necessary
or seemed
necessary
to hold it together
an actual fact based verifiable structure
invisible thread
but does it actually hold it together?
really?
nothing ever
finishes
a thought about coherence being tested
symphony: the music everybody plays together
pushing affective disjointure into attention
hints of Eroica figures in the 1st movement
September 23, 2020
Sonata in F Major, op. 10#2 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm Kempff
stubborn adherence to a thread
never
loses track of what he's about
the social space his music creates
in which it arises
is bigger than a piano can be
Mass in A-flat Major (#5) - Franz Schubert - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek, Helga Terner, Kristine Rohr-Bach, Vladimir Dolezal, Klement Slowioczek, Prague Radio Chorus
thin ice above the dark places
it could go
but might not
lots of contrapuntal
busywork
(not his strongest suit)
some presumably effective spatial effects for which a cathedral space is required
September 24, 2020
Etude in C Major, op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Cecile Licad
the bass line is a red herring
all the fancy voice leading and counterpoint is in
the arpeggios
Fantasiestücke, op. 12 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl
leads you out
so simply
goes
so logically askew
the thread leaps
escherically
the steady balance of answering phrases
is not the norm here
but lengths and
sizes are a thing
as is balance
a reference
seen askance
through several
darkling glasses
In Session at the Tintinabulary
September 20, 2020
Rain 200920 - Keith Eisenbrey
there was rain and our drainpipe gurgled
September 21, 2020
Wallace Book 10 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey
Banned Telepath 62 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey
Banned Telepath 62 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 1010 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt
The rain and dark has arrived, so back indoors we go.
September 22, 2020
Chorale 9 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey
September 23, 2020
Wallace Book 11 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey
Chorale 10 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey
Chorale 11 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey
September 24, 2020
Wallace Book 12 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey
Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey
September 25, 2020
Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey
The Epilogue is a bear - slow, polyphonous, hefty, and requiring exact articulation and dynamics. I'll get it for sure soon, then I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace."
Postscripts
the world is a figment of music
pitch in a swamp is a bird on a
cattail
an embodiment of the absence of itself
