"Milton's tactic was to play wiseguy hipster, brilliantly unthreatening to anyone nervous that he might actually be earnest about his evolving preoccupation with structural complexities in every musical dimension. The contemporary music world, having inherited the thorough and accurate debunking of cultural elitism of the 1960s, feeling oppressed and weary of the representation of music as a strenuous rather than a recreational phenomenon - a world that appreciates Baudrillard rather than Heidegger - and wanting to be able to enjoy and revere its cultural icons, gleefully adopts the dumbdown versions of these composers - including with equal misperception the work of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Merce Cunningham."
- Benjamin Boretz - "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Milton Babbitt at Juilliard" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
Texts
From Recent Arrivals
October 16, 2021
Someone - Julia Shapiro [from Zorked]
rocking between the poles of downbeat and punchbeat melody sung on the ends of each awash in amp noise
I Got Rhythm - Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer [from The Ivory Hunters]
on a walking bass
two pianists verge
in near competition
dancing with muscular
accents
trading spotlight turns
always melodic
around an often visible thread
tune
(it's in the title)
The Middle of Love - Blossom Dearie [from Give Him That Ooh-La-La]
skoot oo doo dee doo,
oh!
October 17, 2021
Finnegans Wake, Chapter 6 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Max Head Room
was WRONG !
[about the -->future<--]
the quin-t-essenti-al
(temporal)
dis
-placement
of our TIME
{((is))}
not
(strut)
a stutter
utter
it
is a fracture between the signals |
| a differential of algorithm.
) RATHER (it
is...
His head holds its gaze |
| he instructs his device
(his device
due to
misunderstanding
transmits
::
the audio signal
after transmitting
the video
signal)
(((((WHY???))))
the algorithm
favors visual information
over audial
vi
-ol
-al
- sual
- dio
|
Auvi
di
(Auvio Auvial Auvisual Audio)
(dio
dial disual didio)
(vio vial visual video)
(Audio Audial Audisual Audideo)
Au
is promiscous
(see?)(c?)(si?)(sea?)
(Au you doin'?)
come here often?
yer kinda
cute.
music and ground meet on mutual language
neutral
language and music meet
on neutral ground
neutral
October 16 - 22, 2021
J.K. Randall Interviews 2011 & 2012 - J. K. Randall, Dorota Czerner, Scott Burnham, Russell Craig Richardson [from Open Space]
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0NnUbuMl8DDo7hMXLkBWr_Nf3F9a6jIdI've been reviewing saved links recently. These six reels on the Open Space YouTube Channel, are, to me, given the huge space Jim occupies in the virtual symposium of my (personal) elder colleagues, a treasure beyond price.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Randall at Princeton once back in the early 80s, and even participated in one of his basement music sessions, the recording of which appeared later on the Inter/Play tapes as Labor Day. Any conversation with J. K. Randall is an unforgettable experience, and Dorota, Scott, and Russell do themselves and the world proud to share these extraordinary interviews from late in Jim's time among us.
Jim talks about his early musical education in 1930s Cleveland, Ohio, his stints at Columbia, Harvard, the Navy, and Princeton, the early days of computer music at Bell Labs and beyond, and his relationships with the music and persons of Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, and a host of others, including thoughts about his long-time collaboratorious endeavors with Benjamin Boretz, spilling copious beans throughout. And of course he discusses and illuminates his own music and extensive writings, all with his unmistakable no-nonsense taken or given, deeply humane, blisteringly honest attitude - his Mid-Western, deeply humane, cussedness, as it were.
If you have any interest at all in a uniquely situated and cogent take on the musical world of the last century, I cannot recommend these to you highly, strongly, vehemently, insistently enough.
October 16, 2021
Nearly Lost You - Screaming Trees [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's SADA mix: Dancing Through the Decades]
busy band
banging and strumming and picking
to fill the ride
to keep the vocal
aloft
surfing
on a wave of bumpety roll
Banned Rehearsal 453 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 24, 1997]
business supply words
to start
also
med test words
vet services
do not pluck
the sliver from your neighbor's eye
prior to removing the frog from your own
eye
the surf waves we make
are irregular
tricky to negotiate
unscripted
we
have
a guitar
piano (Kingsbury)
violin
and percussion
we shove at various parts
upon which stimulus
the thick and heavy music
reconfigures
for more shoving and pulling
it moves
but it takes work
blown
reeds
keyboard chords
strong playing by all concerned
an unwieldy mass
dances
slowly
like clouds
we have loosed it from the mooring
a flow to its floating
Isaac finally gets a little fussy
{from my journal entry of January 3, 2005:
Aaron and a list.
How difficult is it
to force my ear
to not hear it
as a
lexical list
but rather
a rhythm
of timbres and noises?
Piano tunes and feedback
whine/whistle
scrapy string stuff
pretty nice
After the first 5 minutes or so, it settles into some nice sounds. Neal retuning the guitar.
As it quiets
it gets less interesting, more ordinary
- but there are probably 15 20 minutes of
good sound in there
before the "Chorale".
Things improve again when the organ
comes in.
Somewhat, but not a great deal.
A certain amount of marking time
music.
filling space.
But toward the end, Neal's guitar of bees makes an
interesting sound.
Isaac doesn't like it at all.
The piano playing (is it me?)
kind of wrecks it
- and then it becomes mere strumming after all}
October 17, 2021
Ainu 1 - Benjamin Boretz [from Open Space 47]
the |difference| between
"where will it begin"
and
"where did it begin?"
is
not a moment
wherein a question is answered,
but one
in which
a new question
arises,
as becomes each subsequent moment
::
in fact,
that might be a useful thinking for what
a moment
is:
a hinge point
in the earmind,
composition then
being
the art of arranging hinges.
there are both intriguing regularities in this,
easily graspable and easy
going
and irregularities
as easily graspable
why these notes and not others
is not
I think
a question within this universe
Two Circles - Alvin Lucier - Alter Ego
in which pitch is treated as an acoustic phenomenon
interval equally or more
so
these sounds
set ones tailbone to vibrating
exploring with what might be a
plan
a strategy
Ghosting Doubles (second sighting) MS & XY - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at Seattle Composers' Salon, July 7, 2017]
This is the same SCS recording as recently blogged, but including the tracks recorded by the microphones aimed back at the audience.
locks in the metrical structure
of Amy's tune
in a way
that it alone
doesn't.
It accomplishes this
by completely warping
that metrical sense.
Likewise with the upper voice counterpoint.
They each warp Amy's meter
in different
and particular ways
saying different things about that meter
by constructing for themselves
a new and different meter
for discussion.
They work a similar number on her key.
October 18, 2021
Praeludium - Thomas Oldfield - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzgerald Virginal Book]
brief and florid
while the singer is adjusting their stance
Symphoniae Sacrae II, Op 10 #25 "Drei schöne Dinge seind" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
quite extensive
multiple voices as developed soloists
as they might be
characters
in a tableau
returns to the opening
which sounded like it came in
right in the middle the first time
Die Wohltemporierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in B-flat Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Sviatoslav Richter
too fast on the prelude
the fugue cooks away pretty well
though I'm not convinced
it's the right tempo
full of energy
it keeps finding itself in dead ends
must try again
Sinfonia in F Major, Wq. 122.5 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
October 19, 2021
is a transcription of an orchestral work, so clearly not in his intimate voice
the movements are discontinuous
but connected
as they might be
in an opera
the
first ends up in the air
and the second is a new scene
the third opens as
though it wants to cheer the second up
they have an important discussion
he
is fond of the chug chug chug accompanying line
keeps the motor running
allows
the occasional perturbation of regular meter to pass through simply
Symphony in C Major (#38) - Franz Joseph Haydn - Austro-Hungarian Orchestra, Ádám Fischer
Howdy folks!
We got a really big show for you tonight!
We're all excited about
it
and we hope you have a grand time!
dancers
jugglers
singers
dazzling
virtuosity
gripping drama
a symphony
as such
is
that set of pieces
that
introduce and interstitch
the REAL SHOW
the filler
When did that change?
with Haydn's London Symphonies?
earlier or later?
by Beethoven's time (one presumes)?
in other words
when
historically
did "The Symphony"
as a unified work
to be considered
as such
into perpetuity,
arise?
who or what is to blame
for the ossification this engendered?
I don't know the answer
but would guess
sometime between 1750 and 1810
or so
coincident perhaps
with the whole
Napoleonic Romantic Hero Man of Genius craziness
October 20, 2021
Don Giovanni, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, Nicolai Ghiarov, Franz Crass, Claire Watson, Nicolai Gedda, Christa Ludwig, Walter Berry, Mirella Freni, Paolo Montarsolo, New Philharmonia Chorus, Henry Smith
such a hollow balance to the opening chords
shifty
these chords don't exist
elsewhere
the throwaway interjectionary voice-leadings
have attitude
they
comment
first character
(yep, Lep):
the most
perhaps only
sympathetic
character
surely the most Modern
and recognizable
the beleaguered service
employee
Strike me down now Darth Giovanni and I will become more powerful than . . .
Klemperer fronts the metrical play throughout
hidden
Stravinsky
even Don Ottavios' aria is rhythmically alive
Act I begins and ends with attempted rape, followed by fighting.
Sonata in E-flat, Op. 7 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Stephen Kovacevich
The energy is harnessed by rational engineering
from outside of humane forces.
we have made a machine
to do
what we could not do
music is not just for
entertainment anymore
the sophistication fostered
within the court and church
has seen another life
it is no longer appropriate for polite company
in the
evening we can sit
with our pipe and beer
and improve our selves
with clever
and edifying games
Etude in A-flat Major, Op. 10 #10 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [1942]
pitch space
in its fluid state
Ariadne auf Naxos, Opera - Richard Strauss - Philharmonia Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Rita Streich, Irmgard Seefried, Rudolf Schock, Alfred Neugebauer, Karl Donch, Gerhard Unger, Hugues Cuenod, Erich Strauss, Otakar Kraus, Lisa Otto, Grace Hoffman, Anny Felbermayer, Hermann Prey, Gerhard Unger, Fritz Ollendorf, Helmut Krebs
overture thought:
the conceit is that SERIOUS is interrupted or invaded by
COMIC
not the other way around
point of view is crucial,
since we presume the
audience liked to think of themselves as serious.
full of shifts
any one of
which works really well
but they follow each other so thickly
that they hardly
matter
the "light" bits have the same issue
the whole ends up being rather
colorless and bland
a clot
in which any fresh material
ends up being glutted
by the same sorts of treatments
when lost
chromaticise
a dreary ordeal
In Session at the Tintinabulary
Gradus 373 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
for many years now
since after the exhaustion of all A-nats
Neal has been
accelerating the pace
of moving through the combinations of piano keys
with each new
pitch added
he performs 8 rungs
2 rungs per session
the first two rungs
are
the new pitch alone
and then the new pitch
with just one other
the last two
rungs
are all the pitches added so far
but one
but including
the last added
and then
all the pitches added so far
the middle four rungs
are some combination
of 3 or more pitches
always including the last pitch added
the
number of pitches included
as well as which pitches these are
is determined
by
a succession of coin tosses
tonight's session
consists of the last two rungs of
the series
in which the fifth D-nat down
is the last
after some discussion
I
was informed that the last pitches to be added
will be F-nats
Special Mention
My Dinner with Wallace
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0AW-xkopLp0dP1KaGikG3-SWZ11kX0JgMuch of my musical energy during the first year of the pandemic went into producing this virtual recital of recent solo piano music by my long-time collaborator, Aaron Keyt, and by me. There are 9 reels total in the playlist, ranging from 10 to 20 minutes or so each, the whole stretching for just under 2 hours. I am quite pleased with the results, especially with how well I illuminate the extraordinary "in-your-presence-alone" intimacy of Aaron's compositional voice.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
that this god would be felt in the sensory
when yet thinks it is not it is aware
of this not much dryness fruit and spirit
Reality Check::
music thinks the river
this clam shell sings its desk
pitch bent mind time
