Preface
"[Benjamin Franklin's] penchant for bending the rules when occasion indicated...was esteemed a charming foible. When one opponent, a Frenchman, checked his king, Franklin illegally ignored the check and moved another piece. Called on the violation, Franklin declared, 'I see he is in check, but I shall not defend him. If he was a good king, like yours, he would deserve the protection of his subjects; but he is a tyrant and has cost them already more than he is worth. Take him, if you please. I can do without him, and will fight out the rest of the battle en républicain.'"
H. W. Brands, from The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
Texts
Live
Finnegans Wake, Part 2, Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
circumcentric megacycles
it was long after once
breast bare to the brine bath
he is consistently blown to adams
the sinner the badder
for bubblin' through the medium
of Gaulic
Mooseopotamia
old volcanos
makes coroners of us all
this most unmentionablest of men
blastfumed
ah pause
///
infernal machine
here comes emptybody
courting daylight
and
saving darkness
language pouring into thunder
sut down and shet up
giant crash in Eden
and soon to bett
and drums o' bliss
every Tom thick and heavy
hip hop Horatio
his mother was a
glue pot
the streets spin tales
shave on the furst of his
face
knock knock
who's without
deluded in the high places
foots like a glove
bind your heads goin out
lead us not into refornication
silence
///
the trim grimtale
nothing more is told
until now
the man of centuries
leave the letter
that never begins to go
mister monster
in the chair
poor Erin boys go brawl
guards
of Finland
the murder of investment
once again
Wittingtom
a penance for
your thoughts
takes up the communion of sense
like his bosom fiend
Erin gone
broke
after the deadbeats
the bustle of Bakerloo
mind your pews and queues
a strange man
wearing a barrel
the abnihilization
of the hurdily gurdily
shut 'em up
on
all
around
///
vice verse
sounding
in all Confusalem
his round house
of seven faces
reading
in a suppressed book
the tale unravels around the language
erupting from within it
the coach
with the six insides
until Arthur comes again
anybody's beastness
as usual
thunderburst
ravishment
the keen
of old bards
pink ponk
the punch of quorum
on the mug of truth
all the boots
in the straights
hide seek
highed sink
count
the hemidemisemicolons
Recorded
Nocturne in A-flat Major (#4) - John Field - Benjamin Frith
such a music
lives in the beauty of its tone
and the fluidity of
its tune
lyrical loveliness essence
and
that it hints
toward depth of feeling
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156/R. 8, Book I, "Impressions et Poesies": IV. Vallee d'Obermann - Franz Liszt - Ashley Wass
such a music
lives in the elegance and sophistication of its gesture
its passion
is its sensibility
drama essence
it transforms itself in plain sight
Gesänge der Frühe, Op. 133 - Robert Schumann - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded August 11 and September 12, 2007]
1
firm determination
2
decorated by threads of a different meter
3
heroic
4
peril and plea and peace
5
a hymn of thanks
these pieces are partly out of my reach technically
but I think I play
with some understanding of their workings
wonderful pieces!
6 Romances sans paroles - Cecile Chaminade - Mark Viner
Lisztian in its drama language
Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72: No. 1, Gibøen's Wedding March - Edvard Grieg - Håkon Austbø
such a music
lives in its clever inventiveness
quaintness essence
Sonata No. 10, Op. 70 - Alexander Scriabin - Dmitri Alexeev
this music
asks us questions
for which there are not certain
answers
it lives
in the charms it casts
enchantment essence
an entirely new way
to think fluently in music
the technical
particulars
are of less import
than the doors it opens
St. James Infirmary - Louis Armstrong and His Savoy Ballroom Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]
concerning what comes to us all
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Of Thee I Sing (Incomplete) - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin]
not a moment of her voice
is uninvested with an idea
I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles [from The Beatles Anthology]
some live performance
with a great deal of cymbal in the mix
Roses of Yesterday - Rusty Dedrick Orchestra [from Irving Berlin, All By Myself: Notable Compositions 1926-1933]
so he can rhyme
discloses
and roses
across multiple lines
intervening
The Old Rugged Cross [from New Orleans Traditional Jazz Legends 3]
hymn tunes
in the later 19th Century
tended towards a lot of
sweetness
and risk coming across as sentimental drinking songs
Boy Glory - Goodness [from Goodness 1995-1998]
analytical talk with oneself
to understand ones past
Who Would Imagine a King -Whitney Houston [from One Wish: The Holiday Album]
so sweet and softened
one wanders why Christ
would even need to be
born
Beat Goes On (Feat. Kanye West) - Madonna [from Hard Candy]
circular lines
encouraging self talk
Back from the Dead - Spinning Whips [from Sentimental Groover]
a music made of parts
(guitar drums et cetera)
one person one part
segregated responsibility
inner part adds found stage dialog
(from a movie or tv show)
Party of One - Brandi Carlile [from By The Way, I Forgive You]
lazy pedaling on the piano
signifies sincerity
add strings to
signify swelling feelings
must have been the finale on tour
an
orchestra fills the stage
Soundscroll X: Tandâalis (Stone Drone) - S. Eric Scribner [from Ussers of Sleep]
it opens nearly inaudible
crosses the line between
in long shallow
curves
we descend into their space
the layers
of all
that's under us
Turn Out The Stars - Bill Evans [from Another Time: The Hilversam Concert]
these parts
are having a good time
hanging out
supporting
each other
Shut It Tight - T. Bone Burnett [from Proof Through The Night]
old timey tune feel
complete with string band and fiddle
Blow Away The Morning Dew (Morris) - King's Singers [from My Spirit Sang All Day]
pastoral sentimental
social music
Jean de Nivelle (c. 1610) - The Baltimore Consort [from La Rocque'n'Roll]
effective accompaniment
of low stringed pluckers
and on a large
drum
played softly
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repeat it three times
so it knows its the name of the song
not an
unattractive idea for a song
Melodia na Neblina - Frieze of Life [from Nuclear Frog Pond]
concerto thinking
(instrument groupings adjacent and talking)
Radio - Beyoncé [from I Am...Sasha Fierce]
selling equipment
selling selling
Mean Kind of Love - Star Anna [from Go To Hell]
lost in the subrural wastes
They Can't Keep the Sun from Rising - Brenda Ray [from Original Songs/1950s Music]
the convenient they
For a Moment the World Changed - Steve Layton [from No Mind]
throbs of various pitches and rates
collide in partials space
new
and more interior
world
Try Being Lonely - Dolly Parton [from Just Because I'm a Woman]
sung with space between words
clearly articulated
to expressive
effect
Something Better Change - The Stranglers [from Nancy's Mix]
threat to the breezes
Ghione Dos - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir [from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares 2]
weaponized vocal projection
Hungarian Dance 2 - Johannes Brahms - Itzhak Perlman [from The Art of Itzhak Perlman]
popular tavern fare at the time
Gotta Make It to Heaven - 50 Cent [from Get Rich or Die Tryin']
grinding rough edges
life rail
Shatterbound - The True Bugs [from 25 Songs]
weary
down pressed
lines
End of the World - Cumulus [from I Never Meant It To Be Like This]
young folks in dialog with each other
in song form
Cease Fire - Christina Aguilera [from Lotus]
a plea
then
shows the plush lining
I'm a Regular - Your Mother Should Know [from Dirt Cult Records: You Don't Have To Be Cool]
one of Neal's songs that Dead Bars picked up
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Do Something To Me - ? and The Mysterians [from The Best of ? and The Mysterians]
open with the hook-title
begging for sex
perseveres for
2'37"
9-9 - REM [from Murmur]
broad meter
with few words
plastered toward the downbeat
chorus fills the bar with sung sound
a simple effective
distinction
Rebel Without a Pause - Public Enemy [from It Takes a Nation to Hold Us Back]
the lines pop out of the downbeat
breath intake
Eva Ziegler - Switzerland [from The World Sings Goodnight]
a song to lull
and calm
and regulate
Walkabout [from Jack Straw Cultural Center, Blind Youth Audio Project 2003]
this sounds like an activity
that Suzie Kozawa
{who was involved in
this project}
might have cooked up
wandering the studio space
with noise makers
is what it sounds like
Hunger: The Journey of Tamsen Donner (continued) - Tom Baker - Maria Mannisto, Jesse Canterbury, Greg Campbell, Brian Cobb, Tom Baker
musical cues
for kinds of page turns
the broad distances
must first be considered
scrap book song entries
oops!
an anachronism:
It Is Well With My Soul
is from
the 1870s
wouldn't have been sung
in the 1840s anywhere
The Limp - Cornelius Dufallo, Patrick Derivaz [from Bass Violin]
we are underwater in the tidal zone
crabs emerge
feed and dance
flounder shapes hover low
birds outstretched above
Track 8 [from Unknown Christmas Album]
fulfilling a desire
to sentimentalize away
any thought
Diabelli Recomposed (continued) - Various [streamed May 11, 2023]
25
big floppy notes
blunt but tender
26
on Broadway
(movie version)
27
we are oh so correct
oh so mechanical
and dreamy
28
oh dear
as done by Sir Andrew
as a whole stage show
Diabelli!
29
at melodramatic peril
mustachios twirl
damsels
recoil
30
as a bit of intricate jewelry
31
a new scene
silly shadows
chase hordes of tall round hats
and billy clubs
32
it got lost in a mirror
33
as a character piece
Diabelli voice-acted
Stimmung 1968 (end) - Karlheinz Stockhausen
patterns of joining and leaving
disjoining
rejoining
regrouping
in patterns
entering ones own sci fi future world
another self-mythology
within which
patterns
sounds
and wordbitsounds shift
between
each other
all those days of the week:
is this just an advertisement
for his later operatic boondoggle?
even breathing
brought
under compositional control
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flute muscles and sax muscles
sounded serious
so we enter the
improvisational space
those
are all abbreviations
I remember listening to these tapes
30 plus years ago
but my sense
of what they were ever intended to be
has shifted
the demand
of the not playing your game
to be allowed
to not
play your game
as an equal
that is
all this music
doesn't play music's game
and yet
it regards itself
with equal seriousness
interestingly
contraposed to Stimmung
those musicians
were behaving as instructed
these
are simply
behaving
OK
let's hear it for the Communist Manifesto
oh wow man
let the beat evacuate itself
in the wander lands
the costume
the cast
small p production
Sargeant
Sardines
Sartines
I need some amplification here
he speaks in a vacuum
point nine
one point two
one point
two
Phoelix the Cat
ripped by Williams
Wack It - Marley Marl [from In Control Volume 1]
the image of command and control
dance call
Daughter - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]
the full presence of the production
enters in stages
exits
similarly
but more lingeringly
long fade
Colors: Stainless Steel Grey - Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury [from Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury]
a swatch of it
Frenetic Interlude #2-Various - Sacajawea Elementary Students [from Digital Dreams]
game show timer track
Divine/Mimosa - Swearin' [from Swearin']
this music goes places
and earns its stanzas
and its re-arrivals
The Moon - Whitney Ballen [from You're a Shooting Star, I'm a Sinking Ship]
this music
exists
in a genre-space
a set
of culture
conversations
among musics
sharing common enough concepts
I Would Like to Be the Air - Megan Ihnen [from Sleep Songs - Wordless Lullabies from The Sleepless, volume 2]
overdubbing the loop way
but keeping the distinction of spaces plain
Kraanerg (continued) - Iannis Xenakis - Callithumpian Ensemble, Stephen Drury
pitch masses shift heavily
woozily
a certain quantity of the
sounds in this music
come across
as the sounds
of the world
happening
as they might be depicted by instruments
Petrushka's barrel organ squeaks
come to mind
as another
example
of a similar effect
the result
is a temptation
to treat the music as a narrative
depicting a story
but
the big breaks inside of this portion
suggest a more monumental
concept
though still
essentially
depictic
an air of harsh elements
no obvious sense of humor
or sense of
community
it isn't playing around
extremes are sought
All I Want Is You - U2 [from Rattle and Hum]
to fill a stadium
or a fungible recording
with song
may harm
the song
when every song
must bloat
to fill up to the net weight required
in largely the same way
the
process
can bulldoze the song
so produced
this one wanders off at the end
letting the strings pick up the parade
manure
Music from MA - Jocelyn Chang, Michael Leese, Tony Steve
I remember that Michael was big on the use of harps
these folks make
pretty sounds
much gentler than Xenakis
they are in the room for
each other
bends here toward a Lou Harrison vibe
flute harp and
light percussion
blocks and bells being graceful and lithe
playing
with a clear attempt
to be musical
and make musics
somebody picked up a didgeridu
in the interval
now they're making
an eerie atmosphere
harp has gone missing
whoops it's back
I
guess we're done
Bring Me The Disco King - David Bowie [from Reality]
life on the runway
at the bleeding edge of commercially enlightened
taste
technical perfection
repeated lines
weaving among the
vocals
and groups of vocals
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Mariah occupying both solo and backup
(as does Bowie)
though
Mariah can sing higher notes
clutchy embrace
Jewels N' Drugs (feat. T.I., Too $hort & Twista) - Lady Gaga [from Artpop]
miles beneath the surface
where greed lives
and lust dances to
flashing lights
Herbie Blood Sharrock - Bret Harte [from Dubble Thud]
a tempo is established
by invariance
it counts for you
so's
you don't have to
we'll bliss out now
each in our own manner
Sweet Sensation - Carla Thomas [from Written in their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos]
this is a sharp song
performed exactly
worth the price of the
whole collection
Limbo (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival) - Wayne Shorter [from The Classic Blue Note Recordings]
moves right in
to fascinate
allows little room
to breathe
ample room
for the guitar
to make the rounds
of each
table
the keys
will just have to stay in place
pretty darned nice sounding also
we'll take our bows now
and bid fare thee wells to all
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the legend exceeds its basis I'm sure
Good News - Aretha Franklin [from So Damn Happy]
never left the church
preacher extraordinaire
Winter Warn - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury [from Lone Buffalo]
local wisdom passed along
in the Winter it gets cold
and it is
long
Barks and Bites - Choke The Pope [from Who Cares]
this fellow is very articulate
concerning the exact degree
of his
self alienation
Romulus Hunt (continued) - Carly Simon - Nashville Opera, Dean Williamson
the avante life
torn
tween dance and sports
and Dad and Mom
trying to set up his folks' rapprochement
he doesn't want them
at the track meet
Ruby, My Dear - Thelonious Monk [from The Complete Columbia Studio Solo Recordings]
got lost in his fingers
Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns N' Roses [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
articulate
Long Ago and Far Away - Glenn Tate [from Days of Wine and Roses]
we'll wash you
in candle-lit memories
A Stocking Full of Chaw - Swingset Showdown [from Cymbal of Appreciation EP]
a rude awakening
Idiot Orange - Red Ribbon [from Dark Party]
a political message?
as though personal though
cryptic
Study #4 in C-sharp minor - Jeremiah Lawson - Jeremiah Lawson
figures in eight-syllable groups
The Jolly Green Giant - The Kingsmen [from The Very Best of the Kingsmen]
complete with a Keytish list of vegetables
Three Readings - Tildy Bayar [from Open Space 12]
sound and spoken language
works
if spoken language accepts
that its sound
is limited
by its words
in ways
that sound sound
refuses
objects of spoken language
before they are statements
Powow at Crawford - Doug Haire [from The Crawford Opera]
muffled sounds
beneath an audibly present surface
Super Wizard - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks]
a hero
on his comic book pages
a made up world
Darling Lorraine - Paul Simon [from In The Blue Light]
moments in invented lives
Serenade #2 for 11 Players - George Perle - Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose
an expressionist:
expressions every last interval
each gesture
significant
in all directions
keeping track of which directions
is
thankfully
not my
problem
En Reve - Norbert Moret - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, Anne-Sophie Mutter
evocativism:
a scene we witness
suddenly gets all concertoish
per the contract
this piece works best
when it isn't being a
concerto
an illustrator
a set designer
Mistica - Tania León - Cristina Valdés [streamed May 5, 2021]
lots of story before the piece
stubborn
impatient
dreamy
in turns
Ugly Beauty - Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury [from Ascendant]
we vibrate our needs
into a liquid echo space
lonely saxophones
drifting in the dreamy
The Haunting - Slothrust [from The Pact]
trapped in a living
String Quartet No. 2 - György Ligeti - La Salle Quartet
these sounds arise in an alienated space
muttering crowds
whispers
and poison
oppression
sullen obedience
always watched
it is unclear
for whose benefit
this is intended
is it
fun to play?
string quartets are serious business
and must be approached
with
all due severity
suddenly
it's the opening of Nielsen's Fifth Symphony
out
on a line
to dry
in the breeze
gravel beach surf
dark wharf underbelly
of city life
Under the Rainbow - Mathew Rosenblum [from Circadian Rhythms]
flute battles with media sound bits
selected for their instant
recognizability
within the context of its popular culture
the
battle settles into grudging allowance
Too Close - Dawn Clement [from Tempest/Cobalt]
open harmonies
sunfilled wishes
of freedom flying
Gérard - Participants [from Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions 2018]
a marked avoidance of melody
as an overt gesture
these are sounds
until they begin to march
O God Our Help in Ages Past - Alan Hovhaness - The Choirs and Orchestra of St. John's Cathedral, Denver, Donald Pearson
shaped like a choir anthem
each verse a different setting than the last
ABA
so it is easily understood
with optional unearned Amen
Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car - Billy Ocean [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Go Dog Go pick up lines
to dance to
A Waltzer in the House - Milton Babbitt [from Erik Carlson - Slowly Expanding Milton Babbitt Album]
voice and vibraphone
take us through a twisted copse
Somebody Said What Now - Holly Palmer [from I Confess]
recriminations and rumors
jealous thoughts
Garbageman - Steve Kennedy, Lisa Puteska [from Untitled Album]
being told off at length
through an obfuscating duplication of voice
In Session at The Tintinabulary
July 19, 2026
Farnham - Keith Eisenbrey
this is the 159th setting I have made
from the tunes found in an 1846
shape note song book
and completes the second large grouping of those
tunes
grouped by their sharing the ability
to accommodate
quatrains of 8 6 8 and 6 syllables
(Common Meter, or C.M.)
next up is Short Meter
or S.M.
or quatrains of 6 6 8 and 6
syllables
I have been writing these
one for each Sunday morning
since July
of 2023
and am about 3/8 of the way through the book
Postscripts
Drops
Music of Aaron Keyt - Part 3
This third collection of the music of my long-time collaborator Aaron Keyt is composed of two sets of short pieces: Hedgehogs (2014) and Music for Wallace (2016). The recordings were made at my home in 2020/2021.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream.
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