Preface
"And it works; the world works, even if it seems to work in frequently deplorable ways. Without judgment, the world doesn't work; without distinctions, there is no world. But of course we're talking about music; and the question is whether that chaotic disparity of sensibilities which underlies the orderly uniformity created by conventional wisdom is not crucially the realm precisely of the aesthetic; the place where the distinctions are precisely the ones that matter at the heart of the enterprise of creative expression. That the well-tempered effort to hear conventionally, in terms of the givens of musical culture, of the distinctions and judgments ontologized within their defined terms, is in fact sensitivity training in the service of a certain particular register of sensitivities, a powerful homogenizing agent which makes possible the conduct of musical life, its way of sorting out issues of performance, of composition, of description, of opinion, as if they all made mutual sense - and thus enabling the intelligible continuity of the cultural institution that enacts and reproduces itself as music, as the reality of what music is.
But . . ."
Benjamin Boretz The Universe of One, And, the Music of the Other Open Space Magazine Issue 15/16 fall 2013/winter 2014
Texts
Live
July 7, 2017
Seattle Composers' Salon
 |
| Clinton, Washington - July 9, 2017 |
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Jessi Harvey - Eden Untamed (selections)
Massive, dense solo piano writing that loosens into an odd narrative || that involves lots of shoving things around, things unwilling to move at all, across surfaces that fight back with dogged persistence.
Jeremiah Lawson - Guitar Sonata in d minor (selections)
The sort of music that speaks high of lowbrow and low of highbrow: Southern Harmony hymnody in slide-guitar arrangement halfway toward dulcimer Appalachian if it weren't so completely guitar, Haydn thinking in the new world.
Jay Hamilton - Out
man with block head wooden seated bare foot on chair || poly-log from speakers voice of neural chaos. Existentially instructive in the language of prosaic doings stop start up down out.
Clement Reid - Theater Piece #2 (selections)
for toy-piano || in the treating seriously of which (which he does) foregrounds the relation of conceptual size across realms: big piece, little instrument. The theater of it for me is the dynamic question of whether the bigness of the piece overwhelms the littleness of the instrument. Even money.
Thank you, Amy Denio, for permitting the use of your tune.
Carson Farley's question hit things brilliantly on the head (thanks! that's probably why it took me aback so effectively) - and I had already chosen the prefatory quotation - something like (paraphrasing for my own nefarious ends) "why not compose the trajectory from theme to variations, instead of bluntly starting with the finished thingy?"
comment after the fact one: To do so could be another performance of the score. I'd love to hear it.
comment after the fact two: presenting it as I did, in quasi-theme&variations sequence, was an ad hoc decision, since in my thinking about this project all the versions (and others) exist within each other as doubles, ghosts, unperformable as a whole.
comment after the fact three: Scores could be for exploration not performance.
comment after the fact four: Dunno.
comment after the fact five: I didn't.
or less snarkly: This simply was what came out when I started working. Your possibility did glance through my thought process, but this is what finally got written out.
comment after the fact six: In my thinking about composition projects this is a single complex score within a set of three complex scores, which set of three is the eleventh in a set of (probably) seventeen complex complexes of scores named Etudes d'execution imminent upon which I have been engaged for several years now and expect to be so engaged upon for a good bit longer. I take the overarching title of the project with deadly serious intent.
Recorded
July 1, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis
This fugue is being shucked, like an oyster, a strongly resistant oyster, an oyster of many shells.
Die Jahreszeiten "Spring"- Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm
A phantasmagoria of kinds of singing and singing groups. As in movies it has special effects: word painting: music bits standing in for representation, representing representation.
July 5, 2017
Dropping Shucks - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]
After You've Gone - Benny Goodman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
first: shambling around the house moping blues
then: celebrating around the house not so blues as you think I'm bluesing
A bit of a comic version of what I understand to be a traditional jazz funeral rite: solemn to the grave, then shout to the skies.
Until The Real Thing Comes Along - Snow Valaida [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Soloist: "Talk to me, boys". Turn-based conversation as structural stratagem. The titular hook low low in the tessitura each time but the last (see BG above).
I Found A New Baby - Don Byas [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Water ski pull along thrill speed til flip free and soar.
Weary Blues - George Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
This music is having more fun than you are.
(Ah The Apple Trees) When The World Was Young - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]
Never a shiver of a moment more than she needs to make the statement. Tight as a Scriabin Prelude.
Shtiggy Boom - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]
Flutter-tongued harmonica!!!! Yowza!!!!
Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]
Another kiss-off song from Bob. Is the whole album like this? They get over it better in most of the songs noted above, or at least with better humor.
Sister Fatima - Don McLean [from American Pie]
Almost too precious for sensitive tummies.
Golden Years - David Bowie [from Changes One]
An undetermined count of songs in there, a broth bubbling roiling them through each other to the surface. DB at his best doing what he does best.
KCBOL (draft studio recording of June 2009) - Keith Eisenbrey
As cockamamie as the scheme was, there are many features of this 1980 piano piece that continue to be of use to me. As originally conceived there is a theater bit that goes with it, involving stacking alphabet blocks and ringing finger cymbals (which idea came back as whacking an oil drum at the beginning of Five Movements as performed at Bard in 1984). The original performers were Andrew Buchman and me. The midmost movement of the five is a two-note piece for piano four-hands.
July 6, 2017
They'd been working on some stuff and this is a page from their sketchbook.
Banned Rehearsal 248 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Bill Meyer, Marilyn Meyer [February 1991]
small sounds close up moments gel but between gel moments fleeting liminal passages
what passes for a steady rhythm here is the jounce of an overladen wagon hugely wheeled downslope in self abandon bump stop in ditch shake
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis
This fugue is being shucked, like an oyster, a strongly resistant oyster, an oyster of many shells.
Die Jahreszeiten "Spring"- Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm
A phantasmagoria of kinds of singing and singing groups. As in movies it has special effects: word painting: music bits standing in for representation, representing representation.
July 5, 2017
loose bolts on this chassis
jalopy rhythm
bumpety b'bump b'bump
first: shambling around the house moping blues
then: celebrating around the house not so blues as you think I'm bluesing
A bit of a comic version of what I understand to be a traditional jazz funeral rite: solemn to the grave, then shout to the skies.
Until The Real Thing Comes Along - Snow Valaida [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Soloist: "Talk to me, boys". Turn-based conversation as structural stratagem. The titular hook low low in the tessitura each time but the last (see BG above).
I Found A New Baby - Don Byas [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Water ski pull along thrill speed til flip free and soar.
Weary Blues - George Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
This music is having more fun than you are.
(Ah The Apple Trees) When The World Was Young - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]
Never a shiver of a moment more than she needs to make the statement. Tight as a Scriabin Prelude.
Shtiggy Boom - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]
Flutter-tongued harmonica!!!! Yowza!!!!
Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]
Another kiss-off song from Bob. Is the whole album like this? They get over it better in most of the songs noted above, or at least with better humor.
Sister Fatima - Don McLean [from American Pie]
Almost too precious for sensitive tummies.
Golden Years - David Bowie [from Changes One]
An undetermined count of songs in there, a broth bubbling roiling them through each other to the surface. DB at his best doing what he does best.
KCBOL (draft studio recording of June 2009) - Keith Eisenbrey
As cockamamie as the scheme was, there are many features of this 1980 piano piece that continue to be of use to me. As originally conceived there is a theater bit that goes with it, involving stacking alphabet blocks and ringing finger cymbals (which idea came back as whacking an oil drum at the beginning of Five Movements as performed at Bard in 1984). The original performers were Andrew Buchman and me. The midmost movement of the five is a two-note piece for piano four-hands.
July 6, 2017
They'd been working on some stuff and this is a page from their sketchbook.
Banned Rehearsal 248 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Bill Meyer, Marilyn Meyer [February 1991]
small sounds close up moments gel but between gel moments fleeting liminal passages
what passes for a steady rhythm here is the jounce of an overladen wagon hugely wheeled downslope in self abandon bump stop in ditch shake
The so-called "Acronymiad", intent on filling the space with sound the acronyms are partially effaced.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
July 3, 2017
Banned Telepath 57 Anchorage 170703 - Aaron Keyt
Banned Telepath 57 Seattle 170703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 938 170703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
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