Playlist

Preface

"Music journalism survives through the continuous propagation of compositional 'movements',
endlessly contending in mutual exclusion and hostility for some ultimate 'supremacy', the achievement of which creates, for a brief Hegelian moment, a new Establishment that is, in its turn, opposed and overthrown. In this our journalists are the victims of their own dedication to hyperbole and generality; for they are frequently left unable to describe a musical work except as a type, a pawn in an ideological conflict whose 'outcome' is the only evident substantive issue. And when works are so regarded, they are described only in terms of their most immediate 'typical' characteristics, whose significance seems to lie only in their contrast with some other, contending 'school'. Perhaps this tendency results also from the considerably greater ease of describing a composition in terms of what it is not than in terms of what it is as a unique realization of particular musical ideas."
Benjamin Boretz "2.26.68 Journalism" from "Music Columns from The Nation 1962-1968"

Texts

Live

August 10, 2019
Finnegans Wake Part 1 Chapter 2
performed from memory by Neal Kosály-Meyer
Gallery 1412, Seattle

earth side hoist
a cad with a pipe
here comes everybody
imposing cobweb crusted corks
may his hairs be rubbed in dirt

Recorded

August 10, 2019
Sonata in A minor, K. 36 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

through-composed artifice
every other aspect of experience is banished and vanished
clarity alone remains

Way Faring Stranger - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

alto solo
verse with oooo's in the upper voices
then another canon
this world of woe

Around And Around - Moe Tucker [from I Feel So Far Away: Anthology 1974-1998]

flat line delivery
except or also the "woo!"

not exactly a cover of the song
more a re-imagining of both the song and energy from which it sprang

Banned Rehearsal 103 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1986]



wound strings are like long guiros
longitudinal scraping
ukulele and ocarina comment
working it like sawing or sanding
ocarina player switches to harmonica

intent: keep sound going, all of space filled
an urgency to continue in like tempo
steady state

pressure applied for metamorphic hopes
not without some success

It just takes some time.

We can relax,
having managed to get somewhere.

We have entered that temple of chapels through which the Wurlitzer wanders, singing praise to noise! praise to noise!
flutes descanting in its train

Now it is time to operate some devices and make rubbings. Wagner is pelted by balloons and bells. O the glorious Rhein rising! We play the stage machinery.

Is it safe yet to emerge?
We do anyway. Clean up the mess. uh oh. Aaronsbundler.

August 11, 2019
The Other Level - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

porn fan fic

Wie Lieblich ist deine Wohnungen - Johannes Brahms - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

In Chopin the strange counterpoints that shape the melody's harmonic heaving are never whole, but persist in hints and patches only. Here they are worked out to the nth, and Brahms is desperate to insist that you hear that he has worked them out as he surely has.

Gradus 105 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2006]

resonance is what reaches out to us
binding sounds
testing the limits of contact

Is there a chaos between touch and not touch?
a touch at the limn of release?

August 13, 2019
Tre Duetti - Elliott Carter - Rolf Schulte, Joel Krosnick [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

the heart of thought laid bare

{extraneous performance noise: humming, breathing, podium creaking, turning pages. The line between acceptable and irritating is personal. For me, any voiced vocal noise is a problem, (because it's pitched?). Herein I am more than willing to overlook the humming for the other strengths of the performance.}

Distracted Driver - St. Rage [at the Common Good Cafe, August 2016]



trending on twitter
eating marshmallow peeps

In 2016 Karen's YA urban fantasy novel "The Gospel According to St. Rage" was released. This was from the book release event, in which Karen and her brother, Neal Kosály-Meyer, posing as St. Rage, the fictional band within the book, sang the songs Barbara, her fictional hero, wrote.

And Hey! That book is being re-released soon! Now available for pre-order, and soon to be followed by the sequel, "Barbara and the Rage Brigade".

August 15, 2019
Sonata in C minor, K. 37 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

For those with ears to hear, Scarlatti thinks in naked composition with a forthrightness that neither Haydn nor Beethoven could quite manage. A perfect match of means and ends, i.e., music, as such.

Symphonie in C minor - Camille Saint-Saëns - Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson

spacious
not room to breathe
but briefly
room to recall

oh the Schubert oh the reminiscence
via Mendelssohn and Berlioz and Tchaikovsky I think
the elan of chops standing in for invention
check in with past glories for the I recognize that bit jollies of the cognoscenti (the cogknows?)

but
something about the way it builds from scraps prefigures Sibelius
and it is never not lively in transfigurations of its idée fixe
every moment of every moment is melodically charged
Busoni was soon to till this same field
then it goes gleefully oratorical-finale-fugue-ish on us
Bach obsessed, but aren't we all?
grandiosity to the max maximum maximaxiest
music designed for the architecture it was meant to fulfill

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 12, 2019
Gradus 354 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

molecular soup hanging just above its atomic base
free floating melody and harmony parts
flotsam with potentialities

Postcripts

the sprung based as we have certain conditions

must be industry sinks the rapidly

to impose him sink state that it has no

pitch bent mind time
want to stop
go for a walk