Playlist

Preface

"He leaps, a little playful,
On the green grass, or lays the snowy body
On the yellow sand, and gradually the princess
Loses all fear, and he lets her pat his shoulder,
Twine garlands on his horns, and she grows bolder,
Climbs on his back, of course all unsuspecting,
And he rises, ever so gently, and slowly edges
From the dry sand toward the water, further and further,
And swimming now, with the girl, trembling a little
And looking back to the land, her right hand clinging
Tight to one horn, and the other resting easy
Along the shoulder, and her flowing garments
filling and fluttering in the breath of the sea-wind."
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Live Streaming

March 25, 2020

American Art Songs

Peter Nelson-King, piano & voice

William Ames - A Patch of Old Snow; Fire and Ice
Paul Bowles - In the Woods
Alexander Lipsky - Lilac-Time
Aaron Copland - Song
Irwin Heilner - The Tide Rises
Theodore Chanler - These, My Ophelia
Carl Ruggles - Toys
Ray Green - selections from Four Short Songs
Otto Luening - Only Themselves Understand Themselves
Hugo Weisgall - 4 Songs, op. 1
David Diamond - Epitaph
William Flanagan - 2 Songs

It's been a rough week at the Tintinabulary, due not only to the general crisis disgorging itself around us, but also due to an unrelated, not unexpected, but nevertheless difficult personal loss. And so, on this roughest of rough days it was a genuine comfort to tune in to this live streamed (I want to say strummed) solo recital. Thank you!

Peter is many curious and valued things here: pianist, singer, antiquarian, treasure hunter, teacher. These often lovely short works - all by early 20th century composers who have, for the most part, fallen somewhat south of fame -  share, for the most part, an expressionistic attitude toward text-setting. The purpose of the song is to act out the poem, to pronounce its referential meaning fully. Squeeze out every gooey drip. This idea goes way back, traceable at least to the early Baroque habit of text painting (Purcell's "shake" - the name then for what we would now call a "trill" - on the sung word "shake," for example), and coming to full hot-house floriation between the wars, at about the time many of these songs were promulgated. It comes as no surprise that the more astringent practices of, say, Webern or Stravinsky, arose then as a corrective.

Not to complain of course, far from it! I was genuinely delighted to hear each of these. We were amused at how, through clever use of telephone camera settings, Peter managed to play his piano backwards, his (apparently) right hand thundering the bass, his left arabesqueing lightly the treble. Right on cue his cat attempted a cameo (Karen called it) before being deftly off-staged by our host. Thank you once again, Peter. You truly made a difficult day much better.

Recorded

March 22, 2020
Sonata in F Major K. 106 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The figures only need to be distinguished from their immediate fellows. They show no need to be utterly original, as figures. The music lives in the play of the figures' immediately distinguishable parts.

Again, Not - Benjamin Boretz, Jill Borner, Bruce Huber, Jeff Presslaff, Charles Stein [from Open/Space]

so civil
as to be
near inert

pokes prods scratches
sporadic signals
from unknown sources

connection unstable
spare and pointed
so that we hear

the bits forming trajectories
or occasional clots
except there where

it is while I write this
sounds form strands
just past where they register

as events
then it seems to have
overwhelmed the equipment

probably not
cuts off
sudden

Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

Bruce goes for the Guthrie

My Home, op. 62 - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

The slow intro to the main show allows spaces to open within the main show that aren't new spaces, but recalled spaces, and allows its tempo, as it begins, to be specifically relative to sometempo prior.

Banned Rehearsal 803 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 2011]



delicate curiosity

Hendrix - Ease [from Roots]



segments (four?) in a sequence
a guitar runs through it

one just guitar
two just guitar plus drums
three just guitar plus drums plus vocal
four just guitar plus drums plus vocal yelled

March 24, 2020
Sonata in F Major K. 107 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

first: show the cards. all of them.
then proceed to prestidigitate

If
at the end
the whole thing seems to balance
then you probably only still seem to have your wallet

Bella Donna (Live 1982) Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

so done up it done gone
all the words are underlined
in order to disaudibalate them

O vos omnes - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

nearly straight
all for the good

Radio Ice Waves - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]



orbits rock slowly
ocean swell

the song of the slower whale

March 26, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 919 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2016]



excelsior breathing steady
-ish
-ly

others wander the room at variously frenetic paces

stable steady seems of a piece with an entity, locatable

other persons flirt with identity, singularity,

the whole eludes circumspection
it takes work

concurrent silences:
a hinge
an articulation
a bending moment

}}product of excelsior!{{

turn together once
forever joined
the path narrows as it climbs

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

March 22, 2020
br_3-22-20_covid19_1 - Steve Kennedy

March 23, 2020
Bannedecameron 200323 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey



March 24, 2020
STE-018 200324 - Aaron Keyt [playing along to Steve's br_3-22-20_covid19_1]

We all do what we can to stay connected in dark times. My hope is, at some point, to lump it all together into a grand banned quarantiniad.

Postscripts

conductor that after i suppose well

don't know which by the bye what i naturally

inquired but if perhaps nor yet but

** ** **

an image of duration bereft

or innocent or prior to any notion of pulse

or specific rational value