Preface
"'. . . We are despised: Minerva and Diana
Are in revolt against me; Ceres' daughter
Will remain virgin, if we let her have
Her present affectations. For both our sakes,
Join the young goddess with her loving uncle.'
And Cupid, searching through this quiver, found
The sharpest shaft of all, and sent it flying
From the bow bent at his knee, and the barb struck deep
In Pluto's heart."
-Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)
Texts
Streamed
"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.
June 20, 2020
Marina Albero
solo piano and hammer dulcimer improvisations
tethered continuities
arrived at by another experience
without question
world without meta-thought or reflection
prior to or innocent of
these are water colors of musics
deflected from wandering outside
by rutted roads
letting feeling flow wistful and placid
all bounds firmly in place
time is left behind
June 21, 2020
Beth Fleenor (Crystal Beth)
Inside Outside
let us breathe
(that's easy)
long comfort loops cushion our floating
incense and fabric hangings
soul masseuse
let go what may be held tight
there's the spot
the ape aggression
channel it for focus
(Beth boxing)
we are brought back down
undoes itself
to close
benedictus
June 25, 2020
Lori Goldston
Yellowstone Score
impressions (like Rich Little):
but here:
im-instrumentations of:
a circle of didjeridus all being played by Jimi Hendrix
inflections
where the flux flexes
or inflects or fluctuates
the stones that shape the surface shift in their beds
magmatic flow
ooze hum
the river of plastic mineral beneath
plays a planettheremin
the age of resin spheres
the core is an open string
Recorded
Polonaise in B-flat Major, op. posth - Frédéric Chopin - Peter Katin
composed at the age of seven or so (1817)
one might guess Schubert
music for home use, elegant but not ornate
Symphony in D minor (#7) - Felix Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton
polyphony reflowers
firmly enlightened
These string symphonies are often compared to Beethoven because of the counterpoint, but Mendelssohn was more fluent in imitating counterpoint than Beethoven was. This is music for musicians, for sure. The last movement has a great opening moment: something is about to happen! A fugue of course. Once fugue infiltrates a piece it gets everywhere.
Impromptu in F minor, Op. 142 #1 - Franz Schubert - Murray Perahia
That guitar-string-plucking-like undulation in the middle register must be a bear to control. Lovely modulations.
6 Studies on Caprices by Paganani, Op. 3 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl
fingery at a prestidigitous rate
The practioners of pianism were starting to find where they could push their newly fangled thingumabob. First they discover mimicry, a comic routine, a puppet show. Eusebius takes over. The use of all the registers is spectacular.
Grande Messe des Morts, Op. 5 - Hector Berlioz - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Wandsworth School Boys' Choir, Colin Davis, Ronald Dowd
When I was at the University of Washington I sang first tenor in the chorus for a performance of this piece. There are moments listening now I find myself thinking along with my old part.
If you are going to commit word painting then be as blatantly literal as you possibly can. There is no sense trying to hide what you're doing.
Why were Requiems such an idée fixe for the Romantics? Was it the death thing or the Mozart thing? Were they all trying to finish Mozart's?
What a megalomaniac this guy was.
Frère Jacques in funeral tones, what Mahler borrowed in his first symphony.
Political satire? Rex Tremendae? in 1837? in Paris? Who would that have been?
The size of the forces forces the slow rate of affect drama and the massive granularity of the details. He pushes it as far as he can. These massive productions with hundreds of people involved must have been important to the revolutionary survivors - morale boost? regicidal remorse?
The famous trombones and flutes in the Hostias are trying to imitate, or create anew, the image of a pre-Gothic soundworld. Then he freakyweirds it.
Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla - Mikhail Glinka - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner
a little opera complete
June 21, 2020
Tannhäuser, Act I - Richard Wagner - Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Josef Greindl, Wolfgang Windgassen, Eberhard, Waechter, Gerhard Stolze, Franz Crass, Georg Paskuda, Gerd Nienstedt, Anja Silja, Grace Bumbry, Else-Margrete Gardelli, Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele, Wilhelm Pitz
when you open your opera in Orgy-Central
where you gonna go?
Sorry ma'am, I want to marry a nice girl.
that'll go well
The style of singing, as a thing in itself, is crude and unattractive. It does fill a big space bigger than life.
In these pre-leitmotif days he makes whole swaths of music stand for broad ideas - like immovable stage sets. They are too unwieldy to penetrate the drama, so he uses filler scrubbing. He is obsessed with enunciating his words, the music tags along stiffly.
Now he sets them all singing all manly, the Romantic ideal of brotherhood. Women are not a part of this, not even the nice girls.
So the act starts with an onstage (actual) orgy and ends with a vocal (projected) orgy. He did know how to story-board.
Es muss ein Wunderbares sein - Franz Liszt - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen
Harmonic shifts are controlled so that each note within them is essential.
Where are you, little star? - Modest Mussorgsky - Benjamin Luxon, David Willison
each note, like Liszt above, is planned so that the harmonies go to the wrong inversion and spacing, in just the right way to ring like a bell.
June 22, 2020
Quartet in A, op. 26 - Johannes Brahms - Eastman Quartet
drawing room social
Scherzo a la Russe, Op. 1#1 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Ramzi Yassa
concert piece for large audience with piano virtuoso obbligato
June 23, 2020
Messe in F minor - Anton Bruckner - Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum, Maria Stader, Claudia Hellmann, Ernst Haefliger, Kim Borg, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Kurt Prestel
reaching without
ever reaching
holding patterns
can't hold
Kyrie as a piece
is never a piece
it is an image of experiencing a piece
what it is of the Haydnesque model:
not the outlines
but the flesh
outside the lines
processes the text
with us
activating liturgy
pert little hosanna entrance
leads into a massive sound
and goes out before we can grasp
how it doesn't fit
like everything else
we are within a space
in which Mass is being
Symphonic Variations on an Original Theme - Antonín Dvořák - London Symphony Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz
More costume changes than Cher could shake a stick at.
fugue de rigeur and stretto dire
everybody POLKA!
flash finish
the crowd goes wild
Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi
imperial spectacle
we bring it all to you
right here in sunny St. Petersburg
June 24, 2020
Symphony in G minor (#1) - Carl Nielsen - London Symphony Orchestra, Ole Schmidt
Nielsen improves on Brahms in his willingness to work honestly with twisted chromatic knots, not putting bows on them and dressing them up all pious. He doesn't seem interested in big tune excrescence. His material is concerned with itself, not the impression it will make on a popular audience - a distinctly modern sensibility. Its undergirdings are part of the show. Fierce and taut.
In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts
June 15, 2020
STE-026 200615 - Aaron Keyt
Aaron forwarded his contribution this past week so I was able to assemble:
Banned Quarantiniad 200615 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt
June 27, 2020
Maple Leaf 200627 - Keith Eisenbrey
I was hoping to capture the dawn chorus this morning, but the birds were shy - possibly due to the cloudy weather. Here is an hour plus of our local outdoor sound starting at about 4:15 AM.
Postscripts
woman forgot the water god's flame in
which about saying that it enjoys
eternal life yet it does not work thus
of grid mounted objects
an owl with scrolled eyes
a crone on a hill
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