Playlist

Preface

"BUT: if our Spiritual Exercise strikes you as Unseemly, or Silly, or Mere Sentimental Wallow;

if nothing Clicked;

Then I'm Concerned For you:

Then it's You, above All, who Need it Bad.

Then it is You who should Not Engage in a wildlife issue Quite Yet:

You're Not Ready."

- J. K. Randall "Statement to the NJ State Assembly Environment Committee, 8/5/93" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

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/.

September 19, 2020

Dave Knott

Requia

a dial-twiddler, but a carefully listening and rewarding to listen to dial-twiddler 

testing a signal
looking at it with filters and lenses
better at
1 or 2
A or B
now with this set of
A or B
1 or 2 

writing language out by hand has a rhythm to it
and there it is 

a moment when a quiet out door sound with occasional splatter drops is jump cut to
an unending industrial sound cavern
 train brings us near the surface
a mass of ape mutterings
roadside sounds like rain and bowing a ukulele
bass ukulele
or a banjo guitar
what is that? 

patient transition processing

September 20, 2020

Amelia Love Clearheart

laying a music bed down
to stand on
and kick out from under 

loop procedure becomes looped 'form'
or having an idea on my end about how it is accomplished
 and knowing that
finding myself
surmising the kinds of thing it might produce
and what might be done with that 

cyclic pulsing overlapping
once established
 might be renewed
refreshed
or allowed to flow undisturbed 

but it isn't just that the notes repeat or loop
the signal loops
all of it
we put music in it
another way of thinking
about assembling something
from its sound out 

threading it through signal
each loop sample
once laid down
has potential for processing 

up to a point

Recorded

September 20, 2020

Variatio Fvb5 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the slow note tune
is bent gently by the running figures

Philou - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

plausible orchestration
or plausible enough to pass
where no instructions are to be had

Suite in C Major - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

focus has shifted to the singing tune
and its ornate accoutrements 

the slower tune remains
but is structural,
subservient 

opera did that

Sonata in C Major - George Frideric Handel - Michala Petri, Keith Jarrett

harpsichord splits time
between supporting and answering
the recorder 

this one is getting somewhere 

concerning a ceremonial family life
a place for amusement
and games
a place for careful thinking
and stiff decorum

Onzieme Ordre (do) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

a toymaker magic act
don't sit on a cadence
breathe quick and off you go 

 chirpy tunes 

we have been pulled into a longer story
wake up call at the end of it 

brutal keyboard toccata battles among the villagers

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

in being ultra clear about the details of the smaller meter
a much larger meter still
is revealed

a phalanx of stretto entrances

Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

straight flutes sure produce a lot of acoustic weirdness
they happen within hearing
but aren't heard as a sound 

floaters 

excellence in playing
please the king

Sonata in E minor Wq. 49/3 -  - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi

sonata form
as a type
a story frame
as incantation

September 22, 2020

Apollo et Hyacinthus, Act I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Arleen Auger, Edith Mathis, Cornelia Wulkopf, Hanna Schwarz, Salzburger Kammerchor, Rupert Huber

recitative:

the continuo is a fascinating idea to have had
and it had such a long life in music
the naturalism of dialogic drama
held up by a few touches of notes
and sketchy harmony 

the duets, arias, choruses, etc.
among other things
allow the music as logic
to control
so drama holds still
for now
which supports which? 

in Latin no less

Symphony in E minor, Hob. I:44 "Trauersinfonie" - Franz Joseph Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

multiplicity of figures used
the tonal framework was necessary
or seemed necessary
to hold it together 

an actual fact based verifiable structure
invisible thread 

but does it actually hold it together?
really? 

nothing ever finishes
a thought about coherence being tested 

symphony: the music everybody plays together

Sonata in G minor, op. 7#2 - Muzio Clementi, Howard Shelley

pushing affective disjointure into attention
hints of Eroica figures in the 1st movement

September 23, 2020

Sonata in F Major, op. 10#2 - Ludwig van Beethoven, Wilhelm Kempff

stubborn adherence to a thread
never loses track of what he's about 

the social space his music creates
in which it arises
is bigger than a piano can be 

Mass in A-flat Major (#5) - Franz Schubert - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimir Valek, Helga Terner, Kristine Rohr-Bach, Vladimir Dolezal, Klement Slowioczek, Prague Radio Chorus

thin ice above the dark places
it could go
but might not 

lots of contrapuntal busywork
(not his strongest suit) 

some presumably effective spatial effects for which a cathedral space is required

September 24, 2020

Etude in C Major, op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Cecile Licad

the bass line is a red herring
all the fancy voice leading and counterpoint is in the arpeggios

Fantasiestücke, op. 12 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

leads you out
so simply
goes
so logically askew
the thread leaps
escherically 

the steady balance of answering phrases
is not the norm here
but lengths and sizes are a thing
as is balance
a reference
seen askance
through several darkling glasses

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 20, 2020

Rain 200920 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Rain 200920

there was rain and our drainpipe gurgled

September 21, 2020

Wallace Book 10 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Telepath 62 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1010 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1010 200921

The rain and dark has arrived, so back indoors we go.

September 22, 2020

Chorale 9 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 23, 2020

Wallace Book 11 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 10 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

Chorale 11 - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

September 24, 2020

Wallace Book 12 - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

September 25, 2020

Wallace Epilogue - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

The Epilogue is a bear - slow, polyphonous, hefty, and requiring exact articulation and dynamics. I'll get it for sure soon, then I'll be able to start putting together a virtual recital of these recordings, as a dialogue between Aaron's recent music and mine. The working title of the project is "Wallace." 

Postscripts

should have known the which passed between was mad

enough was one little smiling good-humoured

sidling begged compliments i never way

the world is a figment of music
pitch in a swamp is a bird on a cattail
an embodiment of the absence of itself