Playlist

 Preface

"No one should be allowed to witness a linear journey through curvilinear space. It is a knowledge available only from a forbidden perspective, an observation point held as sacred taboo because the knowledge of the qualities of this mystery are dangerous to the underangement of the limited perceptual-conceptual organs of the ones below; they are never allowed to go above, to know the secret of spatial absurdity, that all roads lead to nowhere, that the journey is eventless, that linear is circular, that accumulation is evacuation, that horizon is origin, that beginning has no successor, that end has not arrived, that location is death, that trajectory is chaos, that curvature is loss, that a clock has red hands and an airplane in odd planar orbit for seconds marker, that the universe is, after all, bounded by a purple ring with several functional and/or decorative protuberances thereon, and needs to rest on a swatch of crinkly grey matter (firmament no doubt) to subsist in such stability as to maintain time around incrementing in planar diffractive attitude translational trajectory circumventing content and form both without flying out of space altogether causing the all of everything to fall apart, or in, or down, or out, or up or all or none of the abovebelow."

- Benjamin Boretz "Wiska Radkiewicz's 60 Minute Exercises : her video images" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

November 21, 2020

Night of Punk Rock 

The Rock Academy - Live from Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York

The son of a friend of ours in the Hudson Valley was one of 10 to 15 young people performing in a revolving set of mix and match punk bands in this end-of-term showcase in Woodstock, New York. It reminded me of many another school concert I have attended - except that we were streaming it to my computer and enjoying it from our kitchen table. The kids all did great, they were clearly having a great time, they were taking pains to be masked and as distant from each other as possible, and the production looked and sounded fabulous. What a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Finnegans Wake Part 1, Chapter 6 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer

savage
in the dark 

rabble aye sion
(constellations of words)
fan fuck shun 

syllabic
durational ratio
question to answer
ratios as image

what would Joyce think of this?
flabbergastified?

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/.

November 22, 2020

Faith Coloccia

Voice II Continuum

music and language arise within the same mind
their differentiation or individuation is incomplete
though their juncture may be inaccessible
to either mind
that mind of language
or that mind of music 

the third mind
the mind of consciousness 

language mind may create consciousness
music mind may create an alternate consciousness
song is the proving ground 

if so
the song mind
may be that third mind
the mind of juncture

November 27, 2020

Bonnie Whiting

Control/Release

the drum head  

wind blows | bells
stand firm | jangly
flocks | swoop and
circle | we touch
surface | text 
texture | shape and
sound orbit | stroke

Recorded

November 22, 2020

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act II - Richard Wagner -Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Eugen Jochum, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Lagger, Peter Maus, Roberto Banuelas, Roland Hermann, Gerd Feldhoff, Loren Driscoll, Karl-Ernst Mercker, Martin Vantin, Klaus Lang, Ivan Sardi, Miomir Nikolic, Placido Domingo, Horst R. Laubenthal, Catarina Ligendza, Christa Ludwig, Victor von Halem

though not a number opera
the image of numbers
lingers
recitative and aria is not absent
the recitativo is simply more songlike
and the arias are more conversational
their modes are accessed at any moment 

I guess these music parts have names
- a clot of meaning -
and a branding collective noun (thanks von Wolzogen)
- Leitmotiv -
but the way their musical development collaborates with the flow of conversation is brilliantly done.

they shape and are shaped by the words of the dialog
as they go by together 

: Walther as the stand-in
for Wagner
The Romantic Hero
The Superior Man
The Man of Genius 

why should he submit to this contest?
but he is jealous of the honor,
a Don Giovanni trapped (how pathetic) 

Sachs finally unleashes the voice of the true Meister
riot suppression

Boris Godunov, Act I, Scene II - (1872 version) - Modeste Mussorgsky - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Semkow, Martti Talvela, Leonard Mroz, Nicolai Gedda, Bozena Kinasz, Andrzej Hiolski, Aage Haugland, Halina Lukomska, Polish Radio Chorus of Krakow, Boys Chorus from the Krakow Philharmonic Chorus

second time through this scene - my error

we'll move on next time around

ideas are adrift in the populace
meanwhile
safe in her bedroom
in daddy's house 

now where are we? 

must be night time
really stunning things he's doing there.

November 23, 2020

Symphony in C minor (#2) - Josef Anton Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden, Eugen Jochum

1
kicks away his scaffolding as he goes
concurrent trajectories
sequentially actualized
not adding up
strenuously 

2
wanders the back chambers
of the erstwhile symphony
going on out front 

we can't witness all of it going by as it goes by 

3&4
inhabits its formal parameters liberally
unselfconsciously
without irony

November 24, 2020

Trio in C Major, op. 87 - Johannes Brahms - Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio

really gets into the violin cello in octaves sound
pairing them as the conjoined foil
to the piano 

how material is shared
and how the sharing makes like conversation 

subject matter
the entertainment and delight of the excellent players
for the cognoscenti in secret
music at home
makes a game of the contrapuntal figurational busy-work

Waltz from Serenade in C - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Jascha Heifetz

as arranged for Paganini and chamber orchestra

Allegro appassionato in E-flat minor, op. 4 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

keeping tabs on the whole closetful of insistent melodies

November 27, 2020

Penthesilea - Hugo Wolf - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Otto Gerdes

grand ceremonial celebration
a parade
an enchanted scene
incidental
lovely nymphs
diaphanous fountain fall
invaded! violence and rapine
soaring angels
tone painting
not tone
poetry 

made for Disney
epic
wide screen
battle 

disenchanted scene
no more nymphs
so sad

I was amused by the Wikipedia article on Penthesilea, which contains this little howler: "Here the Greek army is charged by the Amazons, who gain the upper hand, and at the height of the battle Achilles slays Penthesilea on a slab known as BM 537."

Postscripts

through this the by go off to their kingdom

while praises are just one pure rich full

virtues kingdom god beauty and he

it is violet now and I am not

der Mond scheint

the time

Playlist

 Preface

"There are scores for players, there are scores for composers. A score for players you read as an invitation to enact, creatively, an intention, an idea, an image, a narrative, a sound, a structure, a quality, a complexity, a feeling, perceived as pre-existent, as implicitly in the score-code, however many sonic details are inscribed, or must be invented in the playing. A score for composers you read as a specific inducement to discover within yourself, to converge upon with your co-players, to invent, without preformed expectations, an intention, a meaning, a sensibility, a trajectory, a vision, a landscape, a music unknown before and unimaginable ever except under the influence of the scoretextimage."

- Benjamin Boretz "Notes for Open Space CD 6 (1994)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

November 14, 2020

Michael Nicolella

classical guitar
comfort food 

subjects of our conversation:
the close affinity of guitar and keyboard
(guitar the elder)
differentiation of manual function
the ratio of pulchritudisinousness to aptitude for classical guitar
the utter impossibility of doing what he is doing as he does it 

when we all go back to live concerts we'll have to remember not to talk during it
the notion of instrumental contrapuntal arrangement
who invented more than one string per sound board? 

across the encore universe 

conceptual question with electronic instruments: are they centered on making a sound or on the subtlety of the interface with which they are operated

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/.

S. Eric Scribner

the membrane upon which we live
is a spherical drum
whose voice sings
under our mad careers
howling and humming 

we want patience
for hearing these foundations
for hearing where to plant our posts 

attend to the constants 

whatever he's doing
even when there are extra-musical reasonings prompting it
he's always focused entirely
on what the sound he is making
is sounding like

November 15, 2020

Blake DeGraw

1. for Orchestra

2. Slath

3. for Viola

4. Six Vowels

Mensuration Canon for Six Voices

flocks
of morphing birds 

longer shapes
are shared 

details of rhythm
on what would be the note and measure level
fend for themselves 

aesthetic static
luscious vocal sound in six vowels 

canon of the signal
a metaphor
for canon of the pitch token information

Recorded

November 14, 2020

Seizième Ordre (Sol) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

let us imagine a ceremony
ornate nuptials perhaps
flowered maidens
cockaded youths 

we are admonished
solemn but kind 

now we dance a stomping dance
now an old folks dance
or an inspection
a test time tune for developing an answer 

a song is offered
for edification 

and we exit dancing 

counsel is had among the elders
or droning speeches 

back outside
whew 

the party should look pretty
dress accordingly

November 15, 2020

The Sorceress - George Frideric Handel - The Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, Kiri Te Kenawa

mostly little symphonies alternating with songs with more songs as it goes 

I discover that this is a modern assemblage of works taken from his oeuvre
I should have known
as it is far better put together as a large group than what I have heard of GFH himself

Concerto for Harpsichord, Strings & Continuo in G Major, Wq. 16 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Malcolm Hamilton

deep in the works
a chaos agent is kept
for later use
whence
it needn't always be heroic
nor a battle

Sonata in B-flat Major Hob. XVI:18 - Franz Joseph Haydn, Christine Schornsheim

could be blatant pastiche of CPE Bach

Symphony in D Major, K. 133(133) - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

he tells little stories with the harmonic rhythm
one must behave
after all is said and done
as befits the china and silver service 

vigorous and royal

November 17, 2020

Sonata in C minor, Op. 10 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

it is preposterous
that such a passage as that first section
that repeats
could serve
as a repeatable stability
to which one might return
how can we return
where we never
quite
were

Sonata in G Major, Op. 40 #1 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

never tires of trying to delight and amuse
decorative, genteel, avuncular,  patient 

occasionally loses himself while playing with an interesting puzzle or a clever turn of figuration

Sonata in F minor, Op. 77 - Johann Ladislaus Dussek

melodic focus
Italianate
á Bellini 

or a firebrand

November 18, 2020

Impromptu in C minor, Op. 90 #1 - Franz Schubert - Murray Perahia

foursquare phrasing
stands firm
on an emotionally unstable surface
or in spite of
or is permeable
or sinks down into
or is the surface
over unstable depths
a tight leash
a tenuous thread

Etude in A minor, Op. 10 #2 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded in 1933]

in Rock & Roll High School
a paper airplane
flies through the school
camera on its back

Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 - Robert Schumann - Quatuor Via Nova, Jean Hubeau

piano can take the bass line
liberating the cello 

the drama of affect
and the drama of tonal rhetoric
are in cahoots 

sudden turnaround to frenetic activity
(had heard some Schubert) 

drama on a large stage 

stunning coda in the 2nd movement

Elijah Part I (end) - Felix Mendelssohn - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney, Henriette Schellenberg, Florence Quivar, Marietta Simpson, Jerry Hadley, Richard Clement, Thomas Paul, Reid Barteleme

amply annotated
makes the whole rather ponderous 

birth perhaps of the self-conscious masterpiece genre

Variations on 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen' - Franz Liszt - Alfred Brendel

rather than duplicate
in ultra-grandiose modern noise
the spectacle of a baroque oratorio
get down inside
explore the particulars
of where it didn't go before

November 19, 2020

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 16, 2020

Banned Telepath 65 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

November 17, 2020

Banned Telepath 65 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1014 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1014 201116-17

Karen and Keith at the Tintinabulary, pulling Anna and Neal in by phone in a can from Outpost Lake City, Aaron at Outpost Toad Hall, we do what we do and make the noise we make.

Postscripts

its conditions by prejudices behind

which lurk in ambush just as many classes

that got acquired at previous historical

inverts

his desert

of grid mounted objects

Playlist

 Preface

"Freddy Malins, who had listened with his head perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when everyone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he could clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for him.

--I was just telling my mother, he said, I never heard you sing so well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is to-night. Now! Would you believe that now? That's the truth. Upon my word and honour that's the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so . . . so clear and fresh, never."

- James Joyce "The Dead" from "Dubliners"

Texts

Streaming

November 8, 2020

Robin Holcomb & Wayne Horvitz: Solos and Duets

If Seattle has a class act this is it. Robin wears her aging voice with more than grace, its faults and catches are made into new marvels of expression. There is no doubt here. This is the real thing.

Recorded

November 7, 2020

Moonglow - Art Tatum [from Classic Early Solos]

stage wide shenanigans with a whole troupe of dancers
in the midst of which
as though it could always be so easy
a song is embedded
entire

Horn Concerto in E-flat (#2) - Richard Strauss - Staatskapelle Dresden, Rudolf Kempe, Peter Damm

German culture in the pleasant timeline
a fantasy made as a delusionary tactic
the feel good drug

Petrushka Ballet Suite - Igor Stravinsky - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky

this is recorded as though we are in all the really good seats
always exactly distanced for enhanced clarity
you are in the orchestra
all moments are placed just so
to you
radio ready 

radio: the new stage
tightened up orchestration
brightens the place right up
like a new coat of paint 

the trumpet high trombones low duo in The Masqueraders is right out of Tchaikovsky's playbook 

I think only Stravinsky could get away with such a strange path through his original
turning it into an entirely other something
what it might be if it was not a story

November 8, 2020

Duo for Oboe & Clarinet - Arthur Berger - Phyllis Lanini, Don Stewart

a game danced with hats and canes
wind players can look straight at you
they don't need to twist themselves into their instrument like a violinist would 

the timbres of the two are distinct enough that there is little ambiguity as to which is playing which notes

Wake Up Little Susie - The Everly Brothers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

It could happen to you!
Has anyone in rock & roll since then ever mentioned their reputation as something they were concerned about?
Where did all the reputations go?
Long time passing.

Three Cool Cats - The Beatles [from The Beatles Anthology, Volume 1]

symmetry
3:3
everything fits together

24 Preludes, Preludes 9 through 16 - Lockrem Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey [from a recital on October 25, 2002]

aside from going too fast
and rushing the rhythm
I do get the idea of them right I think

Garden Party - Rick Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

young man feeling old song
with in the know name drops

("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [from a recital on October 10, 2000]

Within its voice, it accomplishes marvels of figurational modulation and variety.
So what do I mean by figuration?
:: the specifics of how the notes are patterned within and among the hands
alberti bass is a figure
boom chick bass is a figure 

What's magic about the "Chopin" bit is that it is as though the one-handed-dyad pairings vanish like fog burning off and reappear without ever breaking stride.
I made a few clunkers but otherwise played it pretty well.

Poor Little Critter on the Road - the Knitters [from Poor Little Critter on the Road]

and other hangover favorites

Seeds - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [from a recital on March 17, 2007]

I wrote each of these to a person
I put them in letters and sent them out
intending I guess
for the recipients to make something of them
perhaps they did
I don't know
never heard 

They look so abstract on the page but I find when these seeds hit the reality of actuation they reveal what they always were in my head - potentialities.

November 9, 2020

Better Days - Bruce Springsteen [from Lucky Town]

He jumps right into full power mode.
generic Bruce
I'm just not sure why he's shouting
imitating himself
doing his own song

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent - Sergei Glagolev - University Temple Chancel Choir, Chris Vincent

that's a good idea

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso - Camille Saint-Saëns - Itzhak Perlman [from Masters of the Bow - Violin - Volume 1]

cult of the virtuoso 
for display only
not to be sold

November 10, 2020

Gradus 111 - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2007]

the trail ended

Before moving from all A-naturals to the first new pitch class (it would be an E-natural) Neal made  series of rungs with each single A. This was A3.

timeline thinking
where along the unspooling time band
does this impact occur
always now
then then 

by the end of does
the d is gone

November 11, 2020

Downtime - Russell Craig Richardson, Benjamin Boretz [from Open Space DVD 1]

map of an interior world 

in
out
and through space 

past
passed 

a loving portrait of an instrument I knew pretty well at one time
lived across a wall from it  
the One piano

Banned Telepath 53 Tucson - Steve Kennedy [January 2017]

constructed from who knows what lying about
a collection of screeches and rattles and thumps and blats and shakes
raucous glory
no wonder he fit in so well with us right away
trading floor on the noise exchange
a seminar by an all on its own solo improvisor

November 12, 2020

Fantasia, Fvb 8 - William Byrd - Christopher Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

reading anachronistically
:: music constructed as a series of fugato openings spilling over each other and their repercussions and refractions 

good luck keeping up
though it sounds like it ought to be easy squeezy

Pavane deSpaigne, Spagnoletta - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Picket [from Dances from Terpsichore]

shifts within the motion types make 3D meter
show of grace in bearing
no stomping in this one

Suite in A Major, BuxWV 243 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

the exact science of how much is needed to shape a thought in all its bodily presence

Fugue in A minor, BVW 543- Johann Sebastian Bach - Albert Schweitzer

That keyboard figure
in which one note alternates
with the notes
of an embedded moving part 

here they come loose from each other 

in the acoustic space 

scansion problematic 

but we cling
lest we drown

Postscripts

must be industry sinks the rapidly
to impose him sink state that it has no
longer under between the advance of

nascent arid tactics
everything cold
is colder

Playlist

 Preface

"One should recognize that all "schools of thought" are relative to interests, and not born out of theoretical objectivity - in fact, theoretical objectivity is rather to be skeptically viewed as perhaps irrelevant to the reason for which one thinks - namely, to deal with problems of unclarity or insecurity in one's identity or one's intuition or one's perception or one's motivation or one's "program" for activity or behavior or interbehavior. "Objectivity" is therefore without a subject or a purpose and of all modes of thought most prone to self-referential irrelevance. (You could argue that a "field" consisting of "objective" thinking develops its own internal energies; but that is precisely what unmasks such a "field" as being relevant only to its own internal economy - an analysis which I believe would not really be congenial to the practitioners of most such fields.)"

- Benjamin Boretz "thoughts in an email, 10/93 (to Marianne Kielian-Gilbert)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

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/.

October 31, 2020

Melia Watras & Michael Jinsoo Lim

the almond tree duos - Melia Watras

gently archaic
in the manner that J.K. Randall's Troubador songs are
but not reaching quite so many centuries back
perhaps Praetorius at times
or Debussy at others 

occasional modestly extended techniques in playful play
archaic but with modern commentary 

it reminds me how much I love solo strings
a string player is so closely entwined
their body and the instrument's body
intervulnerable 

in some modern jazz pieces
post bebop
the ritornella can be
a sequence of  unison or heterophonic rhythms
angular in pitch contour and metrical thrust
very like old courtly dance
some of this is
very like that

November 1, 2020

Angelique Poteat & Artemisia Winds

Josiah Boothby, Ryan Hare, Angelique Poteat

Melisma - Angelique Poteat

Sound, Flight, Touch - Josiah Boothby

Under the Sun - Angelique Poteat

Tales for Three - Ryan Hare

Harkening - Ryan Hare

You Are Home - Angelique Poteat

dressed up for formal presentation
sit down concert style music relies on and benefits from close inspection
in turn
allowing a liberty to indulge in fine distinctions 

it is also
for better or worse
the formality with which I am personally familiar
and in which I have been schooled
and in which I find myself 
all too easily indulging
and in which
consequently I am these days
more and more leery
distrustful 

the formality of it is rooted
in academic
new-music-program
presentation ready
c.v. enhancing
institutionalism
perhaps inescapably
without regard to the qualities of the music as itself 

but this particular streaming presentation isn't being had within that milieu

so how might a musical thought
requiring for its optimal reception
the kind of close attention
that is
on the best occasions
at least available
in that cloistered academic environment
operate now
in this new world?

Recorded

October 31, 2020

Selections from Die Meistersinger: Prelude to Act III, Dance of the Apprentices, Entrance of the Meistersingers - Richard Wagner - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy

trope of the Liszt Wagner camp:
start dark slow and mysterious
echo back
the hush
the dark 

the stillness insisted upon
to hear this
in the space it is composed for 

rather dark for a comedy though
those are some well-behaved apprentices
so happy to be German Villagers
and here comes the glorious vanity of man
on parade
pomping and strutting

Boris Godunov, Act I, Scene II - (1872 version) - Modeste Mussorgsky - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Semkow, Martti Talvela, Leonard Mroz, Nicolai Gedda, Bozena Kinasz, Andrzej Hiolski, Aage Haugland, Halina Lukomska, Polish Radio Chorus of Krakow, Boys Chorus from the Krakow Philharmonic Chorus

it is dark outside
but bright and cheery in here
uh oh
men's voices laughing
always:
trouble will follow 

and a dance not so far out from parts of Petrushka 

it is hard to be happy in Moskva 

outside of this story
of this stage
in the outside
of the image of this music
abides an oppressive expanse of dark silence
a wilderness of nothing for days and days around 

many words are spilt in peril

Les Eolides - César Franck - Orchestre Philharmonique De Liege, Paul Strauss

this main melody (the first one)
seems to have a prior existence
of which this is only a series of clever allusions

My Home - Antonín Dvořák - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

our peasants are happier than your peasants 

Nationalism signified by
an accent of dance
sentence structure
phonemic patterning
melodic slant

November 1, 2020

Sextet in D minor, Op. 70 "Souvenir de Florence" - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Copenhagen String Quartet, F. Christensen, I. Geisler

Figuration in classical form arose as a means of articulating fine distinctions of harmony within segments of frames.

In Romantic neo-classical usage this aspect of figuration is partly subsumed to its use as prolongation of melody,
and thus the theme was born
and melody found it had arisen
within a kind of prison
its roles laid out in books.

1st theme should be X
2nd theme should be Y
etc. 

The face of the music is turned toward the audience rather than toward within the circle of players. They are doing this for us,
then for them.

The later movements
especially when they thin out
are playful -
a welcome relief 

leave room for national character
it's all the rage
big tune payoff shot

Klavierstücke, Op. 119 - Johannes Brahms - Julius Katchen

The struggle anent the barline is waged on all fronts available. 

Davidsbundler in the Modern World
fighting the old fight

Concerto in F-sharp minor - Alexander Scriabin - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Ashkenazy

begins in mid-swoon Hollywood scene of mad passion
wanders into innocent childhood dreamy land
sugar plums and all
got the Tchaikovsky model on his noggin 

his piano writing here is far more engaging than in any concerto of Tchaikovsky's or Rachmaninov's, but engaging is subtle and won't get you far in Romantic Piano Concerto Land. 

he is of that Land though a natural citizen
and not a slouch of one either
Happy Ending Glory Land

November 2, 2020

You Been a Good Old Wagon - Len Spencer [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

an edifying reminder of just how blatant the racist caricatures really were

Valsette - Zoltán Kodály - Jenö Jandó

the sense of a waltzy 3 emerges gently
2 vanishes
but when?

November 3, 2020

Le Roi de etoiles - Igor Stravinsky - Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Riccardo Chailly

yes 

this is an alien mind
sit down
I'm talking

Reflection Rag - Scott Joplin - William Albright

Life here is charming and controlled.
All the phrases are 4 barred, because America
isn't fancy that way
we like triadic harmonies
deal wid it

Three Fantastic Dances - Dmitri Shostakovich - Dmitri Shostakovich

three little ironical knots

James Alley Blues - Richard Rabbit Brown [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]

such a light touch!
rather grim message though

November 5, 2020

Moses und Aron, Act I - Arnold Schoenberg - Sinfonieorchester des Osterreichischen Rundfunks, Michael Gielen, Gunter Reich, Louis Devos, Eva Csapo, Elfriede Obrowsky, Roger Lucas, Richard Salter, Ladislav Illavsky, Werner Mann, Maria Muhlbacher, Elisabeth Wagner, Helga Chlup, Elisabeth Brommel, Alfred Winkler, Franz Handlos, Chor des Osterreichischen Rundfunks, Wiener Sängerknaben

not a friendly bush
the corporate voice of God
as against Moses' Sprechstimme
as against Aron's blank stone face tenor
translating 3rd hand revelations 3rd hand 

a number opera
anti-Wagner 

crowd of God
crowd of the people
a dense onslaught of voices contending

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 2, 2020

Banned Rehearsal 1013 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1013 201102

Anna and Neal, improvising, phoned in from Outpost Lake City. I put the receiving phone in a large tin can and mic'd it separately. Karen and I improvised around it at the Tintinabulary.

Postscripts

cannot help him sink into fed can

compatible for the sway cannot help

letting him sink into such a state that

and hear

the reflection

a thing lit