Playlist

 Preface

"Listening is the primal expressive act;
listening is primal composition;
the music we hear, the sound we hear, moves us to the core not because of the external things and persons it expresses, but exactly insofar as it expresses us, ourselves,
the listeners.
To listen tangibly is to be mobilized, as a total consciousness, to be present to an occasion of sound experience.

Listening is primal composition"

- Benjamin Boretz "music/ /consciousness/ /gender" 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/.

December 26, 2020

Lost Chocolate Lab

one feature of much processed sound:
the gap between the perp and the crime - a finger twitches and oceans engulf 

does this isolate the body performing the act
alienating it from its result
or erase it
ridding the self of ego
by hiding behind a maximized ego shield? 

but:
that presumes we're not involved
and that the perp isn't listening
as we are 

and:
the above is, here, only a background of general thinking,
the music here is quite lovely and approachable 

Here:
like some of what Neal does
in Gradus
on occasion:
playing an evolving sonority
by telling figurational touches
balancing the reverberant roil
like a finger painter 

ages ago, after a session with Ben
I admitted that I couldn't see myself
playing all those jazz-stacked Bill-Evans-spaced chords 

- his response: but those are some of my favorites
- (like this) 

who am I to complain about a figure?
so they're plain?
they still each have their particular effect upon the roil

December 27, 2020

L.A. Lungs - Nathan Markiewicz, Lori Peterson

1.
our hero emerges in detail
at the bottom,
where they sank to 

slowly we circle
shining such lights as we have with us
vast ocean floor Buddha 

no part of the bass pattern
can be in a different tonal space
than any other part
they are all in the same bubble
enclosing it
womb desire
floating
umbilicaled 

little pulses wiggle

2.
humming blocks
we tend them
have always so
hygiene is crucial
for humming blocks to hum 

patient entrance
all the time in the world 

nursery for humming blocks
child's play 
L'enfance du humming blocks

December 29, 2020

China Faith Star & Arrington de Dionyso

Hindsight 2020

an incident
might be an entrance
of a new voice
into the jumble pile
or
it might be an inflection
of that voice
ripe with incident 

active
bracing
tonal qualities raucous
in a salutary way
medial storm

Recorded

December 27, 2020

Boris Godunov, Act III- (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

female voices duet
worried minds
their melodies
circle back around 

let's try singing
silly old songs
old tales
game songs 

uh oh
a man
takes over the sound entirely
the female voices have vanished
man has words to say
no wonder the worried voices
man goes all spooky
gets nightmarish real fast 

as a National Honor composer MM stands out as an original creative mind
not content to fold folk material into otherwise unsullied high art
the peculiarities of his material permeate everything
down into the functions of harmonic practice
(why it alarmed NR-K so much) 

ends in pathetic whimper

Symphony in C minor (#2) - Anton Bruckner - Kolner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Gunter Wand

instantiates a space
builds its corners 

a new space
disconnect
gapped 

a third space
related to the second
like its back wall
might be 

idyllic for ever
isolated cadences
question
as much as
complete 

find space 1 hiding 

dramatic sequence
not in any Mahlerian sense
but baldly structural
it is there
as it is
as doing what it does
not what it means
in some mind or other
but its doing
what it does
is its meaning 

dramatic in that
these tonalities
burn against each other
these descend on us like sleep
enclosed shapes
icons
images
very strange thin place
but it would be 

confession
comfort
brother and sister themes
if so
sister is kept within 

furtive nocturnal terrors
cavalry storms in
sink like sleep again
more secretive
but still furtive
still terror 

such chaste keys
fighting evil from inside 

scariest damn C Major chord I is ever heard

Gesang der Parzen, Op. 89 - Johannes Brahms - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw

heavy bodies shove each other around
no Odes to Joy for this puppy 

parental warning
causes depression

December 29, 2020

Slavonic Dance in B, Op. 72 #1 - Antonín Dvořák - The Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi

completely forgettable

Sadko (A Musical Picture), Op. 5 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Milton Katims

like a short at the picture show
nothing particularly challenging
colorful 

I presume he knew his audience

December 30, 2020

Polonaise in B-flat minor - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

restless stasis
full of nervous fidgets
goes nowhere
with great energy and bravado 

from my journal entry of August 17, 2004:
Chopinesque, but with an explosive clotted rhythm in the figurations, and a stutteringly decorated tune-sense

All C---- Look Alike To Me - Arthur Collins [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

of historical interest (only)
for the banjo playing style
and flexible tempo
otherwise just awful
- though Mr. Lowe feels that if one takes the time to actually understand the lyrics (good luck) it's more than a little subversive in a sexual-political way. 

trigger warning for numerous racial slurs

When You Aint' Got No Money You Needn't Come Around - May Irwin [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]

ain't the only poodle in the pound
- flex temp
- mostly steady except when the stagy presentation calls for emphasis 

see trigger warning above

Valses nobles et sentimentales - Maurice Ravel - Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon

The orchestration is wonderful, and it probably has a larger audience in this form, but the piano solo version is more subtle, with a wider apparent dynamic range - what was sharp and clean as a solo becomes, for orchestra, atmospheric and merely pretty.

Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute (Orchestral Suite No. 1) - Ottorino Respighi - Philharmonicia Hungarica, Antal Dorati

clearly the neo-classical was an immediate reaction
or pre-cursor
to modernism
or to the general insanity of 1917 

but the question remains
aside from lifting these pieces to a larger audience, does expansion into orchestra do them  any real favors?
rescue from oblivion? 

or: neoclassicalism before Stravinsky got hold of it 

but: also offering an alternative to the increasingly dense contrapuntal chromaticism that sprang from Bach Beethoven Brahms and Co.

January 1, 2021

Symphony No. 5 - Carl Nielsen - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein

I stole the minor 3rd tremolo
or quoted it in transposition
for my Sonata 1980 

the lingering nationalist school of North Europe
especially trending eastward
or leaking West from the Revolution
post WWI toxic nationalism 

tambourine stuff is weird
music from a land of stone fields 

we follow the wiggly critters into grim weather 

now we follow a figure from the high strings
Shostakovich employs a similar method of stitching a long movement together, using a constant messenger wave figure that morphs, but is recognizable, as it moves into new territories.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 28, 2020

Banned Telepath 68 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K*, Neal Kosály-Meyer* - *telephonically from Outpost Howth

Banned Telepath 68 Outpost Humble - Steve Kennedy

Banned Telepath 68 Outpost Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1017 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1017 201228

We gather once again, by Telephone and Telepath, from four locations, to make noise for you.

Postscripts

::Consult the Oracle

origin of the others to be means

of the dark night persons many of which

can be called through the dark infirmities

Reality Check::

the white knight

doomed in the forest

the crank in the roof