Preface
"And yet, and perhaps even consequently, it's possible that music, in our culture, is drowning, may even already have drowned, in saying, in discourse; that musics as musics have become virtually unrecoverable except as illustrators of saying, as contentless placeholders used as soundless referents in deluges of program notes, pre-concert lectures, newspaper reviews, pedagogies, a whole headful of philosophical and theoretical and political and critical expressions identifying themselves in the name of music. Could it be that the seductive, imaginative, thoughtful, intricate, acute, profound qualities of critical thinking simply become the entire residual experiential content of 'music' in our world; and, shorn of their music-determining power, would the texts of discourse simply be vacuous? And would music, leached beyond metaphor and model, dredged back up out of the morass of discourse, come up blank, faceless, voiceless, meaningless? Deprived of linguistic explication, music, in a verbal world, really doesn't signify anything; it doesn't even signify nothing."
- Benjamin Boretz "Music, as a Music" 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/.
January 30, 2021
Mark D. Cooper
Asteroid 1
Exosphere
Oort
Axion
Orbits
Eridanus
Asteroid 2
constant constancy
a surface
across which ephemerates
shades casting shadows
substanceless cyclic drumming
why such
ever returning
to cycles
round round
to dislocate nowness
and sequence
and number
inside the machinery of chronos
chronopath
an object of time
pick it up
an organism with behavior
redundant as a policy
all the lines are closed
loops
a
dimension in which a circle is a straight line
a story may have rubbed this crystal
left shades
drums
like
fire
keep back night
keep back
Christopher Icasiano
small sticks in a large space find drums
stability of cyclicity
gets in the groove
a gradual drift to a variant of the stability of cyclicity
a way of
thinking about a musical idea
forming it plasticly
through its
clear continuous cyclic presence
back to the sticks
a breather
start with rubbing tapping
linger on the breath strokes
February 2, 2021
Francis/Callahan/Witscher (RM Francis, Jack Callahan, Jeff Witscher)
Every Single Person Has Some Muscle
narrative
literal
fractured
in collisions we grasp at momentary coherence
lexicon modulation
Seattle Modern Orchestra
Kaleidoscope - Reflections in Sounds
Mikhail Shmidt violin; Ha-Yang Kim cello; Michael Nicolella electric guitar; Bonnie Whiting percussion; Cristina Valdés piano
ALVIN SINGLETON Greed Machine for vibraphone and piano (2003)
three yellow stools
now only two
these events transpire in the difference
the lack
or overage
of stools
JÉRÉMY JOLLEY (contro-)clessidra I for violin and electric guitar (2015)
an idea
a balance
a ratio
and rationale
a guitar
and a violin
pluckstrummer
and scraper
not so much two instruments
as two mindsets
differentiation
specialization
composer performer
heirarchy
(so starchy)
but it does create here a vibrant tension that thrums
like a drum
CHEN-HUI JEN across & between II – into the chasm for electric guitar and portable percussion (2015 [Seattle Premiere]
the artist's statement
is to provide every possible route in
none
of which routes
quite prepares us
for anything
that might
be
remotely
surmisable
as being
about this
a duet between color balances
a further distinction
and camera
angles
and body lingo
how faces and hands move to each other
HELENA TULVE lumineux/opaque for violin, cello, piano, 3 wine glasses (2002)
the stools are back
they are crucial to how this sounds
string trio
two scrapers and a hammerer
outlier
the
escapement lever system
hammered zither
CHRISTIAN WOLFF For Bob II for violin, cello, percussion, piano (2015)
splotches
co|mm|une
com|mun|ity
com moc
mun num
cum muc
mon nom
Recorded
January 30, 2021
A Much Married Woman, Chapter 1 - Nancy Cole Silverman - Adam Verner
style is the thing
the only thing
style
of everything
Nancy is a cousin of mine. She writes in various genres. I found this audio-book in my Mom's collection. This scene is set on a train moving through the American West sometime in the past, late 19th Century I think.
Banned Rehearsal 926 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2017]
take words in the order desired
the words that follow
of course my listening is skewed
because I recognize these sounds
with their instruments
and operators and
to some extent
the discrete sources
imprint of ontology
though they speak
the source telepaths
speaking across
chronopathically
we've hit a bit of weather here
glorious old sounds indeed
uncoil
so spirally
simultaneous times
as perceived
and a permeable bubble
coeval
in any order
January 31, 2021
Galliarda to My Lord Lumley's Pavanne, FVB 11 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
mode and register and voice
the lyric paths of each and every
La Sarabande - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances for Terpsichore]
for a dance
the fancy decorations
take a background role
Suite in F Major, BuxWV 238 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
a metrical beat is a basket
with plenty of room for more
a
heftable moment
with polyjanus faces
Neuvième Ordre (la) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert, Martha Brickman
two soundboards made to sing harmony
with each other
clear differentiation of rhetorical function
between the main tune
and
the accompanying figures
though they still echo each other
and
dance the same dance
hierarchic design
to mimic multiple instruments at once
to be the
whole orchestra
no moments during which he isn't designing something happening
and
moving
unlikely to get into much trouble
being so closely chaperoned
February 1, 2021
Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I - Prelude and Fugue in D Major - Christiane Jaccottet
left hand
old dog
right hand
eager pup
which leads
a fugue that hides inside an overture
Excerpt from Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spany
life at home
Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI:47bis - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christina Schornsheim
an affective scene
searching out the threads of sensibility
lighten up
strike a balance
that first movement would be a good clavichord piece
February 2, 2021
Symphony in C Major - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood
complete with proscenium and audience separation
fun with bits of
counterpoint
music that speaks
from the company on stage
to us in our seats
Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 9 #1 - Jan Ladislav Dussek - Viviana Sofronitsky
selling the instrument
it sings
it thunders
it babbles along
brook-like
doesn't much hold still
any deficiency in sustain
is mitigated by figuration
building its own mini adventures
Sonata in C Major, Op. 2a #3 - Johann Nepomuk Hummel - Constance Keene
chafing at surface unity
or parts of it
impatience
contrast
once possible
becomes necessary
the new piles on
never rests
Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 7 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel
a gesture is an idea
in its own sphere
in what person is this
a space is vacated
into which
we are compelled
to form
ourselves
medium of self reflection
the thought must finish solid
from my journal entry of March 21, 2004: more violent reckless - and more accurate to the markings [in comparison to Kempff]
In Session at the Tintinabulary
February 3, 2021
Work
Architecture
Unity
And
The
- Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey
I have been thinking about this 2002 composition of mine, in anticipation of recording it again. This is my first go at it. It consists of 17 bits of musical thought each of which is composed of two mod-17 pitch sets related by transposition of 2 unit intervals (T2). My recollection is that a function of some kind (probably mod-17 multiplication) was used to generate each successive bit. I was unable to spend more than a few minutes in an attempt to recover the specifics of that function, which remain elusive. Part of the impetus behind it was to find a way of making a composition that could be played by Banned Rehearsal. That project might have led to some interesting results, but wasn't that great an activity as a Banned Rehearsal thing to do. I recorded a version of this with Doug Haire at Jack Straw late that year. I overlaid the piano solo bits with improvised percussion. I also performed it at Seattle Composers' Salon once when that was being held at the educational space on the lower street level of Benaroya Hall, and also once in a joint recital with Gavin Borchert at Polestar Gallery - the space currently occupied by Gallery 1412. In those solo versions I would play each bit and then wait for a good long time before playing the next one. I wanted each bit to come upon the listener suddenly and vanish thoroughly before the next one. I'm not so sure I hear it that way anymore, so I have been working at leaving just enough time between each to clear the air.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
her bed doctor why that business passing
flags even while he was speaking he I
to his talk directly said words he lay
Reality Check::
circle voice
more than one
monologue in the world
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