Preface
"A music musically 'real' but verbally indeterminate - or at least verbally neutral- susceptible to infinite experiential variety and unlimited creative response, but opaque to judgment; a discourse expressive and committed but removed from the territory of truth or authority; a pedagogy intensely holistic but non-abstract and untestable, are all subversive to the existing social order of musical things. They cannot be controlled or institutionalized without being transformed into their negations. They threaten to materialize a world of acts which are expressive and rational but not manipulative or usable as criteria of judgment. Can our world stand to have any even so insignificant a stratum of it running around loose like this?"
- Benjamin Boretz "Music, as a Music" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"
Texts
Recorded
February 13, 2021
Aria 'La Capricciosa' Partita diverse sopra una aria d'Inventione in G, BuxWV 250 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
a model for the Goldberg Variations?
the aria stays in view at all times
like spokes
rather than a venturing path
doesn't even get far from the 3/8 meter
demonstrating what one can do with a thing
not where one can take it
nor how far
Huitième Ordre (si mineur) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
works at lifting its spirits
but is in a mood
echoes of an older metrical practice leak in
what differentiates this from virginal music of the 1500s
how the ornaments are styled
variety of figuration
underlying harmonic* syntax
predominant framing of piece-ness
subject and elaborations
binary derived formats
*cadences are harmonically structural
rather than being demarcations
phrases are dialogic
a conversation
rather than a yarn being spun
rondeau not just a familiar place to return
but also an exact shape of time to measure by
a happy little creek finds a noble purpose
the bit of dramatic homophony at the close of the Fugue
is an echo of the 'both hands play all of a sudden' episode in the Prelude
Menuet in E-flat Major - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
in the best fashion
just so
Capriccio in G Major "Acht Sauschneider müssen sein", Hob. XVII.1 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
from what operetta could such a line be lifted?
was it a popular ditty sung upon the streets?
or an inside joke for Joe and his drinking buddies?
subsequent research reveals that it is based on an Austrian folk song about how many people it takes to castrate a pig (eight)
February 14, 2021
Symphony in D Major, K. 135 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood
corporate crescendo
the latest trend
(trendy crescendi)
marks off
corners
lengths
fills with flash and dazzle
brilliant plumage
ein Vogelfänger bin Ich ja
Sonata in C Major, Op. 9 #2 - Jan Ladislav Dussek - Viviana Sofronitsky
at about the time of the increased promulgation of the fortepiano
individual movements began to be full of highly differentiated episodes
both expressively (affect)
and figurationally (mechanics)
the model of the human mind became a less simple creature
when was the damper pedal introduced?
we blame Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) who used a hand stop rather than a pedal
ends with a comic song sort of number
Sonata in C minor, Op. 10 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Emil Gilels
holds reserves
generous with time
we get to know these movements
live them
night sprites
February 15, 2021
Sonata in C Major, Op. 2 #2 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley
includes its own asides
bass line remains completely structural
subservient
Impromptu in F minor, Op. 142 #4 - Franz Schubert - Murray Perahia
where will this single figure take me
bravely drawn
Etude in E Major, Op. 10 #3 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [1942]
sing the song first
the rest will fall into place
trapped in an ecstatic loop
fights like crazy to break free
opens with a measure that brings us to a new trap
all modulations descend
we rage to emerge
avail-less
the pages fly off the desk
can't write quickly enough
over it all an angel hovers
we struggle
hopeful
everybody loves a fugue
February 16, 2021
Variations Brillantes on a Mazurka of Chopin - Friedrich Kalkbrenner - Francesca Carola
a 19th Century Art Tatum plays Chopin
heavy on the Brillantes
Boris Godunov, Act IV Scene I - Modest 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
disjointed parts add up to a discollective identity
things are falling apart
Symphony in D Major, Op. 73 (#2) - Johannes Brahms - Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Charles Mackerras
the spotlight moves to different parts of the orchestra from segment to segment
then becomes two spotlights
avoiding full tutti
if one doesn't emphasize the common warm glow
the individuated scoring of each passage
provides a drama told piecemeal
a symphony of things to notice on a Summer day in the country
idyll of pre-industrial bucolic life
in the rearview mirror
even the beginning of the 4th movement is a mitigated tutti
not until the last few pages does it go all in
February 17, 2021
Parsifal, Act III (Beyreuth 1966) - Richard Wagner - Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, Thomas Stewart, Kurt Bohme, Josef Greindl, Sandor Konya, Gustav Neidlinger, Astrid Varnay, Hermann Winkler, Ger Nienstedt, Ruth Hesse, Elisabeth Schartel, Dieter Slembeck, Erwin Wohlfahrt, Ruth Hesse, Anja Silja, Dorothea Siebert, Lily Sauter, Rita Bartos, Helga Dernesch, Sona Cervena, Wilhelm Pitz (chormeister)
out from hopelessness
triumphal despair
all the leitmotivs have settled into a stagnant sump
headway unmakeable
Beethoven: a melody is a tool to build with
Berlioz: a tune can stand for something, can signify
Wagner: I can work the significations as a tool to build a drama with
even when nothing happens
doomed days go by
nothing left to signify
some shouting
February 18, 2021
light classical? if so, how to approach?
study in balance and stability
a composition game
like still lifes
150 Psalm - Anton Bruckner - Eugen Jochum
every few measures is part of something else uncontained
In Session at the Tintinabulary
February 17, 2021
Work / Architecture / Unity / And /The - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey
I made another recording of this 2002 piano work. I need to think more about the space between each of the bits. The original idea was that we would come upon each bit suddenly as though from a dense fog, so I waited for each bit to at least be a finished thing before moving on. Now I think it might be better to not have breaks between them at all, let the out-of-nowhere effect emerge from the rhetorical contrasts rather than from a literal nowhere.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
tiring by the guard and I to each
usually were small talk we inn new
have known city shadowing very
Reality Check::
we turn a corner
in stop frame motion
and hear
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