Preface
"Music is not really much like science: the notion of a 'musical problem' is pure slogan, or at least, metaphor. But the metaphor of 'musical science' is a potent enabler, a powerful pretext for strenuous theorizing and talking, or for strenuously opposing - discursively or behaviorally - those acts. That compositional thinking is of a fundamentally different nature is something that had to be discovered as a consequence of a long history of serious efforts, of many different aspects, to find the precise rigor through which the infrastructure of musical thought would reveal itself."
- Benjamin Boretz "The Zeitgeist of Perspectives, ab origine" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
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/.
June 26, 2021
Marcin Pączkowski
MMM #1
internal thumping
indifferently regular
distantly external
roar
as might a jet in the sky
radio signal
closely external
are we slabbed
?
laid
out
as Big Mister Finnegan
a surface for writing upon
inscribed by industrial machinery
not an alien attack
this is ours
the miniature clatter tower
clatters down
electric drizzle
Greg Campbell
Chimes & Vibraphone 1
Bugle & Drum Set 1
French Horn & Toy Electric Sax
Chimes & Vibraphone 2
Kpanlogo Drum & Drum Set
Bugle & Drum Set 2
Chimes & Vibraphone 3
Cornet & Vibraphone
French Horn & Resonant Metals
pitch centered composition
with percussion
of variously focused
pitch centers
not just
pitch as melody part
but also
the ways in which
pitch can hang in space
lingering
al niente
exposed thinking
plain to hear
Recorded
June 27, 2021
Incidental Music to "The Mother" - Carl Nielsen - Athena Ensemble
3 short cues
flute and harp and violin (viola?)
a-sentimental tonal clarity
none of it is obscured
one can walk
around it
see over the top
right through
and lift it high
Calico Rag - Frank Banta and Howard Kopp [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
piano and light percussion
so that
this take on ragtime piano
is a kind of drumming
entertaining in that way
that vaudeville seems to have been
Teasin' the Frets - Nick Lucas [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
piano and guitar
easy togetherness
Awful Fix - Buddy Boy Hawkins [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]
blues as a vehicle
for verbal free play
like hip hop
Hallelujah Side - Quaker City Gospel Singers [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
indulging in the pleasure
of singing
in four parts
Kind Hearted Woman Blues (take 2) - Robert Johnson [from The Complete Recordings]
telling us about it
the orchestra comes in
sounding like a fabulous gown
glitters and
shapely
a message to the boys abroad
5 years separate the recordings made by Robert Johnson from this
clearly
money was involved
3 Compositions - Milton Babbitt - Robert Taub
bridging some complex of ravines
among Arnold Schoenberg, Art Tatum,
Bill Evans, and Conlon Nancarrow
full of sudden explosions
Schoenberg Interview with Halsey Stevens
and he spends the whole time asking about painting
Rock Island Line - Johnny Cash [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]
the tempo play is all about that Sun Records reverb
he plays it like a
master
June 28, 2021
Toccata Jazzica - Matthis Michel - David Di Fiore [from The Cathedral Organ Collection - live recital from St Martin Metropolitan Cathedral Bratislava, August 28th, 2013]
light fingered
tricky in a large space
Do Right Woman - Do Right Man - Aretha Franklin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
I'll slow this down
so you can hear what I'm saying
and I'll
repeat it
to make it clear
The Fashions Change - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [live recording of Spring Concert April 14, 1972]
to its credit it provides a platform
for soloists and smaller ensembles
and a variety of musics
presented historically (sort of)
much as
this blog does (sort of)
yup there's the vocal blackface
oy
there's my mom singing Lida Rose
finish up with corporate happy time
Atmen gibt das Leben . . . - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Sinfonie-Orchester und Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks, Karlheinz Stockhausen
hip(c) hey! ah!
Eva Adam
a precisely drawn
first person
portrait
of a confused
mind
crowd scenes
claxon
back to hick
the non-ironic silly
stuck
solidified
frozen
chemically granitic
stonefaced
June 29, 2021
Book of Windows - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Paul Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [recorded in Bellevue on June 25, 1982]
as clunky as it is
there is much in this piece that has stuck with
me
Neal on piano
Paul on clarinet
Aaron reading the wordmare
me
reading the introductory texts and turning pages
made days before I got on a plane for New York and Bard
and within a day
or so of when Karen and I first met
a momentous June indeed
prime number cross rhythms
in the background structures
there are
pictures
Pilentze Pee - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir, Philip Koutev [from Le Mystere des voix Bulgares, Volume 1]
this arrangement is composed with a scalpel
uses folk vocal production
and inflection
but isn't some person with a recording device
finding folks
Banned Rehearsal 291 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [April 11, 1992]
solid thumps and whumps
no mistake
Aaronsbundler on dijeridu
whatever we do is right there
bells on the door post
spit up on
the floor
clearly the Tintinabulary
signal under extreme pressure
Aaron recites the holidays
the times
that try men's souls
time to feed the cats
that's Spiro T. Agnew
John is sad
drumming leads to drink
where
or what
is drambouli
Little Wonder - David Bowie [from Earthling]
a song in two parts
the little wonder part
and the so far away
part
then little wonder
to start up again
for instrumental
electronics play
Banned Rehearsal 628 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 11, 2002]
from a gentler age
recorded to DAT
tapping is plentiful
June 30, 2021
The Rain - Jarrad Powell - Jessica Kenney [from Stonehouse Songs]
sung without accompaniment
inflected time sense
spacious but focused
inflected pitch sense
chromatic but centered
inflected setting
syllabic but ornamental
sophistication played straight
The Day That You Deleted Me - Your Mother Should Know [live at Prospect UCC February 4, 2012]
recorded with that crazy compressor mic
works OK except for what the
tambourine does to it
which is constant
Neal does pretty well in
falsetto
two streams exchange imaginations - walking words - Mark So [from Open Space 45]
a distant voice
a close voice
traffic noise
or other sounds
such as birds
fragments float through
walk on snow
walk on water
punctuated by mechanism clicks
left channel much quieter
but
ever-present
there might be material shared
they might be the same voice
broken
into parts
with occasional repetition
a-systematic as an
image
considered words
The Irish Ho-Hoane, Fvb 26 - Traditional - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
as
the facts of it
set down
with great care
and
exactness
and
in the finest hand
Symphoniae Sacrae II, "Lobet den Herrn in seinem Heiligtum", Op. 10 #10 - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
with great industry
working out the relations
between vertical
consonance
and horizontal fluidity
Suite in C Major, BuxWV 230 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
pleaching complete
it is no longer possible
to extricate
the
source
of each twig
of voice
nor vertical
nor
horizontal
nor which
answers which
Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, BWV 722 - Johann Sebasian Bach - Michael Chapuis
interlineal flourishes
nourished
by the irregular phraseology
of gothic chorale tunes
an old source
monumental without being Monumental
solid to the core
Quinzieme Ordre (la) - François Couperin - Rafael Puyana
a swarm of camels
gracefully threading needle eyes
departing
sunsetward
beset by prancing clowns
it's hurdy gurdy time,
sunshine
anything can be said
if said in good taste
even here
in this
tiny closet
here's how
watch careful now
Sonata in E-flat Major, Kk. 123 - Domenico Scarlatti - Jan-Pieter Belder
tonality floats free
in register space
all the back alley ways
are known and brightly lit
Variations on Ich Schlief, Du Traumte Mir - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
as much about imaginative variation
as step by step
path
of
variation
sequence matters
or
like spokes
sequence doesn't matter
so much
classical
that way vertical
is made the material
of the
horizontal
in order
to clarify
the higher level vertical
as a synthesis
sequence matters loosely
Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI.19 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
dynamics
stepped or stopped
a mechanical solution
that
operated globally
simply double the instrument
make a soft one
and a loud one
in the same box
as one did with the organ
but they had clavichord as a model too
or use a mechanism
to
damp the strings
or some of them
operates globally
mind they
were quite clever with their stops
a machine for telling stories
Randallian syncopation
Missa Brevis - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - University of Puget Sound Chorale, Thomas Goleeke
hurried for Mozart, his timing isn't there
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
compatible for the sway cannot help
letting him sink into such a state that
him compatible his wife and children
Reality Check::
inverts
his desert
of grid mounted objects
No comments:
Post a Comment