Preface
"If somebody asks you a question about a chord, a diatonic harmony, or classical music structure or anything like that, and you start out with the idea that what you have to do is explain to this person, in some plausible way, why things are as they should be, then you're in the wrong place - if you're not saying to yourself, gee, I don't know; maybe this is all bullshit, and I ought to consider that this person is opening up a floor under my feet and I'd better think about this."
- Benjamin Boretz "July 29, 1989: a talk with Ben (about writing Meta-Variations and other things)" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
Texts
Recorded
August 15, 2021
Sonata in G minor - Claude Debussy - Pinchas Zukerman, Marc Neikrug
1
piano is subordinate
but essential
as in a balletic duet
the ballerina is the show
but her partner's
moves are the architectural grace
they keep the whole airborne
2
they discuss things in a playground
3
the talk spills out now
6 kurze Stücke zur Pflege des polyphonen Spiels - Feruccio Busoni - Paul Jacobs
Busoni comes across here as though he were a fiction that Liszt and Brahms conspired to create together for their own amusement, in order to confound the categorizations of critics.
The Freight Wreck of Altoona - Vernon Dalhart [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
jaw harp
guitar
violin
matter of fact versification
whistlin' hokum of disaster
with a moral
Sweet Feet - Memphis Nighthawks [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
people want to dance
so here's some help
complete with lewd
remarks from the drinkers at the table
Sweet Home Chicago - Robert Johnson [from The Complete Recordings]
blues is built on formulae
this one includes some numeric formulae in
the lyrics
as a readymade partner in rhyme
Somebody Nobody Loves - Peggy Lee [from The Complete Recordings 1941-1947]
this sound
sounds expensive
Tiny's Tempo - Charlie Parker [from The Complete Savoy and Dial Masters]
Charlie Parker
a song and dance man
possibly the best
he
just did his singing and dancing
by playing horn
stripper name
stripper tempo
Symphony 3 - Roger Sessions - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Igor Buketoff
blend of Zemlinsky and Reger level counterpoint thinking
and Ivesy
glee
moments come and go so quickly here
the puppet has returned home
duly soused
an expressionist true believer
new stage
drifting in the dark
the moored boats sing to each other
slow songs in mist
this
is really pretty music
until it isn't
UH OH
peril stomps up the wharf
everybody's in an uproar
wreckage at a
Charleston
there it is again
this is a decadent dance hall
the orchestration kills it
an angry drunk
The Loco-Motion - Little Eva [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
did these songs
(songs that advertise their own dance (like a square
dance caller does?))
disappear?
when?
Bernadette - The Four Tops [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
what an incredibly egotistical song
it's all about him
Freddie's Dead - Curtis Mayfield [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
in a whole new plane
August 16, 2021
"...such words as it were vain to close..." - J. K. Randall - Neal Kosály-Meyer [live at Brechemin Hall, School of Music, University of Washington, Seattle, May 24, 1986]
timing
Neal plays this slower than the marked tempos
so that the
whole is about half again as long as it would be
if played as marked
does it work at this tempo
sure
the question
is
whether at this tempo
some latent aspect of the work vanishes
or
becomes less clear
than were it to be played at tempo
possibly
but tempo choices aren't moral choices
they are expressive choices
one might argue that at this slow tempo
the pathos is overdrawn
is too much
or that the thread is pulled too thin
again
possibly
August 17, 2021
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen [from Nebraska]
See how well it works when he doesn't try to fill a stadium with a song that never wanted to be in a stadium?
Cantus (870111) - Keith Eisenbrey - Fehrwood Ensemble
a rehearsal recording of my mixed recorder quintet
we try it at a faster
clip
doesn't let on where it is headed
nor what it might be
building up
Spindrift - Ken Benshoof - Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby, Ken Benshoof [from In Shadow, Light]
I remember how, during my lessons with Ken, when his daughter, perhaps 9 or 10 at the time, would be visiting, he would let her down out of the window of his office in the Lewis Annex into the little garden they had in the center.
For Ken, that his music should, or that any music should, be enjoyable by all concerned, was paramount. Music is a social activity (or in my locution: a mode of social intercourse).
Banned Rehearsal 448 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
 |
| from my journal entry of August 17, 2021 |
{from my journal entry of November 23, 2004:}
We certainly are in the era
of clAaronet.
and Wurlitzer.
In
full-on chamber symphony mode.
Falls apart into an intentionally
un-remitting, un-modulated banging.
Why?
Unresolved aggressions?
But whose?
only violence can compete withal.
as the banging
goes away
- clapping carries the rhythm into a let's play loud
episode
- organ attempt to overwhelm.
succeeds?
the flood...
Eventually the space thins out
- and as unsocial as a lot of this
sounds, there are some good mixes here and there.
An example of BR at
our most argumentative.
OK tape from about 15' in -
[after the
banging goes away]
Isaac is a bit fussy.
Snare drum could be trouble . . . we'll see. - didn't. pretty crazy violin playing.
Variation Variations - Michael Chealander - Ryan Hare [from Intrada]
at least a duet
monologs with several participants
as variations
among the progressive tribe
successively more notes in each
iteration
so perhaps redoubled doubles
Consider the Birds 16 - Keith Eisenbrey [February 3, 2007]
The title of this project came last.
After the whole thing was put
together Karen thought it sounded like a bunch of birds in a tree.
We
quipped
"consider the birds, how they bicker."
But the metaphor
holds well even down into the individual files,
prior to their inclusion
in the final mix.
Rhythmically these are plausible avian calls,
though not necessarily melodically so.
though we haven't read it, we know there is a script - Mark So [from Open Space 45]
voices saying phrases
cut in and cut out
possible thematic
connections
but are possibly disconnected
certainly repetition
mechanically fragmented
stacked and looped dictaphone notes
speech at the tempo of rushed talking
read* language
spoken
at colloquial tempo
seems faster than spontaneous talking at the same
tempo does.
*read as in
"this sounds as though it is being read."
is Cage's silence gay?
how so?
discussion of New England
speech patterns
and the Russian word for "what":
"Shto".
August 18, 2021
Banned Telepath 54 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
We percuss while Neal serves a bit of Joyce
squeeze tones emerge from
the scraping
Excelsior!
small electronics
wee scrapers
low tones are heard before nibbling
that grand old vice
colossus among cabbages
In Nomine, Fvb 37 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
plain thinking
fine as it gets
Symphoniae sacrae II, Op. 10 #15 "Gib unsern Fürsten und aller Obrigkeit" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
parsing text
and setting text
||
both structural on multiple
levels
Suite in C Major, BuxWV 227 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
the scores I have seen have relatively few notated embellishments,
but
we apparently know that it was expected to add them
and that the art of
playing
was in large part
one's skill and taste in so doing
so the idea as a composer
was to make a score solid
but
ample with room to extemporize
the performer then fills it out
turns on the lights
Wir Christenleut habn jetzund Freud, BWV 710 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Michael Chapuis
the lugubrious heavy ghost
to which the bubbles are moored
lest
they drift free
overlapping
end of one continuation
varied
becomes the start
of a new continuation
- as though a regular sequence suddenly
encountered a new environment
L'Ernestine, Wq. 117/38 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
Apparently there are two recordings of the same piece, with the same Wq., on
the same disk.
This version is twice as long as the other.
Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:11 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
because fingers love to wiggle
and arms love to sing
String Quartet in G Major, K. 387 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Alban Berg Quartet
really works
at how things work out
where they get to
and
what they get up to
loves sleight of hand
misdirection
emotionally complex drama
another reason Die Zauberflöte was a waste of
his time
then he goes full stretto
what fun!
Romance in F Major, Op. 50 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, Bernard Haitink, Henryk Szeryng
proceeds in ample balanced periods
trouble announced
softened
perhaps only a marker
or a darker copse
back into the
pleasant sunny garden
heroically we plunge back
copseward
sneak past the sleepy hound
with the vicious snore
August 19, 2021
Rondo in A Major, Op. 113 #1 - Friedrich Kuhlau - Loredana Brigandi
a truly daunting prospect
to return to this
over and over
unless that's just the introduction
like a flowery cover
page
and a mini retrospective
just in time
for the applause-begging
finish
Impromptu in A-flat Major, Op. 29 - Frédéric Chopin - Claudio Arrau
the key
as in
the
key
is never certain
only
guessed at
provisional
temporally and figurationally
something is pushing it
Selection 8 from Selections from The Nutcracker - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
note the use of the orchestral instruments as percussion, pre-Stravinsky
Some Folks - The Gregg Smith Singers [from The Great Sentimental Age]
ignore the old folks
such bores
ignore what we have just been
through
such wars
Mississippi River Tapioca - Cantrell & Williams [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
the song from which the title of the book and collection comes
identification or mis-
and desire
what a twisted mess we are
Sonata in G Major, Op. 62 (#6) - Alexander Scriabin - Ruth Laredo
thought in an echo chamber
nothing moves without bringing the whole of
self dragged behind
wraithlike
verticalities that can only be heard
in specious sequence
the ecstatic moment protracted
Slippery Hank - Ed Fuller's Famous Jass Band [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
enter circus firetruck
with clowns
variously rude
one must
be old Slippery himself
Stumbling - Bill Murray [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
is the latest step
Shaking the Blues Away - Ruth Etting, Rube Bloom [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]
another white desire
to
do what the _______ do
"they"
shakeathem
blues
away
dosing with the medicine of the other
Some of These Days - Bing Crosby [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
doing some slick scat
musical grace
no mere horn player
is
gonna beat him at that game
Never No Mo' Blues - The Rhythm Wreckers [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
must have done some of that shaking
countrified accent coming across
almost like minstrel speech
but nice yodels
On the Sunny Side of the Street - Peggy Lee [from The Complete Recordings 1941-1947]
cool swing playing
such as this
is more than a music
it's an
entire society
a party to which you want to be invited
Tuxedo Junction - Harry James [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
the even cooler after-party people
the trombone player giving Bing a run
for his money
piano player dances light on his fingerbones
and
late at night
of course
there will be stripper tempo
Please Find My Baby - Elmore James [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
speaking of which
the tempo d'strip
a blues straight up
with
fuzzed guitar
far along the way
to Elvis and Rock & Roll
Going Down the Road Feeling Bad - Elizabeth Cotton [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
should have gone to the other side of the street
wait isn't that the
problem
that side of the street is the sunny, white, side
"and I
don't want to be treated this way."
hm
flexible as to which beat
in the figure is the down beat
In Session at the Tintinabulary
August 16, 2021
Banned Rehearsal 1032 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Steve couldn't make it, but Anna visited on her birthday no less. We sat on the porch. At one point toward the middle a bearded long haired dog walking man passed by and stopped at the bottom of the steps, listening for a minute. We waved at each other.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
soul tears and tear because the veil is now
through this the by go off to their kingdom
while praises are just one pure rich full
Reality Check::
soon
the stone
would draw thunder
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