Preface
"In the moment of each piece I am transported out of the universe of music, to an incommensurable non-relativistic absolute of 'this' - in which 'this' is, at this moment, for this moment only, what music is.
objective analysis: what's there to strike/affect you however; experiential descriptions: an inner biography of a reception; aesthetic analysis: what's there in the sense of how it ontologizes in consciousness - in whatever terms capture the experiential sense it makes insofar as the person composing the analysis is concerned - and since the units of musical reception are single music-phenomena received by single people at single times, the person-specific mode of description is the musically most accurate, as far as I'm concerned. This sort of explains to me why most generalized descriptions of music, or objectified descriptions of single musics, seem not to be intuitively 'about' anything like music, or like any particular music."
- Benjamin Boretz - "to Dora Hanninen" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
Texts
From Recent Arrivals
September 12, 2021
Embraceable You - Judy Garland [from The Complete Decca Masters]
sung with extensive, but perfectly controlled portamento
nothing that
gets in the way of putting the song across the decades intact
That's The Way Love Goes - Janet Jackson [from Janet]
[NB This was the fourth track I attempted to random-pick from the album. The first three I chose were little snippets of sound inserted among the longer tracks. I began to wonder if there was anything on the album longer than 10 seconds.]
singing in a bed of rhythm and speech
a crowd of speak-in-turn
I Am Free - Mariah Carey [from Daydreams]
testimony
with gospel pipes
amply elaborated
Shades - Dawn Richard [from Newbreed]
additive rhythms
rooted in the bass
reconfigured with each vocal
eruption
quick
String Trio, Op. 45 - Arnold Schoenberg - Rolf Schulte, Richard O'Neill, Fred Sherry
sizes of gestures
counterpoint with
number (count) of notes
with articulation echoes
with dynamic gestures
his thinking is clear
simple to follow
even if it takes some
thorny prose
to attempt to describe
some of what it is that is so
clear within it
Strike Zones - Joan Tower - Albany Symphony, David Alan Miller, Evelyn Glennie
not as cheerfully playful as its Babbitt-worthy title would suggest
more
of a grim nocturnal goblin mist about it
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Tower ages ago at Bard.
Recorded
September 11, 2021
Crack Glass Eulogy - Stan Brakhage
dimming lights
Banned Rehearsal 450 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 5, 1997]
quieter weather
but incessant
and increasingly so
little
moves
hold steady
stay put
fade gently
{{from my journal entry of November 29, 2004}}:
Aaron brings the clarinet again.
We hear lots of rattling around
and the piano
a strummingtheguitar/piano
above this dark
warm buttery sound
a sax squawk
whose squawk is echoed
down
into the warm buttery
by percussion
guitar
everybody shares
it
tethering it to the collective
are those pulling against each
other,
or toward each other?
this mass doesn't move.
It doesn't roll.
perhaps it roils within
itself.
But inert is its mass.
- violin entrance could signal change.
The warm butter sharpens up a
bit.
music on the move.
How is its moving?
not like a huge
iron wheel.
more like an icebreaker in slow motion.
landed now
in a quieter, colder, emptier space.
for awhile it hangs midair,
then fills in a space below it.
but
not yet on the ground.
[extremely strong, almost psychedelic ensemble playing throughout, by everybody]
premium is placed on blend.
the sounds blend with each other
none
stick out for long,
or create a line that is stronger as itself
than it is as a part of the whole.
Even Isaac's squalling.
private matters tend to diminuendo into the background.
We resolve for awhile
into a fabulous scribbleguitar and piano duet
- with organ bass
and occasional outside comments by drums and
stuff.
Really a far cry from warm and butter.
Exit to an
outerspace virtual image terminal.
distant cold, and eternal.
|| jangly low piano and drums.
We have come back to earth.
having
seen.
Could go weak here, if this drumming drumming continues.
The
question - once we have come back to earth
have we anything to say,
or should it just cut out there?
does come,
briefly,
to a very quiet place.
Isaac is kind of
noisy.
We collectively compose a diminuendo, which isn't quite as interesting as that journey into the stars just completed.
rhythm section demo
strictly instrumental
not sure what the
Apachees have to do with it
Consider the Birds (Raw Footage) - Keith Eisenbrey [February 3, 2007]
As I recall, this is a bit of a then recent Banned Rehearsal that was on my
hard drive when I started experimenting. I sliced out 10 minutes to use.
Trombone, or cornet or somebrass perhaps the alto,
xylophone,
ocarina.
a light percussion contraption with a spring in it
and
some rattling or shaking
a can drum
triangle
gong soft bong
a honk as might be by a duck with a cold in the nose
Nokturno 7 - Aleš Fridel - Lovorka Nemeš Dular [from Open Space 47]
piano figuration anchored to a shifting harmonic center
as might a
conversation work itself along
Banned Telepath 54 Anchorage - Aaron Keyt [February 15, 2017]
synthesizer telegraph message
September 12, 2021
Pavana of My Lord Lumley, Fvb 41 - John Bull - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
the meter expands at elaboration's behest they dance genteelly
Symphoniae Sacrae II, Op. 10 #19 "Der Herr ist meien Licht und mein Heil" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
two male voices push each other into higher steps on the ladder
all
quite diatonic until a sudden chromatic twist warps the cadence
the
several segments are connected by a similar duet
Prelude and Fugue in B minor (Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band 1) - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet
I'm sorry she didn't take the repeats in the Prelude, they add to the sense that the piece has been about its business before you arrive and will do so after you leave
the fugue is one of my favorites
how each entrance-sized segment is so
clearly figured,
that one might think it's square,
but the sheer
quantity of metrical implications at play is bewildering
Sonata in B-flat minor, Kk. 131 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
a stomping kick dance
might the binary schema of these sonatas
serve mostly just to help the sequentiality of it,
as it goes,
seem plausible,
that perhaps its fact
is less crucial to the
form
as experience
than its effect is
La Xenophon and La Sybille - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
sketch for an opera number?
I love these 18th Century bass lines
so unashamed to own their function.
Perhaps a miniature diptych?
a vamp for a pantomime?
Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:16 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
what I said above about Scarlatti
applies here as well
yes Haydn
invented all sorts of new ways to tightly bend (and bind) the structure
together
but he also balanced that
with a wide figuration range
and a quick rhythm of its changes
it simply takes more twine
to hold plausibility
also without such care taken
his jokes
won't make sense
a lot of this would work real well on clavichord
not all of it though
very much a fortepiano piece
but certainly recalling the older
figurations
this piece goes into a mood now and then
a mood to
sweep away
yes
yes
that's the end
Sonata in G Major, Op. 47 #2 - Johann Ladislav Dussek - Zvi Meniker
a lively but essentially gentle imagination
he will never do anything to
actually shock you
he was more into charm
Coriolan-Ouverture - Ludwig van Beethoven - Academy of Ancient Music - Christopher Hogwood
a terrifying story
thrills chills worry and dream
has there ever
been a symphonic overture written for Titus?
Etude in F Major, Op. 10 #8 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot (1942)
establishing the key is not the point of what these figures are doing
they're discussing things amongst themselves
the key is the
carrier wave at most
Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564 - Johann Sebastian Bach / Feruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden
Busoni was a devotee of the cult of Bach
in reverence of the learned
past
doing what Liszt had done for Beethoven
in his (Liszt's)
transcriptions of the 7th Symphony (Beethoven's)
for instance
or
Brahms for the violin Chaconne (Bach's)
stop here first
be warned
this is a fugue
you venture upon
who me?
adds voices
at the bottom of the stack
Selection 11 of Selections from The Nutcracker - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
harp is the storybook instrument in this milieu
fairy tale dynasty
doomed to blood
September 13, 2021
Walz Medley - The Gregg Smith Singers [from The Great Sentimental Age]
none but
as anyone but
or any but
me
as in
she
would not dance
with none but me
perfectly reasonable usage
but strikes me as poetic
(doggerelic?)
in the sense
that the choosing of it
was due to the syllable count
2 Poems, Op. 63 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti
a light passes across a terrain
in flood
with languid spent desire
Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag - W.C. Handy's Memphis Blues Band [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
a dance
to leave one breathless and flushed
earlier comments
regarding binary form
could be applied to this as well
plausible
coherence
Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1 (finish) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer [recorded at Gallery 1412 on November 22, 2015]
face to face
vertical time unspooling
the imputed thread of plot
providing a plausible coherence
but thinner
than the
repetitions of rhythm
the word games
the lists
and doublings
all the apparatus
of its sentence by sentence
phrase by
phrase
coherence
3rd Set Piece:
the Prank Queen.
in
imitation of narrative
invocations
Elegiad
tales told above
a bier
reports from the living
applause
chat
out
September 14, 2021
Ornaments - Alexander Krein - Helen Lawrence, Jonathan Powell
wordless melody sung with piano
featuring a certain amount of portamento
and other articulating embellishments
I wonder if this piece was
intended as a show piece for student virtuosi
it would certainly take
some serious breath control
per Slonimsky,
Krein was heavily involved in Jewish theater
in the
years after the revolution (1918)
often using "authentic" "Jewish"
material.
believable
but I am an ignoramus on the question
dance hall standard?
any tavern
anywhere
in any America?
shave and a haircut six bits
piano taking care of business
Frankie and Johnny - Alabama Boys [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
the song so well known one hardly needs to speak the words
these guys
are all over their guitar licks and fiddle licks
Lincoln Portrait - Aaron Copland - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, James Earl Jones
set the controls for sanctify
it is stern and hard and wiry
was this written at approximately the same time as Sandburg's bio
(yes,
more or less)
the condensed version
for the war effort
in
time of peril
we erect an elder saint
if everything is underlined
is anything
thought control in action
Tone Painting (parts 1 and 2) - Dodo Marmarosa [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
solo piano
noisy recording
with some wobble
moody
in glancing imitation
of what?
concert hall music?
or
film noir soundtrack?
but more internally focused than movie music can
allow itself to be
I count 3 parts so far at least
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 92 (#5) - Dmitri Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam String Quartet
breathing as best it can within strict confines
its key is a cover
he could probably get away with more in his quartets
because only
musicians ever listen to them
everything turns bitter
we are being
led inside
where memory is
we are prodded
time
soon
to leave
be sure to pick up your resolve and outrage at the door
sleep as well as you can
Blue Monday - Fats Domino [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Monday is a mess
something almost punk about the plainness of it
Peasant Cantata - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey [April 10, 1962]
not Bach
short canonic choruses a capella
has almost a
Billings-ish vibe to it
neo-Billings?
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
hard
left right track assignment
bass and drums one side
guitar on other side
with everything else
vocal up the
middle
Daniel - Bellevue First United Methodist Church Children's Choirs, Betty Eisenbrey [April 14, 1972]
featuring me
member of the chorus
being fed odd biblical history
asserting
for instance
that Daniel was a Christian Man
this is even stranger than I remember
just throw all the bible
stories in
higgledypig
we'll stop to praise Daniel's sweetheart
with similes from Midwestern Americana
The Laughing Gnome - David Bowie [from Starting Point]
as dumb as it is
David gives it all he's got
can't quite do it
with a straight face, just as well
Intermezzo I - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at Bard Hall, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, November 2, 1982]
I have a picture of me dressed for this occasion
sharing a little
concert with Dan Sedia,
for an audience of six.
Ben opined that
since they were all my friends
it wasn't really an audience.
I thought that
if a real audience consisted of people who were not
my friends
that I didn't want one.
Ben quipped "Not to worry."
but as a composition
I was
in this
thinking about
filling in intervals sequentially (horizontally)
and gradually,
step by step,
clearly influenced by
("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...")
at the
time it had a poetical title
Long Way Noon
suggested by AW,
a fellow student the summer before with whom I was sharing an intense
correspondence
a poem in single tones
except some dyads
notes at opposite ends of the keyboard
a flaw perhaps
played
slowly
trying to crack melody's code
two lengths of notes on the
pages
long and really long
as played
no two notes are the
same length as any other
 |
| your blogger, November 2, 1982, Bard Hall |
Dig It a Hole - U-Men
vocal provides the message
guitar provides the Amen
and other
support
September 15, 2021
Four6 - John Cage - Stu Dempster, Neal Kosály-Meyer, William O. Smith, Melissa Walsh [recorded at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 25, 2012]
earbrain identifies sounds:
signal noise
"ahem,"
chair
movement,
etc.
some sound distinguishes itself in earbrain
by adding intent (implied)
to identity:
harp sound made by (intended by) Melissa,
vocalization made by (intended by) Neal,
clarinet sound made by
(intended by) Bill,
etc.
In order to treat un-made-by sounds as music
in the same sense we treat
made-by sounds as music
we must either
posit an intent and an
intender to the un-made-by sounds
or remove intent from the made-by
sounds.
Given that this would need to happen subconsciously |
inside
earbrain
either accomplishment would require a spiritual discipline
with uncertain results
beneficial or malevolent.
The paradoxes of Zen are often cited in this regard.
I find myself
unwilling to consider walking that path.
I descended a different rabbit
hole,
have my own problems and urgencies to work out.
But the question remains,
how might I take this in,
if I have
chosen not to follow the Zen path
and if Cage's intentions and
motivations are therefore relatively opaque to me?
That is,
if the
inherent paradox doesn't incandesce, for me?
Perhaps by now they serve
mostly to neutralize the impact of the music rather than clarify it?
In this case the recourse to Zen could be seen as less explanation than cop-out.
(to my ears,
in this case,
the performers are listening to each
other and responding to each other just as they would in any other music.
Their individual personalities just as clear
perhaps more so than
in industrialized orchestra music,
but not a level unique to many
another music)
((and to be honest,
I would have a difficult time pointing at what it is
I object to, exactly.
hence my befuddled verbosity))
Soup - The Keeners [a Rescued Record]
in the manner of a confession
formulaic delivery
generic rock riff
in the back
Work / Architecture / Unity / And / The - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [March 12, 2021, take 2]
very little by way of breaks between bits
good experiment but (because)
failed results
the bits would each benefit by some elbow room
A Beginning - Peter Fedofsky [from The City of Good Neighbors]
smooth overtracked tenor
with keys
lazily nice
 |
| my journal entry of February 20, 2012 |
Gradus 206 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 20, 2012]
in the age of A natural,
but also in the age of 2 rungs per
session.
For me,
Gradus is not about,
nor even peripherally concerned with
John Cage.
It is about Neal's earbrain.
to the extent it might be posited that Cage's concept of silence
(whatever it is)
permeates the conceptual substrate of Gradus,
I would counter that Neal's earbrain
has transmogrified that
concept into his,
utterly.
Cage's concept of silence was his alone.
Neal's concept,
likewise,
belongs to Neal alone.
Sinksmania - Camarones Orquestra Guitarristica [from Feeexta]
Karen and I heard this Brazilian band at The Kraken
in what may have
been the last dive bar show we went to before the shutdown.
I probably bought this on some Bandcamp Friday or other.
loud instrumental
mostly guitars
a tight ensemble
September 16, 2021
Goe from My Window, Fvb 42 - John Mundy - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
decorated manuscripts
in colorful and ornate calligraphy
the sound
of the music
the sense of the music
the placid goingness of the
music
all match the style of page
suitable for presentation to
and preservation by
16th Century nobles
flowing with the pace of an elegant cranky
Symphoniae Sacrae II, Op. 10 #20 "Zweierlei bitte ich, Herr, von dir" - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
the control of pacing through meter is marvelous
modern mixed meter is
an upstart
devastating
Prelude and Fugue in B minor (Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band 1) - Johann Sebastian Bach - Sviatoslav Richter
thank you for taking the repeat
we need to live in his space before
moving on
how it climbs and climbs and yes,
the 2nd repeat as
well!
My hero!
again we need the time and repetition
to
contemplate the/this tonality
before venturing into the
aggregate-completing fugue,
with its chromatic climbing
the
pacings of the sequences in the fugue episodes
match the pacings of the
canon in the Prelude
the view from these heights is humbling
Sonata in C Major, Kk. 132 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
shows his cards before his tricks
he still robbed you blind
even
when and while he explains what he's doing
This one has luscious dissonant chords that sink in solid.
La Sophie, Wq. 117/40 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklos Spanyi
understated misbalance
until the accents enter from the stage right
it doesn't fall apart
it unbinds itself
from its parts
its parts seize their own micro destinies
Divertimento in F Major "il maestro e lo scolare" Hob. XVIIa:1 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim, Andreas Staier
little dialogues
now repeat after me
alternating registers
bass treble
(4 hands clearly)
repeat that. young
whippersnapper!
dueling banjos style
listen to the metronome and
pitch pipe?
Symphony in D Major, K. 385 "Haffner" - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter
he treats counterpoint the way he treats operatic ensembles
everybody
stays in character
in 2 the chug chug chug motive moves around the
orchestra
comes back in all sort of unexpected places
Symphony in D Major, Op. 36 (#2) - Ludwig van Beethoven - Berliner Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
a bit smeared to get that big glow
it all seems to run together
gets along without particular propulsion
like a list of Beethoven
Symphony parts
got together for a BeetSymCon
in too big a space
Etude in E-flat minor, Op. 10 #6 - Frédéric Chopin - Cecile Licad
this one misses its key terribly,
remembers it fondly
and regrets
its absence,
grieves for it,
though it never was
Selection 12 of Selections from The Nutcracker - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
a quick number
for not one of the marquee dancers
just up and
coming
Battle of San Juan Hill - Mike Bernard [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
not the first keyboard work to depict a battle by a long stretch,
William Byrd played this game through a whole suite.
this uses
many of the same effects, if different tunes.
Definitely silent movie
fodder
or perhaps campaign fodder.
It does sound like a bunch of
tin Americans attacking cannonfire.
(T. Roosevelt sold himself as a hero
of this battle,
and was running for President as a Bull Moose the year
this song was made.)
Moonlight Blues - W.C. Handy [from Allen Lowe's Really The Blues]
the tune is squeezed from one note to the other
in lazy waltz time
just begging for the Max Fleischer liquid line treatment
September 17, 2021
She Walked Right Up and Took My Man Away - Lizzie Miles [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
another take on Frankie and Johnny?
Yup.
There's that
rubber tired hack
names and events have been changed
but the
structure of betrayal remains
Finnegans Wake, Chapter 6 (continued) - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer (recorded from Neal's live stream November 21, 2020)
a lightmare and a liberal education
a swallowship in full sail
answer
Finn Mccool
two
the felicitude of our orba
the soapstone of silvery speech
water quaffed
five
poor old Joe
gooseberries
what would the farseer see
ten
gossip
friend of vegetables
see if I'm self
thought
underworld of nighties and naughties
In Session at the Tintinabulary
September 13, 2021
Banned Rehearsal 1034 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Neal called in to the can set upon the xylophone while Karen and I puttered around the Tintinabulary.
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
the united states' mint and when I saw a
dark wood 17 the way was lost ah
how hard a thing to what my fear so bitter
Reality Check::
trace result
sand paper
stones
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