Saturday, June 29, 2024

Playlist

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
Preface

"'I take a great interest in her, Mr. Weller,' said Mr. Pickwick.
Mr. Weller coughed.
'I mean an interest in her doing well,' resumed Mr. Pickwick; 'a desire that she may be comfortable and prosperous. You understand?'
'Wery clearly,' replied Mr. Weller, who understood nothing yet.
'That young person,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'is attached to your son.'
'To Samivel Veller!' exclaimed the parent.
'Yes,' said Mr. Pickwick.
'It's nat'ral,'said Mr. Weller, after some consideration, 'nat'ral but rayther alarmin'. Sammy must be careful.'
'How do you mean?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.
'Wery careful that he don't say nothin' to her,' responded Mr. Weller. 'Wery careful that he ain't led avay, in a innocent moment, to say anythin' as may lead to a conwiction for breach. You're never safe vith 'em, Mr. Pickwick,  ven they vunce has designs on you; there's no knowin' vere to have 'em; and vile you're a considering of it, they have you. I wos married furst, that vay myself, sir, and Sammy was the consekens o' the manoover.'"

Charles Dickens - The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club

Texts

Recorded

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
June 23, 2024

Symphony in B minor, Op. 74 "Pathetique" (#6) - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky

1
B minor or loneliness 

the open
is about how these notes move together
about the accumulation of tiny differences 

first segment
scales descending
second segment
scales ascending 

first segment
begins off the beat
and falls
second segment
begins firmly
and ascends 

emotive whammy?
absolutely
but the whammy ought not to deafen us to crucial stuff behind the scenes
how it accomplishes said whammy
by a ritualized
highly structured
acting out
of emoting 

2
first segment
the waltz in five
second segment
the solemn procession
also in five 

3
a scherzoid march
cheering multitudes
streamers and gleaming buttons
bayonets and epaulettes 

4
garret or basement
humble quarters
apotheosis of emotive acting out

Das Orgel-Büchlein, BV B 27: No. 4, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen (After J. S. Bach's BWV 734) - Ferruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden

so 

is Busoni transcribing Bach
any different
than a ritualized
highly structured
acting out
of emotiveness?
and certainly
to be asked of the Bach directly as well
is the piece
that is the acting out
a different piece
than that which is ritualized
or that which is highly structured?

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
4 Preludes, Op. 33 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

fashions
among appropriate emotions to act out
anguish
cool reasoning
or liquid languish
or violent passion

I Ain't Had No Lovin' In a Long Time - Bob Roberts [from Turn Me Loose White Man]

adult entertainment
in the old days

5 Pieces for Orchestra - Anton Webern - London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez

speculated emotives
aphoristicules

June 24, 2024

3 Etudes - Béla Bartók - Paul Jacobs

1
something nefarious emerges from a full rolling boil
piano is a percussion instrument school of thought 

2
heavy and slithery
obscured by dense growth 

3
massive stone
playful sprites

New Orleans Joys - Jelly Roll Morton [from Really The Blues]

motion
quivers up
from hip to shoulder
shivers strum the ribs

Clarinet Concerto - Carl Nielsen - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Drucker

considered placement
of clarinet sound within the orchestra sound
always clear
never perfunctory 

in slow portion
horns and bassoons
composed
to sound like horns and bassoons
rather than
like all horns 

excellent snare drum part

A Deserted Plantation - William Grant Still - Mark Boozer

a music based on a music
wears music on its sleeve
a vastly different vibe
than when Ives pastes musics in 

slowly
dotted rhythms
never had it so good
location evoked through song

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
Nice Work If You Can Get It - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]

introducing the band and its soloists
every song a showcase

Nesta Rua - Heitor Villa-Lobos - New York Chamber Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Bonfiglio

pretty tune to rend hearts with

Wrong Road Blues - Tommy Duncan and his Western All Stars [from That Devilin' Tune]

string band
with a bit of snare drum
hanging out with the double bass

Klavierstück 2 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky

drawing lines through dots
violently

Scherzo - Berthold Goldschmidt - Kolja Lessing

witty and slight

Da Doo Ron Ron - The Crystals [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

lets rhyme stuff

Barstow - Eight Hitchhiker Transcriptions - Harry Partch - The Harry Partch Ensemble

lost in Massachusetts
go to 530 East on Heron Avenue
gentlemen
easy hand out
object matrimony
every person on stage
is a character 

I'm mystified
as to why it's Partch's tunings
that get all the attention
for me
it's all bout theater
the tuning
is just one of the particularities of it

Sixty Minute Man - Clarence Carter [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

drop the needle
heh heh heh heh heh heh

I Believe - Buzzcocks [from Nancy's Mix]

credo in my machine nature
as programmed
to program your credo
by repetition of slogans

Modern Love - David Bowie [from Let's Dance]

I am programmed
and oiled
to fit in 

80s
upfront
uptight
drum sound 

like a clenched scrotum

I Can Shout All I Want - Banned Rehearsal [from Purple Stripe]

Neals' version of Aaron's sudden song
a few quasi chords and can drumming 

they're all for sure
going straight to Hell
but better them
than me 

unless I ring that little bell
this bus won't stop for me

back up
she bop de boo wop

String Quartet 6 - Milton Babbitt - The Fred Sherry Quartet

the axioms of hexachordal combinatoriality
are their own homogeneity
a machine
that deals with incoming messages
a polyreceptive reference
and dispatcher 

this music knows what it is 

where does this music take us
through what are we pulled 

an exquisite ecstasy
find a pitch
and hang on for dear life
catch the next one if you fall off

Banned Rehearsal 478 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 3, 1998]

we open our cases and begin to squeak and squawk
bringing a low string up to a tuning
each part distinct
no part front and center
the seed need not appear within the tree
behind it all
a distant simian chatter
in small voice
through small speaker 

Taps
begins drunken brass drinking song
crowded moorage
the beef boats bellow
rocking swells
a wandering mind passes through
Taps
on The Aaronsbundler
excitement building among the pilings

this sound has a reflective surface
but the angles matter

dragon hoard
mulling horns and bells
glance off each other 

a three sneeze night 

this music is a consistent re-morph
but slow at it
reluctant
hold on...

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
{journal entry of February 11, 2006:

a fussy dense middle
sticks
and non-intra-extractable brass
blatting on top
like drunken sovereigns
on decaying thrones
drift off into slumber
while the court connives a dunking
too feebly inebriated
to resist the force -march into the moat
takes its time
about all getting on the same soundpage
timepage
big Wurlitzer sounds
help glue
then open
new spots
vistas
like a quick spin through the FM spectra
lots of taps played
a moment here
late
and we are outside at night
piercing stars with drone tones 

glowing
growing
gelatinous
expansion
of shrill burning light}

Karen at Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
June 25, 2024

Firecrackers in Metal - Christopher DeLaurenti

some musics are virtual worlds
some are wall mounted objects

Track 3 - Aaron Keyt [from 7(7)]

some are virtual worlds
of wall mounted objects

being virtual
it can't be like anything else
except
by virtue
of the virtualizing mind
yet
it often
seems
to seek
to be 

communication
of a type not fully understood
by anybody

Marry The Night - Lady Gaga [from Born This Way]

dance hall
nightlife propaganda
tip your bartender

Banned Rehearsal 950 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 15, 2018]

some are virtual worlds
of virtual worlds
of hand wielded sounds 

public facing musics
use devices to attract attention
playing in tune
and in time
for instance

Totem 21 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Totem VI]

some music
is a virtual world
made of wind
and water
and earth
and fire

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
O Virtus Sapientiae (Antiphona) - Hildegard Von Bingen - Sequentia [from Spiritual Songs]

lifted up
floated down

Non Mirar, No Mirare - Carlo Gesualdo - Delitiæ Musicæ, Marco Longhini

some virtual worlds
seem to intend
to speak eloquently

Alma redemptoris Mater a 8 - Peter Philips - The Choir of Royal Holiday, The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, Robert Gough

space translates music
music enables space
to stage virtual worlds

Geistliche Chor-Music, Op. 11, SWV 374, Volume 1: VI. Unser keiner lebet ihm selber - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana

early baroque rejuvenation of meter
as a field for workmanship of intricate design

Jesu, meine Freude, BuxWV 60 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Purcell Quartet, Suzie LeBlanc, Dame Emma Kirby, Clare Solomon

the sonata that opens this cantata 
has some weird shit in the middle part 

in Lutheran circles
without the Mass to work off of
they zeroed in on the hymns
as backbone
then proceeded to construct a body of liturgical music
as impressive in its scope
as what the Catholics had
(for a time at least)

Quatrieme Ordre (fa): La Marche des Gris-vetus - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

voices moving in accord with each other

Invention in E minor, BWV 778 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Edith Picht Axenfeld

left hand acts as a yes man
to the right hand
but backwards
in heels

Sonata in C minor, Kk. 230 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

juggling duet
Scarlatti is not about repetition
he is about play
he often plays with repetition

Sonata in F minor, Wq. 63/6 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi

baring the melodic
of extraneous showy prolongations
by building the prolongations
into how it goes along 

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
Sinfonia in C Major, Op. 3 #2 - Johann Christian Bach - Camerata Budapest, Hanspeter Gmür

enlightenment and elegance
a mask of reason
civilization
is screaming itself hoarse
to convince itself
it is in charge

Allegro Molto in D Major, Hob. XVII.D2 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

a game
to make the party laugh

Sonata in A minor, K. 310 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Lili Kraus

in the middle of what they were saying
they notice a motion off to the side
best take the message
but
if prolongations are built into how it goes along
then vanity itself
will demand decoration

Sonata in G Major, Op. 37 #2 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

pieces of music
began to become things one did
in order to have them published
and sold
independently of the original occasion
if there was one

instructions in refinement
and cultural etiquette

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
June 26, 2024

Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 47 "Kreutzer" - Ludwig van Beethoven - Nathan Milstein, Georges Plademacher [from Nathan Milstein: The Last Recital]

trading off the tune
sequential translation
in negotiation
embodied in the persons playing
but not contained by them
variations
sets of
also sequential translations
but displayed serially
or generational
each begets the next

Caprice in E-flat Major, Op. 1 #8 - Niccolò Paganini- Salvatore Accardo

thinking about strings as tuned
in relation to the key in play

Music for 'Rosamunde' D. 797 - Franz Schubert - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm

the notion of first and second subject
as among the sines qua non of Sonata Allegro form
must have arisen
from its uses in operatic overtures
but
the form appears in far more varied a population of musics
than operatic overtures 

lyrical rather than epic
drama
fantasy
poem
music 

this music caricatures characters 

melodramatic
melofantastic
melopoetic
melomusical 

B Movie
B for Brilliant 

this music folds us into a warm blanket
so comfy 

our guide and friend
in this music
it's better
to not know
where you are within it
it is complete

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
Etuden in Form Freier Variationen über ein Beethovensches Thema - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

story weaver
change scene
weave another
be quick 

variations as literary device
as in
on a theme of Beethoven's  |
treating the source as a literature

hands like spiders
Lisztian Reminiscences de Septieme Symphony

Waltz in F Major, Op. 34 #3 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson

dances gracefully in all things

Ich stand in dunkeln Träumen - Clara Schumann - Dorothea Craxton, Hedayet Djeddikar

song writing
is the art of revealing the voice of the poem

Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 - Johannes Brahms - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Charlotte Margiono, Rodney Gilfry

edification carved into every brick and board
finds himself struggling to punch through the fugal mass he has brought forth
a plea for knowledge
of what we know
will knowing what we know
provide comfort 

free of weight and weightlessness
free of mass
cushioned on the contours of smoothly crafted lines 

the soloists don't stand in star power spotlights

Via Crucis: Station II - Jesus trägt sein Kreuz - Franz Liszt - Nederlands Kamerkoor, Reinbert De Leeuw 

an illustration with inscribed lesson

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
June 27, 2024

Symphony in E Major (#7) - Anton Bruckner - Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

1
a promise unfurls
undescribed
into
within
every interior
root tips
and buds
in the dark
in the light
seed of promise
of the Holy Spirit

is without a doubt
Anton being devout
what it is all about 

2
at home
in one's being
healing immense kindness 


valiant and brave
in struggles untiring 

4
as though we awake from dream
but for now
live! 

impelled

Psyche - César Franck - Orchestre Philharmonique De Liege, Paul Strauss

another big piece about spirits
my favorite of Franck's symphonies
especially with the choral bits included 

glorious
floating bliss
eternity
effortless motion
no need for symphonical processes
to bog it down 

as tune birds go
this one is resplendent 

the hot housiest
of hot house flowers 

voluptuous in all its parts

Sea Pieces: A.D. MDCXX - Edward MacDowell - Fred Karpoff

this music sounds like how roman numerals look

Cowiche Canyon, Uplands Trail
Madama Butterfly, Act II - Giacomo Puccini - Coro e orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Alberto Erede, Renata Tabaldi, Giuseppe Campora, Nell Rankin, Giovanni Inghilleri, Piero de Palma, Fernando Corena, Gianna Diozzi, Melchiorre Luise, Michele Calvino, Luigi Pizzeri

the essential story
only relies on the power-differential
between Butterfly and Pinkerton
(Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni?)
(and between Butterfly and her keeper)
(and between her keeper and Pinkerton) 

the particular nationalities
are immaterial
power is power 

lost in the voluptuous folds of exoticism
the exotic
signifies innocence
true-heartedness
trustingness
simplicity 

Americans
as much a novelty
as Japanese
(to Puccini) 

the big tune
lets us down gently

the Americanness of Pinkerton
is signified
by a European-derived Patriotic Tune
Oh Say Can You See 

public/private faces 

||"ooohhh. . . Marta!"
(John & Marsha?)|| 

this music
depicts the projected feelings
of the audients
(instruction) 

this must be the famous humming chorus

Fig Leaf Rag - Scott Joplin - William Albright

a mechanically marvelous element
contraptional
this music is about notes
in a unique way
as
the result
of a mechanical action
that it is programmed to perform

Preludes, Book 2: Brouillard - Claude Debussy - Walter Gieseking

intimating touch

Sirfelirat, Rubato, Op. 11 #4 - Zoltan Kodály - Jenö Jandó

picking up on Debussy's clarity of expression
a miniature drama for solo piano

Serenade, Op. 24 - Arnold Schoenberg - London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez

treating notes
as sound
made by prescribed gestures
of arm
lip
and hands
and breath
and mouth 

axiomatic gestures
coy and clever
it B A C Hs us 

a little song persists
while being pelted by note stones 

cramped  molecular space 

what meaning does it have
to our experience of a music
to have it demonstrated
that
some aspect of it
is consistent
to certain axioms?

In Session at The Tintinabulary

June 23, 2204

Hamburg - Keith Eisenbrey

Postscripts

Drops

Keith Eisenbrey 19: 2021
Études d'exécution imminent - Acknowledgments
Rounds for Aaron (2021)
Rungs for Neal (2021)

The Acknowledgements form the last segment of my large-scale project "Études d'exécution imminent", which might be subtitled "studies in compositional listening".

Prior volumes are available at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com

All are free for download.

Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery

listening journal doodles from 2023






No comments:

Post a Comment