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| Kubota Garden, Seattle |
"Rigdum Funnidos lamenteth, that there are, in this our day, among those who do seek to subvert the venerable usages of our ancestors, divers vauntings and boastings as to what they do most affectedly and erroneously term 'the growing intelligence of the age,' - 'the march of intellect,' and such-like absurd phraseologies. This irreverent spirit doth manifest itself in unseemly comparisons, between the times which are past, and those which are present, which do end in a preferring, to the wisdom of the olden time, their own newfangled and presumptuous theories. Ay, there be even those who do maintain, that what the lamented Francis Moore did, and other equally wise admirers of the by-gone past do, venerate as the olden time, is in very sooth, the juvenile time; inasmuch as time groweth older every day, and, as a necessary consequence thereof, every succeeding generation groweth wiser. It profiteth not to waste words on such manifest absurdity; and suffice it therefore to say, that Rigdum Funnidos hath, with much cost and travail, assemblaged what may be most worthily intituled, a fair sample of 'collective wisdom,' wherein will be found, most conspicuously shown forth, the worthiness of our ancestors to the designation of Wise."
from
The Comic Almanack
an Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry
Tales, Humorous Poetry, Quips and Oddities, First Series, 1835-1843
Texts
Recorded
 |
| Kubota Garden, Seattle |
Klavierstücke D946 #3 - Franz Schubert - Alfred Brendel
with
a trio
of obscure corners
and sudden vistas
between
two slices
of circus fun
Mazurka in B-flat Major, Op. 17 #1 - Frédéric Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy
chromatic figure sequence
a reset
with a mischievous grin
Phantasie in C Major, Op. 17 (portions) - Robert Schumann - Charles Rosen
extracted as examples
for a book about the Romantics
melodies singing from stages
constructed by figurations
Busby Berkeley leg flowers
Romanze in G minor, Op. 21 #2 - Clara Schumann - Susanne Grützmann
a little opera for solo piano
I'm afraid one of the characters in it may
have died
(sadness)
Slavonic Dance in F Major, Op. 46a #4 - Antonín Dvořák - The Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi
light social music
such as this
avoids trip hazards
square
and balanced
in twos and fours of groups
so as
not to call
attention to itself
nor
to jar promenaders
out of graceful
display
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| Kubota Garden, Seattle |
Symphony in F Major, Op. 90 (#3) - Johannes Brahms - Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Charles Mackerras
1
besotted by French Horns
a river journey
with the ghost of
Schumann
through the eyes
of an earlier generation
memory
floods back
folds of threes vanish behind the hills
2
the shadows deeper back
rumors of distant war
but idyllic
here
(closer to The Great War than to the Napoleonic)
the villages
subside into slumber
long past
3
a romance
from never ago
and never to be
4
passion bursts into now
held in check
with phrase balance
and symphonic/polyphonic workings
feverishly refastening the stays
the storm subsides
under lullaby horns
In der Frühe - Hugo Wolf - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Daniel Barenboim
dawn arrives into night with no sleep
Das Orgel-Büchlein, BV B 27: No. 4, Nun freut euch, lieben Christen (After J. S. Bach's BWV 734) - Ferruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden
industrious and nimble
Symphonie in E minor, Allegro - Louis Vierne - David Di Fiore [from Grand Music for a Grand Castle]
clearly articulated spans of music
rarely are we between things
our figuration groups don't much fraternize
else
what would
they mean?
Prelude, Op. 56 #1 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti
pulled and yanked
the solid final cadence
is merely a punctuation
not a destination
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
the moveable type
has begun to interconverse
covert messages
passed through the type-net
under hush of night
L'Histoire du soldat - Igor Stravinsky - Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz
in a chamber cottage on a lake
groups congregate in various rooms
two here three there
our camera stays Jarmuschilly in each
just past taste
ones metrical bearings
are not ever allowed
to settle
before moving on
to new calculations
a bespoke
meter
made
of the feel
of the shifts
from metrical
scheme
to metrical scheme
a particularist slant
of just off kilter
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| Rampart Ridge Trail |
Octandre - Edgard Varèse - Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez
butoh bones blasted bare
Symphony in A Major (#3) - Franz Schmidt - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi
turns aside into itself
bathed in lush folds
immersed in dreamy
hopes
brush so thick
there is no direction
that you don't
find yourself
unturned
from any
to it
mired
in
spiralling fevers
Tampa Strut - The Georgia Browns [from Turn Me Loose White Man]
mouth harp floating above the guitar grid
which then floats above itself
to dance
Quartet in C Major, Op. 49 (#1) - Dmitri Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam Quartet
this key has expanded in its old age
it calls freely
upon all the
parts of all the others
Singin' In The Rain - Cliff Edwards [from That Devilin' Tune]
Jiminy Cricket!
pretty amazing
no lie
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
In a Landscape - John Cage - Stefan Husong
undulous hills
morning mists
Crying In The Chapel - Orioles [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
a creature of amplification and recording technology
a music
inconceivable
prior to a specific technological time point
I'm So Young - The Students [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
pandering
novelty record
Help Me - Sonny Boy Williamson II [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo's Milieu]
the blues
to Rock & Soul
were an infusion
of an older
tradition
a way out of teenybop novelty songs
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
stage-ready Beatles pastiche
spread out across a broad stage in the stereo field
feeding a commercial
legend beast
part of the broader industry branding effort
The Pittsburgh Stealers - The Kendalls [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
a country song doesn't need much in the way of lyrics
just a sad tale
with a clever textual gimmick
Production Line Blues - Dan Sedia [recorded live at Bard College, March 18, 1983]
factory thinking favors a steady beat
now a hurry-up
Too Good To Be Food - U-Men
good feelings have degenerated
and gone sneery
Banned Rehearsal 328 - John E, Betty Eisenbrey, Dick Eisenbrey, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [April 30, 1993]
tape goes round and round
sentences have emerged
play the plano
marks above letters
diacritics
notation of pronunciation
an abomination
to any independent minded cuss of an English
speaker
we will pronounce our vowels
the way we pronounces 'em
and spells 'em
how we spells 'em
mixing up the rhythm
won't solve a too persistent presence
John laughs well
|
| my journal entry of February 2, 1998 |
fill the airwaves
Too-Big Bundler
noise
more noise!
an up down sound
composed on the spot
all the sounds
are
right in your ear
compression distortion
the sounds misshape each
other under pressure
the sprout finds a mystery chord on the Sprite
Bang Bang Boom!
one of the Funmaker's finer sessions
at its most
blatant
my Mom and Dad show up late in the game
Rosa Parks - Outkast [from Aquamini]
it may make verbal sense
but it seems almost superfluous to do so
the meaning is in the flow of the rhymes and rhythms
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
in which direction is down in the pitch experience?
is it a direction at
all?
(no)
is pitch a space?
(in which a direction could be?)
for a bare location matrix
it certainly has some peculiar mathematics
going on
and its distance from others
its gap-web
in a
single continuous line
(sort of)
Gradus makes an excellent sample
for Ben's Meta-Variations ear training
excercise
"listening to . . . any 'instance of music' in terms of what
can be perceived solely by means of the stipulated observables."
Cold Hearted Woman - Vince Mira [from The Cash Cabin Sessions]
we heard this gentleman at a cabaret in the Market
late one evening
on a whim
nice looking young man with a phenomenal country bass
voice
Luke 6:20-26 - Keith Eisenbrey - Zach Buker, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey
I still like this setting
A Guest House - Hanna Benn [from Divide]
a curated choir of one
a polished sheen to it
as though in an impossible acoustic
Banned Rehearsal 1071 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [February 27, 2023]
this sound doesn't cram
it prefers elbow room
and an ample shared
work surface
plucks and plinks
some thumps and clangs
a
sudden howl of feedback protrudeth
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Instrumentalstück - Hildegard Von Bingen {?} - Sequentia [from Canticles of Ecstasy]
interval
difference pertaining
betweeen pitches
(what's the difference?)
different than
name that interval
or count it
or measure it
what's the difference
between notes?
interval
presumes a spatial metaphor
difference
presumes a
mathematical metaphor
(this piece is nowhere ma'am)
the delta
(symbolic)
the gap
(spatial)
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| Rampart Ridge Tail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
music as a virtual mathematics
made of virtual concreta
how does he cram all that music into such a tiny space?
angels on pins
dancing jigs
Magnificat Primi Toni - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
western music
pitch and interval
point and difference
pitch
in a swamp
object in a field
what is the difference pertaining
between the red wing black bird
and the cat tail?
what is
its gap?
its interval?
its dissonance?
its otherness?
music is virtual thought
communicated in such guise
as such things
are capable
Cinquieme Ordre (la), La Tendre Fanchon - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
is what pitches are
just their intervals pertaining?
well, no,
but,
well, yes.
personally I cannot name them
they go by too quickly
they don't
wear badges
wall
chink
moon
Thisby Baby
Pyramus
Maximus
Invention in F Major, BWV 779 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Edith Picht-Axenfeld
primly jaunty
a figure proceeds to transform itself
a self
dis-figuring figure
Sonata in F minor, Kk. 239 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
this figure
disfigures itself
into its own self
a spiral
a mathematically generated difference
(I've been fleeced)
(in F minor)
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
composing with intervals
just politely enough
to pass muster
with Meister Johann Sebastian Fussypants
does it matter
that this music is tonal
and if it doesn't matter
is it?
music
as the difference engine
tonality
as a virtual
harmonious model
of society
made
of gaps
is a pitch
a quantity
no
because of what?
a bare
quantity
a variable
we explain metaphors with metaphors
and
other such beetle-like things
we construct the tonality
we put
this in
music
as an indiscreetly
obscene
courtesy
mock obsequious
 |
| Rampart Ridge Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
is the perceived value
of a game of differences
based
on our
ability
to claim
to have scoped it out?
is the coherence of a thing
as a mathematical object
as
constructively designed
dependent
on its mathematical correctness
or truth value?
this music
doesn't follow the rules
it forces them into
existence
how might one adequately evoke this music
if one had the experience of
but not the word for
pitch?
(or interval)
pitches
can be conceived of
as locations
but intervals can't
but gaps can't
spins can't
slants can't
France can
(boy can they
those French
can sure can)
figures
or difference constellations
represented
as location
constellations
In Session at The Tintinabulary
August 25, 2024
Illinois - Keith Eisenbrey
I believe I have two more of these to go
before exhausting the tunes in
Long Meter (LM)
August 26, 2024
Banned Rehearsal 1106 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
on the patio
due to a user error (mine)
the only live microphones
were pointed away from us.
still pretty nice.
Postscripts
Drops
Greg Short: Twenty-Four Tonal Preludes
Seattle composer Greg Short (1938-1999) left of copy of this score on my doorstep one day in the Summer of 1986, asking if I would play four of them at a program in December, which of course I did. The preludes were composed 1965-66, and revised in 1983, per notes in the score.
All but the last four of these recordings were made, four at a time, at various recitals between 2006 and 2018 at University Temple United Methodist Church, and at The Chapel Performance Space, both in Seattle. The last four were recorded at my home in 2022. I include at the end an "ossia" version of the G-minor Prelude (#22).
Selected recordings of my compositions can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com
All are free for download or to stream.
