"Day and Night Equal."
'Tis Six o'Clock; - and now the Sun
His daily course begins to run;
While
Folly's children slink away,
Like bats who dread the glare of day,
From
Masquerade or Fancy Ball,
Where pleasure reign'd in Fashion's Hall;
And
sneak along, like guilty creatures
With tir'd limbs and haggard
features.
The sons of toil, as they come near 'em,
With coarse-spun jokes begin to
jeer 'em;
While, au contraire, each motley hero,
Whose wit is
now far under zero,
With 'not a gibe to mock their grinning,'
Has
but a sorry chance of winning.
The clown, with phiz so dull and sad,
Looks grave as Ghost of Hamlet's
Dad;
And Falstaff, now he's lost his stuffing,
Looks lean as lath,
and pale as muffin;
While Harlequin, half muzz'd with wine,
Don't
care a rush for Columbine,
But leaves her, like a careless loon,
To
draggle home with Pantaloon;
And Romeo, with empty purse,
Abandons
Juliet to her nurse.
The child of labor, when he sees
Such silly spectacles as these, -
How dissipation is repented, -
May with his station be
contented;
For, mete them both with equal measure,
He'll find the
hardest toil is pleasure.
from
The Comic Almanack
an Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry
Tales, Humorous Poetry, Quips and Oddities, First Series, 1835-1843
Texts
Recorded
October 26, 2024
The River of Dreams - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]
trying to make a Paul Simon song
Banned Rehearsal 487 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 14, 1998]
gesturing in pitch
is immediately musical
(to our ears)
hence bird 'songs'
a medium of social intercourse
gestures and figures
musical
bricks
is a music possible
that has neither gestures
nor figures?
that is
can we hear
as music
without hearing
as
gesture and figure?
dunno
tones interrupt the stream of white noise
Spirals - Tom Baker [from Sounding The Curve]
coil springs touched in gestures
Banned Rehearsal 731 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 14, 2008]
take part in
without taking over
that way
we can cobble
together
the unimaginable
a music
arising
from autonomous agents
listening carefully
to each other
Gulabi - Sachin-Jeager [from Bollygood Volume 1]
hitching a music
to the trappings of another
applying a face
like that of a music
onto the body of another
a constant
intercourse
among musical cultures
or
transforming musics
into other musics
by means of each other
(optimal)
Banned Rehearsal 952 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 12, 2018]
(I was mistaken)
in the form of an environment
dynamic
interactive
mutually interfering
transforming
autonomotons
do we feel discomfort
in wilderness environments?
anxiety?
sound imported by radio
or recording
or sampling
can't hear
us
it is deaf to our agency
the sense in which
improvised sessions
are not only kinds of music
but also
real-time experiments
in social intercourse
mediated by such music
as it becomes
the flute and the viola
have nearly drunk themselves under their
tables
smooth and clean
as forest floors
right tidy!
Out of The Mud - Tom Varner, Neil Welch [from Out of The Mud]
music on a dense layer of sediment
Geistliche Chor-Music, Op. 11, SWV 369-397 (1648), Volume 2: XX. Das ist je gewißlich wahr - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
there is an overwhelming amount of information imparted
along with the
sacred words
Herr Christ, der einig Gottes Sohn, BuxWV 192 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
a music can operate
function
as a ceremonial articulation
what happens
while time passes
Deuxieme Ordre (re): Canaries, Doubles des Canaries - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
particulars of patternings among the ornaments
guard the simplicity of
the underlying melody
or obscure its complexity?
Invention in B minor, BWV 786 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Edith Picht-Axenfeld
repetition of a figure
arrests attention
allowing pick-pocketry
to flourish
Keyboard Sonata in C-sharp minor, Kk. 247 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
and confidences
to pass below board
Sonata in C Major, Wq. 65/41 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi
this music finds its way through a crowded space
its path is not
straight
nor steady
alone in its tonality space
uncertain of footing
Keyboard Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob. XVI:25 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
phrase set begins square and stern
is quickly ridiculed in the ensuing
holes poked in the law it lays down
very correct
while teach
is looking
Sonata in F Major, K. 332 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Alicia de Larrocha
stays in character
even in the dark
is a figure's seating
within the meter
in relation to 'one'
as potent
as its
seating
within the key?
is metrical function
up to the games
that pitch-class function
can play?
every point in the
meter
has a point
in the echo-meter
the
after-meter
the left-hand-meter
the bass-meter
is there such a thing
as a down beat in this?
the meter
has been taken apart
and re-assembled
thrown into
impatient heaps of meter bits
shaking sense back into oneself
after adventuring far afield
one
is restless at rest
glancing shadows that linger on the tongue
for a pianist
a sonata such as this
is a role
to take on
if one hears its voice
then by all means
take it on
triadic sonorities
are dissected
in plain hearing
Moment Musicaux in C-sharp minor, Moderato, Op. 94 #4 - Franz Schubert - Alfred Brendel
homophony lifted
by the imagination
of its voice leading
Polonaise in E Major, WoO 20 #26 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
clever and cheery
if slight
Six melodies pour le piano, Op. 4 & Op. 5: IV. Lento Appassionato - Fanny Hensel - Beatrice Rauchs
first figures
a note on every beat
then
only on the off
beats
balance
between this gap
at play
throughout
too much drama at the end
Via Crucis: Station XI - Jesus wird ans Kreuz geschlagen - Franz Liszt - Nederlands Kamerkoor, Reinbert de Leeuw
severe
Symphony in F Major, Op. 90 (#3) - Johannes Brahms - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Otto Klemperer
is the style of an era
something created by composers alone
or
is it as heavily
or more heavily
influenced
by the
habits and limits
of performers
of such era
leaving aside
the question
of whether such habits
were indeed
ubiquitous
or optimal
to the music at hand?
we value composers
for their originality
which aspect of anything
can be easily effaced
by prevailing habits
of course
we're all chin deep
in the same habits
an orchestra of players
who play mostly individual notes
in a line
of notes
allows those notes
to be distinguished
by means
other than touch and tone
on keyboards
a group of notes
played at the same time
more
easily becomes a chord
an object
rather than
a group
even in note glutted textures
such as this
a dance with times past
the voice
pulls a countermelody
out of the piano
composes songs polyphonically
Das Orgel-Büchlein, BV B 27: No. 8, Durch Adams Fall (After J. S. Bach's BWV 705) - Ferruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden
an arrangement
is a translation
into another time
a
recording
is an arrangement
using a performance
which
is yet another
what music is
perhaps
is
the that
that cannot be
in language?
not the remainder
but the original
before the abstraction
inflicted by reference
Poeme Tragique, Op. 34 - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti
certainly ardent
though melody
here
has a way of melting
down into the basement
A la Maniere de Borodin - Maurice Ravel - Vlado Perlemuter
the French to Russia connection
czarist's weaponized language
against the rabble
Ramble On The Last Love - Percy Grainger - Percy Grainger, Lotta Mills Hough [from Percy Grainger plays Percy Grainger]
impulse
if composing for duo pianos
or four-hands
the urge
to make it sound like a single instrument
and not
also
many
the last
dying pants
of the sentimental age
(pax
Liberace)
a human
with four arms
twenty fingers
and two left thumbs
quite correct
little surprise snide courtesy cadence
'Cause I Feel Low Down - Sophie Tucker [from That Devilin' Tune]
cabaret honkytonk
eruption of the underworld
Sophisticated Lady - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra [from Ken Burns Jazz]
bedecked with pearls
in all the right places
and curves
in
all the other
right places
Mathis Der Maler (Excerpt): "Woher Kommt Ihr Denn?" - "Die Wärme, Der Lange Weg" - Paul Hindemith - Kölner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Joseph Keilberth, Leopold Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Pilar Lorenga
weight
oppression
pushed deeper
slow
inexorable
You're Going To See A Lot of Me (with Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra) - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]
promise and threat
Sonatas and Interludes: Sonata IV - John Cage -Adam Tendler
one to one
pitch to timbre
a preparation
is a bespoke
mechanism
to alter tone quality
is this music
hiding behind its sophistication?
lingering
francophilia
as had been imported
from Czarist Russia
inside
Igor's ear
Sweet Little Rock & Roller - Chuck Berry [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo's Milieu]
incipient pedophilia?
Then He Kissed Me - The Crystals [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
fill the upper end with strings
The Lamb (William Blake) - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]
under the influence
Ramblin' Man - The Allman Brothers Band [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
another song
self divulging
the singer's own rootsiness
a
play for sympathy
just one of y'all
Statue of Liberty - XTC [from Fossilfuel]
clever in a way
a sophomoric way
tape wobble
intonation
unrepressed
polyphonic pleading
a piece like this
as much as I enjoy it
will never be more
crucial to me
than it was then
tying figurational rhetoric
to voice-leading function
(to tame
it?)
Ooby Dooby - Roy Orbison [from For The Lonely: Roy Orbison's Greatest Hits]
it was from the days
of the dance-craze craze
October 30, 2024
Banned Rehearsal 329 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [May 28, 1993]
if improvisation is real-time composition
then listeners are in the same
boat
as the players
in regard to putting it together
reading
it
as a finished product
is perverse
as a moment
as a
session
or as the entire project
this session
has lots of banging and whacking in it
lax wrist drumming
whew!
a brief respite
the amplifier must have been new
yes
just after the Cat's Life
performances
for which it was purchased
this session has a raucous start
but settles down nicely toward the
finish
{journal entry of February 7, 1998:
the amp makes its appearance
works its way
over the course of the
tape
into very tiny sounds
singular
alone
unmixed
bare
the rattle madam}
progfusion
shred and discard
do it drearily
Sounds of The Brush: Improvisation 2 - Gust Burns, Adam Diller, Keith Eisenbrey, Mike Marlin, DL Scott, Adam Weiss
as I recall this show
the group of us
that were performing
were also
the entire audience
taking various turns
at
grouping ourselves
into either camp
Raga Dhani-Tintal/Songo - Anjuman [from Rumba Meets Raga]
cultural exchange
is littoral
or simply maritime
exotic
fusion jazz
Banned Rehearsal 831 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [recorded live at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, February 22, 2013]
inclusive
of the gathering
of our throng
pre-performance
chatters
a rustling
as of the taking of seats
scraps of
sibilants to the left
marching feet
bang goes the door
we
have begun
we roll the room
I have no real idea
how many parts of this glorious din were made
Countering The Con - Greg Campbell, Bill Horist, Dennis Rea, Wally Shoup [from Wally Shoup 2X4tet]
out on a yell
spontaneous duet swapping
something about my hymnodic playing
in
this
reminds me of improvising
in free style
with Bach
Chorale samples
in my youthful piano lessons
what a great band my fellows made!
string battle grumblies
not a bad bit of wizardry that
Symphony Concertante in A Major - Johann Christian Bach - Camerata Budapest, Hanspeter Gmür
it persists
in sounding
like the material payoff
will be
in the next phrase
but
the material
is built
of
those apprehensions
and finally
the soloists are there
to
provide
Caprice in A minor, Op. 1 #24 - Niccolo Paganini - Salvatore Accardo
that launched a thousand variations
a few of his own
to get the
party started
In Session at The Tintinabulary
October 27, 2024
Broomsgrove - Keith Eisenbrey
Gradus 403 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
1
the F-sharp
mixes with the air filter
and the air traffic
not just
different sounds
but different locations
distance
air filter
a soft whine
air traffic
closer
more focused
as to horizontal
bearing
the F-sharp
quiet and insistent
stable
without being
constant
the same key
pressed the same hammer
striking the same three
wires
one ought
not
to confound
the physical
massy
persistence
of the key hammer and strings
with
any
notion
that the sounds
produced
by those pressings and
strikes
are not
unique
each and all
the sound
here
is an activated property
of the strings
within their chamber
2
the second note enters
a G
and the scene shifts
that G
has belligerence
that rubs off
even the air filter
fades
from attention
in light of their
discussion
still
there
if I remind myself
to listen
for them
October 30, 2024
Sinfonia 15 (piano) - Keith Eisenbrey
Postscripts
Drops
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
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