Playlist

 Preface

"A score is a stimulus. to specific expressive events. to, that is, experientially realized creative activity.

There are primary and secondary creative activities. depending on the depth of expression elicited from you.

A stimulus to creative activity you value for its specificity. The greater its specificity as a stimulus the more potent its capacity to engender and participate in an episode of creative activity associated with it.

Stimulus specificity. which, liberates ideas in direct ratio to its distinctness. is easily confused with coercive specificity as to literal detail. If a stimulus has the effect in a given episode of creative activity of being coercive as to literal detail to some extent: to that extent, its stimulation is specific, but of something other than primary creative activity. at most of some form of secondary creative activity.

To the extent that a quest for 'correctness' ('compliance') replaces a quest for the maximum awareness of specificity of stimulus in the interest of specificity of response: primary creative activity is unavailable."

- Benjamin Boretz "(1/81)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

October 28, 2020

Jazz: The Second Century - Night Two - Watch Party
Earshot Jazz

Cha - Carol J Levin, Heather Bentley, and Solvej Noa (Amelia Love Clearheart)

Ray Larsen

EarthtoneSkytone - Kelsey Mines, Carlos Snaider

Rae - Abbey Blackwell, Ronan Delisle, Evan Woodle

the river
is wide and level 

smooth
up to the brush
that crowds the banks 

the ancient bed
is unknowable
its depth unspecifiable 

bright sky
bright water 

equidistant

Recorded

October 25, 2020

Variation, Fvb 7 - Ferdinando Richardson - Claudio Columbo  [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]

the running notes
float weightless
among
the pillars of homophony 

I want
to refocus
my attention
to the pillars 

one could think of Chopin's C Major Etude as being similarly configured - running notes and slower melodic/contrapuntal spine - but not as gracefully accomplished

Bransle de la Torche - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

these old courtly dances
I presume they are courtly
else why would they have been kept at all
are derived
from even older courtly dances
(we presume or I do) 

the act of writing down
or transcribing
music  
from the demotic
to the aristocratic
becomes composing
it throws cultural grit into the machinery of demotic, unwrit, tradition  

Suite in E minor, BuxWV 237 - Dietrich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

moves in all directions at once
all the time 

a devious cabinetry

Huitième ordre (si mineur) -  François Couperin - Rafael Puyana

voices playing peekaboo games among the keys
hiding in the tetrachords 

spider silk macramé 

a flattering portraiture
each of his subjects is dressed
in all the fancy gewgaws
and latest doodads

those are some ferocious chords down there Frank! 

keep to the straight way
of manly virtue
and rejoicing shall be yours

Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp minor - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

a lovely duet
the prelude is 

ingenious
sequences of  
multiply chromatic
approaches to the structurally penultimate
threshold 

Sonata in F Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

is this about scales
I think so
then tonguing

Sonata in A Major, Wq. 48/6 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Miklós Spányi

tiny monkey hands
taking music apart from the inside 

no dramatic necessity here
necessity here
is geometric

Adagio in F Major, Hob.XVII.9 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

he flings flowers
in a down the wedding aisle flower flingy way

Sonata in D Major, K. 381 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Keith Eisenbrey, Chris Vincent [recorded during service at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, September 30, 2018]

Mozart is alive here
to the theater
of the mechanism
that two people making this happen
make happen

Sonata in C Major, Op. 20 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

charming and full of tricks
fully engaged entertainment
he's showing all this to us 

now see what you can do

Sonata in G minor, Op. 49#1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

a sonata for playing in tempo never veering 

how many times has this been rescued from vinyl?
presumably some or all of:
from 78 rpm dubplate to 78 rpm master
from 78 rpm master to 78 rpm production
from 78 rpm production to 33 1/3 rpm master
from 33 1/3 rpm master to 33 1/3 rpm production
from 33 1/3 rpm to indexed memory locations

and more intermediate steps than that no doubt

October 26, 2020

Symphony in B minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert - The Met Orchestra, James Levine

a quicker tempo than to which I am accustomed
it misses something important
vastness 

sounds great
but the moments don't sink in 

now appropriate for the small screen
Il Commendatore

October 27, 2020

Etude in C Major, Op. 10#1 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded in 1942]

there is a quartzy hardness about this music
it wants to sing
but is only capable
of etching the surface
on rare moments
when it glances
at just the right angle
so that the light
might just catch it
at it

String Quartet in A minor, Op. 41#3 - Robert Schumann - Quatuor Via Nova

melodies spill off the ends of melodies into the framework
the opening section
exposition to those who insist on music appreciation lingo
has no stable metrical locations
anywhere 

advantage counterpoint 

statements are answered by forked tongue questions 

poly-chambered in that
the walls hold them in space
they don't always agree
where they are
all at the same time

Elijah, Part I (beginning) - Felix Mendelssohn - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney, Henriette Schellenberg, Florence Quivar, Marietta Simpson, Jerry Hadley, Richard Clement, Thomas Paul, Reid Barteleme

what stands for piety?
oratorical structures developed for the stages and orchestras and choirs of a previous century
in bloated Romantic modernization 

Elijah champion of the old order 

reasonable expressions
appropriate for the occasion
gussied up Enlightenment fan fiction

October 29, 2020

Ein Faust-Symphonie - Franz Liszt - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Beecham Choral Society, Thomas Beecham, Alexander Young

relay
baton pass
progression
traces the logic
brick upon brick
tissue upon tissue 

Faust opening and Gretchen opening
have similarities in procedure 

as in
how the batons pass

motives are sequences of ordered pitch intervals
slotted into segments of metrical and key function locations
all parts and slottings are malleable
linear melodic thinking
the melody is making this music as it goes
as a listener we are right in there with it in 3rd person audiential

Postscripts

will be years and a half and boughs and trunks

and stumps of possible brief open country

some bright lake or pool broad river so

open olive lakes

nascent arid tactics

everything cold

Playlist

Preface

"We cannot afford to deprive ourselves of our own expression by conventionalizing or institutionalizing our talk, or our thought, or our music; not because that is wicked, but because it deprives us of what we most need from those outlets, what we lusted after in the first place so as to find ourselves energetically engaged, for life, with them."
- Benjamin Boretz "Talk: If I am a musical thinker. . . " from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

July 1, 2020
Free - Kaley Lane Eaton, Jesse Myers

lesson plan
shaped like a wave in a mirror
with commentary
in both vid & aud

language and shadow

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

June 27, 2020
Young Scientist - James Husted, Marc Barreca

dawn on the sea of electric doohickies
weather mild
breezes wafty

gentle bells clang the hull
solar cells upcharging
we start to move

we may be further out there
than we had imagined
in no hurry

escape assured
contact intermittent
inconsequential

the ministrations of the maintenance mechanisms cleanses our solitude

June 28, 2020
Rae - Abbey Blackwell, Ronan Delisle, Evan Woodle

bass, guitar, drums
moods with rooms to wander into
or that wander through
solos supported with care
(early Renaissance Fancies with Points go similarly)
(see Fitzwilliam or My Ladye Nevell)

compositional idea:a strand that stays throughout, though decorated and melodically and rhythmically following a set of stylistic/structural guidelines. The delight is in just how subtle one can manage to be.

July 3, 2020
Haley Freedlund (w/ Kyle Bruckmann, Evelyn Davis, and Phillip Greenlief)

chattery introductions to start
get an ear for the room

now we are all looking in the same direction, at the same body, on the same slab
our activities congrue
we are shown elicitations of phenomena
arcane potions aerify
in the billows of which refractions of light configurate
the results are discussed

see here
one says

some issues are well known
so we can scroll quickly through them
to show the larger shape of the argument

this one has a squeaky wheel
what can we do about it?
it is counterexemplified

episodes are punctuated from each other with episodes of silence and relaxation of attention
(the social cues for one piece then the next piece)

pre-planning is allowed, score-like
another social cue for this is a piece:
a piece: the set of all physical objects, inscriptions, episodes of sound, episodes of production activity, and episodes of experiential activity, which congeal into a mental image of itness or thatness

{stray spontaneous spoonerism: Teeming Power of Leeza}

we've played this game before
and play it again
because it is a fun game to pleasure our time with

a performance practice is a shared concept or set of concepts

game-based, as in play a game of piece making
(blessed are the)
this one may as well have written down notes
probably does, without problems, they are perfectly fine notes for this game

when musicians gather to listen to each other wonderful things happen often

Recorded

June 27, 2020
Sonata Fantaisie in G-sharp minor - Alexander Scriabin - Michael Ponti

The fantasial introduction finds an uncertain path to a key region with restless portions, not just working out how Chopin's fingers felt, but also how meta his use of tonality was.

Symphony #2 - Charles Ives - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Harold Farberman

The National Composer of Cranky New England
(counterpoint was not his forte)
with an overlay of americana scrapbook and library paste
inert

Try as he might, and try he does, there is no way he is capable of constructing a tonal process that doesn't strangle itself immediately. His mind wanders in dreary slogs. Music is above him, hence his cantankerous defensiveness.

modulations in gray
prose and dull prose at that
the plod thickens

patriotic sentimental quod libet
try some fire works to finish it off

Symphony in C Major (#3) - Jean Sibelius - Grand Orchestra Symphonique Radio Television USSR, Guennadi Rojdestvenski

Now there's an ear for vital tonality, we're with him all the way. So sly! The ground here is alive with urgency, vistas open and come alive. Virtual head rush.

Those folk-like tunes: (he owns these, knows where their weaknesses lie). Duration games to distract us as the eruption prepares, strung out along the motor chain. Triumph so proud!

June 28, 2020
A Winter Landscape - Charles Tomlinson Griffes - Michael Lewin

an apassionato landscape
some particular painting?
or a music as a painting?

4 Canciones Campesinas - Igor Stravinsky - members of the Orquesta del Teatro Nacional de la Opera de Paris and Coros del Teatro Nacional de la Opera de Paris, Pierre Boulez

bespoke ensemble
two brass instruments and women's voices
sharply drawn

a set of matching greeting cards
the balance or ratio between what matches between the cards and what kinds of details count as identity

Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer (December 2014)

spacious opening
long spaces between word groups
word groups of numerous lengths and complexities.
It's a while to go so it's a while in getting going. I think he'd rehearsed himself hoarse.

grace before glutton

echo heh.
active audience noise is never in the way, but sudden, repeatedly

thing mud

A story is a kind of thing that might show up in this string of text. Was I holding it? Chapel ghost in fine form

||:||: thing :||: mud :||:||

the hub bub caused in Edinburough

June 29, 2020
Háry János Suite - Zoltán Kodály - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

five-note melodic groups

amplified mandolin or dulcimer?

cimbalom

I looked it up
the amplification of it is a problem

there is an issue with non-standard-issue-orchestra instruments, having to do with cultural supremacy. noted. but also they need to be hired special under the current regime. which is more a reason to avoid orchestras than to not use the instrument.

Bugle Call Rag - Elmer Snowden [from That Devilin' Tune]

hop the beat
keep it tight
keep it hot

21 Years - Carson Robison Trio [from Evans 78s]

relic of a slice
of america outside of blues & broadway
small theater variety show early radio
non-threatening folksy

My local colleague Nat Evans recently shared a collection of 78 RPM records that his grandfather had collected.

June 30, 2020
Symphony #1 - Bohuslav Martinů - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

maximum lush
everything is choral
a joint effort
no sound is made alone

there are not trees
only forest
ritmato tunes bounce off the geologic shelves of other tunes
bouncing

everybody is dressed alike
sinking back behind the curtain soon

The Minotaur - Elliott Carter - New York Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

a shift in point of view
this is witness music, not hero music
newsreel post cinema music
a new mimesis of time
not opera scenes, ballet works better
bodies without words

July 1, 2020
Castor & Polux - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble

robust

These are people making these sounds for those gathered in a real room.

full frontal

Peggy Sue - Buddy Holly [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

I think the drummer left their snare on.
or an echo that responds differentially to each tom tom tom

the guitar solo comes on a bit strong, over done

Reap What You Sow - Billy Stewart [from The Best of Billy Stewart]

"a what a"
echoed by sax

Eye Myth - Stan Brakhage

caught in ecstatic webs
the device is deactivated

nine seconds goes by fast
watched it 5 or 6 times

When Children Pray - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon [from LWS Betty's Picks]

low hum constant relic, artifact

God Save The Queen - The Sex Pistols [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

carefully arranged and recorded with nothing left in that doesn't sneer

July 3, 2020
Hi Ho - Aaron Keyt - Jill Stroming, harp; Monique Buzzarté (members of the UW Contemporary Group (ca 1982))

Aaron Keyt, seated, with guitar and case

asks the unanswered question
rubs chin (avuncular)
starts to really look
at the question

what else is it asking?

that spaced out harp rhythm is making it for me tonight

could it be arranged for piano solo, or clavichord? I'd like to play it.

Totus Tuus - Henryk Górecki - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw [from Evocation of the Spirit]

wallows in it
a souped up anthem with pretensions of big A Art
for cathedral, but honestly, kind of tacky in comparison

the ending keeps on ending without end

this could go on all night

and he signals the actual end
at far too long last at last

with yet another

presumably written out

in rhythms

ri-

tar-


dan-



do




In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 29, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 1004 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1004 200629

It was the 36th Bannediversary. Karen, Steve, Aaron, and I gathered in the yard and porch, masked, and Neal phoned in from Lake City Outpost. It was our first session together since March 9.

Postscripts

eighty-seven slim nil and none

incredible that she should perform her

work of love in god effects how comes it

remove quantification

focus on reality

for a change

Playlist

Recorded

January 4, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 55 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer - November 1985

 

tuning or just plucking - talking - moving microphones

heater expanding sliding down onto a Steady Rhythmic Texture

(problematic because SRT is hard to stop - SRT precludes a choice)

lo and behold the whole becomes more invested the moment SRT does finally stop

but Wild Thing (Neal) intrudes again - De Imitatione Troggi

once that is over the sound in progress re-emerges

then Anna gives Wild Thing a come-hither slant - probably the best performance of them all, if that is what we wanted

at the end we construct a din, whew!

 

Cape Alava trail, Olympic National Park, Washington

January 5, 2014

Gradus 183 - Neal Meyer - November 2010

 

Gradus concerns itself, through the entire expanse of its conceptual scope, with a dialogue about identities. At it's root end, the tokens of identity are individual key strokes, conversing in series and in conjunction. Each sequent decision builds, over time, a field of variations, and, over bigger time, larger-scale fields of variations of fields of variations. But all is seen from the inside, the shape of its experience forming itself like the trace line of single starling in flock.

 

Sonata in D K.284 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

January 7, 2014

KEE JR 851114 - Keith Eisenbrey, John Rahn - November 1985

 

I remembered making this tape at John's house but I had forgotten, or didn't realize then, how fabulous it is. Admirably minimal and transparent, with a lovely soft hum that morphs as we move about - a commentary on the shape of the space. It is really two separate sessions, the first and longest with small instruments (monochord? ocarina?), and the second on bassoon (John) and cello or bass (me). If my memory serves me correctly it is also the first time I heard a CD. I believe the music was by Janacek.

 

Agogic - Andrew N. D'Angelo, Cuong Vu, Luke Bergman, Evan Woodle

 

A crack team.

Mission: to instantiate through independent cooperation complex environments in which individuality can emerge, but never as the whole of the whole.

Some notes as it went along:

1. bass drum heavy parallel play short hockety interlocks

2. quick hyper

3. slow reverbery

4. crack team, see above

5. lyric (drumming mirrors amplifies comments textures

6. starts like R&R but trips, trips, trippingly - like an extended Buster Keaton riff

7. receding back into the past

 

Keyboard Sonata in C Hob.XVI:35 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

 

figurations distracted to find themselves of a sudden wearing new clothes.

 

January 8, 2014

Banned Sectional 18 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - November 1985

 

Starts with some texts: If I Am A Fishy Thinker (with commentary), then some freeform, and then we rehearse Neal's Three Songs, finishing up with yet another Wild Thing.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

January 6, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 850 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

We welcome a new face.