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June 27, 2006
Increasing Optimism
The Crunch is a blog by Guthry Trojan that takes the politics of music-making seriously.
SCORES/IMPROVISATIONS/TEXTS is a blog by Jukka Pekka Kervinen with many samples of graphic and prose scores. I still find prose scores to be useful in certain circumstances, graphic scores seem more an item of nostalgia than urgency these days, and I remain allergic whenever Fluxus flops in, but all things return and have potential to surprise.
(The illustration above may be an example of graphic notation, a Coptic manuscript, the interpretation of which is uncertain.)
SCORES/IMPROVISATIONS/TEXTS is a blog by Jukka Pekka Kervinen with many samples of graphic and prose scores. I still find prose scores to be useful in certain circumstances, graphic scores seem more an item of nostalgia than urgency these days, and I remain allergic whenever Fluxus flops in, but all things return and have potential to surprise.
(The illustration above may be an example of graphic notation, a Coptic manuscript, the interpretation of which is uncertain.)
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 27, 2006 at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)
What kind of American English Do You Speak?
| Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 65% General American English |
| 15% Yankee |
| 10% Dixie |
| 5% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Midwestern |
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
Fun little quiz, but it's a real bummer that they've not included my beloved Californian dialect.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 27, 2006 at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
Confusion
I'm totally confused about putting music online. On one hand, there is a lot to be said to just putting stuff out there. Webspace is cheap and up- and download times are brief, so it all should be pretty easy. A lot of my colleagues are going the MySpace.com route, which I've just learned is part of an evil empire. On the other hand, my rights organization (GEMA, the German equivalent of ASCAP or BMI) wants to make me pay a license fee upfront if I want to put my own music online, which strikes me as circuitous and perhaps a real loss of my own rights, rather than protection. I do appreciate the fact that GEMA does a fair job of collecting fees for physical recordings, concerts and broadcasts, and I want musicians to be able to earn a fair income from any innovative technologies for reproduction and transfer, but I don't see even the outlines of a workable plan for doing this yet. I could wax a little rhapsodic legalese over the brewing conflict between 19th and 21st century conceptions of intellectual property rights, but the issue for me is a practical and immediate one. At the moment, I'm only putting scores, occasional works and juvenalia online, things not registered with GEMA, and will wait and see about the rest. But I'm totally open to other suggestions.Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 26, 2006 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2006
Michael Gordon- Instrumental.
I've been just mundaning my way through summer, so far. Sleep, eat, work (in some form), look at computer, repeat, but at least i've had the escape of good music. There is a close-to-sublime beauty in those strings.My mother recently bought Meredith Monk's Dolman Music, Steve Reich's 1977 recording of music for 6 pianos and some Golijov. I only suggested it and to my surprise she went ahead and got them on amazon. Im waiting eagarly for their arrival.
Originally from Music in a Suburban Scene, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 25, 2006 at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
Instagon's LOB spins tunes on KDVS
Originally from The Hollow Tree Experimental Music Report, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 25, 2006 at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Charlemagne Palestine in Boston
Monday night was the kick-off concert for NEC's SICPP week. Stephen Drury presented Morton Feldman's Palais de Mari, followed by Charlemagne Palestine presenting his own Golden Mean. Drury's playing was very lovely. Though score for the piece is dry on dynamic markings (except for the initial ppp and some cryptic decrescendos), he tastefully added swells during some moments. Rather than evoke a Romantic sentimentality, it suggested more a shifting luminosity, the sun emerging from beneath clouds and casting a more golden light on the scene.He really captured the piece's sense of vertical time. Listening to it is like exploring ancient ruins. One's thoughts are caught between the present and an imagined past. Time seems to bend accordingly. When you finally leave the area you feel as if you were there for only a brief moment (and accordingly, are humbled by that reality).
Though I hardly object to the number of Feldman recordings that are available, this recital was a reminder that the concert hall is really the best place to hear his music. The physical reality of the sounds permeating through space is an essential part of it. I don't mean this in a Cagean sense of taking pleasure in sounds as they are, but that this movement seems an important part of the piece's conception and orchestration. Drury evenly balanced its experimentalism with a sense of its connection to the classical tradition.
Palestine's set was begun with a little more fanfare. He was no doubt responsible for the giant crowd that was there (people had to stand in the aisles). At the beginning of the night, Drury thanked him for the best audience he's ever had. Note to hipster-seeking performers: an interview in the Dig is a sure way to round them up.
Everything you've heard about his playing style is true. Yes he has stuffed animals all around the pianos, yes he's a flamboyant dresser, yes he drinks cognac while playing. Despite his anti-pretentious habits, I was struck by his professionalism when setting up his mise-en-scène. He placed all the animals very quickly and intently.
He became more relaxed once his performance began. He opened with a few minutes of remarks, talking about the varying reception he's gotten over the years, definitely framing himself as an enfant terrible. He said he was glad to see that there was a new generation who was open to his way of hearing sounds. He talked a little about how his relationship with Feldman (the similarities end with them both being Russian Jews from Brooklyn), and made the usual comment about how much Feldman's personality differed from his music. This struck the audience as a joke, to which a surprised Palestine explained that he was just stating the facts.
He began playing by creating a drone by running a finger around one of his glasses. After a little, he sang along with it (he explained beforehand that he always got into a trance state before playing). Golden Mean begins as a motoric unison (using two pianos) and expands to a variety of other similarly hammered out sounds.
His interest seemed to be not in the fundamental pitches, but in the elusive harmonies found in the farther reaches of the overtone series. He didn't always play both pianos at the same time, though their sustain pedals were weighted down so they would always resonate. At a few points, Palestine sang in a modal fashion over the pianos, usually vocalises or what sounded like Hebrew. He cried "sound is sound!" a number of times throughout.
Palestine seems very concerned with creating a spiritual music. I think he would agree with Feldman and say that sound is his only deity, but they definitely have different notions of what that deity is. Palestine's music, despite its flirtations with Eastern thought, struck me as being very animist. All his hammering seemed like it was trying to tap the same energy reached by the man-animal deities that surrounded the pianos.
The audience's reaction to him was raging, loud and effusive (hipsters being hipsters, I suspect his swashbuckling stage manner and theatricality, with its dips into childhood imagery, had a lot to do with their enthusiasm). He shouted "sound is sound!" a few more times as he paced the stage, closing the show.
Originally from Form/Content, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 23, 2006 at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
D.I.Y.
I heartily recommend Nicolas Collins' (1) new book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (Routledge 2006). This is a nice introduction to one of the paths in music experiments, one that began with independent and subversive tinkering with the remainders of the military-industrial-scientific world and has continued to be lively with the added jetsam of the digital era. Whether building useful little amps, mics, and oscillators, or laying hands on the entrails of discarded radios, this handbook is a nice way into a world where intuition and trial-and-era can play a greater role than those theory lessons you've probably long forgotten from high school Physics lab or machine shop anyways. The author's prose is sometimes a bit vivid for my tastes, managing to sustain a higher one-liner-per-paragraph-ratio than either Abby Hoffmann or Tom Robbins, but maybe that's a good thing, because the subject is one that you can probably take in best in small doses. My son (who'll turn 13 in two weeks) and I have already worked our way through a few chapters, and it sure beats the Boy Scout Manual for cool and noisy things to do at home, while matching the Boy Scout Manual point-for-point on the quality of the safety guidelines. Merit badge well deserved Mr. Collins!
___
(1) Let me get a possible conflict of interest out of the way: Mr. Collins and I were both students of Alvin Lucier. He studied with Lucier at a time, a few years before mine, when both he and Lucier shared an interest in applying electronics to their music, while by the time I got to Wesleyan, the post-analog, not-quite-yet-ready-for-prime-time-digital era meant -- for me -- that figuring out what to ask voices and instruments to do seemed more urgent. I entered grad school retired from both soldering (never solder on a pool table) and programming (nothing worse than entering Buchla hex code into a cassette recorder), and have basically avoided doing both ever since, although a certain summer project (2) looks likely to change that.
(2) More about that later.
___
(1) Let me get a possible conflict of interest out of the way: Mr. Collins and I were both students of Alvin Lucier. He studied with Lucier at a time, a few years before mine, when both he and Lucier shared an interest in applying electronics to their music, while by the time I got to Wesleyan, the post-analog, not-quite-yet-ready-for-prime-time-digital era meant -- for me -- that figuring out what to ask voices and instruments to do seemed more urgent. I entered grad school retired from both soldering (never solder on a pool table) and programming (nothing worse than entering Buchla hex code into a cassette recorder), and have basically avoided doing both ever since, although a certain summer project (2) looks likely to change that.
(2) More about that later.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 23, 2006 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
An Invitation: The First Online Book of Consort Lessons
Quite a few composers write ensemble pieces in an "open" format. The instrumentation is not fixed beforehand, and can be played by a variety of ensembles. Others aspects of the work may be open as well: the form may be modular, with the order of parts, numbers of repetitions, or total duration variable; it could be composed of a single line that becomes an ensemble (think In C) or already divided into parts, equale or with contrasting ranges.
There have been collections of music in the past -- the Attaignant Dance Prints or the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book or C.F. Peter's collection of Walzes -- through which one can get a playable snapshot of musical activity in a single environment. I propose now to do the same for our contemporary consort music and to put online a collection of scores for ensembles with variable or flexible instrumentation.
So here's an invitation to send me a PDF file of a score, which will be put online at a site to be established. This is not a commercial publication offer, no commissions are offered and none will be paid, all composers will retain whatever rights that they assign to the own scores. (Advice: put a clear copyright notice, clearly identifying the title, your name, the copyright year, the name of your rights organization - ASCAP, BMI, GEMA etc. - and add some information on how to contact the composer in order to directly report any performances.) (Please send scores by email to djwolf ATTTT snafu DOTTTT de with "Consort" in the subject line.)
The purpose of this project is, first and foremost, to get pieces played, and the possibilities of reaching professional players in this way are real and serious. However, I will admit to an ambition beyond that, perhaps a naive ambition: wouldn't it be extremely cool to get together in the evening with a handful of musician friends, download some of the latest scores for open ensemble, and just play some music? Composers of "serious" music have been undervaluing amateur (in the best sense of the word) music-making lately, and the distinction between the music played by amateurs and professionals strikes me as artificial, a remnant of the 19th century masterwork ethic, with a discouraging effect on the prospects for building a repertoire that reaches across a continuum of performance conditions. If this project works out, we can think about a similar book of music for piano, or four-handed piano, or percussion, or flute, or recorder, or a book of songs or madrigals, but let's try this now and hear what happens.
There have been collections of music in the past -- the Attaignant Dance Prints or the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book or C.F. Peter's collection of Walzes -- through which one can get a playable snapshot of musical activity in a single environment. I propose now to do the same for our contemporary consort music and to put online a collection of scores for ensembles with variable or flexible instrumentation.
So here's an invitation to send me a PDF file of a score, which will be put online at a site to be established. This is not a commercial publication offer, no commissions are offered and none will be paid, all composers will retain whatever rights that they assign to the own scores. (Advice: put a clear copyright notice, clearly identifying the title, your name, the copyright year, the name of your rights organization - ASCAP, BMI, GEMA etc. - and add some information on how to contact the composer in order to directly report any performances.) (Please send scores by email to djwolf ATTTT snafu DOTTTT de with "Consort" in the subject line.)
The purpose of this project is, first and foremost, to get pieces played, and the possibilities of reaching professional players in this way are real and serious. However, I will admit to an ambition beyond that, perhaps a naive ambition: wouldn't it be extremely cool to get together in the evening with a handful of musician friends, download some of the latest scores for open ensemble, and just play some music? Composers of "serious" music have been undervaluing amateur (in the best sense of the word) music-making lately, and the distinction between the music played by amateurs and professionals strikes me as artificial, a remnant of the 19th century masterwork ethic, with a discouraging effect on the prospects for building a repertoire that reaches across a continuum of performance conditions. If this project works out, we can think about a similar book of music for piano, or four-handed piano, or percussion, or flute, or recorder, or a book of songs or madrigals, but let's try this now and hear what happens.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 23, 2006 at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
Landmarks (12)
Alvin Lucier: BIRD AND PERSON DYNING (1975) Lucier could have entered this landmark list several times already -- I AM SITTING IN A ROOM (can you think of any other piece from the '60s with the same staying power?), MUSIC FOR SOLO PERFORMER, MUSIC ON A LONG THIN WIRE, CROSSINGS, or NAVIGATIONS FOR STRINGS might still appear -- but BIRD AND PERSON DYNING (and audio and video version here) isOriginally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 21, 2006 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
Landmarks (13)
Johannes Brahms, Trio, Op. 40, für Waldhorn, Violine und Klavier in Es-Dur (1865) Because I like it. (Okay, I could point out some amazing technical features, especially metrical, and those involving the problematic but rich instrumental combination, but it's really on the list becuase I like it, so that ought to be enough. I heard it in when I was 13, played by Hermann Baumann, Eudice Shapiro,Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 21, 2006 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
An Extraordinary Rendition
I await with interest the result of the (SNCF) French state railway’s appeal against the recent historic judgement condemning it for nazi collaboration during the Second World War by running trains of extraordinary rendition.
Presumably we can expect a raft of similar claims following the alleged use of a number of privately owned charter jets for similar purposes more recently. Although the process of tracing many of the plane’s owners often collapses in an interminable paper chase, some planes are clearly registered to people or companies that do actually exist. The legal representative of the law firm, which according to the Boston Globe represents the owners of one such plane, was unfortunately“not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for reasons I don't know,"which seems an oddly impenetrable excuse. Another, which according to the Daily Kos and the Boston Globe belonged to Phillip H. Morse, vice chairman of the Boston Red Sox, was also used by the CIA to fly to Guantanamo Bay and other overseas destinations.
I can only hope that those suffering the ignominy of illegal abduction were able to elicit some small pleasure from their luxurious mode of travel in the Gulfstream 5 before enduring years of torture and imprisonment without trial. Georges Lipietz and his associates were less fortunate in 1944: they were sent 3rd class and transported in cattle wagons.
Written evidence of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Originally from The Crunch, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 20, 2006 at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
Beauty in crude recordings?
well, maybe not beauty, but hopefully its not too boring. I just recorded myself playing on top of a recording of me playing on top a recording of an improvisation.* I like the results. Its in a very free cannon structure dominated by one 3 note theme.*here is the first recording which is the basis of the whole thing.
Anyway, im just glad to be home!
Originally from Music in a Suburban Scene, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 19, 2006 at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
In the repertoire
Today would have been Stravinsky's 124th. A friend pointed out a review by Terry Teachout of the new, second volume, of the Stravinsky biography by Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky, The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971 . The review focuses on two areas, Stravinsky's relationship with his family and with Robert Craft (the man for whom we now reserve the profession of ananuensis) and theOriginally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 18, 2006 at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2006
Nixon in China/Reagan in Space?
John Holbo at Crooked Timber reminds us of one of those wtf? moments in American diplomatic history:
"I couldn't help but -- one point in our discussions privately with General Secretary Gorbachev -- when you stop to think that we're all God's children, wherever we may live in the world, I couldn't help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species, from another planet, outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries, and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this Earth together. Well, I don't suppose we can wait for some alien race to come down and threaten us, but I think that between us we can bring about that realization."
-- Ronald Reagan, remarks to the students and faculty at Fallston High School in Fallston, Maryland, December 4, 1985
This is posted as yet one more reminder that recent American political history, as momentarily lively as it may get, is seldom the source of potentially operatic material. Had Mars actually attacked in 1984, I doubt that we'd be seeing the revivals of Nixon in China that grace our stages these days.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 17, 2006 at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
SICPP 2006
Originally from Form/Content, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 15, 2006 at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
Treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads
The Finnish national broadcaster YLE Radio 1 has the most extraordinary treasure trove of historic MP3 downloads on their website. I can't even list the riches available, but the artists include Dinu Lipatti, Pablo Casals, Alfred Cortot, Kirsten Flagstad , Yehudi Menuhin, Arturo Toscanini, and many, many more. There are lots of downloads for each artist, and the technical quality is very good. The whole site is in Finnish, but navigation is intuitive. Just select the artist from the left hand side list, then select the Real Audio or MP3 hyperlink under the composition. Each download has a spoken introduction of around 20 seconds in Finnish, but don't let that put you off. This is an extraordinary discovery. I am listening to Toscanini conducting the adagio molto e cantabile from Beethoven's 9th as I write - beautiful. Here is the link, and many thanks to reader Walt Santner for the heads-up.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Discovered - the online Arnold Schoenberg jukebox
Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 14, 2006 at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)
Taint Modern
At the end of his recent Guardian article, ‘Isms come back with a vengeance’ Adrian Searle worries that the problem with the Tate Modern is its popularity.
Not a new problem for art museums and galleries: the Museé du Luxembourg here in Paris, to name only one, is regularly full to bursting point and the queues that extend around the building by day, and on occasions, late into the night, show no sign of shortening even inside the exhibition hall. But visitor numbers for the Tate exceed the Pompidou Centre, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim in Bilbao.“It is difficult to see how it can reasonably cope with the volume of visitors, many of whom will have little chance to pause and savour either individual works or their new contexts. They won't get the gags, they won't be moved or touched. Instead, they'll be crushed.”
So how is it that the plastic arts are able to wallow in a popularity that the art of serious music can only crave? Deyan Sudjic in an Observer article [May 1 2005] covers most of the ground in explaining the Tate’s laudable success although he swiftly glosses over the fact that entry to the museum is free, which I’m sure is of more than passing significance.
The Beeb and the usual pundits made much of the series of free downloads that were available from the BBC last year – expressing astonishment that “The take-up has been absolutely enormous!” While the rather more cautious, considered response from Noseda now seems laden with a certain amount of satirical pessimism.
"I'm thrilled that our performances have reached such a large, new audience and hope this trial will encourage more people to experience and enjoy orchestral music live in concert."I wonder if it has?
Both of these examples are unquestionably marketing success stories; the former, for reasons explained in Deyan’s article, and because museums remain high on the cultural tourist’s itinerary; the latter because large numbers of people now have conspicuously redundant, acquisitively hungry portable media devices hanging about their necks.
Classical music – or at least the idealised sound of classical music - still has a certain cachet. By appealing to widespread dilettantism it inspires an intellectual elitism, which is why it remains popular in film scores, and why orchestral samples pervade serious news bulletins, ads etc. However, shifting the audience’s transitory interest from the periphery to the core is quite another matter: a matter not of marketing, but of education.
To make any sense of the statistics we’d need to know a few more details. For example: what proportion of the average 103-minute visit do Tate Modern visitors actually spend looking at paintings - as opposed to ascending and descending the various stairways, visiting one of the largest art bookshops in the world and pondering the range of hot or cold beverages? Similarly, we’d need to know how many freeloaders were sufficiently impressed or inspired by wall-to-wall Beethoven to cough-up their hard-earned cash and attend a live performance?
Adrian Searle needn’t worry; if the Tate becomes over-popular they can always starting charging an entry fee. Besides, Nicholas Serota, (the Tate’s director) is struggling with a rather different problem:
“…to deal with the single greatest challenge facing the Tate - its inability to afford to buy new works in an exploding art market. We need people to give us great works.”And we need musicians to give us great performances – and we too are unable, or unwilling to pay.
Originally from The Crunch, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 14, 2006 at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
More experimental music newsbits
Originally from The Hollow Tree Experimental Music Report, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 13, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
Ligeti
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 13, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
Dept. of Short-Lived Ideas
I had the notion of applying for press credentials and blogging from the Darmstädter Ferienkurs this August. But before dashing off an email, I took a look at the program (featured composers: André,
Aperghis, Furrer, Hölszky, Hosokawa, Lachenmann, Mack, Reudenbach) and better judgement took over.
Okay, I might drive down to hear something by Dieter Mack, but the combination of this program (bleak, grim, bleaker, grimey, grimmer) and sweltering, dusty Darmstadt in August is just not promising stuff for a "what I did in my summer vacation" essay.
Okay, I might drive down to hear something by Dieter Mack, but the combination of this program (bleak, grim, bleaker, grimey, grimmer) and sweltering, dusty Darmstadt in August is just not promising stuff for a "what I did in my summer vacation" essay.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 13, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
In the garden of secret theories
I entertain a suspicion that most musicians have -- at least within the privacy of our ateliers, rumpus rooms, redoubts and cloister cells -- rather idiosyncratic ways of thinking about what we do when we make music. With time and experience, you come to certain understandings with the muse: the terms and metaphors you use to describe music, its parts and its attributes, the habitual networks of associations with which you tie those parts and attributes together, and the external sentiments we attach to both parts and their connections.On the one hand, this is simply the personalization of the theory that we have received through institutions and teachers, but I think that it is both more and less than that. Personalizing puts weights and values on systems and structures that come to us from "official" music theory with a certain degree of value neutrality. But a personal, private, theory is under no obligation to be either complete or internally consistant, demands that are reasonably made of public theories. (Personal theories are not validated by the truth or logical consistancy of the theory, but by the character of the works and performances they help bring into being.) And personal theories can make connections among repertoire that represent the individual's experience and taste, and that repertoire has no need to be understood as coherent in any terms other than the individual's experience and taste.
The metaphor can come from anyplace. I was told once that the composer Robert Erickson described tonal functions in terms of a baseball diamond. I could well imagine other sporting metaphors (cricket, mumblety-peg, poker, and thoroughbred racing are my preferences) or handwork or programming or even a culinary tact. Algorithms have considerable currency, and an individual algorithm has metaphoric character: given the difficulty (indeed, impossibility) of finding the shortest algorithm required to produce a given work of music, any given algorithm is going to have something arbitrary and tentative about it. (For what it's worth, I used to think about the relationship between algorithmic discipline and impromptu handwork in my own music in terms of tending header on a wheat harvester. (1)
I have a couple of theoretic notions that I keep coming back to in my work, and I like to think that I am able to keep them rich by avoiding or postponing the expression of these notions in formal terms. Perhaps at risk of public doubt of my complete sanity, I'll mention a few of these. One is the notion of a field, a space in which musical materials are assembled.(2) The space could be organized along some strict metric -- pitch height or class, a tuning lattice, a row box, or a Partchian diamond or one of Erv Wilson's Combination-Product Sets -- or it could be filled in some random way, a one dimensional list, or one of Cage's multi-dimensional charts (as in the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra or the Music of Changes), or the pools of material found in some of Christian Wolff's "cuing" pieces. I often think of my scores as paths across such fields. These paths might be random, or weighted, or patterned, or could be forced to follow a kind of gravity. (For example, if you think of the primary, root position, triads in common practice tonality as positions in a series of fifths IV -- I -- V, common practice allows any move to the right, but only moves of one step to the left). Another notion dear to me is that of spacing -- how pitches are assembled vertically. I pay close attention to gaps and densities in the spacing, and often times the choice of a new pitch will come more immediately to me from spatial rather that functional harmonic considerations. I've come to recognize three basic spacing structures: one in which intervals get smaller as frequency increases, in this resembling a harmonic series, I call "harmonic", another when intervals get smaller as frequency descends, I call "subharmonic", and a third, in which intervals are more or less equally distributed, I call "neutral" or "equal". (It's not neccesary that these relationships be precisely harmonic, equal/neutral, or subharmonic, juat the rough characterization suffices). As this is purely a private theory, I'm not going to formalize it, but I do believe that on the basis of a spacing model, you could construct a reasonbly complete description of species counterpoint, tonal harmony (major/minor, consonant/dissonant) or even orchestration (clear/muddy, thin/dense etc.).
---
(1) Yes, it is often a good thing that private theories stay private.
(2)In my catalog, there are a number of pieces which come directly out of this : Field Study, Crossing The Field, Fieldwork (String Quartet II.), Afar Afield, Farther Afield, The Art of Fielding. Aside from sharing the notion of the field as a point of departure, these works have little in common.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 13, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
Experimental music news roundup for Sunday, June 11 2006
Originally from The Hollow Tree Experimental Music Report, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 12, 2006 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
Free for the plucking
Prickly Paradigm Press is now putting several of its older titles online in PDF format. PPP publishes small books, mostly from social scientists, or those on the edge thereof, and I've found the PPPs that I've read to be thoughtful, playful, and a nice departure from my everyday scholarly music reading (how about some German here: Alltagsmusikwissenschaftlicheslektüre)(!), especially when there'sOriginally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 12, 2006 at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2006
A walk in the woods
from an
interview
, Lawrence Weschler on Norman O. Brown*:
... I took a walk with him—this must have been 10 or 15 years ago—in the forest outside Santa Cruz. And he was saying, “It’s all been a huge mistake.” I said, “What’s been a mistake?” He said “Freud, Marx, wrong, wrong, wrong.” I said, “What are you talking about.” “Chance,” he said. “I never took chance seriously enough. [John] Cage should have been my master.”
___
*I was also fortunate to have Brown as a teacher. I will forever be in his debt: he was patient with my words, he presented me to John Cage, and blessed my graduate study with a recommendation to go to Wesleyan. Officially "Professor of Humanities", and originally a classicist, in the end that which he taught his students, following the example of Charles Olson, was posture, and if composing is about anything at all, it's about posture. Try this: the next time you play or listen to a piece of music, ask yourself if the composer has posture? Has she or he taken a stance towards sounds or silence? Towards the world, towards you, the listener? Does the composer love the world enough to risk the inherently violent act of putting sounds into it in order to change it?
... I took a walk with him—this must have been 10 or 15 years ago—in the forest outside Santa Cruz. And he was saying, “It’s all been a huge mistake.” I said, “What’s been a mistake?” He said “Freud, Marx, wrong, wrong, wrong.” I said, “What are you talking about.” “Chance,” he said. “I never took chance seriously enough. [John] Cage should have been my master.”
___
*I was also fortunate to have Brown as a teacher. I will forever be in his debt: he was patient with my words, he presented me to John Cage, and blessed my graduate study with a recommendation to go to Wesleyan. Officially "Professor of Humanities", and originally a classicist, in the end that which he taught his students, following the example of Charles Olson, was posture, and if composing is about anything at all, it's about posture. Try this: the next time you play or listen to a piece of music, ask yourself if the composer has posture? Has she or he taken a stance towards sounds or silence? Towards the world, towards you, the listener? Does the composer love the world enough to risk the inherently violent act of putting sounds into it in order to change it?
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 11, 2006 at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)
Consorting
It's time to put in a good word for those composers who have put ensembles together to play their own works, and works by like-minded musicians. And special praise goes to those ensembles that respond to scores with open, or flexible, instrumentation, and open or modular structures. (I hereby propose a project: an online "Book of Consort Lessons", an open-ended collection of scores, flexibly orchestratable, and adjustable to resources at hand.)I am a great partisan of Bratislava's "middle-class orchestra" Požoň sentimentál (sorry but their web site appears to be a bit dismantled at the moment), with a basic instrumentation of flute, violin, piano, and accordion, they are a kind of K.-&-K.-era salon orchestra, playing originals by the four members as well as arrangements of everything from salon standards to Schoenberg. A fascinating take on Kitsch and life in central Europe.
If you are fortunate to be in the LA area on the 24th, you can hear three such ensembles in one evening, those led by Paul Bailey, Jon Brenner, and Lloyd Rodgers:
REALNEWMUSIC FESTIVAL, SATURDAY JUNE 24TH
TOTAL EARCANDY: PBE's LATEST FLASH-BASED MUSIC COMPOSITIONS ADDS SWEET FLAVOR TO DIGITAL MUSIC COLLECTION.
June 9th 2006
Expanding on its line of acoustic and digital music,the Paul Bailey Ensemble today announced a new series compositions designed sure to be a feast for the ears as well as the eyes and come in such tasty colors as coconut white, tropical ice blue, and licorice black.
These new products incorporate our most coveted features in a fresh design that's unlike anything in the market today," said Kelly Davis, senior product manager for at the Paul Bailey Ensemble. "They're a playful and easy way to enjoy live performance; just listening at them makes you want to smile." The compostions are easily played back using both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis music files, in addition to supporting WMA and WAV formats. They are compatible with Itunes ™ online music store and include Itunes ® software to import, manage and transfer music collections.
Becoming available at retail stores and at authorized dealers nationwide, the ensemble will be giving a special demonstration of these new products at the realnewmusic festival on Saturday, June 24th at Whittier College. Pricing is flexible, Tickets are $10.00 /$7.50 (students and seniors or anybody two for $10) .
At the conclusion of this event the ensemble will distribute an optical disc that connects directly to a PC for the process of transferring music. These discs provide up to 5 hours of continuous playback and feature a quick-change function that enables individual selection of your favorite musical products. In fact, through recent changes in our distribution system you can access any of this material online for a small fee.
info:
Kelly Davis
Hakim M. Bey
Division of Public Safety
Paul Bailey Ensemble Inc.
314-228-1700
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jodru on Jun 11, 2006 at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2006
New posts impending
Originally from The Hollow Tree Experimental Music Report, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 9, 2006 at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2006
Knowing when to stop
Remember the Magic Fingers
TM machine? Once upon a time, they were installed in motels everywhere, a coin operated gadget that would shake the bed for a few minutes in return for a quarter. I suppose that it was someone's idea of a mechanized massage, but that someone was probably a Calvinist of some sort who had never actually experienced a real massage. But the Magic FingersTM machine did have one great, if unintended, attribute: it felt so good when it stopped.
When everything has gone well, a composer has that same feeling when a piece is finished, especially when all the loose ends are covered: parts made, errors corrected, posted or faxed or emailed in time for the deadline. But if the composer harbors any doubts at all, the strangest, emptiest, feeling can set in. You're not sure if the piece works or not, or if you have really done all the work, or if you have gone too far, meddled a bit too much with something that was better off the way it was before you started mucking about. Or maybe the piece was no good to begin with and no amount of adjustment is ever going to fix the thing.
When I have the luxury of a far-off deadline, I like to tinker with my pieces, especially when it comes to details. I like to load up my notation program with a half-dozen scores, decide which one works least well, and then go in and work on that one first, and then a bit on the others. Then I go through, reassess the rankings, and begin again. This process has the benefit of elevating the general level of quality, but carries the risk of going to far and throwing out some good material along the way (confession: I am miserly with my disk space, lazy about saving interim versions of pieces, and have no intention of changing these habits). It also has a slight masochistic quality to it: by continuously delaying the end of a piece, I am sustaining the euphoria of the compositional experience in exchange for delaying the feeling of satisfaction that comes with completion. Some composers work fast and never revise, others are serious revisors, taking years, if not decades to finish pieces. Analyse this if you like, but I think it takes all kinds to keep our musical lives lively.
When everything has gone well, a composer has that same feeling when a piece is finished, especially when all the loose ends are covered: parts made, errors corrected, posted or faxed or emailed in time for the deadline. But if the composer harbors any doubts at all, the strangest, emptiest, feeling can set in. You're not sure if the piece works or not, or if you have really done all the work, or if you have gone too far, meddled a bit too much with something that was better off the way it was before you started mucking about. Or maybe the piece was no good to begin with and no amount of adjustment is ever going to fix the thing.
When I have the luxury of a far-off deadline, I like to tinker with my pieces, especially when it comes to details. I like to load up my notation program with a half-dozen scores, decide which one works least well, and then go in and work on that one first, and then a bit on the others. Then I go through, reassess the rankings, and begin again. This process has the benefit of elevating the general level of quality, but carries the risk of going to far and throwing out some good material along the way (confession: I am miserly with my disk space, lazy about saving interim versions of pieces, and have no intention of changing these habits). It also has a slight masochistic quality to it: by continuously delaying the end of a piece, I am sustaining the euphoria of the compositional experience in exchange for delaying the feeling of satisfaction that comes with completion. Some composers work fast and never revise, others are serious revisors, taking years, if not decades to finish pieces. Analyse this if you like, but I think it takes all kinds to keep our musical lives lively.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 8, 2006 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
Pastimes
So I happen to run into two composing colleagues in the Main Train Station here in Frankfurt. We have a few minutes to chat before the trains start to leave. Turns out that we all had something in common besides our vocation: we're all insomniacs, and we all agreed that when all else failed, there was nothing that went better with that insomnia than televised hold 'em poker at 3:00 in the morning.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 8, 2006 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
Left Coasters
Here are two great resources for West Coast experimental music, that I've been meaning to post for a good long time:
The first is the Other Minds Archive at the Internet Archive, including much from the tapes of KPFA, the Bay Area Pacifica station. (I like this concert of works by composers mostly connected with the S.F. Tape Music Center (I like the Ramon Sender aquarium piece segueing into the Leedy Octet: Quaderno Rossiniano), this autobiography by Henry Cowell, and this 1947 rehearsal recording of Stravinsky conducting the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. There are also treasures by Lou Harrison, John Cage, Robert Ashley, Harry Partch and many others. It is disappointing, though, not to have anything by Robert Erickson, for a time Music Director at KPFA, a fine composer and an important teacher).
The second is a document archive collected by the late Jim Horton.
Both of these resources are Bay Area-centric. We really need some similar resources for Los Angeles, but I suspect that it would be a much more difficult topic to cover. L.A. is spread-out in all ways, centerless, and anything that isn't solid (and much of that which is) simply melts into air. But then again, that's why it's called the City of Angels.*
---
* Okay, I know that it's the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels on the River Porciuncula but I couldn't resist.
The first is the Other Minds Archive at the Internet Archive, including much from the tapes of KPFA, the Bay Area Pacifica station. (I like this concert of works by composers mostly connected with the S.F. Tape Music Center (I like the Ramon Sender aquarium piece segueing into the Leedy Octet: Quaderno Rossiniano), this autobiography by Henry Cowell, and this 1947 rehearsal recording of Stravinsky conducting the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. There are also treasures by Lou Harrison, John Cage, Robert Ashley, Harry Partch and many others. It is disappointing, though, not to have anything by Robert Erickson, for a time Music Director at KPFA, a fine composer and an important teacher).
The second is a document archive collected by the late Jim Horton.
Both of these resources are Bay Area-centric. We really need some similar resources for Los Angeles, but I suspect that it would be a much more difficult topic to cover. L.A. is spread-out in all ways, centerless, and anything that isn't solid (and much of that which is) simply melts into air. But then again, that's why it's called the City of Angels.*
---
* Okay, I know that it's the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels on the River Porciuncula but I couldn't resist.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 8, 2006 at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006
Steering the customer
From my Inbox today:Dear Amazon.com Customer,After considerable deliberation, I have decided to pass on this particular item. Nevertheless, my curiosity about Lord Andrew's contributions to extended instrumental techniques has risen from nil to slightly more than negligible.We've noticed that customers who have purchased The Contemporary Violin: ExtENDed Performance Techniques (The New Instrumentation) by Strange Patricia also purchased books by Andrew Lloyd Webber. For this reason, you might like to know that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Andrew Lloyd Webber Classics (Andrew Lloyd Webber Classics) will be released in paperback soon. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 35% by following the link below.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 5, 2006 at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2006
Benjamin Brittten's relationship with children
From early in life, Britten had close relationships with handsome teenagers. On his side, there was often a sexual attraction. The boys themselves were sometimes unaware, sometimes complicit. Ronan Magill, the last such figure in Britten's life, wasn't conscious of the charge in their relationship at the time, but says now: 'If he did [feel attraction], then I'm glad that he did - if I could make him think that way for even five seconds.'
When it comes to the question of how far attraction was physically expressed, Bridcut sometimes leans on the evidence. In 1936, Britten invited Harry Morris, 13, on a family holiday in Cornwall (Britten's brother and sister and their families were also present). According to Morris, Britten came into his room one night and made what he understood to be a sexual approach. The boy screamed and hit his host with a chair, attracting the attention of Britten's sister, Beth. Harry returned to London in the morning.
With Pears installed as a sort of combined spouse and chaperone, favourites were welcomed but limits were set. The chosen boys tended to be more or loss posh, and both sensitive and sporty. For Britten, the essence of boyish beauty was movement, which was why he made Tadzio in Death in Venice a dancing role. (See photo above). Parents were usually grateful rather than suspicious (Ronald Duncan willingly made over part of the parenting of his son, Roger, and forwarded his school report).Innocence and sensuality seemed to co-exist in Britten, as they do in children, but an adult's innocence must always be held to account. He was lucky. There was gossip, but never quite scandal, though in himself, by virtue of being an artist with an obsessive outdoor streak, Britten combined the two arch stereotypes of the corrupting homosexual - the aesthete and the scoutmaster. Bridcut mentions a day of composition, rehearsals and performance into which he managed to cram four swims.
To describe an aspect of Britten's relationship with children, Bridcut uses the term 'paedocratic', not a word that will widely catch on, perhaps. Britten liked children to be in charge. The freer they were, the better he liked it. He never talked down to children and, in sports, never lost by choice.
From today's Observer review by Adam Mars-Jones of John Bridcut's new book Britten's Children. A brave, and highly commendable, piece of publishing by Faber. It tells, for the first time, the full story of Britten’s love affair in the 1930s with the 18-year-old German Wulff Scherchen, son of the conductor Hermann Scherchen. As Paul Hoggart of The Times commented, ‘this type of love belonged to an emotional landscape that has vanished for ever, and we are the poorer for it’. Follow this link for Richard Morrison's perceptive Times article on the TV documentary from which John Bridcut's book is a spin-off. Now playing - Britten's Holiday Diary and the music for one and two pianos. A wonderful anthology of Britten's piano music 
composed and revised between 1923 and 1969. Played by Stephen Hough and Ronan O'Hara on EMI Classics 567492. The cover painting is by the English artist Henry Scott Tuke who worked in Falmouth in Cornwall between 1885, his work in this style made him a pioneer of gay art.
Image credit - Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, Opera Company of Philadelphia production from Stevenrickards.com, Britten from Britten-Pear Foundation Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to I am a camera - Britten's Aldeburgh
Originally from On An Overgrown Path, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 4, 2006 at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)
If the form fits
Over at the Sequenza 21 Composers' Forum, Jodru asked about "Relevant Forms": By relevant, I simply mean forms that have some sort of social significance, beyond their historical interest, and in my view, there are only two: Opera The Album (and by default, its constituent element: the Song) Non-relevant forms? Sonatas, Symphonies, Concerti, Fugues (and many many more).I wrote: The questionOriginally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 4, 2006 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
Practicing theory
Checking up on a few Wikipedia music theory articles, I found a few discussion pages where articles were critiqued for not representing "standard music theory". While the articles in question may well have had some genuinely unorthodox aspects or even contained the -- in Wikipedia forbidden and dreaded -- "new research", this line of criticism hung, however, behind the great fig leaf of music education, the notion that there is a "standard music theory". In practice, most of what is called "music theory", even well into a university-level education, is, in fact getting command of notation and some terminology, with the goal in the best cases of attaching that notation and terminology onto real sounds as an useful ancillary to performance and perhaps some composition. Few students are made explicitly aware of the diffences between music theory as an analytic or synthetic activity, and many students are confused by the relationship between the physics of musical sounds, the perception and cognition of musical sounds, and the cultural construction known as music theory. Further, very few music students leave even a graduate education with any understanding of the breadth of music theory, whether as analytic theory (concerned how existing works of music were put together, are heard, and possibly what they "mean") or as speculative theory (concerned with how works of music might be put together or heard).
I am at best, a casual theorist (besser auf Deutsch: Teilzeitmusiktheoriekonsument), but I have found theory to be useful and even essential to my odd combination of interests, and admire serious music theory as an intellectual pursuit with depth, relevance, and unexplored potential. Writing now as a trained ethnomusicologist who has closely observed theorists in the wild, allow me to offer three observations about the practice of music theory:
(1) Music theory is parochial. Music theory is sometimes practiced within national boundaries, sometimes within networks of theorists or institutions. Comparing the best selling harmony books in Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Russia, or the US can be a startling experience. The premises and the notations can be wildly different. (This has very practical professional consequences: without recognizing the boundaries or networks, is may be difficult for a musician or scholar to make contacts or advance professionally. Tangentially relevant aside: In my own case, I think I aced the music GRE because I happened to notice that the chair of the Music GRE Board at the time was a Berlioz scholar. Sure enough, at least one of the 100 questions had to do with Berlioz; whether or not Berlioz was worth 1% of an exam attempting to cover music theory and history with at least token references to non-western and popular music was besides the point, which was: knowing something about Berlioz is worth something on this test).
(2) Music theory is provisional. The nature, extent, and limits of music are not known, and it is far from known what criteria would a "final theory" of music would have to fulfill. We are probably stuck for the foreseeable future in the state of waiting for better theories to come along. This is an active area of research but at any given time, it has probably been explored more thoroughly through innovative composition rather than theory.
(3) Competing theories of music do not neccessarily contradict or invalidate one another. They may complement one another, filling in each others' lacunae, or tracing the alternative paths in a music which is, in fact, ambiguous, or, in many cases, they may be equivalent, alternative ways of describing the same phenomena. While there may be some institutional power to be had in forcing the hegemony of a single theory or complex of theories, I remain persuaded that having as many theoretical tools available as possible is both more sustainable intellectually, and more humble in the face of the complexity of music.
I am at best, a casual theorist (besser auf Deutsch: Teilzeitmusiktheoriekonsument), but I have found theory to be useful and even essential to my odd combination of interests, and admire serious music theory as an intellectual pursuit with depth, relevance, and unexplored potential. Writing now as a trained ethnomusicologist who has closely observed theorists in the wild, allow me to offer three observations about the practice of music theory:
(1) Music theory is parochial. Music theory is sometimes practiced within national boundaries, sometimes within networks of theorists or institutions. Comparing the best selling harmony books in Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Russia, or the US can be a startling experience. The premises and the notations can be wildly different. (This has very practical professional consequences: without recognizing the boundaries or networks, is may be difficult for a musician or scholar to make contacts or advance professionally. Tangentially relevant aside: In my own case, I think I aced the music GRE because I happened to notice that the chair of the Music GRE Board at the time was a Berlioz scholar. Sure enough, at least one of the 100 questions had to do with Berlioz; whether or not Berlioz was worth 1% of an exam attempting to cover music theory and history with at least token references to non-western and popular music was besides the point, which was: knowing something about Berlioz is worth something on this test).
(2) Music theory is provisional. The nature, extent, and limits of music are not known, and it is far from known what criteria would a "final theory" of music would have to fulfill. We are probably stuck for the foreseeable future in the state of waiting for better theories to come along. This is an active area of research but at any given time, it has probably been explored more thoroughly through innovative composition rather than theory.
(3) Competing theories of music do not neccessarily contradict or invalidate one another. They may complement one another, filling in each others' lacunae, or tracing the alternative paths in a music which is, in fact, ambiguous, or, in many cases, they may be equivalent, alternative ways of describing the same phenomena. While there may be some institutional power to be had in forcing the hegemony of a single theory or complex of theories, I remain persuaded that having as many theoretical tools available as possible is both more sustainable intellectually, and more humble in the face of the complexity of music.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 4, 2006 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
Ever more optimism
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 4, 2006 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
What's wrong with this sentence?
Over at the New Music Box, I read the following:
Orchestra Summit 2006If that's an "industry" then it's about as advanced as the Morgan Motor Company. I mean, seriously, do we really want to speak of orchestras as industrial? That's risking a market environment in which I do not believe most musicians are prepared to compete, and I suspect that the introduction of industrial production values may adversely affect product identity. From an industrial point-of-view, it is silly that Morgan still has a woodshop, puts the wheels on first so that the cars can be rolled up and down the hill from shop to shop, and use very few power tools, but those are exactly the elements that make the Morgan's identity as a "hand-made" motorcar so charming and enduring. The endurance of the orchestra as an institution is also in large part due to charm -- evening dress with tails, horsehair bows, coughing between movements, that person in front of the orchestra noiselessly gesticulating -- and it's hard to say what a loss any retreat from these charming elements would mean.
No one denies that we all want performances of new orchestral work that composers, musicians, and their audiences will look to with pride and satisfaction. Six key industry players discuss ways of reaching that goal and the hurdles that remain in our path.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 4, 2006 at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006
We were robbed and didn't even notice
Finally, and for a broad audience, a persuasive case is made that the official results of presidential election of 2004 did not reflect the will of the voters. I'm generally a sceptic about things like this, but if someone set forth to rig an election, this article describes just about the optimal way to do it: not through a single large activity, but through simultaneous smaller, and apparentlyOriginally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 2, 2006 at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2006
Mr. Grumpy Strikes Back
Taking part in late May in a festival organiszed by Trinity College of Music centred around the music of Frederic Rzewski, I went along to Blackheath Concert Halls as a member of the London COMA ensemble.At the early evening rehearsal Mr Rzewski criticised the speed at which some of the students performing with us were playing a percussion section - they had to walk, holding an instrument and the music while playing. He argued that they should have learned the music, even though they explained had only received the music recently and were in the middle of exams.
During the concert performance of the piece, he was heard telling one of the same students to 'get a move on', or words to that effect, as they walked past him performing his piece. He did not acknowledge the applause for this piece, or respond to the conductors attempts to identify him in the audience. Nor did he respond to the applause for the other piece of his played in the concert.
As for his music - sophisticated de-construction and re-construction of revolutionary songs, but much of it seemed to me rather dull - in that concert at least. The pieces seemed to me to be playing clever games with the material in a way not necessarily evident, even sub-conciously, by the audience, and I found it hard to see the point of it.
Originally from New Music Notes, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 1, 2006 at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
The Band and the Bagpiper
Southwark Concert Band gave one of its bi-annual concerts in mid-May - YAWN - another community Band does a concert!But the following things were interesting:
- we have been working with the students of Deptford Music Centre, located in one of the most deprived parts of London. We had visited them to rehearse pieces. For the concert, they visited us and played in half of the concert. They and their tutors were thrilled. Their parents, in the audience, seemed equally thrilled.
- we performed Gagarin by Nigel Clarke. We always try to include one piece which will challenge both our players and our audience in each concert. Clarke's piece on the first space man, Yuri Gagarin's, account of his trip round the Earth, was dramatically effective, and hight recomended. To our astonishment, Nigel Clarke turned up unannounced for the concert from his home in Brussels.
- and then there was the bagpiper - we had programmed a piece called Songs of the British Isles by Barrie Hingley, an arrangement of famous songs from each of the four countries in these islands. We managed to coax the audience to sing along, and them when we arrived at Scotland, gob-smacked them with a piper marching in playing Road to the Isles, dressed in full regalia. Never mind that he was a Canadian student we came across busking in central London.
Originally from New Music Notes, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 1, 2006 at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
Dorodango
Dorodango: lumps of mud polished into shiny spheres, made by small children in Japan.
A good Freudian would blame it on early childhood training: some musicians need to get everything perfect, every detail accounted for, every surface polished and neat; others need to leave some things unfinished, unsaid, a bit messy, uneven; most musicians probably find themselves between these extremes, balancing or oscillating. But I think that there's probably a better music-evolutionary reason for this particular form of biodiversity: it keeps our musical lives lively and interesting, full of variety, even if the basic materials available to us are all pretty much the same.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 1, 2006 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
First things first
"The first casualty when war comes, is truth" - Hiram Johnson, Governor of California (1910-1917), US Senator (1917-1945), co-founder of the Progressive Party.
I guess the present adminstration decided to cut to the chase. They went ahead and let truth fall even before the war began.
I guess the present adminstration decided to cut to the chase. They went ahead and let truth fall even before the war began.
Originally from Renewable Music, ReBlogged by jeff on Jun 1, 2006 at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)