aworks :: "new" american classical music

Robbin's Nest (1947). Illinois Jacquet and Charles Thompson /sax and gratitude/

At lunch today, I was listening to the late saxophonist Warne Marsh and then the late saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. Compared to the more relentless music I often listen to, it was good to hear the soft and fast music of the former and the surprisingly smooth tones of the latter. Little did I know I was going to draw from such serenity later.

This evening, I was driving as usual on 101, in this case, in Redwood City. First up was Signal by Brian Eno in a so-so remix. Then, it was Aphex Twin's Rhubarb. Finally, as I pulled into the exit lane and began to slow down due to heavy traffic, it was the noise of two cars smashing as I got rear-ended by the guy behind me. As he tried to swerve onto the shoulder, his car made a glancing blow on mine, launching me back into the on-going traffic lane. I somehow managed to change my trajectory back out of traffic without spinning or flipping or colliding with all those other cars, making it safely to the shoulder. Yikes.

The CHP guy bent my car back into shape so I could drive home, although I wonder if the lasting result will be to develop a psychological aversion to the music of Aphex Twin. Dunno but Jacquet's Robbin's Nest (Alternate Take) sounds particularly soothing again tonight.

From a 1994 NY Times concert review:

The concert opened with Mr. Jacquet and his band gliding effortlessly into some of its best material. Mr. Jacquet's band recalls the Count Basie orchestra of the 1950's, glossy and smooth and the perfect cushion for Mr. Jacquet's hard sound. He and the band performed an early hit of his, "Robbins' Nest," taking the tempo at a restrained pace that suggested power held in reserve.

Study No. 11 (1948-60). Conlon Nancarrow

I'm listening to the new recording by Jürgen Hocker of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano -- one through twelve on this CD. It's interesting music and this recording uses "two precisely synchronized original Ampico player pianos."

In small doses, this precise music can be exciting. For an entire CD, the lack of color is wearing. I'll keep listening but I look forward to someone's future rendition via computer software in the colorful manner of the Ensemble Modern orchestral arrangement.

Hocker has also recorded player piano versions of Ligeti's Etudes. Hearing this right after the Nancarrow makes for an interesting contrast -- not as rhythmically unusual, not so methodical, and less melodic, but even more of a fascinating blur. Humans also play this music? Amazing.

conlon nancarrow: work list chronology by kyle gann

Eleven Intrusions (1949-50). Harry Partch /amazon recommends american classical music/

Here's what I saw upon entering amazon.com:

American Music
Celebrate the legacy of American classical music. Browse through our list for suggestions on such greats as the contemporary John Adams or the ever-popular Aaron Copland.

›             American classical music

The recommendations don't particularly capture the "new" of "new" american classical music but click on the American classical music link for a rather good starter set of "legacy" CDs. The Barber, Ives, Partch, Glass, and Reich have been essential to my American classical music education and the Griffes is a recent favorite. Still don't like Howard Hanson, though.

Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1954). Quincy Porter /real poncho or sears poncho?/

Via serenadeingreen, Paul Reale tears apart the Pulitzer Prize winners in music including Quincy Porter's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra:

Another dated noisemaker from Sears.

Other concertos on the hit list include John LaMontaine's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Roger Sessions' Concerto for Orchestra, Mel Powell's "Duplicates": A Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Christopher Rouse's Trombone Concerto, Melinda Wagner's Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion, Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra, and Yehudi Wyner's Piano Concerto, "Chiavi in Mano."

Amidst the carnage, he is kind to Barber's Piano Concerto:

This concerto in one of the pillars of American repertoire and has actually made it out of the Pulitzer bin into the concert hall.

A quick check of the American Symphony Orchestra League has Jennifer Higdon's Percussion Concerto as this season's most performed American concerto.

pulitzer winning concertos available in full on free napster: none
pulitzer winning concertos available as clips on free napster: trombone concerto
(probably) most popular american concerto on free napster: gershwin's concerto in f
on tomorrow's whrb orgy: harold shapero
frank zappa "sears poncho" references: mystery science theatre 3000. wikipedia

String Quartet (1960). Terry Jennings

Terry Jennings' String Quartet was just performed as part of the Minimalist Jukebox festival at Disney Hall in Los Angeles...

Mark Swed: As much an exploration of low volume as the Orb is of high, the quartet contains little more than a handful of chords or pitches that last a long time and are played at dynamic levels within the pianissimo and pianissississimo range. If you've spent too much time around electronica concerts, you've likely lost the hearing needed to perceive this music.

Johnny Chang (one of the performers): The concert last night went off. Well not entirely - the first piece, String Quartet of Terry Jennings, was even more difficult for the audience than it was for us. [coughing. snickering. cell phone at the 28'50" mark]

Zach Behrens: The "drone-inspired, modal, repetitive," extremely quiet and delicate work gave room for a chorus of antiphonal coughs, throat clearing and shuffling feet. These small, but constant sounds foreign to the piece, made it even more beautiful in that sort of "you are a noise nerd" way.

In addition to audience noise, the concert included Riley's In C. The reviews imply a future for contemporary music as well as a future audience for the LA Philharmonic.

4' 33" (1952). John Cage /video/

terminal degree on experiencing John Cage's 4' 33" for the first time:

What I found the most interesting about this work was the tension that was created (dissonance, if you will) through imposed "silence"--which was anything other than truly silent. Resolution came only after the work was finished.

And Stephen Hicken on 4' 33" performance practice:

The emptiness of Cage’s structure is filled with the unintentional sounds of the audience, the heating/air conditioning machinery, outside noises, etc. These sounds occur during performances of other pieces, too, but we work (with greater or lesser degrees of success) to keep them from our consciousness. Cage asks us do the opposite in 4'33", and a good performance makes that easier to do. If a performer camps up the beginning and ending of the movements, the effect is lessened, much as the effect is lessened in a performance of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata if the important structural points aren’t articulated, for example.

String Quartet in Four Parts (1950). John Cage /itunes signature maker/

Jason Freeman's iTunes signature maker is a Java applet that analyzes your iTunes library and creates an audio signature of selected contents. In this case (MP3 here), it's twenty of my highest-rated tracks:

• Musica ricercata: III. Allegro con spirito. Pierre Charial, Barrel Organ; Francoise Terrioux, metronomes; Jurgen Hocker, player pianos. Ligeti Edition 5 Mechanical Music re-import
• John McLaughlin. Miles Davis The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Disc 1)
• String Quartet In Four Parts - 4. Quodlibet. LaSalle Quartet LaSalle Quartet - Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Mayuzumi, Cage
• Summertime. Miles Davis. Blue Moods
• La Forme. Kraftwerk. Tour de France Soundtrack
• Un Grand Sommeil Noir (Orchestral Version). Riccardo Chailly; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Varese - The Complete Works (Disc 1)
• Megamix. Tranquility Bass. Reich Remixed
• Music in Twelve Parts: Part 3. Philip Glass Ensemble. Music in twelve parts (disc one)
• Epistrophy - Thelonius Monk. Monk In Paris: Live At The Olympia
• Satyagraha (Act 3, Conclusion) Bruce Brubaker. Music for Piano by Philip Glass and John Cage
• Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles). The Arcade Fire. Funeral
• Pastoral Composure. Matthew Shipp. Pastoral Composure
• I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band. The Dust Blows Forward - An Anthology (Disc 1)
• Leroy Kyrie. The Tallis Scholars / Peter Phillips John Taverner / Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas
• Symphony No.2 "Antar" Largo - Allegro Giocoso. Bergen Philharmonic Dmitri Kitaienho. Rimsky-Korsakov. Symphonies 1-2-3 Caprricio Espagnol-Russian Easter festival
• Shadow And Act. Junkboy. Wire Tapper 13
• Prelude For Piano Trio (1924). Music From Copland House. The Chamber Music Of Aaron Copland
• All Along The Watchtower. Bob Dylan. John Wesley Harding
• Un Grand sommeil Noir (Original Version). Chailly - ASKO Ensemble. Varese Chailly 2
• In A Silent Way/It's About That Time. Miles Davis. In A Silent Way

The ensemble fragments get lost in the mix versus the jazz and vocal but an interesting summation nonetheless. Think of it as the aural equivalent of Jen Vetterli's mood boards.

Jason Freeman works here.

Epistrophy (1947). Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke

For some reason, I completely lost interest in the music of jazz musician Thelonious Monk. I used to find it captivating but for the last decade, his music became one-dimensional and lifeless. And then...

via Emusic, I downloaded Epistrophy from Monk in Paris: Live at the Olympia, a 1965 recording. Maybe it's the recording, maybe it's saxophonist Charlie Rouse, maybe it was in the context of other music I heard last night, or just maybe my ears are ready again for the world according to Monk. In any case, wow.

I burned through my monthly allotment of emusic downloads last night with tracks by the Ying Quartet, eighth blackbird, Paul Moravec, and in a bit of nostalgia, ELP playing Copland etc. plus  cover versions of tv soundtracks for Batman, Mission Impossible and Hawaii Five-O. Of the nostalgia, only Batman proved worthy. I admit all that only so I can point out I now have to wait until next month for the rest of the Monk album.

From emusic:

The show closes with "Bright Mississippi" and a moving reading of "Epistrophy," leaving listeners left in a kind of awe at the joyous, brilliant, and bright offering this band laid before a European audience nearly 40 years ago.

NPR streams Epistrophy as played by Monk and John Coltrane.

A Hand of Bridge (1959). Samuel Barber

I used to have a soccer blog but it was tedious for me let alone any readers. In any case, for the next six months, I may show surprising interest in music from Italy, the Czech Republic and Ghana. Related, the News Blog has the best prediction so far for next year's soccer World Cup in Germany:

But a win in Germany would likely bring back the Cup to the UK, if the English fans don't refight WWII in the process.

So, I'll be seeking out Italian-American, Czech-American, and Ghanian-American composers. Only Gian Carlo Menotti and his Pulitzer-winning The Counsel comes to mind but I'll keep working on it.

Reading Menotti's bio, I see that he "wrote the libretti to Samuel Barber's operas Vanessa and A Hand of Bridge." I'm not familiar with the latter but the Wikipedia description intrigues:

A Hand of Bridge, a nine minute opera composed by Samuel Barber with libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti, is one of the shortest operas that is regularly performed. It consists of two couples playing a hand of bridge. During the opera each character has a short arietta in which they express their internal monologue. The soprano laments not loving her now dying mother while she was still well. The contralto recalls a hat she saw in a shop window erlier in the day. The tenor recalls an ex-lover and wonders where she is now. Finally, the baritone fantasizes about what he would do if he were as rich as his boss "Mr. Pritchett."

Uh oh, I identify with several of those characters...

---

A quick search points out Tomas Svoboda and I suppose Dvorák has relevance here. Amazon, via this interesting list of African American composers, also turns up a CD I want.

******** (1958-60). ****** *****

Via Fred, M., and Lynn. Ok, classical music memes complete with simple html markup don't happen very often so I better jump on this one while I have the chance. Of course, this being aworks, the composer list is skewed -- after all, I don't even care what I think about Havergal Brian...

Stravinsky	yawn
Schoenberg	infuriating yawn
Tallis	cool
Glass	overly prolific but cool
Adams	great and/or yawn; love the orchestration
Reich	percussion great; vocals mostly annoying (apologies to TSR's cool Tehillim friend)
Copland	cliched but great
Roy Harris	one great, rest yawn
Bernstein	tuneful and unfocused [yawn on that assessment -editor]
Nancarrow	better performed by humans (apologies to that noted net music person who emailed me and who probably wouldn't think much of this meme)
Corey Dargel	not prolific enough (give this man a recording contract, please)
Ives	indescribably awesomely authentically complicated
Carter	complex but yawn (again, apologies)
Carl Stone	electronically cool
Virgil Thomson	writerly cool
Riley	unironically cool
Cage	zenfully cool
OSU composers	huh?
U of M composers	aiee! (apologies to my fellow native Michiganders; since I previously made an obscure slight of the composer I am thinking of, I've cloaked the name of this post)