aworks :: "new" american classical music

Improvement (1992). Robert Ashley

I can think of two composers whose music used to baffle me and now captivates me -- Harry Partch and Robert Ashley. I'm listening to Ashley's Improvement for the first time. I don't "get it" yet but can't wait to hear more of it.

To a lesser degree, I feel the same about Captain Beefheart as do others:

What speaks to me in Beefheart's music is a fearless combination of total out-there avant-gardeness and the primordial simplicity and heart-grabbingness of the blues in a way that seems completely natural, as opposed a lot of high/low-culture-mixing experiments.

The Fourth of July (1960). Robert Ashley

Cahiers du Corey and Stephen Hicken have posted their holiday playlists for the American Independence Day. Here's mine:

• Fourth of July. Robert Ashley - From the Once Festival in the early Sixties, this starts out as an audio verité version of what may be a holiday barbecue and turns into esoteric radio noise. Spirited and not as unpleasant as you might think. Originally recorded on WUOM public radio, for those of you within range of the Ann Arborösphere.
  
• American Woman. Guess Who. - A Canadian perspective.
• Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. Stephen Foster. As played by violinist Leila Josefowicz.
• I Got Rhythm. George Gershwin.
• Raw Silk (A Rag). Nurit Tiles. For a rag, it's quite emotionally expressive.
• The Beatles 1962-1970. John Cage. To honor our former British political heritage. By the way, Tim Rutherford-Johnson has linked to a comprehensive (and phenomenal) musical analysis of the Beatles canon - all 212 songs in-depth.
• North American Ballads: Winnsboro Cotton Blues. Frederic Rzewski. Powerful use of the lower registers.
• Rodeo: Ranch House Party. Aaron Copland. A raucous first half, by Copland standards anyway.
• Parchment. Julius Hemphill. As played by Ursuala Oppens.
• Why Does Someone Have to Die? Philip Glass. From The Hours soundtrack.
• Symphony No. 3. Roy Harris. Last and probably best.

And this just in, Language Log reports of a dangling modifier in the Declaration of Independence but calls the document overall a "masterly and beautiful piece of writing." Wikipedia lists many Declarations of Independence although the American version was apparently the first one to be called that. Our declaration was unilateral, by the way.

Finally, thanks to our neighbors for not shooting off fireworks all day, thereby keeping the dog sane and the dry grass untorched.

Notes on the Once Festival and Ashley's Fourth of July:

On July 4, 1960, Ashley tested a new parabolic microphone by recording the sounds of a friend's Independence Day party. He combined these party sounds with a previously composed electronic work built from a series of tape loops, creating a dramatic eighteen-minute composition that begins with a jumble of nature and party sounds—background instrumental music, animal noises (birds, cat), talking, laughter, children playing, glasses clinking—that rise in a gradual crescendo until they are overtaken and then superseded by electronic noise.

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Alan Theisen, on Sequenza21, also goes with the more diverse approach to American Fourth of July music.  And, he doesn't want to hear about Dvorak:

(Oh, and anther thing - Dvorak's "New World" Symphony is not, nor ever will be, American music. Period. End of story. The next time I read something about Dvorak's piece "ushering in the American symphonic style", I'm going to go insane.)