aworks :: "new" american classical music

Set of Two Movements (191?). Henry Cowell

With 46 plays, Henry Cowell's High Color from Set of Two Movements is #3 on the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004. This is the MP3 on epitonic played by the Bay Area's own Sarah Cahill. I have to say with my focus this year on American music from the last century, I have really grown to appreciate the pianists who are playing this repetoire. I see that Cahill has some local concerts upcoming in January and February, including works by Beglarian, Rzewski (in a kids concert!), and Blitzstein.

Hilary Robinson says this about the Cowell CD:

The performances brim with enthusiasm and affection for Cowell's music, simultaneously communicating an immense joy in the physicality of playing the piano that it unleashes in a manner true to the spirit of its composer.

For me, this was also the year of Henry Cowell, the Menlo Park native and son of bohemian parents -- his mother, sixteen years older than her husband, was forty-five when she had Henry, and wanted to raise her son to be:

free, independent, progressive, literate, versatile, devoted to nature in both its scientific and poetic aspects, versed in religious tradition but skeptical, and perhaps above all, devoted to art.

I am quoting from Brigham Young professor Michael Hicks' Henry Cowell: Bohemian, the catalyst for my exploration of Cowell's music this year.

#4 Glass, #5 Glass, #6 Cage/Harrison, #7 Ives, #8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

Metamorphosis (1988). Philip Glass /2004 #4/

With a play count of 44, the Aleck Karis recording of Philip Glass' Metamorphosis Two is #4 on the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004. For no apparent reason, I only listened once this year to Metamorphosis One but I really like everything on the album.

Paul Cook liked the performance, hated the music:

Pianist Aleck Karis obviously cares for these pieces; his touch is loving and very confident. He is particularly good at capturing the meditative character in the five sections of Metamorphosis. Unfortunately, there's nothing Mr. Karis can do for the music if it is restricted to simple melodies repeated in predictable patterns.

David Hurwitz loved both:

But there's more variety here than meets the eye, particularly in the five-movement work called Metamorphosis, where the whole point isn't how the piece starts, but rather how the music develops (differently in each movement, as it turns out)...His [Aleck Karis'] silky sonority and solid sense of rhythm consistently beguile the ear, and the final result, gorgeously recorded, makes the best possible case for this obstinately seductive music.

While I have other ideas for the aworks new years resolutions, getting more music by Aleck Karis (and Anthony de Mare, for that matter) should be on the list.

Joan Jeanrenaud's cello rendition of Metamorphosis Four is also recommended along with her own Alter Piece.

#5 Glass, #6 Cage/Harrison, #7 Ives, #8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

The Hours (2002). Philip Glass /2004 #5/

#5 on the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004, Why Does Someone Have to Die? is my chance to recap some political memories, even if I have not yet made sense of the election. The track is from the Philip Glass soundtrack of The Hours and was played during the Democratic National Convention this year.

I remember watching a John Kerry community meeting on CSPAN several weeks before the Iowa caucuses in February.  My thought at the time was "what a loser." He was low energy, didn't have a strong, clear message, and looked like he had no chance. Two weeks later, he won the primary and eventually the nomination.  Fast forward to a Kerry rally in Ohio the night before the election. Bruce Springsteen was there and played "No Surrender", which was apparently Kerry campaign's theme song. In a bit of an aesthetic faux pas, at least by rock concert standards, Springsteen finished playing "No Surrender" and they segued directly to the recorded version of the same song. And then, 36 hours later, Kerry had in fact surrendered.

Over the holidays, I read William Manchester's The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-1940, where he explains why the British public was slow to hold Neville Chamberlain responsible for his futile attempts to negotiate with Hitler:

In politics the squeaky wheel gets little grease. This is partcularly true when a public figure challenging the leader [Churchill] carries a controversial reputation in train. The mass distrusts controversy. Reluctant to reconsider its convictions, superstitions, and prejudices, it rarely withdraws support from those who are guiding its destinies. Thus inertia becomes an incumbent's accomplice. So does human relevance to admit error. Those who backed the top man insist, against all evidence that they made the right choice.

And describing a key to Churchill's ultimate success:

"Politicans rise by toil and troubles. They expect to fail; they hope to rise." Perserverance is the worthiest of political traits, and certainly the most difficult; a British historian who takes a jaundiced view of Winston acknowledges that "To persist in a political career that appeared to others, and even on occasion to the politician himself, as finished, demands exceptional strength of character in a sensitive and proud man."

Pandagon's Jessie Taylor posts about an editorial  bemoaning the Democratic Party's star worship including Warren Beatty, Bon Jovi, Michael Moore, and Bruce Springsteen.  I don't know about that but buried in that post is a good comment by Avedon Carol:

The debate was Kerry's chance to tell the American people what he was about, and he didn't do it. Or rather, he gave the impression he was only about getting elected, and that ain't good enough.

By the way, The Hours soundtrack is #3626 in Amazon sales rank.  Pandagon's Ezra Klein blogs about how with Amazon "61% of the political contributions go to Republicans" and is ambivalent about what to do about it.

#6 Cage/Harrison, #7 Ives, #8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

Double Music (1941). John Cage/Lou Harrison /2004 #6/

We were in Oklahoma for the holidays but alas, I had to make an unplanned trip to Indiana, putting me behind on blogging, among other things. Can I finish the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004 in 2004?  Fifteen hours left...

At a play count of 32, Double Music, a percussion piece by John Cage and Lou Harrison, is a lively but not raucous work. I don't know if tuned percussion can in fact play a true melody but for percussion, this music is melodic. Does Lou Harrison's participation somehow soften the sometimes abrasive tendencies of John Cage? My prior post indicates they composed their parts independently.

I can't find it but a year ago, someone wrote an online essay on how recorded pop music of the last fifty years has been a great achievement in timbre. Listen to five seconds of a pop hit and it is likely recognizable. While Double Music is esoteric, it has some development as well, again within the constraints of percussion music. Regardless, it is clearly an achievement in timbre as well.

#7 Ives, #8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-60 (1915). Charles Ives /2004 #7/

Ok, where was I?  Oh yeah, counting down the aworks Top 10 Tracks of 2004. Number eight is The Alcotts from Charles Ives' Piano Sonata #2 as played by Anthony de Mare. I also like the recent release by Aimard, which is a more resonant performance/recording. But, apparently I listened more to the quieter rendition by Anthony de Mare (not that any Ives music can be called "quiet.")

By the way, Barry Ritholz also blogged his top iPod/CD listens in 2004, albeit by album rather than by track. His list includes Renee Oldstead singing George Gershwin's Summertime.  For the record, artists who have covered Summertime include REM, The Zombies, Janis Joplin, Morcheeba, Nick Drake, Billie Holiday, the Doors, Albert Ayler, Jim Hall/Pat Metheny, Sublime and many others. I've heard the Sublime version but all of these intrigue me.

#8 Ornstein, #9 Fink, #10 Garland.

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

After blogging about who is sweeter --  Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, or Sarah Jessica Parker? -- Gabe and Tony ask who is lamer -- Marcel Duchamp or John Cage? While Cage's place in history is acknowledged:

John Cage was a revolutionary musical artist throughout much of the 20th century. On the sweet side, he was one of the first to experiment with electronics in music. Of course, disco couldn't have happened without electronics in music, but neither would the sweet intro to Baba O'Reilly, so you be the judge.

So why is Cage lame?:

Why, you ask? Because of 4'33. What is 4'33? It is a "song," or more accurately a "performance," as simply playing the song on a cd is a bit hollow, in more ways than one...I say: Shennanigans!... And just for the record, I do think these are all works of art. Very lame works of art.

For regular readers, you might notice I really enjoy hearing how listeners love Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. I may have a new interest: those listeners who hate the music of John Cage in general  and/or 4' 33" specifically.

Which is a lead-in to a post by Mr. Appoggiatura about the three factors that determine musical taste: exposure and musical training, culture and social ties, and genes and personality. He uses jazz as an example of an art form suffering due to lack of exposure and thus lack of familiarity with its more complex harmony and rhythms. As for the genetics/personality dimension, I'll reiterate a relevant John Cage quote:

I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' So I said, 'I'll beat my head against that wall.'

blue cathedral (1999). Jennifer Higdon

In a long post about how to buy a gift CD for the classical music novice (or vice versa if you are the novice), Dick Strawser recommends a Telarc recording of music by Barber, Copland, Theofanidi, and Higdon. Of the latter two, he says:

But for me, the real treasure on this disc is in the NEW music it includes, composers you WON’T know but who may one day be the 21st Century’s answer to Copland and Barber. And they both posses similar attributes: their music is easy to listen to, beautiful with a lot of orchestral color, two composers who, I think, really know what they’re doing... The two new pieces are new enough without being “avant-garde” to satisfy those who worry about where classical music is going.

In an interview by David Patrick Stearns, Jennifer Higdon comments on blue cathedral:

DPS: Many people feel you had a stylistic turning point with your orchestral work blue cathedral, which the Curtis Symphony Orchestra premiered in 2000.

JH: It feels different, like a breakthough, but it's hard to say why. Maybe it reached a new level of expression, a certain kind of rawness.

America (1930). Frederick Martens, Leo Ornstein

Time Magazine has posted their articles since 1923 to the Web (although you must be a magazine subscriber to see the full text).  Searching for "Leo Ornstein" turns up the following from 1930:

Among the products of the widespread U. S. yearning for a new national anthem was a $3,000 prize competition...the best anthem had been submitted by Musical Writer Frederick Herman Martens (words) of Rutherford, N. J., and Pianist Leo Ornstein (music), that they would divide the prize. Final stanza of their anthem, entitled America:

Thou, America, enshrined, In ev'ry patriot soul, To olden greeds and hatreds blind, In unity thy strength shall bind The nations that they find In brotherhood their goal.

I assume the "widespread yearning" of that era continued...

Four6 (1992). John Cage /sonic youth/

  On the John Cage silence email list (threads here and here), they are discussing Sonic Youth's recording of Four⁶ being "un-cageian", because of the self-expressive, improvisational approach taken by rock musicians. To all those who hate the music of John Cage ("Hi Fred."), at least note there are performance standards for the music and there are those willing to see that those standards are maintained. Although to the unconvinced, I suspect this doesn't really matter; in fact, it probably makes it seem even more like folly because it implies seriousness. But I won't speak for the unconvinced...

Although Kim Gordon's vocals were, in my opinion, both memorable and annoying, I have yet to be  concerned, in this case, about a lack of fidelity to Cage's aesthetic principles. In fact, I've recommended the CD in the past as "semi-accessible" experimental classical music, Yoko Ono notwithstanding. Think of it as the moral equivalent of those Adagio techno remixes.

The Fog of War (2003). Philip Glass /intrusive/

Not everyone liked the soundtrack to The Fog of War, for example, Verbatim:

I also forgot to mention that I found the Philip Glass music intrusive, particulary the overbearing violins.

Looking at an old aworks post, I see that Sufjan Stevens didn't either.