aworks :: "new" american classical music

Magneticfireflies (2001). Augusta Read Thomas

Meatpopsicle writes about a band composition by Augusta Read Thomas on DePauw's Listening Journal:

She often plays with the colors of instruments, instructing such instruments such as the piccolo to play "brassy." How does a piccolo play brassy?

Other entries that caught my eye: Ed Geyer on Coldplay's Yellow, Mr. Luxury Yacht on Monty Python's Decomposing Composers, Martin Buber on Nixon in China, Act 1 Scene 1 ("Wagner meets Philip Glass"), and Sanders on Steely Dan's Deacon Blues.

Deacon Blues gives me the chance to use this quote from Steely Dan in Metal Leg about saxophonist Pete Christlieb, who solos on the track:

He came about because we liked the saxophone player on the Tonight Show and we found out who it was, that's how exactly that happened. And we kept on hearing this one guy who was great, but never could figure out in the band who it was, so we called ... We had one player come down thinking it was him, and when it wasn't, we called the other one and it was Pete and he was great. And he played on other things, he played on "FM" as well. Pete's a free spirit, there's not much controlling Pete, which is exactly what we want. So you just run the music by him and he blows his brains out and it's great. He's just a great player. That is a very uninhibited session with Pete because he just wants to play, he just wants to hear it and he'll play it. And we like that spontaneity.

Christlieb raced dragsters (the Tonight Show paid well) and played with Warne Marsh on this album.

Augusta Read Thomas site.  DePauw site. Warne Marsh site.

Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /grace/

A blog quote from Alice Goodman's text sung by Zhou Enlai in the last act of Nixon in China:

...
Outside this room the chill of grace
Lies heavy on the morning grass.

Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ (1973). Steve Reich /serious/

  Ron on 20th Century Music discusses serious listening:

So, I can understand that the disparity between trying to mentally chew on Reich’s “Music for Voices, Mallet Instruments and Organ” is a bit different than blaring loud Broadway show tunes in a moving car – but, like, – they both have their place, right?

The irony for me is that Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is easy to listen to and emotive, compared to say Reich's Drumming or Come Out where I have to work to absorb rather than just "feel" the music.

In another post, Ron addresses an additional issue of concern -- lack of shelf space for recordings.

---

Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'... Maybe if I directly confront it, my nightmare will go away.

Be-In (1991). Evan Ziporyn /favorite/

I've gotten a little ahead of myself in ripping CDs to MP3 format. As a result, according to iTunes, I had about 1300 tracks I'd never listened to. I have listened to four hundred of those; I'm now a little dazed but keeping at it.

Although not new to me, Be-In is probably my favorite of the first four hundred. I blogged some about it last year. Note that Ziporyn's Melody Competition (prior aworks post) will be played Saturday at the Other Minds Festival (although I won't be able to attend).

Brief notes on other music I've just heard:

• That CD of Allen Ginsberg is better than I expected. Alain Neveux playing Schoenberg also exceeded expectations as well (albeit low ones).
• Why I don't listen to Eric Dolphy more I'm not sure. Some concentrated listening of Hat and Beard among other tracks was enlightening. Definitely on my list of eMusic downloads for next month.
• More Pixies, less Boulez please.
• I need to listen more closely to the music I have of Barney Childs (or was that Donald Martino, I may have them confused).
• The Early Music CD by the Kronos Quartet was consistently interesting.
• Without any liner notes handy, I couldn't make sense of Evan Ziporyn's Shadow Bang. What's the significance of that long frog track?
• Finally, why did I recently rip Journey's Greatest Hits? Did a recent article in SF Weekly about Journey's star being added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame get the best of me? The wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'...

Update: Back in town. However, I fear I've ruined my brain. I don't dare mention it as I am worried about permanent imprint, but song "x" by Journey keeps going through my head on a daily basis. I've tried to erase it from my recall by listening to other Journey songs, some Walter Piston flute music, Hans Zender's orchestrated Winterreise, e.e. cummings, anything. If this doesn't stop, I'll end up as a Oliver Sacks neurological case study, "The Man Who Can Only Remember the Song Stylings of Steve Perry"...

Days Run Away (2000). Peter Garland

Tonight on WNYC, David Garland played, among other works, Peter Garland's The Days Run Away, performed by Aki Takahashi on piano. I always wondered but David declared Peter is no relation.

As part of their American Music Festival, WNYC staff pick their favorite recordings of American music. A sampling:

• Sarah Fishko: Antheil Plays Antheil.
• Margaret Juntwait: Conlon Nancarrow. Studies for Player Piano.
• Leonard Lopate: Thelonius Monk. Mysterioso.
• Margo McLean: Leontyne Price Sings Barber.
• John Schaefer: The Velvet Underground and Nico.
• Irene Trudel: The Mothers of Invention. We're Only In It for the Money.
• Janet Waggener: The Chamber Music of Aaron Copland.

 

On the Transmigration of Souls (2002). John Adams /Grammy/

On the Transmigration of Souls won several Grammies:

1. Best Classical Album: (Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s) if other than the Artist.) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. Lorin Maazel, conductor; John Adams & Lawrence Rock, producers (Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New York Philharmonic) [Nonesuch Records]

2. Best Orchestral Performance: (Award to the Conductor and to the Orchestra.) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. Lorin Maazel, conductor (Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New  York Philharmonic). [Nonesuch Records] 

3. Best Classical Contemporary Composition:  (A Composer's Award. (For a contemporary classical composition composed within the last 25 years, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year.)) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. John Adams (Lorin Maazel; Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New York Philharmonic). [Nonesuch Records; Publisher: Hendon Music.] Adams has won in the past for Nixon in China and El Dorado.

Philharmonic President Zarin Mehta (via WNYC): The award has special meaning because of the circumstances surrounding this work, which John Adams wrote under incredible pressures of both time and emotion. The work is a testament to his great sensitivity to the human challenge of this subject and to the foresight of Lorin Maazel, who oversaw the commission, and who did such a fantastic job of bringing all the forces together to create a memorable performance.

Other American classical winners:

• Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) (Award to the Instrumental Soloist(s) and to the Conductor.)  Previn: Violin Concerto "Anne-Sophie"/Bernstein: Serenade. André Previn, conductor; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin (Boston Symphony Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra). [Deutsche Grammophon]

• Best Engineered Album, Classical (An Engineer's Award. (Artist names appear in parenthesis.)) Higdon: City Scape; Concerto For Orchestra. Jack Renner, engineer (Robert Spano)[Telarc]

• Best Classical Vocal Performance. (Award to the Vocal Soloist(s).) Ives: Songs (The Things Our Fathers Loved; The Housatonic At Stockbridge, Etc.) Susan Graham, mezzo soprano (Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano). Track from: Ives: Concord Sonata; Songs [Warner Classics]

Note: Pierre-Laurent Aimard deserves a vocal performance honorable mention on Ives' Ann Street, calling out New York cross-streets ("Broadway", "Nassau crosses Ann Street"). I relish the accented interjections; this was last year's micro-highlight for me. Graham's part is of course good as well. Since the song is quite short, Amazon streams all of it, although it sounds much better on CD.

Adagio for Strings (1936). Samuel Barber /theme/

Via musipedia, the Open Music Encyclopedia, here's the Adagio for Strings melody as MIDI and in written form, and here's a theme from Aaron Copland's El Salon Mexico.

I haven't yet tried the "whistle to Parson's Code" translation applet for melodic identification, because I've been too busy wasting my time on a site hosting the Name Voyager applet. Did you know the name Samuel is in the ascendancy unlike say, Robert? I wonder what it is like to be the last Agnes or Hank? On the other hand, we know a four-year-old Otto and the blog associated with Name Voyager predicts Otto as a name "up-and-comer."  What I really want is an "aworks Voyager" applet that would tell me the popularity over time of various compositions. As a proxy for that, the American Symphony Orchestra League lists only two performances of Adagio in the 2000-2001 (PDF) season but five for 2004-05 (PDF). 

The Parson's Code for Gershwin's Summertime from Porgy and Bess: DUDDUUDDDUDURDDUDUD

Music in Similar Motion (1969). Philip Glass /habituation/

For the last week, I've been listening, with varying degress of concentration, to fifty or so tracks by the electronic  group Boards of Canada. I've always had an affinity for their music  and so I wanted to see if there was even more to what they were doing than I realized. Now, having heard everything at least once, I have a sense of fatigue in the way one feels saturated (and guilty) after eating too much ice cream. Timbrally, the music is quite similar, with electronic lines on top of drum tracks, with odd sounds and voices thrown in.  Development is quite simple as well, and it leads to monotony.  This is all relative of course; as this music goes,it barely qualifies as ambient, given the use of beats. But nonetheless, I am approaching saturation.

So, I've been pondering if such an intense focus on Philip Glass, or Copland, or Stravinsky or Webern or whomever would have the same boring result, of if there is something inherently more substantive (or at least more complex) that would sustain such a burst of listening of stylistically similar classical music. I don't know. I also recognize my reaction about the tedium of all this music is similar to what others would say about the music of Philip Glass and minimalism in general.

Then today, Peter Lindberg quotes from Tokion magazine on Eno and the origins of his notion of ambient music:

I'd just [about the time he started experimenting with “ambient music"] been reading an essay by Warren McCulloch called “What the Frog's Eyes Sees,” and it's about habituation. Habituation is what happens when our eyes move all the time. We don't keep our eyes still. We scan all the time. We do that so that the rods and cones don't habituate. So, to habituate is to become saturated, and to cease to give any signals. What frog's eyes do is they stay absolutely still, and so any parts of the environment that aren't in motion cease to become visible to the frogs. Now, the big advantage of this is that, assuming something does move, like a little fly, it's the only thing the frog sees.

This makes me realize I was listening to Boards of Canada incorrectly. Instead of listening for what wasn't there, I should listen for what is there, ambient and minimal as that may be. Call it frog listening. I have to say the music sounds more vivid with this change in mindset.

Lindberg goes on to quote Eno on how  composing classical music is like architecture where everything is specified in detail as opposed to say, gardening.  Eno also constrasts pop music with gallery art.

Oh, and Wikipedia quotes Boards of Canada as saying "We're not Satanists, or Christians, or Pagans." We already knew Philip Glass' spiritual beliefs...

4' 33" (1952). John Cage /random quotes/

Recent random quotes on John Cage:

We could get away with this because our theme was "Are You Crazy?" -- and we could say Cage was crazy for writing silent music, while Webern was crazy for writing short pieces. Greg Sandow

Thirty or so years ago, the composer John Cage proposed a different sort of battle strategy: Take the heads of warring nations, give each a 25kg sack of horse manure, lock them in a room, and let them fight it out. David L Ulin

"Mine is a much better silent piece," Batt declared. "I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and thirty-three seconds." Henry Kisor

Hawkins set the various scenes to compositions by Arthur Levering, John Cage (his dreamy "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano''), Ward Hartenstein and Barry Hall. Theodore Bale

Had John Cage's famous silent piece "4'33" " been in her repertoire, she could have played it without the piano. Wilma Salisbury

And how, then, do you categorise such iconic figures as John Cage or Steve Reich, never mind the more recent proliferation of mongrel kids? Kenneth Walton

Johnson reportedly slowed his progress through the backwoods of the Deep South by constantly stopping his convertible to make agonised telephone calls to the composer John Cage, his current amour, in Manhattan. Times Online
 
Trier says besides using his common ordinary hands with the CMU Percussion Ensemble he also plays marimba, "gong things," timpani, a generator for a John Cage piece, you name it. Janet Martineau

Cage was one of those whacked out white guys whose white-skin privilege gave him the luxury of being whacked out. (Not unlike a certain 8-Miler we all know and love.) Gentle Jones

Beside the Laurie Anderson exhibition, the celebrated composer Kevin Volans will give a series of lectures on contemporary music, discussing among other things Jasper Johns’ connections with John Cage. ArtDaily.com

Symphony No. 3 (1901-04). Charles Ives

An article without byline in the Old Colony Memorial describes a rehearsal of four American works by the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra:

The players of the Phil toiled Friday night. In privacy, with intimacy, they harrowed the works of four American composers in preparation for Saturday night's concert. Going over the same ground again and again would begin with difficulty and end gloriously...Karidoyanes had said earlier that the Ives would prove the biggest challenge to the orchestra and the audience. It's a complex piece with dramatic rhythmic and melodic shifts. It leaves lots of discretion to the conductor. This conductor wanted to get it right.

The Charles Ives page on Wikipedia is a featured article, one of five hundred selected as best from the universe of four hundred seventy thousand articles. I  My only contribution was to add a link to Scott Mortensen's definitive Charles Ives site, although I see six months later someone deleted it. Progress...