aworks :: "new" american classical music

Dialogues (2003). Elliott Carter

Recent relevant reviews from Classics Today:

10/10. Dialogues for Piano & Chamber Orchestra et al. Elliott Carter. Hodges et al. Bridge. Amazon #19,611. You would never guess that these four compact, vivacious, and imaginatively crafted concertos are the work of a man in his 90s.

10/10. Bells for Stokowski. Jerry Junkin. Telarc. Amazon #15,019. David del Tredici is less radical than Daugherty in the post-Romantic original wind work, which he named In Wartime because composition of this commission coincided with the four months of debate and build-up before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

10/10. Symphony No. 3 "Kaddish." Leonard Bernstein. Gerard Schwarz. Naxos. Amazon #81,969. The more time passes, the more Leonard Bernstein's "Kaddish" symphony sounds like an important work.

10/10. A Song for Anything - Charles Ives. Finley, Drake. Hyperion. Amazon #33,338. This is far and away the best program of Ives songs currently available, 31 of them, lasting slightly more than 70 minutes.

10/10. Symphony No. 4 et al. Alan Hovhaness. Keith Brion et al. Naxos. Amazon #105,411. But there is enough difference in the inspiration of these works, and enough stylistic development, that you don't really get an impression of sameness.

10/9. The Unknown Ives, Volume 2. Berman, Drury. New World Records. Amazon #195,083. Berman not only understands Ives' volatile aesthetic but also feels it in his bones, and more importantly, is a fearless pianist with a huge, totally ambidextrous technique and big sound to match.

9/8. Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra et al. Alan Hovhaness. Konstantin Krimeta et al. Black Box. Amazon #112,175. Several familiar ingredients of Alan Hovhaness' early style combine to make a dish of rather unusual flavor in his Concerto for two pianos and orchestra.

In Trane's Name (1973). Frank Lowe

Via Avant Music, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth lists his top ten free jazz recordings. A quick survey of iTunes turns up some conventional jazz by Rashied Ali (drummer on Coltrane's Interstellar Space). Saxophonist Frank Lowe's catalog is deeper; his Black Beings album is $4.49 and in the clips at least, has an edge to it. Joseph Jarman and Leroy Jenkins (under the pseudonym "The Wizard") play on the recording. Compared to say, the courtly Mozart, this is angry and conscious music. iTunes

artists on moore's list: rashied ali, peter brotzmann, marion brown, dave burrell, ric colbeck, arthur doyle, milford graves, dr. umezu-seikatsu kojyo iinkai, frank lowe, sonny murray, don pullen,  cecil taylor, john tchicai, marzette watts (with sonny sharrock), frank wright.

Each Day Is Yesterday's Tomorrow (for moondog) (2001). Franz Nicolay

Samantha Steinberg writes of the CD Anti-Social Music Sings the Great American Songbook and quotes founder Franz Nicolay:

"Classical composers today compose and then sit quietly weeping and hoping that someone will play their music,” Nicolay said. “In the rock business, you get together with a band and play the music you wrote. … We want to put our music out there despite the cost."

streams: amazon, new music jukebox, antisocialmusic.org.
bios and anti-social music trivia: moondog. 5 members own more than 1000 records. jean cook listens to don ellis, captain beefheart, and toby twining. joe exley is working on a tribute to tribute albums.
currently playing: john cage's in a landscape on postclassic radio.

Ancient Voices of Children (1970). George Crumb

Inspired by kottke's four things list, here are some notable American (or related) works I've never heard:

1. String Quartet in F major Op. 96 "American." Anton Dvorak.
2. Ancient Voices of Children. George Crumb.
3. Antony and Cleopatra. Samuel Barber.
4. Atlas. Meredith Monk.
5. You Are (Variations). Steve Reich.
6. Dead Man Walking. Jake Heggie.
7. Four Saints in Three Acts. Virgil Thomson.
8. Musicircus. John Cage.
9. Paul Bunyan. Benjamin Britten.
10. most of David del Tredici's Alice compositions

The Tides of Manaunaun (1917). Henry Cowell

The Tides of Manaunaun is not for everyone:

tried listening to it, want/wanted to, but i couldnt hear more than two chords, my heart started beating fast and i felt lightheaded immediately and something inside me cried, i could hear myself sobbing in my head "no no stop it stop it make it stop, stop it dont listen stop it"
that was very scary

other unsafe cowell works: the banshee, concerto for piano and orchestra, the voice of lir, aeolian harp, anger dance, what's this. cowell streams.

Music for 18 Musicians (1976). Steve Reich /versus mozart?/

To some extent, I practice what Alex Ross is preaching, although it has taken awhile. Let's see:

• 1985? - Heard John Adams' Shaker Loops on WUOM public radio and realized contemporary classical music had something I was missing.
• 1990 - Began to seriously collect contemporary music CDs and attending contemporary concerts.
• 1994 - Had my interest in "legacy European" classical music peak by taking the last of various Stanford musicology classes.
• 2000 - Quit buying legacy music CDs.
• 2001 - Realized that I was very interested in American classical music, although at the time I assumed that meant truly contemporary composition.
• 2003 - Started aworks.
• 2004 - Planned to take a break on aworks for a month and instead blog about the works of "A." Mozart.
• 2004 - Re-discovered my love of jazz after hearing Dexter Gordon again, putting the Mozart idea on hold.
• 2004 - Listened to some Beethoven and Schubert and surprisingly, found little enjoyment or meaning. ("Schubert? Schubert? How can I not be moved by Schubert?").
• 2005 - Listened to some Mozart etc.

And so, here I am, walking away from Euro-legacy classical music. On my death-bed, will I regret this? Mozart and Beethoven, I don't think so; Bach and Schubert, maybe. But when I think of the joy of Reich's Music for 18 Musicians...

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I used to travel to Salzburg for business (!), I've done the Mozart thing, seen the yellow birth house etc. but at this point, I'm not excited by the celebration. And yet. And yet. Although I am usually averse to hyperbole, I'm glad to see such hoopla for Mozart's birthday. Trivially, having Google recognize Mozart with a logo for a day seems like a good thing. It's the idea of mind-share. If a birthday gets this guy to start a Mozart CD collection, isn't' that better than him spending his time and money on, I don't know, Phish CDs? (I was going to say Grateful Dead CDs, but I can play devil's advocate and make a case for them if I had to).

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Interestingly, I Love Music has a more substantial Ligeti thread than a Mozart birthday thread. Is Ligeti more relevant and cool or is it just because someone compared his music to Sonic Youth instrumental breaks?

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I read Alex Ross' ignore Mozart post this morning. And then on the train, iPod shuffled Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. Excellent. An hour well-spent on what I think may be the premiere American composition. The fact that it has been well received, at least in the rock community, is important. 

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On the other hand, due to other obligations and commitments these days, I definitely live in what Ross calls the "technobubble" and so live music is a rarity. I wasn't able to attend the Sarah Cahill concert last weekend in Berkeley but the Berkeley SO is playing Varèse, Carter, Bach, and Stravinsky tomorrow. Maybe...

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Other historical facts for this day:

• 1870: the first sorority starts, at DePauw of all places.
• 1885: Jerome Kern is born.
• 1901: Giuseppe Verdi dies.
• 1930: Bobby "Blue" Bland is born.
• 1944: the siege of Leningrad ends (I still like Russian/Soviet symphonies, by the way).
• 1967: Apollo 1 fire kills three astronauts.
• 1973: the Vietnam war officially ends.

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Five hours left in the day to get some Mozart listening in. Wish me luck...

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.

Of Mice and Men (1939). Aaron Copland

Continuing with California-themed articles in the journal American Music, Sally Bick writes Of Mice and Men: Copland, Hollywood, and American Musical Modernism. Copland wrote the score for the film of John Steinbeck's novel even though at that point, at least in Hollywood, he was seen as a "modernist art music composer." Copland:

It seems to me that what I was trying for in the simpler works was only partly the writing of compositions that might speak to a broader audience. More than that they gave me an opportunity to try for a more homespun musical idiom not so different in intention from what attracted me in more hectic fashion in my jazz-influenced works of the twenties. In other words it was not only musical functionalism that was in question but also musical language.

Bick goes on to suggest that in a quest for realism in the film, Copland effectively uses dissonance, "unusual rhythms and melodic structures," and novel timbres in the context of an overall simplified musical approach, resulting in the marriage of the pastoral with the contemporary.

Washington's Birthday (1909). Charles Ives /cowell in prison/

The latest American Music has an article by Leta Miller and Rob Collins titled The Cowell-Ives Relationship: A New Look at Cowell's Prison Years. The thesis of the article is that even though Henry Cowell was imprisoned for a sexual act with a minor, Charles Ives, despite his anger and distress, may have still wanted to continue their friendship. There is a hard-to-decipher note written by Ives to Cowell indicating he didn't know what to say or do about the situation but wished him well for the future.

I don't know what to make of this. What I found more interesting in the short note was Ives describing his own travails (circa 1937; he lived another seventeen years):

As far as music is concerned, I'm through--can't see it, can't hear it well, & can't play it except both hands or both feet.

The article also has Cowell writing to Nicolas Slonimsky on making the best of the circumstances while serving in San  Quentin prison:

"I have gotten in the score of his [Ives'] Washington's Birthday Symphony movement, and have been demonstrating it to a class of advanced students. They were mystified but highly interested."

Many of Cowell's friends wrote letters supporting his release, including from Ives. In 1940, Cowell was parolled and in 1942, received unconditional clemency from the California governor.

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.