aworks :: "new" american classical music

links for 2007-03-01

• Dial "M" for Musicology: Tastes like Bob Dylan
  '"your next meeeeaaalllll."We digitally slowed it down (I use a computer program called Transcribe! for that) so you could hear every nuance of contempt Dylan packs into that one word.'
• Out West Arts: Trompe L'oiel
  re: New York City Opera - "Who is this wispy French racoon-eyed wraith we see before us?"
• modal minority: crooked face
  "Now, I ain't got nuthin’ but love for Pepys, but he’s constantly waking up and inspecting ships and suppin’ and going off to bed; sup, my Pepys, but don’t tell me about it in excruciating detail every ...day."
• Gawker Artists: Dave Curd
  example art is a portrait of Thom Yorke (courtesy gawker.com)
• Does the music of Aaron Copland sound American? - Google Search
  referrer of the day
• After the fall of Tower Records, smaller music retailers like Santa Cruz's Streetlight and Metamusic are finding hope appealing to the audiophile. - - - February 24, 2007
  "The CD is becoming more of a specialty item; some people are collectors and completists." C'est moi.
• Scripting News: 2/28/2007: Negotiate with users
  Ideas on how the recording industry could have handled napster

links for 2007-02-28

• rogerbourland.com » Blog Archive » What is the Academy telling composers?
  "Philip Glass provided a full orchestral score and did an excellent job on NOTES ON A SCANDAL. He even wrote some tunes."
• James Fallows | Author and Journalist » Blog Archive » Market Crash Day in Shanghai
  "The economy: endless expansion, or finally a breakpoint when too many strains are felt all at once (inflation, Gilded Age-style inequalities, dispossessed peasantry, our old friend environmental catastrophe, etc)?"
• westmp's bookmarks on del.icio.us
  hey, what happened to yesterday's links?
• OCRegister blog: Classical life - post: K-Mozart Kaput
  "He said that a commercial classical radio station just doesn’t make sense anymore." Although in the Bay Area, that turned out to be for aesthetic, not commercial reasons.
• The Standing Room: Mutant
  Except for the vocals, the lyrics, and the acoustic guitar, I love Wilco.
• The Long Tail: Who needs a CIO?
  Kids "neither need or want the university to administer their email, wikis, blogs, video storage or discussion groups. They want it to simply get out of their way."
• classical music crisis in malaysia - Google Search
  recent referrer

Mad Rush (1981). Philip Glass /unexplained emotions/

I may be getting old or jaded but music has less of an emotional impact on me than it did twenty years ago. And then there's the music of Philip Glass:

The recent release of an old organ recording of Mad Rush never fails to make me sad and melancholic...

But Glass' Symphony No. 6 - Plutonium Ode never fails to annoy me, in a mish-mash kind of way...

And yet for whatever reason, I was mildly disappointed Philip Glass didn't win an Oscar last night, for a movie and soundtrack I haven't yet experienced...

Philip Glass as our most enigmatic composer?

tyler cowen: status-based smiling

links for 2007-02-26

• Séance 2007! (All I Know²)
  "Sarah Cahill, Kate Stenberg, and Eva-Maria Zimmermann were awesome."
• Bank of England|Publications|News|2006|Adam Smith to Feature on New-Series £20 Banknote
  Replacing Sir Edward Elgar. When will we have Charles Ives or Duke Ellington on US currency?
• SFist: Swells By The Numbers
  'Number of artists listed as being featured on Gordon Getty's vanity project, "Songs by American Composers": 7, most of whom waived or reduced their fees to participate.'
• Two Ears: a classical music blog: Hiatus
  "I haven't been able to put much effort into discovering classical/orchestral music because I love pop music too much."

links for 2007-02-25

• Tonight's MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS #96 (All I Know²)
  Leo Ornstein, George Antheil...
• Renewable Music: Landmarks (23)
  "Ashley creates this instability by allowing the text itself to become an element of continuity rather than change."
• Adams' new opera 'A Flowering Tree' rooted in Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'
  Peter Sellars on discovering John Adams: "They played this piece called 'Shaker Loops and it was so hot compared with other American music of the time that just tried to impress you with its braininess."
• instrument synthesis
  for better and worse
• Musical Assumptions: Embracing the way "classical music" is changing
  'Classical music no longer means "orchestral music."' Yes, that's correct.
• ionarts: Janine Jansen with the NSO
  "Mr. Bates...did what every modern composer seems to do: He looked up “percussion” in the New Grove and included every mentioned instance in his score."
• Steven Rubio's Online Life: has there ever been a less appropriate last name than “jobs”?
  "If Steve Jobs or anyone else wants to point fingers at the culprits who are bringing our educational system down, they need to look somewhere besides teachers."
• Kinderkuchen for the FBI: Mahagonny
  "Mahagonny is like San Francisco or Reno, a boom town for the newly rich. Except it's in Alabama"
• Anecdotal Evidence: Rereading
  I'm doing more re-listening lately.
• The Weblog: Single Post View - Art and Non-Art
  And ars versus esthetica.
• Soho the Dog: Suffragette City
  Matthew gives us our voting instructions for the WCRB "top classical pieces of all time" poll. I mostly voted the party line.
• Radio SASS
  evil or genius? "(Short Attention Span System) takes the playlist and musically condenses songs to their essence. Through time compression, you get the memorable heart of each song, with an average length of aproximately two minutes"

In C (1964). Terry Riley /shanghai and the 53/

Steve Hicken has an interesting list of 53 notes about Terry Riley's In C. As I listen to the Shanghai Film Orchestra's version, which I don't particularly like, this item may be pertinent:

In C embodies the 20th century’s fascination with quest for freedom in a way that is characteristic of American society in the 1960s, because it requires a combination of individuality and a strong feeling of community.

Do I not like this performance because it is not individualistic enough? Or is it that, although timbral variety is a life-source for me, I just don't like the Chinese instrumentation?

Amazon disagrees:

The Shanghai Film Orchestra plays this contemporary Western work on traditional Chinese instruments. The tuning is different, and the tone colors of the ancient Chinese bells and strings lend a new vibrancy to the piece.

And Joshua Kosman points to a new choral version.

links for 2007-02-24

• Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Fact or Fiction?: Glass Is a (Supercooled) Liquid -- Are medieval windows melting?
  Apparently not.
• Modernclassical: Messiaen's feathered fans
• SFist: Cycling: Stage 4 Drags Down the Pace
  "Kolley-phone-ya!"

links for 2007-02-23

• calimac: concert review: San Francisco Symphony
  'Overheard: "That was pretty good. I even liked the modern work. It wasn't too modern; it was written in 1906 or something like that." Actually 1961, but I wouldn't want to spoil your idea that modernism goes in some kind of linear progression"
• Civic Center: Dvorak and Schuman with One N
  "'this composition shows us another and particularly likable side of William Schuman." If this is the likable side, please spare me the other.'
• Renaissance Research: ANOTHER DAY WITHOUT A SINGLE MINUTE OF AMERICAN CLASSICAL MUSIC ON WETA-FM PUBLIC RADIO IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL
  I think I heard Copland once on KDFC, or was that Milton Babbitt?
• oboeinsight : oboeinsight.com
  "WGBH 89.7 to Broadcast Rare Performance of Scott Joplin's 'Treemonisha', February 26-28"
• Iron Tongue of Midnight: Classics Without Walls
  re: Mark Theodoropoulos on KUSF: "take a look at those playlists! Classic music with intelligence!"
• ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News: La Scala's First Encore Since 1933
• The Fredösphere: Dillon Does Ypsi
  Good news all around in "Ypsi"
• Imagination and monkeys feed Kotche's concepts | Straight.com Vancouver
  "He'll play a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich, some original works for tuned percussion, and the aforementioned monkey chant, which grew out of his fondness for Indonesian gamelan music."
• Reflection Field: Rhys Chatham
  "Just wallow in the chunks of sound being thrown out of the speakers."
• An Ergodic Walk » A first rehearsal with Adams and Sellars
  "Turning a massive chorus into a dramatic agent is no small task, and Sellars was as clear and effective as any director I have seen."

links for 2007-02-22

• Sequenza21/ » Is Grapes of Wrath the Great American Opera?
  re: Ricky Ian Gordon's new work
• if charlie parker was a gunslinger,there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats
  The Art of Pop #5
• NewMusicbox: What's Hot, What's Not. Colin Holter
  "Counterpoint (c. 1200 – c. 2006) is out, apparently. Rest in peace."
• Notes on a Scandal
  Mixed critical reaction to the Philip Glass score
• contentions » Terry Teachout Bookshelf
  Aaron Copland: A Reader ... essential addition to the fast-growing literature on America’s greatest composer.
• Confessions of a Portrait Artist: A few things, including Phrygian Gates and Fairbanks
  'I'm listening to John Adams' "Road Movies" (the other John Adams, that is, not the Alaskan one).'
• Modernclassical: Cathedral live broadcast is Saturday
  By William Duckworth

beyond aworks :: and now, an opposing point of view

The old is good not just because it's past,
nor is the new supreme because we live with it,
and never yet a man felt greater joy
than he could bear or truly comprehend.
Your task it is, amid confusion, rush, and noise
to grasp the lasting, calm, and meaningful,
and finding it anew, to hold and treasure it.

-- Paul Hindemith

Actually, my task is to find the "lasting, calm, and meaningful" in the promises of the "new". And then blog about it...