aworks :: "new" american classical music

links for 2007-10-31

• 5.6 quake in San Jose rattles Bay Area
  'Amy Clayton, a clerk at 7-11 in Milpitas, said the quake felt like it lasted a couple of minutes. "Our mirrors started bouncing up and down - it broke a shelf in the backroom and it broke a jar of jelly," she said. "It could have been a lot worse."'

String Quartet No. 2 (1932/1957). Virgil Thomson /virgil and the 5.6/

For the record, I was greatly enjoying Virgil Thomson's Second String Quartet when we had a local earthquake.

You can hear what I heard via Art of the States. You can feel what I felt by shaking your dining room table for five seconds. I only give the quake three stars, but the music five...

links for 2007-10-29

• define: classical music - Google Search
  "traditional genre of music conforming to an established form and appealing to critical interest and developed musical taste"
• Leonard Link: Joshua Bell plays Barber & Greenberg Concerti at Carnegie Hall
  re: Greenberg: "...there is a freshness to all of it, he uses the orchestra in an idiomatic manner and produces some ravishing colors with his instrumental combinations, and the whole thing is quite tuneful and listener-friendly..."

links for 2007-10-28

• PostClassic: Taruskin Charges Again
  "there was no way to deeply appreciate that music and pretend that art and entertainment were separate human activities." They may overlap but I listen to something like Feldman for the clarity, not because it keeps me amused.

links for 2007-10-27

• Modern interpretations of classic songs | Ask MetaFilter
  "There's also Schlong's Punk Side Story, a punk version of West Side Story."
• Dial "M" for Musicology: How to Educate?
  "National styles, high and low styles, and certainly the topics and styles (e.g. dance topics like Sarabande and Mazurka, styles like Pastoral, Storm, Hunt) are immediately easier to recognize, given a modicum of background, than form and motive."
• The Kurt Cobain Biopic: Does This Guy Know What He's In For?
  "I will say one thing: He's definitely got the eyes for the part." :: They are strangely present.
• Steven Rubio's Online Life: for setlist junkies
  "Born to Run: ...Robin plays coy, she knows we have "a song" but she never comes right out and says this is it. It is. I haven't missed her so much in a long time as I did when they played "Born to Run" last night. ...#1 on my all-time list."
• Twitter / Sean Voisen:
  "What is it about 20th century classical music that helps me write great code? Especially Glass."
• Musicwhore.org: Anton Webern: Complete Works for String Quartet and String Trio (Artis Quartett Wein)
  "Conciseness doesn't necessarily mean a lack of emotion."
• WFMU's Beware of the Blog: WFMU 2007 Record Fair--November 2nd, 3rd, 4th!
  "The Fair...specializing in the fringey sounds that keep you coming back to WFMU again and again like Krautrock...DIY, Breakcore, ...Electro-Acoustic, Hobbit Rock, Folk, Minimal Synth, ...Weirdo Propaganda, Afrobeat, ...Noise, 20th Century Classical"

links for 2007-10-26

• FAQ
  Pandora explains some of their musical attributes although it's all standard musicological stuff - meandering melodic phrasing, old school roots, gangsta rap attitude, chopped & screwed production, vinyl ambience, use of sing-jaying, IDM influences...
• Linda Ronstadt
  "All of those passing tones and incredibly complex chords that came out of the New Modernism of the turn of the 20th century. Charles Ives was the first one, and Gershwin took it up with a vengeance and made it accessible."
• DJ SPOOKY Class Syllabus at EGS
  Again, a rather orthodox listening list - Gershwin, Debussy, Basement Jaxx...

They Are There! (1942). Charles Ives /dance remix enigma/

Scott at Musical Perceptions has a good meme -- report five google searches returning your blog as the #1 result. Here's the aworks edition, as always, crossing traditional boundaries:

1. adagio for strings by beethoven. aworks :: your number one source for all things adagio.
2. dj tiesto samuel barber. aworks ranked ahead of the youtube video itself.
3. platoon soundtrack remix. Yet more Adagio-related blogging.
4. edgar varèse ionisation mp3.
5. german soccer handball philip glass. Based on an obscure soccer reference I made as I was about to pass out from the anticipation of World Cup 2006. Instead, I passed out from the awful results of the US team in World Cup 2006 (as well as feeling pain this year from the disappointment of the US in the Women's World Cup).
6. They are there ives. The bottom of my Ives birthday post called Ives "enigmatic," also relevant to yesterday's post.
7. Charles Ives dance remix. Note for future Googlers: to my surprise, for a composer who uses the music of others in his works, Charles Ives doesn't seem to have a legitimate dance remix yet. And I don't know what to make of the fact that even prior to this post, aworks was the #1 result for this query.
   

links for 2007-10-25

• SFist: SFist Interviews Pierre-Laurent Aimard
  "What do you mean by philosophical light? Pierre-Laurent: I mean what my words mean. Let me finish." Regardless, I'm impressed with SFist lately; beyond Muni reports and shootings, first an interview with TRIN and now one with P-LA.
• AfriClassical: "Ulysses Kay: Works for Chamber Orchestra" (2007), Albany Records
  "He always felt that thematic and structural concision was the best way to express oneself"
• Musical Assumptions: The rest are women
  "I do, however, wish that Ross had given a little more than a paragraph to Nadia Boulanger. I wish he had mentioned Lili. There are a couple of paragraphs on Ruth Crawford Seeger..."
• The Standing Room: Vingt Regards:IX. Apples and Amoebas
  Yes and no. I love shopping at Amoeba but also enjoy the more abstract experience of listening to MP3s.
• Musicwhore.org: That is so last century
  "I didn't think much about Jean Sibelius save for the music notation software which bears his name. Yesterday, I used the rest of my monthly eMusic quota to get some Sibelius symphonies and string quartets."
• THE HIGH HAT | DETRITUS: Different Destinies
  "Some wrote twelve-tone music to achieve control; others saw it as a medium of freedom...in Berkeley in the 1950s it tilted toward extreme abstraction and meditative stillness (I’m thinking in particular of La Monte Young’s String Trio)."
• Orange Crate Art: Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times
  "I decided a couple of days ago to check the New York Times online archives for the newspaper's first reference to Louis Armstrong. I was astonished to find that it came on October 5, 1935, in the day's radio listings"
• Out West Arts: "No," cried the people of Mahagonny
  "If one wants to guarantee high quality sound, the first task is to get the audience to shut up and listen."

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /"a father, not a fossil"/

Several items of note including two from the Halloween issue of the New Yorker (items not online; go buy the magazine) and one from the Fredösphere (online, free and often surprising):

1. In a New Yorker paragraph about the Yale at Carnegie concert of Ives songs, it is stated that "Ives is generally recognized as America's greatest classical composer." Really, generally recognized? I think his body of song represents an amazing achievement and I'll accept Ives as the first great American composer (although I would nominate Aaron Copland as the greatest). This so astounds me, I'd like to hear if anyone wants to suggest Ives as greatest.
2. Fred of Fredösphere basically calls Ives a coward, at least on a harmonic basis (along with Elgar). I also enjoy Fred's continued dislike of Haydn even as I have warmed up to the composer earlier this year after listening to the Robert Greenberg Haydn lectures.
   
3. Speaking of Aaron Copland, Steve Martin, in a nostalgic piece centered around performing at Knott's Berry Farm early in his career, tells a bizarre anecdote about he and a friend visiting the composer for an interview:

We emerged a half hour later with the coveted interview and got in the car, never mentioning the men in skimpy black thongs, because, like trigonometry, we couldn't quite comprehend it.

links for 2007-10-22

• The Standing Room: Vingt Regards:V. They Speak According to the Book
  'I suddenly hear a voice say, "...blogs by double bassists and artistic administrators."' I always suspected TSR was a double bassist but I was too polite to ask. I can't comment on hip hop and Janacek, having heard little of either.
• Seth’s blog » Blog Archive » The Silent Spring of Marching Bands
  "Music teachers don’t acknowledge their own hearing problems...because doing so could endanger their livelihoods. Band parents, known for their fanaticism, were sometimes dismissive. They claimed that pain and ringing in the ears are normal."
• YouTube - Metamorphosis One - Philip Glass, Bruce Brubaker
  Play for the audio, not the video.
• Twitter / Matthew Levine: Watching Philip Glass' new ...
  ...opera "Appomatox" at the aptly-named War Memorial Opera House.