aworks :: "new" american classical music

Christian Zeal And Activity (1973). John Adams /shutter island/

Image via Wikipedia

I missed this when it came out but I see that the soundtrack for the Scorsese film Shutter Island has an all-star list of contemporary compositions. as selected by Robbie Robertson. The list includes:

• Fog Tropes - Ingram Marshall
• Music For Marcel Duchamp - John Cage
• Hommage à John Cage - Nam June Paik
• Lontano - György Ligeti
• Rothko Chapel 2 - Morton Feldman
• On The Nature Of Daylight - Max Richter 
• Christian Zeal And Activity - John Adams
• Suite For Symphonic Strings - Lou Harrison
• Lizard Point - Brian Eno 
• Root Of An Unfocus - John Cage 
• Prelude — The Bay - Ingram Marshall 
• This Bitter Earth/On The Nature Of Daylight – Dinah Washington/Max Richter

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By the way, last week, I tried to watch Scorsese's After Hours, a 1980s look at life in downtown NY. I got the impression it was going to be a romantic comedy of all things. Unfortunately, it proved too dark to be quirky or wry. I stopped watching after an hour.

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Rdio doesn't stream the Shutter Island soundtrack and I can't find it at all on MOG. There is a Lego version of Christian Zeal and Activity although you have to wait awhile before the preaching starts. 

101 Is a Hard Road to Travel (). John Fahey /a world of non-traditional musical ideas/

Image via Wikipedia

MP3Maniaco has an interesting quote from Dr. Demento about the late John Fahey:

[Fahey] was the first to demonstrate that the finger-picking techniques of traditional country and blues steel-string guitar could be used to express a world of non-traditional musical ideas — harmonies and melodies you'd associate with Bartok, Charles Ives, or maybe the music of India.

1-Bit Symphony (2009/10). Tristan Perich /the materiality of hardware/

Image via Wikipedia

The Rambler posts about Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony, which prompted me to finally listen.

From the 1-Bit Symphony website:

1-Bit Symphony utilizes on and off electrical pulses, synthesized by assembly code and routed from microchip to speaker, to manifest data as sound. The device treats electricity as a sonic medium, making an intimate connection between the materiality of hardware and the abstract logic of software.

I don't generally care about instrument building and assorted technologies but so far, despite the constrained palette of sounds, I like this.

The composer/artist's website has MP3s of various works. Rdio has 1-Bit Music and 1-Bit Symphony.

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Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (1950). Aaron Copland /20th century radio/

Image via CrunchBase

Pandora now has genre stations. I'm trying the 20th Century Radio. First up was Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland (ok, actually just one poem). 

And unfortunately, there is no 21st Century Radio. For that, I'm starting to rely more on CounterStream Radio.

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4'33" (1952). John Cage /squeezing this cool idea again/

Image via Wikipedia

Andrew Druckenbrod complains about an orchestral performance of 4'33":

Why must we keep squeezing this cool idea again and again until it becomes a mockery of that it once was? And really, it never was all that great -- better in theory than reality...

I'm fortunate that, at least in recorded versions, the piece still works for me. 

johncage.info:

1. Silence does not exist. One simply should listen and open one's ears. 2. Silence is a means to seperate tones and chords, in order to avoid melodic interpretations to chronology of sounds.

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aworks hot tracks :: what i'm really listening to /by decade/

2000s

• Quiet Music from Three Etudes for Piano. Nico Muhly
• Local Variations. Bill Sethares
• Virginia Trance. Henry Flynt
• A Portrait. Henry Flynt
• Dreams Away. Henry Flynt
• Wear Your Seatbelt. Cliff Martinez -Solaris soundtrack 
• These Are My Twisted Words. Radiohead - unknown recording
• Pauvre Type. Amadou & Mariam - Sou Ni Tile
• The Sad Branch (Bonus Reissue Song). Black Moth Super Rainbow

1990s

• Rez. Underworld - Underworld 1992-2002 
• Study No.51 ("3750"). Conlon Nancarrow - Lost Works, Last Works
• EK For JC. Jin Hi Kim - The Wire Tapper 07
• Seventy-Four For Orchestra. John Cage - American Composers Orchestra

1980s

• String Quartet No. 2, "Company": I. Philip Glass - Carducci String Quartet
• String Quartet No. 2, "Company": III. Philip Glass - Carducci String Quartet
  
• String Quartet No. 2, "Company": IV. Philip Glass - Carducci String Quartet
• String Quartet No. 2, "Company": IV. Philip Glass - Kronos Quartet 
• String Quartet No. 4, "Buczak": I. Philip Glass - Carducci String Quartet
• This Is Not America. David Bowie, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays - Ahn Quartet
• Ryoanji: for double bass and tape. John Cage - Stephano Sconadibbio

1970s

• Black Market. Weather Report 
• Modern Love Waltz. Philip Glass - Margaret Leng Tan 
• Mysterious Traveller. Weather Report
• From a Room on the Plazza. Alvin Curran
• Downtown. Steve Drew - Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co.
• Jungle Book. Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller
• Einstein on the Beach: Knee 4. Philip Glass

1960s

• Very Special. Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach - Money Jungle 
• Bolivar Blues. Thelonious Monk - Monk's Dream
• Spoonful. Willie Dixon - Howlin' Wolf
• Contrary Motion. Philip Glass
• Two Pages. Philip Glass
• Music in Fifths. Philip Glass 
• Music in Similar Motion. Philip Glass
• As You Said. Cream - Wheels of Fire

1950s

• Atlantis. Bernard Herrmann. Journey to the Center of the Earth soundtrack
• Study for Player Piano No. 15. Conlon Nancarrow - Arditti Quartet
• Misterioso (alt tk). Thelonious Monk - The Complete Blue Note Recordings

1940s

• A Room. John Cage - Philipp Vandre
• A Room. John Cage - Bruce Brubaker
• A Room. John Cage - Anthony De Mare
• A Room. John Cage - Markus Hinterhauser
• Double Music. John Cage & Lou Harrison - The Ethos Percussion Group
• The Unavailable Memory of. John Cage - Philipp Vandre
• Dream. John Cage - Margaret Leng Tan

1920s

• Two Little Flowers. Charles Ives - Helen Boatwright, John Kirkpatrick

1780s

• Cello Concerto #2 In D, H 7B/2 - 1. Allegro Moderato. Franz Haydn - Yo-Yo Ma
• Cello Concerto #2 In D, H 7B/2 - 2. Adagio. Franz Haydn - Yo-Yo Ma

By decade of composition, more or less...Margaret Leng Tan plays toy piano in addition to the grown-up instrument...Not sure what happened to the second movement of the Glass quartet...Did I mention I haven't found a good alternative to lala for making generally available playlists?

After Sundown (1933). Don Redman /harmonized melody lines and pseudo-solos/

Harlem image via Wikipedia

Musical Assumptions links to an interesting map of night clubs in 1930s Harlem (double click to zoom in). 

Wikipedia on band leader and arranger Don Redman, who is mentioned on the map:

His importance in the formulation of arranged hot jazz can not be overstated; a chief trademark of Redman's arrangements was that he harmonized melody lines and pseudo-solos within separate sections; for example, clarinet, sax, or brass trios. He played these sections off each other, having one section punctuate the figures of another, or moving the melody around different orchestral sections and soloists. His use of this technique was sophisticated, highly innovative, and formed the basis of much big band jazz writing in the following decades. 

Mural (1943-44). Jackson Pollock /each age finds its own technique/

I streamed the Ed Harris film of the painter Jackson Pollock. The movie was disturbing, Pollock himself was disturbed and the scene after Ed Harris gained thirty pounds for the role was a cause for disturbance as well. At least Pollock's aesthetics are captivating.

The painter on the art of time rather than place:

The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the 'thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of creating a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd...It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old form of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.

In the film anyway, Mural, commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim, is the work that sends Pollocks' career into orbit.

Bemsha Swing (1953). Thelonious Monk, Denzil Best /jam-session rules/

I don't think I've heard the John Coltrane/Don Cherry version of Monk's Bemsha Swing. It's spacious and low-key (for Coltrane anyway). Burning Ambulance:

To my ear, “Bemsha Swing” is the heart of the record, and a perfect complement to the four Ornette and inspired-by-Ornette pieces that precede it. Throughout the album, Coltrane is willing to be Cherry’s equal, never swamping the trumpeter under waves of notes (as he surely could have done) or blasting him flat with raw power. Coltrane in 1960 was still very much under the sway of Prestige jam-session rules, wherein solo statements were made in a form as strictly organized as a university debate.

Cheap Imitation (1969). John Cage /i owe that confusion to love/

Listening to the Irvine Arditti violin version of Cage's Cheap Imitation. Wikipedia:

Cheap Imitation became something of a departure for Cage, because it was his first "proper" composition, in the old sense of the word, since 1962. Furthermore, the open declaration of Cage's own feelings (about Satie's work) was something very unusual for his work, which was, since the late 1940s, almost entirely impersonal. Cage himself was well aware of the contradiction between the rest of his works and Cheap Imitation: 

In the rest of my work, I'm in harmony with myself [...] But Cheap Imitation clearly takes me away from all that. So if my ideas sink into confusion, I owe that confusion to love. [...] Obviously, Cheap Imitation lies outside of what may seem necessary in my work in general, and that's disturbing. I’m the first to be disturbed by it.

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