aworks :: "new" american classical music

aworks sentences :: this modern world

Wikipedia

• "A new solution to the problem of expanding one’s musical taste and collection without working one’s ears off has appeared: the MusicRadiator web app, which layers a remarkably simple interface over the freshest music, either in general, or by genre." hypebot. 
• "So, though I don't think my personal response is any kind of deciding indicator, it's clear that with a landscape that has only gotten more crowded, Radical.FM's future will depend on how it addresses those changes for listeners" hypebot
• "Lantern is a search engine for the books, periodicals, and catalogs contained in the Media History Digital Library." kottke.org
• "Buzzam delivers a similarly bespoke listening experience, interspersing music from users’ Rdio, Spotify and/or downloaded music with news, weather, and the periodic reading of users’ Facebook and Twitter feeds." hypebot
• "During a performance of the show, musicians are spending the time between music by participating in various activities, including, but not limited to: sleeping, reading, eating, laughing at mess-ups on stage, socializing, playing Hangman, texting, etc." Quora
• "This strongly suggests that people are reluctant to admit to themselves how much the passion and energy of motion of pianists influences their evaluation of such pianists."   Overcoming Bias 

aworks listening log :: Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center #timbre #archaic

Label: Ling Music Group, which appears to mostly offer fifites and sixties pop compilations.

Release date: This version was released in 2011, the original album in 1961. I take it that this is a live recording of electronic music. 

Composers: Bulent Arel, Halim El-Dabh, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbit, Mario Davidovsky, Otto Luening

Favorites: None. It was all timbrally archaic and the music ranged from ok (Babbitt's Compositon for Synthesizer) to mildly intolerable (Luening's Gargoyles).

The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Miklos Rozsa #johnfahey

Soundtrack: The Music of the Movies:

Rozsa's scores for The Thief of Baghdad and Rudyard Kipling's Junle Book (1942) attacted considerable attentioni; they abounded with appropriate orientalisms, blended with Rozsa's own lyrical, chromatic texture.

The John Fahey Handbook: Vol. 1:

In 1948, at age nine, Fahey became interested in music aftrer watching The Thief of Bagdad. What fascinated him most was the musical score of the film, and he made his father take him to see it at least five times.

As one who is obsessed with both American classical music and the music of John Fahey, I find it interesting that the two most recent books I've purchased intersect.

  

aworks listening log :: Alvin Lucier: Vespers and Other Early Works

North American Time Capsule is quite obnoxious. The other works are more sedate, although I liked Chambers back in 2004.

On New World Records.

Used to Call Me Sadness (1970s). Noa Ain #proustian #demure

And another interesting work from the New American Music series from the seventies, this time by Noa Ain.

Lost Transmissions on the piece:

 Proustian musique concrete, nostalgic and demure.

From the liner notes of the Folkways recording:

The tape is made from an interview I did with her [Yoko Matsua] speaking in English and Japanese about her childhood, her feelings about her marriage and her life now.

The composer's official bio indicates a classical music education from Julliard and École des Beaux-Arts.

 

Apolitical Intellectuals (1974). Frederic Rzewski #silence #shame

I've stumbled on a series of Folkways recordings from the Seventies titled "New American Music." It's mostly odd jazz and classical. The most interesting so far is a song by Frederic Rzewski, Apolitical Intellectuals. Milton Schlosser describes: 

In one of the most dramatic and searing endings in art song, the singer sentences the apolitical intellectuals to a truly disgusting punishment—namely, being tortured by their own silence and shame.