aworks :: "new" american classical music

4' 33" (1952). John Cage /in a browser/

Via runme.org, Jon Meyer has a browser-based performance of John Cage's 4' 33". I found my attention turned to the motion out the window rather than any ambient sounds.

Peter Gutmann on 4' 33":

One more question: is this stuff really classical music? I think so. The huge variety of music of all eras that we call classical (and here I'm certainly including classic pop, folk, blues and jazz) seems to share two key traits. The first is a respect for tradition. Beyond being a wickedly keen variation on the conventions of the formal concert, 4'33" fills a crucial slot in history. Music began as an imitation of natural sounds and human voices but then became increasingly stylized. Cage brilliantly brings the process full circle, bridging the cultural distance that has developed between conventional performance and the sounds of nature where it all began.

The second hallmark is staying power. I've heard Mozart's dozen mature piano concertos dozens of times each over dozens of years, but right now I can recall only a few of their melodies. I heard the Cage piece just once (and three decades ago), but I remember it so vividly.

Guttman goes on to highlight Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room and Reich's It's Gonna Rain as other successful examples of contemporary music. And yes, I can get tired of a work through too much repetition but unlike say a film or a book, I think music, due its brevity and abstraction, holds up well to thorough replay.

Cheap Imitation (1969). John Cage

BH Lang, a young student and aspiring classical musician, has just started The Bayan Blog:

This Blog is intended to be a documentary of my efforts to reach my life's goal - founding the first Classical Accordion Department at the Juilliard School in NYC.
So in my spare time, I will be updating this blog with my work status, little steps I take down the big path to my goal. I am hoping that in the meantime, I can begin to inform America about the Classical Accordion.

OK, I'm one American who knows little or nothing about classical accordion. Actually, Google lists aworks for the search american classical accordion music because I posted last year about, among other things, an MP3 of John Cage's Souvenir played on accordion.  Still,  Accordionlinks.com (Accordionlinks.com?) reports more on classical accordion than I would have ever guessed. I expected accordion renditions of traditional classical music  and maybe a mention of Pauline Oliveros. But I also found Gershwin for the accordion, and surprisingly, this historical note:

Although Gershwin didn't actually write for the accordion, Doktorski said his music has always been popular with accordionists. In fact, the second recording ever made of "Rhapsody in Blue" was released in 1928 on Victor Records and featured the accordion stylings of Basil Fomeen and Nick Hope.

For music written for accordion, George Antheil wrote an orchestra piece Accordion Dance (instrumentation: 1+pic.222/4331/timp.perc/acn[=hmn]/str).  Charles Wuorinen wrote Buttons and Bows (or, Superparticular Variations), for cello and accordion, and original compositions for accordion were also written by Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson, Alan Hovhaness, Otto Luening, and William Grant Still (and many more including Lutoslawski. Lutoslawski?).

William Schimmel has an essay What Constitutes a Classical Accordionist in America:

I like to think that my accordion work is about the accordion than around the accordion. It's not much about me anymore. My own compositions (realities) explore other works. My recent accordio-shinto work explores our American accordion ancestors such as Deiro, Frosini, Ettore, Contino, Palmer, Pino and yes, Lawrence Welk.

Here's a description of the bayan instrument (as opposed to the Welk-ian piano accordion as described in Wikipedia) and of an organization of interest-- The Classical Free-Reed, Inc.:

a nonprofit educational and cultural organization dedicated to the advancement of the free-reed instruments i.e. accordion & bayan, concertina & bandoneón, harmonium & reed organ, harmonica, shêng, sho, khaen, kobing, etc.

In film, Morgan Boatman's Princess Isabelle:

The lead character: the eccentric and artless Emery Ried (portrayed by Richard Rouse), an outdated relic from a bygone era, one of the last survivors from the golden age of the accordion (ca. 1920-1955). His wife, Rose (portrayed by Mary Kate Sawert): a jealous woman on the verge of filing for divorce because of her husband's all-consuming love affair with his mistress: an accordion which he affectionately calls Princess Isabelle.

Finally, on CD, I found more classical accordion than I would have ever imagined, including the soure of that Cage MP3 I blogged about -- Stefan Husson playing the music of John Cage and William Billings (William Billings?). Notably, I also found this CD by Teodoro Anzelotti on Amazon, an all-Cage accordion CD. It duplicates two works from the Husson CD (Dream and Souvenir) but also includes Cage's Cheap Imitation.  Even in three thirty-second Amazon samples, Cheap Imitation on the accordion sounds haunting and probably more resonant than on the violin (via emusic).

Good luck to BH Lang and thanks for revealing the vast world of the classical accordion.

The Well-Tuned Piano (1964-73). La Monte Young

Kyle Gann blogs about his external hard drive and the challenges and joys of filling it up with music, including La Monte Young's 5 CD set of The Well-Tuned Piano. Note to self: find said CD set so I can rip it to MP3, although if it shows up as hour-long tracks, that may not work so well in shuffle mode. Note to family: I've been eyeing an external hard drive for Christmas.

I searched five years to find the La Monte Young recording after reading an intriguing article about the composer in downbeat magazine. Eventually, Rhino Records in Westwood had it, although by the time I got it, CDs had supplanted LPs. Amazon has a used CD copy at $199, although the comments may indicate it is Just Stompin' instead, a blues improvisation 2-CD set by La Monte Young and the Forever Bad Blues Band. Unlike that guy who is blogging his entire record collection, album by album, I don't remember where I bought Just Stompin''.

I also agree with Gann about not abandoning CDs after ripping. In times of need during college, I sold parts of my LP collection and I vowed never again. 

Kyle Gann on the tuning of The Well-Tuned Piano:

The premise of this tuning is actually very simple, and analogous to the tuning from which European classical tuning evolved. Young's tuning can be arranged in a grid in which the perfect fifths (3/2 ratios) run in one direction... and the pure minor sevenths (7/4 ratios) in another...

Violin Concerto (1993). John Adams /leila josefowicz/

Andrew Sullivan blogs about a visit to LA including a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall:

...and then took in a gorgeous John Adams piece and some over-the-top Shostakovich in Frank Gehry's Philharmonic crumple...I guess it goes to show that stereotypes have a limited usefulness. Classical music, peerless architecture, old friends and walk, walk, walk. All in L.A. And it rained too. Heavenly.

Leila Josefowicz performed the Adams Violin Concerto. I don't have her Koch  recording. I probably have fifty John Adams CDs and I just realized I've blogged tonight about two I don't have. And I call myself a completist...

4' 33" (1952). John Cage /one minute/

So Weird Productions has a "1 minute biography" of John Cage.