May 2009
7 posts
A Post-Minimal Soiree
The most compelling element of Timo Andres’ competent and playful How Can I Live in Your World of Ideas? is the composer’s simple language that dances with stops and sonic “green-zones,” where tension never warns of impending aggression. He called these jolts “needle-drops,” moments when differing melodies or motifs interrupt flowing lines, like a turn-table arm...
“Sound-fields and masses that flow together, alternate with, or penetrate one...”
– György Ligeti from Nordwall, Eine Monographie, p. 41
myTunes
Due to posting restrictions set by Tumblr, I am forced to tether my creative explorations to bogus MySpace instead: www.myspace.com/hazelandhyperion
I have only just begun posting a small selection of studies and statements. I will update regularly.
City Noir
When the LA Phil posted the program for their upcoming season, I was very enthused to learn John Adams’ newest work will be premiered in October under the baton of Dudamel. The work, titled City Noir, was supposedly a work for full symphony orchestra. Fortunately, more details about the work were recently released on Mr. Adams’ website, including a short synthesized sound bite. His...
Mega-DEATH →
A Synaptic Symphony
World premiere of brain orchestra; kinda lame: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8016869.stm
I’m waiting for a group of flatulence-fueled iPhone Ocarinas playing Berg’s Lyric Suite. Anybody?
April 2009
8 posts
Auf wiedersehen Herr Finn!
For those of you who didn’t get the chance to say goodbye in the palace, here is Mr. Ross’ admiral job.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2009/05/04/090504crmu_music_ross
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Donnerstag aus Licht,...
What 10 Million Euro Can Buy
Apparently the city of Dresden, with some philanthropic help, will host the first complete cycle of Stockhausen’s operatic voyage Licht. Beginning in 1977 with Donnerstag, Stochhausen set himself to construct seven majestic operas, one for each day of the week. Sonntag was finished in 2003 and, along with Mittwoch, is yet be performed in its entirety. May the battle between Michael...
Lego My Ligeti
I’m finding more and more, day by day, I have much in common with the stylistic integrity of György Ligeti. His whimsical juxtopositioning of bare dissonance within both mechanical and organic imagery is evidence of his ability to remain at the periphery of the major schools of twentieth century classical music without buying stock. He respectively drew influence from some sweet shards of...
Lifetime Achievement?
If you’re as curious as a kitty to hear what finally helped determine the Pulitzer judges’ decision to award Steve Reich his much deserved place at the top of the list of American musical innovators, you can hear streaming audio of a recent live performance (presumably by Eighth Blackbird, who premiered the piece) of his new Double Sextet here:
...
Songs of a Homeostatic Homer
I have immense respect for the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella, an ongoing series of performances inaugurated in 1981 that highlight budding artists, composers, ideas, and pieces belonging to the more experimental strains of new music. I have enjoyed only a handful of these mesmerizing performances, but all have solidified an indelible impression of the necessary foresight and bravado such a series...
Shattered Porcelin
This is a video of Christoph von Dohnanyi leading the Arnold and Ruth Black Pick-Up Philharmonia in a strong, stoic, and crisp rendition of Webern’s orchestration of Bach’s Musical Offering BWV 1079 in Royal Albert Hall.
http://instantencore.com/video/details.aspx?Source=youtube&SourceId=qV0U-lB45RY
Bach originally dedicated the work to Frederick the Great in 1747 (thus the term...
March 2009
5 posts
“…a not unamusing place frequented by English upper-class bohemians,...”
– Virgil Thompson on Le Boeuf sur le Toit on Rue Boissy d’Anglas, pre-1923.
Out of the Cold Blue
I have been ill and unkind, wound between numerically proving how much my US residency is worth, internal Spring cleaning, and the impending season of elegiac allergies that I was once immune to. My work has not seized, but my digital transcriptions of thought have been bubbling away on the back burners. But they will be more like chowder than outmeal, believe you me. In the mean time, this is...
Anew Avinyl
Five new vinyl acquisitions from my number one vinyl acquisition depot, Brand Books:
Subotnick: Return*
Kodaly: Works for Piano (Complete)
Orgelkonzerte: Paradies, Stanley, Corette, Durante, and Meyer
Byrd: Madrigals, Motets, and Anthems
Messiaen: La Nativite du Seigneur
*: Commissioned to celebrate the 1985-86 return of Halley’s comet, this piece explores the historical...
Internal Organs
Dr. Serenus Zeitblom agreed with Levenkühn that “philosophy is the queen of the sciences…it assumed among the sciences about the same place as the organ did among instruments.” (Doktor Faustus, 90) Understood within the context of Hegel’s Preface of the Phenomenology, this correspondence deserves more attention. Serendipity recently graced me with a Sunday filled with the...
February 2009
9 posts
Freitag Muzik
Some songs that alchemize with the silken fabric of clouds painted below the sky today:
Satie: Gnossiennes and Nocturnes
Schubert: D960 in Bb
und für der Nachtmittag: Adams: Phrygian Gates
Die Klavier über Alles.
“We live in a time I think not of mainstream, but of many streams, or even, if...”
– John Cage
Path to New Music
I recently found a copy of Webern’s short but rewarding series of lectures given in 1933 to a small group of friends and fellow learners in quaint circumstances. The most startling two characteristics are its accessibility and his charisma. Apparently the manuscript survives because of a meticulous note-taker in the class who kept papers secure in neutral territory during the war; however,...
Rossian Mechanics
I want YOU! to know!
There are few journalists, in any field, writing today that I admire so dearly as Alex Ross of the New Yorker. His undying resilience to prove that music of the classical class is as relevant, malleable, and transparent today as ever is matched only by his ability to do so in an informed, well-balanced, erudite, and accessible way. He writes with enthusiasm and hope. Please...
Das Rheingold ala Boulez
Though I possess a complete digital copy of Solti’s Bayreuth production, in addition to the complete cycle on vinyl by Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonik, I must say I have yet to experience Wagner’s magnum in its entirety. With most parts perused, and many others mildly interpreted, I found myself savoring the thorough experience of actually viewing the festival, cover to cover. So...
Homage
I must pay my dues to a piece of music that turned my ears on and transformed my artistic sense of expression.
Transfigured Night is a representation of the cultural aesthetic transfiguration that Schoenberg undoubtedly caused within the world of music. Savoring for something more than that which has been, salivating over a method of expressing the deepest aspects of the human condition in a way...
For Those of You
For those of you who don’t already know Nico Muhly, bust out your Rolodex and get a pen. His music is so sharp it can chop butternut squash like its cantaloupe. Forward-thinking, socio-culturally astute, internationally recognized and informed, Muhly identifies more with Björk and Teitur than John Adams and Steven Stucky. I first heard about his ambition and precocity from a New Yorker...
Boulez from Beyond
I recently purchased the new cornerstone to my vinyl collection: the complete Webern recordings produced, but not exclusively conducted, by Boulez. It is a four disc set, perfect condition, and I owe it to the antiquated and wonderfully strange world of eBay. More specifically, Scott Campbell Records. The cream of the this crop is the last recording on the last disc. When I first heard...
MTT, Yea, You Know Me
I recently experienced.
The first performance of the season I witnessed was Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony playing Copland’s Our Town, Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor. The pastoral landscape that Copland set as the background to our evening was like smelling artifical grass in a fragrance laboratory-it was...