Reflection Field

Open Mike in Second Life

2008-07-02T03:45:00.001-07:00

HD Artists in Second Life (That's me) is offering an "open mike" on Sunday, July 6, 2008 from 1 pm PST. Music: modern classical, ambient. minimalism, noise, etc. Please email me or IM me in-world (Flivelwitz Alsop), if you wish to perform. I hope it will be a successful concert!

Spreading out

2008-01-13T18:02:00.000-08:00

Trying to get your music out into the public arena is not the easiest thing in the world. I send a little post off to websites that discuss music, I sat "Could I list my website on your page?" Some of them reply in a friendly manner, some reply like I asked them if I could poo on their dining room table.

Pastoral

2008-01-12T12:52:00.001-08:00

The clarinet first appeared in the orchestra in the Classical period, Mozart liked the sound of it, and soon it was part of the standard orchestra we know today. I like the clarinet too,. It's smooth and silky, and blends well with many instruments. I've been working on a piece for clarinet and band, and you can listen to it, if you wish. I call it a Pastoral. I have used a pedal point which runs throughout, with the ensemble moving about that point.

Sci Fi

2008-01-11T18:01:00.000-08:00

I was just reading about science fiction operas over at Kyle Gann's PostClassic blog. The opera he discusses (Aniera) by Blomdahl is quite engaging - it's obviously 12 tone, but kind of like a gentle Wozzeck in space.

It made me think, I wonder how many science fiction operas there are? Besides this one, I can think of:

Philip Glass 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof
Tim Risher The Moon Moth (well of course I'm going to list my own piece)

There is a list in Wikipedia, but you can go there yourself and see if they are all correct. I wonder when the first Doctor Who opera will appear?

Trrmg

2008-01-11T13:58:00.001-08:00

Trying to sell your music is not easy. I have set up my site now, it's here. At the moment I am only selling the music in PDF files. I think this is easier and cheaper:

1) There is no paper, the purchaser only has to print the music his/herself. That's convenient.
2) It's cheaper, because there is no postage for sending bulky packages.

Of course, the purchaser can order the pieces in copied and bound form, if he/she wishes.
I hope to expand the site to include other composers as well, however, at the moment, it's enough just to sell my own music.

Practical Music

2007-11-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about "practical" music - music written to be included in the workings of society, like church service or rituals (graduation, ceremonies), parties, shopping, exercise. Hindemith had his "Gebrauchmusik", where he would write music for whatever he was asked to do, whether it be for mandolin, tuba and timpani. THis, however, doesn't lead to practical music, music used for something, just the "art for art's sake". That's fine, but there is more to it than that. The inclusion of new music in the rituals of our life leads back to a more utilitarian use of muisc (or maybe this should be a question), but does it mean that it loses its "art"? Maybe with some composers, yes (think of Telemann and his turgid "Tafelmusik" or the endless supplies of "background" music that is still available). But then again, composers like Bach, Perotin, Monteverdi, Schuetz, etc, writing music for specific reasons and writing music of artistic worth. They were, of course, writing for churches that generally knew great music, nowadays we are surrounded by "mega-churches" that are more interested in music that sounds like "Cats" except with religious words, dripping with "feeling", and then claiming that that's what the "audience wants".

Choral Society of Durham

2007-10-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last night the Choral Society of Durham gave its first concert. I mention this because I sing in the CSD. The concert was "Soldiers, Sailors & Celebration, A Concert of Opera Masterpieces." As it was sponsored by the Center for Slavic, Eurasion and East European Studies at Duke University, three of the artists were Russian - Marina Tregubovich (soprano), Dmitry Karpov (tenor) and Aleksandr Smoridkin (piano). The second soprano was Elizabeth Byrum Linnartz, faculty at Duke. The concert consisted of works by Gounad, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Dvorak, Mozart, Donizetti and Verdi. Not really too varied, but well done (if I say so myself). The soloists sang with verve, the Russians with that amount of vibrato one expects from the Eastern style of vocal training (I notice it too with the brass instruments; very bright and cutting). This is not my favorite kind of concert, as you can tell from reading my blog, but it was quite fun. Listening to it makes me understand more where the 20th century musical got its start. The Dvorak especially made me think of Dorothy yearning to see the end of the rainbow, Mother Superior advising Maria to climb every mountain. Dvorak did it better of course, with the Song of the Moon, sung by Elizabeth Byrum Linnartz.

Ciompi Quartet

2007-09-21T08:15:00.001-07:00

Ok, coming up on Saturday, September 17 is a concert of the Ciompi Quartet here in Durham, NC. They will be performing one old work - String Quartet in E-flat Major by Joseph Haydn; one sort-of-old work - Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg, and one fairly new work - Black Angels for electric string quartet by George Crumb. It is $15 for general public and $8 for students. If you haven't heard the Crumb piece, you should really go, it's one of his best pieces and worth the time. It will be at the Reynolds Industries Theater(on Science Drive on the West Duke University Campus).

Kronos Quartet

2007-09-14T06:57:00.001-07:00

The Kronos Quartet will be performing in Durham tonight (good timing, Tim) with their program Awakening: A Musical Meditation on 9/11 at the Page Auditorium on the Duke West Campus at 8 pm.

The program consists of 13 pieces were written or especially arranged for the quartet by many different composers, including Osvaldo Golijov and Michael Gordon.

The Kronos Quartet has released more than 40 recordings, winning many awards over the years, including a Grammy! The concert prices (from the flyer I picked up the other day) are $46 (section A), $38 (section B) and $25 (section C). Not too expensive, considering the the hip hop group Black Eyed Peas gave a concert recently and the tickets cost around $180.

I've got a lot of RAM

2007-08-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a video I made with help - yes, I know, the words are different than the video, etc etc. It's a dance video, although with contorted dancing. But it was my first video, I would like to do more. If I get the software program again, I will certainly make more.

quick improv

2007-08-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

As you can see I am a slacker blogger, but I will try to write more now (yeah, right).

I was reading Anthony Cornicello's blog about improvisation (yes, Anthony, I read your blog). Improvisation certainly has its place in music, and can be used very well - not only with jazz, also with classical (Bach and that Brandenburg concerto movement with only two chords, I forget which one at the moment, Liszt and his improvisations etc), More modern people - Stockhausen, Fluxus Ensemble, Glass (yes even him), Cage, Brown, and do on. If a composer chooses not to use it, however, doesn't make him an elitist know-it-all snob (Charles Wourenin discusses this idea of elitism in this interview at NewMusicBox, very interesting whether or not you like his music - listen to Wourinen's interview here).

I have heard people use the phrase "the tyranny of the composer" because we don't allow improv. Would we say "tryanny of the author" because Kafka didn't leave blanks in his stories, inviting us to improvise on what he wrote?

Pause that refreshes

2007-06-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

People are not always fond of breaks in music; it interrupts the flow of sound!
When I use a silence in my music, am I writing a break which is to be felt and counted, or am I writing a real silence, one which all movement stops? I feel that it is a bit more complex than this, it depends on the nature of the work. In the music of Pärt, for example, the silences cause the music to stop, to breathe at that point. It is an interruption to allow for personal meditation. There is no tempo, no time - a stop in the fabric of the piece. The pauses in The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, on the other hand, are timed breaks, they are counted, we wait for the piece to continue the process.

Performance

2007-05-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to the performers of Aviary Corridor.

Director: Mike Katell; Megan Drake, soprano; Erik Ansprach, flute; Jesse Myers, piano; Tim Strait, violin; Heather Elsa, violin; Melissa Hughes, viola; Brad Hawkins, piano.

Aviary Corridor

2007-04-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

So, Aviary Corridor was performed on April 25th! The performance went really well. The piece was performed as part of a conference-festival of the poetry of Charles Alexander. Before the performance that evening, the poet came up and read some of his poetry (including Aviary Corridor). He writes wonderful poems, the words are strewn about, words and phrases falling form the sky. The listener connects his or her own dots to find hidden secrets.
Then the group performed my piece (soprano, flute, string quartet and piano). It was an exuberant performance, almost the way I heard it in my head. They are repeating the concert on May 2nd, 2007 at the Richard Hugo House,1634 11th Avenue, Seattle, WA, at 7:30 pm.

absolutely relatively fabulous

2007-03-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

I am busily getting my Aviary Corridor (see post below) for performance, and the conductor wants me to lower the dynamics of the flute in the higher parts so it will balance with the voice. That got me wondering - are dynamics just absolute values and the performer will play loud, or will the performer adjust his dynamic relative to the rest of the group? I realize that I am playing a bit of the devil's advocate here - a performer would certainly know what to do. But what about if the piece (as per usual) doesn't get enough rehearsal for the group to become familiar with everything in the piece? What do you do as a composer? Do you just not worry about this, or do you try to balance your dynamics by using different markings throughout?

Over and Under

2007-03-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

Just published by www.prbmusic.com. An early music group in England, the Palladian Ensemble, wanted a piece to follow their arrangement of a Bach trio sonata, and I happily obliged. It's a chaconne with alto recorder, violin, baroque guitar and bass gamba.

Shameless Advertising

2007-03-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at the North Creek Event Center in Bothell, Washington, there will be a performance of my Aviary Corridor (soprano, flute, string quartet and piano), with poetry by Charles Alexander. The poem, according to the poet

"was written as a kind of response to an outdoor site-specific installation by artist Cynthia Miller (my wife) at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. In the installation, painted sticks, beads, hanging hoops, and other objects were placed along a walkway in the gardens. These objects were in bushes, in branches of trees, and along a wooden fence. In a way they were very unobtrusive, and one could conceivably walk along and not notice them at all. But if one began to notice, then more and more would be seen. When installing the work, soon after hanging a red hoop in a tree, a hummingbird came and flew through the hoop. "

You can see more about it here. And here is a program for the arts series at the University.

Rhys Chatham

2007-02-22T18:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything for a while, wow, not since Novemember. Life is doing this to me. Anyway -

Aaah the sound of the guitar! In this case, lots of them, and amplified a lot. The music of Rhys Chatham is just that – loud and raucous, a mixture of modern minimalism and punk rock. This work, An Angel Moves too Fast to See, was composed in the 1980s for 100 guitars and drums. Just wallow in the chunks of sound being thrown out of the speakers. The walls of sound come in 5 movements -

Prelude, Intro, Allegro, No Trees Left: Every Blade of Grass is Screaming and Adagio.

The Allegro I find a bit thin on the ground, it seems to wander a lot, if it is possible to say that with short repetitive patterns.

If you want to read more about Chatham, go here, you can order the CD here. Certainly worth owning.

Not new, but worth the time

2006-11-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

Of all things - I was listening to the North Carolina Symphony the other night on the radio, they were performing The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. Gosh, what a cool piece this is. I haven't listened to it in a long time, and it will definitely go back onto my listening list!

(I did buy a new CD of music by Ingram Marshall, by the way - it isn't within reach right now, but as soon as it is in my hot little hands, I will post some details about it.)

Steve Reich Part II

2006-10-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

Daniel Variations was also performed in the Barbicon Centre in London; I found a review in the Gaurdian from Oct 10, he gives it a good review. He says in the review that the piece is seen as somewhat of a departure from his earlier works, but from what little I've heard of it (snippets on radio reports), it sounds like a continuation of his more recent works (Three Tales, etc). I also enjoyed what I heard of it, I was not too impressed with his Cello Counterpoint and the Triple Quartet. Is there a longer fragment around to listen to?

Daniel Variations

2006-10-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Just so you know - A new work by Steve Reich - the "Daniel Variations" will be premiered Sunday, October 22 in Carnegie Hall. It's a tribute to the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan in 2002. The make-up of the ensemble is:

Steve Reich and Musicians
Synergy Vocals
Maya Beiser, Cello
David Cossin, Percussion/Video
Brad Lubman, Conductor

I heard a report about it on Weekend Edition on NPR, and rushed home to type this.
More about the piece? Click here

Amazing Race

2006-10-05T05:07:00.000-07:00

American drivers have an interesting way of driving on roads. I go to work down a highway, and the most amazing things that I notice are:

1) Tailing at high speeds. What, I can't appreciate this? "Why, you're on my tail, but I can understand that - I'm only going 10 miles over the speed limit, after all."

2) Entering the highway on the acceleration lane. The drivers come out in two ways - they enter with a complete indifference and, I assume, expect people to move out of they way as they come in. They will fly onto the highway and zoom along the lane, apparently waiting for people to move out of their way so they can slide in. I often give people a hole to slide into, but no, they want to get as far as they can without having to slow down or change their behavior in any way.

3) Entering the highway and stopping in the acceleration lane. What can I say beside the fact that this is illegal - ain't safe for the people behind them, and especially dangerous for groups 1) and 2) above.

Shipoopi

2006-09-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

Shipoopi is the name of a song from The Music Man. It's sung by Marcellus Washburn, a friend of Harold Hill. The song is about finding love and occurs at about the same time that Marian begins to fall for Professor Hill's wooing, but some versions of the musical have been performed without them, as it doesn't specifically refer to the characters in the song.

A really excellent version of the song can be foundhere.

Besides that, the word Shipoopi is quite nice.

Steve Reich

2006-09-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Reich's 70th is coming up (october three), so I thought I would start a bit early. Here is a video ofDrummingwhich was recorded with Professor Steven Schick and his ensemble.

New stuff

2006-09-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well, what have I composed this summer? I just finished a set of songs (bass voice, piano and string quartet) called Rhyme and Reason. The title matches the poems - I used three nursery rhymes, well, two nursery rhymes and a counting-out rhyme. Counting-out rhymes are those things that children do to choose teams or such - you know, like eeny, meeny, miney, mo and so on. There are many, many variations of these rhymes and they go back hundreds of years. The one I chose was used in Connecticut in the early 19th century -

Onery, uery, ickery, see,
Huckabone, crackabone, tilleebonee,
Ram pang, muskidan, Striddledum, straddledum, twentyone.

Basically nonsense words - but quite enjoyable to set.

The second song is based on a lesser-known nursery rhyme called "There was a Man of Double Deed", very unusual text -

There was a man of double deed
Sowed his garden full of seed.
When the seed began to grow,
‘Twas like a garden full of snow;
When the snow began to melt,
‘Twas like a ship without a belt;
When the ship began to sail,
‘Twas like a bird without a tail;
When the bird began to fly,
‘Twas like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar,
‘Twas like a lion at the door;
When the door began to crack,
‘Twas like a stick across my back;
When my back began to smart,
‘Twas like a penknife in my heart;
When my heart began to bleed,
‘Twas death and death and death indeed.

and the third is a light-hearted song (to help alleviate the above song)

Where are you going to, my pretty maid?
I’m going a-milking, sir, she said,
Sir, she said, sir, she said,
I’m going a-milking, sir, she said.

May I go with you, my pretty maid?
You’re kindly welcome sir, she said.

Say, will you marry me, my pretty maid?
Yes, if you please, kind sir, she said.

What is your father, my pretty maid?
My father’s a farmer, sir, she said.

What is your fortune, my pretty maid?
My face is my fortune, sir, she said.

Then I can’t marry you, my pretty maid.
Nobody asked you, sir, she said.

Which seems to have been taken from an earlier folksong, but it isn't certain. The songs restricted my choice of musical material - the rhythmic patterns of the poems, the constant rhyming - to a basic song-refrain style, but with slight pulling and stretching of the repeats, so as to keep interest.

Note

2006-09-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

Here is the biographical note on the main webpage of Aaron Cassidy:

Aaron Cassidy is a young composer currently based in Chicago, Illinois. His music is gaining increasingly widespread exposure, with performances in the United States, Mexico, Austria, the Netherlands, Croatia, England, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany.

His music can be characterized by an uncompromising dedication to instability and fragmentation. The received wisdom of performance practice is continually questioned and reasserted, often with intentionally unpredictable results. His recent works have experimented largely with the interaction of a performer with his/her instrument, introducing a decoupling of component performance techniques. Fracture is prioritized in timbral, structural, and rhythmic strata in such a way that resulting aural units are themselves only the byproducts or collisions of independent (and often cyclic) musical processes. The musical score becomes, then, both the locus of processual sediment and concurrently the cause of significant deterritorialization on the part of performer and listener alike.

Recent projects have included significant research of linguistic, semantic, and spatial theories, focusing in particular on heightened states of dislocation (as in Jakobson's analysis of aphasics or Deleuze & Guattari's writings on smooth and haptic space).

It's like taking a clock apart and laying out all the parts on the table-top, then expecting us to tell the time by it, or even to know that it is a clock at all. The pieces have all the fragments of the music presented, all the gestures, the notes, the dynamics, all broken down, then presented to us on the table-top.

John Moran

2006-08-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

In the New York Times today There is an article about the composer / (choreographer) John Moran and his latest opera Zenith 5. Philip Glass said "I am convinced that there is no more important composer working today, than John Moran. His works have been so advanced as to be considered revolutionary." Moran is often see as a protégé of this composer.

Maybe I am showing my stupidity here, but I really haven't heard of John Moran until now. I went to Amazon to hear fragments from The Manson Family: An Opera, with Iggy Pop as the Prosecutor. He seems to work with taped and found sounds, as well as music instruments, which he then organizes into musical patterns. The result is a wild mix of styles, from chaotic traffic noises and birds to soft piano patterns underlayed with quiet noise.

I shall order this CD and check it out.

Quotable

2006-08-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton, on her new album release, Paris:

It's like so good it makes me cry.

Occam's Razor

2006-08-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

Since I am thinking about "laws":

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

translated as:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

This is Occam's Razor - here is the basic entry in Wikipedia as well:

Occam's razor (also spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Originally a tenet of the reductionist philosophy of nominalism, it is more often taken today as a heuristic maxim that advises economy, parsimony, or simplicity in scientific theories. Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off", those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness).
Furthermore, when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.

Matthew Effect

2006-08-07T05:17:00.000-07:00

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." (Matthew XXV:29, KJV).

I took this description from Wikipedia:

In sociology, Matthew effect was a term coined by Robert K. Merton to describe how, among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher even if their work is similar; it also means that credit will usually be given to researchers that are already famous: for example, a prize will almost always be awarded to the most senior researcher involved in a project, even if all the work was done by a graduate student. An example is given by the story of the isolation of the antibiotics streptomycin by Albert Schatz in 1943, and the attribution of all the credit, including the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952, to his supervisor, Selman Waksman.

So, recognition tends to be given to those who already have it.

Early Musick

2006-08-06T05:03:00.000-07:00

Here is an article about early music ensembles - Trevor Pinnock, etc and etc. I've always been interested in early music; I played the sackbut in an ensemble, I have a friend who plays theorbo and I've written a heap of pieces using early instruments. Writing for the instruments is not just like writing for the modern variety. I wrote a piece for Northwest Baroque, a Seattle-based ensemble, and the hardest parts were the guitar and the theorbo. That little guitar has the, Excuse my French, weirdest tuning in the universe, and one almost has to know how to play the thing in order to write for it. It doesn't look weird on the link page, but, believe me, it is. But the sound of the ensemble was very nice.

Brains and Music

2006-08-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

David J. Levitin, head of the Laboratory for Musical Perception, has written a book called "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession" (article here), about the cognitive perception of what we call music. An interesting book on music - although he gives atonal music a hard time - and you can listen to him discussing the book here.

2006-08-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

Of course, commenting more on Purpose Music (I don't know if I like that, sounds too much like "Porpoise Music"), nothing is wrong with writing music for orchestra, or for string quartet, or for MIDI trombone etc. I myself have written many of these pieces; just last year (as an example) I wrote "Loop and Swirl" for flute, guitar, theorbo and bass gamba - it's meant to be performed on stage, not during any kind of event or anything. So does it have a function? Is it meant to be only admired as a piece we hear on the radio or on stage? Why shouldn't we write pieces which people simply go to in this fashion? After all, we race off to the museum to see works of art, or run down to the bookstore to buy books. Why is it that music is seen differently?

And why am I poking holes in my own discussion about how music should have a purpose?

Practical Music? Purpose Music?

2006-08-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

I have been lately composing music for the church calendar - at the moment music for the Advent season. It has opened up a little thing for me I have often thought about - writing music which has a function inside the culture. Not Gebrauchsmusik (shudder), but music which which fulfills a purpose. Purpose Music sounds nice. Writing music for parties, or for film, or for church services or music which is part of the whole. Of course, nothing is wrong with "concert" music, but sometimes I find this strangely detached from my life.

I certainly don't want to write "elevator music" or "shopping music", but then again, why not? I also don't want to be John Williams (except for the money part!) I don't want to write "ordinary" elvator music. "Music for Airports" by Brian Eno is an excellent example of Purpose - even though the Purpose has been taken away by the passing years.

MP3s

2006-07-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

A nice site for unusual, ambient, electronica MP3s -

click here!

This site really covers a lot of bases, and you get to hear the music as well!

Finished!

2006-05-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

Ha ha! I finally finished my "Aviary Corridor" for soprano and ensemble. It's amazing how the mind works. This piece is in ten short movements (the original poem is divided this way), and the movements coincide like arches throughout, even though this wasn't intentional, I was actually contrasting other things in the music. Parts 1 and 10 use the same chords, melodies and structures; this was intentional, of course, but then 2 and 9 align as well - using the piano to play slow repeating harmonic patterns; 4 and 8 are for voice and string quartet; 5 and 7 match in the use of the ensemble; what about 3 and 6, then? Well, they don't exactly match, but, as I said, it was mainly unconscious; My efforts on the piece had a different focus.

New Piece

2006-05-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

I am working on my latest piece now, it's a thing for soprano and ensemble, an ensemble made up of flute, string quartet and piano. I am using the poetry of Charles Alexander, a fine poet from Arizona, and you can find some of his stuff here and here and here and a nice bio here. He releases the poems in books that are "total" art works. For example, the poem I set, Aviary Corridor, was released as, part of the screen fold series, "Primal Format Screenfold Number Five", folded paper with Alexander's poem on one side and drawing on the other (created by Cynthia Miller). The poems imitate this "screenfold" by using overlapping phrases which can
be read in different sequences. Take for example part 8 of "Aviary corridor" -

no thing
attaches
he needs
a bowl of soup
Tuesday
watch the thermometer
for a time
something alters
or runs
around a river
wet

I have (for my music piece) divided it into patterns thusly:

no thing attaches
he needs a bowl of soup Tuesday
Tuesday watch the thermometer for a time
for a time something alters
something alters or runs around a river
wet

Of course, other patterns can be made, it is of course determined by how the words fit to the lilt of the spoken voice or to the sense of what one wants it to make. I would agree with what poet Robert Creely wrote about his works:

"[Alexander’s work]hears a complex literacy of literalizing words. By means of a fencing of statements, sense is found rather than determined. The real is as thought."

Southern Fried Chicken

2006-05-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

I returned to the US from Germany moderately recently, and am now making the rounds to find work of some kind. Now I am living down here in the south (or is it the South?) and, besides the accent, the closeness of the talk surprises me after living amongst the Germans for so long, with their Du and Sie. I was at the supermarket, searching along the huge aisles groaning with billions of different types of cereal, and, after finding the things I needed, I went up to pay for them.

"You got you a shopping card, dear?" the cashier asked me.
"Um, no I don't," I reponded.
"we'll fix you up with one in a jiff, sugar, just sign right here."

Hmmmm, dear? Sugar? It was like I was their best pal. In Germany you could hardly get the cashier to acknowledge your presence, much less say "dear" or "sugar". It was one thing I definitely missed.

As Slow as Possible

2006-05-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

John Cage's piece, "As Slow as Possible" is getting attention - There is a performance of this piece going on even as I type at the St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany - and for the next 630 odd years. The New York Times has an article about it. here is the address:

NY Times

Kamran Ince

2006-04-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I found the music of Kamran Ince the other day. I enjoyed the music that is available on his website (his works are available on Naxos, EMI, Argos and many others). It's an intersting blend of Western minimalism, romanticism and Turkish music (one of his parents is American the other Turkish) and his ensemble writing is very convincing. If you get a chance, stop by and listen to some of his music. I don't have to say a lot here; his website pretty much covers all the bases concerning his career.

Not about Music

2006-04-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

I received this e-mail in the usual mailings of spam and chain letters. I thought I would post the whole thing:

GAS WAR - interesting concept! Don't wimp out on this! It can make a difference This is worth a shot... GAS WAR - an idea that WILL work
This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive.

It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton.
It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are
going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might
go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take
some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this
good idea.
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking
gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.79 for regular
unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 -$1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the. marketplace..not sellers. With the price
of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by
not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting
ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war. Here's the idea: For the rest of
this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest
companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices.

If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!! I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...
and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further,
you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all! If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am . so trust me on this one. How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out
to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

I suggest that we not buy from

EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30
RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

It has the usual hallmarks of the chain letter - hoax emailings -

". . . This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive."

I wonder which "Coca-Cola executive" that was.

". . . I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer . . ."

Hey, I hear it's going to hit close to $1,000 a gallon, but why believe me, a scientist from Halliburton said so, it must be true!

My favorite line is, however:

". . .And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves."

So, we, as Americans, deserve cheap gas prices, huge Humvee-sized automobiles, and no sacrifices on our part, simply by the fact that we are Americans. And if you don't believe this, you are a commie pinko fascist.

I certainly agree the oil companies are making a bloated profit, but, here's a clever idea I thought of in about 1 second, maybe we could help by buying more gas-efficient automobiles, working towards better public transport, not building suburbs 1 million miles away from the stores, allowing the mixing of homes and business.

Oh, we have to make some sacrifices, what a gyp!

Idea

2006-04-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

Radio is a good disseminator of music (well duh). When I worked for NPR (WFSU - FM, Tallahassee, Florida), I produced two radio shows there - FSU Concert, which presented music performed at the Florida State University, and Radio Diffusions, which presented recordings of new music by composers from all over. Although I presented composers who were already famous and on CD, the bulk of the programs were recordings of music by composers not yet known, or local composers. This way I tried to incorporate the community where the station was located. Tallahassee is not New York, but I had quite a few listeners to my show. Listeners like to hear music written by local musicians, and I tried to fill this role. This is a way to get more listeners to new music and perhaps to get a fuzzy awareness that a) there is new music out there, b) not all music is grinding dissonance.

2006-04-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

I read Robert Lister's blog entry about 12 tone and blame (or should I say "the blame game"). I too agree, I am certainly no fan of twelve - tone music (but I do have my favorite works), the style is long gone and we cannot blame it any longer for the ills of modern music (loss of audience, not relevant, etc and etc). There are many exciting new works which can capture our ears in so many ways, and the main thing now is to disseminate new music and to get people even aware that we exist. New music festivals are of course one way, but how do we get ordinary people to discover that we are here and composing music? I am too tired to write more at the moment, but will pick up on this thread next time.

Music Downtown

2006-03-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

I have recently acquired Kyle Gann's latest book Music Downtown. Although I have just started the book, I have read many of his writings over the past years, and I really look forward to his latest. His style is always provocative and thoughtful. I have read through the introduction, which is about a definition of Downtown, Midtown and Uptown music in New York. In Uptown,

"it had become common to justify music theoretically, showing by charts and diagrams that pieces of music were good, even when you couldn't tell by listening what they were about."
The Midtown composers

"continue to write symphonies and concertos, wear tuxedos and formal attire to concerts, and do their level best to ignore their maginalization in a world in whihc they are subject to the whims of their star conductors and soloists and made to feel that their music is inferior to even the minor opuses of the dead masters such as Brahms and Mendelssohn."

Downtown music

"was a deliberate rejection of Uptown elitism....in the sense of employing an extravagant and difficult-to-follow technical apparatus....preferring more "natural" ordering devices such as chance, machine logic, natural numbers, and the harmonic series."

He is of course here using New York to show how music divided into the various camps, but one can see it as New York being a model of what actually happened in music all over America (after all, he uses the writings of Thoedor Adorno as the basis of his argument) in the late 20th century.
It should be an interesting read.

2006-02-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried to write music for high school ensembles? I have written a little set of pieces for high school wind band, called Southern Harmony - based on tunes from the shape note tradition (the melodies are from two collections - the Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony). It is an interesting experience to write music for young ensembles, one must simplify one's usual extravagant and lavish use of complex patterns, without being mindless. It is not an easy thing to do, I have to say. Here is a MIDI version of the first movement, Kedron. I would put the third movement on (All is Well), but I am busily rewriting it.

2006-01-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

I recently found an old box at my brother's house, and, Lo! it contained many of my old hand-inscribed works from the 1980s. Wow, these pieces are pretty wild, although some of them I am still proud of, especially Skeleton with Burning Cigarette for solo guitar (written for Bill Carter), Way Beyond the Looking Glass for solo piano (written for Tom DePlonty), and my Broken Motet for oboe, oboe d'amore, 2 bassoons and baritone voice (written for David Badagnani). I can really see how my music changes through these three pieces, from an atonal style to a "medieval" sound. I am tempted to toss away the rest - most of these pieces seem more as studies than as regular pieces I want to hear again, and that is probably true for anybody that would hear them.

Organ2/ASLSP

2006-01-06T05:33:00.000-08:00

Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:38:43 -0600Subject: Silence. Second chord sounds in world's longest lasting concertHALBERSTADT, Germany (AFP) - A new chord ( ) was scheduled to sound in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert that is taking a total 639 years to perform.The abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany, is the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by US experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992).Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.The first year and half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord -- G-sharp, B and G-sharp -- not sounding until February 2, 2003.Then in July 2004, two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded and are scheduled to be released later this year on May 5.But at 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Thursday, the first chord was due to progress to a second -- comprising A, C and F-sharp -- and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project. Cage originally conceived "ASLSP" in 1985 as a 20-minute work for piano, subsequently transcribing it for organ in 1987.But organisers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to take the composer at his word and stretch out the performance for 639 years, using Cage's transcription for organ.The enormous running time was chosen to commemorate the creation of Halberstadt's historic Blockwerk organ in 1361 -- 639 years before the current project started.That original organ, built by Nikolaus Faber for Halberstadt's cathedral, was the first organ ever to be used for liturgical purposes, ringing in a new era in which the organ has played a central role in church music ever since.As part of Halberstadt's John Cage Organ Project, a brand-new organ is being built specially, with new pipes added in time for when new notes are scheduled to sound.Cage was a pupil of one of the 20th century's most influential composers, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951).Cage's avant-garde oeuvre includes works such as the notorious "4'33", a piece comprising four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence, all meticulously notated.The organisers of the John Cage Organ Project say the record-breaking performance in Halberstadt also has a philosophical background -- to "rediscover calm and slowness in today's fast-changing world".

--To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence can find searchable list archives at http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/

Aah What a year

2006-01-03T18:23:00.000-08:00

well, 2005 is over. That was the year I retuned to the US. To live.

I worked on a set of pieces for Wind Band. All based on hymn tunes from the...wait for it....shapenote music! Gee, am I still doing that? But they are nice pieces, if I must say so myself. And I do. Three movements - Kedron, Parting Friends and All is Well.

I wrote a work for the Baroque Northwest in 2005 - Loop and Swirls for flute, guitar, theorbo and bass gamba. It was performed October 1 in Seattle. I want to revise it a bit; writing for those plucked instruments is not easy, and I want to make it sound easy. I have many pieces for early instruments, I need to put them into one file someday.

Several choir pieces joined my collection as well - Prospect, Elysian, and several others. I sang in a Methodist church choir in Hamburg and also composed a few works for them. Now that was a challenge and fun! They sang all the music so enthusiastically and so musically. I am really proud of this group!

I also wrote a set of piano pieces, also based on shapenote music.
I went down to Tallahassee and jammed with Charles Baker and Ted Stanley, using a Mac and many lovely software programs.

I guess I didn't write too much more than that last year, this year I will compose a lot more.

Happy New Year!

Famous or Infamous

2005-12-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Ah! the vagaries of being famous! Or winning contests! or getting published! How do these things happen? Some composers, of course, get there because they deserve it, their music is brilliant, worthy of constant performance. Many of these contests, publishers, etc, seem to award the winners, however, on some unknown factor. I think it is wearing a blindfold and picking out random pieces from a huge pile.

An American Tragedy

2005-12-05T05:13:00.000-08:00

Over at Sequenza 21 they mentioned the new opera "An American Tragedy" by composer Tobias Picker. Well, it got a review in the New York Times today (considering it was done at the Met, I would certainly hope so!) Read the review here. The review praises his control of the opera genre:

"Though "An American Tragedy" is essentially a conventional work and whole stretches of Mr. Picker's score would not be out of place in a Broadway theater, the opera is accomplished, dramatically effective and thoroughly professional. It's hard to imagine a more compelling cast. Admirers of the baritone Nathan Gunn who have been waiting for him to have a major success at the Met will cheer his portrayal of the protagonist, Clyde Griffiths, the uneducated, ambitious son of street-corner evangelists in the Midwest who yearns to join the upper crust. The production by the director Francesca Zambello could not be more gripping."

Best Music 2

2005-11-22T14:19:00.000-08:00

Harrison Birtwistle has written some pieces which make my best list. His music comes from the "school of whispy music", as I like to call it - very quiet, instruments making quiet rattles and scrapes or quick bursts of sound, voices going ooooh or aaaaah or singing phonetics. Birtwistle is part of the English trio which dominated the music scene in the 50s and 60s - Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr and Peter Maxwell-Davies.

Not all of Birtwitles music is whispy. Punch and Judy is one of my favorite pieces by Birwistle. Very pungent, aggresive and, well, a wonderful work! Also violent - he kills Judy several times over, tosses the baby into the fireplace. The story is held together using the Greek tragedy - chorus, search, ritual.

Of course there is the real Greek opera of Birtwistle, the
Mask of Orpheus.

This is a very nice piece as well - whispy, but very nice.

Moderately New

2005-11-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

I bought You Are (Variations) by Steve Reich. The album has received many good reviews; John Kelman states that it is "...a rewarding and profoundly musical experience." He certainly has extended his style into a more chromatic field, no doubt with his work using vocal inflection as musical melody, especially in Different Trains and The Cave. I, however, do not find the vocal writing impressive here. I feel the text could have pretty much been about anything - advertising slogans, newspaper clippings, random words. And the vocal parts do not come out of the textures being created (which adds to my feeling that they could be about anything), they simply add a new layer to the musical effect, and there is no interpretation. This is totally different than Different Trains, where the texts are beautifully interpreted, or even Proverb. Steve Reich, in his early writings, of course said that he wanted just to set up a musical idea and then let it go on its own, but I think words need extra care.

I give this piece a 6 0f 10.

Oops

2005-10-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

Of course I meant exchanging talent for fame.

Best music

2005-10-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

We often see lists of "The Best 100 Pieces of the 20th Century" etc etc and etc. We never agree with them; see all the responses from people saying "Gee what about this piece by Ladoslav Villivich?" So I thought that I would list great pieces by composers of the 20th (and 21st, don't forget the 21st!) century.

Who to start with? Well, I will pick a name out of the hat - I will start with Philip Glass, simply because I was listening to some in my car yesterday. Here is a list of his best pieces - and not in any particular order:

1. Music in Twelve Parts

Ensemble: Philip Glass Ensemble
Label: Nonesuch
Catalog: #79324
Audio CD (September 17, 1996)
Number of Discs: 3

This is one of the top pieces by Glass, leading directly to Einstein. It is a summation of all of his techniques in minimalism to that point, and at the end of the piece, breaking out into full fledged slinky tonality.

2. Einstein on the Beach

Conductor: Michael Riesman, Robert Wilson, et al.
Ensemble: Philip Glass Ensemble
Label: Nonesuch
Catalog: #79323
Audio CD (September 28, 1993)
Number of Discs: 3

Definitely the opera to own. The orginal recording on Tomato Tecords (also relesed on CD, but no longer available) is also worth having, the Bed scene is much better on the original, and the new recording uses variant texts.

3. Satyagraha

Actors: Leo Goeke, Ralf Harster, Helmut Danninger, Inga Nielsen, Elke Estlinbaum, etc
Directors: Hugo Käch
Format: Color
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Release Date: December 11, 2001
Run Time: 148 minutes

This is the DVD. The opera is based on the life of Ghandi. You can also get the music on CD, but I prefer it with the opera.

4. Akhnaten

Label: Sony
Audio CD (October 28, 2003)

This is the third of the set of Einstein and Satyagraha. It is a bit weaker than the first two, but still has its moments.

5. Koyaanisqatsi

Director: Godfrey Reggio
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Studio: MGM/UA Video
DVD Release Date: September 17, 2002
Run Time: 87 minutes

Don't get the soundtrack! Get the whole stinking thing! Movie and soundtrack. That's how it should be heard!

6. The Photographer

Conductor: Michael Riesman
Label: Sony
Catalog: #37849
Audio CD (October 25, 1990)

Better to see it with the play.

You notice that these are all his earlier works. I find his later works to be too turgid, too four-square, replacing fame with talent.

Only six pieces, but some of the most influential pieces of our recent history!

-

Live Recordings

2005-10-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

I printed out an application form today to submit some music to the 2006 New Music Festival at Illinois State University, and among the items requested, they want you to send a recording of the piece. They won't accept a MIDI version, only a live version. Now, where on earth am I going to get a recording of the piece. I don't work at the university or in a college situation where I have easy access to an orchestra or band or "fill-in-your-group-here" ensemble. How do composers do this? Do you pay for people to perform your music?

2005-10-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to an album of music by Kevin Volans - specifically Cover Him with Grass (Landor CTLCD111, released 1989). I still think this album contains some of his best music. The original version of "White Man Sleeps" is here (two harpsichords tuned into a mbira tuning, viola da gamba and percussion) along with the version he did for string quartet (the Smith Quartet, this recording is much more satisfying than the Kronos Quartet version, meiner Meinung nach!).

He insists that "they are not minimalist. When I wrote them, I was frustrated both with the bland mechanism of repeat-pattern music and with serial technique. I wanted to move away from a conceptual approach to composition." Whatever he does, his use of interlocking and revolving rhythms still impresses.

I haven't heard any of his latest works, although I went and saw his dramatic work "The Man with Footsoles of Wind", written between 1988-1993. It uses several of the same melodies from the string quartet, and the stage presentation was wonderful, using shadow puppets and dancers.

More about Nicholas Maw

2005-10-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

Tom DePlonty asked me today about Nicholas Maw - What kind of music does he write? Did the English Horn Concerto have anything redeeming about it at all? Well, You can read more about him here and here. The work is in an extended Romantic style, as he says:

"I'm becoming more and more concerned with what music has lost, with the things a composer can't do any more. I want to be able to do them again... There was a break in the natural tradition around 1914, for obvious social and political reasons... It seems that I am trying to regain that tradition."

Of course, the idea of trying to "regain that tradition" is ok, if you believe in the idea of "progess", that stylistic periods progress into one another. I, for one, do not believe this, I think that as our philosophies change, as our world changes around us, art changes with it. The change from the Baroque ideals to the Classical ideals is not one of "progess", but one of ideas building up to critcal mass, and then we head off in another direction, using bits and pieces of the rubble to create something new, perhaps better, perhaps not. Why not claim that the movement into the Romantic period was a wrong direction to move in and so we should return to Classical ideals? Or why not go back even further?

Like Watching Bread Go Mouldy

2005-10-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

I listened to the premier of the English Horn Concerto by Nicholas Maw on NPR on Friday evening, with english horn player Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia, playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Did Mr Maw not put much effort into this piece? It was an instantly forgettable evening, the work winding sinuously from one end to the other, like smoke from a blown-out candle, the horn player dutifully playing the long, flowing lines, drifitng endlessly on and on and on and on. Get my point?

I have to admit, I had not heard any music by Nicholas Maw before this point. Or, considering that I promptly forgot the work immediately after hearing it, perhaps I had heard his music before this. He has been commissioned by various orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. He is on the staff of the Peabody Institute. His music is certainly very polished, like a melting ice sculpture. I can't help but wonder how much he got paid for this.

Arounds

2005-10-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was off in Seattle last week to hear the premiere of my piece Arounds for the Baroque Northwest. I had to get up beforehand and make a little speech beforehand, but altogether it came off very nicely. I enjoy the sound of early instruments playing new music, it is like silk thread - very fine and smooth.

And Seattle is a wonderful city! I like cities that one can really live in, with nearby shops, parks and sights.

Copies

2005-09-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

If I built a house from a plan by Frank Lloyd Wright, say in Florida, and it was exactly like the original house from top to bottom, would it be as valuable as the original? Well, why not??

For example, a picture of a regular drinking glass.

Now a picture of a regular drinking glass, but this one was owned by Gustav Mahler.

Why is this one more valuable?

Arounds

2005-09-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

My new piece "Arounds" is being premiered by Baroque Northwest at the Bethany Lutheran Church in Seattle, Ocotber 1, 2005.

It's made up of two movements - Loop and Swirls. I hate naming pieces, but these titles actually describe what the music is doing - The first movement loops around and around, looping in on itself, and Swirls has the lines swirling about a chaconne. More information about the concert can be found at http://www.baroquenorthwest.com/2005main.html

(Travels with Quantz).