mysterious, adj. exciting wonder, curiosity, or surprise, while baffling efforts to comprehend or identify. E.g., the string quartet music of Anton Webern.
Anton Webern (1883-1945), Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Penderecki String Quartet, live
Falls Village, Connecticut (Music Mountain), 2010
Part 1
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Part 2
More? Here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Ignorance has a big upside: the more music you’ve never heard, the more there is to discover.
What I get from this guy I can’t quite put my finger on. But I do know this:
I don’t get it anywhere else.
Arthur Russell (1951-1992), singer, songwriter, cellist
“You And Me Both”
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“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”
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“That’s Us/Wild Combination”
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Terrace of Unintelligibility, live studio performance, 1985
Part 1
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Part 2
(First three clips originally posted 11/23/09.)
Edward Wilkerson, Jr. (bass clarinet), Tomeka Reid (cello), Scott Hesse (guitar), live, Lakeside, Michigan (Lakeside Inn), 10/16/11*
Vodpod videos no longer available.No matter how long you’ve been listening to music there are always new things to hear. When, for instance, is the last time you heard a trio featuring bass clarinet, cello, and guitar?
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
This whole division between genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It’s terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
*This concert was presented by portoluz as part of its Jazz on a Summer’s Day series.
You’re probably in the same boat—no MacArthur “genius” grant this year. Oh, well. These folks, unlike you and me, are half a million dollars richer than they were Monday.
Dafnis Prieto (b. 1974), drummer, composer
Proverb Trio: DP, drums; Kokayi, vocals; Jason Lindner, keyboards
Live, Puerto Rico (San Juan), 8/1/11
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Alisa Weilerstein (b. 1982), cellist
Zoltán Kodály, Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8 (1915), excerpt (1st Mvt.)
Live, Massachusetts (Worchester, College of Holy Cross), c. 2008
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Kay Ryan (b. 1945), poet
We’re Building the Ship as We Sail It
The first fear
being drowning, the
ship’s first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn’t
happen. It’s awkward
to have to do one’s
planning in extremis
in the early years—
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.
The Niagara River
However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.
Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (2010), excerpts
Kronos Quartet, with prerecorded tape
1st Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
3rd Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
reading table
They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
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Barbarism is not the prehistory of humanity but the faithful shadow that accompanies its every step.
—Alain Finkielkraut, Le mécontemporain, (epigraph, Clive James, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 [2003])
lucid, adj. suffused with light, luminous. E.g., Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet.
Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet (1985)
Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (piano)
In a world that keeps getting faster and noisier, Feldman offers a refuge.
Here time slows. Quietly.
how to improve your life (guaranteed!)
Listen, each day, to one of Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello. I’ve been listening to them for 40 years. If I hadn’t, I assure you, my life would be even more of a shambles.
Bach, Suite No. 3 in C major for Unaccompanied Cello
Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
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lagniappe
reading table
I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.Nature’s wardrobe
holds a fair supply of costumes:
spider, seagull, fieldmouse.
Each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.I didn’t get a choice either,
but I can’t complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
Someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.What if I’d prompted only fear,
loathing,
or pity?If I’d been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?Fate has been kind
to me thus far.I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments.My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Among the Multitudes” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak)
The four familial instruments seem to whisper directly into our ears, communing with us about our personal sadnesses and anxieties.
—Wendy Lesser, Music For Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets (2011)
Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 14 in F-Sharp Major (1972-73)
Fitzwilliam String Quartet
1st Movement (Allegretto)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
2nd Movement (Adagio)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
3rd Movement (Allegretto)
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I think he [President Obama] needs to listen to some jazz. Maybe the entire capital needs it to calm down.
—Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 7/28/11
what’s new
(an occasional series)
James Blake, “The Wilhelm Scream,” Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, 7/14/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
favorites
(an occasional series)
Hearing JB brought this MCOTD fave to mind (originally posted 11/23/09).
Here’s Arthur Russell, the “seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist and disco producer” who died in 1992 at the age of 40 (of AIDS-related complications) and is the subject of both a recent documentary, Wild Combination, and a new book, Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992.
Arthur Russell
“Get Around To It”
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“You And Me Both”
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“This Is How We Walk on the Moon”
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“That’s Us/Wild Combination”
(Yeah, the fact that I’m posting four tracks by this guy shows how much his music, which I just encountered recently, has been getting under my skin.)
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[Russell’s] various distinctions—folkie, art-music songwriter and improviser, dance-club maven—seem incoherent until you hear several of his records. When musicians get angry about being categorized by critics, I usually feel frustrated: readers, after all, want to know what the record sounds like. With Russell, I take the musicians’ angle. Just listen to it and you’ll understand.
—Ben Ratliff, “The Many Faces, and Grooves, of Arthur Russell,” New York Times, 2/29/04
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For Arthur, there was no cachet to being eclectic. Rather, he played across genre because it would have required a colossal and entirely counterproductive effort on his part to stick to one sound. . . . Drifting into an ethereal, gravity-defying zone, Arthur had come to embody the interconnectivity of music.
—Tim Lawrence, Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 (2009).
music clip of the day 