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.
If sounds define a space as much as walls and windows, you don’t need to knock out a wall to open up a room—just play this.
International Contemporary Ensemble with Steve Lehman
Impossible Flow (S. Lehman), live, New York (Le Poisson Rouge), 4/19/11
The moment this ends I want to hear it again. Is there any higher compliment?
More Steve Lehman? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.—Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (c. 662-710; trans. Kenneth Rexroth)
No matter how often I hear it, this piece—Beethoven’s final piano sonata—never fails to astonish.
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 32
Rudolf Serkin (piano), live, Austria (Vienna), 1987
#1: 1st movement
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#2: 2nd movement, part 1
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#3: 2nd movement, part 2
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If I knew I had a week to live, this is one of the things I’d want to listen to—more than once.
***
Another take on this sonata? Here (Claudio Arrau).
More of Serkin playing Beethoven? Here.
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lagniappe
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
Today marks our 800th post.
*****
reading table
A Day! Help! Help!
Another Day!
Your prayers – Oh Passer by!—Emily Dickinson, c. 1858 (58 [Franklin], excerpt)
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musical thoughts
If it wasn’t for the music, I don’t know what I’d do.
Sometimes less is more; other times more is.
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), Symphony No. 8
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Bernard Haitink, cond.), live, Amsterdam
IA
***
IB
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IIA
***
IIB
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IIIA
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IIIB (misnumbered at YouTube; nothing’s missing)
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IIIC
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IVA
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IVB
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IVC (again, misnumbered at YouTube; nothing’s missing)
Frederic Chopin, Mazurka in C Major, Op. 24, No. 2
Martha Argerich, live, Sweden (Stockholm), 2009
More? Here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
When I don’t play Chopin for a while, I don’t feel like
a pianist.—Martha Argerich
*****
reading table
Look how
we “attempted to express ourselves.”Every one of these words is wrong.
It wasn’t us.
Or we made no real attempt.
Or there is no discernible difference
between self and expression.*****
The outer world means
State Farm Donuts Tae Kwando?*****
Today could be described as a retired man humming
tunelessly to himself.*****
Any statement I issue
if particular enoughwill prove
I was here*****
It’s as if
the real
thing—
your own
absence—
can never be
uncovered.*****
These temporary credits
will no longer be reflected
in your next billing period.—Rae Armantrout, Versed (2009), misc. fragments
Often feel muddled?
Me, too.
That’s why I turn to Webern and Mondrian.
What they offer, more than anything, is clarity.
Anton Webern, Variations for Piano, Op. 27 (1936)
Glenn Gould, piano, live
*****
Piet Mondrian, Composition (No. 1) Gray-Red (1935)
Art Institute of Chicago
Joseph Haydn, Piano Sonata No. 24 in D major, excerpt (2nd Movement)
Sviatoslav Richter, live
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart.
—Sviatoslav Richter
*****
reading table
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no taxes to Caesar.I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.—Tomas Transtromer (winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature), “Allegro,” trans. from the Swedish by Robert Bly
*****
Great music, unlike great food, doesn’t fill you up.
It leaves you wanting more.
Bach, Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826
Martha Argerich, piano, live, Switzerland (Verbier Festival), 2008
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.
***
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Bach? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
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reading table
Last night, opening a book at random, I came upon this—another reminder that Emily Dickinson, surely one of my desert-island writers, takes a backseat to no one when it comes to strangeness.
I see thee better — in the Dark —
I do not need a Light —
The Love of Thee — a Prism be —
Excelling Violet —I see thee better for the Years
That hunch themselves between —
The Miner’s Lamp — sufficient be —
To nullify the Mine —And in the Grave — I see Thee best —
Its little Panels be
Aglow — All ruddy — with the Light
I held so high, for Thee —What need of Day —
To those whose Dark — hath so — surpassing Sun —
It deem it be — Continually —
At the Meridian?—Emily Dickinson
serendipity
The other night, as I listened to the radio,* this (“Patient Observation”) floated out of the speakers.
Falling From Trees, Neon Productions, music by Peter Broderick
Premiered at The Place, London, 1/09
Excerpt, Part 2, “Patient Observation”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Full Length
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Falling From Trees is a 30-minute production set in a psychiatric hospital that delves into the mind of a resident patient. The piece explores how a neurological disease can alter your sense of self and relationship to the world and people around you. Peter Broderick’s score has been created solely on piano and strings; it is also the first time Broderick has created music specifically for dance.
*Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture, WFMU-FM, Monday, 8 p.m. (EST), archived shows here
music clip of the day 