Sometimes less is more; other times more is.
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), Symphony No. 8
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Bernard Haitink, cond.), live, Amsterdam
IA
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IB
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IIA
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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.
**********
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
Morton Feldman, For Christian Wolff (flute, piano, celesta; 1986)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Listening to this, you can find it hard to remember, after an hour or so, what the world sounded like before it began playing.
More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
Imagine a long, narrow hallway with paintings—subtle, shimmering abstracts by Mark Rothko—hung along both walls. Imagine walking through the hallway, stopping to examine one painting closely before moving on to the next. Imagine the hallway extends for three miles without an exit. This should give you some idea of what listening to For Christian Wolff is like. What might be hell to some people could be an all-too-brief time spent in paradise for others.
—Art Lange, Fanfare, July/August 2009
*****
At the beginning of Morton Feldman’s “For Christian Wolff” at the Alternative Museum last Sunday afternoon, Nils Vigeland – who played the piano and celesta to Eberhard Blum’s flute – invited listeners with other engagements or expired patience to leave at will.
The few who did walk out before this three-and-a-half-hour musical experience was over neither insulted the spirit of the late Mr. Feldman’s piece nor necessarily missed anything. This music, with its trancelike exposition of simple intervals, can haunt one as much in one hour as it can in three.
“For Christian Wolff” is music whose internal clock has stopped. It offers us the moment, invites us to forget what has already happened and discourages any curiosity about the future. Mr. Wolff was on hand to honor his late colleague. His introductory words – which said little about either the music, the composer or himself – seemed terribly appropriate to the occasion.
***
“For Christian Wolff” . . . gives us a deflected image of silence. Like the shadows of Plato’s cave, it is a corporeal flicker of pure nothingness – the kind of music that in the heavens surely sets the toes of gods to tapping.
—Bernard Holland, New York Times, 4/1/90
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
*****
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
*****
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)
*****
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])
music clip of the day 