serendipity
This I just bumped into this morning.
What would we do if we could never hear anything new?
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), Livre pour orchestre (1968)
RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Gunther Herbic, cond.), live
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York)
Stuart Davis (1892-1964), The Paris Bit, 1959 (Stuart Davis: In Full Swing, through 9/25/16)
Close your eyes.
Listen—just listen.
If you don’t have time for this, what do you have time for?
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), From me flows what you call Time (1990); La Jolla Symphony (Steven Schick, cond.), live, San Diego, 2008
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lagniappe
reading table
Come, see
real flowers
of this painful world.—Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), translated from Japanese by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
more
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Piano Concerto in G major (1929-31); Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (Yuri Termirkanov, cond.) with Martha Argerich (piano), live, Stockholm, 2009
never enough
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor; NHK Symphony Orchestra (Miltiades Caridis [1923-1998], cond.) with Annie Fischer (1914-1995), piano, live
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lagniappe
reading table
Even now one is amazed
by transience: how it
outlasts us all.—Geoffrey Hill (1932-2016), from “Scenes with Harlequins” (TLS, 7/8/16)
So bleak, so beautiful—like life.
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), Viola Concerto (1985), live, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Valery Gergiev, cond.), Yuri Bashmet (viola)
#1
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#2
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#3
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), Palisades, N.J., 1958
Why God made “repeat.”
Morton Feldman (1926-1987; MCOTD Hall of Fame), Coptic Light (1986); Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Peter Eotvos, cond.), live, Amsterdam, 1998
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art beat
William Eggleston (1939-)
never enough
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Symphony No. 3 (Eroica); Vienna Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, cond.), live
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reading table
Beethoven delayed writing a symphony until 1799–1800, when he was thirty years old and firmly established in Viennese circles as the successful composer of piano and chamber works. His first two symphonies, No. 1 in C Major, finished in 1800 and published as Opus 21 in 1801, and No. 2 in D Major, completed in 1802, were solid pieces in the traditional Viennese mold (though Lockwood makes a case for subtle innovations in No. 2). At that point Beethoven went through a severe personal crisis as he realized that his loss of hearing, first sensed around 1796 when he was twenty-five, was irreversible and would probably get worse. In an anguished letter to his brothers, the famous Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802 (named after the town outside Vienna where he was staying), he lamented his fate and admitted that he had considered ending his life. But art held him back, he wrote, making it impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought forth all that he felt within himself. The letter remained unsent and was discovered after his death.
The result of this self-reflection and resolve was Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major of 1804, in which Beethoven broke with classical tradition and created a work of unprecedented scale and complexity. Called “Eroica” (Heroic) and dedicated “To the Memory of a Great Man” (originally Napoleon, until he crowned himself emperor and fell from Beethoven’s favor), the work liberated the symphony from eighteenth-century conventions and drew listeners into an emotional realm of struggle, endurance, and triumph. From then onward Beethoven produced a series of highly individualistic symphonies, normally writing two together, one radical, one conservative. The tame Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major provided a balance to the “Eroica” in 1806. Then, in 1808, Symphony No. 5 in C Minor complemented Symphony No. 6 in F Major (“Pastoral”). In 1812, Symphony No. 7 in A Major appeared with Symphony No. 8 in F Major. Finally, after a hiatus of ten years and his descent into total deafness, came the monumental Symphony No. 9 in D Minor in 1824, the most radical of them all and the first symphonic work to incorporate solo voices and chorus.
—George B. Stauffer, New York Review of Books, 12/3/15 (reviewing Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven’s Symphonies: An Artistic Vision)
Ever feel you can’t find a foothold?
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Piano Concerto (1942); Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (Jeffrey Tate, cond.) with Mitsuko Uchida (piano), live
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lagniappe
reading table
Aspen tree, your leaves glance white into the dark.
My mother’s hair was never white.Dandelion, so green is the Ukraine.
My yellow-haired mother did not come home.Rain cloud, above the well do you hover?
My quiet mother weeps for everyone.Round star, you wind the golden loop.
My mother’s heart was ripped by lead.Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?
My gentle mother cannot return.—Paul Celan (1920-1970; translated from German by Michael Hamburger)
two takes
Need a lift?
Charles Ives (1874-1954), Ragtime Dance No. 4 (1904)
Alarm Will Sound, live, New York, 2013
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Orchestra New England, recording, 1990
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
As I remember some of the dances as a boy, and also from father’s description of some of the old dancing and fiddle playing, there was more variety of tempo than in the present-day dances. In some parts of the hall a group would be dancing in polka, while in another, a waltz. Some of the players in the band would, in an impromptu way, pick up with the polka, and some with the waltz, and some with a march. Often the piccolo or cornet would throw in asides. Sometimes a change in tempo, or a mixed rhythm would be caused by a fiddler who, after playing three or four hours steadily, was getting a little sleepy. Or maybe another player was seated too near the hard cider barrel. Whatever the reason for these changes and simultaneous playing of things, I remember distinctly catching a kind of music that was natural and interesting and which was decidedly missed when everybody came down ‘blimp’ on the same beat again.
—Charles Ives
music clip of the day 