last night
I heard these guys at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, where the program ranged from Felix Mendelssohn to John Zorn.
Philip Glass, Mishima (1984-85, excerpt); Brooklyn Rider, New York, 2006
last night
I went back to Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Hall—they’re in the midst of a Winter Chamber Music Festival—where I heard this string quartet, along with this clarinetist, play this piece.
Aaron Jay Kernis (1960-), Perpetual Chaconne (2012); Calder Quartet with John Bruce Yeh (clarinet), 2012
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
When we go out to hear live music, we realize, again, something that seldom occurs to us when we listen at home: the world, in its messy unpredictability, its insistent particularity, is way more interesting than we are.
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the music of words
Martin Luther King, Jr., Shreveport, La. (Galilee Baptist Church), 1958
last night
I heard these folks at Northwestern University’s Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, where they played another piece by this composer (Last Round), a MacArthur “genius” grant recipient.
Osvaldo Golijov, Tenebrae; A Far Cry, Boston, 2011
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lagniappe
Here’s another take (four players, no conversation).
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musical thoughts
Nobody sits down and thinks, “I’m going to create some classical music.”
Forget harps—my heaven’s full of string quartets.
Franz Schubert, String Quartet No. 14 in D minor (“Death and the Maiden,” 1824), excerpt (mvt. 2), Takacs Quartet, live, Scotland (outside Edinburgh), 1998
What you want, sometimes, is to lose yourself, even if only briefly, in beauty.
Leo Janacek (1854-1928), String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” excerpt (arr. Tognetti), Australian Chamber Orchestra
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lagniappe
random thoughts
When you’re young you want to find yourself; when you’re old you want to lose yourself.
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reading table
Variations for Two Pianos
for Thomas Higgins, pianist
by Donald Justice
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Movers dismantled the instruments, away
Sped the vans. The first detour untuned the strings.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
Up Main Street, past the cold shopfronts of Conway,
The brash, self-important brick of the college,
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
Warm evenings, the windows open, he would play
Something of Mozart’s for his pupils, the birds.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
How shall the mockingbird mend her trill, the jay
His eccentric attack, lacking a teacher?
Higgins is gone, taking both his pianos.
There is no music now in all of Arkansas.
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.
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.
two questions
1. Why would anyone create a piece of music that lasts not one, or two, or three, or four, or five, but six hours?
2. Why don’t more more people?
Morton Feldman, String Quartet No. 2 (1983), excerpts, Flux Quartet
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On June 12th the Flux Quartet performed this piece in Philadelphia, the finale of American Sublime, a festival devoted to Feldman’s late music. The concert, which took place in the sanctuary of Philadelphia Cathedral, began at 2 p.m.; it ended around 8 p.m. The program notes said: “Audience may come and go as they please.”
More? Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
this & that
I don’t win stuff. I don’t even enter things—contests, sweepstakes, lotteries—that would give me a shot at winning stuff. Until yesterday, that is.
Yesterday morning, driving home after dropping my son Luke off at work (7 a.m. can be a pretty brutal starting time for a 20-year-old), I was listening, as I often do while driving, to our local public radio station (WBEZ-FM), which, I learned, was in the midst of a fundraising drive. “Pledge,” they said, and “you’ll be entered in drawings for an iPad 2,” which were going to be made throughout the day. The earlier you pledge, they said, with what seemed unassailable logic, the better your chances of winning. I hadn’t sent them any money in a while so, when I got home, I went on-line and pledged. A couple hours later, a friend sent me an email: “Congratulations on your iPad.”
When bad stuff happens, particularly bad stuff that’s unexpected and outside my control (as often seems to be the case), my tendency is to try to let it go. Why invest bad experiences with ill-fitting, after-the-fact meanings? This is different. This experience I’d like to invest with all kinds of after-the-fact-meanings, ill-fitting or not. I’d like to see this as a favorable omen, one that portends all sorts of wonderful stuff—things that, at the moment, I can’t even begin to imagine. Goofy? Yeah, I suppose. But is it any nuttier than any number of other stories we tell ourselves to get us through the day?
music clip of the day 