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.
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
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.
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
two takes
Arvo Pärt, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
A Far Cry, live, Boston (Jordan Hall), 10/17/08
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
BBC Symphony Orchestra, live, London (Royal Albert Hall), 8/17/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.This goes, and goes, and goes, keeping you afloat, carrying you along,
then stops with stunning suddenness—is any music more lifelike?
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
***
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?
sui generis, adj. A person or thing that is unique, in a class by itself. E.g., Anthony Braxton, composer, reed player, professor, MacArthur “genius” grant winner, one-time professional chess hustler.
Happy (Belated 66th) Birthday, Anthony!
(born June 4, 1945)
Anthony Braxton with his 12+1tet, Ghost Trance Music
New York (Iridium), 2008
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I wanted to live. I wanted to be alive. This experience goes by very quickly. Part of the radiance of a moment, in my opinion, involves that which we call music.
***
Suddenly, Coltrane solos become the “it” of music, when in fact, the records and the notated solos are the sonic footprints, the bone structure of what actually happened in the music.
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I wanted a system that would be equal to the dynamics of curiosity. I wanted to have a music where I could have some fun.
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There is the wonderful discipline of music and the ability of music to keep on opening up fresh prospects. I must say, what a discipline!
—Anthony Braxton
three takes
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), String Quartet No. 15 in E flat minor (1974)
Excerpt (1st Movement)
‘Play it so that flies drop dead in midair, and the audience starts leaving the hall from sheer boredom,’ the composer told the players preparing its premiere in 1974.
—Edward Rothstein, New York Times, 5/6/11
Emerson String Quartet, live
Part 1
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.
*****
Borodin String Quartet
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Part 2
*****
Taneyev Quartet
(gave the premiere performance [Leningrad, 1974])
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
Want to hear the rest?
Emerson String Quartet, live
2nd & 3rd Movements
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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4th & 5th Movements
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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6th Movement
Vodpod videos no longer available.
