tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post5722540154893173789..comments2024-03-29T07:38:17.008-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Friday MiscellaneaBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-59654167745246563932017-09-23T08:25:56.128-05:002017-09-23T08:25:56.128-05:00Ha, ha. I do l i k e Julia Wolfe's Anthracite ...Ha, ha. I do l i k e Julia Wolfe's Anthracite Fields, too, at least in a 'sure, I'd listen again at some time in the future' sort of way. Just names to make the point-- after you wrote the other week or month that the Rzewski had grown on you, words to that effect, I listened again to that too. If only the theme had been called Lobe den Herren, machtigen Konig der Ehren or something like that....Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-54062117274891419062017-09-23T06:27:27.486-05:002017-09-23T06:27:27.486-05:00Marc, you are starting to sound like me (in a part...Marc, you are starting to sound like me (in a particularly sardonic mood)!Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-12367366125817181092017-09-22T23:45:24.874-05:002017-09-22T23:45:24.874-05:00Will, I don't have an issue with the OBF featu...Will, I don't have an issue with the OBF featuring non-Bach music nor even non-classical music in judicious and carefully reasonable ways: past seasons have seen Savion Glover, PDQ Bach, 'Duke Ellington and the Harlem Jazz Craze', the Canadian Brass inter alii programmed into the mix. (While I myself didn't go out for those particular performances many people did.) The current mess has, in part (and I do emphasize that 'in part'), to do with the suspicion that diversity! cooperation with university faculties and programs! food studies! new directions! means that in place of reasonably (or at least colorably) 'musical' or aesthetic rationales for programming we're going to be subjected to concerts of ideologues performing for ideological reasons, the Musicology Now LGBT Ensemble playing the Julia Wolfe and Nico Muhly orchestration of the Rzewski Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated, for example. :-)<br /><br /> Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-40412224276921612972017-09-22T17:56:42.459-05:002017-09-22T17:56:42.459-05:001) Regarding the “two streams” of John Wooldridge ...1) Regarding the “two streams” of John Wooldridge as being both an RAF bomber pilot and a musical composer, by coincidence just today I was reading about the “Airborne Symphony” by American composer Marc Blitzstein (1905-64), who “served with the [US? Royal?] Air Force in London in WWII and got time off to produce the ‘Airborne,’ for which he wrote both the music and text. When the manuscript was lost, Blitzstein rewrote it on Leonard Bernstein's urging.”<br /><br />http://unsungsymphonies.blogspot.com/2011/01/pushing-envelope-blitzsteins-airborne.html<br /><br />2) Regarding talk of the Oregon Bach Festival to be planned by guest curators such as a jazz musician, while I agree with you Bryan that is not at all a promising approach to organizing a Bach festival, since it lacks the due reverence to authenticity deserved by Maestro Bach. But perhaps as one of the many performances, a jazz musician could bring a welcome and expansive dimension. For example, I have a CD called “Tone Dialing” by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman which includes a Bach Prelude played very beautifully in a jazz style.<br /><br />3) Regarding “serious music” and, specifically, its relation to Broadway, here is how I once heard described the difference between musical theatre and opera: when you hear a Broadway song, you say “I could sing that!” and when you hear opera you say “I could NEVER sing that!”Will Wilkinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01997868915978439364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-46075130029180411632017-09-22T09:12:19.912-05:002017-09-22T09:12:19.912-05:00Very likely!
I'm tempted to turn the tools of...Very likely!<br /><br />I'm tempted to turn the tools of the new musicology on this piece and analyze it for its political content. Obviously it is the perfect representation of nihilism in music.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-82014189472668982352017-09-22T08:16:04.223-05:002017-09-22T08:16:04.223-05:00Perhaps the ultimate source of John Haskell's ...Perhaps the ultimate source of John Haskell's anger and desolation is the knowledge that he has engaged himself to pretend that Cage's four minutes is music? Marc in Eugenehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04331547981498637474noreply@blogger.com