Mid-Week Miscellanea

If you want to know more about neglected composer Julius Eastman, the New York Times has an excellent survey of his works focussing on a new recording of his piece Femenine: From a Composer’s Resurgence, a Masterpiece Rises:

Black and gay when few experimental composers were either, Eastman was an impish, provocative fixture on the New York scene into the 1980s, but drifted into mental illness and homelessness, and died in 1990 in obscurity, just 49. What little was left of his work then was a shambles, and his music went almost entirely unplayed and unheard for years. 

“Femenine” is notated, but sketchily so; the score consists of smallish cells of material that are repeated, and evolve. The timings of major transitions are set in the music, though there is also room for improvisation and flexibility, not least in the instrumentation, which has a core of winds, piano, bass and bells — and the vibraphone that provides the indelibly summoning central statement — but can expand in size and variety. While the basic contours are constant, the mood can be surprisingly different from version to version.

Follow the link for excerpts from the new recording. Here is a different performance from YouTube:

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More composer news: Frederic Rzewski, Politically Committed Composer and Pianist, Dies at 83

Mr. Rzewski’s anti-establishment thinking stood at the center of his music-making throughout his life. It was evident in the experimental, agitprop improvisations he created in the 1960s with the ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva; in “Coming Together,” the Minimalist classic inspired by the Attica prison uprising; and a vast catalog of solo piano works, several of which have become cornerstones of the modern repertoire.

His approach was epitomized in his best-known piece, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!,” an expansive and virtuosic set of 36 variations on a Chilean protest song.

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 Here's a pretty forthright claim: Cultural Marxism is Killing Music. And here I thought it was Auto-Tune!

Richards argues that cultural appropriation is wrong and should be avoided when it feels like “taking” instead of “making.” “When Justin Timberlake beatboxes, or Taylor Swift raps, or Miley Cyrus twerks to a trap beat,” he observes, “it feels like taking. Nothing is being invented other than superficial juxtaposition. On the flip side, when the Talking Heads echo African pop rhythms, or the Wu-Tang Clan channels the spiritually of Kung-Fu cinema, or Beyonce writes a country song, it feels more like making. The borrowed elements become an essential, integrated part of a new, previously unheard thing.”

That sounds like it would need a fairly lengthy dissertation to make that distinction clear.

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 Mozart can help with epilepsy, but Haydn not, researchers say.

The study was designed to compare the effects on EDs of listening to either Mozart’s K448, or Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 (No94: Surprise Symphony). “We chose Haydn’s music as it represents a similar musical style from the same period,” the investigators wrote. “Works composed by Mozart and Haydn may have similar emotional effects.” In fact, the team noted, when comparing music in terms of the repetition of harmonies, Mozart’s music scored much higher than works by composers including Bach, Wagner, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. “It was shown that K448 differs from music composed by other composers in terms of its higher repetition rate,” the team commented. Haydn’s music values were those that were scored second to Mozart’s.