Friday, September 3, 2021

Friday Miscellanea

Rick Beato has a prolific channel on YouTube in which he not only talks about music in his core area, pop and rock, but also wanders further afield. This little tribute to Bach is actually not too bad:


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In the summer of 1990 John Cage gave a lecture at the International New Music gathering in Darmstadt, Germany, and effectively admitted defeat. The then 76-year-old US composer announced that his philosophical ideas of freedom and collaboration, concepts built into his avant garde musical compositions since the 1950s, had failed to influence reality. The world had got worse, not better. It was “a life spent … beating my head against a wall”, he announced. There was, however, one consolation. “I no longer consider it necessary to find alternatives to harmony,” he said. “After all these years I am finally writing beautiful music.”

Cage was referring to his Number Pieces, around 40 late works named after the quantity of performers involved (from 1 to 101) in which individual musicians could choose when and how long to play (within designated time brackets) resulting in often quiet and meditative pieces, a marked contrast to the previous, often abrasive compositions he’d built his 40-year reputation on.

Late John Cage sounds a lot like late Morton Feldman. 

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It is both interesting and heartening to hear how some musicians have responded to the pandemic: Isolated By Pandemic, Violinist Jennifer Koh Nurtured A New Community Online.

When the pandemic arrived, it hit artists like Jennifer Koh hard. A classical violinist whose repertoire runs from Bach and Beethoven to newly minted pieces, she returned to her New York home from a concert in March 2020, and within a day found all of her engagements postponed.

"My first reaction was panic, because I lost all of my work," Koh says. "It was not good times." At one point she had to rely on food stamps.

But she's also the kind of artist who creates projects for herself and her friends and colleagues. Concerned about ways the pandemic was affecting the musical community, she came up with an idea: she asked prominent composers, like Tania León and Vijay Iyer, to write short solo violin pieces, then had them nominate emerging composers to write pieces, as well. And, by April 4th, she gave her first recital on Instagram.

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What is the problem with Australia? After just attending a festival in Austria where nearly all the concerts were packed and held in the usual venues, I see that Australia is cancelling everything: ‘It just feels safer’: the Australian musicians pivoting from an industry in crisis 

With Australia reeling from the Delta strain, major festivals including Splendour and Bluesfest have been cancelled for the second year running, with an estimated 7,000 gigs and live events cancelled each week.

Strict restrictions and slow vaccination rates, coupled with unpredictable snap lockdowns, have made it impossible for musicians to plan tours and promote albums; and with many music industry workers ineligible for jobkeeper (which ceased on 28 March this year) and federal grants schemes failing to trickle down, there are rising concerns that government rescue packages aren’t reaching the people who need it.

Many of those people are musicians, in an industry that was worth $1.8bn to the national economy in 2019. And in 2021, some of those musicians are pivoting away from the industry to find work elsewhere.

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The New York Times has an interesting survey of what is happening with classical music in the city: For Music, a Fall Deluge of Performances Is Beginning

On Saturday the Attacca Quartet played a heavily amplified yet lovingly textured program for hundreds in Prospect Park, as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn festival. (The pop group San Fermin headlined the evening.) In a half-hour sprint that managed not to feel rushed, the group played excerpts from its July debut on the Sony Classical label: the dance music-suffused (but somehow not schticky) “Real Life.”

Here is a sample:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th2QoQ_yxPU&t=122s

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 Let's have some envois. First up, one of John Cage's Number Pieces. This is Seven2 played by Apartment House:


And this is my favorite piece from the Art of Fugue, the Canon per Augmentationem in Contrario Motu:

The second voice enters down a fifth, inverted, and in double note values. Then, in the second half, the two parts switch with the lower voice leading.

15 comments:

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

to kick off the Labor Day weekend here in the U.S., here's the first half of a sonata-prelude and fugue in C minor called "in memoriam Aretha Franklin"
https://youtu.be/Cu2JjUCVVgw

The fugue is in development and under wraps but it's going to explore some musical territory similar to the old Fugue in B major
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TydUYpuugzE

only for the subject I will say that the vibe I'm shooting for is more in the groove of "Mustang Sally" which is why developing satisfying counterpoint for the subject has been so rough.

Bryan Townsend said...

Thanks, Wenatchee. I like it when people send in clips they are working on. Interested to hear the prelude and fugue when it is finished.

Steven said...

Wenatchee, sounds nice! I enjoy playing through many of the scores of your preludes and fugues -- I remain particularly fond of the B minor one you sent to me some time back. I intend to learn it fully at some point, but my right-hand since cutting off my nails isn't quite up to complicated polyphony, yet...

Steven said...

Bryan, I am going to interpret your comment as an invitation to send another recording. I'm very happy with this one, took quite a bit of work: my arrangement for guitar (by ear) of a Takemitsu film score, which I finally got round to recording last weekend. I adore Takemitsu, so having "found" a new Takemitsu guitar work to play was a real thrill.

https://youtu.be/rjbwWyWrXmQ

Bryan Townsend said...

Wow, Steven. Good job. Do I understand correctly that this does not exist in notated form?

Steven said...

An orchestral score does seem to exist, but I couldn't find any copies, so I notated it by ear (in a reduced form) then adapted to it to guitar. A fun exercise, learnt a lot.

Bryan Townsend said...

I guess what I meant to ask is does your arrangement exist in score?

Steven said...

Oh I see, yes I wrote it up in Sibelius. Just one page long believe it or not.

Bryan Townsend said...

And can I have a copy?

Steven said...

Of course, I've just emailed it to you

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

Steven, the B minor as in the William Byrd-based P&F? I used to think that one was easy but I set it aside for a few years and tried coming back to it and realized it is, in fact, not easy at all!

Everything Takemitsu wrote for guitar is a gem, which is why I was so excited Fukuda had another release of TT's guitar music since the spectacular Denon release from the last century. I've since discovered from fellow guitarists that getting that landmark 1990s Fukuda recording was one of those "you really had to be there when it came out" purchases.

I would have hoped by now someone would have done a doctoral dissertation on Takemitsu's music for guitar or done a dedicate monograph on it. His works are certainly that amazing and worthy of study!

Bryan Townsend said...

Lovely arrangement of an excellent piece, Steven!

Takemitsu is one of those really underrated composers--especially his guitar music. I used to play Folios in the occasional concert.

Steven said...

Yep, the Byrd one. I didn't know Fukuda had done a recording in the 1990s as well, will look it up. I love his Naxos album.

Thanks Byran!

Wenatchee the Hatchet said...

I'm probably going to have to put new strings on the Tele and do an electric performance later now that I've had time to think about it. There are a lot of fun timbre-changing possibilities with the C minor sonata-prelude on an electric guitar with the right gear. Too bad my wah pedal and delay pedal are defunct.

Fukuda's Naxos album is great ... but not quite as great (to me) as his Denon label recording.

Naxos has a new album out of guitar chamber music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco I picked up recently that is pretty fun if you're already into Tedesco (as I am).

I'm hoping we get volume 2 of the Koshkin prelude and fugues in the next few years and that guitarists tackle the rest of the Rebay solo guitar sonatas. If guitarists keep avoiding the first E major sonata I might have to play the first movement on film just to see to it someone has filmed at least one movement from it.

Steven said...

Will check out the Tedesco. I do like some of his guitar chamber music, particularly the fantasia for guitar and piano.

Oh I do hope there will be a recording of vol 2 of the Koshkin P+Fs. I have the scores but it is some of hardest guitar music to play through.