125th St (Harlem) Station, New York
7 March 2018
music: "Song to the Siren" by as performed by This Mortal Coil
have long been fascinated by the idea of notation as a personal, expressive, and highly psychological art
Martino, "Fantasies and Interludes"
Mikhashoff, "Elemental Figures"
Silvestrov, "Kitsch-Musik"
Monk, Suite from Atlas
Ustvolskaya, "Sonata No. 6"
Miller, "Philip the Wanderer"
Kurtág, "Jatékók"
Ligeti, 10 Pieces for Wind Quintet
Reich, "Piano Phase"
Soper, "Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say"
Adès, "Mazurkas"
Aperghis, "14 Récitations"
Schubert, "Piano Sonata in A minor"
the most meaningful compliment I received these past two semesters accompanying precollege came from a mother who told me she remembered my accompanying her son on Debussy's "Première rhapsodie" – she described my playing as "so supportive", which is perhaps all I could ever really hope to be as a musician who likes to play with others
paid a visit to La Monte Young + Marian Zazeela's DREAM HOUSE a few days ago. stayed for about a half hour. it's a special experience, and psychological – move your head the slightest bit and the sound seems to shift with you. saturation/immersion that didn't feel too controlling. room is beautifully dark, with understated light installations (the entry way has a wonderful neon sign). incense was lovely. a moment to remember.
a friend of mine had her percussion sextet played at school tonight. stunning piece and very solid, graceful performance. I enjoyed every second of it.
in hearing a piece of music I'm always hoping to have an experience about which I have no questions, no second-guesses and no challenges. sometimes I have to work harder to listen to a piece than what I end up getting out of it, or I'll be unsure whether I "understood" what the artist intended for their work to express. when I hear a piece of music I'm always hoping that it meets me where I am, and listening to it does not become a conscious act of discrimination; I crave that experience of having questions and doubt washed away, where meaning is both complex but ultimately arresting, ultimately sufficient/coherent on its own terms, that holds my attention in its unwavering clarity.
love love love this first Debussy étude. I've always been struck by how funny it is (and I always find it strange, for some reason, when I find things funny that also happen to be old, as if only things happening in the present can be funny).
it's really effective in its "breaking-the-fourth-wall" humor, a reductionism that is almost crude (a mockery of Czerny). but it also lays down the harmonic dialectic of the piece (half-step relationships between modes, diatonicism etc). in this way the "joke" is more than a detached comic moment; it is woven into the music as an integral part of its construction. to me it is funny but also so much more; dignified, breezy, witty, noble, wise, insouciant. just wonderful music.
is it just me? is it just my neighborhood? or have flags really been flying at half-mast much more often, lately? memento mori?
current obsession:
I think the fixation on "cool sounds" in new music is extremely frustrating
call me by your name
- fly motif?
- use of piano music (Elio’s instrument), use of music specifically for variants of piano duet (4 hands, 2 pianos)
- Elio, a musician? Bach, Liszt, Busoni, Schoenberg? Ravel?
- love as open secret, unfamiliar, yet not a thing to be afraid of
- love and self-identity; “call me by your name”, who we love is such a part of who we are and who we become
- first love, unfamiliar, perhaps feels forbidden but “right” and unstoppable. several factors emphasized here. problematic? perhaps. poetic? also perhaps.
- Une barque sur l’ocean, Hallelujah Junction, Ma mère l’oye, Wachet auf... pieces of fairytale comportment (except Bach).
- politics? vote signs? 5-party government? sociopolitical backdrop of “innocent” love story?
- evocation of antiquity (pederasty – but not pedophilia!) casts a mythical, "Dionysian" light
what I would do to ban the word "première" from the lexicon
never have i ever
- played a solo recital
- performed or even learned a concerto
- performed a piece from memory in at least 15 years
I have many “holes” in my knowledge and practice, and though I hope continually to mature I also have become less self conscious about my “weaknesses”.
there are artists that do not let a lack or lacuna of technique stop them from doing beautiful work; in fact, sometimes recognizing and working with them can be illuminating indeed. technique can thusly become highly idiosyncratic; you don’t have to know how to do everything to do SOMETHING as you dream it.
idea of music as a domestic practice
upright pianos
music as ritual/community practice; just a thing to do that doesn't need the typical trappings of formal presentation
in this sense music can be both divine and humble
sur prise
over taken
I want to read more about music but I find I get very bored when i sit down to do it. the most readable writing on music is also often the most purple-prose-ey and I don’t like that at all, it becomes this whole affectedly starry-eyed THING (or a cult of personality) that I just can’t stand. (Alex Ross, Tom Service, Paul Griffiths, no thank you.)
I find that I’m more interested in what other musicians are interested in; I don’t like Alex Ross’s writing but his taste is interesting and I’ve discovered a good amount of music this way. Thomas Adès and Stravinsky are two others whose tastes and inspirations are fascinating. making the connections between their inspiration and their own work teaches me more than whatever they’ve said about their own music.
despite everything I have come to learn about music in these past years, and how many strange and wonderful and forward-thinking things it can be and can do, whenever I sit down to write it is only ever to be Emotionally Expressive in the most wistful, millennial bedroom-pop sense. it's one of those things I guess I just can't shake, no matter how much I tell people that music doesn't have to be about anything, doesn't have to say anything, doesn't have to aim for your feelings to hit them.
rhythm as “elastic” dimension of music
if there is anything i’ve learned about music in the past two years it has been that music is so much more than what it sounds
this piece has been making the rounds lately; some of my friends have been variously angered, puzzled, and amused by it. it took me a while to really apprehend but I think it's wonderful.
"Marche fatale", a march of death. Lachenmann writes about avoiding banality as an artist's perennial struggle – where does one go when one's entire career-worth of music is now accepted as common currency, fodder for composition students in ivory towers? at the twilight of a career or a life, where now we can hear a new Lachenmann piece and "get what we expect"? is that not banal too?
Lachenmann writes too, in the program note, about a recourse to "utility music"; music written for use. and as we see, in quotations and in the glib face of this march, anything can be co-opted for "use", can be rendered banal by a culture that has learned to exploit it or capitalize upon it. "Marche fatale", a march of death – even Wagner's transcendent "Tristan und Isolde" is not safe from trivialization; music has a half-life just as people have lives, that must grow old, possibly irrelevant. "Marche fatale" has a cheeky surface but I think there is a real wistfulness, not in some kind of longing for the past, but for an exhausted present. I'm thankful that it's also a lot of fun.
On repeat a lot lately.
Thomas Adès references the late style of Billie Holiday as a model for his "Life Story". not being all that familiar with her music (I know, I am ashamed), this came as a bit of a revelation; also because "Life Story" is so often done as a bitter, kind of "bratty" piece. There is real resignation and melancholy in Lady in Satin that I'm curious and eager to pull out of "Life Story".