From the back cover notes (enclosed):
Gyorgy Ligeti-Atmospheres:
"My most basic aim as a composer is the revivification of the sonorous aspect of musical form.Those factors of contemporary composition which do not manifest themselves directly as acoustical experience seem to me of only secondary importance. However, this emphatically does not mean that I intend to limit myself to the invention of new tone colors or other sound phenomena.It is much more important to me to discover new musical forms and a new manner of expression...Tone color, usually a vehicle of musical form, is liberated from form to become an independent entity."
Each instrument in the 87-member orchestra is considered independently and produces an individual sound line.The various tones and strands of sound, melting and repelling, are mixed together and transformed into a shifting expanse from which, not elements, but their momentary combinations emerge. The music reverberates in seeming chaos,its substance lithe and intense.
Toshi Ichiyanagi-Life Music:
The original version of this piece was composed on magnetic tape in 1964.In the version recorded here, the taped segments are played through large speakers situated behind the orchestra, which performs and interacts with the taped sounds. The "live" performers are picked up with contact microphones attached to their instruments. This is amplified and electronically processed for a modified quality.The result is music consisting of several elements-The unmodified "Live" orchestra, that sound mixed with its own processed sound and any combination of the two played with the taped material. This results in many possible combinations intermixed in continually varying ways.Accompanied by coordinated,shifting light effects on stage,the effect is a striking one.The "chance" element in the music is expressed through the use of silences as well as the fluid give-and-take juxtapositions of live,recorded, and live/processed sounds.
Toru Takemitsu-Arc For Piano and Orchestra:
As organizer of "Orchestral Space I" Toru Takemitsu's reputation as one of the most innovative contemporary composers is secure.
This performance of Arc uses the original score-an augmented version also exists.The piece features various instrumental combinations which are both separate musical entities and portions of a greater whole which interact with one another.The piano is situated center-stage with, initially, strings and horns gathered around it.The other instruments are divided into four groups surrounding this central nucleus.These groups go their separate ways in terms of tempo etc, yet criss-cross and intermingle ("Like fish in an aquarium" as the original Japanese notes put it) so that the whole work is more than the sum of its parts. Yet those parts retain their independence as musical "events".
Iannis Xenakis-Strategie:
Strategie is a unique work in which the composer employs a method which he calls "strategie musicale". He applies the mathematical "theory of games" to music in order to demonstrate a logical principle of behaviour.
Two 44-member orchestras are seated, one at the left and the other at the right of the stage.Each conductor chooses one (or two) at a time of the seven sound structures given by the composer (including one of silence). The seven basic sound structures or "strategies" can be characterized as follows: 0-silence, 1-wind instruments, 2-percussion, 3-striking the bodies of the string instruments, 4-pointillistic string sound, 5-string glissandi, and 6-harmonics (winds and strings) with organ points.
Each conductor signals his strategy with his hand, to his orchestra. A large score-board is set at the end of the stage.Each possible combination has already been assigned points based on the composer's calculations.So the points acquired by a conductor can be shown at once on the scoreboard by a scorekeeper. Thus two musical teams compete in a game of musical tactics.The audience hears music born of the unpredictable combinations of the strategies.
Strategie was composed in 1962 and was first performed at the Venice Festival in 1963 under the direction of B.Maderna and K.Simonovic (Maderna won the game). At "Orchestral Space I" Japanese conductors Seiji Ozawa and Hiroshi Wakasugi competed with the victory going to Wakasugi."However", Xenakis says, "a defeated conductor should never be thought inferior to a winning conductor.The latter won the contest only because he was better at following the rules of the game as determined by the composer."
-Based upon notes by Kuniharu Akiyama
Orchestral Space:
Side One:
a1-Gyorgi Ligeti- Atmospheres (1962) 8:11
a2-Toshi Ichiyanagi- Life Music,for Various Modulators,Magnetic Tape and Orchestra (1966) 16:57
Side Two:
b1-Toru Takemitsu- Arc,for Piano and Orchestra (15:00)
(Yuji Takahashi-Piano)
b2-Iannis Xenakis- Strategie (1962) 13:24
Seiji Ozawa conducting, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra
Hiroshi Wakasugi, 2nd conductor on "Strategie".
(1) or (1)
Please Note: This record has a slight warp at the edge which results in some noise for the first minute or so of each side.It is most noticeable in side B.
Today's date allows for a post of solo piano music by four different composers, with music spanning over seventy years.
The modern piano owes much to the sonic and pianistic endeavors of the composer whose death supplies the jumping-off point for the music to follow: Claude Debussy, who died in 1918.
Debussy's exposure to the music of an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition was to have an important effect on his writing, and to further influence the music of many of the French composers to come- Including Olivier Messiaen, and subsequently his pupil, Pierre Boulez.
Each of the composers featured here has used the piano in a distinctly personal way.
Claude Debussy died on this day in 1918, aged 55 years.
From the cover notes (enclosed) by Nat Hentoff:
(...) I remember wondering at the term "impressionism" applied to this music, the music of Debussy. The term did not seem to me to convey the precision, the accuracy of the scenes,sounds and sometimes almost even smalls within the mysterious settings.And then, later, I read a letter he had written: "What I am trying to do is something different- an effect of reality, but what some fools call impressionism, a term that is utterly misapplied especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art". In a way, it can be said of Debussy what was written of Marianne Moore- that he was "a literalist of the imagination."
As for the piano music, which has seemed to me both more precise and more mysterious than his work in any other area, he urged that his interpreters imagine the piano as being without hammers. If that were done, and if the piano were to be transformed into into an instrument that could evoke real toads in imaginary gardens what was needed was an exceptional knowledge of the piano. Required. Edward Lockspeiser pointed out in his book: Debussy was "the closest analysis of touch and vibration of keyboard harmony and figuration, of the immeasurable contrasts in tone and register- in short...an analysis of all the technical resources of an instrument whose very limitations and defects were to be turned by Debussy into newly discovered virtues".
Side One:
a1-Feux D'Artifice
a2-La Cathedrale engloutie
a3-Les Collines D'Anacapri
a4-Les Sons et les Parfumes Tournant Dans L'Air du Soir
a5-La Terrasse des Audiences du Clair de Lune
Side Two:
"Children's Corner" Suite:
b1-Doctor Gradus Ad Parnassum
b2-Jimbo's Lullabye
b3-Serenad for the Doll
b4-Snow Is Dancing
b5-The Little Shepherd
b6-Golliwog's Cake-Walk
b7-Clair De Lune
Ivan Moravec-Piano
(1)
Bela Bartok was born on this day in 1881.He died in 1945, aged 64 years.Bela Bartok composed his Sonata in 1926, the year in which he wrote several important piano works to use on his concert tours in Europe and the United States (...) The Sonata remains the unique example of his thinking in the (solo piano) medium, just as it represents the culmination of the piano music written during the first half of his career.
Throughout the Sonata the piano is treated as a percussion instrument. In the first movement (Allegro moderato) the thematic materials are groups of repeated notes, shot like bullets from a machine-gun and punctuated by booming bass sounds, dissonant harmonics, or clusters of adjacent notes. Or there are fragments of scale passages, flourishes,outcries and chatterings. Everything is carried along on the wave of a powerful rhythmic drive that persists unaltered until the end,where it goes even faster.
The second movement (Sostenuto e pesante) is made of the same kind of material, but in a slow tempo that directs the attention to harmonic matters rather than rhythmic ones, and to the course rather than the speed of events. The music is like an epilogue spoken by an impartial observer of a tragedy.
The last movement (Allegro molto) is based on a folk idea, but it's dynamism is even more elemental, almost primitive. It's structure, on the other hand, is quite complex, and the changes rung on the theme are examples of highly organized rhythmical and melodic variation. Even at a first hearing, the Sonata is an extraordinarily vital and exciting work.But for all its modernity of sound, it is constructed on the soundest principles of classical form.
Contemporary Piano SonatasSide One:a1: Sergei Prokofiev-Sonata No.3 For Piano (1907, rev.1917)a2-4: Bela Bartok-Sonata For Piano (1926)1-Allegro Moderato2-Sostenuto e pesante3-Allegro moltoSide Two:b1-3: Miklos Rozsa-Piano Sonata (1948)1-Calmo2-Andante con calore3-Allegro giusto e vigorosoLeonard Pennario-Piano
(1)
Pierre Boulez was born in 1925.He celebrates his 87th birthday today..Boulez (rather paradoxically) said of his Piano Sonata No 2 that it represented
"a total and deliberate break with the universe of classical twelve-tone writing,the decisive step towards in integrated serial work, that will be realized when serial structures of tone-colors and dynamics will join serial structures of pitch and rhythm."(Boulez quote from Joseph Machlis's "Introduction To Contemporary Music", W.W.Norton & Co. 1961)
From the cover notes:
With Pierre Boulez's Second Piano sonata Idil Biret not only makes her American recording debut ,but also presents the first U.S. recording of this important contemporary work- It was previously recorded in Europe by Yvonne Loriod for Vega and by Claude Heiffer for Deutsche Grammophon. Composed in 1948, this Sonata occupies a position that exerted a causative influence upon Boulez's subsequent music.It's experimental and ground-breaking nature may be better understood if one regards it as having grown out of a response to Webern's Variations (1936), the companion piece on this album. The rigid, geometric patterns of Webern's work,the classical purity of its encompassing organization, seem to have served as a base of departure for Boulez's broadened structures which are equally rigid but incomparably more complex. It is this very complexity which conceals the strict framework of the entire composition and projects it as the product of an ardent improvisatory impetus.It demands form its interpreter a similar approach, along with technical prowess and intellectual control of the highest order.It was only a matter of course that this work, together with influences emanating from other sources (chiefly that of John Cage) should lead the path not only to open-form and aleatory compositions, including Boulez's own Third Piano Sonata,but also, through its new pianistic language, urge the development of a whole new generation of virtuoso pianists, such as Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky, Marcelle Mercenier,Frederic Rzewski,David Tudor and Charles Wuorinen.Side One:a1-3:Pierre Boulez-Piano Sonata No.2 (1948)1-Extremely Fast2-Slow3-Moderate,Almost LivelySide Two
b1:4-Very Freely,with Brusque Oppositions of Movements and Nuancesb2-b4: Anton Webern-Variations For Piano, Opus 271-Very Moderate2-Very Fast3-Quietly FlowingIdil Biret-Piano
(1)
And Finally, Cecil Taylor, who celebrates his 83rd birthday today.This record has an insert with notes in Japanese.
The text which follows are my own musings.
Among the avant-garde jazz composer/performers to begin working in the mid to late 'fifties, it is Cecil Taylor who blended his jazz influences (Horace Silver,Bud Powell,Oscar Peterson,Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Mary-Lou Williams) most thoroughly with the influences he evidently gathered from the contemporary European "Classical" idiom. (Much as Ellington had done a generation or two before him).
In this live performance the influence of, and the similarities between, Taylor's improvising and Boulez's composing in Sonata No.2 can be heard at times (if only in the great intervallic leaps and the swift dynamic changes), and one could easily add Cecil's name to the list of virtuoso pianists whose work can be seen as reaping the soil sewn by composers like Boulez.This is,of course,In addition to the rich soil of the jazz music which is indispensable to him.
Taylor's solo method generally relies on development of motivic cells, stated at the outset,and which gradually expand and become more complex and highly charged, sometimes contracting back to something like their original state at the end, and at other times ending abruptly, in mid stream.
Taylor's technique does not rely on independence of his two hands so much as contrary motion between them in great block chords and an alternating full-armed hammering and jabbing attack on the instrument in his single-note flurries.
As was said above of Bela Bartok, Cecil Taylor uses the piano like a percussion instrument in much of his high-energy work.
Cecil Taylor-Live In TokyoSide One:a1-Lono-Choral Of Voice (Elesion)a2-LonoSide Two:b1-Asapk In Ameb2-Indent-Half of First Layer, Second Half of First LayerCecil Taylor-Piano
(1)
Today would have been Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 94th birthday. He died in 1970, aged only 52 years.Excerpt from the (enclosed) notes to Tratto:
The experimental stage in the history of electronic music is not yet closed, and everything is pressing so toward the stormy further development that, for the time being, only technical novelties are expected in the way of progress. But technical progress says nothing at all about the state of composing. There are electronic compositions which,from a musical point of view,are far behind Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, Op.16. To put it otherwise, it is not the technical manipulation of the new sound medium that is decisive, but the question as to whether the specific characteristics of the new medium have been understood and can be used profitably for musical composition.
And so, I asked myself if it would be right to neglect using sine vibrations as a basic material,and if the fact that this doubtless pure electronic fabric has til now proven to be not very flexible nor expressive could be explained by the way it has been treated til now. The conviction that there are still undiscovered possibilities led to the point of departure in composing "Tratto"(...)
Excerpt from the (embarrassing) notes to "The Numbered/Improvisations":
What attraction does jazz have to the composers who do not directly stem from it?
If one wants to imply that such an attraction can - with very few exceptions - be generally observed, then one can say perhaps the attraction that is to be seen is that of naturally talented people who make music together. But talent for what?
First of all, for a completely spontaneous way of playing certain instruments, which is not necessarily to be learned in the school,but which somehow functions like doors or gates through which something wishes to exit...
Side One:
The Numbered (Ode to freedom in the form of a dance of death from the music to the radio play "The Numbered" by Elias Canetti)Improvisations (on the jazz episode from the second act,second scene of the opera "The Soldiers").
Performers: The Manfred Schoof Quintet
Side Two:
Tratto (Composition for electronic sounds in the form of a choreographic study) 1966
It is unclear exactly how the two pieces listed on side A are divided as it is not labeled precisely.
discogs labels the pieces as track one and track two, but there is no visible or audible separation to merit this.
I believe that the two pieces alternate back and forth for the duration of side A.
(1) or (1)
Another great record from Ilhan Mimaroglu, who celebrates his 86th birthday today.
Notes excerpted from the insert (enclosed):To Kill A Sunrise
Although this is a piece of program music, the listener needs no program text as what is meant to be said is said in plain words which are part of the music....I wish to avoid, however, one possible misinterpretation. The piece is a dirge, a "song of mourning" for those who are murdered by the lackeys of the ruling class. It is not a criticism of the killers. I am not saying to them "you shouldn't have done what you've done to all those people who who wanted to change the world and and overthrow what you represent," or it would have been like saying to the enemy general "you shouldn't have killed our soldiers." such a criticism would amount (to) changing sides and trying to come to terms with those who are fought against.
The piece was composed in September through December, 1974, and first heard publicly in one of the evenings of electronic music given by the Ripert Center at The Kitchen, NYC, January 29, 1975(...)La Ruche
The piece is titled after a famous Paris building where such painters and writers as Picasso, Modigliani, Mac Orlan and Appolinaire had lived and worked.
At the time I was proceeding with the first experiments on on a new piece commissioned by the GRM, I learned that this historic building, still used as working and living quarters by many artists was facing demolition, to be replaced by a high-rise. My nocturnal visits to the environs soon turned into near-pigrimages, and the music I was composing developed under the influence of that place described as "unwonted, mysterious,phantom, a castle of mists(...)
Ilhan MimarogluIlhan Mimaroglu - TWO COMPOSITIONS FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC TAPE (1976) Folkways Records
Side One:
To Kill A Sunrise (A Requiem For Those Shot In The Back)
Composed in the studios of the Columbia-Princeton Center For Electronic Music, New York, 1974
Side Two:
La Ruche
Composed in the studios of the Groupe De Recherches Musicales,ORTF, Paris, France, 1975
(Jacques Wiederkehr-Cello
Michel Merlet-Harpsichord
Martine Joste-Piano)
Please Note:
I am offering this record in two separate files,as La Ruche has some
distracting and persistent crackle in some sections; If you are annoyed by such vinyl artifacts, I suggest that you do not grab this particular file (#2).
If anyone can identify any of the music used for punctuation in "To Kill", (other than Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band's "Sun Zoom Spark") I'd appreciate it.
Dr I
(1)
(2)
There is a link to a new page on the sidebar above the list of posts (Blog Archive). I created this page to make a list of older posts that have been updated. They may have added information or have been modified in some way. The page is also intended to list posts with new links. I am not sure if anyone has noticed the new page which is why I decided to write this post. Usually, links to pages would be placed under the header on Blogger's blogs. Since it is not working properly, I had to create a link for the page in the sidebar. I placed it on top where it would be easy to spot. BTW, if you have any requests for material that have dead links, that page is a good place to let me know.
Some thoughts on free music. (Alternate title - "Where's the Melody?")
These thoughts are spurred by a comment left in a post here which I initially misinterpreted, to the effect
"In my favorite music you can't tell who's playing what".
I remember many years ago complaining to a friend who turned me fully on to Sun Ra that I had problems with not being able to hear who was playing what.
At the time, I was probably listening almost exclusively to the early music of Ornette Coleman, who's music of the late 50's is a precursor of much of the free music that came after.
In Ornette's Harmolodic theory (and I'm paraphrasing here, but I'll give you the gyst as I understand it- but note that many people have complained that even Ornette's spoken and written thoughts on the subject of his own theory are frustratingly vague and unclear), but- in any case:
In harmolodic music the focal point (which Ornette refers to as "the melody") can be anywhere at any given moment; it can be in the saxophone one moment and in the bass the next, then the trumpet for a few moments, then in the drums.
(Just referring to a melodic drum part is problematic, as drums are typically un-pitched. I think perhaps part of the fuss some people make about this theory's vagueness may be in here somewhere: "The Melody".)
Webern had, many years earlier, created (or at least named) a melody of a sort he called "Klangfarbenmelodie" - Tone-Color Melody,
Which is a somewhat similar thing, or at least gives us a somewhat similar result: the melody in Webern's music skips from instrument to instrument, sometimes in single note transitions, which can make the melody very hard to follow for someone (like me) who doesn't really read music, and has no music-theory knowledge to speak of. (To be more precise- I can't recognize what a particular piece of music will sound like by looking at it, beyond certain basics- "That's fast, that's dense, that's wobbly"...)
And so, when I listen to Webern (for example) what I hear as the melody may not be, strictly speaking - according to Dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) theory - the melody at all, but simply what I perceive as the moving focal point of the musical line.
So, I personally never thought I had grasped the meaning of Harmolodic theory, but I noticed that when I hummed the melody to (say) "Lonely Woman" from the album "The Shape Of Jazz To Come", I found myself singing a bit of Ornette's line, then a bit of Don Cherry's, and back and forth, and maybe even a few of the notes in the bass line (played by Charlie Haden), and this is what, in my mind, I had absorbed as the "melody". I think I had perhaps intuitively grasped the practical result of Ornette's theory.
Now- creating a music where a listener can't tell who's playing what isn't really that difficult- a high degree of similarity in sound between instruments will achieve this effect - i.e: all loud, all low, all high, all fast, etc, etc...
But a music which achieves this effect the way the best jazz ensembles often do- with the interplay being so "close" that it verges on e.s.p. is really inspiring to hear.
It does, however, make the music rather difficult to write about with any degree of precision: Trying to pick it apart in order to laud the merits of a given player's contribution when the music achieves an effect which seems to make manifest the dictum "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" is really quite difficult, and may leave one who writes and/or reads the result with the feeling that something essential has been lost in the translation.
One can read only so much vague prose about "sound-masses" and suchlike.
Many of the Jazz records of the type I'm alluding to here have no liner notes, and usually an interested reader will end up reading details about chronology and personel replacing critical review or analysis, a la wikipedia (but, to be fair, criticism is not their mandate)...Perhaps this is a good thing, as the music can be left to speak for itself, as it usually can.
But perhaps also, a few extraneous words about the content and context of the music can be helpful to some.
The gist of this is- I may post some records with almost NO text to accompany them. It's not that these records are any less interesting or important to me, it's just that the music might in my opinion speak so clearly (or perhaps opaquely) that any extra "help" from me might seem unnecessary (or worse: facile).
So- Here's some music:
Today is Ornette Coleman's 82nd birthday.Ornette has one of the most exciting, consistently challenging and listenable discographies on the planet. His Atlantic recordings are essential listening for anyone interested in post-bop music. They have been collected into a 6-cd set and titled "Beauty Is A Rare Thing".
This record dates from 1985, and is one of the lesser-known Prime Time albums.
It is a very densely populated live performance, inaugurating the Caravan Of Dreams performance /recording/meeting space in Ornette's home town of Fort Worth,Texas.
*part of "Compute" can be seen in "Ornette:Made In America", a film by Shirley Clarke.Ornette And Prime Time-Opening The Caravan Of DreamsSide One:a1-To Know What To Knowa2-Harmolodic Bebopa3-Sex SpySide Two:b1-City Livingb2-See-Thrub3-Compute
Ornette Coleman-Alto Saxophone, Violin & Trumpet (track b3)Bern Nix-GuitarCharles Ellerbee-GuitarJamaaladeen Tacuma-BassAlbert MacDowell-BassDenardo Coleman-DrumsSabir Kamal-Drums
(1) or (1)
Samuel Barber was born on this day in 1910.
He died January 23, 1981.
Notes excerpted from the (somewhat subjective) cover notes (enclosed) by Tom Carlson:
The Sonata for Piano in E flat minor, Opus 26, dates from dates from 1949, with its premiere given by Vladimir Horowitz in New York the following year. In four movements, it begins with a statement of lofty introspection in the lower register,which leads to music of a halting, searching vein, suggestive of the sense of loneliness and apprehension while exploring an abandoned house. The work takes on a romantic coloration near the conclusion,but then grows increasingly moody, and ends quickly. The second movement begins in a quick and carefree atmosphere; alternate light and shadow dart back and forth, leading to a light-headed exhilaration one feels when running down a steep hill. The Adagio is a poignant, yet detached melody for the right hand, played against slowly moving deeper chords. The Finale is a complex fugue, noble in its brilliance and virtuosic demands.
As a whole, the sonata demonstrates an exultant mastery of piano composition in the modern idiom, with its elements of 12-tone harmonics and uses of chromaticism, and is increasingly becoming a staple in the repertoires of many of today's pianists.
Ginastera (born 1916 in Buenos Aires) first visited the United States from 1945-47 on a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was five years later (1952) when he wrote the Piano Sonata, a work which well demonstrates his "objective nationalism". The energetic opening moves to an insistent,pulsating rhythm, which is heard repeatedly throughout the work.The presto begins with a fast-paced melody,the notes all but falling over themselves,until they arrive at material from the preceding movement.The music returns in the original Presto, only to give up tho its own quiet exhaustion. the Adagio might well be called "Nachtmusik", for it is emotionally quiet as a nocturne, becoming almost blatantly romantic with its use of arpeggios, blended with a broad melodic contour. The finale returns to material from the first movement, with a rhythmical binge plunging the work ever onward to its inevitable conclusion.
Side One:
Samuel Barber-Sonata For Piano,Opus 26 (1949)
a1-Allegro energico
a2-Allegro vivace e leggero
a3-Adagio molto
a4-Fugi:Allegro con spirito
Side Two:
Alberto Ginastera-Sonata For Piano (1952)
b1-Allegro marcato
b2-Presto misterioso
b3-Adagio molto appassionato
b4-Ruvido ed ostinato
Robert Guralnik-Piano
In the fiercely competitive ranks of pianists,Robert Guralnik is steadily and surely becoming one of the formidable practitioners of his instrument. A New Yorker by birth, he received his Bachelor of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a full-time scholarship student(...)
(1) or
(1)
Victoria Looseleaf - Harpnosis
released on LP in 1984
The intent on this album of harp music is to help calm and relax its listeners which it does. It's one of those new-age type recordings that draws from classical music. It is alluring and beautiful. When I spotted a copy of this in the flea market and saw the names Satie and Cage on it, I knew I had to have it.
The liner notes give Looseleaf's bio at the time of the album's release:
Victoria Looseleaf was classically trained in both piano and harp. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and then received a master's of fine arts in the performance and literature of the harp from Mills College. She has appeared in chamber music concerts and as a featured soloist in San Francisco, New York, Southern California and Europe. Currently residing in Laguna Beach, Ms. Looseleaf is perfecting the art of harpnosis, a technique she herself originated. Harpnosis, a de-stressing and relaxation practice, combines the most cogent aspects of psychology, analysis, meditation, sensory input and music.
Victoria Looseleaf recorded another album called Beyond Harpnosis (which I am on the lookout for). Then she quit releasing music and went on to do a cable public-access show called The Looseleaf Report that aired only in Los Angeles and New York. It totaled somewhere around 400 episodes and aired from 1987 to 2008. It had some big name celebrities and other interesting personalities as guests. So far, I found only one episode of her show, but it's a good one, an interview of Timothy Leary. Another interesting tidbit is that she wrote a biography of Leonardo Dicaprio whom she says she knows quite well personally.
She is currently writing a blog of the same name as her TV show where she covers the arts as well as contributing articles to The Los Angeles Times, Dance Magazine, among other publications.
Tracklisting:
Side One
1. Premiere Gymnopedie {3:02}
composed by Erik Satie
2. La Fille aux cheveux de lin {2:17}
composed by Claude Debussy
3. Deuxieme Gymnopedie {2:32}
composed by Erik Satie
4. Premiere Arabesque {4:14}
composed by Claude Debussy
5. Troisieme Gymnopedie {2:20}
composed by Erik Satie
6. Clair de lune {5:07}
composed by Claude Debussy
7. Air on a G string {2:48}
composed by Johann Sebastian Bach
Side Two
1. Canon in D {5:29}
composed by Johann Pachelbel
2. Andante {3:55}
composed by Johann Sebastian Bach
3. In a Landscape {11:58}
composed by John Cage
(1)
Notes from the booklet (enclosed) by Lejaren Hiller:
This is the second of a series of three VOX BOX albums of music for solo piano written by American composers. The first, performed by Neely Bruce, contained concert and salon music or 19th Century America. the present album takes up where that one left off, roughly at the turn of the century, and continues to mid-century. The final album, to be recorded, as is this one, by Roger Shields, will contain music of the present- with emphasis on music of the avant-garde.
(Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, this projected album was never recorded-Dr I).
Specialists in the history of American music like Gilbert Chase (America's Music, McGraw-Hill) and H. Wiley Hitchcock (Music in the United States, Prentice-Hall) have found it convenient to divide the period represented here (approximately 1900-1950)
into three main periods; the years prior to WWI, the decade of the 1920's and lastly, the years of the Depression and WWII. The pre-WWI period closes a long period of musical growth in America, during which the profession of composing acquired respectability, symphony orchestras and other performance ensembles were established and the teaching of music began to be accepted as an academic discipline. The model for all this was Germany, so it was considered correct and proper that aspiring young performers and composers be sent to Germany to polish off their studies. I speak here of course of the concert world, not of popular music which flourished perfectly well on its own.This stage of music history culminates in the singular career of Charles Ives, who not only combined in his music all the diverse trends of his times, but also because of his experimental turn of mind, prophetically anticipated much of what was yet to come.
In the music of the 1920's the focus abruptly shifted away from Germany. In foreign study, France replaced Germany; also, experimentation, iconoclasm, anti-Romanticism and an interest in jazz replaced former ideals. Perhaps the most important American composer of this period was Edgard Varese, who cannot be included in this album since he wrote no piano music. Then, of course, the Depression came, and with it, artistic as well as economic retrenchment. Moreover, America became the refuge for nearly all of the most famous European composers escaping the Nazi assault. Not surprisingly, these displaced Europeans dominated American musical life in the 1940's and it wasn't until afterwards that newer and different native musical impulses began to assert themselves.
Piano Music In America Vol.2: 1900-1945
Side One:
Charles Ives:
a1-The Anti-Abolitionist Riots (before 1908)
a2-Some Southpaw Pitching (1908)
a3-"The Alcotts" from "The Concord" Piano Sonata No.2 (1909-15)
Edward MacDowell:
a4-Five Movements from "Woodland Sketches", Opus 61 (1896)
Side Two:
Henry Cowell:
b1-Exultation (1919)
b2-Invention (1950)
b3-Aeolian Harp (1923)
b4-Advertisement (1914/59)
Charles T. Griffes:
Two Movements from "Roman Sketches", Opus 7 (1915-17)
b5-The White Peacock
b6-The Fountain Of The Acqua Paola
George Antheil:
Second Sonata, "Airplane" (1922)
b7-First Movement-As fast as possible
b8-Second Movement-Andante moderato
Side Three:
George Gershwin:
Three Preludes (1926)
c1-Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
c2-Andante con moto e poco rubato
c3-Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
John Alden Carpenter:
c4-Impromptu (1913)
Wallingford Riegger:
c5-Six Movements from "New And Old" (1944)
-The Twelve Tones
-The Tritone
-Seven Times Seven
-Tone Clusters
-Twelve Upside-Down
-Fourths And Fifths
Side Four:
Carl Ruggles:
Evocations, Four Chants For Piano (1937-43, revised 1957)
d1-Largo
d2-Andante con fantasia
d3-Moderato appassionata
d4-Adagio sostenuto
Roy Harris:
d5-Piano Sonata, Opus 1 (1928)
-Prelude (Maestoso, con bravura)
-Andante Ostinato (Misterioso)
-Scherzo (Vivace)
Side Five:
Roger Sessions:
From My Diary (1939)
e1-Poco adagio
e2-Allegro con brio
e3-Larghissimo e misterioso
e4-Allegro pesante
William Schuman:
e5-Three-Score Set (1943)
-=circa 96
-=circa 40
-=circa 144
Aaron Copland:
e6-Piano Variations (1930)
Side Six:
Walter Piston:
f1-Passacaglia (1943)
Virgil Thomson:
f2-Piano Sonata No.3 (1930)
-Bold
-Softer (same speed)
-very soft and without accent (same speed)
-Gay, and getting gradually louder and gayer
-Sustained
Two Movements from Ten Etudes (1943)
f3-Parallel Chords (Tango)
f4-Ragtime Bass
Samuel Barber:
f5-Nocturne, Opus 33 (1949)
f6-Fuga, from the Piano Sonata, Opus 26 (1949)
Roger Shields-Piano
(...) Only briefly exploring the usual contest/concert circuit (winning a Busoni prize and the Kinly Award), Shields prefers the new, unusual, and seldom-played repertoire. Works of Lutoslawski, Syzmanowski, Antheil, Zez Confrey and promising young composers figure as prominently in his concerts as do the Liszt Don Juan Fantasy, Stravinsky's Petrouchka, the Hammerklavier Sonata of Beethoven and Chopin Mazurkas. During the past 5 years, Shields has worked as pianist for the Center of Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, New York,and has been artistic director of the East European Concert Series(...)
(notes from 1976)
(1)
(2)
(3)
Echoes of Nature: Morning Songbirds
CD released in 1993
For this Sunday's (infrequent) nature sounds post, the cardinal, dove, morning dove, and other morning songbirds are featured along with accompaniments of rain and streams. An obvious and wonderful selection of sounds to listen to especially during the morning on a day that is free of any schedules.
Tracklisting:
1. Pacific Surf & Songbirds {4:56}
2. Predawn {16:35}
3. Rain with Pygmy Owl {3:21}
4. Marsh {3:04}
5. Sparkling Water {3:03}
6. Brookside Birds {6:55}
7. Bobwhite, Doves & Cardinals {8:59}
(1)
