Bird Songs in Your Garden

Arthur A. Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg - Bird Songs in Your Garden

book and accompanying 10" record released in 1961

Produced by Peter Paul Kellogg and Arthur A. Allen from recordings made for the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds.

List of species included in book and record:

Wood Pewee, Cardinal, Robin, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Catbird, Scarlet Tanager, Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Red-eyed Vireo, Wood Thrush, Veery, Cedar Waxwing, Brown-headed Cowbird, Blue Jay, Rufous-sided Towhee, Baltimore Oriole, Orchard Oriole, Purple Finch, Yellow-shafted Flicker, White-breasted Nuthatch, Kingbird, Phoebe, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Black-billed Cuckoo, Screech Owl

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1.  Bird Songs in Your Garden side 1  {12:48}

commentary by Arthur A. Allen

Side 2

1.  Bird Songs in Your Garden side 2  {13:11}

The songs of 25 birds unannounced but identified on side 1

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Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite

Olivier Messiaen - Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite

released on a 2-LP set in 1973 by Musical Heritage Society (same as 1972 release on Erato)

performed by Olivier Messiaen himself

Organ used on this recording is that of the Church of Sainte Trinite, Paris.

Composed in 1969, the mystical Meditations sur le mystere de la Sainte Trinite (Meditations on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity) is made up of 9 pieces or meditations that reflect on an attribute of the Trinity. The Meditations contain bird songs, plainsong, quotations from Thomas Aqunias's Summa Thelogica, deci-talas (Hindu rhythms). The liner notes include Messiaen's own musical and theological analysis on the music that helps in understanding the music. Also in the liner notes, Messiaen explains his attempt at creating a musical language called communicable language that is incorporated in the music.
Messiaen's version is the only one that I have listened to in its entirety. I'm not sure if it is the essential version although since it's performed by the man himself, it probably should be. The performance and the recording itself is great. I am welcome, of course, to any other suggestions.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1.  Meditation No. 1  {8:15}

2.  Meditation No. 2  {11:37}

Side 2

1.  Meditation No. 3  {2:19}

2.  Meditation No. 4  {6:30}

3.  Meditation No. 5  {11:18}

Side 3

1.  Meditation No. 6  {8:30}

2.  Meditation No. 7  {6:27}

Side 4

1.  Meditation No. 8  {10:39}

2.  Meditation No. 9  {9:38}

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Hall Overton / Lester Trimble - Split Release (CRI 1972)

Notes (reprinted in spite of the fact that I find them really rather annoying) excerpted from the back cover (included).

Pulsations is the last in Overton's considerable catalogue and is probably the work that most perfectly fuses his own equal and opposite musical loves, concert music and jazz. In his words, it "explores various aspects of rhythm. Instead of avoiding the pulse, my intention was to write music based largely on a strong, steady beat." This is not, however, the primitive pulse of the typical jazz band but ranges from "straight-ahead propulsion, lag beat, silent beat, free time and doubling"". The moderately knowing listener will recognize characteristic jazz figures, along with others that are subtler, more deeply imbedded in the musical texture,  and also more personal to Overton.
In addition to its specific jazz references, Pulsations sometimes achieves a strange and dreamlike atmosphere that seems to represent the unworldly aspects of the jazz scene.
The work is dedicated to Thelonious Monk, the eminent jazz pianist,who is one of the many jazz people Overton worked closely with. It was commissioned by The Ensemble of New York.

The Ensemble; Dennis Russell Davies,conductor

In Praise Of Diplomacy And Common Sense  has been described as "a sonic happening", "an hallucinatory montage", "an ironic sequence." It has been compared to sections of James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.
To evoke such observations it would seem to be a new and unusual kind of theatre- one might call it "spatial sonic theatre"- which seeks through techniques of musical and verbal overlapping and interpenetration, to evoke the realities of a dramatic event and simultaneously, to make a philosophical comment upon them.
The composer writes:
"The libretto is a montage of news items culled mostly over an eight-day period from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and Life magazine. It presents the simultaneous spectacles of a bloddy uprising in the Congo, the release of the Warren Report on the assassination of John F Kennedy, violent anti-American demonstrations in Egypt, a threatening contretemps between the USA and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, and other examples of human cruelty and intransigence displaying an apparent absence of true diplomacy or common sense from the national and international arena."

The Ensemble; Dennis Russell Davies,conductor; Richard Frisch,baritone

























Hall Overton- Pulsations (17:42)

Lester Trimble- In Praise Of Diplomacy And Common Sense (14:51)


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