Doris Hays (Plays Various Artists)-ADORATION OF THE CLASH (Finnadar 1979)

Doris Hays- ADORATION OF THE CLASH

Notes excerpted from the cover (enclosed) by Doris Hays:

Tone clusters: ideal rebellious gesture to topple the sacred Western muse off its sacred pedestal. A forearm bangs, and the tedium of linearity is broken, its intractable logic punctuated by the rude rough mass of second intervals- fingered, palmed, armed, and fisted for the clash.

Doris Hays: Sunday Nights (1977)
...Sunday Nights in Rossville, Georgia, at McFarland Memorial Methodist Church, when I was a teenager, and Mr Hudgeons led the hymn singing with his fist and the bass line. Sunday Nights is a recollection of those 4th and 5th intervals and tune fragments and a memory of the boredoms , tyranny and uncertain promise of church religion.

Henry Cowell: Piece For Piano Paris 1924
uses strumming, plucking, damping, and hitting the strings inside the piano (hence his term "string piano') in addition to fist, forearm and palm clusters.

Russell Peck: Suspended Sentence (1973)
Peck's own ideas about Suspended Sentence:
"...of desperate flight, a trip down blind alleys, trying to get started but can't get started. I was trying to write a piece that was purely pornosonic, had no structural coherence whatsoever. Hopefully this is not achieved. Definition of pornosonic: titillation of the senses without any deeper significance."

Ilhan Mimaroglu (1926) has written much music for traditional instrumental, as well as his better-known electronic music, which often contains collage, thick texture,overlay of different musical events. A surprise to those who know only the latter, his music for piano, string quartets, etc, is characterized by lyrical line and an expressive quality not often associated with composers of electronic music. Rosa reflects in its title and expressive intensity, as do all his compositions, Mimaroglu's deep passion for personal action towards the changing of society.

Morton Feldman: Vertical Thoughts IV; and Piano Piece (to Philip Guston) both composed in 1963. Marked extremely soft, both pieces record louder than they might be heard in live performance. Even at very soft dynamic levels, the minor seconds in this fingered cluster harmony prick the ear, often not lasting long enough to mellow out before the next vertical aggregate is quietly piled into place.

Leo Ornstein: Impressions De Notre Dame, I and II
Ornstein began his life as a piano virtuoso, but left public performance fairly early to give his time to writing music. His performances in the teens and twenties caused much excitement because of the music's dense harmonies, ferocious in loud passages; particularly one piece for which Ornstein is well known- Danse Sauvage or Wild Man's Dance.
In the past several years his music has been again brought to the attention of a larger public with frequency in performances of his keyboard music, notably his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra performed at Yale University in 1976.
Born in 1892 (or 1894) in Kremenchug, Russia, Leo Ornstein lives with his wife in Brownsville Texas.

(Addendum: Ornstein died Feb 24th 2002, aged 108 or 110 years.)
























Doris Hays-Adoration Of The Clash (Finnadar 1979)

Side One:
1- Doris Hays– Sunday Nights (5:17)
2- Henry Cowell– Piece For Piano Paris 1924 (5:32)

Side Two:
3- Russell Peck– Suspended Sentence (9:24)

Side Three:
4- Ilhan Mimaroglu– Rosa (5:10)
5- Morton Feldman– Vertical Thoughts IV (1:30)
6- Morton Feldman– Piano Piece (To Philip Guston) (2:52)

Side Four:
7&8- Leo Ornstein- Impressions De Notre-Dame (11:41)
7 – First Impression (5:09)
8– Second Impression (6:32)


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