Music For Pianos In Sixths Of Tones (McGill Recordings,1985)

Excerpts from the cover notes (enclosed):

Born in St.Petersburg in 1893,Ivan Wyschnegradsky was a disciple of Scriabin. In 1918 he had an intense mystical experience that caused him to see the necessity of a musical expression in micro-tones. Because of the chaotic conditions in Russia at the time,he moved permanently to Paris in 1920, where he lived until his death in 1979.
His determination and courage in face of incredible difficulties and the neglect of the musical world seem almost superhuman.because of the problems in creating adequate instruments for microtones,he had almost no performances until 1937 when he adopted the solution of two or more conventional pianos tuned to different diapasons.
Aside from the two successful concerts in 1937 and in 1945 in Paris, there were few performances and no publications.Only recently has the world recognized the importance of both his compositions and his theoretical writings on microtonal composition.
Since his death the "Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky" in Paris under the presidency of Claude Ballif has produces concerts,recordings and publications devoted to his music. But the first long playing recording of his music was produced by McGill University Records (No.77002) in 1978. On that recording the LePage-Mather Duo plays Two Concert Etudes,Op.19,Two Fugues,Op.33 and Integrations,Op.49, all in quarter tones. The works in sixths of tones on the present disc received their premieres at McGill University's Pollack Concert Hall in Montreal on April 21,1983* and are recorded here for the first time.
In the 1950's Wyschnegradsky elaborated his ultimate system for organizing his "continuum of sound".
This system he called "les espaces non octaviants". They are cycles that repeat not at the octave but at a slightly smaller or larger interval.In the case of Dialogue a Trois the interval is the major seventh or 33 sixths of tones.This interval can be subdivided equally (11,11,11) in "perfect regular structure" (requiring 3 pianos), in "irregular structure one colour" (9,12,12) requiring one piano) or in irregular structure two colours" (10,11,12) (requiring two pianos). He associated each piano with a color.
In DIALOGUE A TROIS he also uses his system of "ultrachromaticism rythmique"; very subtle changes in tempo which are the counterpoint of the small intervallic differences.The musical language can be reduced in three elements (1) broken chords, (2) repeated notes or chords, (3) regular fluctuations between two chords.

COMPOSITION OP 46,NO 1 is a short work which uses a non-octaviant space of 17 thirds of a tone (one third of a tone less than an octave). It is subdivided into three intervals of 12,11 and 11 sixths.This system offers the possibility of 34 different positions of the cycle.

The subject of the FUGUE in OPUS 30, on this recording, starts with a minor sixth,each note of which alternately slides downwards in sixths of tones. Following  the five voice exposition the fugue features an entry in augmentation, and entry with the inversion of the augmentation, a  stretto and a coda in non-fugal style.

For its pitch organization, Bruce Mather's POEME DU DELIRE uses Wyschnegradsky's system of "non-octaviant spaces", modified to produce a scale of thirds and sixths of tones.
Formally, it is a mosaic of six different textures: 1-monody, 2-a slow melody accompanied by complex broken chords, 3-a chorale with chords of 3,5,8 and 11 notes, 4-a melody of moderate pace accompanied by solid chords, 5-trills and chromatic (semitone) scales accompanied by slowly broken chords, and 6-fast tremolos and ostinatos.
Poeme du Delire is dedicated to the memory of A.Scriabin and his disciple I.Wyschnegradsky

ASPECTS by Jack Behrens is comprised of a Prologue,six Episodes and a Postlude- each less than a minute long. It is,in intent, a work for one piano with enhanced pitch possibilities; that is, the work is not antiphonal, with one piano echoing or reflecting another.Against a static pitch centre the Prologue quietly explores the "feel" of microtonal possibilities; these are reaffirmed (with many octaves slightly enlarged) in the Postlude. In the body of the composition, microtones are sometimes used to "color" pitches (especially in the final prankish Episode) and are frequently treated as point of fluctuation (rather than steps) or as ingredients in clusters (Episode 1) in other instances spatial expansion (Episode 3) or interval expansion (Episode 5) is explored .Aspects is dedicated to Bruce Mather.

Side One: Ivan Wyschnegradsky

a1-Dialogue a Trois,Opus 51 (1974)

a2-Composition,Opus 46,No.1 (1961)

a3-Prelude Et Fugue,Opus 30 (1945)

Side Two:

b1-Bruce Mather-Poeme Du Delire (1982)

b2-Jack Behrens-Aspects (1983)

Louis-Phillipe Pelletier,Paul Helmer,Francois Couture-Pianos
Bruce Mather,Conductor.


 






















 
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John Cage - Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano (Harmonia Mundi,1980)

Well, the CageCentennial week here in A Closet is officially over.
But- never let it be said that we here can't go above and beyond the call of duty.
Or, more accurately, never let it be said that I, DrEyescope, can't be counted on to be the consummate procrastinator, with more to add now which should have come before.
So, Here you go:

John Cage: Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano. (recorded either 1950 or 1958) Maro Ajemian, Piano

The minimal notes are in French, and I won't torture you all with my half-assed translation.

This is a kind of a strange record.
It's one of those Harmonia Mundi releases with a thin, minimal cover without photos or liner notes (there is an enclosed strip of paper with minimal notes), the idea being (as I recall) that the money would be spent on superior performances and pressing.
This record clocks in at over 64 minutes, which means that the grooves are cramped.
Normally in cases such as this, the cramped grooves give a less defined sound than wider grooves, and this record is no exception- especially towards the end of each side, or when the music gets loud, the record suffers from distortion.
And, on top of that, Maro Ajemian is playing while sitting on a squeaky chair.
But the real problem with this record is that it is incomplete:
The center label lists track 1 on side two as "Sonata No.IX", but it is, in fact, Sonata No.X,

Sonata No.IX is entirely absent. (Either that, or silent.)

Nevertheless, I enjoy this album very much. When it comes to the Sonatas and Interludes, I (who know these works only as a listener and not a performer or reader of scores, and am therefore only partially informed)  judge many of these performances to be very nearly "definitive".
There is a rhythmic vigor; a "dancing" quality in these interpretations which I find lacking in some other recordings, and even with the questionable reproduction, one can also hear a sensitivity and subtlety in some of the slower, more meditative pieces which gives them a broader emotional scope than other interpretations.

I plan to compare these interpretations with the (seemingly very dramatic) Steffen Schliermacher disc which was posted the other day by (timely and hard-working) grey calx.


John Cage: Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano (composed 1946-48)

Side One:

a1: Sonata I (3:00)

a2: Sonata II (2:23)

a3: Sonata III (2:43)

a4: Sonata IV (3:04)

a5: Interlude I (3:42)

a6: Sonata V (1:28)

a7: Sonata VI (2:20)

a8: Sonata VII (2:31)

a9: Sonata VIII (2:54)

a10: Interlude II (4:22)
 
a11: Interlude III (3:04)
 
Side Two::

B1: Sonata X (3:35)

B2: Sonata XI (3:27)

B3: Sonata XII (4:18)

b4: Interlude IV (2:45)

B5: Sonata XIII (4:03)

B6: Sonata XIV (3:36)

B7: Sonata XV (3:36)

B8: Sonata XVI (5:02)
 
Maro Ajemian, Piano

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Gyorgy Ligeti / Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Music for two Pianos (1980)

Gyorgy Ligeti was born 89 years ago today, in 1923. He lived to the age of 83, passing away in 2006.

Notes excerpted from the (enclosed) insert:
 
Monument, Selbstportrait, Bewegung- Ligeti's first piano composition since his emigration in 1956, was commissioned by the West German Radio; it was written during February, March, and April 1976, and received its world premiere at Cologne on the 15th of May 1976.

Monument - music which with its unvarying character and momentum seems to mark time on the spot - or, as the title suggests, on its pedestal. Regularly recurring intervals, only occasionally increased or reduced, are associated with particular gradings of volume level. While the pitch layers gradually extend upward and downward from the middle register, the fortissimo blocks of sound at the beginning evolve into an ever more complex texture of different dynamic levels which exist simultaneously, drawing the ear from the forte in the foreground by way of mezzo-forte, mezzo-piano and piano levels to the depths of pianissimo.
"If the dynamic differentiation is realized accurately, the music produces the effect of being three-dimensional, like a hologram standing in an imaginary space. This illusion of space gives the music a statuesque, immobile character (=Monument)."

Selbstportrait - "Self Portrait with Reich and Riley (and with Chopin in the Background)" is in the tradition of the pieces of Ligeti which by means of the polyrhythmic superimposing of extremely intricate kinds of figuration conjure up musical puzzles of outrageous absurdity )Poeme Symphonique for 100 metronomes, 1962, Les Horloges Demoniaques from Nouvelle Aventures,  1965,  Continuum for harpsichord and the 2nd String Quartet, 1968. Similar methods, although within entirely different formal concepts, were also developed during the sixties in the music of the American "minimalists"  La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Ligeti's musical group picture - drawn sharply and with a hint of caricature - clearly  reveals both relationships and differences. "As hommage to Riley and Reich (while personal affection certainly also played a part) I gave it a touch of irony (and no less self-irony, as I also depicted myself), combining the techniques of Riley's pattern repetition and Reich's phase shifting with my own techniques of superimposed grids and supersaturated canons"(...)

Even more pianistic in effect is "In a gently flowing movement", a hair-raisingly difficult study in velocity demanding the utmost virtuosity, in which characteristics of traditional piano music (Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy) glimmer like recollected images. This third third movement is, at the same time, a pendant to the first, a "liquified" variant of the static "Monument", and its chorale-like closing section - an eight-voice mirror canon "which constantly draws closer together like a telescope" sums up the concluding character of all three pieces in a joint epilogue.

Perspektiven, Monologue- Key works Of Zimmermann's oeuvre during the fifties and sixties. The Perspektiven, which form what is probably his forst strictly structural piece, reflect his coming to grips with late Webern, with the technique of serial composition, it is no mere chance that the second part of this work contains, like a deeply respectful evocation, an allusion to Webern's Concerto Op.24.
It is typical of Zimmermann that from strict construction he was able to create music of a sensuous character, marked by richness of tone colours, espressivo, apparently improvisatory freedom and pianistic brilliance. Perspektiven I was completed in April 1955 and Perspektiven II about a year later.

Zimmermann produced Monologe-a solo version of the Dialoge for two pianos and full orchestra- at the beginning of 1964 during his second year of study at the Villa Massimo in Rome. With the Dialoge (1960) and the piano trio Presence  (1961). The Monologe forms a kind of triptych; all three compositions correspond to each other formally and are derived from the same symmetrical all-interval row; indeed, all three are  founded, down to details of note sequences, rhythmical and dynamic articulation, on almost identical structures. Zimmermann's concept of "pluralistic sound"- from the time of his opera "Die Soldaten" (1958-60) the dominant principle of his musical thinking and composing- is realized in Monologe perhaps even more clearly and comprehensively than in the  two sister works. 

Materials of the past and of the present, personal to the composer and borrowed from elsewhere, are subtly interwoven in a "broad texture of musical elements of time an experience". This pluralistic composing introduces skillfully fashioned collages of quotations: Bach, Messiaen, Debussy, Beethoven, Mozart, Gregorian Chant and Boogie-Woogie are recognizable- alienating, colouring and commenting on Zimmermann's train of thought. Spontaneity, eloquence and virtuosity schooled on earlier models - above all Liszt and Debussy - give this quasi-surrealistic world of dreams and associations an extremely telling actuality.

Side One:
 
a1-3: Gyorgy Ligeti-Three Pieces For Two Pianos

I-Monument (4:07)
II-Self-Portrait (With Reich And Riley And With Chopin In The Background) (7:03)
III-Movement (4:52)

a4: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Perspektiven I (8:04)
Side Two

b1: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Perspecktiven II (5:10)

b2: Bernd Alois Zimmermann-Monologue For Two Pianos (18:02)

Alois and Alfons Kontarsky-Pianos

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Tom Plaunt Plays Charles Ives (1984 McGill University Records)

Charles Ives, the archetypal American Maverick, died 58 years ago today at the age of 80 years.

 

Side One:

a1-I:Emerson (15:05)
a2-II:Hawthorne (13:09)

Side Two:

b1-III:The Alcotts (5:14)
b2-IV:Thoreau (10:32)

Tom Plaunt,Piano

(1) reuploaded Aug.20 2014

Claude Debussy-PIANO MUSIC (Connoisseur Society 1967)

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























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Bartok,Prokofiev,Rozsa-CONTEMPORARY PIANO SONATAS

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 Sonatas

Side One:

a1: Sergei Prokofiev-Sonata No.3 For Piano (1907, rev.1917)

a2-4: Bela Bartok-Sonata For Piano (1926)
1-Allegro Moderato
2-Sostenuto e pesante
3-Allegro molto

Side Two:

b1-3: Miklos Rozsa-Piano Sonata (1948)
1-Calmo
2-Andante con calore
3-Allegro giusto e vigoroso

Leonard Pennario-Piano























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Boulez/Webern-Piano Sonata No.2/Piano Variations (1973) Finnadar

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 Fast
2-Slow
3-Moderate,Almost Lively

Side Two

b1:4-Very Freely,with Brusque Oppositions of Movements and Nuances

b2-b4: Anton Webern-Variations For Piano, Opus 27
1-Very Moderate
2-Very Fast
3-Quietly Flowing

Idil Biret-Piano






















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Cecil Taylor-LIVE IN TOKYO (1974) Trio Records

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 Tokyo

Side One:

a1-Lono-Choral Of Voice (Elesion)
a2-Lono

Side Two:

b1-Asapk In Ame
b2-Indent-Half of First Layer, Second Half of First Layer

Cecil Taylor-Piano























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Samuel Barber/Alberto Ginastera-PIANO SONATAS (Mace MXX 9085) ca.1970

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(...)

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George Antheil/Henry Cowell/Leo Ornstein - THE BAD BOYS! (Hat Now) 1994

The Bad Boys! George Antheil, Henry Cowell, Leo Ornstein - Steffen Schleiermacher, piano
Hat Now 1994

Today is the 10th anniversary of the passing away of Leo Ornstein at the astonishing age of 109 years.

Notes from the booklet (enclosed):


It is Antheil- Futurist, Vorticist, self-made enfant terrible of the 1920's avant-garde who provides a name for this collection of piano works by three independently minded American composers. Indeed, Antheil wrote an autobiography at the age of 35, Bad Boy Of Music, that stands as the classical music world's equivalent to Charles Mingus's Beneath The Underdog, for sheer audacity and self-mythologization. "...I reached in under my left armpit in approved American gangster fashion," he writes of an early Eastern European performance, "and produced my ugly little automatic. Without a further word I placed it on the front desk of my Steinway and proceeded with my concert. Every note was heard, and, in a sense, I suppose I opened up the way in Hungary for modern music of a non-Bartok-Kodaly variety."
Antheil's most important work, both as a self-promoter and as a composer took shape in Europe (Berlin and Paris, especially) during the early 1920's. Travelling there in search of a lost blonde love named Anne Williams, he started playing piano professionally and soon became one of the first American students of Nadia Boulanger. Like much of the French avant-garde - Jean Cocteau, Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, Antheil's music fell under the influence of jazz, and the works presented here (both composed in 1922 or 1923) explicitly refer to that preoccupation. In 1927, impressed by the rhythmic complexity of Antheil's music, Pound wrote Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, a book that harmony should be thought of primarily as a rhythmic, rather than a tonal, concern.
Back in the U.S in the 1930s, Antheil turned his attention to opera and Hollywood film music, but these solo piano works and his performances of them had polarized and galvanized fans. "Riots came to be the order of the day at my concerts," he recounts in Bad Boy Of Music, "because I was one of the few pianists of that period always to end a concert with a modern group, preferably of the most 'ultra' order. In fact, I invariably closed with a piece of my own, the "Mechanisms,' the 'Jazz Sonata,' 'Fireworks and the Profane Waltzers,' "Sonata Sauvage,' or something equally cacophonous. I also played works of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, Ornstein."

The fiery ultramodern pianist Leo Ornstein was born in Russia, , in 1892, and came to the States at age nine. Better-known to many as a player than a composer (converse of Antheil), Ornstein too loved bombastic, mechanistic rhythms and was was also influenced by jazz. His own reportedly wild and outlandish performances of "Danse Sauvage," written in 1915, earned him intense notoriety, as did a 1914 London recital of his own work that he announced as "futuristic music." Hailed by some as the leading Futurist musician, Ornstein's piano music predates Antheil's by a decade- "Suicide in an Airplane" was composed in 1913; " Impressions de Notre-Dame" in 1914- and is contemporaneous with the earliest works represented here by that other piano ultramodernist, Henry Cowell.

The centerpiece of this collection is a set of short, brilliant studies by thai baddest boy- if also the most genteel- of the three, Henry Cowell. Born in 1897, raised in San Francisco, and always a West Coaster at heart, Cowell began his influential reconsideration of the piano as an instrument when he was literally but a boy. At age 13 he composed "Adventures in Harmony," which used his newly-coined term, "tone clusters." Later Bela Bartok would write to him asking for permission for the use of his "clusters.") This piece, like many of his later works, also made use of innovative techniques such as striking the keyboard with fists, forearms, and elbows, and in 1914 he demonstrated his new technique of placing objects directly onto the strings of a piano for what must have been a completely bemused Aan Francisco Musical Society.
(...) The compilation of Cowell's piano on Bad Boys, selected and stunningly rendered by Steffen Schleiermacher, ranges in date from the early 1910's ("The Tides of Manaunaun," "Anger Dance,") to the late 1920s ("The Banshee," "Tiger"). On one hand, these compositions set a course for composers such as Cage and Nancarrow (whose piano-roll pieces bring to fruition the call for mechanization of the Futurists, first heard in Ornstein and Antheil). On the other they predict many piano developments specific to improvised music, from the energetic deployment of clusters characteristic of Cecil Taylor to the internal surgery carried out on pianos by Nick Couldry, Carlo Inderhees, and Denman Maroney. In fact, Cowell clearly had improvisation in mind with many of his extended techniques. For instance, instructions at the top of the score for "Aeolian Harp" (1923) read: "Lento.In improvisatory style."
(...) Taken together with these historically important and musically rewarding pieces by Antheil and Ornstein, Cowell's piano music looks to the future we currently occupy,. A crucial link between Scriabin and Sun Ra, his wide-eared musical mind drew on music from all over the world, particularly classical musics of China, India, and Japan, which he is said to have known far better than he did the standard Western classical repertoire.
(...) these early piano pieces are startling reminders of his singular and motivational place in the front ranks of the avant-garde.
John Corbett, Chicago, June 1994 (thanks to David Grubbs for historical assistance).

The Bad Boys! Henry Cowell, George Antheil, Leo Ornstein

Henry Cowell (1897-1965):

Three Irish Legends:
1-The Tides Of Manaunaun 1912
2-The Hero Sun 1922
3-The Voice Of Lir 1920

4-Aeolian Harp 1923
5-Banshee 1925
6-Anger Dance 1914
7-Dynamic Motion 1913

Five Encores To Dynamic Motion:
8-What's This 1913
8-Amiable Conversation 1917
10-Advertisement 1914/59
11-Antimony 1914
12-Time Table 1914/15

13-Tiger 1928

George Antheil (1900-1959):

Second Sonata ("The Airplane Sonata") 1922
14-First Movement
15-Second Movement

Sonata Sauvage 1922/23
16-First Movement
17-Second Movement
18-Third Movement

19-Jazz Sonata 1922

Leo Ornstein (1892-2002):

20-Suicide In An Airplane ca.1915
21-Impressions De Notre-Dame (Op.16 No.1 ca.1915)
22-Impressions De Notre-Dame (Op.16 No.2 ca.1815)
23-Wild Men's Dance (Op.13 No.2 ca.1914)

Steffen Schleiermacher - Piano























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Toru Takemitsu- KEYBOARD WORKS PLAYED BY ROGER WOODWARD (Decca/Head) 1974

Toru Takemitsu-VARIOUS KEYBOARD WORKS (Decca/Head) 1974

Today is the 16th anniversary of the passing of Toru Takemitsu at the age of 65 years,4 months.

notes excerpted from the insert (enclosed):
"In a positive sense, for me the activity of composing consists in creating an environment where sounds can meet dramatically". To the listener educated in western music, this statement may not seem ti apply to many of his works: such an aura of quiet concentration and almost motionless development does not easily strike us as dramatic. Takemitsu's concept of drama is different from outs- nearer perhaps to that of the Japanese classical Noh theatre than to any western form. Sounds in his music are not pitted against one another: they flow freely, creating new relationships at every instant, each one individually alive. The dramatic movement is interior,: a search inside each sound for new relationships, new currents, new freedoms-Dominic Gill

Some words from the composer:

"To make the void of silence live is to make live the infinity of sounds. Sound and silence are equal. But this conception cannot work without extracting to the fullest the expressive potential of a musical sound or phrase which then will become an abstract, anonymous entity, freely offered to the executant. The virtuoso of the shakuhachi dreams of a perfect, sublime sound. Like that of the wind in the bamboos, and in that is the full expression of a belief in Japanese music. The inner complexities of a natural sound are akin tho nothingness."

"The heart of the many processes in composition is, in my view, only the first stage. I don't want to resolve this fruitful contradiction. on the contrary, I want to make the two blocks fight each other. In this way I avoid isolating myself from the tradition while advancing into the future with each new work. I would like to achieve a sound as intense as silence"...
The Works:

Corona (London Version) is the realization made by Roger Woodward in London of Takemitsu's graphic score Corona for pianist(s) (1962). Corona is the most freely conceived of all Takemitsu's keyboard works. The score is not traditionally notated, but consists of five differently colored circles containing instructions and symbols which may be fitted together or overlapped into any combination to provide the basis of the composition, which is then elaborated by the performer. Each of the five circles concerns a different aspect (or parameter) of the music: articulation, vibration, intonation, expression, conversation. The realization may be worked out (as here) in detail before the performance, or it may be improvised, but whatever the method chosen, each realization, and thus each performance, will be unique. The result is music of great freedom and individuality, whose basic aspects are nonetheless prescribed by the composer with precision and clarity.
Any number of pianists may, in theory, take part. In this realization, Woodward has combined the sound of three keyboard instruments: piano, harpsichord and organ, by means of over-dubbing techniques, and has borrowed pitch-material from other Takemitsu works.

For Away (1973) is a "personal gift" to Roger Woodward, and at the same time an "expression of extolment and offering to the Galaxy of Life- a galaxy that is not the sole domain of mankind". The predominant mood, brought about by a subtle combination of percussive and free-flowing, liquid gesture, ifs one of quiet elation.

Piano Distance (1961) is a sharp-edged, highly contrasted study in piano sonority. The "title has no particular meaning".

The trio of lyrical compositions based on a poem by Shuzo Takiguchi, Undisturbed Rest (1952) is the earliest of the Takemitsu works on this record- "....a dream of western music", haunted by echoes of Scriabin, Debussy and Ravel.

























Toru Takemitsu- VARIOUS KEYBOARD WORKS (Decca/Head) 1974

Side One:

a1- Corona (London Version)

Side Two:

b1- For Away
b2- Piano Distance
b3- Undisturbed Rest
I- Slowly sadly as if to converse
II- Quietly and with cruel reverberation
III- A song of love

(1)

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)


(1)

Boris Blacher-WORKS FOR PIANO (1980) Thorofon Capella

Today is Boris Blacher's 109th Birthday.
He died in 1975.


From the liner notes by Horst Gobel (enclosed) with interpolations (in italics) by Dr I:

Boris Blacher writes about his technique of "variable meter" in the forward to his "Ornamente, Opus 37":
"The realization that formal development will often be intensified by metrical change gave rise to the idea of organizing the metrical process in such a way that each measure is subject to a different metrical structure. If the metrical proportions are then constructed along mathematical lines, namely according to sequences or combination theory, then the metrical process is no longer the product of random or arbitrary events. New, higher-level symmetries are the result, moreover interesting overlaps of the metrical series with the musical phrase, varient recapitulations, and the like.

Some of our well-worn compositional techniques (e.g. canonic and imitative figures) will likely have to be sacrificed in favor of new rhythmic patterns. The variable meter method, on the other hand, if correctly applied, places at our disposal a substantial enrichment in respect to rhe elemets of rhythm and form.

No.1 and 2 are based on the simple arithmetic series:
234....9 and retrograde, then 34....43.

No.3 is based on a series with the formation law:
234 345 456....678 and retrograde.

No.4 is based on the principle of cyclic variation ie:
4532 5324 3245......
4532 2453 3245......

No.5 on a summation series:
2,3,5,8,13,

No.6 Permutation of four elements=24

No.7 is based on the formation law of the series:
87 876 8765.....8765432
65 654 6543.......65432
43..................432
The recapitulation appears in retrogerade. The basic unit for all movements is the eighth note".


Lest all this math should scare you away-as Gobel writes in the liner notes (in reference to the Sonata - but it is a truth which could be applied to almost all of Blacher's works):
"This purely formal component is of course to be recognized only as the groundwork upon which the musical materials are then to be erected."

That such strictures could yield such playful, lyrical, and swinging music is truly a marvel.

Boris Blacher- WORKS FOR PIANO (Thorofon Capella MTH 223) Recorded In 1980.

Side One:

1: Sonata For Piano (1951) (7:59)
-Allegro ma non troppo - Andante
-Andante - Vivace

2: First Sonatine, Opus 14 No.1 (1940) (2:33)
-Allegro
-Andantino - Vivace

3: Second Sonatine, Opus 14 No.2 (1940) (3:08)
-Moderato
-Allegro

4-10: Ornamente Opus 37 (Seven Studies In Variable Meter) (1950)

4: No.1- Vivace (Virgil Thomson) (:58)
5: No.2- Andante (Rudolph Wagner-Regeny) (1:16)
6: No.3- Allegro (Karl Amadeus Hartmann) (:56)
7: No.4- Allegretto (Priaul Rainier) (1:11)
8: No.5- Allegro (Rolf Liebermann) (1:20)
9: No.6- Moderato (Nicolas Nabokoff) (2:47)
10: No.7- Presto (Gottfried von Einem) (1:19)


Side Two:

11-34: 24 Preludes For Piano (1974)

11: No.1- Allegro (:46)
12: No.2- Allegretto (:28)
13: No.3- Moderato (:45)
14: No.4- Presto (:38)
15: No.5- Allegretto (:25)
16: No.6- Andante (:46)
17: No.7- Maestoso (:39)
18: No.8- Agitato (:49)
19: No.9- Adagio (1:27)
20: No.10- Vivace (:35)
21: No.11- Lento (:39)
22: No.12- Allegro molto (:25)
23: No.13- Allegretto (:41)
24: No.14- Lento (1:16)
25: No.15- Vivace (:40)
26: No.16- Adagio (1:22)
27: No.17- Agitato (:28)
28: No.18- Maestosto (1:30)
29: No.19- Andante (:51)
30: No.20- Allegretto (:26)
31: No.21- Presto (:50)
32: No.22- Moderato (:54)
33: No.23- Allegretto (:25)
34: No.24- Allegro (1:06)

35-37: Three Pieces For Piano (1943)

35: No.1- What About This, Mr. Clementi? (:45)
36: No.2- Moderato (1:35)
37: No.3- Allegro moderato (:44)



















Horst Gobel: Piano

re-up:
(1)

Boris Blacher- MUSIKVERLAGE

Boris Blacher MUSIKVERLAGE

(All sleeve notes in German.)
These Notes excerpted from external sources:

Memories of Boris Blacher
by Harald Kunz

Blacher certainly took great pleasure in experimenting. This began already in the 1920s with the Dadaistic opera Habemeajaja. The high point was reached with music for Werner Egks meaningless but emotive artificial words in his Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1, which initially caused a scandal but went on to be a success. The end point was Ariadne, a duo-drama in which two speakers recite a text written in Goethe's time to an accompaniment by electronics in microtones of a third.

He also found great pleasure in jazz. Jazzy syncopation in Concertante Musik had made him unpopular with the Nazi press and later compositions often use chords that recall Blacher's liking for the Glenn Miller Sound of the 1940s. From time to time he wrote compositions for jazz ensembles like the Modern Jazz Quartet and the German All Stars. Blues Espagnola und Rumba for the twelve cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra demonstrates how elegantly Blacher combines jazz elements with the classical tradition.

The creativity of the musician Blacher was guided and controlled by the rationality of Blacher the mathematician. According to the laws of mathematics, he constructed his compositions and created the rhythmic serial principle of his „Variable Metrics“. Yet even in the most logical of his scores, there are always deviations from the norm, breaks in the rules; Blacher said of such „mistakes“ that they are what renders art human.
Intelligence and imagination, charm and humour, nonchalance and understatement were the hallmarks of his personality. With these congenial traits in his music, Boris Blacher's oeuvre will remain timeless and contemporary.

(translation: Gloria Custance)
Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes
(...) Blacher's is an idiom of striking originality,based upon free atonal counterpoint. His adherence to the neo-classic esthetic manifests itself in his fondness for terseness and directness of expression.His orchestral writing is bright, vivid, and thinned out according to a careful selection of instruments. The result is a lightness and transparency which is at the opposite pole from the fat sound of German postromanticism. The rhythmic subtlety of Blacher's music derives from a technique of "variable meters" that are worked out according to definite mathematical progressions. The meter changes from bar to bar according to a pre-existent series which applies to rhythm the tone-row principle of twelve-tone music.Yet Blacher does not transform the technique into a system, leaving himself free to vary it according to his needs.His penchant for satire and irony goes hand in hand with a suppleness and volatility that are not often found in German music.(...)

Joseph Machlis- Introduction To Contemporary Music (1961,W.W.Norton & Company, pp 251-2).

note: Blacher was married to the pianist Gerty Blacher-Hertzog.



















Side One:

ABSTRAKTE OPER NO. 1, OPUS 43 (1953) 27:21
(The University of Illinois Opera Group, Leitung- Ludwig Zerner)


Side Two:

ELEKTRONISCHE IMPULSE (1965) 2:50

SONATA FUR KLAVIER, OPUS 39 (1951) 7:54
(Gerty Herzog- Klavier)

APRESLUDE- 4 Lieder nach Gedichten von Gottfried Benn OPUS 57 (1958) 4:41
(Ernst Haeflinger- Tenor ; Gerty Herzog- Klavier)

WHAT ABOUT THIS, MR. CLEMENTI? 3 Stucke (1943) 3:05
(Gerty Herzog- Klavier)

re-up again:(1)