Christian Clozier, "Lettre a une Demoiselle"

Lettre a une Demoiselle

a) 1st movement: brouillon 6'20
b) 2nd movement: ratures 3'45
c) 3rd movement: post-scriptum 4'07

Gary Allan, "Songs About Rain"

ga

Christian Clozier, "Dichotomie"

Street Sweeper, "Clap For The Killers"

Street Sweeper puts together two of my favorite things: Rage Against the Machine and the Coup, and the results don't disappoint.

"Clap for the Killers" is from the free promotional NINJA Tour Sampler. Unlike other past Nine Inch Nails free releases, this one doesn't feel like a collection of demos and B-sides. The contributions from Jane's Addiction are solid as well. Definitely worth grabbing while it's available.

Mauricio Kagel, "Der Schall"

-- Liner Notes --

Der Schall (1968)
for five players (with 54 instruments)

Side A (14'18)
Side B (23'02)

Cologne Ensemble for New Music:
I. Edward H. Tarr
II. Vinko Globokar
III. Karlheinz Bottner
IV. Wilhelm Bruck
V. Christoph Caskel

Production: Karl Faust
Artistic Supervision: Mauricio Kagel
Recording Engineer: Justus Liebig
Recording Place: Studio Rhenus, Godorf bei Koln. (5. und 6. November 1969)
Formation of players during the recording session:

Design: Holger Matthies. Hamburg

Composers are still weighed down by the implicit yet definite need to write works for as familiar an instrumentarium as possible-lest the number of performances should be limited and keep the music from spreading as desired. However, reproduction by tape or record has reduced the importance of these traditional views, since the reproducibility of musical ideas by means of instruments or instrument-like music props no longer depends on a music that is "playable". It's rather the other way round: "unplayable" music may nowadays avail itself of mechanical repetition ad libitum. It seems paradoxical that in music which would ultimately lead to the abolition of public musicmaking the performer can expect to enter into a more active and lively cooperation.

The selection of instruments in "Der Schall" (= "sound" as defined in physics) resulted from the wish to arrive not at an utilitarian but at an almost imaginary ensemble, one which hardly occurs in "real life". It was decided beforehand never to repeat combinations of instruments in this composition. The principle applied throughout was: each instrument could only be used for a certain period of time. Furthermore: the number of different periods should correspond to at least half the instrumentarium, the duration of the longest period not exceeding a third of the total duration of the piece.

The five players of "Der Schall" have the following instruments at their disposal:

I. Foghorn, spaghetti tube with trumpet mouthpiece, straight cornet, C-trumpet, baroque trumpet (clarino), plastic tubing with ringed joints, tromba da tirarsi, short tube with plastic funnel, 20 meters of garden hose with plastic funnel, antilope horn, various mutes and mouthpieces.
II. Conch trumpet, pandean pipe, 2 posthorns, hand-drum as mute, double foghorn, plastic tubing with connection piece, plastic tubing with ringed joints, trombone, various mutes and mouthpieces, nafir.
Ill. Low jew's harp, sitar, banjo, octave guitar, stoessel lute, rubberphone (rubber bands to be plucked), various gloves, bowing and plucking requisites.
IV. 6-12 organ pipes (mixtures) to be blown by mouth, 2 pandean pipes, taishokoto, ocarina, Kimuan violin (Kimuanyemuanye) bass balalaika, bass mouth-organ, 2 brass tubes, various bowing and plucking requisites.
V. Bell-board (eight bells fixed to a board, to be bowed only), genuine Cagniard de la Tour siren (blown siren with frequency measuring device), cuckoo (a short of seesaw with two bellows, each adjustable in pitch),4 tortoiseshelIs, nose-flute, bassdrum, telephone, 2 brass tubes, 1 musical box.

Mauricio Kagel

Mauricio Kagel was born in Buenos Aires on December 24th 1931. Musical training and varied activities on behalf of new music in Buenos Aires. In Europe since 1957, lives in Cologne. Has worked at the electronic studios in Cologne, Munich and Utrecht. 1960-66 lecturer at the International Summer Courses for New Music at Darmstadt. 1965 Slee Professor of Composition at the State University of New York in Buffalo. 1969 Director of the Institute for New Music at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne and of the "Cologne New Music Courses". Conductor, stage and film director, principally of his own works. Extensive lecture and recital tours in Europe and America.

Works: String Sextet (1953), Transicion II for piano, percussion and two sound tapes (1957-58). Anagrama for four solo voices. speaking chorus and chamber ensemble (1957-58). Transicion I for electronic sounds (195-60). Sur Scene, chamber music theatre piece (1959-60), Sonant for guitar, harp, double-bass and membranophone instruments(l960), Pandora's Box, bandoneon piece (1960), Metapiece (Mimetics) for piano (1961). Heterophonie for orchestra (195961). Improvisation Ajoutee for organ (1961/62), Antithese, composition for electronic and public sounds (1962). Die Frauen, a feminine play for voices and instruments (l962/64), Phonophonie, four melodramas for two voices and other sound sources (196-64), Match for three players (1964). Diaphonie for chorus, orchestra and diapositive projections (1964), Tremens, scenic montage of a test (196345), Pas de cinq, transformation scene for five performers (1965). Die Himmelsmechanik, composition with stage scenes (1965), Camera Obscura, chromatic piece for light sources with actors (1965), Music for Renaissance Instruments (196546), String Quartet (196-67). Kommentar & Extempore, monologue with gestures (196667). Variaktionen for singers and actors (1967). Hallelujah for voices (1967-68), Phantasie for organ with obbligati (1967), Montage for various sound sources (1967), Der Schall for five players (1968). Synchronstudie for singer, noisemaker and film projection (1968), Privat for lonely listener(s) (1968), Ornithologica Multiplicata for exotic and indigenous birds (1968). Acustica for experimental sound-requisites generators and loudspeakers (1968-70), (Radio Play) Ein Aufnahmezustand (1969), Ludwig van, Hommage from Beethoven (1969), Klangwehr for marching military band (1969/70), Tactil for three (1969170). Films: Antithese (1965). Match (1965/66), Solo (1967), Duo (1968) Hallelujah (1968), Ludwig van
(1969).

Harper's Bizarre, "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"

The bridge turns 100 today.

Luc Ferrari, "Société II"

Side Two
1. Société II, (27'27)
and if the piano were a female body

for Piano, 3 Percussions and 16 Instruments.

Gérard Frémy, Piano
Jean-Pierre Drouet / Sylvio Gualda / Gaston Sylvestre, Percussion
Ensemble Instrumental de Musique Contemporaine de Paris
Dir.: Konstantin Simonovitch

Production: Karl Faust
Artistic Supervision: Hansjoachim Reiser
Recording Engineer: Heinz Wildhagen
Design: Holger Matthies, Hamburg

His ancestors emigrated from Genoa when Napoleon tried to force them into military service--hence his mistrust of authority. His grandfather played the cornet in the barracks of the Marseilles customs office--hence his gift for music. His mother was one of Louis Lumihre's editing girls-hence his interest in cinema.

This is the sort of tale Luc Ferrari tells when asked about his origins, for he denies the fact that the biography of an "artist"-which he has no desire to be-is more illuminating than that of any other of his contemporaries.

Be that as it may! Luc Ferrari was born in Paris in 1929 and started composing seriously in 1953 after a long illness had saved him from becoming a pianist. Up to 1958 he wrote instrumental and vocal works mainly for small ensembles, first proceeding from Schoenberg, Messiaen, the serialists, becoming increasingly orientated in the gesture and syntax of Edgar VarBse; works that were both descriptive and what is called absolute, works whose style was sustained throughout and ones in which the demolition of style became the subject. In 1958 he turned towards tape music, at first still basing his work on instrumental ideas, and joined Pierre Schaeffer's 'Groupe de musique concrète'. He remained there until 1963, formulating his concept of 'anecdotal music' in 1964. Since then he has made instrumental music and tape music, theatre, texts, films and collages--composing, like Kagel, with both sounding and non-sounding material.

According to Ferrari, the triumphal procession of mass media has radically changed the composer's position. The composer used to work for a small circle of initiates. Today he has to deal with a much larger audience, but with one that is unprepared and insufficiently informed. There is no point in continuing to present aesthetic objects to such an audience since it has had no part in the developments leading to aesthetic objects. The composer's relationship to his "work"-which may no longer be one--must be given a new definition, it must be activated, included In a process.-But how?

In the field of tape music: instead of forcibly eliminating every trace of the origins of the material which has been taken from reality, Ferrari uses its reference to reality in order to appeal to the hearer's experience and imagination. He makes a montage of tone-pictures which mean something to everybody, he (just) relates anecdotes, sketches stories.-'Presque Rien No. 1' is an undistorted portrayal, although in fast motion, of daybreak on the beach: it is electro-acoustic natural photography, in which Cage's respect for reality is crossed with the dream of a sounding 'minimal art'. If it should occur to anyone that this were no longer "art", he would be entitled to his opinion, and Ferrari would be happy.

In the field of the theatrically orientated series of 'Société': instead of merely constructing the pieces according to dramaturgic considerations, Ferrari makes use of his hearers too, turning them into actors whose collaboration is necessary to charge the exposed material with meaning.-In 'Société II' the material is, in spite of all improvisatory freedom, a strictly conceived concerto for piano, three percussionists and 16 instrumentalists. And yet the sub-title ('And if the piano were a female body') places what behaves like "art" in a dubious perpective, pulls it down from the sphere of good appearance, stimulates tangible erotic fantasies. If it should occur to anyone that this were an offence against "good taste", Ferrari would agree with him.

When the bottle gets empty, It sure aint worth a damn...

Some stories just stop you in your tracks, and the sight of this picture in the Wall Street Journal last week did just that. That's Popcorn Sutton, a 62-year old moonshiner from Tennessee who killed himself rather than report to prison for 18 months. He gassed himself to death in his 'three-jug car', an old Ford pickup that he'd gotten in exchange for three jugs of his wares.

The AP illustrated the depths of Popcorn's incorrigibility with a tale about his contribution of a still to the Museum of Appalachia. At a ceremony with the governor present, Popcorn, despite being told to run nothing but water through the still, cooked up a batch and handed it out in paper cups to everyone assembled. The cops complained that "Popcorn is getting everybody drunk". If the presence of state troopers and a governor along with hundreds of people is incentive to moonshine, it's understandable that the idea of doing anything else with his life just didn't make sense to Popcorn.

The various obituaries of Popcorn are a rabbit hole into a world that most likely vanished with him (or survives in a much altered state). He'd written a book about his experiences titled Me And My Likker, which will surely be in high demand now. Popcorn also wasn't shy around cameras, and there is an absolutely fascinating video online showing him cooking at an enormous still. The danger inherent in moonshining becomes readily apparent when you see it up close in these clips:

Makin' Likker with Popcorn Sutton (Part I)



Makin' Likker with Popcorn Sutton (Part II)



In the more luminous documentary The Last One, Popcorn demonstrates how to build a still, and we get to see the locals enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Henry Kaiser, "Joaquin (Twenty-Four Eyes) Miller"

From henrykaiser.net

MEET THE FLINTSTONES (continued)

Well, for the next seven or eight weeks my roommate would come back to the barracks after each weekend at his home and tell me the story of all the Flintstones episodes that he had seen. Especially he'd tell me about every dinosaur and all of the dinosaur-powered machines. This sure sounded like my kind of TV show.

Suddenly I had a chance to see The Flintstones myself. My father was feeling a little better and his doctors decided to let him spend one last weekend in the house that I grew up in. And I was allowed to come home from military school be with him. I really loved my father a lot and it was great to see him again! I think it was about the last time that I did see him. He died a few months later. We had a wonderful time that weekend. We did all sorts of things together. After dinner one night I explained to him that I really wanted to watch this new TV program about some cavemen called The Flintstones. I'd heard that it was full of really cool dinosaurs. I realized that it was on at eight o'clock, a half-hour past my bed time, but couldn't we make a special exception and stay up and watch it? He said it was OK! So we got ready to watch The Flintstones. We made some popcorn. My father rolled his wheel chair over in front of the big old RCA television set. I climbed up into his lap. He picked up the remote control and turned on The Flintstones!

The Flintstones came on and The Flintstones was not at all what I had expected. Oh no. To actually see The Flintstones was a terrible, terrible shock. For my roommate had neglected to tell me one essential fact about The Flintstones. He had never told me that The Flintstones... ......WAS A CARTOON.

Dino copyright Hanna-Barbera Studios, 2001.

Ornette Coleman, "Lonely Woman"

(One of the samples used in "Human Language")

Henry Kaiser, "The Empty Set"

From henrykaiser.net

MEET THE FLINTSTONES (continued

No television in military school. No movies. Not much fun. My roommate, though, he got to go home on weekends so that his family could pretend that they were a normal "Leave It to Beaver" type American family. He got to watch TV and go to the movies when he went home. He'd always tell me about what he saw.

"Henry! I saw the most incredible movie! The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms! It was about this giant dinosaur. The army had a big fight with it in an amusement park. It smashed a roller coaster! I don't know how they did the special effects. But it looked real! A real dinosaur!"

So he told me the whole story of the movie - as kids do. It sounded great! My kind of movie! You know, a few years later I got a chance to see The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms and it was even better than I had imagined.

After another weekend at home my roommate came back to the military school and said:

"Henry! I saw the first episode of this new TV series called The Flintstones! It's great! It's all about a family of cavemen who live in this town called Bedrock. They live in houses made of boulders and there are dinosaurs all over the place! They drive stone automobiles that are dinosaur powered! Fred Flintstone, he's the hero, works in a construction site where they use a brontosaurus for a crane! The Flintstones even have a dinosaur for a pet. His name is Dino and he's just like a dog!"

Wow... A dinosaur for a pet. No pets in military school. And certainly no dinosaurs.

Rush, "Closer to the Heart" (Live)

From A Show Of Hands

Henry Kaiser, "What The Dead Men Say"

From henrykaiser.net

MEET THE FLINTSTONES

Fred...

    Wilma.. .

        Barney... 

            Betty... 

                Dino....

FLINTSTONES... meet the Flintstones...

I had kind of a bad experience with The Flintstones when I was very young. Such a terrible experience with The Flintstones that only watched the show once and then I could never stand to watch it again. Let me tell you about it.

The Flintstones premiered on television back in 1960, when I was seven years old. It was kind of an unhappy time in my life. My father was in the hospital, dying of multiple sclerosis. My mother was in a psychiatric ward receiving electroshock therapy. (She was never really the same after that.) I had no other family to speak of beyond my parents. No brothers. No sisters. No friendly adults to watch out for me. But I did have... a wicked uncle. He put me in a military academy. A year-round, military boarding school. No vacations, no going home on weekends. Not a pleasant place. I was there for second, third and fourth grade.

What was life like there? A lot of marching around the parade ground with a toy rifle. Shining your shoes. Getting your room in the barracks ready for inspection. You'd better make your bed really tight. When Captain Dutton came around for inspection he'd bounce his silver dollar off your bed. If it didn't bounce high enough: 25 demerits. No dessert for a week. Major Nichols puts on his white cotton glove. He runs it along the door sill at the top of the door. If you hadn't pulled that little chair over to the door to stand on, and stretched up real tall to dust off that sill - there'd be dirt on Major Nichols' glove. 50 demerits. No dessert for 2 weeks.

SPUTNiK @ the Living Room Tonight

Henry Kaiser, "The Invisible Hand"

Recording of a live set featuring covers of 'Paint It Black' and 'Cortez the Killer'

Charles Dodge, "A man sitting in the cafeteria"

From Any Resemblance Is Purely Coincidental

Henry Kaiser, "945"

Copious amounts of Henry Kaiser live recordings are posted at the HK Forum.

Neil Young, "Transformer Man"

Henry Kaiser, "Christmas on Bear Mountain"

Young & Restless, "B Girls"

video

Henry Kaiser, "The Shadow Line"

-- Liner Notes --

When I asked Henry about reissuing Outside Pleasure, I knew I was in for trouble: as an LP, it ran maybe forty minutes, a good length considering the guitar terror contained in those grooves, but it's the 90s and Henry likes his CDs long. I suggested adding "The Shadow Line" from Aloha, which was probably the single most alarming piece of guitar music I'd heard up to that point, and it still holds that power fifteen years later. That makes sixty minutes. How much does a CD hold? Red Book specs be damned, Henry managed to fit 78 minutes onto the disc. So, what this disc holds is almost all of Outside Pleasure and pretty much all of the solo material from Aloha: a working title was "Henry Kaiser Solo Guitar 79-80," but...

But, it is true, this disc represents a certain period of Henry's guitar playing that has (very) unfortunately seemed to skitter off to the shadows in light of his endeavors since the mid-80s, which have emphasized interests besides solo guitar. But for me, locked up in my Harwood Heights bedroom, these records changed my life. I was already lucky to have heard Derek Bailey through his "ant music" record (well, that's what I called it) with Dave Holland on ECM (I remember selling my first guitar amp, a Fender Champ, in order to take advantage of the big Warner Bros. cut-out sale of ECM at the Rose Records near school. What was meant to be a big score ended with my being faced by row after row of Epidemic records, the brainstorm of L. Shankar and Steve Vai.) but none of this prepared me for the assault of Outside Pleasure. I was afraid to play the album while my parents were home for fear that they would finally find a reason to have me committed. But the biggest shock was "The Shadow Line," the (then for me) epic-length solo that seems more inspired by Michael Snow's Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder: at an early point in the track, Henry's guitar stops dead and holds static, high up in the stratosphere, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes (at that time it seemed an eternity) slowly descends in pitch beyond hearing until just the speaker is rumbling. Rock and roll! The miniatures, such as "The Empty Set," are so filled (title be damned) with information that you put in a glass of water and that takes on, relatively, gargantuan proportions. "Information Mechanics" is more than just a track title; in some ways it should be the title of this record.

One Christmas I gave Henry the "Jesus Plant." Water it and let it die. Water it again, and it rises from the grave.

Outside Pleasure originally ran 11, "Punctual as Actual" (not included), 12, 4, 1, 3, 8, and 13. It was recorded August 1979 at Woody Woodman's Finger Palace, Berkeley, and Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. The original order of solo material from Aloha was 2, 9, 5, 6, 10, 14 and 7. Recorded by Phil Brown at Warner Brothers Recording Studio, North Hollywood. Cover: Chris Baumgart; additional photos: Craig Denis Street. Notes: JO.

Loop 2.4.3, "Zodiac Dust"

ANALOG arts has partnered with Music Starts From Silence to produce Loop 2.4.3's sophomore album, Zodiac Dust. The album is a 45-minute head trip, a throwback to days of yore when bands like Return to Forever or King Crimson would take you on an instrumental sonic adventure.

The similarities stop there, though. Loop 2.4.3 sort of sound like a collaboration between Harry Partch and Brian Eno. The title track from the album features strings and a gorgeous progression of textures.

We'll preview more of the album before its official release on June 16. Between now and then, Loop will be busy performing and promoting the album. (They'll be in Cambridge tomorrow night at the Lily Pad, if you happen to be in the neighborhood.)

One of Two Random Records (side A)

Henry Kaiser, "Homesickness"

For more of Henry Kaiser's music, visit Bert Switzer's site.

Aceyalone, "Human Language"

a

Henry Kaiser, "Delerium"

From Table of Elements:

Bran Van 3000, "Astounded" (with Curtis Mayfield)

bv3000

Henry Kaiser, "The Blood at the Back of the Harp"

From Henry Kaiser's blog:

Finally, I just saw the most recent Gamera film. And I really loved it. It's the best Kaiju (Japanese Monster) film ever. I love Gamera so much! It's cool that he's both a sea monster and a space monster. Chris Larsen of www.girlbrand.com, just made me a cool guitar with a reverse glass painting of Gamera on the top. He will post pix of it at that site soon.

Raymond Scott, "Don't Beat Your Wife"

Henry Kaiser, "Information Mechanics"

From henrykaiser.net

EQUIPMENT

This is the equipment HK most typically uses when performing or recording

ELECTRIC GUITARS

Steve Klein Custom Electrics
Danny Ransom guitars
Modulus Graphite Neck guitars
Moonstone M-80
Moonstone Z-80
James L. Mapson 7-string
Tom Anderson Cobra
Tom Anderson Classic strat type
Rick Turner Model T

BASS GUITARS

Jerry Jones 6 string bass
Rick Turner Rennaisance fretless bass

SPEAKERS

JBL D-120JBL D-130

EFFECTS RACK

Lexicon MPX-1
Eventide 3500
Lexicon PCM-42
Eventide 4000
TC 2290
Aleisis Midiverb II

PICKUPS

Alembic Activator
Bartolini
Sunrise
Turner

ACOUSTIC GUITARS

Monteleone Eclipse
Dana Bourgeois Anniversey Model
Dana Bourgeois Bourgeois Blues
Stefan Sobell 12 fret
Bohmann 12 fret
Ralph Bown baritone
Ralph Bown 12 fret
Danny Ferrington baritone
Santa Cruz Koa D
Marc Silber K&S Leadbelly Model 12 string

AMPS

Dumble Overdrive Special
Dumble Steel String Singer
ADA Cobra
Fender Super Champ
THD V-Front
Trainwreck Rocket
Trainwreck Liverpool

PICKGUARDS

Clown Vomit

Johnny Thunders, "I Only Wrote This Song For You"

Henry Kaiser, "Aquirax Aida"

From henrykaiser.net

SPECIFIC SUGGESTED READING:

It is inspiring and educational to read biographies and critical studies of famous musicians from B.B. King to Eddie Van Halen to Iannis Xenakis. It is certainly useful to study method and theory books. However, in this list I'm trying to point out some fairly obscure books that you might never come across on your own. My reading of these books has helped me to create the ways that I think about music and music making. Many of these books are not directly about music. But if you listen to me play, the music that you will here will have been radically affected by some of the things that I have learned here. Some of these books are fairly expensive and difficult to find. I suggest that you try a large library, particularly a university library. Many of these books are old and valued friends and it is my pleasure to introduce them to you.:

Musics of Many Cultures, edited by Elizabeth May, University of California Press, 1980. Twenty essays on different musics of our planet: China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Polynesia, Australia, Africa, Iran, Alaska, South America, etc. This can turn you on to many new musical sounds, ideas and feelings. Useful discographies and bibliographies are included.

Improvisation - Its Nature and Practice in Music, by Derek Bailey, Moorland, 1980. Improvisation is one of the most widely practiced and yet least documented and understood aspects of music. This excellent volume is the only book that I know of that discusses improvisation in any kind of philosophical detail. It includes interviews on this subject with musicians from many different styles: Indian, flamenco, baroque, classical organ, rock (Steve Howe) and jazz. Bailey gives a very good history of the British-European free improvisation movement of the 60's and 70's that inspired me to pick up guitar. Unfortunately this book is now out-of-print. So, try your library for it. You might be able to get it by mail from Derek Bailey, 14 Downs Road, London E5, England.

Sound Structure in Music, by Robert Erickson, University of California Press, 1975. There are countless books on the subjects of melody, harmony and rhythm. This is about the only generally readable book that I know of on the subject of an area of music that is just as important: timbre. This book helped provide a framework for a lot of my thoughts on this subject. What is the exact difference between the guitar sounds of Hubert Sumlin, Otis Rush and Albert Collins? What is the difference between a note, a chord, a sound and a noise? Why does it mean something very different when Albert King and Eric Clapton both bend an A up to a C#? How can I make my solo guitar playing sound like a large orchestra? These are the kind of thoughts that this book encouraged for me. Very inspiring but also a bit academic and orientated towards 20th century classical music.

Mind Tools - The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality, by Rudy Rucker, Houghton Mifflin, 1987, The Mathematical Tourist, by Ivars Peterson, Freeman, 1988 & Silicon Dreams, by Dr. Robert Lucky, St. Martins, 1989. I was one of those kids who enjoyed mathematics a lot in school. If you hated math you might not like these books. They are full of clear explanations for the general reader of what is happening on the far frontiers of mathematics today. The emphasis of Mind Tools and Silicon Dreams is on a fairly new branch of math/science called information theory. The "thought tools" of information theory have proven to be very useful to me for thinking about and making music. To me, all music that I have heard is just one tiny drop from an infinite ocean of music that could be. Reading these books could give you a good handle on how to think about what music might be in the depths or on distant shores of that ocean. There are many books that directly relate math and music. Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, for instance, is a popular book that I do not recommend. I find its ideas to be extremely culture bound and limited.

The Science of Musical Sound, by John R. Pierce, Scientific American Library, 1983. The scientific view of music. The basic physics and mathematics of music are set forth in this well-illustrated volume. The author is a professor at Bell Laboratories who was involved with the first computer-generation of music about 25 years ago. If you are getting into MIDI and synthesizers/samplers, then this would be an excellent book to read to get an overall understanding of the scientific views of what music and sound are.

Grammatical Man - Information, Entropy, Language and Life, by Jeremy Campbell, Touchstone-Simon and Schuster, 1982. An excellent, popularized introduction to information theory as mentioned above. Some sections on the structure of language that relate well to the structure of music. Some interesting discussions of music, too. I suspect that information theory and music will become a very fashionable subject during the 1990's. I was exposed to information theory at the same time that I started to play guitar in the early 70's. I have thought about music from this point of view from the very first day that I picked up a guitar in 1972 and still information theory completely colors the way that I think of music today.

Mind and Nature, by Gregory Bateson, Bantam, 1980. This book is concerned with Bateson's theory that how we think and learn is governed by the same sort of system that governs the evolution of ecology of all life on earth. I like to compare systems and this book provides interesting system models to apply to art and music. Since the human mind produces music, it is interesting to look at how it might work and think about how that affects music. While directed towards a general audience this book is a challenging pleasure to read. It certainly challenged my assumptions about many things.

The Lore of the Chinese Lute, by R.H. Van Gulik, Sophia-Tuttle, 1969. The chin or Chinese lute of this volume has the most sophisticated and varied right hand picking techniques of any instrument that I know. I have applied a lot of this book's information directly to guitar technique.

Micromotives and Macrobehavior, by Thomas C. Schelling, Norton, 1978. I took a course from this guy in College. It was probably worth more than all of the time that I spent in all my other classes combined. He deals with a special area of his own where economics meets human behavior meets unanticipated results. How does behavior in the aggregate become more than the sum of simple individual behavior? How do a group of musicians playing and improvising together create music that transcends their individual contributions? Why are artists who nobody likes so popular? Why does the music industry behave the ways that it does...often in ways that are bad for music? This work, for me, provides an interestingly different starting point for discussing such subjects (while of course the book never mentions music).

The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky, Simon and Schuster, 1986. Minsky is one of the chief pioneers in the development of artificial intelligence in computer science. In this book he attempts a unified theory of the mind and the nature of thought. It can also be looked at as a new conception of human psychology. Some possible unifying concepts for all that has been discussed above are provided here.

Does God Play Dice? :The Mathematics of Chaos, by Ian Stewart, Blackwell, 1989. Fractal mathematics, something very important to me since the late 70's is suddenly becoming very fashionable. For me this is probably even more relevant to the music of the future than information theory. This is by far the best, and most accessable book that I know of on chaos and fractals.

Spooks, "Things I've Seen"

Henry Kaiser, "An Economy Of Scale"

From henrykaiser.net

SUGGESTED LISTENING/VIEWING/READING

Here are some things that I know about that I'd like to suggest for you to check out. These listings are by no means complete and they are in pretty much of a random order. These are all people/things that I love and have been influenced by. I could talk for a minimum of a half-hour and play you five minutes worth of guitar for every single name, country, style or book listed below.

VARIOUS GUITARISTS:Harvey Mandel, John Fahey, Jerry Garcia, Danny Gatton, Billy Gibbons, Robbie Robertson, Ry Cooder, George Van Eps, Jim Hall, David Torn, Bill Frisell, Gabby Pahinui, Raymand Kane, Amos Garrett, James Burton, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Nolan, Pete Cosey, David Lindley, Bob Weir, Peter Green, Merle Travis, Jimmy Bryant, Clarence White, Dick Dale, John McLaughlin, Hank Garland, Randy California, John Abercrombie, Fred Marshall, Ralph Towner, Jimmie Webster, Terje Rypdal, Richard Thompson, Glenn Phillips, John Cipollina, Sekou Diabete, Brij Bhushan Kabra, Sonny Greenwich, Tisziji Munoz, Carlos Santana, Neil Young, Robbie Basho, Reeves Gabrels, Atta Issaics, Roy Nichols, Chuck Berry, Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, Henry Vestine, Jerry Reed, Bola Sete, Speedy West, Jan Akkerman, J.J. Cale, Bob Adams, Grady Martin, Leo Nocentelli, Ollie Halsall, Allan Holdsworth, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Ray Russell, Phil Baugh, Sandy Bull, Davey Graham, Martin Carthy, Lonnie Mack, Mike Bloomfield, Joseph Spence, James Blackthorne, Pat Martino, Bob Brozman, Greg Ginn, Bruce Anderson, Larry Carlton, Larry Coryell, Les Paul, Scott Colby, Roy Buchanan, Junior Barnard, Albert Lee, Jerry McGhee, Eldon Shamblin, Jerry Donahue, Leo Kottke, Robben Ford, Joe Maphis, Scotty Moore, Don Rich, Elliot Ingber, Bill Harkleroad, Jeff Cotton, Frank Zappa, Shawn Lane, Ramon Montoya, Harold Kelling, Gabor Szabo, Peter Lang, Michael Hedges, Tisziji Munoz, Ernest Ranglin, Steve Kimock, Nels Cline, Chris Muir, etc.

BLUES GUITAR, urban and rural: Lonnie Johnson, Hubert Sumlin, Skip James, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King, Albert Collins, Jody Williams, John Lee Hooker, Guitar Slim, Wayne Bennett, Lafayette Thomas, Johnny Heartsman, Johnny Guitar Watson, Robert Pete Williams, Snooks Eaglin, Robert Willkins, Freddie Roulette, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Bukka White, Rev. Utah Smith, Fred McDowell, Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Patton, Matt Murphey, Willie Brown, Lightnin' Hopkins, Buddy Guy, Tampa Red, Hound Dog Taylor, Brewer Phillips, Luther Tucker, James Ulmer, Robert Ward, Ali Farka Toure, Big Joe Williams, Tommy McClennan, Magic Sam, J.B. Lenoir, Billy Butler, Pat Hare, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Rosetta Tharpe, Cal Green, Clarence Green, Robert Nighthawk, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, James Davis, William Robertson, etc.

WEIRD/EXPERIMENTAL/WILDLY INNOVATIVE GUITARISTS: Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, Hans Reichel, Eliott Sharp, Davey Williams, Fred Frith, Keith Rowe, Eugene Chadbourne, Masayuki Takayanagi, Tomoko Itani, Dudkin Valeriy, Joe Morris, Jim O’Rourke, etc.

MODERN COMPOSERS: Bela Bartok, Duke Ellington, Conlon Nancarrow, Terry Riley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charles Ives, Harry Partch, Gyorgy Ligeti, Toru Takemitsu, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, Anthony Braxton, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Henry Brant, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, etc.

FREE IMPROVISATION/FREE JAZZ: Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, John Stevens, John Oswald, Han Benninck, Paul Lovens, Tony Oxley, Anthony Braxton, Toshinori Kondo, Peter Brotzman, Pharoah Sanders, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Revolutionary Ensemble, Greg Goodman, Rova Sax Quartet, Julius Hemphill, Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, George Lewis, Richard Teitelbaum, Archie Shepp, Mashiko Togashi, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Barre Phillips, John Coltrane, Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, Charles K. Noyes, Sang-Won Park, Jin Hi Kim, Barry Guy, Oliver Lake, Hugh Davies, Jaime Muir, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Marilyn Crispell, Milford Graves, Sonny Rollins, etc.

Telepathe, "Chrome's On It"

t.

Henry Kaiser, "The Stormy Present"

From 'Henry Kaiser in Antarctica: Journal Five', December 6, 2001

Setting a DAT recorder at the geographic pole, I take out my acoustic guitar (in this case an all-graphite Rain Song guitar that I have used for years as a boat guitar on dive trips; it will remain here as a gift to Pole Station) and I ready myself to attempt to play slide guitar, using the South Pole as my guitar slide. The night before, I sat out by the pole and searched for a slack key tuning that would right for this job. Finding one that I liked, I checked it with many station residents, all of whom approved. Messing around with the pole for an hour, I found that I could produce lots of sound effects and textures, but melody, groove, and harmony seemed quite elusive. I spent another 30 minutes trying to play melodies and licks, kneeling next to the pole, as my hands and knees became colder and colder. Gloves were on and off; finger picking became more and more problematic in the 40°F below zero air. After 90 minutes, I was a little tired, so I stood up, put my gloves on again, inserted some chemical hand warmers and held the guitar's strings up against the pole. I stared off to the distant horizon, across the miles of whiteness, and I idly strummed the guitar with a gloved right hand as I slid the guitar's neck along the pole. After drifting into an empty-minded trance for a while, I returned to the mundane world to find myself strumming a peculiar rhythm pattern with my gloved right hand. What did it sound like? It seemed American Indian in cadence, not something that I had played before. It was quite enjoyable. Suddenly, I realized that the American flag next to me was flapping with exactly the same rhythm! The music had literally came to me OUT OF THE AIR. Next I tried fretting and sliding against the pole to find melody and chords. A riff jumped out at me. It was fun to play. Again, I drifted off into no-mind state for a while, as I continued to play. My thoughts returned to the pole and the Race to the Pole that the heroes of the early age of Antarctic exploration had participated in. Hmmmm? This rhythm fit my idea of a slow race, as was the race to the pole. Suddenly I had a set of musical ideas for a piece about that historic race and I was instantly able to play it! I checked the frozen DAT machine, and it was still operational. I ran off five takes of the tune without many mistakes. This is the kind of inspiration that I had hoped for on the ice, and here it was, like some kind of miracle out of the air, when I least expected it.

He Didn't Start The Fire (But It's His To Put Out)

Robert Gibbs gave an admirably nimble response to the concern that his brand new administration is trying to do too much in the face of such a massive banking crisis. He compared the country's plight to a house that's on fire, and joked that you wouldn't ask the fire department to put out only specific parts of the blaze. You just want the fire out.

True.

But his metaphorical logic comes up short on one key point. Again, staying with the fire metaphor, if you look at the National Fire Protection Association's standard #1710, which deals with the protocol for the 'Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations', the problem quickly becomes clear:

5.2.1.1* On-duty fire suppression personnel shall be comprised of the numbers necessary for fire-fighting performance relative to the expected fire-fighting conditions. These numbers shall be determined through task analyses that take the following factors into consideration:

(1) Life hazard to the populace protected
(2) Provisions of safe and effective fire-fighting performance conditions for the fire fighters
(3) Potential property loss
(4) Nature, configuration, hazards, and internal protection of the properties involved
(5) Types of fireground tactics and evolutions employed as standard procedure, type of apparatus used, and results expected to be obtained at the fire scene

-- NFPA 1710

Our current 'On-duty fire suppression personnel' consists of one guy:



That lonely name on the Treasury Department's website is Tim Geithner. It is abundantly clear to anyone with a TV that Geithner is stretched beyond his capacity. He does not have the resources to provide even a halfway decent response to a fire, let alone the several that are raging across our economy at the moment.

And Geithner's problems are Obama's problems. Much as I like Obama (especially how he plays small ball), he may well be sealing his fate in these first few weeks by not focusing all of his efforts on putting out this fire in the banking industry. Like all newly elected Presidents, he has embraced the mirage of political capital. By way of buzzkill, he need only look back 4 years to when Bush declared a non-existent mandate which he promptly squandered on a Quixotic attempt to privatize Social Security. He was a lame duck before his second town meeting.

Health care can wait. Education reform can wait. Everything. Can. Wait.

Our Federal Reserve just dumped Weimar-esque amounts of currency into the economy because of Obama's lack of focus. We spent the past week talking about garroting AIG staff with piano wire. The House has channeled the collective outrage into a bill of attainder. The political chatter next week will certainly center around Timothy Geithner's ability to stay on at Treasury, and none of this will inch us any closer toward the exit of our current crisis.

Obama needs to summon the strength that eludes him most: practicality. Instead of talking about food policy (which was the subject of his last weekly address), he should actually go back and listen to how plainly FDR spoke in his Fireside Chats. Skip the flowery rhetoric, skip the nuanced long-term outlook, and hunker down on concrete details. Explain the AIG collapse, apologize for the bonuses, promise to work ceaselessly to get a functioning Treasury Department in place and restore the vitality of the American banking system.

His rival in the election sealed his fate when he notoriously 'suspended his campaign' to return to Washington to focus on a solution to the banking crisis. That was half a year ago. If Obama can echo McCain's sentiment that the fundamentals of our economy are strong (which they are), perhaps he can also embrace the wisdom of actually shifting into crisis mode. The collateral damage of idiotic acts of Congress and blathering talking heads is unimportant, but in order to keep it strictly collateral, he has to actually address the crisis head-on. If he doesn't, Obama will be a lame duck faster than his predecessor, and the country will be on a fast track to even greater calamity.

Henry Kaiser, "Farmer In Heaven"

Widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz and experimental music, California-based musician Henry Kaiser is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 140 different albums. A restless collaborator who constantly seeks the most diverse and personally challenging contexts for his music, Mr. Kaiser not only produces and contributes to a staggering number of recorded projects, he performs frequently throughout the USA, Europe and Japan, with several regular groupings as well as solo guitar concerts and concerts of freely improvised music with a host of diverse instrumentalists. Evidence of his exceptional musical breadth and versatility can be found in a partial list of the extraordinary artists with whom he has recorded and/or performed: Herbie Hancock, Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Bob Weir, The ROVA Sax Quartet, Elliot Sharp, John "Drumbo" French, Raymond Kane, Michael McClure, Bill Laswell, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Barbara Higbie, John Abercrombie, Leo Smith, moe., Negativland, Michael Stipe, Terry Riley, Jim O'Rourke, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sergei Kuriokhin, Zero, Critters Buggin', Diamanda Galas, Sonny Sharrock, Hans Reichel, Chris Cutler, Henry Cow, John Zorn, Andy West, David Torn, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, Davey Williams, Eugene Chadbourne, Evan Parker, Sang-Won Park, Material, The Golden Palominos, Victoria Williams, Jin-Hi Kim, John Oswald, Glenn Phillips, Toshinori Kondo, John Stevens, Tom Constanten, Kiyohiko Senba, Bruce Anderson, Sang-Won Park, Yuji Takahashi, John Medeski, Zoogz Rift, Ngoc Lam, Dama Mahaleo, Merl Saunders, Freddie Roulette, Mari Kimura, Harvey Mandel, Danny Carnahan, Robin Petrie, Rakoto Frah, Rossy, Alan Senauke, John Tchicai, George Lewis, Kazumi Watanabe, Peter Brotzmann, Zero, Bob Bralove, Greg Allman, Billy Kreutzman, Jerry Garcia, Miya Masaoka, Miroslav Tadic, Cecil Taylor, and Amos Garrett.

As one of the "first generation" of American free improvisers, born in Oakland, California, on 19 September, 1952, Mr. Kaiser has helped unfetter the guitar from the conventions of genre-bound techniques, but his instrumental virtuosity and technological breakthroughs are always deployed in the service of deep and immediate personal expression. Likewise, he has developed a highly individual, inimitable style from an uncommonly varied range of influences. Some of his musical sources include traditional blues, East Asian, Classical North Indian and Hawaiian music, free jazz, free improvisation, American steel-string concert guitar, and 20th century classical, but like any probing artist he also draws creatively from other abiding interests, which for Mr. Kaiser include Information Theory, experimental cinema, mathematics, experimental literature and SCUBA diving. (He was employed for the last 15 years as a senior instructor in Underwater Scientific Research at the University of California at Berkeley. Sadly, Berkeley's excellent scientific diving program was terminated in the summer of 1996.)

Since taking up the guitar in 1972, Mr. Kaiser has built an ever-mounting reputation as one of the foremost musicians of his time. The respect of his peers has earned him membership on the advisory board of Guitar Player Magazine, and the appreciation of his creativity by the music, film and television industries has kept him in command as a composer and producer. He scored the weekly television series, Secrets & Mysteries, and has assisted dozens of artists from Ali Akbar Khan to Richard Thompson with their recording projects.

Guitar players and devoted fans can delve deeper into Mr. Kaiser's instrumental and philosophical approaches to music via Eclectic Electric, Exploring New Horizons of Guitar and Improvisation a very unusual 97 minute guitar instructional video released by Silver Eagle/Backstage Pass/Music Video Projects.

Mr. Kaiser returned from the island of Madagascar in 1991, where he and his friend David Lindley recorded 6 CDs for the Shanachie label, in collaboration with various Malagasy musicians. The first of these CDs to be released, A WORLD OUT OF TIME, HENRY KAISER AND DAVID LINDLEY IN MADAGASCAR, is, perhaps, the most successful of all American World Music releases of all time! VOL. 2 of A WORLD OUT OF TIME was nominated for a Grammy award. Two more Madagascar releases have also been recently produced by Mr. Kaiser in Madagascar and Louisiana. Kaiser & Lindley's second project, THE SWEET SUNNY NORTH VOLs. 1 & 2, were recorded in Norway and features collaborations with most of Norway's greatest musical artists, as well as many surprising "discoveries". Henry and David are planning several new series of collaborative recordings that may someday take the duo "on the road" to Korea. Richard Thompson and Henry are presently considering preparation of a similar type of collaborative project for the Islands of Fiji.

Another recent and very successful project is Wadada Leo Smith's and Henry's YO MILES!, a tribute to the mid 70's works of Miles Davis. A live version of this project will debute on Oct. 21, 1999 at the San Fancisco Jazz Festival. -- From www.henrykaiser.net

Tsinandali Choir, "Kakhuri Mravaljamieri"

Henry Kaiser, "Punctual As Usual"

-- Liner Notes --

All selections are free improvisations; heard as played. In addition to guitar, an FM radio was employed on The Stormy Present. Recorded August 1979, at Woody Woodman's Finger Palace, Berkeley and at Fort Mason Center, San Francisco. Photography: Craig Denis Street.

Many Thanks to: Larry Ochs, Greg Goodman, Toshinori Kondo, Lee Kaplan, Alex Varty, John Oswald, Al Mattes, Marvin Green, Scott Colby, Tom Mulhern, Ron Armstrong, Hideo Kamimoto, Howard Dumble, Bob Shumaker, Phil Brown, Allen McKinney, Craig Street, Judith Stadtman, Woody Woodman, and Fred Frith.

Metalanguage Records, 2639 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705.

How Not To Run An Estate

In a New York article, Arthur Laurents describes the level of micro-managing the Bernstein estate indulged in during the run-up to the revival of West Side Story.

“It was Steve [Sondheim] and the Bernstein kids who wanted every note and every vamp and every word untouched...The Bernstein estate was the worst. They’d say things like ‘Bars 75 through 81a have been omitted, and we want them back.’ But theater music is written for theater, and if you would like to stage it, you are welcome to come in and do so. They’re just pedants. Archivists.”

“‘It’s a classic,’ they say. Well, so I hear. But the three previous revivals were all replicas, and all failed. That’s no accident. The original was about dancing and singing. This West Side Story is about what it was always meant to be about but wasn’t. This one is all about love.”

Great masterworks, of which this is one, can stand up to all sorts of abuse. How an artist interprets West Side Story should be the least of the Bernstein estate's concerns.

Henry Kaiser, "Outside Pleasure"

HKOP

Marianne Faithfull & Keith Richards, "Sing Me Back Home"

From Marianne's new album.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück XI"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

10. Klavierstück XI [13'59"]

Compensation:
During the flight from Düsseldorf to Zurich on June 29, from 8:30 to 10:40 p.m., the Caravelle went through some heavy turbulence, and what was left of the evening meal, which had already been served, was cleared away as quickly as possible; only Kontarsky, who had refused the "warmed-over" airline dinner, kept his Tuborg beer in hand, with the somewhat worried remark that this would be the last decent beer he would get for days. After arriving in the Gartenhotel in Winterthur, he made sarcastic comments in the bar about Haldengut beer, the only brand available, and slept "rather badly" from 12:30 to 8:30 a.m. That morning, he took - as usual - a hot bath and his habitual breakfast with orange juice, a three-minute egg, tea with cream and a roll with cherry jam. Contrary to his habit of talking about books in the most excited tones, telling anecdotes in dialect and commenting on the latest Spiegel [news magazine] stories he used every opportunity during the days we were recording to dream aloud about past and future gastronomical pleasures. On the day of the first recording session, as a matter of principle, he abstained from all alcohol until 10:00 p.m., drank only an espresso at noon, ate a fillet of perch with a bottle of Hermiez mineral water in the Gartenhotel at 2:00 p.m., and in the evening in the Hotel Krone - whose cuisine he henceforth praised - consumed a clear oxtail broth, a schnitzel in cream sauce with tagliatelle, green salad with oil and vinegar, Brie with black bread, 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine and two bottles of Hermiez mineral water. He went to bed early and slept "somewhat better" from 11:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. On the following day, he lunched on a glass of tomato juice, a saltimbocca alla romana with spaghetti, an ice cream coffee float with whipped cream, 2/10 lit. Johannisberg wine, and two bottles of mineral water; at around 6:00 p.m. he ordered a bottle of Coca-Cola, and for dinner (the kitchen had already stopped serving warm meals) a Bündner Platte (smoked country ham) with a tossed salad and 3/4 lit. Johannisberg wine; afterwards at Kolbe's house, he ate a piece of "Mövenpick" ice-cream cake and drank two glasses of cognac; he slept "marvelously" from 2:30 a.m. to 8:30. On Saturday, July 3, he ate steak tartare at midday shortly before the departure, and drank a glass of mineral water.

On the evening of November 14, after landing at Zurich airport, Kontarsky passed the time spent waiting for the bus with a Bloody Mary, and in the bar of the Gartenhotel, prepared himself for bed with two Haldengut Pilsners as a nightcap. On November 15 at noon, he ordered a salami omelet and High Grown Ceylon tea; in the evening in the Krone Hotel: bouillon with beef marrow, two baked fillets of sole, chipped veal in a herb sauce on spaghetti, 1/4 lit. Johannisberg wine, one bottle of Hermiez mineral water and a hazel-nut desert. Then we went to the City-Lichtspiele [a cinema], where during the showing of Morituri he looked at me from time to time and rolled his eyes; I motioned in the direction of the exit three times, but he remained seated and shrugged with his right shoulder. After the film, he drank two John Haig "Red Label" whiskies on the rocks. On November 16, we went to lunch so late that the Im Silbernen Winkel was filled to overflowing with cake-eating ladiesand he could only order, of the three warm dishes offered, a helping of jugged venison on spaetzle [a regional variety of pasta] and a green salad, with a cup of tea with lemon. In contrast, the evening meal in the Schloss Wülflingen restaurant was a minor feast. He consumed a bouillon with beef marrow (incomparably better than the one mentioned above), six helpings of saltimbocca alla romana ( he sent the rice back), another six helpings of saltimbocca alla romana, green salad; he drank 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine; there followed crêpes Suzette, together with mocha coffee; and to accompany three glasses of pear schnapps, he chose a "Montecristo" Havana cigar, with an extended commentary on European cigar duties (he praised Switzerland for reckoning duty by weight) and on the preparation and packaging of Havana cigars. On November 17, he closed the recording sessions by composing a lunch: bouillon with beef marrow, sole meunière, 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine, a pear Hélène, mocha coffee, one glass of pear schnapps and an Upman Havana cigar.

I mention the technical and material details of the recording sessions because I learned from these sessions how much the recording process, playback quality, and even the pianist's playing is dependent on all these conditions. These were the first recording sessions at which I personally had been present, and I was shaken by the extremely artificial situation, the amount of influence exercised by "imponderables", and the technical intervention in the musical sphere. -- Karlheinz Stockhausen

Yoko Kanno, "Bad Dog, No Biscuit"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück X"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

10. Klavierstück X [22'15"]

Things "with a will of their own" (one of many): During the recording of the eleventh Klavierstück on July 15, Kontarsky's every movement caused the stool to creak on the wooden floor. First, the recording was stopped and restarted several times; then pieces of rubber were put under the stool legs; finally, different sorts of mat were procured and put under the stool. Recording started again. Stopped again several times. The stool was taken apart and put back together. Recorded. Again interrupted. Other stools tried: same result. Finally, after about one and a half hours of fruitless effort, a wooden organ bench was found upon which Kontarsky played the rest of the recordings undisturbed. As he started recording again, Kontarsky called through the microphone, "My heartfelt thanks, many thanks, thank you, I'll never forget you! You know, you have to be able to move around for this piece. Thanks, many thanks...fantastic, thank you, gentlemen, thank you!" Kolbe answered over the loud speaker, "But now people listening to the record won't know when you've shifted your center of gravity, Mr. Kontarsky!"

ANALOG @ The Red Room Tonight

We're playing at the Red Room tonight, opening for Pamplemousse. The show includes original music for tuba and theremin, Robert Ashley and Stockhausen, and one of the members of the ensemble will be a visual artist projecting his interpretations of the scores throughout.

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30
$6

Program
Karlheinz Stockhausen, IT
Karlheinz Stockhausen, INTENSITY
Dolf Kämper, PULSATING STARS...
Robert Ashley SHE WAS A VISITOR

PERFORMERS
Cody Griffith, visual artist
Dolf Kämper, trumpet & theremin
Alex Muehleisen, tuba
Nick Mazziott, trombone

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück IX"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

9. Klavierstück IX [9'42"]

Recording equipment:
Microphones: Neumann U 67, Telefunken KM 54, three Sennheiser MD 421s. The Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V, VIII & IX were recorded with one KM 54 and two MD 421s, Klavierstücke VI and XI with an additional U 67 under the piano to bring out the bass. Klavierstücke VII and X with the additional U 67 (as for VI and XI) used still another MD 421 (cardioid) directly above the piano strings to bring out the long, sustained resonant tones.
Recorder: Studer C 37 Stereo.
Three-channel mixer: Kudelski (Paudex near Lausanne) and Leonhard (Zurich).
Recording tape: AGFA PER 555, high output.
Monitor speaker: KLH, Model Four.
Music:
Kontarsky: Klavierstücke I-IV, V and VI, published by Universal Edition, reprint 1965; Klavierstücke VII and VIII, a photocopy of the manuscript that had been compared with the UE 1965 edition; IX and X, photocopy of the manuscript; XI, published by UE, new edition (1964).
Stockhausen and Kolbe: Klavierstücke I - VIII published by UE, 1965 edition; IX and X, a photocopy of the manuscript; XI, published by UE, new edition (1964).
Photographs were taken in the recording auditorium by Glattfelder, Winterthur, on July 2, 1965 from 10:00 to about 10:30 a.m. and from 3:30 to 4:00 p.m.

Look, Up In The Sky! It's Capt. Sanctimony!

The pile of crap that passed for a Daily Show tonight was an anticlimactic end to an obnoxious week of television. Jon Stewart flogged his feud with CNBC nightly, while cable news stoked the fires by day. Jim Cramer, who never seems to shine outside of his Mad Money set, went in to take his shaming, à la James Frey.

And Stewart, sadly, indulged himself as much as Oprah did. What was the point of any of that rambling nonsense?

People are mad. We're looking for scapegoats. It's a fine way to fill 22 minutes of TV, but a whole week? Let's hope this is the last of it.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VIII"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

8. Klavierstück VIII [1'43"]

Instruments
For the recordings on July 1 and 2, a Steinway (Hamburg) grand piano was used, Model D, built in 1959, No. 361 880, lent by Pianohaus Jecklin, Zurich. The piano had a definitely hard touch, its dynamics were balanced throughout the entire range and the resonance time was comparatively short, particularly in the highest range. The tone was considerably affected by the relatively high humidity (75%) at 21°C room temperature (rainy, muggy summer weather); it had to be retuned frequently (piano tuner: Doldinger, Winterthur).

For the recordings made on November 15 to 17, this piano was not available, as it had been rented to the Zurich Tonhalle for the entire 1965/6 winter season. Instead, the Steinway (Hamburg) grand piano Model D, built in 1964, No. 386 360, was borrowed from Pianohaus Hug, Zurich. This piano had a very soft touch and tone, was not balanced dynamically (volume fell off in the lowest and highest ranges, no brilliance), and had a rather long resonance time. The relative humidity was approximately 50% at an average room temperature of 18°C (because of the excessive heating, all the windows were opened at frequent intervals to keep the auditorium at this average temperature; dry, frosty weather, snow). Several notes had to be retuned repeatedly, the entire tuning was corrected once on the 16th and once on the 17th; the left pedal made a creaking noise that could only be corrected after several repairs (piano tuner: Wilhelm Baehr, Zurich).

Crazy Has No Party

Last month, the Daily Show ran a hilarious piece about two ministers who think Obama is either the next Hitler or the Anti-Christ:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Unusual Suspect

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

But just in case you think this kind of crazy has a political affiliation, here's a clip of David Icke interviewing a woman who claims to have seen George HW Bush, Madeline Albright, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter, the Queen Mother, and Queen Elizabeth II at Satanic rituals around the world. She claims that she was escorted to these rituals by Josef Mengele, who, like everyone on this list (except for Hillary Clinton), was also a shape shifter.

You see, Icke and this woman believe that the world is run by The Illuminati, which contrary to what you've been told in your grandfather's pansy-assed conspiracy theories, is actually a race of shape shifting reptilian beings from another frequency range. The woman claimed to have seen Presidents Ford and Johnson, as well as both Jeb and George W. Bush shape shift at these rituals.

[The talk about famous leaders at the Satanic rituals starts at the 8'30" mark of the clip, if you don't have the patience to listen to the whole thing.]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VII"

7. Klavierstück VII [6'34"]

Yoko Kanno, "Tank!"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VI"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

6. Klavierstück VI [25'23"]

Tape recording:
Phonag AG, Stadthausstrasse 69, Winerthur, Switzerland, commissioned by COLUMBIA RECORDS, New York, MASTERWORKS, Mr. John McClure. Sound supervision and editing: Hellmuth Kolbe (Fohrlibuckweg 9, Zurich, Wallisellen). Assistant: Robert Lattmann (Etzbergstrasse 70, Winterthur). Recording supervision: Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hellmuth Kolbe.
Location: the large auditorium of the Parish Hall (Liebestrasse 3, Winterthur).
Time: July 1, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: technical set-up, microphone adjustment and test recording; 3:00 - 6:30 p.m.: recorded Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V & VIII; 6:30 - 10:00 p.m.: edited Klavierstücke IV, V & VIII.
July 2, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: microphone adjustment and test recording; 3:00 - 3:30 p.m. and 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstücke VII and IX; 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.: editing.
July 3, 1965, 10:45 a.m. - 2:25 p.m.: edited Klavierstücke I, II & III; 2:30 - 3:00 p.m.: listened to the edited tapes of Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V, VII, VIII & IX.
November 15, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: technical set-up, microphone adjustment and test recording; 2:45 - 4:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstück VI from page 11 to end; 4:20 - 8:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstück X to the top of page 8.
November 17, 1965, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 - 7:00 p.m.: edited Klavierstück X and VI.
November 19, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.: listened to Klavierstücke I-XI.
A list with all information on the segments recorded, as well as the sheet music with all remarks entered during editing, are in the possession of Phonag AG.

Tibetan Uprising Day

In light of 50 years of Chinese occupation of Tibet, I can think of no better occasion to quote at length from Robert Thurman's introduction to his translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead:

TIBET: A SPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION

During the three centuries of Tibet's modern period, the national priority was on monastic education, literary and philosophical creativity, the practice of meditation, the development of ritual and festival arts, and so forth. Spiritual adepts were accepted as the highest level of Tibetan society...They were inner-world adventurers of the highest daring, the Tibetan equivalent of our astronauts...They personally voyaged to the furthest frontiers of that universe which their society deemed vital to explore: the inner frontiers of consciousness itself, in all its transformations in life and beyond death.

In Western culture, the last frontiers of our material conquest of the universe are in outer space. Our astronauts are our ultimate heroes and heroines. Tibetans, however, are more concerned about the spiritual conquest of the inner universe, whose frontiers are in the realms of death, the between, and contemplative ecstasies. So, the Tibetan lamas who can consciously pass through the dissolution process, whose minds can detach from the gross physical body and use a magic body to travel to other universes, these "psychonauts" are the Tibetans' ultimate heroes and heroines...They are believed to have mastered the death, between, and rebirth processes, and to choose continuously, life after life, to return to Tibet out of compassion to lead the Tibetans in their spiritual national life and to benefit all sentient beings.

Thus the modern Tibetan civilization was unique on the planet. Only such a special civilization could have produced the arts and sciences of dying and death transmitted in this book...

The ultimate example of the inwardly directed rationality of the modern Tibetan mind is precisely our present concern, the Tibetan exploration of death. The outwardly directed Western mind long ago dismissed the topic of death and future lives as archaic, of concern only to the superstitious traditional mind...death is merely a physiological condition, equated with a "flatline" on an electroencephalograph. There is no interest at all in the states of the person or condition of the mind after death. Scientific investigation restricts itself to the material quanta perceivable by the physical senses, augmented by machinery, during this one bodily life. At the same time, Westerners have set about exploring the outer world, the farthest continents, the macro realms of the outer galaxies, and the micro realms of the cell, the molecule, the atom, and the subatomic forces.

Tibetan inwardly directed reason put the material world second on its list of priorities. Its prime concern was the world of inner experience...

TIBET'S PRESENT PLIGHT

In spite of some neglect of its material progress, Tibet developed during its modern period into a relatively happy land. Tibetan society was organized to maximize the individual's potential for inner development, economic pressure was mild, and conflict within and warfare without were rare. However, it was still far from a perfected Buddha-land. In modern geopolitical terms, it became highly vulnerable during our century as a result of one positive quality and one negative quality. Positively, it was long demilitarized and therefore no match for the modern armies first of the British and eventually of the Chinese. Negatively, it had become too isolated from other nations, locking them out as Buddhism disappeared from them. Consequently, the only two nations with a little knowledge of Tibet, the British and the Chinese, were able to misrepresent Tibet to the rest of the world in any way that suited their immediate need. When the British wanted to enact trade agreements with the sovereign Tibetan government, they dealt with Tibet as the independent nation that it was. Meanwhile, they let the world at large think of Tibet as under China, to keep the Russians out and to keep the Chinese happy, pleased for the British to retain possession of Hong Kong and its valuable trade opportunities. The Chinese likewise knew very well they did not control Tibet, that Tibetans had no sense of being Chinese, and that no Chinese person had ever had the slightest feeling that any Tibetan was a kind of Chinese. Meanwhile, they still pretended to the world that they owned Tibet (which they call Shitsang, "the Western Treasury"), that it had always been a part of China. Thus when the Maoist government invaded Tibet in 1949, they told the world they were "liberating" their own country's Tibetan province from foreigners (there were half a dozen Europeans in Tibet). But since Tibetans considered the Chinese to be foreigners, they resisted being "liberated" to the death. The full force of the Red Army overwhelmed the Buddhist Tibetans, and the Chinese occupation ever since has only endured by brute force. Over a million Tibetans have died unnaturally, and the entire Buddhist culture has been shattered. Not a single Tibetan does not dream and pray to be free and independent of the invaders.

In order to transform Tibet into a part of China, the Chinese have attempted to suppress the Tibetan language, Buddhism and the culture based on it, and all vestiges of Tibetan national identity. Such a project is doomed to failure, as the Tibetans simply cannot make themselves into Chinese. Therefore the attempt to make Tibetans into Chinese ends up killing off the Tibetans.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück V"

5. Klavierstück V [5'24"]

Scatterbrain, "Sonata #3"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück IV"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

4. Klavierstück IV [2'02"]

PERFORMER

Aloys Kontarsky, born May 14, 1931 in Iserlohn, Westphalia, received his first piano lessons at the age of five from his mother, later (1939-49) from Franz Hanemann Jr. (pupil of James Kwast and Max van de Sandt). In 1951, school-leaving certificate at the Oberschule, Iserlohn. In 1949, public concert with his brother Alfons (Stravinsky's Concerto for two pianos); 1951, Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion. From 1949-51 lessons with Else Schmitz-Gohr at the Cologne Hochschule fur Musik, together with his brother Alfons, followed by one semester at the University of Freiburg (German studies and musicology). From autumn 1951 to January 1953, University of Cologne (German studies and musicology) and piano duo (again with Else Schmitz-Gohr). One year of illness. From January 1954 to autumn 1955, Cologne Hochschule fur Musik, solo piano and chamber music with Maurits Frank, music theory. In 1955, first prize for piano duo, together with his brother Alfons in the fourth German Radio International Music Competition. Autumn 1955 to 1957, pupil of Eduard Erdmann (Hochschule fur Musik, Hamburg). Since 1959, regular activity as concert pianist, mainly as a duo with his brother Alfons.

Since 1962, instructor at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music; since 1963, instructor at the Cologne Courses for New Music; since 1962, member of the Darmstadt International Chamber Ensemble (as well as public performances with individual soloists from this ensemble: Siegfried Palm [cello], Christoph Caskel [percussion], Severino Gazzeloni [flute]). In 1959 he married the actress Gisela Saur.

Most important premieres: Stockhausen: Klavierstuck IX, Mikrophonie I, Momente (Hammond organ); Kagel: Sur Scene; Pousseur: Caracteres; in addition, works by Brown, de Pablo and Zimmermann.

Frequent tours in all Western European countries; extensive tours in the Middle East, South and Middle America.

Spike Milligan, "Purple Aeroplane"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück III"

3. Klavierstück III [0'27"]

Rudyard Kipling, "The Man Who Would Be King"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück II"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

2. Klavierstücke II [1'47"]

COMPOSER

Since finishing his studies (1947-51, Cologne University and Hochschule fur Musik), Karlheinz Stockhausen, born August 22, 1928 near Cologne, has composed KREUZSPIEL for oboe, bass clarinet, piano, 3 percussionists (1951); SPIEL for orchestra (1952); PUNKTE for orchestra (1952-62); KONTRA-PUNKTE for 10 instruments (1952/3); KLAVIERSTUCKE I-IV (1952/3); ELEKTRONISCHE STUDIEN I and II (1953/4); KLAVIERSTUCKE V-X (V-VIII 1954/5, IX-X 1954/61); ZEITMASZE for five woodwinds (1955/6); GRUPPEN for 3 orchestras (1955/7); KLAVIERSTUCK XI (1956); GESANG DER JUNGLINGE (1955/6); ZYKLUS for 1 percussionist (1959); CARRE for 4 orchestras and choirs (1959/60); REFRAIN for 3 performers (1959); KONTAKTE for electronic sounds, piano and percussion instruments (1959/60); ORIGINALE, musical theater (1961); MOMENTE for soprano solo, 4 choir groups and 13 instrumentalists (1962/4); PLUS-MINUS, twice seven pages for elaboration (1963); MIKROPHONIE I for tam-tam, 2 microphones and 2 filters (1964); MIXTUR for orchestra, 4 sine-wave generators and ring modulators (1964); MIKROPHONIE II for 12 singers, 4 ring modulators and Hammond organ (1965); SOLO for one melody instrument and magnetic tape recorder (1966); TELEMUSIK (1966); ADIEU for wind quintet (1966); PROZESSION for tam-tam, viola, electronium, piano, microphones, filters and potentiometers. All works have been published by UNIVERSAL EDITION, Vienna-Zurich-London.

Writings: TEXTE, Vol. I, zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik; TEXTE, Vol. II, zu eigenen Werken, zur Kunst anderer, Aktuelles (DuMont Schauberg, Cologne); numerous articles in periodicals, principally in "Die Reihe" (Universal Edition, Vienna; Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania).

First Stockhausen monograph: K. H. Worner (P.J. Tonger, Rodenkirchen/Rhine, 1963).

Since 1955, instructor at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music; since 1963, instructor at the Cologne Courses for New Music; 1963, teacher of composition at the conservatory in Basel, Switzerland; 1964, visiting professor of composition at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A.; 1966/7, leader of a composition class at the University of California Davis; since 1953, permanent participant in the Studio for Electronic Music of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Radio] in Cologne, where he has been the artistic director since 1962. Regular concert tours as director and performer of his own works in all European countries, the U.S.A. and Canada; 1966, five-month stay in Japan (for composition) and Asian tour.

Raymond Scott, "The Rhythm Modulator"

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück I"

-- Liner Notes --

1. Klavierstück I [2'56"]

Aloys Kontarsky, Piano
(Recordings: KGH, Winterthur, Switzerland, July 1 & 2, November 15-17, 1965)

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN:
KLAVIERSTUCKE I-XI - MIKROPHONIE I & II
The following texts by the composer accompanied the original long-play recording. As they, like the recordings themselves, are interesting documents of their time, they are being reissued in unabridged form with this new edition.

Despite -- or rather because of -- the importance of tonal color compositions in my electronic music, in the orchestral and vocal works, I have from time to time concentrated on "Klavierstücke" [piano pieces]; on composing for one instrument, for ten fingers, with meticulous nuances of instrumental tone and structure. They are my "Zeichnungen" (drawings). I wrote the third and second Klavierstücke in 1952 in Paris for my wife Doris, who studied piano with me at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. I then added the first and fourth Klavierstücke. In these four pieces, a transition can be seen from "selective" or "point" music to "group composition".

The second cycle, begun in late 1953 in Cologne, is characterized by an expansion of the tone composition by means of the piano; I found six new "touch forms" that changed the way the piano tone was built up, just as before in Elektronische Studien I had composed tones using a series of "envelopes". I defined new symbols for these touch forms. Above all, I was greatly aided by the discovery of harmonics with "subharmonic" resonances: these made possible the simultaneous combination - on one tone - of short, staccato notes with soft, undamped "echo" tones. In addition, I no longer composed single notes and chords, but sounds with characteristic inner structures. The so-called "small notes" - what were earlier known as "grace-notes" - were used in great number, composed in groups of varying density around "nuclei": Klavierstücke V-X were all characterized by preceding, simultaneous and succeeding tone groups arranged around their nuclei. Klavierstück X consists almost entirely of greater or lesser density around few tonal nuclei.

I have written several texts about the Klavierstücke for radio programs, and they have all been published in "TEXTE" (two volumes, DuMont Schauberg, Cologne) which includes an extensive analysis of the first Klavierstücke. As early as 1954, I worked out a plan for a cycle of twenty-one Klavierstücke divided into six subcycles as follows: I-IV / V-X / XI / XII-XVI / XVII-XIX / XX-XXI, of which I-XI have been completed to date. Klavierstücke I-IV are dedicated to the Belgian pianist Marcelle Mercenier, Klavierstücke V-VIII to the American pianist David Tudor, Klavierstücke IX and X to Aloys Kontarsky, and Klavierstücke XI to Doris Stockhausen, née Andreae.

Actual Proof, "Maybe We'll Stay"

Igor Stravinsky, "Three Pieces

2. Drei Stucke fur Klarinette solo (1918) [4'00]
Alain Damiens, Klarinette

Martin Denny, "On Green Dolphin Street/Hernando's Hideaway"

Igor Stravinsky, "Octet"

1. Octet for Wind Instruments (1923/ 1952)
I. Sinfonia: Lento -Allegro moderato
11. Tema con Variazioni: Andantino - attacca:
111. Finale: Tempo giusto [14'55]

Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Doriot Dwyer, Flute
Harold Wright, Clarinet
Sherman Walt, Bassoon
Matthew Ruggiero, Bassoon
Armando Ghitalla, Trumpet
Andre Come, Trumpet
William Gibson, Trombone
Gordon Hallberg, Bass Trombone

Stravinsky began his Octet for wind instruments (flute, clarinet, two bassoons, two trumpets and trombones, one tenor and one bass) at the end of 1922 when he was in Biarritz, finishing it in Paris the following spring. In his "Dialogues and a Diary", he writes that it was prompted by a dream, in which he saw himself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some attractive music, which he did not recognise though he strained to hear it. There is some discrepancy with his account in "Chroniques de ma vie" where he said that he began to write the music down without knowing what the sound medium would be. The first movement in any event was written first and is in sonata form; the second began life as a waltz but Stravinsky quickly realised that it would be ideal for a set of variations, the first time he had employed this particular form. Stravinsky himself conducted the first performance at a Koussevitzky concert at the Paris Opera House (Cocteau, who was present, described Stravinsky's conducting as reminiscent of 'an astronomer engaged in working out a magnificent instrumental calculation in figures of silver'. Stravinsky subsequently revised the score in 1952 but the changes he made were trivial in character. -- Robert Layton

The Tielman Brothers, "18th Century Rock"

TB

Igor Stravinsky, "Concertino for Twelve Instruments"

-- Liner Notes --

5. Concertino for Twelve Instruments (1952)

Boston Symphony Chamber Players

Joseph Silverstein, Violin
Jules Eskin, Cello
Doriot Dwyer, Flute
Ralph Gomberg, Oboe
Laurence Thorstenberg, English Horn
Harold Wright, Clarinet
Sherman Walt, Bassoon
Matthew Ruggiero, Bassoon
Armando Ghitalla, Trumpet
Rolf Smedvig, Trumpet
William Gibson, Trombone
Gordon Hallberg, Bass Trombone

The same year, in 166, Stravinsky arranged his Concertino forstring quartet for twelve instruments - flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, two bassoons, two trumpets, two trombones, violin, and cello -and in this form it received its first performance in Los Angeles the same year. Orignally the Concertino was written for the Flonzaley Quartet and occupied the composer during the summer of 1920. It is a single-movement work, written in a free sonata allegro with a concertante part for the first violin. When transcribing it Stravlnsky took the opportunitv of rearringing it, and making other minor adjistments, but the concertante violin part remains as before. -- Robert Layton

T.O.'s...

....so, not back!

Which seems like reason enough to revel in this gem that he recorded when he got signed to the Cowboys:

Im'ma make it hard for you dudes try'na stop my show Look it's hard for you dudes try'na brow Ask Philly was it hard try'na stop TO He the main reason that the fans would come fo But he took that hit and he bounced rite back Got a brand new deal and his pockets is fat Like Boost Mobile they been asking "where you at?" And you can tell em in Dallas with your Cowboy hat Go Big Blue Go do what you do Gon' have the city goin' crazy, fans gon' love you Like Ray Charles you gon' make it Do What It Do Still the best in the game and they know that it's true Gon' take the team to the top where they used to be I can see another trophy up in Big D We gon' sell a few records, be back in the Pro Bowl One week after, we winning the Super Bowl

I am back with a vengeance I'm back on the mission Got the reciepe bro, so I'm back in the kitchen Try'na take me out the game people saying I'm missing Got the whole worlds undivided attention This a brand new year Got a brand new team I'm a Cowboy now, no more black and green And to the hata's who said I wouldn't get my money I'm laughing in ya face, haha that's funny When it comes to this game, I'm the best on the field Some said i was gonna sign just a one-year deal But I got what I wanted up front, ten mil. Change the rules of the game so now how you feel? See when I work my magic, when I catch that rock I dominate like Shaq when he's downon the block And this prolly be my best season by far No more get my eagle on, meet me at the star

Igor Stravinsky, "Concertino for String Quartet"

-- Liner Notes --

3. Concertino fur Streichquartett (1920) [6'33]

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Although we know that Stravinsky regularly composed at the piano, the scoring of his music never sounds at all secondary, and he delighted throughout his life in setting himself new problems of instrumentation. The works recorded here all demonstrate this, not least the earliest of them, the Three Pieces for solo clarinet (1918), where the severest problem is that of creating music which is pure melody, without harmonic support or contrapuntal interest. There is, however, no sign of compositional strain in these lively pieces, echoing the tangy style of Histoire du soldat and designed as a thank-offering to the man who had made the production of that work possible, the Swiss patron Werner Reinhart.

Interest is again centred on a solo line in the Concertino for string quartet, which Stravinsky described as being 'in the form of a free sonata allegro with a definitely concertante part for the first violin'. The piece was written in the summer of 1920 in Brittany and was the composer's first work alter Pulcinella, so standing at the threshold of his neoclassical period while also recalling the biting violin part of Histoire du soldat.

Nico, "The Falconer"

Igor Stravinsky, "Symphonies of Wind Instruments"

-- Liner Notes --

STRAVINSKY:
SYMPHONIES OF WIND INSTRUMENTS . . . .8:37

FREDERICK FENNELL, conductor
EASTMAN WIND ENSEMBLE

By coupling Paul Hindemith's Symphony in B flat (1951), and Arnold Schoenberg's Variations, Op. 43a (1943) with Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920-revised 1947), it is possible to present three divergent concepts of the wind ensemble medium by composers of the first rank. As with others in this series by Mercury and the Eastman School of Music, this disc is representative of the important compositions from the musical literature for the wind band and the symphonic wind ensemble. Our recordings in the field of symphonic repertory have included representative scores by American and British composers. Much of the best in the areas of field music and military marches by outstanding creators of these little masterpieces likewise has been both British and American in origin.

This far from accidental emphasis upon Anglo-American repertory has come about mostly because the music of quality which it represents has been or is becoming the basic repertory of our country's vast wind band activity. The interest, understanding, and sympathy of the composers thus represented is only now beginning to reward those long-patient and devoted souls to whom the wind medium is a happy and exciting form of musical life. This interest, however, is by no means confined to Englishmen and Americans. We are all the more pleased, therefore, to present on this disc three provocative scores by men who descend creatively from origins other than Anglo-American.

It is too obvious, perhaps, but it is likewise undeniably true, that the present and future state of musical literature for all mediums of performance is sustained by the continuing interest of composers. The fabrication of an instrumental ensemble, however, is the end result of the combined skills and interests of instrumental designer-manufacturers and performers; but this joint industry waits upon the composer for the full realization of their work. i Without the composer, all instrumental apparatus is relegated to vain wish and unfulfilled desire, conditions in which those agglomerations of wind and percussion instruments called bands have languished for over a century. In the final analysis it will be the composer who will decide the future of the wind band. This has been the history of those vast and great musical treasures which dwell in health in the mansions of the orchestra, the opera - house, and the chamber music hall - treasures bountifully stored up for all to whom life without music would be toil without reward.

A medium of musical performance may vary with time. It may even perish as did the noble family of lutes, leaving a beautiful literature in their passing. When those various flat- and round-backed precursors of today's string family gave way to Salo's violin, it was the designers and builders working with the performers who eventually relegated their previous medieval masterpieces to the museum. But this was achieved only after the composer realized in the violins the presence of a more versatile, powerful and beautiful imitation of the human voice.

There is an appreciable comparison (provided one does not make it with the orchestra) in the development of the wind band. In this instance it may seem that the judgment of the composer, however, has been harsh and prejudiced. It may also be that, in his infinite wisdom, his rejection of it as an ensemble for his serious consideration has forced those men of honest purpose who conduct and otherwise devote themselves toward its acceptance to probe ever more deeply into themselves and the medium to discover why this should be. If this is the real truth of the matter, and if those who are associated with the wind medium might have begun to purge themselves of charlatanism and artistic iniquities - then,.perhaps, the silent treatment dealt to the band by great creators In the past century has made a proper effect. But if this is true - as I firmly believe it to be - then our present gains in performance and education have been achieved at great price; that price includes no music for the wind band by such influential 20th century instrumental composers as Richard Strauss, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, Bartbk, and Mahler - recalling but a few that come quickly and painfully to mind. The reasons why they wrote nothing for the massed wind ensemble (if they ever really thought of it at all) lie locked with them in the silence of peace. One can only conjecture. But luckily for us, Hindemith, Schoenberg and Stravinsky did compose works for the wind ensemble, and it is their fine compositions which make up the music on this disc.

Igor Stravinsky's (1882-1971) Symphonies of Wind Instruments is one of the masterpieces of 20th-century music. Written in the recoil of his instrumental usage from the heights of Rite of Spring, its modest instrumentation of 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 3 B-flat clarinets, 2 bassoons, contra-bassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba represents what we have chosen to call a symphonic wind ensemble. The Symphonies written in memory of Claude Debussy, were designed for performance by the wind section of any symphony orchestra. Serge Koussevitzky first performed them in this fashion at a London concert on June 10, 1921. Stravinsky describes them as "an austere ritual, which is unfolded in terms of short litanies between different groups of homogenous instruments." These are the sounds of genius, so classically balanced that to remove one bar or to add another would seriously impair their relationship. Like Mozart's magical Serenade No. 10 in B Flat (K. 361), from which it is "descended," it reveals again that composers with a true perception of the wind instruments as a sonority for performance by themselves may be as rare as the true genius himself.

Davi Det Hompson, "Lessons"

Lessons
List the difference, in cubic inches,
between your bed and your tub.
List the difference, in square inches,
between your porch and bathroom floors.
1969

100,386

::

4,428

Igor Stravinsky, "Ragtime"

-- Liner Notes --
3. Ragtime for Eleven Instruments (1918)

Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Joseph Silverstein, Violin
Max Hobart, Max Hobart
Burton Fine, Viola
Henry Portnoi, Bass
Doriot Dwyer, Flute
Harold Wright, Clarinet
Charles Kavaloski, Horn
Armando Ghitalla, Trumpet
William Gibson, Trombone
Everett Firth, Percussion
Myron Romanul, Cimbalom

Production and Recording Supervision:Thomas Mowrey
Coordinating Pladucer: Franz-Christian Wulff
Recording Engineer: Hans-Peter Schweigmann
Cover-Photo: Speidel, Hamburg
1975 Polydor International GmbH
1975 Karl Heinz Wocker, Robert Layton
Printed in Germany by Neef, Wittingen

"Ragtime" is scored for eleven instruments including the cimbalom. Stravinsky wrote it in Morges in 1918, completing the score at the time that the armistice was being concluded at the end of the 1914-18 war. He later made a piano arrangement of it but the first performance was conducted by the late Arthur Bliss at the Aeolian Hall London, in 1920. As Eric Walter White puts it, the idea motivating the work was to produce some kind of "composite portrait" of the new type of popular dance music that had just emerged in the States, bringing it into the concert hall as In the past composers had done for the minuet, waltz and other dance forms. -- Robert Layton

Fela Kuti with Ginger Baker, "Let's Start"

Igor Stravinsky, "Suite Italienne"

-- LINER NOTES --

SIDE ONE
Suite Italienne (from "Pulcinella" after Pergolesi)
band 4-Introduzione-Serenata

SIDE TWO
band 1-Suite Italienne (cont.)
Tarantella-Gavotta con due Variazioni-Scherzino-Minuetto e Finale

In 1931 Stravinsky was introduced to a young violinist, Samuel Dushkin, and was asked to write something for him. He declined at first on the grounds that he was unsure of his ability to exploit to the full the potential of the violin as a virtuoso instrument. However, the friendly advice of Hindemith and the encouragement of his publisher persuaded him to set aside his scruples, and the outcome was the Violin Concerto which received its first performance in Berlin in October 1931, with Dushkin as soloist and the composer conducting.

Work on the concerto brought with it a close and fruitful friendship between composer and performer, and during the 1932-33 and 1933-34 seasons they were engaged for recital tours throughout Europe. Stravinsky was anxious to have something of his own for them to play at these concerts, but as he explains in his early autobiography Chronicles Of My Life, the combination of piano and strings had so far given him little pleasure. He felt that the percussive sound of the one blended badly with the plucked and bowed sounds of the other, and after long consideration he felt that only by reducing the number of instruments involved to the minimum was he likely to solve the problem.

The recitals offered Stravinsky the immediate impulse to come to terms with the aesthetic problems involved in writing for violin and piano, though, typically, these pragmatic considerations had to be qualified, and to some extent justified, by a statement of artistic aims. At the time, Stravinsky tells us, he had been reading a book about Petrarch by one of his friends, Charles-Albert Cingria, and a passage in it relating to lyricism assumed particular significance for him. In his opinion lyrical expression, which was not the same thing as 'a facility for lyricism', was a matter of craftsmanship and composition~something that had to be learned and practised....

The Suite Italienne is now more commonly heard in the cello version made by Piatagorsky. Like the Divertimento, it is an arrangement of movements from a ballet, this time Pulcinella, originally produced in 1920. In 1925 Stravinsky prepared a violin and piano version of some of this music under the title Suite for violin and piano, after themes, fragments and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi. The present Suite, with the same title as the cello version but a slight variation in the items included, was prepared in 1933.

Unlike the Divertimento, the arrangement of the Pulcinella music differs considerably from the original, at times almost to the extent of recomposing the music. There are six movements in all. The first four and the last are the same as those of the 1925 suite and equate to numbers l,2, 12, 15, 17 and 18 of the original ballet where, incidentally, the Serenata is a tenor solo which originated as an aria in Pergolesi's opera Il Flaminio. The additional movement, Scherzino, is not to be confused with No. 3 of the ballet, but is in fact another tenor solo (No. 10(c)) which in the original is sung to words set to part of the Overture to Pergolesi's Lo Frate 'nnamorato. Inevitably this transcription has neither the vigour nor the colour of the orchestral original, but it makes a useful, lively and not too difficult addition to the violinist's repertoire. -- Kenneth Dommett, 1976

Recording Producer: SUVI RAJ GRUBB
Recording Engineer: NEVILLE BOYLING
1976 EMI Records Ltd.

33 Variations

The play about a musicologist and the Diabelli Variations is running through May on Broadway. They've got a lovely site, where you can listen to excerpts of the piece.

Igor Stravinsky, "Suite Italienne"

-- Liner Notes --

Laszlo Mezo, the cellist, has a special place among the younger generation of Hungarian instrumentalists. Despite his youth, the bare facts of his career so far throw light on his exceptional abilities. He studied at the Bekestarhos Music School, the Budapest Bartok Bela Conservatory and the Academy of Music. Throughout his studies, he was a pupil of the great Hungarian cello teacher, Antal Friss. (His chamber music teacher was Andras Mihaly.) While still a student, he won a certificate of merit at the 1957 Casals competition in Paris and won second prize at the Dvorak Contest in Prague, in 1961. He graduated in 1962 and in the same year, won fourth prize in the heavily contested Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition. In 1963, the first prize at the Budapest Casals competition was divided among Laszlo Mezo, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Mihail Homitser.

Laszlo Mezo continued his studies in the United Slates on a Ford Foundation scholarship in 1965/66. Two of his greatest teachers are Pablo Casals and Gregor Piatigorsky. During this time, he also attended the world famous Juilliard School of Music and participated in the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. Mr. Mezo has a number of foreign tours behind him which took him to the Soviet Union, the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic, Austria, Italy, Turkey, Finland, stc.

Laszlo Mezo's considerable acclaim can be attributed to his beautiful tone, brilliant technique which knows no difficulties unfailing musicality and primarily, his irresistible rhythmic drive all of which make him at home in every style.

This record contains two solo pieces played by Laszlo Mezo - the Solo Sonata by Paul Hindemith written in 1923 and which represented a dramatic turning point in the composer's career when Hindemith settled finally on contrapuntal construction, and second. the Solo Suite Op. 72 by Benjamin Britten - a piece dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovitch. In the nine or rather ten movement composition, a "canto" recurring four times divides the various character sections. Besides the solo selections, Stravinsky's "Italian Suite" a!so features on this record. Stravinsky transcribed the light-hearted, charming chamber music piece for cello and piano from the "Pulcinella" ballet music in 1933.

Lorant Szucs the piano accompanist in the "Italian Suite" is also a young musician. and is in the front ranks of Hungarian instrumentalists both as a soloist and an ideal accompanist. -- Peter Varnai

The Sleepy Jackson, "This Day"

Iannis Xenakis, "Cendrées"

-- LINER NOTES --

Face 1
Cendrées
Cette ceuvre est une commande de la Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian de Lisbonne. Elle est dediee a Monsieur et Madame Jose de Azeredo Perdigao
Ed. Salabert, Paris

CHOEURS DE LA FONDATION
GULBENKIAN DE LISBONNE
ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE FRANCE
Direction : Michel TABACHNIK

Cendrées, for choir and orchestra, by lannis Xenakis, was commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation, where it was performed for the first time in 1974. The first French performance was in Paris, at the Salle Wagram, on 21 December, 1977. The work is headed by a bucolic epigraph, exceptionally for Xenakis : "Before the autumn, before the summer, before every season, when the sun is like a snow-flake, and when it comes down to meet the earth, all is white and opal; and this at times may be long-lasting. These are no mists, no dews, but cinders." Nonetheless, this is no descriptive work after the manner of Vivaldi or Beethoven, while being perhaps less strictly abstract a canvas than his earlier pieces which were rightly, though vaguely, described as "cosmic" in character. Is this the beginning of Xenakis the landscape-painter? Perhaps, but he still remains difficult to penetrate.

Here is none of that gentleness and silence that the epigraph seemed to promise. After the rising glissandi of the violins and the descending ones of the cellos, are quickly superimposed those of the female voices, bringing movement and humanity to the process; then the male voices proffer, with a vulgar brutality, like rough shouts, apostrophes sung to vowel-sounds; the choirs and instruments mingle in an extraordinary "landscape" of timbres, rhythms, cries, and violent punctuations leading to a superb tumult.

A curious central episode begins with a solo, then a duet on the flutes, with some very fine microtonal sounds, broadening into a concert of all the woodwind, with acid sonorities and rhythms, bringing in the return of the tumultuous chorus. Various evocative episodes follow one upon the other until the end : astonishing solos, sobs or barking by the two contraltos (one of them a young man), also making use of the very expressive aura of microtonal inflections and accents; light scrapings on the violins over a distant murmur of the horns; sometimes the heavy rain of the strings and further looming walls of fearsome sounds; and finally choruses of breath, whispered like the last whisper of a lonely strand when the sea withdraws (with one last cry), - all this that can scarcely be described, has indeed the relief of an unknown landscape and leaves the impression of a lyricism that is as powerful as it is strange. -- Translated by John Underwood

AGP 99

The Beach Boys, "Johnny Carson"

Iannis Xenakis, "ST/10=1-080262"

-- Liner Notes --

ST/10=1-080262 for Ten Instruments (1956-1962)
(band 2 - 12:1O)

Dedicated to Konstantin Simonovitch and the Paris Instrumental Ensemble for Contemporary Music which performs it here, the work was actually realized at the Paris IBM installation (Place Vendome) in 1962 under the direction of Simonovitch himself.

The composition signifies the initial calculation by the IBM 7090 (utilized by Xenakis for "Atrees (Hommage a Pascal),""Morisma-Amorisma" and "ST/4" among other works), following a special stochastic (probabilist) program devised by Xenakis. To the composer, the calculation of probabilities in itself is based upon the only theory capable of dealing with great numbers. The program he used here was a derivative of the thesis of "Minimal Rules of Composition" which he had formulated four years earlier for the "Achorripsis for 21 Instruments" (side two, band two). Basically, the program is a complex of stochastic laws by which the composer orders the electronic brain to define all the sounds one after the other in a previously calculated sequence. First comes the occurence date, then the tonal class (arco, pizzicato, glissando, etc.), the instrument, the height, the glissando pitch if there is any, the length in time and the dynamic form of the emission of sound. In the title itself, ST stands for stochastic (from the Greek word stochos, meaning aim) and is a term Xenakis frequently applies to his music. (In mathematical terms, stochastic has reference to the contingency of change or the theory of probability first introduced by Jacques Bernoulli in 1713.) 10-1 signifies that this is Xenakis' first work for ten instruments. 080262 equals February 8, 1962, the date when the work was calculated by the 7090. As Xenakis has commented, the IBM 7090 has served his music well by advancing his goal of creating ". . . a form of composition which is not the object in itself, but an idea in itself, that is to say, the beginnings of a family of compositions."

PARIS INSTRUMENTAL ENSEMBLE FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
*CHILDREN'S CHORUS OF NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
(Chorus Master: Abbe Revert)
KONSTANTIN SIMONOVITCH conducting

AGP 99

'The Sound of Silence' at Galerie Lelong

Alfredo Jaar's The Sound of Silence' is showing at Galerie Lelong through May 2. It's not typical for spoilers to be an issue when discussing an art installation, but in this case, you should probably stop reading if you're going to check it out.

The first thing you encounter is a bank of fluorescent lights (above). The light and heat are overpowering, and one quickly scurries past them to avoid accidentally tanning or temporary blindness. The lights are the back end of a box, on the other side is a door:






Just inside the door is a red light, which is meant to stop you from entering. (Oblivious to the cue, I walked in only to be stopped by some gallery staff.) When the light turns green, the previous audience exits, and you're encouraged to enter. The inside is completely black, with a projection screen flanked by four lights on stands. You immediately figure that at some point the lights are going to shine on you, exposing you as the subject.

The projection is extremely simple: white text on a black screen. It tells an abbreviated life story of Kevin Carter, whose photograph of a vulture and a starving child won him a Pulitzer Prize. The text uses much of the same language found on Carter's wikipedia entry, and it links the picture with Carter's suicide a year later in a way that I found to be too moralizing. However, over the brief span of the installation, the desire to see the photograph builds slowly towards an acute dramatic tension, which is cut when the picture appears as the four lights flash once, blinding you momentarily.

It's quite an effective moment. Our desire to see suddenly becomes the subject, rather than Kevin Carter. The black box suddenly feels like a peep show, and as you quickly regain your sight and are confronted with this horrible image you can't help but feel a vague sort of complicity in some unnamed moral lapse.