"Dream of a History of a World", piano & orch., MP3
Steve Layton
download the file),
"Dream of a History of a World", at:
http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/1682/1682972.html
the blurb reads:
"(2001) For piano and orchestra. (ca. 8 minutes.) An ambitious piece; one
that draws on a huge complex of memories, yet compressed into an
ever-shifting surrealistic panorama that can seem either utterly
disorienting -- or utterly magical. A fever dream with its own impeccable
logic, composed in just six days in June. "
Listeners of my other work may notice that this one takes off in the
"opposite" direction from my piano piece "Garuda". But the evocation is of
the whole of what we think of as "fin de siècle"; the people, places, and
ideas of the bridge between the 19th and 20th century. The music is tonal /
very free chromaticism, in a way that seems to always be ripping away
another curtain.
Enjoy.
Steve Layton
orangie
<tk9hl8n...@corp.supernews.com>:
>http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/1682/1682972.html
steve, i'm listening to this now. what does the MP3 "contemporary" genre
mean? i've always associated "contempory" with fm radio contemporary rock
or something. is contemporary supposed to be the avant guarde slot?
during the piece the piano is becoming the focal, holding it together, and
the work seems to go episodically in and out of style spaces... not surreal
to me at all (which, in 2001, i think would involve playing, concurrently,
two identical martin denny L.P.'s at once. one of them with the spindlehole
off-center).
the piece gives a nice playful space. it reminds me of some of the 3D card
testing animations, where the deal is to show textures and the rapidity of
the card's calculations. i wish your rhythms were a little more complex
here. it all comes off like coctail lounge music for a movie, because of
the soothing pianna, and you're waiting for the thunk-thunk of the drums to
come in too. (maybe this is totally surreal music, though, in some space?
like Berklee consciousness? ("man, waat are you doing to the beat??"). i
remember playing some modern-chord complexities at a jazz roadhouse in
alabama in the sixties? somebody told the waitress, "ax him to play "Ebb
Tide"".
mike
Steve Layton
news:r8417.26366$WI.78...@typhoon.hawaii.rr.com...
> dal...@speakeasy.org (Steve Layton) wrote in
> <tk9hl8n...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/1682/1682972.html
>
> steve, i'm listening to this now. what does the MP3 "contemporary" genre
> mean? i've always associated "contempory" with fm radio contemporary rock
> or something. is contemporary supposed to be the avant guarde slot?
>
Genres are the bane of "MP3 life" on the web. Each site usually already has
determined what genres they're going to have, and it's up to the composer to
squeeze it into one or the other. For example, at MP3.com the main
subdivisions under "Classical" that a composer can use is either
"Contemporary", "Experimental", "Minimal", "Electronic Classical", "Film
Music" (or they could simply try to stick each piece into its appropriate
instrument sub-genre; "symphonic", "piano", "percussion", etc.). Half the
stuff in any genre is sorely misplaced; usually because either the work
doesn't fit so easily into any of them, or that the composers/musicians
themselves have either poor or overly-grandiose ideas of what their own work
is.
Some composers find it easier to opt for putting most of their work into a
single genre like "experimental" or "contemporary" just to keep everything
consistent, and because it hardly matters anyway. Of them all, I go for
"contemporary" simply because it's the most apt and still least specific of
the sub-genres. It's simply "of the times". I stay out of the straight
instrumental genres because they're more the preserve of the performer, and
of standard classics; I'll pop something into "minimal" if that's what's
really going on in the piece; but I leave "experimental" only for a work
that goes quite a bit farther into some territory or process that starts to
leave standard compositional practices or "goals" behind. (in that case,
sometimes things wander so far as to end up in one of the "Electronic"
subgenres, like"abstract".)
...........
> during the piece the piano is becoming the focal, holding it together, and
> the work seems to go episodically in and out of style spaces... not
surreal
> to me at all (which, in 2001, i think would involve playing, concurrently,
> two identical martin denny L.P.'s at once. one of them with the
spindlehole
> off-center).
"Surreal" in the sense of not being afraid of letting it flow into whatever
stylistic area that might suggest itself to me, often in quick succession
over just a few seconds. The piano does "carry" the piece quite a bit, but
as often as not it is the one being "carried" by the particular moment.
Almost every figure is loaded with so much chromatic decoration "in between
the cracks" that at any moment it can sort of "crumble" into some other
area.
(Your other example might work, but ideally you'd want to keep a stack of
other & very different records on hand to spin against the Martin Denny, as
the unexplainable urge came...)
> the piece gives a nice playful space. it reminds me of some of the 3D card
> testing animations, where the deal is to show textures and the rapidity of
> the card's calculations. i wish your rhythms were a little more complex
> here.
>it all comes off like coctail lounge music for a movie, because of
> the soothing pianna, and you're waiting for the thunk-thunk of the drums
to
> come in too.
The general rhythm (and most of the periodicity) moves in bigger waves; the
smaller rhythms are very "complex", just rarely periodic on that level. In a
way, it is close to that cinematic or "cocktail-jazz" thing, but the drums
will never show up here because those associations are really reflections of
things drawn upon in those forms from the whole "fin de siècle" ethos,
something that was very much its own thing before the next guys absorbed it
into other stylistic norms. In a sense, I'm going back and "absorbing" that
milieu through my own "history"; the stuff since then that has shaped a lot
of my own awarness, and I never much followed jazz or film music the way I
did 20th cent. classical.
Thanks for the comments, mike.
orangie
>area.
>
>(Your other example might work, but ideally you'd want to keep a stack
>of other & very different records on hand to spin against the Martin
>Denny, as the unexplainable urge came...)
>
naw, the surreal part is the lifting of the mindlessness of a consumer
object into the emblematic by having the listener say, "this shouldn't be
like this!", he knowing suddenly that there is some real formal object
called "martin denny L.P.", and that it's reality is being divided into
real/unreal... something the hot-tub music listener usually doesn't do.
this is like repeating the word "cummerbund" 300 times: the concept of the
guy repeating the word 300 times is the surreal. the repetition of the
word, however, is is dada. "surreal" doesn't mean "randoM"
orangie
>are really reflections of
>things drawn upon in those forms from the whole "fin de siècle" ethos,
>
"fin de siècle... is this like, "palm room tea time" or Schonberg's
"Galatea"? are we doing "middle-classes couldn't afford real art so they
encouraged the new movements as a source for their own authentication as
Kultured?" or, is it smoking opium in the Louvre?
wait. are you holding two glass negatives up to the light: one of the city
of lights and the other the city of manhatten, and saying "these are both a
turn of the century, but of different centuries", and superimposing them?
why would a linguistic trick like "2000" mean anything profound?
mike
Steve Layton
> >of other & very different records on hand to spin against the Martin
> >Denny, as the unexplainable urge came...)
> >
>
> naw, the surreal part is the lifting of the mindlessness of a consumer
> object into the emblematic by having the listener say, "this shouldn't be
> like this!", he knowing suddenly that there is some real formal object
> called "martin denny L.P.", and that it's reality is being divided into
> real/unreal... something the hot-tub music listener usually doesn't do.
Yeah, but the "two Dennys" on the turntables together sounds seems a more
purely "automatic" as opposed to "subconcious". That would put it closer to
Dada/Futurism than Surrealism, seems to me.
> this is like repeating the word "cummerbund" 300 times: the concept of the
> guy repeating the word 300 times is the surreal. the repetition of the
> word, however, is is dada. "surreal" doesn't mean "randoM"
You're right that surrealism isn't randomness per se. Surrealism is still
about choices and connections, even if the choices and connections follow no
discernable logic or pattern. The artist still creates through some form of
will. But the artist or audience can also take any collection of random
elements and create whole worlds of relations and meaning from them. In your
example there, the surreal moment comes not from the mere fact of the 300
repetitions, but in the guy choosing and executing that particular course
(which is really always only half the equation; the action doesn't mean
anything without the acompanying *REaction*, whether from the guy himself or
someone else observing).
Steve Layton
> dal...@speakeasy.org (Steve Layton) wrote in
> <tkcg9kj...@corp.supernews.com>:
>
> >are really reflections of
> >things drawn upon in those forms from the whole "fin de siècle" ethos,
> >
>
> "fin de siècle... is this like, "palm room tea time" or Schonberg's
> "Galatea"? are we doing "middle-classes couldn't afford real art so they
> encouraged the new movements as a source for their own authentication as
> Kultured?" or, is it smoking opium in the Louvre?
>
Hey! What part of the stuff you mentioned above ISN'T still happening, in
whatever current costume it might have now?
> wait. are you holding two glass negatives up to the light: one of the city
> of lights and the other the city of manhatten, and saying "these are both
a
> turn of the century, but of different centuries", and superimposing them?
> why would a linguistic trick like "2000" mean anything profound?
The "2000" bit doesn't really figure much at all in the equation. But I do
like that "twin negative" image (except that I might not pick NYC), and it's
more than just two specific images. The word that keeps drifting up in my
mind is "affinities", though with all of its definitional shadings rolling
around together.
orangie
>
>Yeah, but the "two Dennys" on the turntables together sounds seems a
>more purely "automatic" as opposed to "subconcious". That would put it
>closer to Dada/Futurism than Surrealism, seems to me.
>
naw, the deal is, that we'd normally see the denny as a consumable, and
when it gets denominalized by the conceptual shift, then we grab at this
thing that's the denny and suddenly it has a hyper-reality, it is what it
is as a physical object, instead of as this aesthetic thing. the
surrealist's point was that it was at That moment that the objects of
reality were served up to us. i don't think this is the case, because the
state of objectivity isn't very truthful... things always return to what
they are For us... and, if we don't know very much, then the things won't
have many layers of meaning either. i think it runs from "that's just a..."
to [the actual becoming of] a fetish. you dig? so, it's not just
strangeness, it's that suddenly everything that Isn't a denny is strange.
and that's surreal.
orangie
>the action doesn't mean
>anything without the acompanying *REaction*, whether from the guy
>himself or someone else observing).
>
>
yeah, well... we're sort of out of surrealism nowadays, cause we think it's
a verbal game, to set up a surrealist situation, and the levels of framing
just drop back to include the gamer.
did you ever read Breton's "Nadja"? he has this thing at the end, where he
says "this is the dumbest joke"... a mr duval checks into a hotel. he says
to the clerk, "i have a terrible memory, so, when i come in, you must tell
me my room number." "Very well", says the clerk. mr duval goes out, and,
when he comes in, the clerk says, "mr duval, your room is number 34". mr
duval goes up to his room. but, ten minutes later a man comes through the
front door. his clothes are torn and he is covered with dirt. he says to
the clerk, in a weak voice, "i am mr duval...". Oh, Non, says the clerk.
you are not mr duval, you are a bum. mr duval just went up to his room!"
"oh, no, it's me", says the man. "i just fell out the window".
he thinks it's surreal that he's telling a joke that he admits not
understanding. this is the artist's attempt to change the style of language
into a style he isn't underware of.
dada came first.
mike
orangie
it sounds like you're really working on this, so i'll merge, cause the cool
thing is that you might reinvent the concept. one of my favorite f.d.s.
musics was written at the actual f.d.c at the end of ww2: Strauss's four
last songs". the atmosphere here is probably closer to what was lost than
anything written in the 1890's... and verklärt' knab'n was written in,
what, 1899, by that smooth-cheeked lad?
leopold
Steve Layton
[.....]
>... one of my favorite fin de siècle
> musics was written at the actual f.d.c at the end of ww2: Strauss's "four
> last songs". the atmosphere here is probably closer to what was lost than
> anything written in the 1890's... and verklärt' knab'n was written in,
> what, 1899, by that smooth-cheeked lad?
.....
The "Four Last Songs" are excellent, I agree. Brings up the whole
rumination:
Composers, who were highly significant and influential during certain
periods, and still have major works today in the permanent repertoire, who
still lived and composed for twenty or even more years past the period
everyone thinks of them in. Guys like Strauss, Saint-Saëns (who died
something like 8 or 9 years after "Le Sacre du Printemps" premiered), come
to mind. There's even for me little echoes of this thought in something like
Stravinsky's "Requiem Canticles", those last chords going straight back to
his own stuff from the time immediately post-"Sacre".
There's something about the once-extremely-relevant becoming irrelevant,
sure; but given the same quality of invention and craft, why can the later
works almost never attain the same level of respect that the earlier works
do?
Tim Risher
> There's something about the once-extremely-relevant becoming irrelevant,
> sure; but given the same quality of invention and craft, why can the later
> works almost never attain the same level of respect that the earlier works
> do?
It seems to be a modern phenomenom - that the later works are not
"groundbreaking" or "earth shattering", like "The Rake's Progress" or "The
Four Last Songs". But look at earlier composers- Bach, for example - his
later works are great - "The Art of Fugue" etc., or Beethoven's late string
quartets. These works are "earth shattering" in a different way.
We think nowadys in terms of expectation, expecting constantly shattering,
bold new works which introduce new and exciting paths. When a composer
develops a style that defines a period or sums up one, however, his later
works develop within the rules set by that "earth-shattering" piece.
Tim Risher
http://www.timrisher.de
Steve Layton
"Tim Risher" <ris...@joice.net> wrote in message
news:3b481...@news-2.misc.net...
Hi Tim. I'd noticed too of course, that this is way more common from the
close of the 19th century onward. Maybe it's just a function of more people
generally living longer; like most composers before were dying at about
their "peak", say 45 to 65?
Then there's the whole "retrenchment" camp; from Hindemith on up to
Penderecki, maybe even Glass & Co.? That seems to be another phemomenon born
in the 20th century. (Unless we think guys like Berlioz stepped back after
the "Symphonie Fantastique" or "Requiem"...)
Tim Risher
> close of the 19th century onward. Maybe it's just a function of more
people
> generally living longer; like most composers before were dying at about
> their "peak", say 45 to 65?
No, I think it was a growing awarness in the 19th century for "music
history" and the belief that music progresses. Also the idea that a
composer must also "progress" within his own works. I don't agree that music
"progresses", I think that as society changes and philosophies change, the
arts change along with it - painting, music, etc. Within their lives
composers develop a style and then work within it. It can lead them to
different directions, perhaps intentionally or unintentionally opening new
paths which influences other composers.
>
> Then there's the whole "retrenchment" camp; from Hindemith on up to
> Penderecki, maybe even Glass & Co.? That seems to be another phemomenon
born
> in the 20th century. (Unless we think guys like Berlioz stepped back after
> the "Symphonie Fantastique" or "Requiem"...)
As I don't believe in the idea of "progress", I think that they didn't
"retrench", but instead, based on the philosophy of the 19th century,
returned to an earlier style that they felt was "beautiful" and "romantic"
and "smooth". They believed that music had "progressed" in the wrong
direction (Strauss and Co.).
Steve Reich has certainly not retrenched, his later works - "Different
Trains", for example, is certainly a major work and shows a lot of new
directions in its structures. "City Life", on the other hand, is a dull, dry
work that I'm sure he wrote in about ten seconds. Just because he isn't
writing like he did for "Drumming" or for "Music for 18 musicians" (which is
one of the top ten works of the 20th century) doesn't mean he is going to
suddenly compose like Mahler. (And I split my infinitive, I know.)
What does it mean now in the 21st century to step back? Strauss could step
back to something definite, but stepping back to romanticism now always (to
me) seems to be kind of cinematic.
Tim Risher
http://www.timrisher.de
Tim Risher
>
>
> Saint-Saens is a whole 'nother case. The only late music that ever gets
> done are those wind sonatas. Why?
because we are very, very lucky. :)
Tim Risher
http://www.timrisher.de
Steve Layton
"Jeffrey Quick" <j...@po.cwru.edu> wrote in message
news:jaq-ya02408000R1707011134120001@news...
> In article <3b4b6...@news-2.misc.net>, "Tim Risher" <ris...@joice.net>
wrote:
>
> > As I don't believe in the idea of "progress", I think that they didn't
> > "retrench", but instead, based on the philosophy of the 19th century,
> > returned to an earlier style that they felt was "beautiful" and
"romantic"
> > and "smooth". They believed that music had "progressed" in the wrong
> > direction (Strauss and Co.).
>
> was ever an avant-gardiste. Sure, you've got Salome and Elektra, but
there
> you're supporting the stage action (but the older Strauss wouldn't have
> chosen those libretti, so it may be begging the question). And arguably
> some of the local harmonic events in late Strauss are non-tonal. I think
of
> late Strauss as quintessential "late-period" music...getting rid of ego
and
> extraneities, craft in overdrive. One can even argue that the mature
> Strauss starts with Rosenkavalier....
I wouldn't have used "progressed" either; but I do think they were aware
that they'd gone "someplace", and that the "someplace" was not where they or
even some of their contemporaries had been before. And they have also to be
aware of where of that shift, as either they and the general "spirit of the
time" diverge.
While Rosenkavalier and beyond is certainly mature Strauss, the stuff that's
been taken to the limit way before that, in Salome and Elektra, is not just
brash and "new"; it's also handled with a kind of mastery that leaves me
completely in admiration. That's one of the hallmarks of a great many
masterworks; the "discovery" is made and at the same moment the "discoverer"
shows the kind of sureness and skill that usually takes other ideas a
lifetime of tradition to develop.
The point about "Avant-garde" is, I think, quite true but raises another
interesting question:
Who in music "pre-19-something", while of course not using the term,
*themselves* considered what they were doing to be what we now define as
"avant-garde"? How many composers saw themselves going beyond innovation
within the tradition, saw themselves *redefining* all or some part of music?
--
Pradyut Shah
> In article <tl95o65...@corp.supernews.com>, "Steve Layton"
> <dal...@speakeasy.org> wrote:
>
> > The point about "Avant-garde" is, I think, quite true but raises another
> > interesting question:
> > Who in music "pre-19-something", while of course not using the term,
> > *themselves* considered what they were doing to be what we now define as
> > "avant-garde"? How many composers saw themselves going beyond innovation
> > within the tradition, saw themselves *redefining* all or some part of music?
>
> Interesting question. Wagner and Liszt maybe. And there were others
> recognized by their contemporaries as doing something new and
> different. But the arrogance of redefining a language seems to be a
> 20th-c. phenomenon.
And Wagner was not arrogant when he wanted to shake up and redefine
what music and opera should be like?
-- PS
Steve Layton
"Pradyut Shah" <pra...@cs.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:as0u20b...@varese.cs.uchicago.edu...
> > j...@po.cwru.edu (Jeffrey Quick) writes:
> > Interesting question. Wagner and Liszt maybe. And there were others
> > recognized by their contemporaries as doing something new and
> > different. But the arrogance of redefining a language seems to be a
> > 20th-c. phenomenon.
>
> And Wagner was not arrogant when he wanted to shake up and redefine
> what music and opera should be like?
Arrogant, sure. But "avant-garde"? No matter how much what he created
changed the face of both music and theater of the age, I have a hard time
reading anything he did as showing him thinking consciously of himself as
the "avant-garde". Jeffrey mentions Liszt as well; same thing. The quality
of their own conception seems different. Beriloz? same. even as late as
Debussy, the things we tend to associate with the idea of avant-garde seem
more unstated, less directly "the goal".
Steve Layton
> In article <3b548...@news-2.misc.net>, "Tim Risher" <ris...@joice.net>
wrote:
>
> > > Saint-Saens is a whole 'nother case. The only late music that ever
gets
> > > done are those wind sonatas. Why?
> >
> >
> > because we are very, very lucky. :)
>
> tastes. But come on, did he suddenly forget how to write music in 1888?
> Was he written out after Carnival and Symphony #3? That's like 35 years of
> career totally ignored.
> And how come he got lucky with his first opera, and wrote a dozen turkeys
> after that?
....
And I seem to recall that Ravel was always pretty fond of Saint-Saens'
music; called him a genius. There are accounts of Ravel often jump-starting
his own inspiration by sitting down at the piano with usually either a
Mozart or Saint-Saens concerto.
Inotmark
>> The point about "Avant-garde" is, I think, quite true but raises another
>> interesting question:
>> Who in music "pre-19-something", while of course not using the term,
>> *themselves* considered what they were doing to be what we now define as
>> "avant-garde"? How many composers saw themselves going beyond innovation
>> within the tradition, saw themselves *redefining* all or some part of
>music?
well, rosen argues this point in favor of the innovations in sonata form
procedures used by mozart and haydn around 1778 for the first time. bach was
soundly criticized for not keeping with the times in the 1840's and there was
this whole ars nova thing in the 1300's...
>
>Interesting question. Wagner and Liszt maybe. And there were others
>recognized by their contemporaries as doing something new and different.
>But the arrogance of redefining a language seems to be a 20th-c.
>phenomenon.
this arrogance is a reflection of a larger cultural process documented in
barzun's latest book 'from dawn to decadence' and also discussed in the fourth
volume of campbell's 'masks of god'. essentially the sanctity of the individual
has triumphed over the group to such an extent that individual inspiration and
language have become the halmarks of insight and creativity. it is a
self-defeating process, hence barzun's reference to the situation as decadent.
Tim Risher
> recognized by their contemporaries as doing something new and different.
> But the arrogance of redefining a language seems to be a 20th-c.
> phenomenon.
I dunno. The Camerata at the beginning of the 17th century (Monteverdi,
Caccini, etc) certainly understood and knew they were redefining the music
when they started writing their recitatives and operas. And the composers of
the Mannheim school certainly knew they were redefining the orchestra (and
the musc with it) with their experiments. The 20th century perhaps
introduced the conflict of a wide diversity of redefinings at the same time
(although I guess once again this would have to be qualified - the classical
composers recognized two styles of composing - secular and sacred, and
medieval music has many styles, but these are more shadings of a common
overarching style rather than an actual competing ideas) in all the arts as
well as in society.
Tim Risher
http://www.timrisher.de