Thursday, December 23, 2004

A new song added

I have added a new song, 'Come Away, Death', to the Songs score page on my web site (www.hand2ear.org). I have also put up PDF versions of the songs for people who have trouble with the Sibelius Scorch plugin.

The song is a simple setting of the text from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I originally wanted to write it as a real theater song, but the character of the music makes it quite unusable for stage. Nevertheless, I like the song as it is - a dreamy and rather passionate art song.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Progressive/repetitive formal schemas

ABC
ABCD
_BCD
_BCDE
__CDE
__CDEF

etc.

ABC
_BCA
_BCD
__CDB
__CDE

etc.

ways to move forward (with repetition) in a time-based piece (music, dance, video, perhaps theater)

could be layered on top of each other in a medium that admits to layering

From a letter of Kafka

"The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation - a book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us."


Perhaps this is true. But I can think of other kinds of books that I want.

Friday, November 26, 2004

Mister Flint

metiCulously carved
Human faces
intricate hIeroglyphs
filled with Combinations
of calligrapHic lines -
so-callEd bald, tall
and ecceNtric

mister flInt's jewels
were collecTed from
an idealiZed ruin
by European observers

thief
scholar
tall
bald
eccentric
so-called
Mister Flint

Friday, November 19, 2004

Cantata: the ancient astronomers

the heavens were a vast sphere, made of fire

dimidium ejus spati

for space was infinite and had no center

diapason

its base was the apparent disc of the sun
sixty times the equatorial radius of earth

a cone had its apex at the center of the earth
the distance to the moon and back

each planet lived in spheres numbered four

three spheres confined the moon

fere tantundem

he did not believe in the large parallax

in the region of the clouds and winds
the horizon equally divided the ecliptic

the homocentric spheres

sescuplum

why did the sun show no movement in lattitude?

diapason

the error disappeared at syzygy
in the pure and liquid air of continual light

dimidium

the shadow of the earth reached the sun's orbit
the planets continued gliding in their epicycles

in the lunar parallax
he observed the distances of zenith
at noon for three hundred stadia he saw no shadows

for space was infinite and had no center

dimidium

for space was a sphere, and earth was its center

diapason

Eudoxus
Hipparchus
Thales
Menelaus
Ptolemy
Kleomedes
Archimedes
Posidonius
Theon

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

A structural idea - time or space

layer 1) abcdea_b_c_d_e_a__b__c__d__e__
layer 2) a_b_c_d_e_a__b__c__d__e__abcde
layer 3) a__b__c__d__e__abcdea_b_c_d_e_


time/space --->


Saturday, November 06, 2004

Daniel Webster on Military conscription

...Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?

Under what concealment has this power lain hidden which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life itself, not when the safety of their country and its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it?

Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from substance of a free government.

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Lovely Child

my tongUe speaks
to aNy ear;
Days go by,
growing moRe
unsEasonable;
theSe days that remain -
it doeSn't
mattEr how many.
Day turns to night;
I bake Bread for you,
mY lovely
chiLd.
hOw did you gain
the silVer which
enslavEs you?

from Rumi 10-24-03

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

James Tenney's Forms I-IV

Reading the liner notes of the Hat Art recording of James Tenney's Forms leads one to expect some kind of dry, conceptual exercise. Each has a simple structure made by slowly adding and subtracting tones from a sound mass produced by sixteen players who play single pitches at indeterminate but regular times. The pitches are derived from the harmonic series, and this becomes apparent at the end of the second piece, which becomes a dominant 7th chord, then the 7th goes away, leaving a major chord, etc.

But the effect of this is anything but dry. The busy sections seem to buzz and hum with life, and when the music becomes low and soft, it feels like an underground river with occasional sparkles of light in the darkness.

It has been a long time since I have heard a piece of new music this original and beautiful. The music seems to hold within it the whole world of phenomena and feeling. In its inexorable, non-dramatic way, it is very moving.

The four pieces are interleaved with four other works, one each by Varese, Cage, Wolpe, and Feldman. Tenney has dedicated one of the Forms to each of these composers. If Tenney feels indebted to these composers, he has paid his debt most generously.

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Joseph Cornell

The obJects that he used -
marbles and wOoden perches,
even a Stray cockatoo -
found thEir way into
cabinets of sParseness;
many of tHem unoccupied.


Joseph Cornell.

The exhibition Consisted
of bOx constructions,
also CamelopaRdalis...
He iNcorporated constellations,
figurEs of Auriga,
coLumns, seashells -
the compLex nature of existence.


Joseph Cornell.

12/02

Aria

How Dismal!
All of my fleas
bite Me bloody!
DooM's apprentice
opeNs his
massive mAw,
drooling wiTh pleasure!
Oh, my paIns
and sOrrows!
None worse
than black despaiR!
In my distrEss
I calleD, "Willie, Willie!"
and whEn they
carried hiM hither,
the dolPhins leapt high,
yeT soon fell back again.
All while the brIght moon
shOne, sizzling
its inarticulate soNg!
How Dismal!
they tickle mE
and I'm All itchy!
and wiTh all of this singing
I'm out of breatH...
12-02

Trigger-man

As I slurp my soup, Hamlet admits
that he tAlked to the assasin
before he talked to Me;
then I hear the belLs begin to ring,
as they have tollEd for so many
distinguished sTate-funerals before.
Which one is the Murderer?
the highrAnking official
whose upholstered Carcass gently
trundles off in an expensive Hearse?
or perhaps 'tIs the smelly trigger-man
hiding in some abject laNe, along with
the rest of the populacE?

9/20/02

Friday, October 22, 2004

Ganymed

Their dEnsity can oppress
the heart mUch more gravely than
the deepest layeR of snow-
and now they surrOund Ganymed,
enveloPed in mantles,
neArly as ancient
as the cratEred surface of the moon.
Of coUrse, their hearts,
like woRlds of ice,
are cOld and still-
and JuPiter has turned away,
his feAtures dark-

An astronomy book
4/16/2002