Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composition. Show all posts

Thursday, November 26, 2009

2 Brünish somethings

2 related somethings written by Herbert Brün that I want to keep around.

First, from th program notes of his String Quartet No. 3:

If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components, will be misunderstood, instead, as one in which the components give meaning to their context.

In order to retard this development, this visitation of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too commonly is mistaken for understanding of music.


Th second, from My Words And Where I Want Them, #247:

Composition generates whole systems so that there be a context which can endow trivial 'items' and meaningless 'materials' with a sense and a meaning never before associated with either items or materials.

Be it linguistic art, where the sentence injects meaningful intent into mere lexicographic vocables, thus turning these into words-

be it visual art, where the configuration injects meaningful intent into mere perceptible data, thus turning these into spaces, shapes, movements and colorpatterns-

be it audible art, where the structuring of time and distance injects meaningful intent into mere acoustical phenomena, thus turning these into musical events-

sooner or later both the profiteering interpreters and the consuming audience will perversely deny the composers' competence and, instead, declare the sentence to be meant by its words, the painting to be meant by its components, and the music to be meant by its sounds.

In order to retard this unfortunate and inevitable decay (too many humans are indistinguishable from laws of nature) for as long as possible, I have contrived to inhibit such gesture forming tendencies in most of my compositions by using many a non sequitur as a structural leap over new gaps avoiding old bridges.

The intent is motivated by my non-malicious desire to keep not only my music as alienated as possible from 'business as usual' and to have not only my composition say something to the interpreter and the listener for the longer time than it may take them to just repeat their habitual commonplaces to themselves.

The survival of composition depends on the composer's art: anticommunication.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

some latelies

Bits of nowish goings in andRLand (traveling backwards in time):

  • Now: recovering from an inter-co-op potluck, lying on th oh so comfy bed in our livingroom.
  • This evening: met w/ Snowleopard & Dogbody about playing dead people.
  • This afternoon: started arranging th old Nim song 'how to ferment th colon' in 17edo.
  • This morning: totaled meat at th food co-op I work at.
  • Last night: auditioned an improvised dance w/ friend Sarah for th dance department of U of I, playing cümbüş.
  • Yesterday afternoon: digitized.
  • Yesterday morning: chatted w/ Drew over tea.
  • Sunday evening: went to a lovely concert in somebody's living room.
  • Sunday afternoon: cleaned my room; started reading th Diamond Sutra.
  • Sunday morning: groggy house meeting.
  • Early Sunday morning: drove home from Chicago, arriving after 2 am.
  • Saturday evening: attended a party in candlelight at AKJ's place in Evanston, IL to ring in th spring; debuted a brand new piece w/ Jacob for a grand piano tuned to a microtonal scale called Centaur; danced & shouted; imbibed wines; recited poetry.
  • Saturday afternoon: took Jacob to my "old neighborhood" in Chicago; we visited El Taco Veloz for lunch & Myopic Books for compulsive reading buys (for me: th Diamond Sutra & a new (for me) version of th Bhagavad Gita - for Jacob: Philosophy in th Flesh).
  • Saturday morning: finished preparing Centaur piece w/ Jacob & rehearsed it.
  • Friday night: saw an improv comedy show in Chicago at iO.
  • Friday evening: arrived by accident 24 hours early for th concert in Evanston!
  • Friday afternoon: rode north (w/ Jacob driving); made last-minute plans for our piece.
  • Friday morning: selected poetry for spring celebration (3 by Wallace Stevens); brainstormed for Centaur piece..
  • Thursday night: potluck at La Casa; I made black bean burgers!
  • Thursday evening: went to Bobbi's art opening at th IMC & chatted it up.
  • Thursday afternoon: began composing Centaur piece w/ Jacob.
  • Thursday morning: worked at food co-op, stockin' stuff.
  • Wednseday night: ate at Courier Cafe w/ Beth, Anna, Jacob, Mark, & th folks in Insurgent Theatre.
  • Wednesday evening: my band w/ Rob & Jacob opened for 'Paint th Town', a play put on by Insurgent Theatre, at th IMC.

& so on. We could take this all th way back to my birth, I suppose, but frankly, I don't remember much before Wednesday evening....