Alex Ross's Blog, page 95

La crépuscule des dieux

A Wagnerian canvas by the forgotten Fauvist painter Alcide Le Beau (1873-1943).

La crépusucle des dieux

A Wagnerian canvas by the forgotten Fauvist painter Alcide Le Beau (1873-1943).

Bookshelf

New and recent titles of interest.

Daniel Bergner, Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family (Lee Boudreaux)

Virgil Thomson, The State of Music & Other Writings, ed. Tim Page (Library of America)

Michael Marissen, Bach & God (Oxford UP)

Stuart Jeffries, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School (Verso)

Jennie Gottschalk, Experimental Music Since 1970 (Bloomsbury)

Branden W. Joseph, Experimentations: John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture (Bloomsbury)

Michael Reynolds, Creating Der Rosenkavalier: From Chevalier to Cavalier (Boydell)

Music after 9/11

Cantos Cautivos is an extraordinary digital archive devoted to music written, sung, and heard in centers for political detention and torture in Chile under the regime of Augusto Pinochet, who seized power on September 11, 1973, with clandestine American support. I've only just begun to explore the library, which includes not only musical examples but also testimonies connected with performances in the camps. Here is Renato Alvarado Vidal talking about a spontaneous rendition of the "Ode to Joy" in Cuatro Álamos: "...The warm air of a Santiago autumn entered the cell together with the 'Ode to Joy,' sung by the recognized prisoners of the adjacent prison section: '…Listen, brother, to the song of joy…' And of course he listened, and he sang. I am a terrible singer. Once at Puchuncaví concentration camp, they noticed that out of 320 singers I was the one singing the National Anthem out of tune. But at that moment, I sang too. With all my heart I joined my comrades’ chorus, and I sang. I sang all my joy of staying alive and standing up on my own two feet."

Previously: Music and Violence.

On the Divide

Outside Red Cloud, Nebraska.

A Füsun Köksal moment

Via the Hefarzen Ensemble.

Wandelweiser miscellany

From the score of Eva-Maria Houben's abgemalt.

In my column this week on the wide world of Wandelweiser, I mention Jennie Gottschalk's new book Experimental Music Since 1970 (Bloomsbury). Jennie has built an amazing website called Sound Expanse, which contains vast quantities of material relating to the exploratory music of recent decades. A few days ago she put up a Wandelweiser page, gathering links to many of the principal composers. See also her previous "resource guides" to Jürg Frey and Michael Pisaro, either of which will keep you listening for hours.

A 2009 essay by Pisaro gives an elegant, personal overview of the history and philosophy of the group. In my column I quoted Pisaro's essay "Time's Underground" and Houben's note for her double-bass piece nachtstück. Much helpful information is contained in J. Douglas Barrett's essay "The Silent Network," which appeared in a 2012 Wandelweiser issue of the Contemporary Music Review; in Tim Rutherford-Johnson's 2012 essay "Some Recent Silences," for NewMusicBox; and in Steve Smith's 2014 Boston Globe piece on Pisaro. I was late in coming to terms with Wandelweiser, and I'm grateful to Tim, Steve, and Will Robin's writing for guiding me past some quizzical first reactions.

Points of departure? I might suggest Frey's Second Quartet (a Soundcloud version of the Quatuor Bozzini's Edition Wandelweiser recording); Eva-Maria Houben's abgemalt (a stream of Andy Lee's Irritable Hedgehog recording); a segment of Manfred Werder's stück 1998, with Cristián Alvear, also on Irritable Hedgehog; Antoine Beuger's memory waves, on Vimeo (many more Wandelweiser videos here); and a YouTube excerpt from Pisaro's fields have ears (1) (drawn from Philip Thomas's recording on Another Timbre). Those prepared to make a more substantial investment can pick up Another Timbre's six-CD set Wandelweiser und so weiter. Beyond that, the catalogues of Edition Wandelweiser, Another Timbre, Irritable Hedgehog, Erstwhile, Gravity Wave (Pisaro's personal label), diafani (home of much Houben), and others run to hundreds of entries. More is on the way: I've been listening to an early version of Reinier van Houdt's three-disc survey of Pisaro piano music, soon to emerge on Erstwhile. As I say in my column, many of these releases are not as effortlessly summoned from the ether as we've been conditioned to expect in the digital era, but one can, for example, easily obtain a download of Pisaro's Tombstones.

The percussionist Greg Stuart, one of Pisaro's closest collaborators, will be touring the East Coast this month. On Sept. 16, he'll collaborate with OpenICE on the first full live performance of Pisaro's ricefall (2), at Abron Arts Center in NYC. The sounds of rice grains falling on metallic surfaces will be joined to sine tones and pitched instrumental parts. Read more in Jennie Gottschalk's recent interview with Stuart. The Wandelweiser calendar brings news of events around the world.

Appearance

On September 8, I will give a talk at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The title: "The Schindelmeisser Factor: Willa Cather's First Encounters with Wagner and Wagnerism in Nebraska."

A Deyoe moment

Wandelweiser

Silent Song. The New Yorker, Sept. 5, 2016.