A Triumph of Musicology

Amazingly, composer Mary Jane Leach now has all of the late Julius Eastman's available scores up as PDFs online, including the much-rumored symphony which, in predictable Eastman style, is titled Symphony No. 2. Good luck deciphering them. There is also a cleaner, annotated score of Crazy Nigger, significantly easier to read, made by Dutch composer-pianist Cees Van Zeeland, who arranged a performance of the piece this spring. I also have in my possession my own arrangement of Gay Guerilla for nine guitars, which I would be happy to send a PDF of to interested parties. It's an amazing musicological feat for a composer whose scores were thrown out into the street in the 1980s by the sheriff who evicted Eastman from his apartment, sending him to live in Tompkins Square Park. Those of us who mourned Eastman's death thought none of that music would ever be seen or heard again.

On an unrelated note, allow me to point out the advertisement to the right of this page for the upcoming Hula performance at Symphony Space. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? At least click on it and look, for after a few thousand clicks I begin to make the first money I've made for the hundreds of thousands of words I've written on this blog. If enough people click, maybe I won't end up living in Tompkins Square Park myself!

July 10, 2008 8:32 PM | | Comments (4)

Categories:

4 Comments

By Andy H-D on July 11, 2008 1:05 AM

The idea of digging of musicologically digging into Eastman is an idea that both thrills and terrifies me. I should take this as sign to either get in or get out.

Also, marked me as interested in the guitar arrangement.

By Bg Porter on July 11, 2008 12:16 PM

Is the playlist for PostClassic Radio what's currently in the queue, or is it a list of everything ever included?


The real question is whether I'll hear the Julius Eastman tracks if I stay tuned in...

KG replies: Sorry, that's now just a list of everything I've ever played so far. I used to try to keep a current playlist, but it was too much work, and slowed down my work on the station.

By Patrick Nickleson on July 11, 2008 5:39 PM

Can I be added as one of the people interested in the guitar arrangement? I'm working on a concert of music for electric guitar to perform in the winter semester.

KG replies: I'll put up an PDF soon.

By Mary Jane Leach on July 13, 2008 9:09 PM

Kyle - I'd like a copy of your arrangement. Do you mind if I post it as well?

Also, does your headline imply that I'm a musicologist? ;-)

Finally, Ellie Hisama at Columbia University is working on Julius, so hopefully the burden on me will ease.

On a technical note, Symphony II had been xeroxed onto 24x36 inch paper, and I didn't think I"d ever be able to scan it, to say nothing of just copying it, but a student at Bennington College, Andrew Przystanski managed to do a great job of it.

KG replies: Hi, MJ. My headline implies that musicology is now done by composers. Heck, I just wrote 7000 words in two days about 4'33". I'll send you a PDF of the guitar arrangement.

Leave a comment

Sites To See

Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer

Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by PostClassic published on July 10, 2008 8:32 PM.

Tidbits was the previous entry in this blog.

Academy d'Underrated: Ljubica Maric is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads
Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Stage Write
Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.