Caution, Slow Listener

I usually think of Dvorak's music as being "nice", not earth-shaking, but also not gag inducing. On the other had, I can't abide
Tchaikovsky. Hearing him makes think "what a waste of decent tunes."

"Paradoxical response" is the general term used when someone has the opposite to the expected reaction to a pharmaceutical, like you and the Benadryl. Looks like that might be a useful term for your responses to the Nutcracker and Dvorak as well. At any rate, this last series of posts has been great. Congratulations on the Planets. Looking forward to the CD.

KG replies: Clever juxtaposition. Perhaps my entire life has been a series of paradoxical responses.

"In my own music, I am obsessed with making the bar-line disappear."

Reminds me of Satie's approach. I've heard too many works where phrasing is limited to bar lines.

Keep on the voluminous blogging... though of course I wish all the best for your health and good sleeeping is part of that.

The other day when you wrote about Dvorák I remembered the ten-measure-phrases of the third movement of the 8th Symphony. That's very pretty and a favourite of mine. Is it derived from folk style or am I mistaken?

KG replies: Dunno. Those Slavs have all the interesting rhythms, though.

Being unfamiliar with the term "Totalism", went to Wikipedia. Are you OK with this sentence?

>>The term totalist refers to the aims of the music, in trying to have enough surface rhythmic energy (often emulating pop) to attract unsophisticated listeners, but also to contain enough background complexity to satisfy connoisseurs.

KG replies: Heck, I may have written it.

If there's something strange
In your polymeter
Who you gonna call
(Groovebusters)
If the rhythm's weird
And it sounds real good
Who you gonna call
(Groovebusters)

I ain't afraid of isorhythms
I ain't afraid of isorhtyhms

If you're seeing tuplets
Running through your score
Who can you call
(Groovebusters)
An invisible beat
Leaking through the bar
Oh, who you gonna call
(Groovebusters)

I ain't afraid of isorhythms
I ain't afraid of isorhythms

Interestingly Balinese music might be a counter example. The more developed music is in the simplest meters and phrase lengths. the odd meters/lengths are more common in the smaller ensembles. I think other world music examples bare this out.

One might argue it takes a good composer to make such regularity work. But i won't in this case

I am not convinced the endless meandering of the late romantics is the result of imagination any more than one would look at urban sprawl as imaginative city planning. (One might compare musical forms to the history of cities designs to in which they are created).
It basically has lead to a collapse of long forms as having much musical meaning. Perhaps the minimalist brought these back. but more often as monotheist enterprises.

Dear kraig Grady,

Early U.S. blues and country recordings -- Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, Carter Family, Woody Guthrie -- frequently depart from 4/4 time from 4-bar phrases; later stuff is much more regulated/regular.

Poet/translator/essayist and theorist of ethnopoetics Jerome Rothenberg has an axiom: Primitive means complex.

I'm easy -- I tend not to mind neat 4-bar phrases as long as there's not a drummer in the group whacking out every damn beat.

Not that I'd necessarily want to play such a piece, though.