I actually dreamed this morning that Obama's secret drone program was really a minimalist sound installation, a kind of soft Phill Niblock piece coming from concealed loudspeakers. … [Read more...]
Virtual Ashley Playground
August 19, 2011 by
University of Illinois Press doesn't allow musical examples in their books (scares off too many prospective buyers, I guess), and so, like so many musicological authors these days, I'm putting my musical examples for Robert Ashley on the internet. I've started a Robert Ashley Web Page on which you can see excerpts from Ashley's scores, hear some brief audio examples, and see a little analysis. Five pages are up now, covering passages from the Piano Sonata of 1959, Perfect Lives, eL/Aficionado, Outcome Inevitable, and Celestial Excursions. I'll … [Read more...]
Kiss Off, Purists
June 7, 2011 by
Liturgy, the band my son plays in, received an interesting review in the Times today. … [Read more...]
Calling All Minimalismologists
August 14, 2008 by
I'm figuring out how to manage the Society for Minimalist Music web page. It's now got information for applying to the Second International Conference on Minimalist Music, which takes place in Kansas City September 2-6, 2009, as well as the specifics of the one-day conference at Goldsmiths coming up in London this September 13. Sorry information heretofore has been so... minimal. … [Read more...]
An Embarrassment of Too Many Pianos
April 9, 2008 by
My music has two performances this weekend. The first is a multiple-piano concert Friday, April 11, at 8 at the College of Fine Arts Concert Hall at Boston University. Pianists Rodney Lister, David Kopp, and Ketty Nez will play my 1981 piece Long Night, in an intriguing-looking program that also includes Arthur Berger's Polyphony, Ingolf Dahl's The Fancy Blue Devil's Breakdown, and Rodney's own Detour. Saturday evening at 7:30, Kate Ryder is giving a recital of toy piano works at the Space Enterprise Festival in London, at 269 Westferry … [Read more...]
Zuni Totalism
March 25, 2008 by
Below is the complete transcription of part of a Zuni Buffalo Dance from Robert Cogan's and Pozzi Escot's 1976 book Sonic Design, one of the best books of musical analysis ever written. (Though long out of print, you can still get print-to-order copies on the web.) This is the book which introduced me to the practice of switching back and forth among different tempos in Southwest American Indian music. Combined with the rhythmic theory I already knew from Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources, it elicited in me an interest in meters with … [Read more...]
Sins of My Youth Revisited
March 22, 2008 by
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Ralph Waldo EmersonSorry for being remiss lately in my role as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of classical music - it's been more than a week since I've said anything my followers need distance themselves from - but I've been preoccupied with something peculiar. One of the things that has surprised me most in the last seven years is what a nurturing presence my early music has for me. I seem to go through a pattern. Of course, like … [Read more...]
Truth Be Damned
March 18, 2008 by
Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on inside. And on and on. The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs … [Read more...]
Will I respect Myself in the Morning for This?
October 11, 2006 by
The new minimalism. Dedicated to Alex Ross. … [Read more...]
Recent Comments
Phillip Bush on Ives, Caught Between Two Caricatures
One of the most perceptive things I've read about Ives, anywhere. Thank you! Ives' omnivorous vision (if one use such...mclaren on Ives, Caught Between Two Caricatures
Once again we get a high-octane musician slamming a composer for producing "naïve" work. And what, I ask you, is...Bob Gilmore on Ives, Caught Between Two Caricatures
Agreed. I love Ives 1, terrific piece. But I'd have to say my favourite of all the symphonies is the...M. on Ives, Caught Between Two Caricatures
Mr. Plush has already written, in his first sentence, what I would have liked to. Consider it seconded.Bill B on Ives, Caught Between Two Caricatures
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