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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Theory Dreams

Last night the American Symphony Orchestra played Brahms’s First Piano Concerto here at Bard, with Blanca Uribe as soloist. As you may know, the work starts off with an aggressive drone on D, above which the theme enters on a surprising B-flat major triad. Much later in the 22-minute first movement, in the recapitulation, the orchestra lands dramatically on that D drone again, only this time, the soloist slaps down the theme on an E major triad, a tritone away from the opening statement and thus the biggest harmonic shock possible; the D drone is the third of the B-flat chord but the seventh of an E dominant, so instead of the expected VI6 you get V2/V, as radical a reinterpretation as Brahms could have managed within his musical language, and a seeming brazen coup for the pianist. I had written the program notes and drew attention to this demonically brilliant moment, which may be my favorite in Brahms’s entire output.

This morning I dreamed about those B-flat and E entries as standing at opposite ends of human experience and encompassing all thought between them. The B-flat was feminine, the E masculine, one was radical and the other conservative, et cetera, a symbol for a whole philosophical system. And the dream went on for seeming hours, as I traveled through ancient and exotic lands, relating everything I came across back to some point in the spectrum defined by B-flat versus E in relation to some eternal grounding on D.

As you’ve guessed before, it’s pretty weird being me.

What’s going on here

So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

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

David Doty's Just Intonation site

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

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