Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

Thanks! I'm at the museum tonight, but I'll tuck into these in the morning.

[Luke]

I was about to post some mundane news of the usual sort but - Karl gone guest? What is happening with the world? Anyone know?

[the mundane news was only that I've been working on The Lamb and it's nearly finished, though maybe it shows too much meddling, I don't know. And it may well be too hard for the girls to sing.]

[Guido]

Will get round to listening soon. This violin/voice piece. Is the voice meant to be a man's voice? Surely significant as in one case, the violin will be wrapping around the voice, the other, soaring above it... Trying to play it on the cello both at pitch and an octave down!

[Cato]

Will get round to listening soon. This violin/voice piece. Is the voice meant to be a man's voice? Surely significant as in one case, the violin will be wrapping around the voice, the other, soaring above it... Trying to play it on the cello both at pitch and an octave down!

Very impressive!

The text implies a male voice, but I suppose a woman could still sing the song.

[Luke]

As Cato says, it implies a man, and a man is what I imagine, but I suppose a woman could sing it too. You're right of course about the issue this raises of where the violin sits in relation to the voice, but it's only the same issue e.g. with most piano-voice lieder.

Playing it at pitch on the cello! Wow! You are a glutton for punishment! I wonder how it sits...awkwardly, I am guessing!

Will post Tha Lamb as soon as I feel  it is done - there are still a few stubborn bars. BTW the Fantasy and About Fern Hill still remain almost un-downloaded, if anyone is looking for a laugh... 

[Guido]

I've downloaded both. Give me time, give me time! I want to hear the violin/voice piece too! Interesting about those three pieces you mention - I like them all too. That Villa-Lobos CD is indeed a treat - the two Bachianas Brasileiras are great of course, but I absolutely adore the cello ensemble arrangements of the 48. Makes you realise how lush and sensual Bach is if presented in the right way!

The Holst is lovely. Lots of his songs are actually very fine - despite being so famous he remains very little explored.

I know it's meant to be his principal achievement, but I have so far found solo vocal music hard going, though I do recognise the quality. Though I do enjoy an occasional listen, I'm not sure why the Kafka fragments are so esteemed - I don't find the word setting or accompaniment particularly distinguished, and of course so much is very grating to listen to (clearly by design). I love his choral and instrumental music.

What about cello and voice? There is a small repertoire. Not sure it's of the same calibre. One song by Shostakovich. A few by Tavener. La Voce by Andriessen for solo cellist who simultaneously sings.  What else is there? Surely there's more given how much more adaptable the cello is, and how every bangs on about the cello being the closest to the voice (I never want to hear it again!).

I started composing something for cello and voice once, but didn't get far (as always), but one of my favourite of my youthful scribbles. The poem was Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths by Yeats.

[Guido]

And so good that there's this new found burst of activity! And encouragement from me obviously on the new projects front - on the piano concerto, on white modulations, on the others you mention, and any cello piece of course. I can wait!

We need to get these things performed though...

[Luke]

What about cello and voice? There is a small repertoire. Not sure it's of the same calibre. One song by Shostakovich. A few by Tavener. La Voce by Andriessen for solo cellist who simultaneously sings.  What else is there? Surely there's more given how much more adaptable the cello is, and how every bangs on about the cello being the closest to the voice (I never want to hear it again!).

Aren't there some Birtwistle songs? Niedecker Songs I think. They are on Black Box - Paul Watkins and um.... maybe Valdine Anderson (I only remember the cellist!). I have the disc, but can't put my hands on it right now.

Thanks for your thoughts, as always! 

[Luke]

No, it's Claron McFadden, Lovely disc, though, The Woman and the Hare is stunning.

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[Guido]

Couldn't tell you in your inbox, so will tell you here: Il Prigionero is being performed at the Royal Festival Hall!

[Luke]

If I had two pennies to rub together I'd be able to consider it! Thanks. Though I think I will go to Robin's farewell concert at West Road next weekend. Especially as it's the Gilded Goldbergs, which I love, and even more because Huw Watkins is one of the pianists. I haven't seen him for ages!

Hoerrendous to even talk of it in this context, but The Lamb is probably finished though I may well keep tinkering. It's a piece of saccharine nonsense of course, though it works on its own terms maybe (I hope).

The score: http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi

Tell me what you think. Though it's only short I've spent too much time with it and really can't tell. And it's left me desperate to write something truly me (i.e. not softened for the children to sing) and with more bite. Can't wait...

[Karl Henning]

If I had two pennies to rub together I'd be able to consider it! Thanks. Though I think I will go to Robin's farewell concert at West Road next weekend. Especially as it's the Gilded Goldbergs, which I love, and even more because Huw Watkins is one of the pianists. I haven't seen him for ages!

Hoerrendous to even talk of it in this context, but The Lamb is probably finished though I may well keep tinkering. It's a piece of saccharine nonsense of course, though it works on its own terms maybe (I hope).

The score: http://www.mediafire.com/?gxg4hpcbu2gvapi

Tell me what you think. Though it's only short I've spent too much time with it and really can't tell. And it's left me desperate to write something truly me (i.e. not softened for the children to sing) and with more bite. Can't wait...

Printing it out now; will look it o'er on the bus ride later this afternoon.

OT, but . . . I've been meaning to ask you about the recording(s) of the Bryars Jesus' Blood . . . .

[Luke]

Please do. You know nothing is OT at the Outpost! Especially not the music I love, and I love Jesus' Blood (though - is this pre-emtping your question? - I see no need for extended or Tom-Waitsified versions)

[Karl Henning]

Ah! Then . . . which recording is your preference?

[Luke]

I like the Obscure recording, which is coupled with The Sinking of the Titanic. Both works can theoretically last forever, but I think 30 mins or so is ample for both (!), and this disc furnishes us with that. I'm sure you know, of course, that these are the two most famous and appealing of Bryars' early, experimental pieces, but that they have nothing technical in common with his post-Medea music (from the early-to-mid 80s, I suppose). That music is fully notated and stylistically uniform (too uniform, some might say, but at leadt the style is strong and deeply personal). Though I have two or three discs of early Bryars, I have maybe 20 or more of the later stuff, and that is where most of the exploration is to be done. Though I recognise that I am an extremist and that those sort of quantities of Bryars would try most people's patience.

[Karl Henning]

Thanks! I wish-listed a few discs back when you were responding to a query from (IIRC) Guido . . . but then I found myself uncertain as to a specific version (if version is le mot juste) of Jesus' Blood.

I had to re-boot my computer (odd printing issues lately) . . . will try The Lamb again right away.

[Luke]

It's this one.

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I like the story that a Winnipeg radio station playing Jesus' Blood was raided by police in full riot gear, because a listener had assumed that the disc jockey was being held hostage and had put on the disc as a furtive plea for help 

[Luke]

Just checking the details of that story, found this

http://www.aventa.ca/reviews/Concert%20preview%20-%20Jesus'%20Blood%20Never%20Failed%20Me%20Yet.pdf

which is a sweet little program note on the piece.

[Luke]

And whilst the place is vaguely active - one in an occasional series of pieces-that-Luke-is-fscinated-by-at-present. Just an excuse to talk about a piece on my mind:

Ravel's Frontispice (1918)

Ravel, of course, is right at the very pinnacle of any list of 'my favourite composers' (top two, usually); I treausre every note he wrote, but this little fragment always falls through the cracks and gets forgotten, by me too. It's only 15 bars long, it lasts less than two minutes, but it is, perhaps, the strangest thing this master of the perfectly-finished ever wrote. And also, probably, the most complex and experimental, in purely technical ways at least. The cross rhythms in this work are simply phenomenal (I think of Bernstein's Harvard lecture on the Rite of Spring, and the passage in which he illustrates the cross rhythms at their most complex in that piece; they have nothing at all on the cross-rhythms in Frontispice!)

This is a work for piano five hands, starting with hands 2 and 3, written in a nominal 15/8 - which is of course 3x5, but Ravel's notes are in 3 groups of 5. Then hands 4 and 5 join, in 5/4, the beats therefore coresponding to 3/5ths of 2 and 3s 'beats'. And that is just the first two bars....thereafter quintuplets and triplets and skirling demisemiquavers and multiple layers of ostinati create the most extraordinary texture imaginable, and I only stop describing it because it just becomes too complex to do so. And above it all, hand number one plays crsip little figures which are like nothing else except the birdsong Ravel writes in Oiseaux tristes and Petit Poucet...but which, more even than those more famous examples, anticpate Messiaen's birdsongs very clearly. And then the end....mysterious, gnomic... OK, just plain odd. Do try it, you can download it for pennies from Amazon (and Karl, it's on that marvellous Ravel-Debussy two piano/duet twofer)

http://www.maurice-ravel.net/frontisp.htm

http://imslp.eu/linkhandler.php?path=/imglnks/euimg/9/95/IMSLP98687-PMLP202713-Ravel_-_Frontispice__2_pianos_.pdf (score - IMSLPs EU filter will apply)

[Karl Henning]

I know! Knew the piece you meant straight away. On the bus now, but that two-fer is loaded onto the player, hang on ...