Boring Like A Drill

New Subscription Feed Redirection

2010-01-01T16:20:00.000Z

I am trying to seamlessly redirect my blog's feed from its old address (http://cookylamoo.com/boringlikeadrill/atom.xml) to its new one (http://feeds.feedburner.com/BoringLikeADrillBlog). You can update your own settings if you wish, but it should soon be redirecting automatically, if I've figured it out right.

An Old Look for a New Year

2009-12-31T16:20:00.000Z

Sorry about the mess. I spent the xmas break moving the blog from Blogger to WordPress (like you care) and trying to get the layout into some coherent, compatible shape. It still needs some tweaking and there are probably some dud links around the place, so please email me if you notice anything particularly ugly or broken.

Please Mister Please

2009-12-23T23:51:00.001Z

Jackson 5, "One More Chance" (1970).
(3'01", 3.45 MB, mp3)

Ignorance achieves wonders.

2009-12-20T15:47:00.003Z

I'd like to apologise for a fundamental error in my review of the Crumb Total Immersion day. I mistakenly referred to the composer as George Crumb throughout. George Crumb is, of course, the famous cartoonist. The composer's name is Robert Crumb, as correctly identified by BBC Radio 3.

It's good to see Radio 3 diligently pursuing its remit to "inform and educate the audience about music and culture", although when you try to follow the BBC's own link to its Radio 3 website it in fact takes to you BBC Three, a television station dedicated to programmes like Bashing Booze Birds and Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets.

There seems to be a webmonkey at the Beeb who gets easily confused over names.

Can't do nothin' for ya, man.

2009-12-16T23:24:00.000Z

Please Mister Please

2009-12-15T22:13:00.000Z

Elliott Carter, "Esprit Rude / Esprit Doux" (1985). Sophie Cherrier, flute; André Trouttet, clarinet.
(4'52", 7.68 MB, mp3)

Total Immersion: George Crumb

2009-12-14T20:59:00.001Z

George Crumb turned eighty in October, and so was dragged across the Atlantic for the BBC to make a fuss of him for one day of the year. Actually, he probably came willingly, as the night concluded with what must be a rare concert of his orchestral music. He seemed pretty cheerful, seated up in the stalls doing that Rat Pack style double-pointing to the performers at the end of each piece.

I wrote a bit about Crumb’s music earlier in the year after hearing the Nash Ensemble perform it at the Proms:

Crumb's music really needs to be heard live to appreciate it, not only for the theatrical elements of its performance, or for the spatial placement of sounds (more than once the musicians had to relocate from the stage to one of the balconies to achieve an elusive, distant quality to their sound), but for the subtlety and complexity of the sounds he specifies.

The Proms gig included Claire Booth singing Ancient Voices of Children, also played here by the Guildhall ensemble, with the soprano Anna Patalong (and a real, live boy this time), in between Joanna MacGregor playing the piano works A Little Suite for Christmas, A.D. 1979 and Volume 1 of Makrokosmos.

The last time I heard Makrokosmos it was part of an ill-judged mix of music and visuals by Michael Kieran Harvey. Witnessing it performed again reminded me the extent to which Crumb's music seems to be held together almost by the sheer force of his personality, and how dependent it is on musicians to hold the greater purpose of its disparate elements in focus. MacGregor’s performance was much less theatrical (or histrionic) than Harvey's, but found and sustained the drama in the music.

The evening gig was a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Crumb's orchestral music - in fact the only three mature orchestral works he has written - culminating in the massive Star-Child. Pure logistical difficulties aside, it seems clear why Crumb tends to keep his music on a more intimate scale. The often episodic nature of his music can be difficult for such a large group of musicians to follow without losing momentum.

The 1967 piece Echoes of Time and the River (Echoes II) is a processional of varying sounds and textures produced by small, discrete groups within the orchestra, to the extent of moving some of the percussionists and brass players on, off, and across the stage in various configurations. In effect, Crumb was attempting to work with the orchestra to his usual scale, while taking advantage of the wider pallette of available sounds. The slow choreography of the musician's movements added a theatrical, ritualistic aspect that was only slightly more awkward in reality than it doubtless was in the imagination.

A Haunted Landscape (1984) must be more successful in combining all the distinctive facets of Crumb's music into a seamless whole, because I always remember it as being more conventional than it really is. On the other hand, Star-Child (1977) works hard to present a semblance of cohesiveness between its seven continuous sections. The piece is often referred to as Ivesian, and amongst the many parallels you could make out were the cosmic scope of the music, and its seemingly rough-hewn structure.

The entire 35 or so minutes is suspended from a repeated "music of the spheres" played by the string section throughout, oblivious to all the other goings-on; they form a separate orchestra, with their own conductor. The remaining sections of the orchestra, plus a truckload of extra percussion, half-a-dozen brass players in the balcony, a male speaking choir armed with handbells, and two children's choirs, require between one and three conductors between them to keep everything together, depending on the music's complexity. Oh, and there's a Vox Clamans In Deserto recited antiphonally between a soprano and a trombonist.

Star-Child boldly reaches for profundity with its Latin texts and massed voices and bells, and for once Crumb uses the full force of the orchestra for emphatic, dramatic power. It's an anomaly in Crumb's canon, the way he uses brute force and awe to move his audience here, particularly in the apocalyptic middle sections. Thankfully his musical allusions never get too overt or too literary, but the piece is really left to stand or fall on the message Crumb wishes it to convey. The performance itself couldn't be faulted, but in experiencing it I felt like I was witnessing an attempt to make manifest a grand vision best realised in the imagination, brought to life as best as one can.

Etudes Boreales for Piano

2009-09-08T22:12:00.002Z

The piano etudes are really more like percussion pieces, the player using beaters and making noises on the piano construction. ... Kirstein found the piece unplayable; it was only Michael Pugliese, a virtuoso percussionist, who found the way to play these "impossible" pieces.
-- James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (1996), p.199.

Last Tuesday night I left home and walked twenty minutes down the road to a cafe to hear the pianist Mark Knoop perform John Cage's Etudes Boreales (1978) for piano. I was reminded of that story of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's percussionists or whoever taking thirty rehearsals to muddle their way through Varèse's Ionisation (1933), whereas now it's a staple of student percussion ensembles.

It is indeed, like all of Cage's Etudes, a fiendishly difficult set of pieces. Having never heard this particular set of four pieces I can't compare how well Knoop performed it compared to other musicians. It sounded fine to me, and he didn't appear to be struggling with getting the right beater to the right part of the piano in the right time, nor was he playing particularly slowly.

Interestingly, the music in these piano parts is significantly more sparse than in the other etudes. Cage was apparently mindful of the practicalities of performing these pieces, even if they did seem impossible at first. The idea behind all the etudes was not to defeat the musician, but allow them to accomplish something never attempted before. To paraphrase Morton Feldman: now that the Etudes are so simple, there's so much to do.

Please Mister Please

2009-09-06T23:12:00.002Z

Jack Ellitt, "Journey #1 (excerpt)" (early 1930s).
(4'52", 7.85 MB, mp3)