Yet More Free Stuff!!. Webern's Complete Works dir. by Robert Craft.

Anton Webern: Trying to look composed after falling over in the grass, probably.

Just spotted a useful tweet from Ubuweb which links to The High Pony Tail blog where you can find 'Webern: The Complete Music recorded under the direction of Robert Craft.'

Recorded in 1957 apparently and released by Columbia as a 4-LP set (out of print and never released on CD.)

Here's the link to an updated post featuring a processed mp3 version of the album and a link to the original post with an unmeddled with version in lossless flac format.

I haven't had a chance to peruse the other content on The High Pony Tail but from the post titles in the sidebar it looks like there is some good stuff available (not sure of the legality of it though, this Craft recording seems ok but I haven't looked at the rest.)

TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/yghlmnu

Quote For The Beginning of March

A transcription of an Aka Pygmy song.

It is the conflation and ultimate unification of the horizontal and vertical “dimensions,” which, for us in the West, have traditionally been regarded as opposites, that could ultimately be regarded as the most deeply fundamental conceptual basis for both traditions.

Surprisingly enough, a precedent for the concept of horizontal-vertical unification exists, but in a completely unexpected place, the thought and practice of the notorious Twentieth Century composer and theoretician, Arnold Schönberg.

Schönberg’s “method of composing with twelve tones related only to one another,” was based on a conception of the “unity of musical space” as, among other things, a “succession of tones . . .
whose comprehensibility as a musical idea is independent of whether its components are made audible one after the other or more or less simultaneously” (Schönberg 1975:208). Or, stated somewhat differently, “The mutual relation of tones regulates the succession of intervals as well as their association into harmonies . . . ” (ibid.:220).

Thus, in most of Schönberg’s mature works, melodic lines and harmonies are tonally unified in
that both may contain essentially the same types of interval (or, more precisely, interval class). This is a highly distinctive and unusual aspect of Pygmy and Bushmen counterpoint as well.

Whereas in most types of polyphony, tribal, ethnic, folk or classical, melodies tend to be stepwise, i.e. based on intervals of a second, while simultaneities are most often based on thirds, fourths and/or fifths, such distinctions are disregarded in the “floating” musical space of Pygmy/Bushmen and atonal music alike. Additionally, we find yet another mode of horizontal-vertical unification in certain works of Schönberg’s student Webern, and serialist disciples such as Boulez, where, as so often in both Pygmy and Bushmen music, though with radically
different results, polyphony and heterophony are conflated.

While it would be unwise to make too much of such remote parallels, they do give us a sense of how remarkable and indeed sophisticated is the musical thinking of both of these so-called “primitive” hunter-gatherer peoples.

Concept, Style and Structure in the Music of the African Pygmies and Bushmen: A Study in Cross-Cultural Analysis;.. Victor Grauer

Musical 'Modernism' - The Movie

Composer Casting Couch, click for larger image.

A while ago some friends and I (at least two, honest) were discussing the possibility of a movie about the Second Viennese School, who should we cast in the major roles?.

Well, I've expanded the concept somewhat to include a few more composers, some 'modernists' more or less. (or perhaps a 'post-modernist' where Cage is concerned and Debussy and Mahler are more like pre-modernists or something).

I would have included more but after searching around some composers didn't seem easy to cast (Xenakis, Boulez, Feldman, Ligeti and others).

Some 'levity' for those long winter nights anyway, 'enjoy' (if you can name all the composers and their actor 'doubles' in the picture you win a special prize, click on the image above, here is a hint, match the images to the names in the tag list).

Oh and thanks to Ross's The Rest Is Noise blog for reminding me about the Second Viennese School 'movie' concept (via his post about Susan Sarandon's slip of the tongue at the recent Golden Globes).

Free Stuff ! : Webern's The Path To The New Music.

Webern's lectures, printed out and filed, thumbs up.

Yes that's right. A free copy of Webern's lectures via the Internet Archive, I found it on the Online Music Resources blog (thanks), although if you google 'The Path to the New Music' the internet archive link is in the first page of results, not exactly hard to find, but, erm, yeah, anyway...(I would probably have just looked for it on Amazon or Abe had I not randomly found it on a blog while looking for Cowell's book)

A timely find from my point of view as I have just finished reading some books on the great man - Webern 20th Century Composers, Webern and the Transformation of Nature, Anton Webern: An Introduction To His Works, Anton Webern: Letters to Hildegard Jone and Josef Humplik - and I was going to buy 'The Path To The New Music' but now I don't have to (I printed it out instead and put it in one of those natty binder folder things, I think the older one gets, the more one appreciates stationery).

Quote of The Something or Other

The great theorist Allen Forte at Webern' s Grave (he is the gentleman on the right, click on the hyperlink to go to his site).

Dearest Hildergard (20.VII.1938)

...
Now listen to this: I am composing 'Kleiner Flugel Ahornsamen schwebst im winde....'. It is the key to a sizeable symphonic cycle for solo, chorus and orchestra, in which more of your texts are to appear. A sort of symphony with vocal sections.
My Symphony was broadcast from Birmingham. More encouraging news about the London 'Augenlicht' perf. (The performance was in the Queen's Hall, it holds about 5000 people!)

Anton Webern: Extract from a letter to Hildegard Jone taken from Anton Webern; Letters To Hildergard Jone and Josef Humplick.

Piece Of The Week (beg:24/03/08)

Anton Webern: Symphony Op21.

I wont go on about this as the piece has been analysed and discussed a great deal by people far more qualified than me.

I will say that it is one of my favourite pieces of music. Before I got the score and started looking at the piece properly I didn`t realise that the first movement contained repeats, I thought I was hearing the row come round again (which is true, but I didn`t think it was a literal repeat, interesting effect, at least for me).

The way the pitches revolve and pass between instruments is engaging, and peaceful (in the first movement at least), it has something of the kaleidoscope about it. While it may lend itself to formal analysis it is also, more importantly, a beautiful piece of music.

The version I have is performed by the LSO, conducted by Boulez, from this boxed set.