Perspectives of New Music articles from January 1 1995

Perspectives of New Music archives from January 1 1995

Dear Kenneth. (poem)
January 1, 1995... On using words to listen with (the body is something that happens to words (knowledge is the compassion of the stupid)): Chris Mann

Two interviews with Kenneth Gaburo. (musician and educator)(Interview)
January 1, 1995... Perhaps I could begin by asking you something about your work with music and the voice, and with ensembles, and perhaps where it all began? I can't say much about where the beginnings were, but I do remember that there were certain strange...

Empty. (poem)
January 1, 1995... TO BENJAMIN BORETZ, at whose invitation this text was written: whose paper, The Inner Studio, was the prime stimulus.... To Melody Scherubel, my dear friend and companion.... To the students in my Multimedia classes, who, over five...

Excerpts from a correspondence with Gaburo. (musician and educator Kenneth Gaburo)
January 1, 1995... Urbana, Illinois 8 April 1977 DEAR MR. GABURO, This letter is finally being written, after many pleasant and appreciative thoughts about your visit to U. of I.... Since I will go to Munich, and since I consider it to be a potentially...

No Replacement (85 Verses for Kenneth Gaburo). (poem)
January 1, 1995... NO REPLACEMENT the i - ea - o - bei - ore de p y in Kevee w Ga tho, tar omco er, n it reau coepcllingdie W shallssey a Mhin home I Iowa this Iow fiHd wasl6we wit ied. Wrbtee oonc everid Ph l pennach la gab one ofDthe best is gone...

Gaburo - notes on .... (musician, composer and composition teacher Kenneth Gaburo)
January 1, 1995... WHY DO YOU WANT TO STUDY WITH ME? One did not study with Gaburo: (a) in order to make "connections," (b) to meet curriculum requirements, (c) because there was no room in another teacher's load, (d) to "sample" a different approach to...

Antiphony #11. (poem)
January 1, 1995... Kenneth commissioned me to write Antiphony #11 in the late summer of 1990, as a text that he intended to set for alto-flute, guitar, and tape. The title refers to this last Antiphony that remained unfinished at the time of his death. In a period...

As/signment. (poem)
January 1, 1995... The following four text-graphics represent instances taken from an extended compositional dialogue between Kenneth Gaburo and myself; the first two are by Kenneth, the latter two by me. Each work may be thought of as a response on some level,...

Transforms for piano.
January 1, 1995... IN MEMORIAM KENNETH GABURO To the power and light of Kenneth Gaburo's teaching and friendship: the opening exposition of Transforms, a full hour of music in the twenty-four-hour complex Symphonies of Sound. My intention with Transforms is to...

Listening to ten tape pieces by Kenneth Gaburo. (musician, composer and composition teacher)
January 1, 1995... Over his career, Kenneth Gaburo produced a lot of electronic music. Much of this was in the form of tape parts for his ten Anti-phonies for instruments and tape. Other electronics appeared in parts of multimedia works. In the late 1980s, in...

The hen series. (prose)
January 1, 1995... The Hen Series, written in 1985 and premiered by Gregg Bendian in 1987, consists of nineteen short items. They may or may not be performed in any order, and any or all of them may be omitted from any given performance. The crux of the matter is:...

Antipathies II for clarinet: "Ken's Clarinet Piece for Dan" by Kenneth Gaburo.
January 1, 1995... Well it's finally done, that masterpiece for clarinet which Dan commissioned from Ken for no upfront money. It was finished in February 1993. And how did he do it, when no longer alive? That's influence for you, he did it anyway. Well, Dan, my...

Stretto. (prose)
January 1, 1995... In February 1992, Kenneth Gaburo asked me to write something about my work with The Big Jewish Band - now called Robboy's Jewish Orchestra - for inclusion in a Lingua Press Catalogue. I had just moved and was consumed with the design and...

Some recorded thoughts on recorded objects.
January 1, 1995... As early as 1807 a certain Thomas Young described his "sound recorder": a sharp metal stylus attached to a wax-coated, revolving cylinder. A vibrating object held against the stylus would cause it to trace a representation of the waveform onto...

In memoriam Keith Humble. (Australian musician)
January 1, 1995... The Australian musician Keith Humble died in Geelong, Australia on 23 May 1995. He was 67. He travelled to Paris in the early 1950s where he became assistant to the French composer, theorist, and conductor Rene Leibowitz. He was the Founder and...

Much ado about nothing. (musical silence)
January 1, 1995... THE POSSIBILITY OF MEANINGFUL SILENCE The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."(1) Blaise Pascal's famous statement seems extreme: simultaneously invoking both limitlessness and absolute nullity might be excessive. Hyperbole...

Cecil Taylor, identity energy, and the avant-garde African American body.
January 1, 1995... Critic Greg Tate opens a 1983 essay on composer/pianist/poet Cecil Taylor with the assertion that the latter's "art pushes the question of Afro-American identity beyond mortal ken" (Tare 1992 [1983], 24). The question of identity is pervasive in...

Cecil Taylor: indent - "Second Layer."
January 1, 1995... Since early in his career, Cecil Taylor has been regarded as the epitome of the jazz avant-gardist - an uncompromising, high-strung, and enigmatic personality whose art and philosophy are inextricably intertwined. In spite of early critical...

Compositional spaces and other territories. ('Composition with Pitch-Classes: A Theory of Compositional Design')
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION This paper takes up topics raised in or suggested by my book, Composition with Pitch-Classes: A Theory of Compositional Design.(1) The book is addressed to experienced composers who are interested in using pitch-class relations to...

On different approaches to computer music as different models of compositional design.
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION In this article I discuss the work of three composers who live and work in Italy, in a small area of the central Italian peninsula: It takes just a fifty-minute car ride to leave Rome - where Michelangelo Lupone lives and works -...

Inner voices.
January 1, 1995... Before I begin this lecture I would like to propose a simple experiment. Please take a pencil and a sheet of paper. During the lecture I would like you to write down ten items, in the order in which they occur to you, without thinking about them...

Frederic Rzewski and spontaneous political music.
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION I am intrigued by Frederic Rzewski's ability, in his pieces from the 1960s and 70s, to model socio-political phenomena and to teach specific lessons about these phenomena on both intuitive and intellectual levels to both...

Fakin' it/makin' it: falsetto's bid for transcendance in 1970s disco highs.
January 1, 1995... Every man has a place, in his heart there's a space, And the world can't erase his fantasies Take a ride in the sky, on our ship fantasii All your dreams will come true, right away... - Earth, Wind, and Fire, "Fantasy" 1977 Let me begin...

Changing the metaphor: ratio models of musical pitch in the work of Harry Partch, Ben Johnston, and James Tenney.
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION Models or musical pitch devised by theorists and composers have taken a large number of different forms and have fulfilled a wide range of different functions. Most models are designed not merely to provide a description of a...

When we think about music and politics: the case of Kevin Volans.
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION: DRAWING THE BATTLE LINES OVER MUSIC AND POLITICS I want to begin by posing a question that I have no illusion of being able to answer adequately at this time.(1) That question is, how can we talk about music and politics? The...

A "New Totality?" (Contemporary Music Review issue on the concerns of US composers)
January 1, 1995... In his book Musical Elaborations,(1) Edward W. Said makes a strong, convincing argument for dismantling the notion of "music history" as a grindingly monolithic, unidirectional totality under whose wheels dissenting voices are methodically...

Cheered by battleship: in memory of Kurdt Kobain.
January 1, 1995... (1) APOCALYPSE THEN It ended in an open shaftway, following LBJ's example. By designating cauldron 19 as their sauce, mirages (against no odds) vented mighty grams of plenty, and cast visceral tracking smoke in henceforth unforeseen...

H'un (lacerations): in memoriam 1966-1976 for orchestra.
January 1, 1995... INTRODUCTION The ten years 1966-1976 was the period of the infamous "Cultural Revolution" in China, the calamitous consequence of the cruel power struggle within the highest level of the Chinese Communist Party. It was the most tragic time in...

Impossible animals: notes on birds and musical style.
January 1, 1995... The visual arts would be greatly impoverished without birds and all that birds represent. Music, except for a few notable exceptions, has left bird song a largely untapped resource. I have been watching and studying birds for twenty years, nearly...

Past theory: a review of 'A History of Western Musical Aesthetics.'
January 1, 1995... Studies that offer the big picture of the far-reaching and highly diverse field of musical aesthetics are extremely rare. It is far more common for authors in this field to attend to particularities that arise in conjunction with particular...

A History of Western Musical Aesthetics.
January 1, 1995... Studies that offer the big picture of the far-reaching and highly diverse field of musical aesthetics are extremely rare. It is far more common for authors in this field to attend to particularities that arise in conjunction with particular...

Music of war. (Sarajevo composer Josip Magdic)
January 1, 1995... Despite the sounds of shells, machine-guns, and snipers, Josip Magdic, Sarajevo composer, keeps composing computer tunes. Constant artillery and gunfire crackles, the presence of death, the lack of food, water, and electricity during the months...