Perspectives of New Music articles from January 1996

Perspectives of New Music archives from January 1996

The sounds of the sounds themselves: analyzing the early music of Morton Feldman.
January 1, 1996... I wonder what they would say if they were here.(1) If Feldman were here. If his fans were here. (I expect some of you are here.) What would they be talking about? What would they want to talk about, with a music analyst? I imagined. They were...

'Bedhaya Guthrie/Bedhaya Sadra' for voices, kemanak, melody instruments, and accompanimental Javanese gamelan.
January 1, 1996... INTRODUCTION Bedhaya Guthrie/Bedhaya Sadra is a set of computer-generated transformations of two melodies, Woody Guthrie's "Rangers' Command" and a melody written by the Indonesian composer I Wayan Sadra. The work is a study in the mutation of...

Interview with Tony Schwartz, American Horspielmacher.
January 1, 1996... [Open with sound of little girl growing up acoustically] Tony Schwartz is a New Yorker, born there in 1923, who has had a major career as a Horspielmacher in America, perhaps the most distinguished career possible. A full time producer of...

Composing the music school: proposals for a feminist composition curriculum.
January 1, 1996... PROLOGUE 1. As COMPOSERS we are allocated a tiny spot in society, with almost zero function. 2. We defend a society that does not defend us. 3. We even take it as a challenge to live in a system hostile to the well-being of its members....

To suffer music.
January 1, 1996... From Webster Dictionary: "Ante - in poker, the stake that each player must put into the pool before receiving cards, hence the amount one must pay as his share." . . . From Rilke's Eighth Elegy. "And we: spectators, always, everywhere,...

Showing and saying.
January 1, 1996... The score shows; the performer says; - a transmutation of independent conditions. I. My Links series for vibraphone celebrates the impractical by setting forth events, passages, moments, that are all but impossible to render as written,...

Goethe, Boretz, and the "sensuous idea."
January 1, 1996... In 1775, GOETHE, in the throes of Sturm und Drang, wrote the following lines in his play Stella: I must flee! It would be foolish to let myself be bound. This state of affairs smothers all my powers, robs me of all spiritual courage, it pens...

Generalized diatonic and pentatonic scales: a group-theoretic approach.
January 1, 1996... I. INTRODUCTION This is the second in a planned series of papers in which musical scales, tuning, and temperament are studied from a mathematical point of view.(1) In the present paper, group-theoretic methods are used to study N-tone scales...

Living tomorrow's life: in memoriam, Salvatore Martirano, 1927-1995. (composer)(Obituary)
January 1, 1996... American Composer Salvatore Martirano died on 17 November 1995. Only six months before, Edna and I visited Sal and Dorothy for four wonderful days of talk, music, food, and wine in their Urbana, Illinois home. Sal and I were going over the final...

Strictly personal, memories of yesteryears, revived with affection. (composer Salvatore Martirano)
January 1, 1996... Tanglewood, Summer of 1995 . . . Sal was studying with Roger Sessions, I with Boris Blacher. Sal had been working on a road construction crew, somewhere in Westchester, Scarsdale? Virility oozed out of his tanned body, his gestures, strut, eyes,...

A naturally gifted composer. (Salvatore Martirano)
January 1, 1996... With the passing of Sal Martirano, we have suffered a real loss. I remember how impressed I was by Chansons Innocentes, Cocktail Music, or especially the Shakespehearean Rag: music so convincing in its continuity, so telling in its harmonic...

... There goes Sal. (poem)
January 1, 1996... . . . there goes Sal: longs for and loves the opera yet avoids excessive drama - passionately throws himself into the embraces of his ideas musical poetic realistic daring ideas and experiments - then surfaces with that look of youthful curiosity...

L.V. for solo trumpet. (music piece)
January 1, 1996... OPTIONAL STAGING A single spot light should be on the soloist; not too dramatic. The piano, facing upstage (keyboard facing the audience) should have a very pale spot on it. The piano should have the sustain pedal down throughout. Please use a...

Choruses for Sal. (in memory of composer Salvatore Martirano)
January 1, 1996... A paean to play on A seance with nuance Sal M's Solemn Psalm resonates His mortality is confirmed His immortality is assured The following remarks, somewhat abridged, were delivered as eulogy at the memorial service held for Sal Martirano at...

Sal's G.A. (composer Salvatore Martirano)
January 1, 1996... SAL MARTIRANO was an iconoclast. That much was immediately obvious to me from my very first encounter with him at the first annual conference of the American Society of University Composers in New York in the Spring of 1966. Sal was one of the...

... Taste, boundaries, relevance, purpose, risk ... (about Salvatore Martirano).
January 1, 1996... Over time, one realizes how deeply the sensibility of an individual composer defines his or her work. This is more the case for us than for our predecessors because there are so many choices that can be made now, so many options for action that...

B.C.-A.D. and two lines: two ways of making music while exploring instability in tribute to Salvatore Martirano.
January 1, 1996... INTRODUCTION (The following, introductory comments are extracted from a Rohlen Lecture, titled "Propositional Music and the Evolution of the Infosphere," which I gave during the School of Music Centennial Festival Week at the University of...

Two Lines. (musical piece)
January 1, 1996... Instructions The line is to be interpreted simultaneously by two or more instruments, referred to as tracks. There is no meter. We will slow down and speed up. Sometimes we'll play as fast as possible. Sometimes we'll slow it way down. We'll...

Un mazzo di fiore per Salvatore. (in memory of composer Salvatore Martirano)
January 1, 1996... O, O, O, O, SALVATORE, what's in some names? Salvatore, cross of a name to bear but also indicative of Great Expectations of a mother (or father?), family; Martirano, evoking martire: martyr; and then Sonny Martin, your 1940s American swing band...

Tonality and paranoia: a reply to Boros. (response to article by James Boros in Contemporary Music Review, vol. 6, p. 1)
January 1, 1996... It is unpleasant to reply to an article as offensive in tone and irresponsible in content as James Boros's "A 'New Totality'?,"(1) which denounces the "New Tonality" issue of Contemporary Music Review.2 He consistently distorts the views of the...

A response to Lerdahl. (reply to article in this issue, p. 242)
January 1, 1996... It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to Fred Lerdahl's essay "Tonality and Paranoia." I'll try to restrict myself to addressing his major gripes, and will refrain from replying to the numerous chastisements found throughout the text...