Pipes, Drums, Fiddles.

A listening blog. Mostly classical music, mostly of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Canon is overrated.

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Between Speaking and Singing | The Organist

Will spoken language become obsolete? What if, in the future, a simple conversation between two adults becomes a rarity, like an obscure musical piece that involves months of rehearsing and vocal training to be able to perform?

Oh! That reminds me! I was very pleasantly surprised to see that a podcast that I listen to regularly did a whole episode on experimental sound art recently. If you’re following my posts (for some reason) it’s likely that you have open ears, and will enjoy this production very much. The Kate Soper interview alone is worth it, but the references to Gesualdo are a delicious bonus.

That said, give the rest of the podcast a listen - it is a bit uneven, but the episode “Two Years With Franz” is one of the most meaningful and touching things I’ve ever heard in this format.

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Music by Kate Soper Text by Aristotle, Guido d'Arrezo, Lydia Davis, Michael Drayton, Robert Duncan, Plato, Sigmund Freud, Jenny...

Concert referral for those of you who happen to be near New York City next Saturday - Kate Soper has emerged from her studio in Massachusetts for a concert with the Wet Ink Ensemble at Columbia University, performing Ipsa Dixit, one of my favorite pieces of new music to have come out of the United States. It’s good, and ticket availability is limited, and it’s silly that I had to wait to hear about it from an unrelated podcast when I’m as big of a Soper fan as I am.

[meme-cafe]

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

Bonus points if you include a topic. ( IE. shipping, roleplaying, ect. )

[justplainsavannahd-deactivated2]

Ooh, this’d be fun!

(Especially if it’s unpopular opera opinions.)

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^^^

esp. if you require New Music Hot Takes, I guess?

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Update

Well, I started this blog with a resolution to avoid personal content, because I presume that no one cares that much, but due to Personal Events it’s become unavoidable, because I’m embarrassed by the drought of content and I feel like I owe at least a little bit of an explanation. 

Without further ado, new things in my life that have happened -

A new job (full-time employment! hooray!)

A new boyfriend (someone seems to appreciate me - also nice)

Law school applications (insanely stressful and anxiety-provoking)

And an updated combination of meds (which seem to be working)

Essentially, things are going well, but there is so much going on that I’ve found it difficult to find time to write, or to even nerd out about classical music. [I’ve been rocking out to LCD Soundsystem lately, but that’s not within the purview of this blog.] I’ll re-think how to structure things, but the urge to Explain A Neat Thing is not always within reach. I doubt the Internet is starving for more of my content, but I still feel like I owe it to myself to exercise my musical/critical mind once in a while. At least.

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Unsuk Chin Wins $200,000 and New York Philharmonic Commission

Ms. Chin, a bold, inventive composer who has been a favorite with the orchestra in recent years, was awarded the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music.

Three cheers for Ms. Chin, one of the most interesting composers currently working. Check out her work! It’s mind-bending, thought-provoking, humorous, and exceedingly colorful. You can hear Ligeti smiling.

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On today’s episode, Debussy is 25 years old and setting horny poetry - 

“la fatigue amoreuse”

                       the fatigue of love

                                            I SEE YOU BOI

On a more serious note, Debussy’s songs don’t get enough love. His early songs are definitely the best indication pre-1895 of where he’s headed artistically, and they are elegant, inventive, and beautiful. Not to mention that he’s showing his debt to Musorgsky - look at those open fifths, the speech-like line, the non-triadic home sonorities, you could go on and on. 

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5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Classical Music

We asked some of our favorite artists to tell us about the sounds they cherish. Listen to their choices.

I really do love this! There are so many great excerpts - and I’m always pumped when Unsuk Chin gets a shout-out. Plus, I’ve never heard of Jessie Montgomery, but now I probably should go check out her work. The piece that Caroline Shaw endorsed is quite impressive. And of course, Yuval Sharon, LA experimental opera director extraordinaire, has the best and most on-brand suggestion.

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Dirty Dog Daily

Me, trying to compose...

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Something very neat - Brahms on period instruments. It’s kind of easy to assume that instrument making hasn’t advanced much in the last century, but Melnikov is playing on an 1875 Bösendorfer and you can really hear the difference! Plus, natural horn, ‘nuff said. (This album is awesome, it’s got the op. 78 violin sonata and the op. 116 Klavierstücke, and it’s on Harmonia Mundi so you know that mastering is great.) A+ all around, good job, excellent music time, and a real pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning.

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So, this is a little documentary made in 2005, when Galina Ustvolskaya was nearing the end of her life. She is weak and small, but she has an imposing presence and she reminds me of my grandmother, who is of her generation. They own the same beret. Ustvolskaya is one of those composers who has an utterly unique voice. She was never denounced by the Soviets because she was never quite radical enough - she was never a serialist, and she writes endless sequences of straight quarter notes. But the music is unlovely, brutal, scouring, blindingly pure and elemental. She's the Woman With The Hammer and a lot of the time her voice feels necessary to me. It's tough listening, though. Be forewarned. P.S. The Russian in here is questionably translated. But such is life when you have a Dutch film crew.

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Wait, I'm the worst. How did I lose track of this? Here comes that movie.

[classic-jenny]

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Did I ever post that Ustvolskaya movie? I'm going to post that Ustvolskaya movie.

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Ooh, a Schnittke score-video. Dark, #edgy, postmodern, but also titanic and wild in a Mahler-on-drugs kind of way.

[10oclockdot]

One of the best things about Erik Satie is that after a certain point in his life he started to pepper his piano miniature scores with all sorts of bizarre performance instructions meant to destabilize even the most seasoned performers.

Stuff like “With conviction and a rigorous sadness,” “With a healthy superiority,” “Don’t eat too much,” “Hypocritically,” “Shake like a leaf,” “Do not cough,” “Go away,” or “Like a nightingale with a toothache.”

For years I had heard about these directions, but without any kind of authoritative list of them I decided to download all the Erik Satie scores at IMSLP and screenshot my favorites.  There got to be so many that I had to present them in this sort-of-powerpoint format.  This collection isn’t anywhere near exhaustive, but it’s a nice introduction.  (The translations are for the most part my own, and I welcome any corrections.)

Oh, and if you’d like to read a nice introduction to Satie’s life, the proto-postmodern invention of “furniture music,” that time he founded his own religion, and the piece he wrote with 840 repeats in it, click here.

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Dutilleux had a penchant for evocative titles but I can’t decide whether Ainsi la nuit (”Thus, the Night”) is beautiful or trying way too hard to be deep. Anyway it’s real pretty, folks. D was a slow composer and the polish of this work (and its beautiful, colorful harmony) makes it really special. Maybe the best postwar string quartet not by Shostakovich. Which sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise but, trust me, this is a big deal.

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pekka kuusisto convinces 5,000 brits to sing along to a Finnish folk song and is very good