Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:33:10 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      A survivor from Warsaw

From:         AD81095@UDLAPVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Mexican music

> Do anyone knows any mexican music? or Does anybody likes mexican music?
>
>    I know mexico isn't known in the world for good pop music, but for its
>  folk music? But is anybody interested in the music of my country?

There was a quite good progressive rock band called Decibel, who only made
one album as far as I know. I have this album only as a cassette dub, and
I'm not sure I can find it. But I think I saw a CD reissue of it listed in
the latest Wayside catalog. It's more than usually adventurous.

That and Carlos Chavez are my favorite Mexican music-- unless you want to count
Conlon Nancarrow, who was an American expatriate living and working in Mexico
City. He's the guy that did the extremely precise player piano rolls.

From:         "Timothy M. Williams" <twillia@EIS.CALSTATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Perfumed ambience

> Your talk of improvisation being more "real" than written music misses an
> important factor:  the two are not the same thing.  Improvisation is a
> performance art, and performance of classical tradition music is a
> composer's art.  The goal of improvisation is to achieve the forms and
> continuity of written music.  The goal of written music is to achieve the
> higher meaning and thought processes of the composer.

I don't think either of these last statements holds water. The goal of music
generally is to express the thoughts, opinions, and/or feelings of the artist
making the music. (That should be general enough to include John Cage, who
explicitly said he wanted a music "free of individual taste and memory"--
i.e. he didn't want to express himself. But he did want to give expression
to certain ideas he had about how such music could be generated-- his I Ching
compositions, tracing the star charts on blank music paper, etc.)

Now, the improviser probably can't make Cage's claim about individual taste--
unless he's got some sort of weird automatic-writing kind of technique that
allows him to play without knowing what's gonna come out, like a kitten at
the keyboard-- but it is conceivable to get memory out of the loop: you react
to the immediate musical circumstances, without trying to create a broader
context or form. A lot of the Germans do this-- Han Bennink, Manfred Schoof,
and many of their colleagues on the FMP label.

I think for these players, the key point of improv is that it sharpens your
perception of events and puts a premium on instantaneous responses. And for
players with that idea, form-- the broader shaping of a series of events over
time-- is simply not of interest. They want to attain a kind of zen effect of
living in the moment, and doing so with such conviction and clarity that their
playing becomes a recognizable means of self-expression, even when bereft of
the compositional virtues of form, melody, harmony, etc.

I've got several records of this stuff, by artists like Derek Bailey, Anthony
Braxton, etc. I don't listen to them much any more, because I discovered that
it's not so interesting when you can't watch their faces as they play.

From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Arvo Part (review of ARBOS)

> This sounded like it might intrigue the Bloomster :-)
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> I got hold of Arvo Part's _Miserere_ recently.  The jacket blurb said
> (among other things) that it transcended any effort to categorize (or
> something to that effect) -- but it seemed pretty straightforward
> to me, a blend of neo-renaissance and minimalist styles.  The ten
> minutes of an unaccompanied hand drum droning very subtle variations
> of the same rythm over and over, interrrupted with a lush choral
> piece that evoked renaissance polyphony in decidedly modern tonalities
> is amazing.  I listened to it while walking 3 miles through city
> traffic -- as David said, not at all an appropriate setting.

Jeez, you make it sound so thrilling, ten minutes of subtly-varying hand
drums, what a treat. I just got this Muslimgauze record... snore...

I'm sort of in a quandary re minimalism. I still think I like the original
works that led me to the field-- Reich's _Music for Mallet Instruments_,
Glass's _Music in Changing Parts_ (which was available only on the tiny
independent Chatham Square label), and the other early stuff. I say "I think"
because I have to admit that I haven't been moved to go listen to any of it
again lately :-) But I do know that the last Glass piece I've heard that I've
liked was the _Koyaanisqatsi_ soundtrack, and he's certainly done a whole pile
of stuff since then. (I should state to be fair that I know nothing of his
opera/oratorio repertoire after _Einstein on the Beach_, which I do like, and
his supporters are nearly unanimous in claiming that that's the best of his
work.)

Anyway, I know I've said this often, and probably to this list, but I always
felt that the attractive quality about minimalism was fidelity to a system of
(arbitrary) constraints, and since it got hip to be minimalist and orchestras
started playing it, at least one part of this restriction ceased to apply.
When it was just a small ensemble of saxes, Farfisas, and percussion, the
timbres were just as minimal and subtle as the tiny little melodic cells and
the glacial harmonic modulation and the near-unchanging pulse. Now that these
guys get to write tiny melodic cells for a full orchestra, with the whole array
of timbres and lush, pseudo-romantic harmonies, it just sounds like tape loops
of Mendelssohn to me.

I wanna hear more concision, more Webernian music-- that's what the minimalism
of the future should encourage. Symphonies that can fit on a 45. Satie rules!

And what have I ever done to deserve the epithet "Bloomster"???

From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Classical Music Poll - part II

> Hmmph!  Neither one was either composer's best--I only put down 4 seasons
> because I didn't have the R number of the sopranino recorder concerto.
> *Grumble, grumble*

Pshaw. I think if it was that important a piece to you, you'd have remembered
the number. I remembered Schoenberg's _Five Pieces for Orchestra_, Opus 16,
when I voted for it.

From:         "(Jeff Beer)" <ujwb@UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Classical Music Poll - part I

> Yes it does.  Webern and Schoenberg should be No 1.  Why are they so
> low?  Maybe they choked on the debates.

Well, what really happened was, operatives of the National Socialist campaign
impugned their patriotism. They replied that they didn't inhale.