Sweet Encumbrance

Continuing with the treacly investigation of romance and its elations, its euphoric pleasures, begun with Two Orchestral Waltzes for Lynne, the current work, Sweet Encumbrance, makes manifest, in sound, the joyous warmth, the sweet iron fetters and the small panics which flow from hogtying oneself together with one's chosen helpmeet and companion. In this piece, it is demonstrated in some detail how much one can gain in life simply by giving up one's philandering, and, while still given license to strut and flirt and still authorized to play the dandy, one must now, for the foreseeable future, festoon one's costume with the leash and collar and electronic ankle bracelet, sometimes visible but most often invisible, like the line that one might be enticed to cross save for the memories of the previous attempts' resultant truncheoning and electric shocks. But let us not dwell on such past pains, but please to look to that bright future world illumined by the brightest and whitest of most pure light where, joined in glory and set upon one's throne just to the right of the Empress, in a new Sagrada Familia, happily holding court, happily holding the hand of the one most beloved.

Two Orchestral Waltzes for Lynne

Off to Japan

The day after the waltz, I'm heading off to Japan for the Tokyo Performing Arts Market to hook up with some of my artist colleagues across the pond - the other pond in this instance. My agent Kyoko Yoshida has done a lovely job of translating up a brochure and writing some kind things about me along the way.

I'm also visiting my Japanese friends at Yamaha who have now risen to exalted heights: the Chairman of the Board, the Deputy General Manager of the Semiconductor Division, etc. Makes me feel that somehow I didn't quite reach my potential in the corporate world. But I have the music to keep me warm at night, so I suppose that's something.

name-dropping postscript: I'm still working with a group of the Yamaha Music Technology engineers: Thom Blum, a founder of the ICMC, Doug Keislar, now editor of the Computer Music Journal, Jim Wheaton. And some of the others have gone on to some greatness as well: Guy Garnett, Xavier Serra, Michael Czeiszperger, John Strawn.

February 28th 2009, Van Ness & Sacramento, SF 8pm

Two Orchestral Waltzes for Lynne

1. Ludmilla Waltz

2. Empress Waltz

"The waltz, in fact, is magnificently improper - the art of tone turned bawdy. I venture to say that the compositions of one man alone, Johann Strauss II, have lured more fair young creatures to lamentable complaisance than all the hypodermic syringes of all the white slave scouts since the fall of the Western Empire. There is something about a waltz that is simply irresistible. Try it on the fattest and sedatest or even upon the thinnest and most acidulous of women and she will be ready, in ten minutes, for a stealthy kiss behind the door - nay, she will forthwith impart the embarrassing news that her husband misunderstands her, and drinks too much, and cannot appreciate Maeterlinck, and is going to Cleveland, 0., on business to-morrow..."  from H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, Second Series.

The two waltzes here are written for my inamorata, and reflect two of her most beguiling facets, the first: as the fallen Russian aristocrat, the woman of a certain expectation lacking the allowance that would sanction it; the second: as the haughty and dominating sovereign, unwilling to brook any usurpation of her ultimate and crushing authority. Popularly, waltzes are thought of as dances in 3/4 time, but the word waltz merely means a revolving dance, as both words come from the same root, and many dances named waltzes over the last few centuries have been in a variety of meters: 2/4, 3/4, 6/8, 5/4.  But in the end, composers get to call their works whatever they want, so, while the first soi-disant waltz is in 3/4, it is hardly a dance at all, more a concert statement of unbridled passion, discords and all, and the second, while primarily in a fast 3/4 with shifts to 2/4, carries us away in a whirl, a flash of ankle as the ball gown spins up, bodies pressed against each other, a fevered head falling to a shoulder in a swoon of sweet and utter surrender.

Waltzes

After a weekend's nose-grindstoning, I dashed off a second waltz and an OK orchestration of both: the Ludmilla Waltz and the Empress Waltz, named after two of the formal natures of the most lovely and admirable Lynne R. It was easier to orchestrate the new one since it was conceived from the start as an orchestral being, whereas the older one had gotten into my head a bit too much as a piano work with its piano sensibilities and pianistic tendencies. But the two together are a good match. Once again, I had a grand plan to write of every moment of the great creation, but that again proved elusive. I'm in a difficult-to-verbalize place when I work, and each decision seems either too small, too arbitrary, or too suddenly insightful.  And it's hard to glean something that is good enough to pass down to the younger generation. But I have discovered one thing: the more I write these chamber orchestra pieces, the more I yearn for the subtler timbres of a larger orchestra, a much larger orchestra.

Feliz Nazi Blog

My literate writing time recently has been spent primarily on the blog I started with my sometimes librettist and always friend Jim Bisso, the explanation for which is somewhat difficult but is revealed by the gestalt of the postings en masse. UPDATE: this blog is no more, but its core has been folded into the E.W. blog hierarchy.

But I'm now in the process of composing a new waltz for Lynne, a companion piece as it were to the old one, both of which will be presented by the orchestra in the most waning day of February. My visit to New York has imbued me with a deep piety for all things artistic and renewed appreciation for hard driving ambition and a work ethic that allows not for fiddle-faddle.

Big and Little Eyes

Here.

Lynne's latest

Her recent absence from Society has been due to a number of majorly lovely projects, including the one above, with before and after pix on her blog.  I was involved in some of the measurements and higher mathematics of the project (but not her use of Sphenic Numbers) using various steam-powered approximates to what we probably could have achieved in an instant with the right laser interferometric sextant or astrolabe or whatever.  Suffice it to say that small errors in rise can lead to large errors in surface area, the basis of estimation in the decorative painting biz.

Freeloading gigolo

I'm quite smug and pleased with myself as seen above in Noah Berger's shot for the Chronicle. I am imagining myself as Erling and also seemingly as a person who has a rod jammed deep into his bowels. Joshua Kosman has written a lovely feature on me and the opera and I am allowing myself a bit of vain rodomantade and narcissism.  In fact, I am going to go outside into my backyard right now and lean over the pond where the Gambusia are leaping through clouds of mosquitos and just stare at my own reflection, possibly falling in love with it and, unlike the love featured in my typical but-I-just-have-so-much-love-to-give story, this love will be a love that excludes all others. In this quiet beautiful space I can't hear Lynne's remonstrations as to how it's her house in Potrero Hill and her Garden and her etc and how I am just a freeloading gigolo and so on and so forth.

Mordake Visuals, Construction, Music et al

I was informed by electronic post late last night that Lynne has been blogging her work for Mordake. As of yesterday morning I finally finished setting the last of Douglas's text, almost just barely too late as we really are in the middle of rehearsals, and Herr Weiß is here only for another week or so, and M. Duykers is back in Florida performing final excruciations on his students. Several would-be assistants had other projects interfere with their participation, but luckily our friend Diana showed up direct from Amersfoort NL, firmly gripped the handle of our construction problems, caused the Jack in the Box to pop out, and has left us all deeply satisfied with her work. 

Mary Ellen Hunt dropped by to interview Frieder and me for a mention in the Chronicle's article about the SFIAF, but we've been corresponding a bit about those people who, like Mordake are double-faced.  She referenced the young Indian girl who is believed by some to be a reincarnation of Ganesh, I countered with Chang Tzu Ping (with a nod to the recent alleged Lakshmi reincarnation), and then on to various other facial tumors and skin ailments and so on. These photos disturb me a bit even though I wish I could just accept them as part of the continuum of human styles and substances.  Like the murder victim we happened across today draped with a cloth and surrounded by police tape and squad cars, they seem to remind me too much of my own fragile physical nature, one step away from worm dirt.

undertaking, similitude to painting

Many Western classical composers have became enamored with their scores but, although scores are sometimes very pretty, they aren't really the thing itself, are they? I happened to run across this old and somewhat embarrassing program note of mine in one of my many self-googling expeditions:

"I worry constantly about something Gerard Grisey said to me: 'Our ancestors confused the map for the territory.' Although he was speaking of the way Classical and Romantic composers confused notes for sound, this complaint could just as easily be leveled at composers who are more interested in concept or structure than sound. In fact, I would say that even the sound is less important than the effect, the representation of the work which exists in the listener's mind and body. To gain control over this, one must use the entire language of music available, be very aware of the feelings which develop in one's own body, use systems which give you complete control over all aspects of the sound, and, maybe most importantly, play at high enough volume to shut out all other effects." E.W.

I think most of the music I have written has been more-or-less front-to-back, at least conceived of as a linear structure in time rather than as an object, even if there is some attention to the architecture or foreshadowing of what is to come. Morton Feldman has talked about the influence of his painter friends on his composition and how he approaches a score like a painting, putting up a large gridded paper and skipping about to fill in the details here and there. My friend Craig Harris has pushed for tools to facilitate this kind of work. I'm finding myself doing the same with the latest opera. I've set up a huge timeline inside of Digital Performer and I'm filling it in with orchestral and noisy recordings and electronic this and that as well as synthesized lines. A libretto gives a structure and I'm not sure I could write a large instrumental piece this way; it just isn't the way I think. But as I've been working on this piece I've been expressly thinking of painterly analogies, maybe because I live with a painter and I seem to have more and more painter buddies. Like Lynne, I have been blocking out some sections very roughly just to get an idea of the whole, then going back and refining and painting in the details. Like Amy, I am painting on layer after layer, the final color and rhythmic texture being a rich mix of bubbled up sound. In my electronic works at least, I seem to like a lot of layers, foregrounds and backgrounds and in between.

Gerard Grisey changes a tire

I went to see Alex Ross speak tonight at Wheeler Auditorium on the campus of my nourishing and most bounteous mother the University of California at Berkeley. The talk was a brief overview of twentieth century music and the Bay Area's contributions, especially those of the more famous of the minimalists, since many of them had their early careers here. He's on a combined book tour (The Rest is Noise) and trip to see the premiere of Appomattox by Philip Glass at the San Francisco Opera. Lynne and I saw it on Tuesday and I was weeping unconsolably afterwards for the loss of one of my heroes, drinking one Baileys after another sitting in the Biergarten at Zeitgeist. I should have given up after Galileo Galilei, for which we also made the mistake of making an effort to see the premiere (at the Goodman Theater in Chicago in the hot midsummer of 2002). John Duykers asked me to go to the latter since he was starring as the mature GG, but some terrible truths are better left unknown.

Even though Jim Bisso stood me up for Berlin - Ecke Schoenhauser, I did finally meet Richard Friedman in the flesh, and Paul Dresher was there. In 1990 I was in Japan for Yamaha demos and I went into an enormous music store in Tokyo - don't remember the name - where I picked up a tremendously beautiful edition of the complete scores of Satie. But the small heart lifting experience was finding the 'west coast composer' section which contained only two CDs, Paul's and mine, proving that from a very great distance two people of such markedly different stature can look almost the same size.

Speaking of heroes and those of great stature, I've been thinking about Gérard Grisey a lot lately. Partiels is a tremendous work and he died way too young and neither he nor I could change the tire on my old yellow VW bug when it blew out on the way back from Stanford.

In my country I have coat of dog

While I was drinking my way through Old Europe last week the Mordake Suite #1 was played on Music from Other Minds, the radio arm of the Other Minds Festival, hosted by Jim Bisso's friend and former colleague at Sun Microsystems Richard Friedman. Jim was in fact 'riffed' from his job last week and has once more taken the reigns of the gelded stallions of the Leisure Class, giving him more time to work on our sex comedy libretto. Oh, how I wish for such a forced retirement, the placing in the lock of my golden handcuffs the sacred key of freedom, to write the next in the series of my great works. After my trip I'm so in the mood to get back to it all, having had my arms loaded up with inspirational moments, visiting old friends in the arts and the technologies of art. I went to see my drinking buddy Alexei Kornienko conduct the piece of high modernism Evocation (1968) by Dieter Kaufmann, a Carinthian composer, in the Konzerthaus Wien with Elena Denisova as the violin soloist. The piece thrilled me like I haven't been thrilled for while, the sound of 40 strings and voices playing in a divisi cacophony of dramatic gestures, the members of the chorus frantically covering their ears and listening oh so closely to their tuning forks to get the next entrance, the soprano leaping from one unsupported frequency to one as far away as possible. I'm inspired to try to reach that level of dramatic height with my own poor fumblings through my own quite different approach. But I went because Alexei has conducted all my European opera performances, including the German versions of both Sub Pontio Pilato and A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil, and Elena's 13 Capricen is an incredible virtuosic firework of violinism. Lynne was there as well, tolerating the din as she has not quite the acquired taste for it, but taking some lovely photos of the cramped stage. She's blogged a bit about the trip included some pics of me here. And, speaking of the blogging illness, filmmaker and colleague Sierra Choi seems to be now hacking up a bit of phlegm as well, writing anecdotes about me and also using our home in the pilot for her latest TV show. Some of Lynne's lovely works appear as well as my recent li'l waltz.

Right, the title. We met up with Erika and Pete on their belated honeymoon in Vienna. Erika works at Torso Vintages here in town and related following incident: Russian woman fingers vintage mink, a hard edge of disdain apparent, turns to her and says with that accent, ...

It is with such baubles that men are led

The powers that be, in their capricious omniscience, have bestowed an honor on my dear love Lynne Rutter, who has now joined the decorative painting ionosphere. Unfortunately it comes with no estate nor servant, but 'tis a joy nonetheless.

Amy Crehore

Let's take a moment to consider one of my favorite paintings. In the collection of the artist. I have a few of Amy's prints above my piano just below Vera where I meditate on them while I work. In a quid pro quo, she at times listens to The Bed You Sleep In in between the blues and the hokum when she is working. It makes me happy to think that, possibly, I've left a small impression. Maybe a brush stroke that took a small turn to reflect a particularly lovely note on the viola, maybe a color that ended up a slightly darker hue as a static sad sawmill loop sounded.

Not for dancing

Lynne Rutter had been asking me to write something for her, and I knew she was very fond of the Shostakovich Jazz Suite waltzes, so I wrote her a short waltz. It's a slow listening waltz more than a dancing waltz, and maybe could be orchestrated as an appropriate dirge for my New Orleans funeral. No recording, but the score is on my works page, direct link here. I did play it at our annual party/salon last Saturday and was later forced to play it again, the second time being a bit more difficult due to the ongoing drinking of the Nerve Center Punch, but probably a little more heartfelt too in a sad crying-in-your-punch kind of way. I've thought we should do a salon more often given that we seem to have a lot of "creative, smart, and funny friends" as one of the thank-you notes said. But maybe the rarity is a plus. Dresher was there and seemed to enjoy himself and we went to see his Tyrant opera last night. Duykers as usual did a great job. He seems to be talking a number of us West Coast composer types into writing him solo operas and paying him for the opportunity.

Just after posting this, I received a DVD from M. Mara-Ann, who unknown to me secreted a video recording device into the party and captured my drunken stumbling through the piece, so there is actually more to love than I thought there was. Lynne told me that, when her friend Rich Kraft once did an imitation of me playing the piano, he started with a bold flourish, stopped and grunted and then started over, and this truth about me is what we see here.

The Laundry Room

After a hard day scrivening my meager attempts to add to our shared culture, I've found there is no better way to relax than to take the servants' stair down to the laundry room and spend a lazy late afternoon in languorous contemplation of the lacy underthings scattered about like autumn leaves after a blustery day. Sometimes, a particularly lovely article will catch my eye, a red chemise, a black garter, a soft night-cap, and an intense impulse will rise in me, and I will find myself secreting it away, finding it later amid my tousled bedcovers, an evening lost.

photo by David Papas