Line of the Day

Officious, Middle-Aged Man: "Excuse me, I'm looking for a recording of Dvořák's Third World Symphony."

Whoa Wait a Minute!

After all my razzin' yesterday I forgot to remind everybody to go hear Nico's concert at Merkin Hall, this Thursday (May 8) at 8 p.m. His new material is very, very strong; honestly, I think his forthcoming CD, Mothertongue, stands head and shoulders above his previous effort, and you know how much I liked that one. Buy tickets here.

You Don't Say

"The music is for me even to this day compositionally instrument remained imagination, and sometimes I use it to automatic acoustic minute, direct Handzucken take on the keys. In the grip, the blow is picturesque energy, also drawing momentum. The direct override those findings with the timbre is absurd involuntary core through. Thus, the piano sound as mine to orchestral sound tower, or it leads me in the sound area, which I nervlich ertaste.” – Wolfgang Rihm

promotional copy from the Qualiton Imports website

You Loved the Etude, NOW Try the Wallet

The opportunity to ruthlessly mock one's smarter, more successful friends comes along so rarely that I could not pass this up. I've been linked to Braithwaite Wallets, Inc., a deliciously pretentious designer of men's accessories that accompanies each of their two wallet designs with a self-serious, J. Peterman-style anecdote and a return policy that promises, "IF YOUR BRAITHWAITE DOESN'T ENHANCE YOUR LIFESTYLE" within thirty days, they will literally send someone to your home to pluck the wallet from your undeserving fingers. So here's the story behind their model, RAPTURED:

Walking down the street, he was reeling inside after the performance he had just seen. He didn’t typically listen to “concert music”, but this was unlike anything he had ever heard. The solitary piano player, the music that seemed broken and disjointed, the strange and beautiful harmony was still stirring within him. With his legs carrying him without concern for direction, he was happy to be alone in this moment to reflect on what he had experienced[.] Watching the strangers that passed by him, his swirling thoughts began to focus and take shape. The seeds of a grand idea, still vague but overwhelming, had been slowly cultivated by the unfamiliar music that unlocked his imagination. A new desire to turn his feeling into a plan, into action, drove his thoughts, as well as his legs, faster and faster. Finally relenting from his brisk pace, he looked up to see a café, a well-lit beacon within the darkened street, a space to calm his unharnessed visions. Once inside, he now wished he could put his ideas into words, that he could share them with someone else. His mind was distant, his body on auto-pilot. He approached the counter and ordered without glancing at the barista. After the steaming drink was set down, he reached into his coat, pulled out his wallet, removed a bill, and told the cashier to keep the change. “Nice wallet.” Looking up, he saw a woman admiring his Braithwaite. “Thanks.” “You look a little distracted.” As he cautiously began to explain the thoughts that had been overrunning him, she interrupted, surprised to find someone echoing her own enveloping ideas. He smiled as he listened to her recent insights, gladdened to find this new connection: a sense of harmonious collaboration uniting the two as they talked into the night.

At the top of the page is an embedded player, offering the wallet's "THEME: 'A Hudson Cycle' by Nico Muhly."

Ha!

Sorry, it's actually a terrifically beautiful wallet, as you can see, and I guess I can even see some connections between it and Nico's music. Minimalist texture, baroque flourish—even the asymmetrical pockets suggest Hudson Cycle's undulating polyrhythms—but can you imagine the accessories that might be inspired by the music of other composers? (Yes, I am segueing into a "bit" now.)

Grandma exhaled uneasily and then was silent. Dropping the syringe back into my purse, I signed her name on the new will with CHEATING LYING STEALING, the David Lang fountain pen.

Or,

"You seem uneasy, was it something I said?" Of course not—but I couldn't tell her it was my Arvo Pärt luxury hairshirt!

Or maybe,

As the klezmer clarinet slipped into a tango rhythm, the dark stranger lowered the brim of her Osvaldo Golijov-brand urban sombrero.

Or simply,

His eyes widened. 'Please, no,' he would have gasped, if not for the gag. "Anything but the Zorn!"

I think this could work!

Ian Buruma on Tan Dun

I hope everybody is reading this NY Times Magazine piece, which manages to celebrate its subject without buying into the hype, and criticize him without buying into the backlash. The first sentence:

In Stockholm last fall, walking past a McDonald’s, Tan Dun turned to me and said: “Some 20 years ago, I was still planting rice in China. And now I’m conducting orchestras in all the great concert houses of the world: La Scala, the Met, the Berlin Philharmonic. I still can’t believe it.”

That might even be too neat—retelling Tan's brilliant success story, a rise from rice paddies to the Berlin Phil, while the Golden Arches lurk in the background. Can the musical sort of globalization have a double edge, too? The politics of Tan Dan's music are as complicated as his music is beautiful, and he deserves a profile this incisive and nuanced.

Victrola, Hola, Hola, Eh, Eh, Eh

Hey, what are you doing after work tonight? Really? Jesus, that sounds boring! Instead of that, why don't you go hear Victrola at the Stone, John Zorn's groovy New York experimental venue? Victrola is a new "bandsemble" starring composer Missy Mazzoli (I've mentioned her here before), and the pieces on their myspace are kind of gorgeous. 8 p.m., $10 at the door, corner of 2nd & C! Go there.

Coming June '08 on Bridge Records`

William Bland's Kindred Spirits, the title work of the disc, is in two movements-- an intense concert waltz, and a wild set of variations based on a tune by the rock band “Limp Bizkit”.

—promotional copy from the Bridge website.

Wrong Answer

Living with a Philosopher

JoJo read me this at the breakfast table today, from Guy Davenport's essay, "Wittgenstein":

When [Ludwig Wittgenstein] lay dying of cancer at his doctor's house, the doctor's kind wife remembered his birthday and baked him a cake. Moreover, she wrote on it with icing, "Many Happy Returns." When Wittgenstein asked her if she had examined the implications of that sentiment, she burst into tears and dropped the cake. "You see," Wittgenstein said to the doctor when he arrived on the scene, "I have neither the cake nor an answer to my question." Some days before, the doctor's wife, patient martyr in the history of philosophy, had shown Wittgenstein her new coat that she was to wear to a party that very evening. Silently he fetched the scissors, silently he snipped the buttons from the coat, silently he replaced the scissors. The sainted wife remarked that, yes indeed, come to think of it, the coat did look better without its buttons, but only when the seals are opened at Doom will the philosopher's skill with the scissors declare its meaning.

The Geography of the Imagination, p. 333

Lives of the Great Composers: Igor Stravinsky Poses Nude (NSFW)

You're welcome. Photo reproduced from (naturally) Stravinsky Inside Out by Charles M. Joseph, p. 70.

Falling in Love Again

Oh my God it feels sooo good to be finally finally finally moved in. We're still living out of boxes, with half-assembled furniture leaning against our walls, but whatever. We are out of that horrible place. Okay, I do miss it, a little. Our old flat was the site of some intense misery, but it was also our home during one of the happiest years of my life, when its decrepitude still seemed "quaint," and its claustrophobic closeness, "cozy." The ivy outside was thick with birds, and the bushes growing up outside our window gave us a green view all four seasons, and JoJo and I could sit in a living room crowded with books, reading, drinking strong black tea (with milk) out of secondhand cups, and listening to Keith Jarrett play the Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues. That's the soundtrack of bliss, you see. I know Tatyana Nikolayeva's recording is, okay, better, or at least more Shostakovich, but the untroubled surface of the Jarrett recording is exactly Sunday-afternoon music, as cool as a handful of pearls. Our new place is so much more spacious, though! The Shostakovich 24 are too intimate. I hereby declare the soundtrack of this flat to be countertenor Carlos Mena's sweet and airy recording of Victoria motets, transcribed for voice and lute. Maybe I'll go back and upload illustrative sound samples when I get the chance. Not right now, though. I'm just excited to be able to blog again, after what seems like weeks and weeks. Free time! What a wonderful thing! I've got an awful lot to say about the various music-related internet nonsenses that have been going on while I was moving... but, again, not right now. I will say, just for closure's sake: Berkshire Record Outlet! After our whole kerfluffle with them, after they made it right, after they sent us a little box of free CDs and a nice apology, and then after we settled into our new place, JoJo placed another order with them—and it already shipped! They've put us on some kind of priority list, so that our orders are sent out immediately! Man, I take back everything mean I said about them. They have totally bought my love.