Podcast Panel #11

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Richard Emsley - '...from swerve of shore to bend of bay'

Today's MP3 came without blurb or explanation from its shy submitter: it can be downloaded in full on that direct link or streamed at http://freakytrigger.co.uk

[Poll #1140876]

POLLS STILL OPEN: Keke Palmer! Natalia y la Forquentina! Avenged Sevenfold! and ending tomorrow Fleet Foxes!

POLL CLOSED: Trina ended up with a score of 6.44 with (I think) the highest NUMBER of votes so far (a still quite low 18).

HALL OF FAME: Lancelot Link's score of 7.2 is the highest (though it dipped after polls closed when dubdobdee voted.)

BUMF: To submit a track to the Podcast Panel send an MP3 to leagueofpop@gmail.com

Comments

TURN YR VOLUME UP

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It starts VERY quietly and doesn't get much louder (unless there's a sudden loud bit in there).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I don't or won't comprehend the compositional principles behind this but once it gets going - and I guess because it's 'art music' I'm giving it more leeway to get going than I would otherwise - I'm enjoying it: it sounds like an imaginary soundtrack to one of those night-in-the-waxworks stories Al was talking about on Lollards, but more a Tex Avery version than a spooky one. I like the swaying creaking strings, the skittery mouse-trail piano, the general feeling of productive disorientation.

Unfortunately my not understanding the principles probably contributes to me getting pretty bored by about 8 minutes in, and not really feeling the closing bits. The length drops this down from a 7 to a 6 or 5 sadly.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

It sounds like close encounters of the 3rd kind music. Maybe aliens get it? 3.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I gave it a 7 for effective sustained atmosphere and my ability to concentrate on something for twelve minutes. Now that ya mention Tex Avery, I kind of want to watch some of the weirder Looney Tunes I just got to see how "experimental" their soundtracks ever got.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Its not that I was shy :-) I've been pressed for time/had computer problems, bah. I was thinking of posting a couple more sometime, hopefully with a short blurb. Hope that's ok.

I don't understand the musical principles of any of this -- I've had phases where its bothered me, other where it hasn't.

That feeling of disorientation is very much a kind of seasick feeling, its v much like its title, in that sense. I really like how (and I should re-listen before saying, but I've no time now) he micro-modulates the dynamics -- it gets v quiet but there are some loud-ish moments that come in and out in this flash. Like what ppl say about quite/loud in post-rock, but it keeps catching you off-guard no matter how many times you go back to it. Like you I was partly dulled at first, but that quality got me to going back, so now I'm trapped in its circularity. That is what the v best compositions do to me.

The thing is Richard's early music was all controlled violence ('Juniper Tree' for puppet theatre and ensemble is fantastic. Tho' long for the podcast!), but then he stopped composing for like 10 years or so to kinda reconsider, and pieces like this are the result.

[epicharmus.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to process this, but the line "from swerve of shore to bend of bay" comes from the first page of avant fave-rave Finnegans Wake.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This is kind of terrifying. 2.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

yeah, its er, 'based' on Finnegans Wake.

I'm still trying to process this, too.

[koganbot]

... to heighten the listener's sense of temporal 'depth of field' in such a way that (to continue the spatial analogy) the near and the distant may be simultaneously perceived. In strictly temporal terms, the intention is that the immediate experience of individual elements (the 'near') always be simultaneous with an awareness of the work's broader time-spans (the 'distant'), and indeed with imaginary spans extending far beyond the temporal boundaries of the piece (the 'infinitely distant').
--From Emsley's Website, what he was working on in his early work

I'm sort of the opposite of Tom, in that I liked this best right at the start, where it did some good quiet skin creepy-crawlies, whereas when it then fills out with the full ensemble sounds my mind wanders (which is the fault of my mind more than the music's, I'm sure). My guess is that this works best when you concentrate on, say, one instrument, while half-attending to other notes as they skitter around it, then you follow those other notes while half-catching different notes skittering at variance, then you get beached in interludes of silence, then capture a new line of notes. But I miss the shivering mood from the start (which'd have elicited an 8 or 9 from me), so I'm dropping this to 7.

Fearless symmetry

[koganbot]

If we could get a 10, we'd have excellent symmetry

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Here's what my composer friend had to say about the track.

"First Listen:

The piece is written for an instrumentation called "pierrot ensemble", flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano. [...] Well upon visiting the guy's website I see it's written for viola instead of violin, and alto flute and bass clarinet instead of the regulars. But the idea is the same. It's based off of the ensemble Schoenberg used in the piece "Pierrot Lunaire", except he used a soprano instead of percussion. People like it because it leads to some interesting combinations... not that woodwinds and strings don't mix well, but it's a nice standard combination ensemble that isn't has homogeneous as string quartet, woodwind quintet, etc.

One thing I'm noticing is that it seems to start off with more ambiguity than it ends with. The notes kind of strain to get started before going into a more flowing counterpointy texture; the piano has that solo that is very straightforward and then there is the glissando section between the viola and cello... this glissando section is the only section of the piece that REALLY embraces any idea of ambiguity, I feel, and ambiguity is my favorite thing. Again, take from that what you will. There follows sections of flute solo and ends with clarinet solo, both of which are basically the same material, the clarinet simply being slower to wind down the piece. This is a very conventional piece; conventional in form, material and orchestration, especially for being written in 1985 by a guy that is 34. The form is conventional in that sections very easily flow into each other and it's easy to tell when you're in a new section, plus the energy transfer never seems to falter (good or bad, depending on your POV). Material in that his melodic lines are very post-WWIIish, see Hindemith et. al, or even Webern although Webern was much more progressive. Orchestration in that there are very few "impure" tones, no irregular combinations of register or sonority, and even the percussion part is very straightforward. It really serves only to highlight the other parts.

Second Listening:

The piano's presence is constantly with that idea of playing notes very evenly rhythmically but disjunctly melodically. What does that mean? What role is the piano playing when it plays that motive fast or slow?

The sections are so defined... notes... pizzicato... piano solo... flowing whole ensemble...

When the strings are glissing they seem to be attempting to upset the structure, but the flute and piano aren't listening.... this is a very pivotal moment, the only time when the ensemble really has material that is at odds with itself, and it says a lot about the piece that what was happening before this moment "won out" and continues to the end.

Well...okay... now there's this section with a lot of long string notes and percussion building while the notey stuff is going on, but it seems to affect the notey stuff less and the notey stuff STILL PERSISTS as the dominant figure. Now the strings are pizzing in a similar manner to the notey stuff...

Other forces react against the piano very briefly and there is a long pause... after this the rest of the ensemble continues their material with no piano accompaniment... what is happening here?

It's almost as if the strings are attempting to convince the winds to join their side.

Now brief iterations where all instruments attempt notey stuff... now long stuff... winds and strings on their own again.

Now here's the final clarinet solo. Accompanied by string pizzing.... slowly fading out but still using the notey material. Strangely, I feel as though a reconciliation has taken place... while the piano never blinked and maintained the same material throughout the whole piece, the other material did have its chance to be heard, and the material at the end is not nearly as dogmatic as the piano's. Things did work together nicely... too nicely for my taste but that's that."

See, I can actually understand "notey stuff"!!!

Re: Fearless symmetry

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

will an 8 do?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I like the arc of this piece. Not sure why you need to understand the compositional principles behind it any more than you would need to for anything else submitted to the Panel thus far. But that's a disussion for another thread perhaps.

[koganbot]

"Understand" might be the wrong word, but in general in many pop and rock and dance songs you know when something is going into a chorus or a break even if you're not thinking to yourself "It is going into a chorus or a break," or paying much attention to compositional principles, ditto for when something sounds dissonant in relation to the rest of the song, and so on, or when the rhythm switches up. Whereas there may be things in this piece that a trained listener would get readily that I wouldn't get at all, getting it not necessarily meaning "grasping principles" but a more general understanding, such as his hearing a change, or a surprise, while I'm thinking the whole thing sounds pretty much the same.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

I kind of detect a slight change on what yr friend is saying there from first to second listen - at first it seems to be 'conventional' but then questions crop up: what's the piano up to? 'what is happening here'?

Or maybe I'm a bit like 'don't call Emsley 'conventional' you should hear some of his other pieces first! His earlier had almost too many notes, an over-abundance of expression, which makes me admire this stuff even more.

Might post an mp3 of 'Juniper Tree' on sukrat sometime.

I never feel there is a reconciliation going on at the end, which follows from my prev (v confused n' all) post on this.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I think you are overestimatng trained listeners here (full disclosure: I am one). And while it is true that many pop songs have a common structure, pop critics don't tend to imagine (or at least never seem to admit to) barriers to general understanding in pop musicians that do deviate radically from those formulas - say, the Aphex Twin or Japanoise bands.

('pop' above used in its widest sense, inc. rock and dance, obv)

[koganbot]

So what you're saying is that trained listeners, when attending to a piece such as this, lean back and go "Oh wow"?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

They might!

Or they might say: sorry not feeling this at all, dude :(((((

But that's not really what I'm saying. What I'm saying is pop and 'composed music' (for want of a better term - a lot of pop is composed obv) shouldn't require different modes of listening or criticism.

(Jazz seems to me a slightly more tricky case; there do seem to be particular 'rules' there that you have to be initiated in before you can criticize it. But I'm no expert on this point and would be highly delighted to be told that that's nonsense.)

[koganbot]

Not different modes of listening but different knowledge of what's going on in different circumstances (and this can pertain within pop as well, since not every listener "gets" all pop in the same way, since not all pop is the same or has the same conventions either).

But I would say that pop doesn't assume a listener who's attending to the story that's going on in the music (may be inattentive, may be attentive to the dance beats, may be singing along, may be using it as excitement to lure customers into one's Hot Topic franchise, but is less likely to think of herself as following along on the music's compositional or anti-compositional adventure) but rather people who are using music in a myriad of ways; whereas the assumption in classical going back to Beethoven is of a listener attending to the music and shutting off his own activity while he's doing so. Of course, this probably misrepresents the classical listener, but the classical listener is probably complicit in this misrepresentation, in that you don't get a lot of commentary on classical and on modern-day serious music that says, "This is really good, especially as mood music, and it also makes a real good social marker and will impress the chicks."

[koganbot]

But of course no one should be required to listen to music in a certain way. I probably don't listen to Ashlee Simpson in the manner that a lot of other people do, since I pay way more analytic attention to what's going on in the lyrics, and some analytic attention to what's happening compositionally, and why shouldn't I?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Well, quite.

And I think you're overstating the extent of the divide in your previous post, even with all the caveats. (I also think the non-classical listener is the guiltier party when it comes to the misrepresentation that you mention.)

But what I'm mainly challenging in this thread is the assumption that, all other things being equal (and the Podcast Panel is a useful device for helping to level the playing field), composition X and pop song Y require - and in practice receive from those who devote their time to the respective genres - different critical faculties.

[koganbot]

Oh, I'm with you here, and especially not as it pertains to classical but to the idea that the rock fan listens to rock in one way and the pop fan in another, and we should aspire to the second when listening to pop. I'm not sure any poptimists would claim the second, but some might claim the first, that we listen to rock in one way and pop in another. Which may not be altogether false, that is, we can listen to both Cascada and Dylan in similar ways but many people don't.

That said, I think if I understood the composer's adventure in Emsley I'd do a better job of listening no matter how I end up using it, as mood piece or social marker or whatever. Just as if someone who grasps counterrhythm or knows it in his bones is going to do a better job of dancing to "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose" than someone who thinks that the beat is "confused."

[koganbot]

One too many "ifs" in the previous post.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one thing to remember about composed music post-webern was that -- even if any given piece did in fact share compositional principles or conventions with a given predecessor -- not only was there no agreed-on set of conventions and principles, but there was a fairly wild free-for-all developing never-before-used principles piece by piece (stockhausen probably furthest ahead of the pack in never staying still); so that the convention is that there as "no conventions" , with organisational choice structured ab novo every time (haha the latter true except when not) (some composers stick with their one principle -- their life's work to explore just that -- but it may well not be a principle anyone else is using)

so even someone FANTASTICALLY learned in the field may be at a loss when faced with a new piece, as to why what is where and what they SHOULD be listening for (it's also why you get a lot of "manuals for best use" with music of this kind) (but jeff's point is good -- i think the "manuals for best use" actually somewhat disguise what's actually going on when fans of this kind of music listen) (my listening is hugely shaped by the amount of recorded and live free improv i've heard -- one of the first things i'm noticing is "stuff improvisors could never have done: noise effects we can ONLY get from composition, music-reading and rehearsal"; and so my response to what's going on is milestoned by those effects)

(this is one of the things my xenakis essay was about, you'll recall) (or er not)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

as a meditation on FW, and an exploration of the close detail, and distant larger strucutre, the infinite structure, i think what i'm going to be looking for is a sense of range of possible musical effects -- a sense as broad as the ones achieved in FW? which is claiming to give a portrait of all spoken and written history! -- as well as a sense of (perhaps) a radically limited number of overall larger structures (the "philosophical claim" os FW is that time is endlessly cyclic, and that tiny everyday events in everyday lives fall endlessly into the shapes of ancient mythic patterns)

and i'm not sure i get that sense of detail: the pierrot luniare ensemble is rich and flexible, but it's also quite precisely located in an era and a sensibility, limited in its sonic choices and sensibilities, in a way that joyce's use of language really really isn't

i must say i think this is marvellously delicately and subtly performed -- immensely listenable and engaging (thx julio!)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

poll closed but i gave it a 9

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

(Actually the poll wasn't closed, cos we hadn't got enough votes when the week expired - so I'll close it now on 6.25)

Curvely speaking

[koganbot]

This curve is the most squashed of bellnesses.