Bad, bad music

Boulder had snow today, lots of it.  My wife and I shoveled several times, yet when I went out late tonight there was at least another inch covering the walk.   Why should snow make for bad music?  I'm clueless, but Comcast must know.  I've been trying to listen to my standard internet radio station, contemporary-classical.com.  Tonight, it's musicmusicmic .. rest .. musi ..rest.. musicmu ..rest .. ic .. rest .. music musi ..rest.. etc, etc, etc.  You get the idea.  I've turned it off but wistfully remember the good old days when my FM radio faithfully broadcast classical music.  KVOD went off the air here in Boulder, so it's either CDs or internet radio.  Well, I guess I'm stuck with CDs.  

I've been using the internet a lot today and had horrible results with ssh.  Comcast kept dropping my connections in mid-stream.  Scp wasn't much better, with long delays as I tried to move files from my workstation to remote servers.  

It must have been the snow, freezing the bits.  It couldn't be a faulty Comcast router.

Very old and very new

Over the past two nights I heard two completely different concerts at the University of Colorado: Music of the High Baroque and the Pendulum New Music.

Elizabeth Farr played harpsichord in the first. Two Bach pieces preceded by a suite by D'Angelbert from around 1689. I've listened to a lot of Bach, but only during the Bourée did I remember hearing any of it before -- and that, I believe, was sung by the Swingle Singers years ago. While Farr's playing was wonderful, I found the D'Angelbert hard to digest. While I tried to follow or find a melodic line the ornamentation threw me. I was listening to 300 year old music with ears tuned to the 21st century.

The Pendulum New Music project has been a favorite of mine over the years. You hear stuff you've never heard before - some good, some not so. I had never heard the D'Angelbert harpsichord suite, either, though. Last night's concert was at the CU Atlas Black Box Theater which is equipped with lots of high-tech sound and projection systems. Multimedia music was interspersed with live soloists playing with computers and projections. I was particularly impressed with multimedia presentation of Hunter Ewen's Elements. One section which I think of as "Birds" but which he called "Staccato" was particularly clever. The black and white projection of bird shapes first appeared to be bi-laterally symmetric but I realized as I watched more closely there was more more going on and things were not symmetric, even though the music did seem so. Fun. It would seem to me that Mr. Ewen has a future in TV commercials, at the least.

The "known" composer on the program was Steve Reich. His "Pendulum Music" was, how do I say it, "performed". Three microphones were swung back and forth over special spherical speakers on the floor, generating feedback as they moved back and forth. Music? I think not. I like some of Reich's works and I'm listening to his Music for 18 Musicians as I type this. Unlike the earlier D'Angelbert which hid the theme behind ornamentation, Reich's theme is repeated over and over and over, with small ornamentation or variations. "Pendulum Music" apparently has no relationship to the Pendulum New Music program, only a shared word.

I also enjoyed the combination of a live performer playing alongside taped electronic music. We had two tubas and a violin in 3 separate pieces. Michael Dunn, from the faculty and who gave his own concert the prior week, played well again, this time in a minimalistic "Tapestry for Tuba and Tape" by James DeMar. In the second tuba piece, Ryan Wurst's "Flow II for Solo Tuba and Live Electronics", the tuba player Ed Wagner used something to tap on the bell. To me it sounded as if he was using two different things -- there appeared to be two completely different sounds. However, when I asked Wagner after the performance he said it was just a penny.

The big brass....

The Colorado Symphony performed Bruckner's 7Th symphony over this past weekend. What a sound! Bruckner has always been one of my favorites and his 7Th was wonderful. I'm listening to it again as I type this. At the applause, the maestro, Hans Graf, gave special attention to the euphonium section, the substitutes for the "Wagner tubas" which highlight the second movement and are heard throught. You don't hear the euphonium often, but at the University of Colorado the other night I heard a faculty concert, "The Winsome Tuba", with Michael Dunn on tuba. During the concery there was a performance with Aaron Tindall on the euphonium of "Michelangelo". The composer was listed as both Sigfart Dagsland and Sigvard Dagsland. I prefer the former, chuckle, chuckle. It's the first time I can recall that I attended an all tuba concert. Fun, but not something I'd want to do again in the immediate future. Dunn showed the extreme ranges of the tuba and played well, so to hear both the tuba and euphonium in a duet was fun and an ear challenge -- well done by both.

Back on Bruckner, my favorite Internet music station, contemporary-classical.com, introduced me to a composer that I've never heard of,Albéric Magnard, the "French Bruckner". I ordered his complete (4) symphonies from Amazon and weeks later, from England, they arrived. Perhaps I'm jaded and perhaps I've listened to too many symphonies by all the greats, but I'm really enjoying these new works by Magnard. One might assume that something broadcast on a contemporary classical internet station might be a bit weird, but these symphonies are not. With some similarities to Wagner and Bruckner and Franck, these are tonal, fairly long and thoroughly romantic works that would appeal to most audiences. Too bad Magnard isn't better know, but I'm glad I found out about him. Thank you contemporary-classical.com.

By the way, Magnard was killed in the early days of World War I defending his home against invading or marauding German soldiers. He was reputed to have a temper and personality like his dwarf name-sake from the Ring. His home was burned, apparently along with some of his other compositions.