{"id":7169,"date":"2018-06-26T20:34:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T19:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/?p=7169"},"modified":"2018-06-26T20:34:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T19:34:49","slug":"memory-forgetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2018\/06\/memory-forgetting.html","title":{"rendered":"Memory, Forgetting"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I wrote about that new recording of John Cage’s Two\u00b2<\/em><\/a>, I tried to link to my recent review of some of Cage’s other piano music on Another Timbre. And then remembered that it wasn’t here on the blog. It got published in the previous issue of Tempo<\/em>, with reviews of Lost Daylight<\/a><\/em>, the collection of Terry Jennings’ piano music, and a large work for solo piano by J\u00fcrg Frey. You can read a large chunk of the review on the preview page<\/a>, which pretty much gets to what I was saying about Cage’s new approaches to piano writing in the 1950s and how it reset understanding of later piano music, both by him and by others. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span>I ended up describing Frey’s La pr\u00e9sence, les silences<\/em> as Hammerklavier<\/em>, or, more appropriately, his Concord Sonata<\/em>. His use of silence, long considered by listeners to be the signature foreground material of Frey and other Wandelweiser composers, has receded but still remains a vital force behind the sounds. Here, it takes musical traits from tradition – continuity, harmony, teleology – and transforms them into something familiar but not yet known. It’s part of his album Collection Gustave Roud<\/a><\/em>, dedicated to the poet who “wandered through the landscape as a fl\u00e2neur, observer…. For me his work constitutes a kind of \u201cfield recording\u201d, not with a microphone and sounds, but with his soul and body, recording his environment in the broadest sense”. <\/p>\n

I didn’t have space to discuss the other large work in this collection, Farblose Wolken, Gl\u00fcck, Wind<\/em> for soprano, trumpet, cello, percussion and tape. The unusual combination of instruments at first evokes a kind of procession, with a slowly building drone made of high, bowed sounds. Towards the end, a slow drum-beat underpins the voice. The sense of wandering, of landscape, pervades the music; but this is not idle wandering, although there is no destination. It is travel for the sake of travel, a d\u00e9rive<\/em> to render the participant susceptible to enlightenment – in the sense of Cage’s “purposeful purposelessness” more than the Situationists’ political awareness. Once again, the listener finds music predicated on the transcendental in art. Voice and trumpet harmonise in unison, or each wanders alone but connected. It’s still one of the most satisfying recordings I’ve heard in the past year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote about that new recording of John Cage’s Two\u00b2, I tried to link to my recent review of some of Cage’s other piano music on Another Timbre. And then remembered that it wasn’t here on the blog. It got published in the previous issue of Tempo, with reviews of Lost Daylight, the collection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,44],"tags":[134,31,165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7169"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7175,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169\/revisions\/7175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}