Historic Works for Percussion Ensemble (1931-1942) Edgard Varése, Ionisation - Johanna Beyer, "IV" - Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo - Carlos Chavez, Toccata Alan Hovhaness, October Mountain - Lou Harrison, Canticle No. 3 - Thomas Siwe, Conductor - Equilibrium 2002

Hello everyone. Since I am currently albeit briefly home I'm uploading this superb album in the background whilst doing other things - still my only option unless I'm visiting family (visiting their computers!).  So, I just might have to take a drive over to 'family headquarters' tonight or tomorrow in fact; I am really itching to share magnificent tunes. I miss the days of posting music regularly/several times a week so very very much :(   Needless to say I'd love to be posting for you my fellow musical explorers, every day, now that would be my (non-profit ;) dream job. Add to that an actual career in classical music broadcasting/programming etc. and I would probably be willing to confess bouts of happiness every once in a while! I dunnoo if I mentioned this but I was a candidate finalist for a full-time radio host job at WQXR New York just short of a year ago, which blew my mind; *this* has been one of my dream jobs (and top day dream, I should add) for over 20 years now! At least I still have a well-produced demo to attach to my CV in the future if I ever get the extremely unlikely opportunity.

What the above flapdoodle has to do with this 1 hour offering of exciting and important percussion music from the early 20th century.....I do not know. See if you all were here I'd tell you many a' dull and occasionally interesting things in person. Then again - have you ever seen the Marx Bros hilarious "A Night at the Opera"? The famous cabin/stateroom scene?? If I invited over say, the top commenting visitors here, we would have not music wine or cheese, but this:

Is that Mr. Driftwood falling for a dame, or is it scraps??

Another shot of my studio apartment-blogfriends-meetup gala.

So, on to the disc. In the booklet each composition lists the varied musicians involved yet it is unclear if they are all part of one unified group (my guess is the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble?) 

So, change of plans. I just looked at the time. I shall add info on this release very late tonight or tomorrow - more likely. For now have fun exploring these percussion masterworks (likely unfamiliar to some will be the Beyer piece - it is a shame that the innovative composer Johanna Beyer < 1888-1944 > is not better known!)

*Sunday afternoon and I am now home.

Edgard Varèse began Ionisation in Paris in 1929 and completed it on November 13th, 1931. This landmark composition was written for 13 players utilizing 40 percussion instruments, including crash cymbal, bass drums, concerros (muffled cow bells struck with a drum stick), high and low tam-tams, gong, bongos, side drum, high and low sirens, slapstick, güiros, Chinese woodblocks, claves, triangles, snare drums, maracas, tarole (a high pitched drum), suspended cymbals, sleigh bells, tubular chimes, cymbals, castanets, celesta, tambourine, anvils, piano, glockenspiel (with resonators), and others that I am simply forgetting. As the very first of many all percussion scores written in this century, "Ionisation" is remarkably subtle in its use of those instruments. The form is articulated by changing sonorities - a passage scored only for metal instruments; a fleeting duet for drums and maracas; a hair-raising moment (the first sustained loud point in the score) when several players have the same triplet figure (a rhythmic unison); the first high, Morse-code clanging of the anvils, more than midway through. The grand and sonorous coda is marked by the entrance of the piano, celesta, and chimes--the three instruments of definite pitch. Varèse once defined his mission as the "liberation of sound" (just as Schoenberg promised the "emancipation of dissonance.") Ionisation is the purest demonstration of Varése's success, and his eventual influence. It is the work of both a pioneer and a

master. 

The life of Johanna Magdelena Meyer is somewhat of a mystery. She was born July 11th, 1888 in Leipzig, Germany, studied music and at the age of 35 immigrated to the States, making her home in New York City. She continued her studies with Dane Rudhyar, Ruth Crawford and Henry Cowell. She was enrolled in Cowell's percussion class at the New School in 1935 when she composed "IV", the only work published during her lifetime. To help support herself, she worked as Cowell's assistant at his publishing firm, New Music, doing office work and translations of German texts. Described as very shy, Beyer, it appears, was reluctant to promote her own works. However Cowell's wife, Sidney Robertson revealed in a phone interview that Beyer would would sometimes include her manuscripts with New Music scores to prominent conductors. Beyer died January 9th, 1944 after after a long illness from ALA - Lou Gehrig's Disease. Her music (over 50 songs, symphonies, and chamber works) has languished, largely ignored, in the American Music Center Library.  The first performance of "IV" was given on March 6th 1933, in Carnegie Hall.

"IV" is composed of 9 rhythmic lines. As with John Cage's 1935 quartet, no instrumentation is indicated. The conductor must select percussion instruments that blend well, yet insure that each voice can be recognized. Four of the lines enter as in a fugue, creating inverted pyramids across the manuscript. Their accents are reinforced by the other voices with a bottom note ostinato marking the start of each 7/8 measure. A sense of movement is created as tempo and intensity levels constantly  shift. The work ends in a great crescendo with seven final beats heard by a single voice.

New World Records has recorded a decent amount of her music thankfully, so when I can locate where I have some other discs of Beyer's music, they will most certainly make an appearance on here.  

"Ostinato Pianissimo" is an example of Henry Cowell evoking the sounds of Indonesian gamelan music without truly imitating its formal structures or utilizing normal orchestration. Elements of  both Indonesian and Indian classical music can be found within its pages. Composed in 1934 and dedicated to Nicholas Slominsky, it is scored for 3 gongs, 3 drums, bongos, tambourine, guiro, 2 woodblocks, xylophone, 8 rice bowls and 2 string pianos (Cowell wrote works that asked the pianist to pluck, scrape, mute, or strike the strings inside the piano with fingers and various objects. Later on John Cage who was Cowell's student took this further with the "prepared piano"). By muting selected piano strings at various points, Cowell altered the sound making it reminiscent of gamelan metallophones. The rice bowls, to be arranged in ascending scale, shocked early audiences (similar sets of bowls called jala tarang have origins in Indian folk music). The bowls, along with the xylophone and string pianos, perform repeated ostinatos of varying lengths creating a complex heterophonic texture. The woodblocks, tambourine, guiro, and drums act as another unit whose rhythmic pattern slowly repeats itself every 10 measures. The final group, 3 gongs performs a cycle five measures in length marked by striking one of the gongs with a wooden stick. "Ostinato Pianissimo" borrows from musical structures found in Asian music yet he transforms them into something original. Definitely the most intriguing 3 minutes one can experience through sound!

*More info on the other works I will add soon; I'd like to move on so I can share one more deliriously interesting recording before it gets too late :)

Enjoy!

H.W.F.P.E.(1931-1942)-Tzadik.zip

http://www6.zippyshare.com/v/QNv476Iz/file.html

Lou Harrison - Piano Concerto - Joanna MacGregor, Piano - Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sian Edwards - Sound Circus 2008

This is a gorgeous account of Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto (1983/1985) and it is my favorite to spin at the moment. Joanna MacGregor plays wonderfully, her piano sings and dances (and oh the swirling merriment brought about by the percussion in the "Stampede" second movement!) and the blissful result is a luminous concerto that soars ever higher.

Keyboard instruments, since the time of Bach, are tuned to what is called "equal temperament," a compromise system in which, for example, the notes G-sharp and A-flat can be played by the same piano key, even though they are harmonically unalike. Given the invitation to write a concerto for the noted jazz and classical composer Keith Jarrett (who, like Harrison, has crossed musical boundaries throughout his career), Harrison suggested a work in which the piano would be "mistuned" to an earlier, pre-compromise system.

"[This] Concerto," writes Harrison, "is an exploration of the many beauties of...this astonishing tuning." Briefly put, the black keys are tuned to produce the mathematically precise 4ths and 5ths beloved of medieval theoreticians; the white keys come off resembling the "just intonation" of the Renaissance and Baroque. The orchestra consists of strings, two harps, three trombones and a large percussion section; each group, furthermore, tunes to different facets of this system.

That's all very complicated; what results, however, is less so: a kind of harmonic richness that sounds slightly disconnected from the customary tuning of, say, a piano concerto of Brahms, without sounding truly "off." There is an urgency to the harmonic impulse here, and this is only partially offset by the ever-so-intangible "exotic" sound of the whole. It is, furthermore, astonishingly beautiful, as the composer promises.

Four movements make up the work, the first two large-scale, the last two single, simple afterthoughts. The massive first movement takes some delight in oratorical proclamations from soloist and orchestra that might indeed have come from the mature Brahms's worktable. But some of the piano writing, too, has a way of suggesting the clangor of Eastern bells; there is an open, clattery quality, not unlike a Bach invention gone amok.

In the wild and wonderful second movement quite a lot goes delightfully amok, in fact. The piano takes flight in veritable perpetual motion to a breathless, dazzling rhythmic configuration. Sharp, boisterous tone-clusters from the pianist accentuate the irregularities of this rhythm; even a brief cadenza near the end cannot stop the onrush. A slow meditation and another airy, light-hearted perpetuum mobile bring the Concerto to an end.

Many strands of thought, some of them seemingly irreconcilable, are imaginatively entwined in this work, itself a sort of synthesis of Lou Harrison's all-embracing musical outlook. "It's never enough," he says, "just to know your own musical tradition. There's so much out there in the world; there's no reason to put on blinders."

Lou Harrison Idiosyncrasies and Fun Facts:

*A lifelong lover of science and science fiction, Harrison frequently paid a small fee to have newly discovered stars named after friends.

*Harrison was fluent in several languages including American Sign Language, Mandarin and Esperanto.

*Harrison typically composed in a trailer with blocked windows.

*Harrison and Colvig constructed an environmentally friendly straw-bale house on land they purchased in the California desert community of Joshua Tree. The architectural dimensions were based on the same numerical ratios as his tuning systems.

*Harrison's short gamelan piece Lagu Sociseknum uses pitches derived from his social security number.

*Harrison co-wrote his Party Pieces at New York social gatherings with his close friends Cowell, Thomson, and Cage. As a game, one participant would compose a measure, then fold the paper so that only the last beat was visible and pass it to the next composer, who would continue the process. After a few rounds, they would play the frequently fascinating result. Bob Hughes later orchestrated these trifles, which were then recorded in 1983 by the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Piano Concerto

1) Allegro (11:04)

2) Stampede, Allegro (8:52)

3) Largo (7:26)

4) Allegro Moderato (3:03)

I bought the lossless (flac) files for this release and I'm posting it this way (it's under 120mb) as it's

certainly worth it. If anyone wants AAC encoded m4a instead, let me know.

Enjoy everyone!

LouHarrison-PianoConcerto-Tzadik.zip

http://www57.zippyshare.com/v/UIhuPYBU/file.html

Lou Harrison - Symphony No. 3 - Dennis Russell Davies, Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra - Music Masters

This post is by request from Tapirman, and I hope he doesn't get too excited and faint :)  I almost forgot how incredibly good this symphony is, it's been way too long since I've played it....

*This post does NOT include the Grand Duo-I still have to locate my physical copy of the disc,

and this magnificent symphony I managed to locate on one of my hdd's. The Third Symphony

however, is the main reason to acquire this rare recording; I don't think there's any other available

recordings of it. Also, the symphony I have as a single mp3 file-which really is fine as the movements are rather seamless anyway.

Lou Harrison, a "West Coast Maverick" and one of the truly original grand old men of American music, wrote this grand and highly melodious symphony for the 1982 Cabrillo Music Festival, which is held near his home in Aptos, CA. Typically, its style and sonority are far different from that of the usual symphony (Modern, Romantic, or Classical). It's in a style that is pretty much Harrison's own, an always-attractive sound that suggests its many Asian influences and almost entirely does without traditional harmony with its constant tension between consonance and dissonance.

The first movement, Allegro moderato, is stately and dignified. For the most part, the movement is written in two-part contrapuntal lines, with whatever harmony develops being a product of the incidental clashing of these lines. It starts with a bold, ceremonial statement with a faintly East Asian character. The symphony's second subject is slower, with the main contrast between the two subjects being the difference in their moods, for the second subject is meditative and melancholy. The movement ends after the grandest statement of the main theme, followed by another, gentle and wistful on solo strings.

In place of a scherzo is a three-part series of shorter dance pieces honoring three friends of his. The first of these is called "A Reel in Honor of Henry Cowell."

Cowell was a formative influence on Harrison. The original "West Coast Maverick" composer, Cowell taught an extension course on music of the world that reinforced Harrison's great attraction to the various ethnic music he could hear as a youth in San Francisco. One of Harrison's favorite entertainments (and cheap at just a quarter for a whole evening) was Chinese opera. Although the actual fiddle figurations of this piece derive from the Irish reel (and hence honor Cowell, who was of Irish descent), just about everything else in this energetic movement sounds Asian, including the active, metallic clicking in the percussion.

"A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichsen" acts as a contrasting slow trio in this quasi-scherzo structure. It is a delicate and relaxing piece. The final of the three scherzo movements is called "An Estampie for Susan Summerfield." Harrison has often used the French term "estampie" or an English cognate for it, "stampede," to denote bright, almost aggressive, pieces with a rhythm deriving from the medieval estampie and strong unison melodies.

The third movement, Largo ostinato, opens with a broad-vista sound that suggests fantasy landscape in its bright shafts of trumpet and high flute sonorities. A lovely and lonely high violin theme enters once the bass lines settle down into their ostinato patterns. This is a seemingly endless melody with broad and aching chromatic leaps.

The finale, Allegro, is a strong symphonic conclusion. It is, again, a purely melodically based movement, but this is expressed in multi-part counterpoint comprising several lovely independent lines. The constantly shifting orchestration rises to an exciting moment with bells and other chiming sounds coming forward as the conclusion reaches real grandeur. Enjoy!

Track listing:

1. Symphony No. 3: Allegro Moderato
2. Symphony No. 3: A Reel in Honor of Henry Cowell
3. Symphony No. 3: A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichsen
4. Symphony No. 3: An Estampie for Susan Summerfield
5. Symphony No. 3: Largo Ostinato
6. Symphony No. 3: Allegro

Lou_Harrison_Symphony_No.3_Tzadik.zip

http://www66.zippyshare.com/v/23491574/file.html

Lou Harrison - Rhymes With Silver - Julie Steinberg, William Winant, Joan Jeanrenaud, David Abel, Benjamin Simon

Commissioned by Mark Morris for his dance group in 1997, Lou Harrison’s 12-movement "Rhymes with Silver" is a strange mixture of the introvert and the extrovert, the anguished and the poignant. Gone here are Harrison’s trademark big, crowd-pleasing tunes and radiant, diatonic harmony, and in their place he has created a darker, more intense work than much of his output. The piece is scored for Morris’s touring ensemble of violin, viola, cello, piano and percussion, but it’s the solo cello that’s the main musical protagonist, in three impassioned, sometimes tempestuous movements in the first half of the piece, and in the resolute ‘Five-tone Kit’ near the work’s end. The part was originally written for Yo-Yo Ma, but Joan Jeanrenaud creates some beautiful sonorities here, from a whole range of pizzicato sounds in the Scherzo to some gloriously rich, arching melodies in the positive-minded ‘Five-tone Kit’. If these solo movements are the work’s inward-looking core, then the movements for the whole ensemble reach the other extreme: the ‘Gigue and Musette’ (originally composed in 1943 and enjoyed by Schoenberg, Harrison’s teacher at the time) is an unashamedly rumbustious romp through some of the composer’s favourite forms, and the hilariously cacophonous ‘Foxtrot’ sounds like a deranged salon orchestra. Enjoy..

Lou_Harrison_Rhymes_With_Silver_Tz.zip

http://www46.zippyshare.com/v/63416712/file.html

Lou Harrison - Symphony on G - Carl Ruggles - Organum - Men & Mountains

*This was a request by Tapirman* Lou Harrison's Symphony in G (1966) may surprise those who think of his music primarily as a blending of East and West. Here, Harrison is a relatively young composer writing in the earnest manner of the time. In his words: "The whole work, though serially composed . . . is nonetheless tonally centered on the note G. In the first three movements the technique is classical 12-tone procedure, but in the finale I have . . . written freely in the "grand manner". The outer movements have dramatic urgency typical of contemporaneous symphonies by Peter Mennin or William Schuman. Only in the third movement do we have a hint of the extended eclecticism that was to become so much a feature of Harrison's later works. Entitled "Scherzo," it consists of four successive pieces: a nervous "Waltz" for strings; a barrel-house "Polka" for solo clarinet balanced by sassy brass licks; a gorgeous "Song" for the cello section accompanied by harp arpeggios and evoking comparison with Saint-Saens' "Swan"; and a scholarly "Rondeau" for piano, tack piano (plucked resonance), and harp. This impressive work is given an outstanding reading by Gerhard Samuel who premiered the work, and according to the composer, played an important part in its gestation.

Undoubtedly a factor in the continuing popularity of Carl Ruggles's music is its association with certain aspects of our mythical, composite American character. Ruggles (1876-1971) typifies uncompromising "individualism" and "ruggedness." Organum (1945) and Men and Mountains (1924-1935) are excellent representative pieces from his few compositions. Organum is a shorter, one-movement work. Men and Mountains is divided into three parts: "Men," "Lilacs," and "Marching Mountains." Ruggle's style is singular and confined. Moving from piece to piece, one has the impression of hearing a continuing work, with new themes subjected to the same process: a waxing and waning of definable but nevertheless amorphous motives, each contrapuntal line propelled at its own pace. Amid these powerfully surging sections are quiet interludes, and dissonance prevails in both. Enjoy.

Lou_Harrison_Sym_on_G_Carl_Ruggles_Tz.zip

http://www58.zippyshare.com/v/24281844/file.html

An Homage to Lou Harrison Vol. 2

Volume 2. This recording has four premieres on it: The Clay's Quintet, A Majestic Fanfare, Rhymes with Silver (New Albion has recently recorded it as well), and Bomba for Percussion Quintet. Enjoy.

And here's what on it:

1-3 First Concerto (1939) for Flute and Percussion
4-9 The Clay's Quintet (1987) for Trumpet, Horn, Mandolin, Harp, and Percussion
10  A Majestic Fanfare (1963) for 3 Trumpets, Snare Drum, and Bass Drum
11-18 Rhymes with Silver (1996) for Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano and Percussion
19-24 The Perilous Chapel (1948) for Flute, Drums, Cello and Harp 
25 Bomba for Percussion Quintet
26-27 Ariadne (1987) for Flute and Percussion 

http://www64.zippyshare.com/v/47448632/file.html

An Homage to Lou Harrison Vol. 1

Volume 1 in the Dynamic Record's LH series with the Tammittam Percussion Ensemble of Italy. Enjoy.

      The treats on offer:

• Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra
• Canticle #1
• Suite for Percussion
• Canticle #3 for Ocarina, Guitar and Percussion
• Fugue for Percussion
• Song of Quetzalcoatl
• Concerto in slendro for Violin, Celesta, Two Tackpianos, and Percussion
• (Sorry I started off lazy & didn't write as detailed a track list as I did
• for Vol. 2) And, I'm awful at 'attempting' to use bullet points..

http://www45.zippyshare.com/v/40412004/file.html

Lou Harrison-The Perilous Chapel

This Lou Harrison disc on New Albion is another of my "desert island discs". It is the Harp Suite, in particular (here played on guitar, with bells, Tibetan rice bowls/tuned water bowls, triangle, percussion, finger cymbals, and a sistra) that I am so very fond of. It can also be played on harpsichord or (surprise!) a harp. Although the disc features guitar & accompanying instruments, I still consider this to
be my favorite "guitar" album. David Tanenbaum is superb on guitar, and further magic is brought courtesy of William Winant and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Enjoy.

 E

Harrison's music has a sense of humor. His Harp Suite (1952) is actually for guitar, harp, or harpsichord--here it's for guitar and all kinds of interesting percussion. Harrison's music is tonal, but he often adapts Indonesian pentatonic scales and Polynesian musical instruments as well as elements of dance, Eastern, and Western. The Perilous Chapel (1948) is a dance piece for flute, cello, drums, and harp, and though it's structured traditionally, Harrison blends the instruments in such a way as to make it sound oriental.


http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/61045837/file.html

Lou Harrison-Seven Pastorales (and music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Terry Riley)

This Music Masters disc has long been a favorite of mine, to be exact when it came out in 1992.
Lou Harrison's Seven Pastorales is a piece that I hold dear, it is beautiful and poignant on many
levels. I met Lou Harrison at the 80th Bday celebration concert in his honor, an all Harrison program.
When I mentioned to him how very moving I found the Seven Pastorales to be, and that It was
one of my favorite compositions-he put a firm and kindly hand on my shoulder and whispered to me
"it's one of my favorites too!". He was one of the sweetest and kindest persons I have ever met.

The Estruscan Concerto of Peggy Glanville-Hicks is also a wonderful piece, full of life and brimming
with lovely ideas, oft Eastern exotic (in a Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness vein), but always in her own
idiosyncratic and inventive voice. Her opera "The Transposed Heads" is perhaps her most popular
work, and one of my favorites as well.

"June Buddhas" by Terry Riley is a setting of four choruses from The Mexico City Blues of
Jack Kerouac. For those who instantly think of the extremely important composition "In C",
when hearing Riley's name, this piece will seem quite the surprise. Imo this piece is a tad
under-inspired but perhaps you will feel differently. Enjoy this very special disc.

http://www37.zippyshare.com/v/17387933/file.html

Lou Harrison-Gamelan Music Volume 1

Classic recording from the Musical Heritage Society.

There will be a ton of Lou Harrison posts in the near future. Enjoy

                     

*I'm aware that track No.1 is garbled; when I locate the disc I will re-up

 the track(I imported it years ago). Sorry Everyone. 

http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/90185133/file.html

*Update-Lucky has shared a link for track#1, @ 192 kbps:

 http://www9.zippyshare.com/v/56414393/file.html