Fitting Room - 1979

Diapsalmata (1979)

Sonata 1979 (1979)

That year I was spending long hours in the library, both reading through scores and listening to recent and unfamiliar music. Among other items that caught my attention were the print book of scores and manuscript pages collected by John Cage called "Scores" and a multi-episode (and pretty darned complete) recorded survey of the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen through the early 70s. I found each of these to be fascinating, puzzling, and intellectually jolting. In response I spent the rest of my undergraduate career trying different modern music garments on for size.

blogger fishing sans hook

Diapsalmata, or Diapsalmata - 11 Preludes for Piano, consists of 11 short pieces, each focused on a different pitch class: G, C, D, F, A, B-flat, [], E-flat, B, A-flat, F-sharp, C-sharp. There was, I recall, a 12th prelude on E to fit in the blank spot, but either I skipped over it or didn't like it much and threw it out. New Music Features used include: proportionate notation of rhythm [I, VI, IX, X]; graphic gestural notation [III, VI, IX, X]; extreme registral displacement (or narrow out-of-center registral limitation) [I, II, III, IV, V, VII, VIII, XI]; and quotation of other music [XI], that other music being a little melody I liked (still do) from Scriabin's Fantaisie in A minor, W. 18, for two pianos (1892-1893). It is gratifying to me that it still holds together pretty well, and some of the detail is lovely - particularly the low register two-voice chorale of VIII.

I recollect that grumbling was heard among the faculty when I presented this at our weekly department seminar - though it would be tempting to make more of the grumbling than was actual, and I'm sure at the time I succumbed. I don't know whether Ken Benshoof, my teacher then, liked it or not, but we had some supportive conversations about it. I performed it in November of that year at the Winter Composers' Spotlight, and then the next May for the Brechemin Scholarship Auditions. Neal O'Doan, with whom I was studying piano, informed me that I had "scared" some of the piano faculty with my full arm fortissimo clusters. I admit the idea of being a teapot enfant terrible was heady, but probably more heady than was warranted for the size of the teapot.

Sonata 1979 was originally just Sonata, then the graphic Sonata - not as a title, but to distinguish it from the Sonata I wrote in 1980. I figured numbering them was weird, especially going back and renaming the first one First Sonata. In 2004 when I preformed both on the same recital I decided on my current naming scheme. I notice that IMSLP imposes their own numbering system, which is fine. The score eschews staff lines. The first part consists of proportionately notated stemless notes and pedal marks, relative durations being indicated by slurs. The second part is in graphic notation - squiggles and trills - followed by a short quasi-reprise of the first part. No precise pitches are indicated. The big accents on page 9 were originally intended to indicate "kick the pedal frame" but it could be any big noise. There are a couple of spots where a pedal release is marked fortississimo, which I have performed by sliding my foot off the pedal so it slams back up with a bang.

Ken grumbled some at this, not because it was graphically notated, but because he felt that it didn't engage that part of me that was getting quite good at composing how pitches might hang together. He was right, but I'm still fond of the idea of it, dragging it out of obscurity for recitals in 2004 and 2007. Prior to that time I had recorded a version in 1980 (Sonata, Sonata, Sonata) that dubs several performances on top of each other using a forgotten method that maximizes the cumulative loss of sound fidelity; and in May of 1986 Neal Kosály-Meyer and I used up the last 20 minutes or so of a cassette tape trading off performances (Readings of a Sonata). 

Performances:

Diapsalmata

November 28, 1979 - Student Composers Spotlight - Meany Studio Theater, University of Washington, Seattle

May 1, 1980 - Brechemin Auditions - Brechemin Auditorium, University of Washington School of Music, Seattle

February 23, 2002 - Continuity in Small Things - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

March 17, 2007 - Preludes in Seattle, Part 2 - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

also: 

February 7, 2007 - home recording

Sonata 1979

February 7, 2004 - Music at the Edge of Space - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

October 13, 2007 - Sopranos - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

also: 

June 14, 1980 - Sonata, Sonata, Sonata (several performances overdubbed) 

May 20, 1986 - Readings of a Sonata - Neal Kosály-Meyer and I trade performances until the tape runs out

Keith Eisenbrey · Readings of a Sonata (860520)

April 20 and 27, 2007 - home recordings

Blog Post (from Playlist of June 16, 2018):

June 7, 2018

Readings of a Sonata - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal and I dink around with another old score of mine, Sonata 1979
We trade off readings to use up unused tape footage
We accomplish 3 full readings and the first part of a fourth

It's a graphic score so all the notes and rhythms are different, to varying degrees

sounds great, in that cruddy way we had, all the way