The Decade of Chaos Part 1: 1991-1994

Karen and me dressed as earth children for Halloween

At the end of March, 1991, Karen and I welcomed our first baby into the family, and composition activity slowed down considerably. We had very cleverly announced the impending event to our mothers (and my dad) while we were visiting with my folks toward the end of the previous Summer, by mentioning that we had tickets to an opera in April and that we would be needing a babysitter that evening. General astonishment and celebration ensued. We let the news filter out to our choir while, during a rehearsal of some crowd noise, Karen said "I will be over my pregnancy in [some number of] months" rather than "salt light" or whatever else was written in the score.

As our activities with the choir, and with choral music in general, were becoming a large part of our lives, I tried once again to see if I could write effective music for choir. fourpartsongs (1992) is a setting of a hymn by Charles Wesley that appeared, sans tune, in the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal. I set each of the four stanzas separately (four part-songs) for SATB (four-part songs). As compositions go they are solid and, I think, singable, but difficult. They are diatonic, a few degrees skewed off of tonal practice, and don't shy away from what I regard as tasteful tone-painting. Later, I recast one of them - O Love, how cheering is thy ray - as a solo for Karen to sing, and even later re-set the entire text, with new music, as a hymn.

wave for the camera

1993 saw the first of what became many recitals that I gave at our church. The main impetus was to present A Cat's Life, with narration provided by Ellen Dessler, a drama student at the University of Washington. The program also included Elaine Barkin's Brandeis, and Benjamin Boretz's Partita, Liebeslied, and ("...what I could hear, trying to crawl out from between the lines of your last ferocious Sonata..."). 

That year I also composed a big concert piece, originally for organ: "...finish then thy new creation...". The title is from another Charles Wesley text. Looking back at it now I was struggling with how to feel my way through a large-scale piece without any way to think clearly about where I was going and what I was carrying along. It is not a bad practice as such, but the result in this case is rather woolly. A few years later I arranged it for string orchestra, and it was performed in that form by a community orchestra on Vashon Island, under the baton of my former composition teacher Dell Wade.

More successful was Nocturnes or Discourses, a procedurally structured improvisation project realized with the kind assistance of sound engineer Tom Stiles. Tom had access to the big piano in Brechemin Auditorium at the UW, so, late one evening we set it up with a microphone. Tom was recording digitally, and this was my first experience working with that innovation. First I sat silently for a span of time (5 minutes? 9 minutes? - something that divided 45 evenly so that the finished thing would fit on a 45' cassette side). Then Tom would play that recording back to me through headphones while I improvised to it, as though I were reading it as a score. Then we took that recording and repeated the process  until we had enough sessions to overlay the recordings so that each improvisation would be paired with its "score". In 2006/2007 I was able, thanks to the acquisition of a multi-track digital recording device to redo this on my own, using two separate pianos - or perhaps on each piano separately - and then combining them. 

your blogger and his boss

Doomsome Otherings (a non-Latinate translation of "Canonic Variations") is a set of five variations (inclusive of the 'theme') for viola and piano prompted by a possible mis-construal of a movement from one of Prokofiev's piano concerti. What I thought I had heard in that movement was the intrusion of one variation's figurations into another variation's flow. I thought it would make an interesting form if I were to do that systematically. I wrote a 'theme' of 50 measures that uses a homogenous figuration scheme for the first 30 bars, then switches to the figuration scheme of the variation two slots later (music like variation two into the 'theme', of three into one,  four into two, 'theme' into three, and of one into four) for the next ten bars, switching back to the music like that of the first 30 bars for the last 10. I also had a scheme for determining the pitch material of each bar that ran, as I recall, somewhat independently of the figuration scheme. It involved several layers of overlapping sequences of pentachords, but details of that determination have faded from memory. I still like the piece, though the piano part is beyond me and it seems to have a vanishing effect on violists, so I stopped shopping it around lest I lose any more violist friends.

your blogger failing to home improve

During this time Ben had asked me whether, based on my flimsy knowledge of formal logic notation, I would help proof-read and prepare computer engraved files of the formal definitions in "Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought", which he was preparing for publication by OpenSpace. While re-reading it I started to wonder what tonal music, as generated analogously to the "Outline of a Tonal-Syntactic System" contained in Part V of Meta-Variations, would sound like if it were 'stretched' so that all the generating intervals were made larger. I quickly settled on a 17-tone "octave" (or "modular interval") as being an interesting choice for the modular partitioning (an octave plus a perfect fourth rather than a perfect octave) because that would make the second partitioning interval (analogous to the 7 semitone "Fifth") an interval of 9 semitones (a major 6th), and the third partitioning (analogous to the 3 and 4 semitone intervals of minor and major thirds) intervals of 4 and 5 semitones respectively. I was also amused that my root position "major" triad would be "C F A", punning on a tonal root position "F A C", and that my "minor" triad would be "C E A", punning on the tonal minor triad of "A C E". We love puns so there it was. My 1994 setting of Psalm 130 ("Out of the depths...") was my first go at it and I was intrigued by the results, using just the most basic of tonal functions: "tonic", "dominant", and "subdominant" harmonies, and possibly a secondary dominant or two. The expanded octave and variability of sounding pitches across the registers opened up a world for me in which I could compose unique harmonic paths using fairly simple pitch functions. I have been following up on ramifications of this speculation ever since and consequently my subsequent oeuvres is peppered liberally with "mod-17" pieces of one kind or another.

Banned Rehearsal continued doing regular sessions, mostly just Karen, Aaron and me, later joined by our toddler, but toward the end of 1994 Neal and Anna were back in town with their little one so things began to get busy indeed. We had been holding our sessions in the spare bedroom, but soon our toddler would need that room. There happened to be a two-car garage on the lot, but the configuration made it nigh impossible to get a second car into it, so with the assistance of my dad we framed half of it in for a studio. The Tintinabulary has been collecting instruments ever since.

Banned Playout (1991):
Numbered: (243-279) 29:03:17
Total 1991:29:03:17

Banned Playout (1992)
Numbered: (280-315) 28:14:01
Total 1992: 28:14:01

Banned Playout (1993)
Numbered: (316-347) 26:02:49
Total 1993: 26:02:49

Banned Playout (1994)
Numbered: (348-379) 24:54:42
Sectionals: 2 Sessions: 1:32:42
Total 1994: 26:27:24

Grand Total: 480:47:31

Scores:
Doomsome Otherings
Psalm 130

Recordings:
Psalm 130 (1994)

Nocturnes or Discourses (1993)

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts - July-August 1982 Part 2

Alison in Woodstock

That summer I shared some of what I had been up to recently in various configurations of ad hoc seminars. For Seventeen Prepuntal Contraludes I put together a talk in which I tried to explain some of its technical specs. Another time I shared a tape of my big Synclavier piece AKU, which Ben thought would benefit from some reverb, so Bruce Huber brought a guitar amp to a stone chapel, left over from Bards' days as a seminary, and we recorded the sound of it as it was thus blasted into reverberant space. We even managed a performance of Book of Windows, with me playing the piano part on Ben's Crumar, Bruces' electric guitar standing in for the saxophone, and Jill Borner reciting the text. Elaine Barkin was there that evening and I have reported her response in a previous post.

New York City

I found that Alison Watkins, who was there to work on her poetry with Robert Kelly, had a similar sense of humor and general level of articulateness and we hung out quite a lot. It was in her company that I visited the local sites, such as Woodstock across the Hudson River, which had a nice bookstore, and a sort of permanent outdoor craft market, presumably populated by some of the festival visitors who never went home. We also took a train down to the city for a couple of days, visiting museums, going up to the observation deck at the World Trade Center, and finding more bookstores. I discovered that my usefulness to Alison was in lugging books, but I did grab a few for myself at The Strand - a nice edition of Chaucer and a 1939 cloth-bound edition of Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives" from The Modern Library. That may also have been where I snagged my copy of "Morte d'Arthur".

I can't recall that I did much composing that summer; the experience itself was so overwhelming that it was almost all I could do to soak some of it in. I did get together with Ben at his house for a couple of improvisation session/composition lessons, and joined as best I could in sessions with others. I may have started working on what became Intermezzo I, which arose as a way for me to compose myself into an understanding of what I thought Ben was on about with his concept of 'Partitioning'  in  "Meta-Variations", but I also remember making some egregiously false starts on at least one huge project, trying to outdo myself in Book of Windows-type chart-heavy structures.

My home, Fall 1982 (not New York City)

By the end of the summer I decided that I wanted to hang around Bard between the summer sessions. I was, at the time, in a hurry to get my degree so that I could continue my journey toward doctoral fame and fortune. Three years was just too long to spend on a Masters. I worked out a plan with the school wherein I would replace one summer with a residency over the rest of the academic year. Finding housing was a bit of an issue but I did finally secure a room on the ground floor of a barn in nearby Red Hook that had been converted to a living space and workshop for the owner's furniture refinishing business; and Ben rented one of his older cars to me so I had a way to get around. So I gave back my return ticket and prepared to winter over.

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts - July-August 1982 Part 1

My acceptance letter

Jet lag due to the three-hour time difference between the West and East coasts was never an issue for me. I have always been a morning person, waking at about 6 and fading around 9 or 10. The program's schedule did not presume wakefulness until after 9 AM and regularly extended toward midnight and beyond, so I simply didn't adjust and meshed with prevailing trends.

The studio space I was provided consisted of a key and use of Brook House, a sizable cottage out in the woods with a piano it it where I could practice in the mornings. The offices of Perspectives of New Music were in the basement. Official activity commenced with softball in the late morning. It was never a game as such but consisted of shagging fly balls for each other. I wrote home soon after arriving to ask for my mitt. Later I would assert, with some underlying truth, that I had received my master's degree in hitting and catching. 

The afternoons and evenings were taken up by seminars, often featuring a visit from a local-ish composer or other artist. It was in this context that I met, among others and over the course of two summers, Milton Babbitt, Elaine Barkin, Arthur Berger, Warren Burt, Morton Feldman, and John Zorn. I'm sure J. K. Randall also visited that first summer, but I must have been in an odd head-space at the time and kept my distance. 

Presentations by the various MFAers were frequent events. Everyone gathered together to discuss what was being shared. It was interesting to me that there was apparently some friction as to the general vibe and purpose of these events, in the sense that there was some notion afloat that critiquing (in the sense of judging worth and professional merit) was expected and valuable. This attitude, which occasionally got rather acidic, was quite familiar to me from the weekly UW Composer's lab, but the usefulness of this approach to the community was in question, especially from Ben. This may have been my first exposure to a different way of looking at what we as community members were to each other - not competitors but collaborators. It rang a bell in my head.

Kingston Bridge

Late evenings often ended with a bunch of us getting something to eat at one of the several pizza places or diners in nearby Red Hook, Rhinebeck, or across the river in Kingston. This would often include some of my fellow music students - Jill Borner, Bruce Huber, Dan Sedia, Ben presiding. We were joined regularly by Charles Stein, whose exact relationship to the program was never clear to me, but who was nevertheless always ferociously interesting. Some of the students from the other disciplines would also join us, notably the poet David Abel, and occasionally one of Ben's guests - thus my claim to have had pizza with Milton Babbitt. Many a Greek Salad (it was cheap) and late-night omelette (breakfast any time) was devoured amid lively and wide-ranging conversation.

After and Before 1981-1982

Book of Windows

Seven Strays

After graduation from the UW in the Spring of 1981, and before my pilgrimage to the East coast in June 1982, I worked part-time selling men's jeans at a department store at Northgate Mall, a job I got thanks to church connections. At the end of Summer I got a full-time job in the mail room at the home office of a cookware sales company in Bellevue.

your blogger in 1981 at home with a beanbag frog

I wrote several short solo piano pieces, none of them ever intended to be included in a set of anything, just quick sketches made when I happened to have a figurational idea I felt like working out. I bundled these together many years later as Seven Strays. I've performed a few of them on occasion, and even transcribed one of them for bell-choir the year I was directing one at our church in the late 80s. Being quasi-tonal for the most part, they can be made to seem intelligible and even attractive to those that might not go for the crazier stuff.

But most of my individual creative time was spent on a massive score-making project called Book of Windows. It involves a lengthy list of words derived from various sources, all arranged carefully using a system focusing on syllable count, line count, and a global multiplex acrostic in which the first letters of several equal subdivisions of line groups form sequences of words that are like unto lines within the greater text. In the final such subdivision, which divides the whole into three parts, the first letter of each respective segment spells the word ART. Very clever.

your blogger spinning vinyl and inking Book of Windows

In the final score the text unfolds on the left of each set of facing pages, and on the right-facing pages two sequences of notes spool out. The most extensive of these is written for piano and consists of carefully charted quantities of notes, lengths of passages as measured in quarter notes, vertical density, and number of times each segment is to be repeated. The other sequence of notes is a line of single pitches, intended for saxophone. I developed intricate charts to determine all sorts of aspects of how it would fit together. I added inscriptions (Gertrude Stein and Wilhelm Müller) and a preface to get it going, and finished it up with a chorale for the instruments.

I didn't want to specify how a performance of it might be accomplished, but it was given a table-read just before I left for Bard, with me on piano, Aaron reading the text, and my brother Paul playing clarinet. I think Neal was turning pages and helping to keep track of the whole mess. In 2005 I realized a midi-enabled version that clocks in at about 32 minutes. It was performed in public, for the one and only time, in a common space outside the cafeteria at Bard that Summer, with me playing Crumar, the inimitable Jill Borner reciting, and Bruce Huber transforming the sax part on electric guitar. As luck would have it another member of what has become my virtual colloquium of senior colleagues, Elaine Barkin, was visiting for a few days and suffered through the whole two-plus-hour ordeal. At the end, or so I was told, she pointed to my date-and-place mark in the score "Bellevue, 1982" and silently inquired of Ben whether I was really from the mental hospital. Ben, of course, just nodded in affirmation. "Bellevue, yes".

your blogger (in glasses), Neal Meyer (in t-shirt),
and Aaron Keyt (in jeans)

In the end it constitutes my one and only extensive experimentation with that oh-so-chic American stylistic juggernaut, Minimalism. When I was done I figured that I could thenceforward ignore the whole movement, having written something far more repetitive and ugly than anyone else would ever care to. Considering it now I can't think it's Minimalist in any essential way and isn't particularly brilliant as commentary either. Its worth, within my personal creative history, is as a compositional exercise in working with algorithmically derived structures.

Seven Strays - recorded February 10 and 11, 2010

Keith Eisenbrey · Seven Strays (100210 & 11) 1983

Book of Windows - digital version realized March 20, 2005

Keith Eisenbrey · Book of Windows 050320