Work/Architecture/Unity/And/The, Toccata, Lamb of God - 2002

your blogger and son playing with rockets

In 2002 I made several experiments composing music based partly or wholly on mod-17 pitch-class procedures. Toccata is, I think, the loosest of the bunch. It is an arrangement for solo piano of my 1986 oboe piece Retrato de Euchababilla, made by adding additional lines and harmonies that I could convince myself were mod-17 derived, resulting in a kind of hybrid music, some mod-12 serial and some mod-17 something or other. However, I don't remember what it was about those mod-17 notes that made them so in my head. It is very much a toccata, in the sense that it lives and dies in the touch of the pianist, and less in the sense of toccatas as being music of quick notes and tricky fingering.

Lamb of God is a setting, in English, of the Agnus Dei of the Latin Mass, for voice and piano. It is flat-footedly serial, based on a 17-tone row, but using that row as a melody and not as a means of integrating vertical structures with horizontal. Karen and I had been working up Stravinsky's The Owl and the Pussycat and the influence of its surface texture is obvious. I remember putting some time into designing the row, but the details of that design are hardly worth digging into.

Work/Architecture/Unity/And/The, or 

Work

Architecture

Unity

And

The, 

went through quite a process before it came out the other end as what it is now. The original image I had was of a music consisting of shards of sound that would be come upon suddenly, as in fog, unexpected and fearsome. I thought that I would compose a set of such shards for piano and then combine that with improvised percussion accompaniment. Banned Rehearsal made several valiant attempts, much of which yielded some interesting sessions, but none of which were really what I had in mind. At some point while I was working on it, Ben was in town and in conversation he suggested that, as a general rule, if one wanted something specific it was best to do it oneself, and if one wanted to work with others it might be better to ditch the conception and work with those others on an equal basis, which is what I eventually did. I recorded my piano score, which consisted of 17 shards, derived by mod-17 multiplicative transformations of a small pitch-class set, at Jack Straw Cultural Center, then recorded myself improvising along on percussion. The results were fine but there was a lingering dissatisfaction. The piano bits, brief as they are, form together a stronger piece than when combined with anything else. I performed it several times as a solo, leaving long spaces between bits. When I picked it up again recently to see what I could make of it now I ended up being most happy with not giving the breaks between any more special treatment than I would give the breaks between any other set of disjunct but related pieces, allowing the tonal and affectual distinctions to serve for both fog and fearsomeness. In aesthetic matters image always trumps fact.

your blogger on a hike

Two small compositions were completed that year: an interlude for four French Horns based on my hymn Depth of Mercy, written (and recorded!) for a horn quartet my uncle Jim Meyer (Karen's dad's brother) was in; and a variation for piano trio of Diabelli's much varied Waltz, written for an ensemble that the clarinetist Sean Osborn had put together (Quake). They performed it (quite well) along with a bunch of others, in the recital space at Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle, possibly the most prestigious venue any of my music has been heard within, before or since.

2002 also saw a shift in Banned Rehearsal, as Aaron chose to take a sabbatical for a few years while those of us who were parents worked out the kinks of doing sessions with kids about. We eventually cut back to meeting every other week or so, chalking up a mere 17 sessions. On the alternate weeks Neal re-started a project that he had first assayed while in San Diego: Gradus for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler. the short version of the idea was that he would teach himself to play piano one combination of keys at a time, starting with the lowest A-natural, followed by a session on the second A-natural up, followed by both together, thence to the third A-natural and onward into the abyss of virtual infinity. From the beginning I have been his listener, recordist, archivist, and commenter, and in those capacities Neal's project has been an important part of my own musical life ever since. That year alone saw 34 thirty-minute sessions. It would be many years before all the combinations of A-naturals would be exhausted.

I gave two recitals at my church that year. The first was in February. I played: Preludes 1-8, by Lockrem Johnson; Untitled (Slow Waltz), by Gavin Borchert; Diapsalmata, Ruth 1:16-17 (Song for Yvonne and David), Psalm 22:9-10, and Jeremiah 17:5-8, by me, the latter three with Karen singing; The Owl and the Pussycat by Stravinsky (again with Karen); Liebeslied and O, by Benjamin Boretz; and "Mrs. Ramsay rose. Lily rose." by me to finish it up. The second recital was in October, at which I played: Preludes 9-16 by Lockrem Johnson; A Cat's Life (with Neal providing the narration), and Three Strathspeys, both by me; ("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") by Benjamin Boretz; and Toccata, by me.

Banned Playout:

Numbered: 627-644 - 12:00:19
Peripheral (2 sessions with me and Pete Comley): 1:00:58

Total 2002: 2:05:24

Grand Total: 700:07:18

Scores:

Toccata
Lamb of God
Work/Architecture/Unity/And/The
Interlude on Depth of Mercy

Recordings:

Toccata

Lamb of God

Work/Architecture/Unity/And/The

The Decade of Chaos Part 2: 1995-1998

your blogger and family visit Bickleton, WA

During the latter half of the decade of chaos I spent a lot of time working on a cantata - The Abyss (1998) (since withdrawn) - for small SATB chorus, with an orchestra of five wind players and string quartet. It is based on several stanzas from Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Being flush with how well my first mod-17 piece - Psalm 130 (1994) - had come together I wanted to make something ambitious to see if it would work on a large scale. The resulting piece has some significant performance challenges, chief among them being ridiculously aspirational ranges for the singers. That aside I was struggling with what it meant for a music to actually be "in" mod-17, and not just some funky bespoke diatonicism. Although many parts may be quite effective from an expressionist standpoint, the whole is hopelessly wooly. But no work is wasted and I did accustom myself to thinking outside the mod-12 box. I also re-used some of the melodic ideas in other smaller pieces such as Two Pomes Play (1997) for clarinet and bassoon.

Neal and Karen in Bickleton, WA

In 1995 I arranged one of my fourpartsongs of 1992 - O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!- for solo voice and piano so that Karen could sing it for a church service. And for a while after that I was composing a song for that purpose every year or so, among which was Glory to God (1998), a setting of the first few stanzas of Charles Wesley's hymn, later stanzas of which appeared as the first hymn in the Methodist Hymnals of the last century as Oh For a Thousand Tongues To Sing.

Karen and I remained quite busy with our church choir through these years. We rehearsed in the choir's church-basement room, but would often work our way upstairs to the sanctuary to practice with the organ. Our organist, the fabulous David Di Fiore, usually got to the loft before the choir got themselves together, and would often accompany our straggling procession to the chancel with rousing quasi-calliope music. This amused me enormously so I wrote a piece for him, based on the hymn tune "Foundation" (popularly known as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) that, at one point goes into full calliope mode. I named it after one of my favorite lines in the hymn -  "Here I raise mine Ebenezer" - and being the clever lad I was I folded in an adaption of the hymn tune "Ebenezer" as a counterpoint. David played it magnificently and I treasure the recording I have of his performance.

In 1995 I gave another recital - Local Flavor - at our church. The program was:

Six Piano Pieces - Aaron Keyt
Short Forms - Ken Benshoof
Fifth Sonata - Lockrem Johnson
Oracle from Dark Wood - Neal Kosály-Meyer (with Neal joining me in a speaking role)
Sonata in 2 Movements - Keith Eisenbrey

your blogger with kids having a picnic

In August of 1996 we welcomed a second baby into the family, wisely deciding to stop right there. Besides our rapidly shrinking house, Karen made it quite clear that she now considered child birth to be a younger person's sport, and that she was done. In 1998 we travelled once again to Yellowstone, destroying the radiator in our car (a used Volvo with a turning radius to die for I had purchased from a co-worker). We met Karen's folks there, staying at a cabin at Canyon. Karen's sister, her husband David and their two kids also made it there, but Neal's little family were stymied by breakdowns and only got as far as Coeur D'Alene. 

your blogger in mid chaos

And Banned Rehearsal just kept right on making tapes. some highlights were two live performances - two 1996 sets at The Speakeasy Internet Café in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle (a few months before a fire closed it down) and back at Brechemin Auditorium at the UW School of Music in 1997 for Banned Rehearsal 440. Shortly after that I bought a DAT recording device and we have been recording ourselves digitally ever since. We also put out our one and only CD - Teach Yourself to Drive (1998). It was a milestone for us, but definitely added some stress to the system on top of the general struggles of life with small children.

Banned Playout (1995):
Numbered: (380-409): 26:27:52
Peripherals: 15 Sessions: 07:31:01
Total 1995: 33:58:53

Banned Playout (1996):
Numbered: (410-439): 27:15:52
Sectionals: 1 Session: 00:46:05
Peripherals: 8 Sessions: 03:55:53
Total 1996: 31:57:50

Banned Playout (1997):
Numbered: (440-477): 34:49:45
Peripherals: 1 Session 00:25:58
Total 1997: 35:15:43

Banned Playout (1998):
Numbered: (478-517): 29:14:24
Sectionals: 1 Session: 00:28:01
Peripherals: 4 Sessions 02:06:54
Total 1998: 31:49:19

Grand Total: 613:58:22

Scores:

Two Pomes Play
O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!
Glory to God
"Here I raise mine Ebenezer"

Recordings:

O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!

"Here I raise mine Ebenezer" (performed on piano)

Return to Puget Sound - Summer 1984

your blogger working hard

Several things happened quickly upon my return to the Puget Sound area at the start of June 1984. I moved back into my parent's home and took a week off before seeking employment. One afternoon that week my brother Glen and I took his wooden rowing boat to the Arboretum and paddled around Foster Island. Coming around a bend we came upon a less than fully clad sunbather, who smiled charmingly as we tipped our hats and paddled on. Welcome home!

I figured that a relatively mindless office job would leave me free to do music the rest of the time. I went to an agency in downtown Bellevue, which sent me to interview as a typist at Ticor Title Insurance near the waterfront in Seattle. The supervisor mentioned that they were also looking for someone to fill a position as an "abstractor", which involved sorting through court filings for information relevant to the title industry and typing up abstracts in a species of typographical shorthand - "NWC" was "Northwest Corner", "NH SEQ NEQ" was 'North Half of the Southeast Quarter of the Northeast Quarter", etc. Short story made shorter, the super felt that if I could read music I could read legalese and I got the abstractor job. I worked for Ticor until the company was purchased by Chicago Title Insurance in 1991, and for Chicago until my retirement in 2021. I also picked up a coffee habit, largely by accident.

gluing down the sound board on the clavichord

On the musical front, I had met up again with Neal and Aaron and we decided it might be fun to try improvising on instruments we didn't know how to play for a few sessions. Unable to resist the pun once it arose we called ourselves Banned Rehearsal before we had even made our first tape, which occurred on June 24, the weekend after I started work.

I thought I might never be able to afford a place suitable for a piano so I decided to buy a build-your-own clavichord kit. I hadn't been at work long so my dad co-signed on a loan for $1600 and I was delivered of a box of boards, a full-sized schematic drawing, a thin book of instructions, and a sinking feeling that I had just wasted a wad of cash I didn't have yet. But thanks to my dad and some help from my brothers we got it finished a year later.

The Sprite

As the Banned Rehearsal project persisted odd little instruments began to amass. I commandeered my mom's guitar and autoharp, which had both been languishing unused for decades. On a whim I spent $200 on an old Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite - a little electric organ with chord buttons, drum rhythms that could all be played at once (great function!) and another button that dropped the pitch down almost, but not quite, a half step. This first appeared (if I am not mistaken) on Banned Rehearsal 10 of September 23, 1984, and quickly became a mainstay of our sound for years to come.

It was also during those first few months that we devised a way of having our (by then) weekly sessions even when we weren't all in town. We would each make a tape wherever we were (called Banned Telepaths) and would then mix them together later (using multiple cassette decks, two-in-one-out mixer cables, and a cheap Realistik mixing device. Truly low budget and low fi, but the method has served us well over the years through geographic displacements and the recent pandemic. This equipment also enabled us to create what we called the Stack-O-Decks so that we could play several sound sources at once into our session space (usually my bedroom) - another commonplace of our early sound. During one such telepath session Aaron picked up the guitar and came up with the first Sudden Song: Bickleton Burger.

It's rhythms, chords, and slide button

no pickles
no mustard
no ketchup
no buns
no meat 

it's a Bickleton Burger
Bickleton Burger
have 'em away
yes it's a Bickleton Burger
have 'em away 

no relish
no special sauce
no sesame seeds
no bacon
no cheese 

just a side-order of fries
on my Bickleton Burger
Bickleton Burger
Bickleton Burger
have it away
have it away

just a side-order of fries
on my Bickleton Burger
have it away