Day 15: April 1 - Self-Isolation
Music for one person for everyone.
Suzanne Vega - Tom’s Diner
Classic ‘90s tune about the people she sees while getting a coffee in a diner in New York. It came after a comment from a friend of Vega who said he thought he lived his life as if being witnessed rather than experienced. Vega hears the bells St John the Divine in the middle which causes her to flashback, like Proust with Madeleine Tea Cakes, to an ex and a midnight picnic. This is so classically 90s, with its soft, intelligentsia edginess and general malaise. Yet, a proper tune and not an easy feat to pull off. Trivia Time: the diner Vega is singing about is also the diner featured in Seinfeld.
Luciano Berio - Gesti for Solo Recorder
A seminal work in the modern recorder repertoire (which, admittedly, is thin), Berio dissects the physical aspects of playing the recorder, separating the hands and the mouth with a tablature rather than with typical notated music. The performer repeats a pattern (a passage of Telemann) with their fingers and follows along with gestures for their mouth, indicating how much air, types of articulations, and some phonemes and vocal sounds. This creates an unpredictable texture of soft taps from the fingers and vocal outbursts which resonate really well through the instrument because physics. This lasts until about halfway through, where Berio brings the fingers and mouth together, beginning when you hear high, buzzy, harsh sounds (called fluttertongueing and overblowing, respectively). These plateau for a while, then descend in intensity where Berio adds some noodly pitches which dovetail into the recorder player humming. The beauty of this piece is in how Berio transforms a seemingly basic instrument, often thought of as a kids instrument, and turns it into this varied, theatrical, modernist masterwork. Played here by Lucia Mense, who brings out all the theatrical elements of this piece, even just through audio.
Johann Sebastian Bach - Cello Suite no. 6: V. Gavotte I & II
Bach is the root of my musical education. I will never outplay, overanalyze, or get tired of hearing his music. It constantly gives something new. The cello suites, composed while he was Kapellmeister (sort of a church worship leader, but greater) in Prince Leopold’s court Kothen, are no different. Prince Leopold was a Calvinist, so Bach wrote mostly secular music while serving there, including his partitas and sonatas for violin, his orchestral suites, in addition to these 6 cello suites. An instrumental suite in sort of a showy version of French dance suites, consisting of court dances popularized by French King Louis XIV. The Gavotte is a mid-tempo dance in 4, lively and refined, which begins on a half-bar upbeat. Many people have a favorite version of these works (a ‘correct’ version in their opinion) but I tend to bounce around based on mood (I’m ill-informed and tasteless). I chose Janos Starker’s version for today because his phrasing here is immaculate (imo fite me irl) and the light ricochet of his bow articulating gestures throughout is so tasteful and delightful. Also, the production in this recording has a nice combination of room and instrument so that you get both the detail of his bow-work and the resonance of the instrument itself and in the space (although it is a little bassy even with my flat, studio-monitor headphones).
Aaron Cassidy - The Crutch of Memory
American composer Aaron Cassidy (based in the UK now) is known for his stunning and complex graphic scores which use an elaborate tablature. Musically, the piece deals with the sonification of the choreography of playing (making the music sound like the physical motions) and with memory and memory loss, inspired by Jonathan Franzen’s article about dementia, My Father’s Brain. I adore this piece, both the concept and the result. Like Gesti, Cassidy dissects the kinesthetics of playing, but he adds a deeper musical element about memory. Now, I like Gesti, but I can mostly understand it after a listen. Like the Bach, this piece reveals more and more with each listen about sound, bow technique, and aural obfuscation/delight. Now, this is a complex and difficult piece to listen to, but I recommend trying to focus on one aspect of the sound: the direction of the pitch (up, down, wiggly), the various types of sounds (smooth, harsh, bouncy), trying to listen for sounds you may have heard before, and try to imagine what the violinist playing looks like. Played here by Australian violinist Graeme Jennings.
Robert Johnson - Preaching Blues (Up Jumped The Devil)
There is a blues myth about a guitarist who makes a deal with the devil to be able to become the best guitarist who ever lived. That myth is based on Delta Bluesman, Robert Johnson. However, Johnson did not make a deal with the devil. Instead, he, already a great guitarist, went away to Martinsville, Mississippi for 6 months to year and practised, perfecting the styles of blues greats, like his hero Son House. His particular style broke the guitar into three sections: bass on the lowest two strings, harmony on the middle two, and melody on the top. It’s an incredibly complex style, especially for an uneducated, itinerant, black musician whose father had been forced out of town by a lynch mob while they were a child, leaving his mom the single mother to ten children. Johnson, and so many other blues musicians, created the foundation for almost all of the popular music we listen to today whilst under some of the worst racist oppression. This song, about the blues following you through life, was originally written by Son House. Johnson’s version is faster, with flashier slide work, and a delightful percussive technique that I can’t quite puzzle out (probably just plucking harder than normal or maybe a proto-slap bass). Johnson recorded his songs in a hotel in San Antonio, Texas in 1936, aged just 25.
Billy Bragg - The Milkman of Human Kindness
A real gem from an album of just Bragg with an electric guitar, called The Essential Billy Bragg. I love the rhythmic vitality here and the detailed pickwork, a cousin sort-of of Johnson’s track. This is also just such a cute and wholesome tag:
I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint
I just love this image so much. A very good recommendation from a friend from Cork.