Cygnus Ensemble

Arts & Culture

A Last Frontier (Displacing notes that aren't there)

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This is the first of two examples.

The contention of this pitch Quixote is that symmetrical structures extend themselves in our brains without being presented in actuality.  In this example, the contention is that the whole tone scale completes itself in our brain.  We hear the G# that completes the whole tone scale.   And then the low G natural in the guitar displaces a note that we hear only in our heads.

What to make of this?   Whatever you like.   My take--this is a last frontier.  I'm bored with only hearing things that are THERE. I'm happy in this realm where we're counting angels on the head of a pin.And it makes for interesting tunes, regardless of who wins the argument.

Another example in the same piece:   look for measure  6.   The contention here is that our ears are soooo diatonic that major thirds always imply the intervening note, symmetrically in between.    So here, between the F# and the Bb our brain supplies the G#.

In both examples it is G# that's not there.   In fact, there are no G#s in this piece.

There's more to the last example.  The complement to the prevailing D, E, F#, G, A, B is heard in measure 6, although it's mixed up with D's and other suspensions from the other hexachord..  The complement is Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F   (the tritone transposition of the D diatonic hexachord).

So in measure 6 we have all but the Ab, which, according to this contention about major thirds, we supply without it actually being there.   Fact is,  I felt this measure first as the complement.  After playing the piece dozens of times the sense that I was hearing the complement became very clear.

Then I looked at the score and realized that complements don't have to be complete.   Is it not the case that augmented 6 chords imply the rest of the complement?   In Beethoven this seems clear enough.  Even in Fernando Sor.   Who needs all the rest of the tritone-transposition???

Oren & I record Genius Loci on July 18!  It's an innocent little doodle, with these devilish deals going on under the table.

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Decoding Babbitt's Swan Song No. 1

Over the past 7 years I've been mulling over a few things in Swan Song.

Whither the 0127 at the end?

Then I found that the first non-diatonic collections that strike us in the opening are also 0127s.   The opening, moreover, is a counterpoint of diatonic hexachords in the plucks,  (023457) in the pizz. strings (B hexachord); followed by chromatic hexachords in the woodwinds.

I've discussed the fat middle of the piece in the Bridge Record notes.  I'll touch on that later.  First, a major epiphany about the 0127s.   It should have occurred to me years ago, but I'm stupid.  I hope to show that even an idiot can understand Babbitt with sufficient time, patience, and interest.   (And now I see that 023457 also M5s to itself.)

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Fashion Collections

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Call these A, B, and C. I think we can describe these three tetrachords as all the pairs of 5ths that contain at least one 1/2 steps?  Of these three pitch collections the A remains fashionable, and has been fashionable for a long time. It is a collection that is particularly associated with Brahms.

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Harold Meltzer's *Brion*, after a second hearing of his *Sinbad*

On Brion, after hearing Sinabad again:

Your music hooks into what in the early 2000’s we’d call “post minimalism”, but it’s not that, really, because of these larger overarching elements–

–Your unique spin on Stravinskian parataxis & nested rondo forms.

In this way, you put postminimalism in a bigger context.

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Cygnus: Emerson Bicentennial Concert

Poet John Hollander will host an evening celebrating the Emerson bicentennial. Theevent will include readings and musical settings, including five new settingsof poems by Emerson, performed by the Cygnus Ensemble. The program alsoincludes two important settings of Hollander's work by Elliott Carter andMilton Babbitt.

There are few poets whose work has been set so frequently by major American composersas John Hollander. "Philomel," Milton Babbitt’s landmark work is oneexample, and Elliott Carter’s "Of Challenge and of Love" on thisprogram is another, as well as his collaborations with George Perle and HugoWeisgall. Dr. Hollander has written several volumes of poetry and seven booksof criticism. His honors include the Bollingen and the Levinson Prizes; the MLAShaughnessy Medal; and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, theMacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A formerchancellor of The Academy of American Poets, he is Sterling Professor Emeritusof English at Yale.

Dr.Hollander opens the program with a discu
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Cygnus: Babbitt 90th Birthday Concert

MiltonBabbitt at the Crux of the 20th Century
Notes on the Program

VareseDensity 21.5
Babbitt'smusic explores and extensively develops compositional techniques that werepioneered by Schoenberg, while making exhaustive and ongoing innovations inrhythmic structure; yet a better way into Babbitt's sound world is throughVarese. Schoenberg is accused by many, with much justification, of never havingabandoned Romanticism without succumbing to neo-classicism. I think Schoenbergmanaged well in Moses & Aron and the violin & piano concerti and someother works, but overall the criticism holds. Schoenberg was an expressionistto the end, and an expressionist is an extreme, belated Romantic.
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NYRB publishes Adalbert Stifter

Last December the New York Review of Books had a new edition of Adalbert Stifter’s *Rock Crystal* out on the bookstore shelves. I wept with joy, truly. Of course this is everyone’s first exposure to Stifter, and I already had 3 different editions of this story, but I bought 2 NYRB editions to give away.

I felt vindicated. For years I would look in the “Sti” section of the fiction shelves just in the off chance that some Stifter would finally find its way there.

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Babbitt & Positivism

Positivism in the arts is perhaps a reaction to antinaturalism. And a second, more ferocious wave of antipositivism followed Milton Babbitt. However we might characterize Babbitt's music, the reactions to it seem antipositivistic in one way or another. If positivism is a reaction to antinaturalism, one might take Babbitt for a naturalist, yet I remember a conversation I had with Mr. Babbitt that suggests that he is not a naturalist. We were at his favorite Princeton hamburger joint, The Annex. I was yaking about fractals and Mr. Babbitt made a point of saying that his music is not fractal. He is interested in the relationships between big things and small things. This does not make his music fractal. [I am suggesting here that interest in fractals makes one a naturalist. It's open to debate.]
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