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A very recent work by Chris Botta & Joe Branciforte and friends.



Joseph Branciforte - drums/composer
Chris Botta - guitar/composer
Josh Lopes - bass
Matt Moran - vibes
Andie Springer - violin/viola
Julianne Carney - violin
Evelyn Farny - cello
Engineered/mixed by Joseph Branciforte

 

 

William Anderson commissioned and recorded this work just for the Cygnus website.  This is the only place to hear Wuorinen's saucy little guitar solo entitled,  Hexadactyl.

 

My cover of Gillian Welch's My Morphine.

(performed by Bill, Oren & Haleh)

 

 

 

The Creation, A Towneley Mystery Play

This is just the first 5 days of creation.  We look forward to your comments on this work.   More about this piece in the Cygnus archive, under the "Home" drop-down menu. If you're music-savy, we'd prefer to hear your comments after being acquainted with the resources we've posted (Creation tour, Creation advanced tour).

Thank....

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.

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.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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.