Dan Stearns' Double Dozen (1)

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Dan Stearns, American Original
Exploring the Double Dozen (1)
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Who is Dan Stearns? -- possibly some fusion of Thoreau walking about
Walden Pond and committing civil disobedience by squatting on largely
unoccupied but fertile intonational real estate, or a friendly host
welcoming immigrants to the land of JI, or simply a weaver weaving a
wealth of musical strands into a new fabric bearing a stamp of an
artist who formulates some fascinating theory but above all makes
music.

The strands are rich, and the total effect sometimes seems a bit
unprecedented -- making one seek possible antecedents, if only for the
pleasure of failing: "maybe close, but not quite...." Is he a
spiritual heir of William Billings, the 18th-century New England
composer who declared that when it came to things like parallel fifths
(routine in medieval European polyphony but excluded in conventional
Renaissance-Romantic styles), he felt under no obligation to follow
any established rules?

How about Aaron Copeland and Daniel Pinkham, 20th-century composers
who have taken various kind of traditional and popular material and
given it settings with new vigor. Indeed this is part of the Dan
Stearns touch -- an important part -- but this is one case where the
whole exceeds the sum of the parts, while honoring and enriching them.

While there are various ways of meeting Dan Stearns, and some of us
have enjoyed encounters through friendly dialogues or joint editorial
ventures, one good way is through the musical welcome mat he has
freely extended to the world to enjoy a full two dozen of his pieces:

<http://zebox.com/danstearns_2/music/>

Please let me admit with great regret that it took me several days to
act on Dan's invitation and have that long downloading session for
those 24 pieces. When I started early this afternoon, I was delighted
to find that one of my excuses for delay was no longer valid: the
download connection with zebox.com went just fine, and in the Lynx
browser for Linux I saw a friendly text menu. It was indeed a long
process, because Dan has bestowed on us all a lot of music -- a CD
album and more, I'd guess.

So far, I've had a chance to listen to five of the 24 pieces, a quick
first selection. While "instant art criticism" has its hazards, I see
no hazard at all in sharing my delight and fascination with what I've
heard. It's indeed vintage Dan Stearns, as a few random reflections
may suggest.

My comments, by the way, follow the order of my listening, which is
more or less for the most part the order of my downloading the pieces
as arranged on the web page. Maybe Dan could comment on whether this
ordering might have any subtle influence on my perceptions.

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1. JI_Americana: Dan Stearns on Ellis Island?
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As it happens, I did start with a piece taken out of the download
order, because it looked so inviting: _JI Americana_. Given that my
grandparents on my mother's side came as Russian Jews to this
continent in the early 20th century, I approached this as a kind of
"Ellis Island experience."

Indeed, Dan charmingly takes some American standards as cantus firmi
or whatever for contrapuntal settings -- it's lively, jazz, maybe a
bit "expressionistic" a la the Vienna scene (a bit more Berg than
Strauss), and the mark of a new intonational patriotism of sorts, one
might say. The layers and timbres sort of dance around the medley of
tunes: welcome to the land of sophisticated JI (not necessarily
defined by any national borders).

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2. If You Blink, You Ain't Dead...Yet
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"What tuning is this in?" -- I'm not sure, but the music comes
through. It sounded to me a bit like pantonal 20th-century music, or
maybe jazz, with a neat percussion timbre somewhat like bells. A
timbre makes an appearance at one point that sounds to me a bit like a
kazoo, and adds to the piece, which has lots of rhythms that
pleasantly remind me a bit of 14th-century European syncopation,
although that's likely a free association rather than a technical
description. A neat piano tune comes in near the end -- another aspect
of an engaging soundscape which again seems to draw on Americana and
transform it into something new.

The other three pieces I've heard so far I'll discuss in my next post;
but this first quick response before I do some shopping for the
weekend, I hope, suggests that Dan Stearns is practicing his art with
finesse and vigor -- and is well worth the hearing, to say the very
least.

While Dan Stearns and William Sethares are in some ways rather
different artists: Sethares often uses his fine adjustments of tuning
and timbre to produce rather urbane as well as winning pieces that
might go in some familiar category such as a jazz/classical fusion (if
I'm any judge), while Stearns wins through a certain directness that
might suggest a cross between an innovative intonational theorist and
a skillful barroom pianist -- both use intonation as one element in
their musical mixes, with their accent in "microtonal music" being on
the second word.

Now that Dan has released via the Internet the equivalent of a very
generous album, we can applaud both the artist and the creative medium
he has found, along with so many others, to share his creativity,
beauty, and sheer spunk with the world at large.

Here I've discussed only one twelfth of the "double dozen," so I have
lots more listening and writing to do, warmly inviting others to join
in and compare notes -- including, of course, Dan himself.

Peace and love,

Margo

Margo, how come you don't use a more 'gui' web browser? I like your
jot-17 samples on ji.net, btw.