23 Chilled

Last piece for me to share today.

Tenor Sax, piano and drums in 23 edo.

Details, online play and download are here:

http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=976

Chris,

I really enjoyed this one. A little mellow, a little minimalist. I wish
you could have a real sax player play that part; the rendering's pretty
good, but the subtleties of a human player -- slurs, bends, etc. --
would have served this piece well. I especially like your use of open
space, whether it's "vertical" (i.e., preventing instruments from
stepping on each other while they're playing at the same time) or
"horizontal" (i.e., those pauses in the music, sometimes of all
instruments, sometimes of one or two). I like your motives and the way
you use them enough without overdoing it.

I'm going to put this one into rotation. :)

Regards,
Jake

> Last piece for me to share today.
>
> Tenor Sax, piano and drums in 23 edo.
>
> Details, online play and download are here:
>
> http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=976
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Jake,

Thanks for the listen and comment. It would be really cool to hear the piece
performed live! Perhaps 23 edo on a sax is not a crazy idea since there
seems to be a lot of quarter tone alternate fingerings available for a
number (if not all) of woodwind instruments and that could be quite close to
a 23 edo fingering. (or this piece mighht translate well to 24 edo...)

Re: the density - sometimes less is more. A friend of mine remarked that in
this piece, #2 I believe of Schoeberg's Op. 19 6 little pieces for piano,
silence was as important as sound.

http://clones.soonlabel.com/public/classical-music/schoenberg-op19-piano.mp3

It happened to be one of my pieces I performed as a piano minor. (but this
is a computer rendering).

Here is the real thing by a real performer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphq-GRd02w&NR=1

actually this is probably better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGLcUfbVF3k&feature=related

I have a few items like that here if you haven't looked.

http://clones.soonlabel.com/public/classical-music/

(People have been downloading the Carl Orff piece like crazy... no idea
why.)

Chris

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@gmail.com> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Chris,
>
> I really enjoyed this one. A little mellow, a little minimalist. I wish
> you could have a real sax player play that part; the rendering's pretty
> good, but the subtleties of a human player -- slurs, bends, etc. --
> would have served this piece well. I especially like your use of open
> space, whether it's "vertical" (i.e., preventing instruments from
> stepping on each other while they're playing at the same time) or
> "horizontal" (i.e., those pauses in the music, sometimes of all
> instruments, sometimes of one or two). I like your motives and the way
> you use them enough without overdoing it.
>
> I'm going to put this one into rotation. :)
>
> Regards,
> Jake
>
>
> > Last piece for me to share today.
> >
> > Tenor Sax, piano and drums in 23 edo.
> >
> > Details, online play and download are here:
> >
> > http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=976
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Chris,

> Re: the density - sometimes less is more. A friend of mine remarked that in
> this piece, #2 I believe of Schoeberg's Op. 19 6 little pieces for piano,
> silence was as important as sound.

I couldn't agree more, especially in the second and last pieces of the six. (I find the computer version unlistenable, though.) It seems to me that Schoenberg's at his best when, as with his piano work, he provides adequate space in and around his music.

Don't get me wrong, his very dense writing can be very good. I like _Gurrelieder_ quite a bit -- the second half mostly, and the last bits ("Des Sommerwindes Wilde Jagd") much more than the rest -- and I can appreciate Verklarte Nacht, though it doesn't exactly move me.

But when he took that big sound and applied it to his atonal composing method, I think he overwhelmed himself. For instance, I acquired Schoenberg's opera _Moses und Aron_ from the local library, and after listening to it for almost a month, I decided it was more-or-less intolerable and not worth my effort to tolerate it. (Your mileage may vary, of course! That's a personal judgment, not an absolute one.) On the other hand, his _Pierrot Lunaire_ (which, with its peculiar singing style, I would now categorize as microtonal or xenharmonic as much as atonal) was very successful when it maintained that open space, or at least confined parts to their own clear space. Of course, the best use of _Pierrot Lunaire_ or _Moses und Aron_ these days is to crank it up on Halloween during trick-or-treating time. :)

It's nice to see Pollini play. I've had his CD of Schoenberg's piano works for five or ten years now, and I enjoy it a lot when I'm in the right mood. It's always nice to watch a performer as well as listen to him.

I'm rambling, so I'm going to shut up now. To bring the conversation back to microtonal music: I think the minimalist, well-spaced approach is sometimes a good way to allow unfamiliar ears to hear what's going on without overwhelming them, and I thought "23 Chilled" worked particularly well in that sense.

Regards,
Jake

> http://clones.soonlabel.com/public/classical-music/schoenberg-op19-piano.mp3
>
> It happened to be one of my pieces I performed as a piano minor. (but this
> is a computer rendering).
>
> Here is the real thing by a real performer
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphq-GRd02w&NR=1
>
> actually this is probably better.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGLcUfbVF3k&feature=related
>
> I have a few items like that here if you haven't looked.
>
> http://clones.soonlabel.com/public/classical-music/
>
> (People have been downloading the Carl Orff piece like crazy... no idea
> why.)
>
> Chris
>
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Jake Freivald<jdfreivald@...> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> Chris,
>>
>> I really enjoyed this one. A little mellow, a little minimalist. I wish
>> you could have a real sax player play that part; the rendering's pretty
>> good, but the subtleties of a human player -- slurs, bends, etc. --
>> would have served this piece well. I especially like your use of open
>> space, whether it's "vertical" (i.e., preventing instruments from
>> stepping on each other while they're playing at the same time) or
>> "horizontal" (i.e., those pauses in the music, sometimes of all
>> instruments, sometimes of one or two). I like your motives and the way
>> you use them enough without overdoing it.
>>
>> I'm going to put this one into rotation. :)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jake
>>
>>
>>