#61: Bang on a Can, "Renegade Heaven"
Bang on a Can, Renegade Heaven, released 2000 by Cantaloupe Music

1) Julia Wolfe: Believing

2) Arnold Dreyblatt: Escalator

3) Michael Gordon: I Buried Paul

4) Glenn Branca: Movement Within

5) Phil Kline: Exquisite Corpses

Renegade Heaven is a collection of chamber works all for more or less the same ensemble -- cello, bass, keyboard/piano, percussion/drum kit, electric guitar, and clarinet -- and all about 10 minutes long. Despite these superficial similarities, there's a wide variety of textures and styles, as well as varying degrees of success in fashioning a compelling piece of music.

Julia Wolfe: Believing

Believing opens with a funky, gritty cello riff and builds on that, growing and accumulating into a texture with a lot of drive and physicality. Then, suddenly everything stops and is replaced by a shimmering, ethereal texture that itself gets more and more frenzied, transforming into a kind of tortured ecstasy. It's a gorgeous piece, and my favorite on the disc; the only misstep is the inclusion of a kind of mystical vocalise in the second half that cheapens rather than heightens the dramatic shift in tone.

Arnold Dreyblatt: Escalator

Escalator features prominent use of the drum kit, and helps clarify for me why it almost never works for me in this idiom: using the drum kit generally strikes me as a lazy shortcut to creating a sense of rhythmic pulse and motion, as well as a lame attempt to infuse a piece with a sense of cool. Escalator is a highly sectional piece, switching from one texture to the next abruptly; unfortunately, there's not a whole lot going on in any of the sections, generally featuring an incredibly repetitive figure over a drum backbeat, and it gets boring fast.

Michael Gordon: I Buried Paul

I Buried Paul might be one of my favorite names for a piece ever. True to its name, it takes its material from the creepy, weird tag that ends the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever". As in Industry, Gordon uses varied repetition to create an ominous, haunting atmosphere, as motifs and melodies emerge and fade away. It's a neat piece; listening to it is like going slowly mad. Unfortunately, it's marred by its ending -- or rather, its lack thereof: the piece just stops, and you're kind of left wondering what the point was.

Glenn Branca: Movement Within

This is what one of my electronic music teachers would call a "mess piece", and what other teachers of mine would call a "kitchen sink" piece. Movement Within creates a blurry, distorted soundscape that might be compared to seeing a kaleidoscope through a smudged, cracked lens into which he throws a lot of random figures. Some people create this kind of deliberate lack of focus and make it work; Branca doesn't in this case.

Phil Kline: Exquisite Corpses

Exquisite Corpses is one of the few pieces with drum kit that actually manages to seem to integrate it into the ensemble; Kline manages that by not relegating it to simple backbeat status, but also giving it more interesting things to do. The piece in general is affable and cheery, featuring catchy hooks and arresting combinations of instruments. I'm not blown away, but I certainly enjoy listening to it.

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#62: Bang on a Can, "Live, Volume 1"
Bang on a Can, Live, Volume 1, released 1992 by Composers Recordings, Inc.

1) Tom Johnson: Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for String Bass

2) William Doerrfeld: Evening Chant

3) Scott Lindroth: Relations to Rigor

4) Michael Gordon: Strange Quiet
     Part I
     Part II

5) Julia Wolfe: The Vermeer Room
     performed by Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne; Lorraine Vaillancourt, conductor

6) Evan Ziporyn: LUV Time
      1. Between the Jaws
      2. Ramrods (for Steve Lacy)
      3. Instep

7) Allison Cameron: Two Bits

Tom Johnson: Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for String Bass

This is a ridiculous and incredibly entertaining piece of theater for double bass. The soloist is asked to play music that gets more and more difficult while narrating a text that provides commentary on the piece itself. One of Failing's biggest challenges for the performer is to make the text clearly audible and maintain a normal speaking speed as music gets more and more frantic. As well, at a certain point in the piece the bass player has to start improvising what to say in such a way as to provide a seamless transition between the provided text and the improvised section. It's damn funny, and really quite impressive, even recorded.

You'll note that I consider this piece theater, not music. Yes, live performance of music obviously has elements of theater, but Failing is really an exploration of artifice and a commentary on the spectacle of virtuosic musicianship than a piece of music per se. The spoken text and its relationship to the music is what's most important; the actual music the bassist plays is fairly irrelevant. You could even call it "metamusic" if you so chose.

William Doerrfeld: Evening Chant

Evening Chant is a piece for a solo synthesizer loaded with samples of the human voice in all sorts of permutations: shouts, yelps, screams, etc. Imagine a kind of Muppaphone, if you will. As advertised, it's a rhythmic, pulsing chant very reminiscent of kecak, and is a very engaging rhythmic study. The only drawback is that, due to the nature of the samples, it sometimes starts to feel like those dogs-singing-Jingle-Bells song novelties.

Scott Lindroth: Relations to Rigor

This Lindroth piece feels very much out of place, dated and stodgy. It just sounds so textbook, as if built out of a template of '50s/'60s era chamber music -- pulseless and atonal, featuring an amorphous stillness punctuated by sudden flourishes. Even the instrumental combinations sound standard. A waste of time, almost exasperating in its lack of creativity.

Michael Gordon: Strange Quiet

To a particularly large extent, Gordon likes to explore the barest shreds of material, focusing on little motives and turning them this way and that until every facet has been investigated, creating forward motion and tension by overlapping copies of a figure in different ways, building towards a climax by creating a kind of cacophonous counterpoint. Sometimes, this can result in a fascinating, quasi-microscopic study; other times, it can make for an interminable, static piece of music.

Part I of Strange Quiet represents the former, as two competing motives bounce back and forth with ever-so-slight variations, compelling and riveting patterns that tantalizingly lie just out of mental reach. Part II manages to represent the latter, featuring a chirpy, bright, chordal figure that's annoying when it's not boring. What's particularly odd about this piece is that it just abruptly cuts off at the end, as if someone accidentally stopped recording in the middle.

Julia Wolfe: The Vermeer Room

Inspired by Vermeer's "A Girl Asleep", The Vermeer Room is a quiet and spacious piece, full of lush atmosphere and proceeding at a relaxed pace. It's a lovely, evocative work.

Evan Ziporyn: LUV Time

The influence of gamelan music on Ziporyn is readily evident in LUV Time which, in a nod to colotomic structures, features a constant, unchanging chordal ostinato in the piano against which wind and brass instruments dance and cavort. They don't dance or cavort in particularly interesting ways, though, and hearing them play around gets tiresome fast...certainly well before the 14 minutes it takes this piece to end. It's definitely fun to hear them imitate elephants in the third movement, though.

Allison Cameron: Two Bits

Two Bits is very pointillist, full of very tiny events that occur sporadically. Interestingly, I think this piece needs to be experienced live to be appreciated, as a concert environment would make the silences and gaps pregnant with expectation rather than dull. But without that energy, it's just way too sparse, as if Jackson Pollock had to fill up a gigantic canvas with only two teaspoons of paint. For a better example of isolated-event-type music, I recommend The Vermeer Room.

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#63: Bang on a Can, "Live, Volume 2"
Bang on a Can, Live, Volume 2, released 1993 by Composers Recordings, Inc.

1) Shelley Hirsch / David Weinstein: Haiku Lingo (excerpt)

2) Lois V. Vierk: Red Shift IV

3) Jeffrey Brooks: Composition for Two Pianos

4) Elizabeth Brown: Migration – in memory of Julie Farrell

5) David Lang: The Anvil Chorus

6) Jeffrey Mumford: a pond within the drifting dusk

7) Phil Kline: Bachman's Warbler

Shelley Hirsch / David Weinstein: Haiku Lingo (excerpt) for voice and electronics

Haiku Lingo is an exploration of different vocal techniques by Shelley Hirsch, set against a bouncy backdrop of tribal sounds (steel drums, bongos, etc.) composed by David Weinstein. In it, Hirsch veers back and forth between different vernacular speaking/singing styles: cutesy Betty-Boop scatting, operatic melismas, dramatic declarations, complaining in a Nasal New York Jewish accent, etc. It's very strange indeed, and it's compelling in a kind of train-wreck way -- it's absurdly, almost offensively pretentious, cringe-inducing in its overweeningly onanistic artsiness. I loathe the piece (the excerpt at least), and feel embarrassed but I can't turn away.

Lois V. Vierk: Red Shift IV for trumpet, electric guitar, piano/synthesizer, and percussion

This piece is very similar to Red Shift, which I reviewed as part of an earlier Bang on a Can compilation. It starts out spare and mysterious, mixing glissandi in the guitar and keyboard with sporadic bursts of percussion and quiet but piercing tones from the trumpet. As the piece continues, all the elements develop and gradually converge into a kind of ecstatic chaos. It's an excellent piece, although it felt familiar after having heard the first Red Shift.

Jeffrey Brooks: Composition for Two Pianos

This is a minimalist duet for two pianos, and does the style proud -- it's rigorous yet playful, meditative but energetic; Brooks seems to know exactly when to add new elements or shift motives. My only quibble is a dissatisfying ending that seems to promise to go apeshit but instead just kind of stops.

Elizabeth Brown: Migration – in memory of Julie Farrell for shakuhachi, violin, viola, and cello

This is a dreamy piece that failed to engage me. I generally don't appreciate pieces that are about atmosphere, featuring a texture in which isolated, unconnected events happen without any larger sense of a larger picture.

David Lang: The Anvil Chorus for percussion

As I said in my earlier review of The Anvil Chorus, the piece never really seems to cohere.

Jeffrey Mumford: a pond within the drifting dusk for alto flute, cello, and harp

This is another dreamy piece, but I found this one more compelling than Migration; it helps that I adore the alto flute, which pairs nicely with the cello and harp. a pond... is just plain pretty, and it instills a gentle, lovely sense of contentment when I listen.

Phil Kline: Bachman's Warbler for harmonica and boomboxes

Bachman's Warbler is incredibly cool and really beautiful. It's a simple concept; Kline simply records himself playing a sequence of harmonica chords into a boombox, and then sets it to loop. He then moves on, plays the same sequence into a second boombox, and sets it to loop...and so on until all 12 are blasting. Each successive loop records not only Kline's playing but the audio from the previous loops, amplifying the little warbles and distortions that are the result of tape playback until they become kind of awesomely monstrous. It's not only brilliant and ingenous, but gorgeous.

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#64: Bang on a Can, "Live, Volume 3"
Bang on a Can, Live, Volume 3, released 1994 by Composers Recordings, Inc.

1) Nick Didkovsky: I Kick My Hand

2) Bunita Marcus: Adam & Eve
     Bunita Marcus, conductor

3) Mary Wright: Lizard Belly Moon

4) Orlando Jacinto Garcia: Colores Ultraviolados

5) Paul Reller: Carcass
     Performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble; Robert Ponto, conductor

6) Linda Bouchard: Lung Ta
     Performed by the Lydian String Quartet

For the most part, Live, Volume 3 is forgettable. Both I Kick My Hand and Lizard Belly Moon are spastic electric guitar pieces that are the aural equivalent of a ball of rubber bands: jumbled, messy, and not really worth the trouble of pulling apart. Carcass is much the same, but for acoustic instruments, more a seizure than a piece of music. Adam & Eve is a haunting piece that relies too much on not enough material, featuring almost absurd amounts of straight and uninteresting repetition; it feels best suited as accompaniment for a film. Colores Ultraviolados features a text penned by the composer himself, and is deadly boring; the singer and instrumentalists do very, very little, repeating the same small motifs over and over again, making the piece eye-rollingly monotonous.

Lung Ta is the only worthwhile piece on the disc, and would likely stand out even among stiffer competition. A 20-minute piece for string quartet inspired by Tibetan culture, it features a number of lovely moments and is almost uniformly riveting throughout. Bouchard pulls off many difficult tricks; not only making a string quartet sound constantly fresh for a very long time, but also drawing from Eastern influences without making a piece sound Orientalist, as well as balancing constant transformation with a sense of logic and internal consistency.

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#65: Bark Psychosis, "///CODENAME:dustsucker"
Bark Psychosis, ///CODENAME:dustsucker, released 2004 by Fire Records

1) From What Is Said To When Its Read
2) The Black Meat
3) Miss Abuse
4) 400 Winters
5) Dr. Innocuous/Ketamoid
6) Burning The City
7) INQB8TR
8) Shapeshifting
9) Rose

The delicate balance of minimalism is creating a looped figure that has just enough momentum, to make you want to hear it one more time. I liken it to the process by which solar sails work: a miniscule, nearly imperceptible, but constant amount of force builds slowly, accumulating and accreting until it grows so large as to drown you. If you can just barely overcome that threshold of interest, you can create a work that subsumes the listener in a way other techniques can't offer; and if you fail to do so, you can create a work that is intensely boring in a way other techniques can't match.

Bark Psychosis, with their debut release Hex in 1994, was apparently one of the pioneers of a genre now called post-rock[1], musicians who used traditional rock instruments to create swirling walls of sound as much inspired by Glass and Reich as by the psychedelia of Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Brian Eno, The Grateful Dead, etc., and by their predecessors exploring in artistic possibilities of distortion, shoegazers. Vocals tend to be used sparingly if at all, and generally more as an additional instrument rather than as a focal point, with words mumbled to a such a degree as to be nearly incomprehensible.

///CODENAME.dustsucker is Bark Psychosis' second release; they remain led by Graham Sutton, although the lineup has completely turned over since their first album. It's infused with a melancholy, searching feel, evoked by the constantly repeated refrain of the opening song – "Give me life / Give me sight / Keep you safe / Can't wait any longer" – which is sustained throughout.

Not everything works on ///CODENAME.dustsucker, of course. The addition of trumpet and vibraphones to some songs gives them a sleazy listening/smooth jazz taste that's off-putting, and not all of the songs are able to achieve the sweet spot to the same degree of consistency or precision. But even at its minima, the album always offers something, like floating in a warm sea without effort or cares to weigh you down – a sensation I imagine is also offered by, say, morphine. And the bookends – "From What Is Said to When Its Read" and "Shapeshifting"[2] – are absolutely gorgeous; both are characterized by an exquisite slow burn that grows and grows into a searing, ecstatic catharsis, culminating in beautiful explosions.

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(1) A term which, as all attempts at artistic classifcation do, arouses contempt in many of its creators and supporters.

(2) I consider "Rose" a lovely coda.

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#66: Béla Bartók, "Chamber Works"
Béla Bartók, Chamber Works, released 1994 by Decca Records

Sonata No. 2 for violin & piano
Lorand Fenyves, violin
András Schiff, piano

1) I. Molto moderato
2) II. Allegretto

Contrasts for violin, clarinet, & piano
Arvid Engegard, violin
Elmar Schmid, clarinet
András Schiff, piano

3) I. Verbunkos (Recruiting dance)
4) II. Pihenó (Relaxation)
5) III. Sebes (Fast dance)

Sonata for solo violin
Hans Heins Schneeberger, violin

6) I. Tempo di ciaccona: Largo
7) II. Fuga: Risoluto, non troppo vivo
8) III. Melodia: Adagio – Un poco più andante
9) IV. Presto

Béla Bartók is generally considered one of the first great Modernists, a contemporary and equal of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Born in Hungary, his compositional style drew heavily from elements of Eastern European folk music; not only its melodies but its modal, nontonal harmonies and earthy, rough character. As with for so many other artists, the disillusionment and tragedy of World War I changed his work tremendously. Though still grounded in the music of his native land, he tossed aside the traditions of Romanticism that characterized his early output – conventions that must have seemed meaningless after the Great War, nostalgic legacies of a naive and self-deluded society – and turned his efforts towards exploring new ways of making music, deliberately breaking the established rules of music theory.

It is difficult to characterize the sound of his music; many disparate elements coexist simultaneously, and the blend changes from piece to piece. Nevertheless, there are some mostly common threads: a kind of unstable tonality, punctuated by unexpected shifts; graceful, elusive melodies whose sinuousness undermines what sense of tonality there is; a highly improvisatory, spontaneous feel; and use of the Golden Ratio / Fibonacci Sequence in its formal organization.

Bartók's music used to be much more compelling for me than it is now; the crunchy harmonies and murky textures found within no longer appeal to me as much as they did when I first encountered his work. The Sonata No. 2 and Contrasts seem dull now. Maybe having encountered so much music that uses Bartók's model has made the original less lustrous to my ear, sadly.

The Sonata for solo violin still stands out, though. It's a thrilling and brutally difficult piece that most thought impossible to actually perform. As in Bach's solo string music, Bartók gives the instrument multiple roles to play, exemplified by the fugue of the second movement in which multiple melodies overlap and complement one another. Despite the fact that I generally find both solo music and the sound of the violin tiresome, I find this a riveting and beautiful piece of music.

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#67: Béla Bartók, "The 6 String Quartets"
Béla Bartók, The 6 String Quartets, released 1988 by Deustche Grammophon

DISC 1

String quartet No. 1, Op. 7, Sz 40
1) 1. Lento – attacca:
2) 2. Poco a poco accelerando all'Allegretto –
3)     Introduzione. Allegro – attacca:
    3. Allegro vivace

String quartet No. 3, Sz 85
4) 1. Prima parte: Moderato – attacca:
5) 2. Seconda parte: Allegro – attacca: Ricaputulaziano della prima parte: Moderato
6) 3. Coda: Allegro molto

String quartet No. 5, Sz 102
7) 1. Allegro
8) 2. Adagio molto
9) 3. Scherzo. Alla bulgarese
10) 4. Andante
11) 5. Finale. Allegro vivace

DISC 2

String quartet No. 2, Op. 17, Sz 67
1) 1. Moderato
2) 2. Allegro molto capriccioso
3) 3. Lento

String quartet No. 4, Sz 91
4) 1. Allegro
5) 2. Prestissimo, con sordino
6) 3. Non troppo lento
7) 4. Allegretto pizzicato
8) 5. Allegro molto

String quartet No 6, Sz 114
9) 1. Mesto – Più mosso, pesante – Vivace
10) 2. Mesto – Marcia
11) 3. Mesto – Burletta
12) 4. Mesto

Emerson String Quartet:
Eugene Drucker, Philip Setzer, violins
Lawrence Dutton, viola
David Finckel, cello

Writing for string quartet – a group comprised of two violins, viola, and cello – is seen as one of the foremost tests of a composer's skill, akin to writing a full symphony. The limited timbral palette emphasizes a tight and controlled approach to the more abstract elements of music while still offering room for variety and experimentation. Many consider the string quartet the apotheosis of chamber music, exemplfying the intimacy and concentrated power of the medium. In contrast to the grandeur and weight of the orchestra, a huge group of musicians held together to common purpose by the will of its conductor, chamber music ensembles are smaller and much more communal in nature. As opposed to the autocracy of the symphony, such ensembles generally take a more democratic approach to music-making, in which all players have the opportunity to contribute their own musical ideas and interpretations without an official leader. This approach, however, takes a long time to refine and mature; no matter how talented the individual musicians in an ensemble, it will often take years for them to build a rapport that allows them to even just equal the sum of their parts.

Amazingly, each of Bartók's string quartets is considered a masterpiece in its own right; taken as a body of work they are one of the most significant and intimidating contributions to Western classical music, a true reinvention of the form as well as a challenge to both composers and performers. People write dissertations on just one of these pieces; I shouldn't even try to begin describing or summarizing them as a whole.

But just let me say that these pieces are awesome and kick amounts of ass that are truly shocking. At times lyrical, savage, playful, menacing, despairing, these are intensely emotional and riveting works, whose power is only enhanced by Bartók's rigorous craftsmanship: his use of intricate and detailed counterpoint, his unique and idiomatic approach to organizing pitch, his entirely new way writing for strings, and what my teacher once called real musical sophistication: the ability to write clear, compelling music that the ear could follow no matter how complicated, dense, and unusual the techniques involved.

Credit should also go to the Emerson String Quartet, of course, who play each piece with conviction, attention, and awareness. If not for them, these quartets would likely devolve into a muddy tangle of thorny noise; they make sense of everything and present it to us – not with polish and sheen, but with the proud grit and physicality – masculinity, if you will – that would do Bartók's roots and inspirations proud.

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#68: Béla Bartók, "Four Orchestral Pieces | Concerto for Orchestra"
Béla Bartók, Four Orchestral Pieces | Concerto for Orchestra
released 1993 by Deutsche Grammophon
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor

Four Orchestral Pieces, Op. 12, Sz 51
1) 1. Preludio: Moderato
2) 2. Scherzo: Allegro
3) 3. Intermezzo: Moderato
4) 4. Marcia funebre: Maestoso

Concerto for Orchestra, Sz 116
5) I. (INTRODUZIONE): Andante non troppo – Allegro vivace – Tempo I
6) II. (GIUOCO DELLE COPPIE): Allegretto scherzando
7) III. (ELEGIA): Andante, non troppo
8) IV. (INTERMEZZO INTERROTTO): Allegretto
9) V. (FINALE): Pesante – Presto

On this disc are juxtaposed one of Bartok's first orchestral compositions – his Four Orchestral Pieces – and one of his last, the Concerto for Orchestra. Though they bookend his career, they nevertheless exhibit many similar characteristics; most notably the influence of both Richard Strauss's program music[1] and the folk music in which Bartók was steeped. Though the first piece is not particularly celebrated, the second is considered one of Bartók's last masterpieces, a tour de force designed to show off the considerable skills a top-tier orchestra.

That said, I didn't find either piece particularly engaging. I've never been a big fan of program music[2], and while these works aren't necessarily trying to express some sort of narrative, they always feel as if they're accompanying and illustrating some sort of scene or narrative. I also feel as if the full orchestra actually dilutes the things that appeal to me most about Bartók's music: its rhythmic energy and agility, its emotional intensity and focus, and its intricate and intimate counterpoint.
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(1) Instrumental music that attempts to tell a very specific story.

(2) I prefer that music tell its own story rather than that of some external narrative.

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#69: Béla Bartók, "The 6 String Quartets"
Béla Bartók, The Miraculous Mandarin | Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
released 1996 by Deutsche Grammophon
Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor

The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, Sz 73
1) Beginning
2) First seduction game: the shabby old rake
3) Second seduction game
4) Third seduction game
5) The Mandarin enters and remains immobile in the doorway...
6) The girl sinks down to embrace him...
7) The tramps leap out, seize the Mandarin and tear him away from the girl...
8) Suddenly the Mandarin's head appears between the pillows and he looks longingly at the girl.
9) The terrified tramps discuss how they are to get rid of the Mandarin at last
10) The body of the Mandarin begins to glow with a greenish blue light.
11) She resists no longer – they embrace.

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Sz 106
12) 1. Andante tranquillo
13) 2. Allegro
14) 3. Adagio
15) 4. Allegro molto

The Miraculous Mandarin was written as the musical accompaniment to a mimed drama of salacious enough content that it was banned on moral grounds after its 1926 premiere. Heavily steeped in the sordid, grotesque Expressionist view of sexuality[1], it's also a fascinating – if repulsive – case study in both early 20th-century Orientalism[2] and the aftermath of Freud's revelation of the psyche as a seething, barely contained morass of conflicting desires and passions.

The plot: a trio of ruffians finds themselves penniless, and convinces a girl of their acquaintance to solicit passers-by; their plan is to wait until an opportune moment during which to assault and rob the john. Her third attempt at seduction compels a wealthy Mandarin to take her up on her offer. After she tries to reconsider, he chases her around her room; he finally traps her, but her accomplices leap out and wrestle him into submission. They try and fail to kill him multiple times, until the girl realizes the Mandarin will not rest until he has sated his lusts on her. She allows him to ravish her, and he finally succumbs to his wounds.

The wild, unbridled score is riveting and evocative, though its lack of subtlety makes it seem somewhat crude and overwrought at times. Bartók uses the variety of colors available to the orchestra to great effect, painting the scene vividly[3]. It's good music, if heavy; and though it helps to know the story it's highlighting, it's worth listening to on its own.

--

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta is Bartók's most well-known piece. The specific pairing of these timbres – allying the liquid, silky textures of strings with the crispness of percussion (a category which in this case includes the piano and celesta) – was then a unique concept, which Bartók then uses to kick serious ass.

Music for Strings... is also one of Bartók's most rigidly formalized works...in particular the opening Andante. Its four movements are nearly equal in length, alternating between slow and fast.

The first movement is a fugue, with an austere chromatic theme that begins almost inaudibly. Originally beginning on A, each successive entrance of the theme is a fifth higher, a journey around the circle of fifths, until it lands on E-flat...at which point the piece almost literally reverses, folding back in upon itself.

This symmetry is characteristic of much of Bartók's work; the "arch" form – mirror symmetry[4] – was of particular appeal to him, both within individual movements and over works as a whole. However, the first movement also evinces another of his predilections in its rigid dependence on the Fibonacci sequence. The theme itself is based on the numbers of the sequence, and important changes and events occur at the major mileposts; 34, 55, 89, 144, etc.

Another element worth pointing out is Bartók's tendency to try to use the same motifs and melodies throughout an entire piece; presented differently[5] to maintain variety and interest, but at heart unchanged, and therefore pervading a work with an intrinsic sense of logic and self-similarity.

The Allegro movement is a marked and sudden contrast, a cockeyed dance that seems to stumble between duple and triple time; bright and energetic sections flank a center that features the low strings of the orchestra in a more hushed and furtive section. An Adagio follows, quiet and nocturnal, slowly building into a terrifying climax that peters out, defused by somehow insouciant, mocking chords from the keyboards and pizzicato strings. The piece closes with an Allegro molto movement, cheery and bustling, with occasional bursts of lyricism.

Let it simply be said that this is rightfully considered Bartók's greatest masterpiece.

Credit goes to Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for performing these pieces with the clarity and precision they are known for.
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(1) See also Richard Strauss's Salome and Alban Berg's operas Wozzeck and Lulu.

(2) How do we enjoy a work with such racist overtones? How do we approach an aesthetic appreciation of something that evinces a viewpoint we find repugnant?

(3) Incidentally, much of Hollywood film music owes an ever greater debt than commonly realized to late 19th- and early 20th-century music; many film composers, expatriates from various European countries, outright stole melodies and more from such luminaries as Mahler and Dvořák.

(4) This is one manner in which such symmetry can be manifested; another might be a five-movement work with tempos that progress from slow – medium – fast – medium – slow, for example.

(5) Changed in tempo, or perhaps time signature, or perhaps with different harmonic accompaniment, etc.

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#70: bauri, "slacker journal"
bauri, slacker journal, released 2002 by Neo Ouija

01) vintetar
02) knusfilur
03) twinkle stars
04) undivided
05) kolikok
06) snowflake
07) lembit
08) barfota nakenfis
09) the slacker journal

bauri is a Swedish electronic artist who puts out music in the vein of Aphex Twin's mellower moods and early Autechre; ambient techno featuring a funky beat and multiple layers of dreamy melodies and fuzzy timbers. I first encountered him on the autumnature compilation; his sweet and adorable track "tummy" is one of my favorites on that disc.

To make loop-based music work, composers have few options at their disposal. One can create a loop that's just kinked enough to make you want to hear it one more time, that includes some "imperfection" that draws the ear over and over again[1] so that each repetition a little bit of forward momentum. Make the oddity too prominent and it becomes grotesque; but if perfectly formed and lacking anything to catch the attention at all, the figure becomes not worth hearing a second time. Another technique is to constanly change the looped material slightly upon every repetition; yet another is to overlap loops on top of each other tocreate something more complex in the combination.

Unfortunately, not enough happens in slacker journal; and when something does happen, it's not very interesting. The CD is so homogenous that the fact that it's divided into nine tracks seems like a joke, as there's little to distinguish one song from another. Four-square and formulaic, each composition seems to follow the same blueprint, to feature the same general sounds and timbres, to combine the same basic elements with little real variation. It's a real disappointment, although "kolikok" and "slacker journal" are passable.
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(1) See Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works, vol. 2 for a primer.

#70a: The Beach Boys, "Pet Sounds"
The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, released 1966 by Capitol Records

1) Wouldn't It Be Nice
2) You Still Believe in Me
3) That's Not Me
4) Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
5) I'm Waiting for the Day
6) Let's Go Away for Awhile
7) Sloop John B

8) God Only Knows
9) I Know There's an Answer
10) Here Today
11) I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
12) Pet Sounds
13) Caroline, No

Maybe it's fair, maybe it isn't, but I can't listen to Pet Sounds and not compare it to The Beatles' concurrent albums; the two bands openly admit that they considered each other rivals, and drove one another to keep pushing the limits of pop music.  The Beach Boys' frontman Brian Wilson  was deeply impressed by Rubber Soul and decided to try to do better.  The end result was Pet Sounds, considered one of the great American pop albums of all time.

Maybe its innovations are too deeply incorporated into music culture to be noticeable today, but I'm not that big a fan.  The timbres the band uses are rich and unusual, but the songwriting itself feels naïve: the lyrics are still shackled to the boy/girl teenage culture The Beach Boys were trying to distance themselves from, and there's a soupiness to the slow, tender love songs that makes them feel droopy, almost like easy-listening lounge songs.  It's as if a painter discovered a palette of colors and materials nobody had ever seen before, but still kept on making the same old landscapes.

I will say that The Beach Boys do something wonderfully that The Beatles never did: polyphonic harmonies.  Most of The Beatles' harmonies are rhythmically homogenous, or have a clear foreground/background distinction, while The Beach Boys meld fully independent lines into rich polyphony.  I'm a big sucker for that kind of writing, and so my favorite songs on the album are "Sloop John B" and "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times".

By no means am I trying to say Pet Sounds is simple or dull or amateurish; it's meticulously constructed and impeccably crafted, the sounds on it are incredibly inventive, and The Beach Boys' harmonies are totally gorgeous.  But perhaps that constant richness, that unrelenting...niceness...is why I don't find it compelling; there's nothing like the oppressive, spare ennui of "A Day In the Life", or the despair of "Eleanor Rigby", or the searing bitterness of "Run For Your Life".  In comparison to the cynical edge The Beatles had already begun to cultivate on Rubber Soul, The Beach Boys still sound innocent and wide-eyed, too eager to please.

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