The snowstorm we had sure was beautiful this morning, but it was miserable hell trying to make it to the bus in it - my right hip was going crazy. When I got on the bus though I was fine. There is a copy of Pere Goirot I keep meaning to take with me to read, but I forgot it again this morning. It didn't matter. I was perfectly fine just watching the quarter-sized snowlakes come down in huge sheets like in an old Stieglitz photograph.
Today I wrote a bio on Swiss composer Marcel H. S. Sulzberger (1876-1941). Interesting character - he apparently didn't write a note of music until his early twenties, yet stumbled upon a functional form of free atonality a year before Schoenberg (1907). Sulzberger studied with Widor and Debussy in Paris, worshipped at the altar of Busoni in Zurich during the Great War, and served as the house pianist at the dens of Dada as Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara drove Swiss audiences mad with their rantings and ravings. As a composer Sulzberger was a most dedicated avant-gardist; that, combined with his choice city of residence, assured Sulzberger's resignation to the annals of absolute obscurity.
I have heard Sulzberger's Sonata for violin and piano (1919) and can report that it is an ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic collection of concepts that seem to have very little connection to one another. Its language is part French impressionism, part non-tonal and part wandering around in the not tonal but not atonal mists that one would associate with late Scriabin. Interestingly when the French side of Sulzberger collides with the tonally decentralized side you get a sound that is not unlike spacier sounding portions of Charles Ives' violin sonatas. And while the piece has not a stick of formal organization, sonata or otherwise, once you get used to the way things come in and out of the sonata there is a sort of indescribably looney thread that holds the various ideas together. It's like having a long discussion with a brilliant friend who flits from one thing to the next without any logical sequence of thought, but the converstion remains interesting nonetheless. I enjoyed the piece very much.
This piece is included on a Guild disc entitled "The Eye of the Storm" (Guild GMCD 7189) which has at its heart an interesting and original premise - it deals with the circle of composers that clustered around Busoni during his stay in Zurich (1915-1920). All of the works are unpublished pieces that are held in manuscript at the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich. The disc opens with a gorgeous, jaw-dropping Busoni transcription of Liszt's First Mephisto Waltz played beautifully by pianist Alexander Zolinsky. Equally fulfilling is a lovely work by a composer I'd never heard of, Emil Frey (1889-1946) a magnificent Fantasy on the Chorale "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden". Frey's connection to Busoni is the most tenuous of the whole group represented here, and the note writer expresses regret that the net was cast so far. And yet, I think it's a good call - the piece sounds more like Busoni himself than anything else on the disc.
I had originally ordered this disc as it contained a piece by Busoni's close associate Philipp Jarnach (1892-1982) whose music I've enjoying playing myself at the piano though I've never been able to find a recording of it (I've since found that he has a whole disc devoted to his work on the Divox label.) Disappointingly, only when I got it did I realize that the Jarnach piece is only 2:15! It is pleasant, though minor. There are a couple of Othmar Schoeck pieces here, one of which is a Busoni transcription of a Schoeck piece called "The Mechanical Clock (The Mummy Dances)". But the title is more interesting (and longer) than the piece itself. The Schoeck String Trio Scherzo here is also a really short piece that doesn't add up to much. Also minor (and none too interesting) are two pieces by Czeslaw Marek (1891-1985). Recently Koch recorded Marek's complete works on eight CDs and these were the only works to be excluded from that project. I haven't heard much of Marek, but what I have heard hasn't left a lasting impression - perhaps I'm missing something.
That leaves the last work on the disc, the "Variations on an Aria from the Opera Platée by Rameau, Op. 34" by Hans Jemoli (1877-1936). It has some attractive surface features, and is definitely in the Busonian manner in terms of a "renewed" set of variations on an old piece of music. But it didn't really grab me, and frankly after awhile I found it rather boring. But the three works I liked best on "Eye of the Storm" - the Liszt/Busoni, Frey and Sulzberger works - add up to nearly 50 minutes of this 78 minute disc, so that's plenty of value for me. I would recommend it to anybody who wants to be on the cutting edge of obscure early modern repertoire, and the sound quality of the disc is primo.
I also listened to the new Arte Nova disc of George Antheil's First Piano Concerto, but if I wrote that up tonight, I wouldn't have anything to say tomorrow! Besides, I'm tired. I think I'm going to have to postpone the New Friends thing yet again - I just don't have the gumption to get it going this evening.
Witty riposte from Mrs. Lewis department: "One thing I've figured out: Elizabeth Smart - is not."
Oh, and as promised, the set of notes for Paredon 1015 "We Say No To Your War!" will be posted past my signature, appended with a short review written for WCBN.
Uncle Dave Lewis
We Say No to Your War!
Covered Wagon Musicians
1. Mathematics (spoken) :50
A1C Jim Schaffer
2. Silver Bird 3:38
Covered Wagon Musicians
3. Phantom Jets Are Coming 2:00
A1C Jim Schaffer & Vic Pacania
4. The Rodeway Nine 6:28**
A1C Jim Schaffer & Covered Wagon Musicians
5. Spring Conscience 3:50
A1C Jim Schaffer
6. Mathematics (sung) 3:42
A1C Jim Schaffer
7. We Say No to Your War! 3:02**
Covered Wagon Musicians
8. The People's Thank You 2:37**
A1C Jim Schaffer
9. My Pledge, My Vow 2:47*
A1C Jim Schaffer & Airman Penny Rand
10. Rattlesnake Junction 3:37**
A1C Jim Schaffer
11. Bring Our Brothers Home 1:30
Covered Wagon Musicians
12. Napalm Sticks to Kids 4:14***
Sgt. John Boychuck
13. Children of the Delta 4:18**
A1C Jim Schaffer
This recording was made in 1972 on portable equipment at the US Army Air
Force Base in Mountain Home, Idaho. The Covered Wagon Musicians were
active duty Air Force personnel who opened a coffeehouse called the Covered
Wagon where they sang anti-war songs and did outreach work to returning
airmen who were emotionally debilitated by battle. The first coffeehouse was
burned down by locals, and this only served to intensify their charity work
and anti-war protest, which continued for some years after this recording was
made.
This is not your typical "tree-hugging hippie crap", but it is a real
statement of resistance and extreme dissatisfaction created by soldiers whose jobs
nonetheless were to put their lives on the line to prosecute the war in Vietnam. This
could only happen in a free society - makes one proud to be an American! -Uncle Dave
Lewis