kimberlyyeo010198

(from Brout met Flilleken for solo flute (2013)) My notational pony is more likely to scratch than show or place — let alone win — in the rhythmic complexity derby, but sometimes I do find myself  venturing into rhythms that look, on the page, if not complex, well, finicky, if not picayune.  As a rule, this happens in one of two cases: The first is when I'm after some precise ensemble rhythmic proportions that echo the relationships found among pitches in an extended just intonation, thus twos against threes, fives against sevens, and so on.  When I require such ensemble complexity, I do it because I want to hear the specific composite rhythms; I won't do it simply to create an opaque density (there are much more efficient ways to do that!) The second case can be found in an individual instrument or voice when I'm after a supple line, a curve with a lacy edge, a kind of written-out rubato with the precision of the notation guaranteeing some crispy attacks along that cur...

John Cage's 1992 Stanford reading of his last major piece of writing,  the lecture Overpopulation and Art , is on line here . Through-composed to mesostics using the letters of the title, this one of a series of summing-up statements, mostly on social themes and an argument for anarchy,  with a decided effort by Cage to write in his most optimistic voice. However, in the brief question session with which this reading ends, Cage's refusal and/or inability to answer a question reflects a more pessimistic tenor in that moment.

At intervals, not periodically and not quite predictably, but often enough to suggest an irregular cycle of some five to ten years, I get hit by the thought , no, nothing so casual as a thought , rather: the conviction that I really have no idea what music is, let alone what it might be (and as a composer, that "might be" is everything.)  I'm usually full of doubts and uncertainties about my music-making  — we don't call it experimental for nothing, chums —  but this has musical-existential dimensions, calling into question not only my own catalog but the larger project of music, and my understanding of it. But after an initially phase of panic or even despair, there — to date — reliably comes a sense that this is not a crisis of confidence but rather a useful opportunity, to renew acquaintance with music as if after a moment of total sonic amnesia, with sound & its potential for organization, from the ground up, isolating it into all its possible constituent e...