taking sides: conlon nancarrow vs morton feldman

i wish i had time to be bored! howeveah drink --> record --> sleep is my usual routine of an evening, so feldman it is, i s'pose

"too many notes mr. nancarrow, too many notes"

no way! conlon IS THE SHIT! feldman is coffee table crap. i suppose you could have it on in the background while you LISTEN TO THE RADIO or something - i'm guessing it would only get ignored then.

haven't heard nancarrow yet but I really like feldman.

bob- are you fkn deaf? OK so you need to listen to headphones and the later stuf is 70 minutes (at least) but so what? its not unlistenable.

no i "get" his angles but the music doesn't "gett" me offf. always so sad & in a minor key. i'd rather listen to the minutemen. easy point to make, i know, but ceding composers control to performers and making enormously long pieces of music - well they are both easily thought ideas & great ideas (?) but don't guarantee any profundity that couldn't have been well put in a short sentence of speech. i still prefer listening to appreciating

notes in a 'minor key =>sad' !!!!

i luv minuteman as well but whatis the purpose of bringing such a comparison here?

Haven't heard much Feldman but have heard some. I'd say Nancarrow. Nancarrow is almost accessible in small quantitites.

julio - the purpose of bringing the minutemen into it is that (A) i'm bored and i want to talk ABSOLUTE CRAP about music, and (B) i'm sick of people building monumental works & the scale being interpreted as a direct reflection of the profundity of that work. not so much morton but those who might vaunt him. it goes against a conversational nature. eg. i could write a critique of a feldman piece - it might take 3 hours to read and be of an indeterminate nature. building obelisks for people to "wow" at. ideas better than the output. in a similar way AMM peeve me so on the improv side of things because they insist on colossal "meta music" super importance and keith rowe makes a "boing" sound at various speeds during the performance. i dunno - whaddya want - well reasoned answers??? you know that's not my thing.

oh - and julio - nancarrow is the BOMB! i can't believe you haven't tried it yet! vol.5 of the player piano studies is my favourite (unfortunately i got into nancarrow when you had to buy all the volumes separately - only got 3 of 5 and can't get the 1st double set now!!) - he really is a supermentalist funster - scott joplin - captain beefheart and ruddy stupid rambunctuous noisemaking on player pianos. you can get them all in a box now. it's like overdoing it on the asthma inhaler

Didn't know composition was a competitive sport. 'Cause I'll take both. (bob, check out "King of Denmark" or "Coptic Light" by Feldman.)

ok i'll give ' em a shot. i thot this here thing was ALL ABOUT starting arguments. it's not like i hate feldman - I WAS JUST BORED, you know...

I think Julio will like Nancarrow.

I mean, it's apples and oranges, really.

ILM can be a bit too "jockist" for me, at times.

well, i have been meaning to get the 5 disc set for ages and ages but cost has prevented me.

hstencil makes a good point- he went into big lenghts into the latter part of his career.

''ideas better than the output.'' that's true for a lot of experimental music but its not the case for feldman. all you're telling me is that you fall asleep if you hear really quiet notes and structure that is developed over 70 minutes whereas what you want is speed and excitement and LOUD!!! (hence minutemen and ''THE BOMB'').

I like the way in which feldman does retune the ears to near quiet sounds. and i like the simple playing abt with sound. its a sort of 'less is more' trick.

''in a similar way AMM peeve me so on the improv side of things because they insist on colossal "meta music" super importance and keith rowe makes a "boing" sound at various speeds during the performance. i dunno - whaddya want - well reasoned answers??? you know that's not my thing.''

I don't what yr fucking thing is at all. so AMM come across as 'high art' to you and i can see how that can stop anyone from listening. baggage is something that is used as discussion. rowe's approach is not just ''boing'' though his last solo guitar album wasn't nowhere near as exceptional as the one on matchless.

i think AMM and most free improv on rec can be a tough one. AMM live does put some of the later recorded output into perpective I suppose but in some ways this stuff is far more of a challenge than alot of 'noise' music. silence is a diff sort of noise.

replace silence in the last sentence with quieter sounds.

please mark s don't kill me hehe.

Since bob was clearly bored, I've stayed out of this so far, but I cannot refrain from pointing that MF didn't always write epics. His early 70s stuff like "The Viola In My Life" and "I met Heine on the rue Furstenburg" are actually fairly short. And great fun to perform - the conductor makes more noise waving his arms about due to the complex time signatures than the musicians do!

Don't kill me either. Anyone.

pointing *out*

that's it Jeff tell him!

it'd have to be feldman because nancarrow is shit. why not just program a casio with some shit ragtime tunes and then speed the BPM to 300?

HA HA HA great post null!

but the point is that he did achieve that without the technology, no?

but yes: so what?

its a pity that the only nancarrow available is as a five CD set.

Both are great. But while Nancarrow is fun and exciting, Feldman wrote the pieces that make my knees tremble. Particularly "Why Patterns?"

But I'll echo the idea that not all Feldman sounds like the Piano and String Quartet. Those who think he is always quiet and wispy: Have you heard "Neither" yet? The "opera" based on a very short Beckett piece -- in which the singer screams out a few shrill and very high notes for about an hour to full orchestral backing. I really haven't made heads or tails of that piece yet -- you know, in a good way.

Neither is actually the only Feldman I do know and it's really great. I had it on once while talking to a friend on the phone and it spooked her out over the phone.

Is it pedantic for me to point out Nancarrow's more boogie-woogie than ragtime? Probably is. Neither boogie-woogie nor 300BPM: Study for Player Piano No. 20 and Study for Player Piano No. 44.

actually I was hearing words and music, which again is based on beckett's writings. his words and the music go very well together.

though i can't remember too much abt it since i started listening to it at 12am and as we all know englissh ppl are rilly rilly boring and they all go to bed at 11:30.

maybe it's just that i find what feldman i have intriguing, yes, but of limited utility in MY life. i'm probably peeving myself about it more than anything, and yeh, it kinda follows cos i do prefer saban's power rangers to samuel beckett (unless we're talking quantum leap) - seriously - i got SHELVES of rangers videos - if you got feldman on while yr watching them it kinda ruins the mood somewhat

and does a knife REALLY trans-substantiate when used to play a guitar? i have a lot of time for keith rowe, but i think you can always rely on there being a "boing" in there somewhere - it's just a noise that annoys me - it doesnae sound sourceless or alien it always just sounds like a "boing"

er...that's an original way to use morton feldman's music: as some kinda of background to power rangers.

well done!

''and does a knife REALLY trans-substantiate when used to play a guitar? i have a lot of time for keith rowe, but i think you can always rely on there being a "boing" in there somewhere - it's just a noise that annoys me - it doesnae sound sourceless or alien it always just sounds like a "boing"''

it is what it is. but tell me abt guitarists that could take the guitar and make wildly diff sounds every time they performed and you can have a cookie.

cee cee deville?

wot?

this thread is so ugly; like two handicapped children taking swings at each other.

jess- do u hate fun?

i noe rite