Some manuskripte covers

manuskripte is an Austrian literary journal, first published in 1960, founded by Alfred Kolleritsch, based in Graz. More information here and here.

Thurston Dart - French Suites (Clavichord recording, 1961)

After being unable to find any good clavichord recordings elsewhere on the internet, I felt I should share this disk, despite this not being a "real" music blog. I'm not sure if these recordings have been reissued, but they are a great document of the capabilities of this neglected instrument. I originally acquired this LP when my friend Ian offered me my pick of a load of classical vinyl that Academy Records (the Williamsburg branch, where he worked) could not sell and was trying to get rid of. For shame, uncultured Brooklyn! This was one of the best of the batch.

From a 1962 review of Dart's recording:

The French Suites were actually called by Bach Suites pour le clavecin; but this does not mean that the nature of the keyboard instrument for which they were intended can be precisely specified. Terry was of the opinion that they "are suited to the harpsichord rather than the clavichord, for they invite the tonal contrasts which only the former could afford", but a convincing case could doubtless be put forward for the clavichord, since it was Bach's favourite domestic instrument and the Suites were initially written in a home album for Bach's second wife Anna Magdalena. Anyway, Thurston Dart's performances on the clavichord, though obviously without the range of colour of Kirkpatrick's recordings, make unfailingly satisfying listening by reason of their sheer musicality, their stylishness, their varied articulation and their wealth of expressive nuance. By omitting all repeats (and even the do capo Minuet in Suite I, though not that in Suite III), Dart saves a whole side over his rival—who, of course, was able to vary his registration for each repeat; but though the music is often so fine that one wants to hear it through again (and though, of course, dance-form movements, such as these all are, should properly have each half repeated), for gramophone purposes the shorter version has its advantages.

I've mentioned here before how I value a sense of intimacy in recordings of chamber music. Whether or not these pieces were intended to be played on the clavichord, this instrument produces the more intimate recording, as though it were more an approximation of Bach's own compositional process rather than the suites' first public performance.

Thurston Dart in 1964, via Semibrevity.

Information about Thurston Dart can be found here at the Semibrevity blog. Dart was apparently one of the earliest and most influential proponents of early music and period instrumentation, although his own work has not had very much exposure.

Thurston Dart - French Suites (1961)

A1.  Suite No. 1 in D Minor (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Menuets I & II - Gigue)    8:34
A2.  Suite No. 2 in C Minor (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Air - Menuet - Gigue)    7:24
A3.  Suite No. 3 in B Minor (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Anglaise - Menuet & Trio - Gigue)    8:54

B1.  Suite No. 4 in E Flat Major (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Gavotte - Menuet - Air - Gigue)    8:03

B2.  Suite No. 5 in G Major (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Gavotte - Bourree - Loure - Gigue)    10:14

B3.  Suite No. 6 in E Major (Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Gavotte - Polonaise - Bourree - Menuet - Gigue)    9:23

HERE

The Happy Stirrup reissue out now on New Images

The reissue of my 2007 CDR The Happy Stirrup—as a double LP including one side of bonus material—is out now on New Images Limited. Order direct from New Images here.

New (academic) poems

And now, for your reading pleasure, three new poems from some of the most gifted new poetic voices active in our American academies:


"Trace(s), fragment(s), remain(s)"

Ways of knowing, ways of doing
Systems, methods, processes
Paper, palimpsests
Impressions, inscriptions, recordings
Photography, analog and digital
Secrets, enigmas, decoding
Bodies : materiality/ spectrality
Screens, digital traces
Accounts, eyewitness and otherwise
Marks, tracks, signs
Style, stylus, pen
Death, steles, tombs
Hyphens / parentheses / blanks
Past / present
Reality / virtuality
Unity / diversity
Events / accidents / crises
Nature / destiny
Continuity / discontinuity
Memory / forgetting
Transmission, passing, surpassing
Voices, subjects, presence
Sites of passage, sites of passages
Trails, wakes, furrows, lines


"(An)Aesthetic of Absence"

The ethics, politics, morality of absence
Absent signifiers, absent texts
The anti-aesthetics of absence
Authorship in death, in exile, in absentia
Absent God(s), authors, voices
Music/Silence/Mutism
Absent senses and questions of ability/disability
Trace and absence (Derrida)
Absence of consciousness; consciousness of absence
Numbness, lack of feeling (momentary or permanent)
Absence of reality: simulation and simulacra
Performing absence


"Enough is (Not) Enough"

Luxury, indulgence, waste
Hoarding, accumulating, greed
Deviant bodies, gluttony, addiction
Transgressions, sins, breaches of decorum
Obsessions and compulsions
Repetition, boredom, tedium
Exaggerations, verbosity
Fragments, ruins, garbage
Inflation, value, debt
Hate, war, violence


If you haven't already figured it out, these three poems are not actually poems, but are lists of possible topics (or "axes of analysis") for papers to be given at academic conferences at North American universities (Georgia Tech, University of Toronto, and University of Washington respectively), culled from "calls for papers" sent out to my own academic department's email list. As hard as it may be to believe, the titles are not my own satiric creation, but are the actual titles for each conference; it is mere coincidence that all three utilize the Superfluous Academic Parenthesis—a formal innovation developed in the late-twentieth century in order to avoid clear meanings, and to give a title an air of multivalent indeterminacy, handy for cloaking a lack of actual intellectual content. These lists are invariably preceded by the qualification: "possible topics may include, but are in no way limited to...," as if the limitation of a closed set of possible topics were an affront to intellectual freedom.
These lists of possible topics are part of the general organizing principle of academic conferences, the main purpose of which is to avoid clear, specific topics which may bring together scholars working in similar areas. Instead, the idea is to bring together work related by an abstract conceptual rubric—the intellectual creation of the conference's conveners—in relation to which several papers which have nothing to do with each other may be made to appear as if they related to each other. Not only this, but the thesis is then put forward that these forced conceptual interrelations are actually productive, and help everyone present to arrive at a radical new understanding of something-or-other. Papers on the Berlin wall, Lewis and Clark, the sociology of medieval bridge design, and cellular osmosis can be presented in quick succession under the analytical grouping concept of "frontiers". This kind of intellectualized montage technique is presented for an audience of willing listeners in order to enlighten the communal understanding of "frontiers," challenging and perhaps changing perceptions of this difficult and divisive concept. A brief look in the dictionary is, however, often more enlightening.
But at least we get some exciting poetry out of it. For those searching, this is where today's true avant garde is found: absurdists and surrealists disguised as eager young literary pseudo-scientists. Lux et veritas!

Architecture/"public works" collection, Summer 2012

A selection of architectural specimens, gathered this summer. 

[Previously: Architecture collection, Summer 2011]

Philadelphia

Paris

Toulouse

Olargues

Lodève

Nant

Florac

Rougemont à Florac

Bédouès

Joyeuse

Aizac

Privas

Valence

Romans-sur-Isère

Lamastre

Saint-Martin-de-Valamas

"Le pont du malheur", Intres

Briançon

Torino

Interrupted silence

I'm sorry to have to interrupt my absence from blog activity. Silence is golden, but my summer travels have renewed my determination to destroy the sleepy stillness into which this corner of digital space has fallen. Words are on their way– reflective, expressive, judgmental, and partisan: words. Images as well! For this I can only apologize, and hope that the expanding ripples I excite may indirectly lead you, my reader, full-circle, back to the secret spring of the wordless world.

List of Foolish Persons: Martin Amis

"I like the idea of coming up with a society that is a little better than this—a gradualist, ameliorist spirit getting something a little fairer and a little more compassionate than most governments we’ve seen. But the idea of a Utopia has always been completely repulsive to me. [...] What would one do in a Utopia? And, certainly, what would one write about? It’s rebarbarative, the idea of everyone being happy and equal. Because it takes no account of human nature. [...] Who would want the socialist Utopia? Especially if you were at all artistic—you want all those inequalities, because that’s what makes life interesting." 1

My art is more important than your equality. Capitalist naturalism and the aestheticization of poverty. A perfect new addition to the culture of Bourgeois Brooklyn!

1 http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/in-conversation-martin-amis.html

Personal canons and anti-canons

I am always, without fail, delighted to discover that a certain writer or artist dislikes Wagner (Gide, for example), just as I am equally dismayed to discover that a certain writer or artist admires Wagner (Schlingensief, for example).
The same can be said for Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Thomas Mann, and Heidegger.
The opposite is the case for Wieland, Lenz, Heine, Brecht, and Wittgenstein.

friedrich achleitner as beer-drinker

First literary cabaret of the Wiener Gruppe, 6.12.1958: friedrich achleitner als biertrinker

"The number friedrich achleitner als biertrinker, in which Achleitner sits on the stage drinking beer while an announcer tries to describe this occurrence, demonstrates the incompatibility of verbal description and reality, allows it to be authentically experienced and makes it understandable in its ridiculousness."
[Translated from Andrea Portenkircher's essay "kaspar ist tot" in Komik in der österreichischen Literatur (Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1996) p. 246.]

friedrich achleitner as beer-drinker
(by friedrich achleitner)

friedrich will drink a bottle of sweet gray beer. he sits on a chair from the old world of the künstlerbund. before him stands an unusual table. what stands on the unusual table. a full bottle of sweet gray beer. an unfull glass. what will friedrich do. he will take the full bottle of sweet gray beer in his excellent hand. what will he do with the full bottle of sweet gray beer. he will pour the full bottle of sweet grey beer into the unfull glass. he pours the full bottle of sweet grey beer into the unfull glass. despite sustained pouring the unfull glass is still unfull. now the unfull glass is full. we call the unfull glass full. the full glass of sweet grey beer stands on the unusual table. friedrich will place the unfull bottle in which the sweet grey beer resided on the unusual table.  he places the unfull bottle on the unusual table. he will take the full glass of sweet grey beer in his excellent hand. he takes the full glass of sweet grey beer in his excellent hand. he will set the full glass of sweet grey beer against his red lips. he sets the full glass of sweet grey beer against his red lips. he will drink. he drinks. he drinks. he drinks. he drank. he takes the unfull glass of sweet grey beer from his red lips with his excellent hand. he will place the unfull glass of sweet grey beer on the unusual table. he places the unfull glass of sweet grey beer on the unusual table. the unfull glass of sweet grey beer stands next to the unfull bottle of sweet grey beer. friedrich will say scheiss schwechata. he says scheiss schwechata. he said scheiss schwechata.


[My translation from original printed in Die Wiener Gruppe, ed. Gerhard Rühm (Rowohlt, 1967), p. 422.]
_________

EXTRA: another Austrian avant-garde meditation on the theme of Schwechater beer:

Thinking about how much I dislike hearing texts recited badly. Smarmy, overzealous pathos. Artless, artificial cadences in which the words find no residence. Thinking how reading is nice, because we bypass the danger of having a bad actor perform the words for us. Then I begin to wonder, are there some people who, when they read a text, hear it recited badly in their head?

Tweety thoughts

1. If it isn't already, ironic mourning should surely be considered a sin.

2. You can fault 20th century misanthropes and pessimists for a number of things—lack of faith, lack of ambition, crankiness, or meanness—but one thing you can't fault them for is being accurate in their predictions.

3. The sadness felt at the death of an artist consists primarily of an emotionally overwhelming sense of admiration and gratitude.

[2012 has been a dangerous year for artists I admire: first Leonhardt, then Kelley, now Spinetta. I can only beg all my admired artists still living (Straub, Handke, Pinhas, Hayward, etc.): please be careful!]

Those garish, sickly smiles

"Man sieht einen Menschen und denkt, was für ein sympathischer Mensch, und bald sieht man (als würde einem auf den Kopf geschlagen!), was für ein gemeiner Mensch, was für ein lächerlicher Mensch, was für ein niedriger Menschentypus."

You see a person and you think, what a nice person, and soon you see (as if it smacked you on the head!), what a cruel person, what a ridiculous person, what a lowly kind of person.

Thomas Bernhard, Watten