letters to myself

It rained during the choir party yesterday. The host asked me to help him move a table as it began. We got soaked. He changed clothes and handed me a towel. I was wet for the rest of the evening. But not uncomfortable.

I found a fascinating piece by Albeniz in the multi-volume piano music anthology my father bought for me at a garage sale.

Albeniz was a contemporary of Debussy and Granados. They all wrote exotic piano music. I think they were aware of each other’s work. Debussy obviously is the giant of the three. But in the last few years I have been more and more attracted to composers who use folk language in their art. Guys like D. Scarlatti (whose essercizi abound with Spanish rhythms and other musical ideas) to Villa Lobos and many others.

zortzico

I was surprised by the rhythmic tattoo Albeniz employed in this piece. A quick glance online reveals that the zortzico was a Basque dance form in 5/4. Who knew?

I read this passage in the Adrienne Rich essay, “Someone is writing a poem,” this morning:

“… sending letters to myself is enough for attention to be paid….

most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers.”

I was reminded of my recent musings about what I expected initially from the internet… conversations, ideas, and so on…

Earlier in the essay Rich mentions the reader as an “active participant without whom the poem is never finished.”

Rich’s emphasis on the communal and the interactive nature of her art is a breath of fresh air to me. Musicians haven’t in my hearing or reading debated this much. So often, music is reified from activity to dull object of learning.

I thin this is why I have landed on the idea that music is “something you do.”

And I like the idea of “musicking” a word Christopher Small coined to include all participants in the process. Not just players and listeners, but dancers, people who cleaned the room, anybody who has anything to do with the process.