working on music

[calimac]

Usually it doesn't worry me when my editor asks me to review a performance of a work I don't know. Even if the piece is dauntingly modernistic, it's not much trouble to listen to recordings and internalize it enough to get a sense of what the composer is trying to do and enable me to judge the performance as an interpretation. Doing this has served me well on many occasions. I've gotten through Kirchner and Webern and various such composers.

But the one coming up in a couple of weeks is different. This is a major work of 20th century music that I'd only ever listened to once, decades ago, and found completely impenetrable. I've just gone through it again now, with a recording and score from the library, and it's just about as cryptic to me now as it was before. I can see a couple cracks in the ice wall here and there, but I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why so cryptic? Maybe a piece I know, and could help with?

(Although if it's Elliott Carter, you're on your own...)

Don Keller

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

I tried listening to Elliott Carter once. "Impenetrable" was my kindest reaction.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, which work & composer?

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Before you attend the Bergamo Ensemble's Pierrot Lunaire on Saturday, you may want to talk to Don Keller, who loves the piece and is quite eloquent about his reasons as to why he loves it. Hope you enjoy yourself despite yourself and, heck, because of yourself too. I've never heard the work, so won't venture an opinion.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Good guess, but wrong work.