Concert: #87 – A Columbus Day Orchestra Concert
“Discovering New Worlds”
Date: October 11, 1999
Place: The New York Society For Ethical Culture, NYC
lyrics
Charles Ives’s THE UNANSWERED QUESTION (1908) is heard here in an alternate form as provided by the composer. The concert took place on October 11, 1999 at The New York Society For Ethical Culture. An English horn solo, played by Derek Floyd, replaces the practically iconic trumpet, nourished in this perspective by extending Pythagorean tuning through two octaves (with all the fifths pure). This tuning distinguishes a notated C# from a notated Db. Ives had always insisted that a C# was higher in pitch than its chromatic counterpart Db, and a B# an eighthtone higher than a neighboring C, easily produced by spiraling perfect fifths through two octaves. (See “The Ives Universe” by Johnny Reinhard, AFMM.) The composer wrote that the strings should sound “off stage” or away from the winds, and remain pianissimo in their representation of the “The Silences of the Druids – Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.” The English horn intones “the Perennial Question of Existence,” according to Ives, in the same tone of voice each time. “But the hunt for ‘The Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes” represents other human beings, and “becomes gradually more active, faster and louder through an ‘animando’ to a ‘con fuoco.’”
Charles Ives (1885-1954) remains America’s preeminent composer at the turn of the 21st Century. Paolo Bellomia (Ottawa, Ontario) conducted this AFMM performance. Maestro Bellomia, originally from Rome, Italy, is a champion of contemporary music, and currently conducts in Montreal, Canada where he directs the Montreal Conservatory Orchestra.
supported by 5 fans who also own “The UNANSWERED QUESTION in extended Pythagorean, conducted by Paolo Bellomia”
wow wow wow is this boxset ever full of riches. Dreamtime, The Driver's Son, and Barn Fever are some of my new favourites, and I am 1 of those people who first (knowingly) came across"Blue" Gene Tyranny's work through Trust in Rock. now I have the pleasure of working backwards, forwards, and in all of the degrees of freedom found Cage's Deli
supported by 5 fans who also own “The UNANSWERED QUESTION in extended Pythagorean, conducted by Paolo Bellomia”
Bay Area light of deliverance Sarah Cahill (and friends) perform piano music of sublime sense by and for the otcogenarian celebration of Bay Area saint Terry Riley. rpm