ROSE
OF BEANS is a fast sinking curve ball in E flat, the kind my father dreamed
he would throw all his life. It is de facto a double trio just like those in
Schtyx and in Why is this Night Different - playing together as if Elliott Carter's
theory of Metric Modulation was invented in Ghana and realized by Chopin and
Fats Waller in Corsica on two Pleyel toy pianos. Throw in a walkman-tuba and
a Lady of Spain accordion and you've got the idea...i.e two opposing groups,
- one post house, the other pre-jungle, a poor-man's Momente, one group, 2 groups
a triple duo, Elliotts double concerto for piano and harpsichord conducted in
Berlin by the beloved Bruno Maderna dead drunk; six different tempi going like
two hearts in "drei-viertel" time and converging in an absurd Blues
Brother's car pile-up leading to a unison getaway conducted by two Balinese
scarecrows. Need I get myself into more hot water? Too bad Beethoven never lived
to hear Cecil Taylor hear Clara Schumann play Brahms, che ne dice?...................what
are Brahms anyway???
variation 1:
Rose... was written back to back with Pittura Fresca in l997. So this
strange force field led me to compose two pieces of instrumental music one after
the other... perhaps some of the former spilled into the latter no doubt; but
the actual composing begun in september of '97 was aimed at a performance in
the spring of '98. And in spite of the pressure, the music somehow composed
itself, as they say, drawing as I do on old notebooks full of sketches, concepts,
poetic phrases and telephone numbers without names I found an old chorale waiting
to be orchestrated, a childlike two part invention, a corny Rhumba written for
a Polish theater group directed by an italian in Holland; some bring in da'
Macedonian Funk chords i've always organized my chaos around and Susan Levenstein's
beautiful rendering of the Chopin Nocturne opus 55 n.2 which just wrote itself
into the piece like a beautiful stolen apple, plus an empty blackboard waiting
to be read by six of the best musicians in California, what more...? Too bad
Beethoven never lived to hear Cecil Taylor.
Alvin Curran
Rose Of Beans (1997), for accordion, tuba, violin, piano, viola and
percussion. First performance The San Francisco Chamber Players; April 1999
ROSE
OF BEANS is a fast sinking curve ball in E flat, the kind my father dreamed
he would throw all his life. It is de facto a double trio just like those in
Schtyx and in Why is this Night Different - playing together as if Elliott Carter's
theory of Metric Modulation was invented in Ghana and realized by Chopin and
Fats Waller in Corsica on two Pleyel toy pianos. Throw in a walkman-tuba and
a Lady of Spain accordion and you've got the idea...i.e two opposing groups,
- one post house, the other pre-jungle, a poor-man's Momente, one group, 2 groups
a triple duo, Elliotts double concerto for piano and harpsichord conducted in
Berlin by the beloved Bruno Maderna dead drunk; six different tempi going like
two hearts in "drei-viertel" time and converging in an absurd Blues
Brother's car pile-up leading to a unison getaway conducted by two Balinese
scarecrows. Need I get myself into more hot water? Too bad Beethoven never lived
to hear Cecil Taylor hear Clara Schumann play Brahms, che ne dice?...................what
are Brahms anyway???
