Exist Yesterday.

This Dance 004»
This edition of my periodic mix departs from the precedent set by the last three, which roamed around in space and time and attempted to fit together according to some mood or other, to (in my opinion) diminishing returns. This one, by contrast, has a very narrow theme: “modernist” symphonic music of the 1920s.
I put modernist in quotes because this is not the rigorous anti-melodic modernism of the serialists, but boisterous populist work, sometimes programmatic but mostly concerned with the rhythms and sensations of urban and technocratic life. Jazz phrasing, blues harmonics, and Latin American rhythms inform some of the pieces, but so does the expanded sense of what can qualify as music that the Futurists and Dadaists put forth in the 1910s, in a sort of analogy to what Duchamp was doing in the art world.
I’m mostly doing this just because I’ve wanted to collect a bunch of these pieces together in one place for a while now, and this was a fine opportunity. The composers are credited as artist and the dates in brackets are the dates of composition; the actual performers and recording dates are in the Comments field of each file. I’ve dropped all pretense of squeezing the running time into the hour-twenty of a CD; this is a two-and-a-half-hour mix. Hurrah for the anarchy of digital!
As always, the cover art is adapted from Brazilian cartoonist J. Carlos’ gorgeous Para Todos covers; this one is from the June 8, 1929 issue.

1. Darius Milhaud “La création du monde” {1923} 2. Arthur Honegger “Pacific 231” {1923} 3. Edgard Varèse “Amériques” {1921} 4. John Alden Carpenter “Skyscrapers” {1926} 5. George Antheil “Ballet Mécanique” {1924} 6. George Gershwin “Concerto in F” {1925} 7. William Grant Still “Darker America” {1924} 8. Ruth Crawford Seeger “Music for Small Orchestra” {1926} 9. Karl Amadeus Hartmann “Jazz: Toccata and Fugue” {1928} 10. Carl Ruggles “Portals” {1926}

If you know the pieces, you may already have spied a slight programmatic theme. From Europe to America is the general drift, with one return visit that’s like a funhouse mirror of both. Anyway. I really love this music, and I hope you enjoy it too.

This edition of my periodic mix departs from the precedent set by the last three, which roamed around in space and time and attempted to fit together according to some mood or other, to (in my opinion) diminishing returns. This one, by contrast, has a very narrow theme: “modernist” symphonic music of the 1920s.

I put modernist in quotes because this is not the rigorous anti-melodic modernism of the serialists, but boisterous populist work, sometimes programmatic but mostly concerned with the rhythms and sensations of urban and technocratic life. Jazz phrasing, blues harmonics, and Latin American rhythms inform some of the pieces, but so does the expanded sense of what can qualify as music that the Futurists and Dadaists put forth in the 1910s, in a sort of analogy to what Duchamp was doing in the art world.

I’m mostly doing this just because I’ve wanted to collect a bunch of these pieces together in one place for a while now, and this was a fine opportunity. The composers are credited as artist and the dates in brackets are the dates of composition; the actual performers and recording dates are in the Comments field of each file. I’ve dropped all pretense of squeezing the running time into the hour-twenty of a CD; this is a two-and-a-half-hour mix. Hurrah for the anarchy of digital!

As always, the cover art is adapted from Brazilian cartoonist J. Carlos’ gorgeous Para Todos covers; this one is from the June 8, 1929 issue.

1. Darius Milhaud “La création du monde” {1923}
2. Arthur Honegger “Pacific 231” {1923}
3. Edgard Varèse “Amériques” {1921}
4. John Alden Carpenter “Skyscrapers” {1926}
5. George Antheil “Ballet Mécanique” {1924}
6. George Gershwin “Concerto in F” {1925}
7. William Grant Still “Darker America” {1924}
8. Ruth Crawford Seeger “Music for Small Orchestra” {1926}
9. Karl Amadeus Hartmann “Jazz: Toccata and Fugue” {1928}
10. Carl Ruggles “Portals” {1926}

If you know the pieces, you may already have spied a slight programmatic theme. From Europe to America is the general drift, with one return visit that’s like a funhouse mirror of both. Anyway. I really love this music, and I hope you enjoy it too.