[Sumpfhahn] Companion to Slug 14

Di Okt 30 23:10:24 CET 2007

A Companion to Slug
Frog Peak Music Newsletter #14
October 2007
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FrogPeakMusic/773b509133/db4133b47a/5dc158977a

==============
PEAK PICKS (contents)
==============
* New Artists, New Works
* 5th printing of James Tenney's META + HODOS
* UNBOUND: Daniel Goode, Malcolm Goldstein
* Frogspeak: John Chalmers on Xenharmonikôn 18; "One." Jody Diamond
and Larry Polansky on the Frog Peak business model.

=======================
NEW FROG PEAK ARTISTS and WORKS
=======================
Frog Peak is pleased to announce that composers Daniel Kelley and
Malcolm Goldstein have joined the collective in recent months, and
that we plan to distribute some of the works of the late Salvatore
Martirano. 

New works have been received from several Frog Peak artists, including
Barbara Benary, Philip Corner, Barbara Monk Feldman, Peter Garland,
Drew Krause, Ron Nagorcka, Jon Rose, David Rosenboom, and Lois Vierk.
Check individual artist pages at
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FrogPeakMusic/773b509133/db4133b47a/8802c7e23e
for more information.

The latest (and last) issue of the journal Xenharmonikon 18 has been
released. [An excerpt of John Chalmers introduction to the final issue
is in FROGSPEAK, below.]

===========
META + HODOS
===========
Frog Peak has recently completed the 5th printing of the volume META
HODOS and META Meta + Hodos by James Tenney.  The most recent books
(made from electronic files sent to a laser printer and an automatic
perfect binder in a local print and communications company) rolled off
the presses in late 2006, 20 years after the first edition (for which
each page was pasted up by hand at a dining room table in Oakland,
California, then sent more than half-way across the country to be
printed, bound, and shipped back) was published in 1986. 

===============================
UNBOUND: Daniel Goode and Malcolm Goldstein
===============================
The UNBOUND section of the Frog Peak Music website,
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FrogPeakMusic/773b509133/db4133b47a/2e7138c1ae,
continues to grow with these new additions:

Daniel Goode's "One Page Pieces," a collection of works that "go back
to 1974 and up to 1993." It includes Goode's widely played "Eine
Kleine Gamelan Music," the ensemble challenge of "Stamping in the
Dark," the surprising and extendable "Relaxing at the Piano," and many
other pieces with interesting props or processes. At one page each,
how can you miss?

Malcolm Goldstein's improvisation book, SOUNDING THE FULL CIRCLE. In
Goldstein's words: "'Soundings' are free improvisations exploring the
rich sound possibilities of the violin. There is no pre-set structure;
rather it is the process of discovering new qualities and
relationships, that is the flow of the music. Melodies of sound
(timbre/texture/articulation) are created that evolve out of the
interplay between the resonance of the violin and the gesture of the
violinist."

================================
FROGSPEAK: John Chalmers on Xenharmonikôn 18
================================
Introduction
by Larry Polansky

Frog Peak Music (a composers' collective) began some 25 years ago with
a few humble aspirations. First, we wanted to make scores and writings
of fellow artists available simply and easily, have the composers
themselves in control of their own work, and allow for the most
radical forms of musical expression without editorial interference or
evaluation of any kind. 

Second, we wanted to publish important manuscripts, particularly those
that dealt with speculative theory, which had not, for one reason or
another, been published in conventional ways. Two of these
manuscripts, James Tenney's Meta + Hodos, and John Chalmers' giant
project on tuning, the monumental Divisions of the Tetrachord, were
among the first projects we undertook. 

Divisions, a highly ambitious project, didn't appear for some 10
years. Frog Peak composer Lou Harrison had initially shown us some of
the manuscripts for Chalmers' book, and been a great advocate for
John's ideas; it seemed clear that this book and Frog Peak were meant
for each other. (While the book is out-of-print in paper, the
information is still available:
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FrogPeakMusic/773b509133/db4133b47a/501c11f00f.

Now, as Lou might say, a score and a lustrum later, another labor of
love begun by John Chalmers has come to an end: the occasional journal
Xenharmonikon [XH], long a champion of and forum for important ideas
and radical composition. The following is from John's introduction to
XH 18, the final issue.

-----------------------------------
Notes and Comments 18, by John Chalmers

This issue is exceptionally late again as the previous issue was
published in the Spring of 1998 and over the past 30 years, there have
been only 17 issues, including those edited by Daniel J. Wolf. I think
it is finally time to end Xenharmonikôn with this issue. Although I'm
at retirement age, I am busier now enjoying a second research career
as a prebiotic chemist and astrobiologist than I was in 1995 and 1998,
when I was a consultant in biotechnology and sundry other areas, and
more easily found the time and energy to publish XH16 and XH17.

More to the point, I think there is less need for a publication like
Xenharmonikôn than there was back in the spring of 1974 when I brought
out the first issue. In those days, the microtonal music community was
so small that I could organize XH as an Amateur Press Association
(APA), an idea I got from science-fiction fandom, on whose edges I
lurked during the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was a postdoctoral
fellow in Genetics at the Universities of Washington and California,
Berkeley. Back then, in what now seems like the Pleistocene, there
were few channels of communication and most microtonalists worked in
isolation. Now there are a half-dozen email lists devoted to
alternative tunings, numerous web pages, concert series, academic
conferences and special issues of established music journals. Although
a hard-copy archive is certainly desirable, with the Internet and
World Wide Web, communication is no longer a problem and I question
the need for a silent journal devoted to an aural art. I've
contemplated including a CD with each issue, but I am not a sound
engineer and I don't really have the time or the equipment to do it
properly.

It's been fun, most of the time at least, and I've met a large number
of people all over the world whom I consider as friends, but it's
time, I feel, to cease publication. In this day of instant
communication, on-line journals, preprint servers, (self) publication
on demand, and professional quality audio and video recording in home
studios, I see little place for an occasional and usually late print
journal like XH, though if anyone reading this wants to start a new
one, you certainly have my encouragement and best wishes.

============
"One."
============
Jody Diamond and Larry Polansky, co-founders and directors of Frog
Peak Music, were interviewed by the journal New Hampshire Business
Resource. The interviewer was surprised that the answer to "How many
CDs do you need to sell to consider it successful?" was "One." (The
full article is at .)

=======================
The title of this newsletter is from
the text of a Shaker song. "Slug"
is one of many Shaker monikers
for the Devil.
=======================
You can read this and other Frog Peak newsletters at
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FrogPeakMusic/773b509133/db4133b47a/1c25f0f36f

=======================

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