Warning the sound files are not yet up on this site. For now what follows
is pure program notes...
Supermarky de Sage Unltd., Inc. Presents
MY MUSIC
New release:
Superhausen/Stockmarky Op. 1984
now available (See below)
Keine Katastrophe Ohne Idyll
Kein Idyll Ohne Katastrophe
For the first time ever my music is available (for purchase)
on cassette tape. The background to this page is not my music, though. It's
a "Freehand" realisation (with a lot of "Hypercard"
clip art and lightened to serve as a background) of Joni Mitchell's song
The Jungle Line. I make the pants I make the pants; please never
forget that! See my fashion page. I think I can lay claim to being the first
composer to collaborate with Adolf Woelfli,
way back in 1979-80, I did. Since everyone from Wolfgang Rihm to Terry
Riley, you might say, has followed suit. I've never heard either fellows'
compositions which involve Adolf Woelfli. The First, the Last, the Best,
The Cincinnatus of the West Whom Envy Dare not Hate! (you might say)
is scored for 6 groups:
Groups 1 & 2: screamin' brass quintet 'n' (not screamin') string
quartet (these 2 groups alternate, never playing at once, and are led by
one conductor)
Group3 : flute/piccollo, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, violin, viola, cello,
piano and percussion
Group 4: flute/piccolo, clarinet/bassclarinet/soprano/baritone saxophone,
oboe, bassoon, synthesizer/piano, violin and percussion (approximately:
everyonceinawhile another instrument sneaks in...)
Group 5: 6 singers (4 gals, 2 guys)
Group 6: for the grand finale, an intimate group: talking and singing
clarinet/baritone sax player, violin, and singing piano player (grand piano
singing soloist on this recording: Supermarky).
So, please download a sample and maybe you'll want to hear more. Maybe
you will be moved to order a cassette which is robbery, in the interest
of dissemination. Not the best of recording conditions but then again more
than one recording, in fact. Ah, but less than 2! Your cassette will include:
a decent recording of a troubled but spirited performance of an orchestral
prelude in which all of the groups are synchronized (and seated like an
orchestra, even) PLUS a COMPLETE recording of the rest of the piece (some
40 minutes, the rest), in which the brass quintet is relocated to a balcony
and the other groups "explode" (move together to disparate points
in the performance space. Allright!! Apres ski, the cassette ALSO
includes ANOTHER recording taken from a second point in the room (very different
[better] sound quality); this one is of 27 particluar excerpts from the
work, though, including most of of the intimate finale: ALLGEBRAH.
This is a much better deal than the Stockhausen recording of TRANS,
for example, note for note, dollar for dollar. Quite the bargain at $12
US!!!!! Allright! Please, then, listen to a little of
NO CATASTRPOPHE WITHOUT AN IDYLL
NO IDYLL WITHOUT A CATASTROPHE
when the sound file is uploaded here, that is...
"It was written eons ago; it must be good!"
--John Rockwell
Fellatio Etudes
It's Just Intonation
Francis in San Franciso
From the Cradle to the Graave -or-
Through Toil, Sweat,Suffering and
Even Through Prayers into Damnation
My second cassette offering includes 2 pieces of tack-piano music for
loudspeakers (for little loudspeakers, actually, for so-called "headphones"):
Fellatio Etudes. It employs the "Super Prime Time" digital
delay system--a sort of Switched on Nancarrow, you might say, but
really completely different from his music (Sorry, Conlon!). On this cassette
you don't get "two & two" as Chuck Woolrey would say but "two
and three".
Do you like Gamelan Music? Maybe you should skip to the next offering. Unless
you think you can take your gam' INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH. Actually, It's
Just Intonation is a performance of a traditional Balinese Gamelan work
(performed by members of a renowned Berkeley, CA Gamelan orchestra who have
asked to remain nameless including however the vivacious Carla Fabrizio,
whose name it's probably OK to use, I think) performed in a non-traditional
fashion on instruments which demonstrate diverse modes of tuning from demodulation
frequencies determined by corporations to monotonic "tuning" and
everything in between including: "grand" piano, violin, clarinet,
one of those Balinese instruments (one that would be in say "Pelog"
if it were a Javanese) turned one way and another of them (but this time
a "slendro" one if it were Javanese gam', again) turned the other
way (played upside down: the already other Balinese tuning inverted), car
radio(s), TV set, Casio drumpad and Casio keyboard. It's an ear-opener!
Sorry but I don't know the names of the Balinese tuning systems, but obviously
I know the Javanese, sorry! This piece was for Lou Harrison (Sorry Lou!).
Next is a piece for winds, again not really an "original" composition,
but more a dis-arrangement of Olivier Messiaen's show stopping paean to
the Catholic Church Dieu Parmi Nous (for organ). (Forgive me, God
& Mr. Messaiaen!)
To conclude the set is a "setting" (it's mostly, so to speak,
"original" music) of the Schubert song Der Wegweiser from
Winterreise which in part 1 incorporates recordings of the audience
and soundtrack at a screening of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast
at the Strand Theater in San Francisco (Eugenia Jensen was in the audience,
making a particularly great deal of noise) and in part 2 a recording of
a real life (homo)erotic telephone call. The ensemble consists of 3 flutes,
alto saxophone, violin, cello and ring modulated electric piano. Part 1
features a solo performer on amplified violin (very amplified, sometimes
with feedback); part 2 features 2 baritone soloists. One boy sings the original
Schubert song and the other sings its mirror image transposed down a whole
step, producing a sequence of sometimes joyously impressionistic, sometimes
angst riddenly late romantic harmonies & dissonances. The text, you
will notice, is kind of a combination of an anti "The Road Not Taken"
and not-anti "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening". Here
is an English translation:
Why do I pass the highways by
that other travelers take,
to search out hidden tracks
through snowbound rocky heights?
I have done no wrong
that I should shun mankind.
What senseless craving
drives me into the winderness?
Signposts stand on the roads,
pointing to the towns;
and I wander on and on
unresting, in search of rest.
I see one signpost standing there,
steadfast before my gaze.
There is one road that I must take
which no one has ever travelled back.
(There's a chance that the recording of From the Cradle to the Graave
won't really be available. In which case I will substitute excerpts from
a piece for video, tracing paper, colored pencils, trombone, saxophone,
harpsichord and clarinet (love that licorice stick!) oh and tape and me,
called (after Robert Ashley in a way): ...Domestic Symphony. (Which
is pronounced, "dot dot dot domestic symphony)" I promise you
you will like it just as much as the other work. Maybe if all goes well
I will include this as a "bonus track"!)
Thank God Supermarky came to save Modern Music!
--Andrew Porter
REDISCOVERED Süpermarky:
SUPER-HAUSEN/STOCK-MARKY OPUS 1984 At the moment
I don't feel like writing progran notes. Later.
Featuring: Magdalene Luecke, Phil Stone, Barney
Jones, Stephanie Graham, Larry Simon and Chris Maher and more...
The 1st piece to our knowledge ever post-dated
like a bad check!
Take this one to the bank!
--Philip Glass
To Come...
A new stereophic sound spectacular for midi and solo voice and pick-up orchestra...meaning
this one doesn't exist yet but with your support, moral and/or otherwise, yet
still it may become...just tell me you want it or do more...give me a deadline.
Say you want to perform it yourself. Or want it performed before you. Say at
anywhere better music is heard...
Please be sure to check back a few months into 2002 for version 3 of this
website which will contain mp3 files of music.
