The Harp of Life

Today, January 27, 2015, would have been Arthur Jarvinen's 60th birthday. It's been over five years since Art chose to take his final bow.  His decision left a lot of baffled and befuddled friends, family and colleagues behind.  He is missed.

Saxophonist and composer Eric Barber was a friend and colleague of Art Jarvinen.  And, for a while, his student.  Last fall Eric released a solo saxophone album entitled Harp of Life in Art's memory.  Here's the cover:

Eric provided this description of the album from his Bandcamp page:

This music is a tribute to my friend, mentor, and teacher Art Jarvinen. The years we spent together eating, playing, and discussing greatly influenced my musical approach and vocabulary. After his untimely passing in 2010, I began composing the music for this project. I think Art would appreciate the music, the meticulous dedication to the recording process, and the utter lack of any marketing potential or financial return on a multi tracked solo saxophone album. I miss him and will always remember the wonderful times we shared and all that he taught me.

Eric's precise order of "eating, playing and discussing" amuses me greatly.  Any friend of Art's will understand those priorities.  Via email Eric expanded on his relationship to Art:

I studied composition with Art for two years at CalArts (97-99) and he basically turned me on to everything good... Beefheart, Rweski, Feldman, Zappa. We had a duo called We Are Not Mailmen which was acoustic sax and his electronics setup. Our band Balkanova with Randy Gloss, Milen Kirov, and John Heitzenrater was a twisted Bulgarian gypsy wedding band with Art on bass, and we played a bunch of his originals too. And I had a trio with him with Art on drums, Scot Ray on trombone and Hammond. And I played a few cuts on Invisible Guy. Most of this was between 1999 and 2004. And we had a lot of Thai food, sea bass, and saunas along with all the Halloweenie fests and pig roasts. He really was like an uncle.

Harp of Life has six tracks - all for various combinations of tenor and soprano saxophones.  The tracks are entitled:

1. Harp of Life (circa 2167 AD)
2. The Folly of Primes (Libyan Fox Trot)
3. Repose
4. Simantronica
5. 49 Halves of 14 (circa 2167 AD)
6. Sabotage (via ledgerdemain)

I sensed allusions to Jarvinen in these titles.

For example Simantronica is clearly a reference to the East European musical instrument (similar to a piece of lumber) called the Simantron.  Art was expert on all things simantronic.  He wrote this article about it.   Here's a short lo-res video of Art using a simantron to call his dinner guests to begin consuming a whole roast pig.  There are no simantrons in Eric Barber's Simantronica; it is for 3 soprano and 3 tenor saxophones.

I asked Eric what the other Jarvinen references in his titles might be.  He wrote:

Yes the titles do [refer to Art] but are not based on his music necessarily. Folly of Primes (Libyan Fox Trot) is a nod to Art's Egyptian Two Step.  49 Halves of 14 is a nod to A Conspiracy of Crows.  Harp of Life is inspired by the Hymn string quartet he wrote that was performed at his memorial.  Sabotage has a relationship to Breaking the Chink, which I got to play at CalArts as a student and was my entree to Art.

Eric added that Harp of Life is a reference to composer Henry Cowell who also wrote a piece of that title.  (Here it is on YouTube.)   While you're at it you can hear Egyptian Two Step (listen carefully for the bursts of air at the beginning) and Conspiracy of Crows.

More to the point, you can hear Eric Barber's Harp of Life on Bandcamp.   Better yet, you can purchase the whole album for the outrageously reasonable price of $7.  Talk about the utter lack of financial return.

The opening cut, Harp of Life, begins with several minutes of mournful solo tenor.  You might mistake this for the beginning of a jazz tune and expect a piano, bass and drums to enter.  Nope.  After this invocation Barber introduces a simple ostinato pattern taken up by more saxes.  The music with rich harmonies evokes a church hymn.  The relationship to Jarvinen's music is much more than in name only. Solos over the pattern search higher and higher for meaning.  

Barber's music on this album comes from the world of minimalism - often with multiple contrapuntal lines fusing into textures.  Much of the music is rhythmic but without an overall sense of meter.  As a composer Barber has an excellent feel for just the right moment to add bits of new material.

The piece Repose uses a muliple sopranos glissandoing in a narrow range.  You can hear difference tones being produced.  It would probably be devastating done live.

My favorite piece is 49 Halves of 14 (circa 2167 AD). This consists only of a series of complex chords, almost clusters, held for various lengths of time, separated by silences.  There is a great sense of anticipation.  You're forced to listen, to wait, because you never know when that next chord will explode, interrupt.

I agree wholeheartedly with Eric's statement "I think Art would appreciate the music."  And I commend Eric Barber for producing a well-crafted artistically challenging album.  He called it a "labor of love".

One way of honoring Art Jarvinen's memory is to play his music.  Another is to let Art's memory inspire us to make new music.  That's a very good thing and something Art would certainly have understood and approved.

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There are many Mixed Meters articles about Art Jarvinen and his music.

Five Reasons Why Serious Immobilities Is Being Performed In New York Soon

If you've been one of Mixed Meters' Three Readers for any length of time you'll recognize the names Arthur Jarvinen and Erik Satie.  And, most likely, you'll recognize the names of their pieces Serious Immobilities and Vexations.  Are you up to speed on these topics?  If so, you're cleared to skip the next two paragraphs.

Erik Satie was a French composer, an avant-garde beacon of the early twentieth century.  He is most famous for soothing piano pieces with names like Gnossienne or Gymnopidie.   Vexations is also a short piano piece of his.  It is the opposite of soothing.  In fact it's an aggravating, infuriating, maddening whorl of unsettled melody and twisted harmony.  Exacerbating this effect, Satie instructed that the piece should be performed 840 times.  Your mind will wander and possibly you'll hallucinate if you listen that long (like 18 hours).  I'm sure you will love every minute.  You'll definitely learn the meaning of the word "unresolved".

Arthur Jarvinen, a California composer who wrote music of great originality, had many different influences.  These include, to name just a few, Erik Satie, Captain Beefheart, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the Beatles.  He is often associated with the post-minimal Totalist movement which had strong connections to New York City.  Serious Immobilities, however, is based directly on Satie's Vexations. Art wrote 840 distinct variations on Satie's trope.  These take a full day to perform.  Listening is sort of like being trapped inside Arthur Jarvinen's brain while he is trapped inside Erik Satie's.  You'll love it. (Much more info here.)

The big news is that all 24 hours of Serious Immobilities is getting another well-deserved complete performance, the first in 17 years. This will happen starting at eight in the morning on June 20th (that's next Saturday) through eight the following morning at the West Park Presbyterian Church in New York City.  I wonder if Sunday morning services begin immediately afterwards.  I sure hope their pews are well padded.  More details of the performance are provided here.  Here's the New Yorker listing. (I'm blown away that the New Yorker could condense the high points of this story into just over 100 words, even though they made one big mistake.)

The event is presented by Composers Collaborative, Inc. a New York group with a busy 20-year history of presenting new music.   Their press release for Serious Immobilities lists 16 pianists so I guess each pianist will be playing for about 90 minutes.  Jed Distler, described online as President and Treasurer of CCi and elsewhere as Artistic Director, took part in the 1998 New York premier of Serious Immobilities.  He's the moving force behind this important performance.

Serious Immobilities is more than just 840 variations on Vexations by Arthur Jarvinen.  There is another simultaneous layer of music by a different composer.  Randall Woolf, a friend of Art's, called his Vexation variations Spineless Dog.   He has described Spineless Dog as a guided improvisation and he scored it for Midi keyboard, computer and electronics.

(This post will help you sort through the versions and performance history of Serious Immobilities.)

Did I mention that this performance is FREE.  If you're nearby or within easy striking distance, I hope you'll attend.  Go for an hour.  Or two.  Or ten.  Heck, stay for the whole thing.  Maybe they'll let you roll out a sleeping bag so you can dream along with Serious Immobilities.  Although there are 70 minutes of Art's piano variations available on CD (from Los Angeles River Records and from Leisure Planet Music), attending this event is your first chance to hear the entire Serious Immobilities since 1998.

Since I've written so often about Arthur Jarvinen and since both Mixed Meters' posts about Serious Immobilities are among the most often read, I briefly considered flying to New York.  And then I calculated how much sleep I'd lose.  After all, it's not like I'm fifty years old any more.  I'll have to wait for another L.A. performance.

There must be at least five good reasons why a 24-hour performance of Serious Immobilities can happen only in New York and no where else right now.  Were you expecting me to list them?  What's most important to me is that this performance is a significant milestone in Arthur Jarvinen's musical legacy.  I'd like to congratulate all who are involved and wish their production the best possible outcome.

(To close, here's the text from the final variation of Serious Immobilities:)

You aren't likely to do much that's predicated on the depth of a literary fragment, and such a short one at that.

With your total lack of respect for it, and the extent to which you despise it, you were always certain there was ample justification for its moderate brevity, the audiences' not wanting to keep it short notwithstanding.

Denying the possibility of any motif occupying a full twenty-four hours is of course absolutely necessary, although falling even one second short would disqualify it anyway.

As you leave this performance perhaps you can't make up your mind whether or not to plagiarize several rather short works for mixed ensembles, none of which you can actually recall, such as any of those by this composer.

None of them are merely crude approximations of necessarily short motifs, with even one unique, fully-realized idea strictly prohibited.

Serious Immobilities is not deconstructed only from rests and single notes.

You obliterated any new sense of timelessness with widely separated silences; so why Vexations?

And you didn't introduce even one unique event.

Talking With Bob and MB

Last month, on the birth date of Arthur Jarvinen, I posted an article called An Antenna Repairmen Performance.   The members of the Repairmen were Jarvinen, M.B. Gordy and Robert Fernandez.  The post included a video of their magnificent joint composition Ghatam in live performance.  (Go.  Listen.  Watch.)

Yes, M.B. goes by his initials.  Everyone calls him M.B..  Most people don't know what the letters stand for.  I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to use periods.  Robert usually gets called Bob.  Everyone knows what 'Bob' stands for.

That post prompted the three of us to get together to talk about the Repairmen's history.  We met last Wednesday.  I recorded everything for use in future Mixed Meters posts.  This post is a quickie to say thank you.  Thanks, guys.

Here's an early picture of the trio - scanned from a xerox of a photograph.  Bob said it was taken in 1978 or 79 at CalArts where the Repairmen, all students of John Bergamo, met.

L to R: M.B. with hair and mustache, Art with hair and sideburns and Bob with hair and beard.  (I love the video camera on the left and the shadow of same on the right.)

You may well wonder what these guys are doing.  Certainly not conventional percussion music.  The tall cylindrical object is a resonant metal artillery shell to which long strips of masking tape have been affixed.  The shell was amplified.  The trio slowly pulled the strips of tape away from the shell creating sounds.  Neither M.B. nor Bob could remember a title.  We'll also have to imagine what it sounded like.

I asked about how the group got started.  Bob answered:

We gravitated towards each other.  We were in the new music ensemble together.  We had a lot of likes, our personalities.  Art could see that we had chops, we could play already.  We were getting better.  And he said 'You know, this might be something.'  It was his idea.  He said 'Let's do a trio.  Let's start writing.'  It was wide open.

M.B. added:

And it was going to be not just a percussion trio because it was pretty much going to be whatever it was.  Sort of a Performance-Art-for-Percussion trio because we did plenty of pieces where there wasn't a whole lot of percussion going on.

Back to Bob:

We started kind of sifting what was out there for trios.  Art started writing text, you know, just to push the boundaries.  We knew that text could be involved, that non percussion activities could be involved.  There was theater, how hard could [that] be?

In our discussion we covered the piece Ghatam in detail.  They gave me a lot of information about the history and structure of Ghatam.   Watch for that in some future Mixed Meters post.

After 3 hours of talk and laughter hunger overtook us.  Here's a picture of M.B. and Bob taken later that evening, before the food came.

THE DANCE CLASS COUNTING STORY

I'm not very good at telling jokes.  One joke I do tell, however, is about how dancers count to three or to seven.  Musicians often find this very amusing.

Unfortunately the joke cannot be conveyed through written language.  It must be told by someone out loud and in rhythm.  I've mentioned this before in the post Counting to Seven.  Back then I didn't try to tell the joke.

It turns out that this bit of humor is based on reality.  It actually happened to M.B.  Here's audio of the three of us discussing how it happened.  (Note: To protect the innocent I removed some personal details about the dancer from the clip.)

Listen right here:



(If that doesn't work try this page instead.)

BOMBED

Somewhere, back in history, I wrote a piece for the Antenna Repairmen.  It was called Bombed.  I've mentioned Bombed before here.  (That page has a story about how Frank Zappa reacted to Bombed.)

Bombed is in three movements.  Here are the program notes for each movement.

1. Into the Stone Age – Three young Americans, believing the sound-bites of their leaders, participate in the destruction of a less significant culture.
2. Pan Am 103 – Wrapped up in their own problems and fears, they have no conception of what is happening around them.
3. Out of Your Mind – Our heroes, trying to walk home after the bars close, cannot remember the music they heard that day.

Bombed came up in our three hour marathon Wednesday.  Here's Bob talking about it.

That was a fun piece.  That was a hard piece too.  We played it pretty damn well.  You know why I think we liked that piece so much?  Not because it was well written.  To me it epitomized the Repairmen, the kind of weird things that we did, the odd rhythms.  'You're playing seven?  I've got my six in that time.'  It was no problem for us, we got so used to doing that.

You can listen to Bombed here.  You can even download the score here.

An Antenna Repairmen Performance

Composer Arthur Jarvinen was born on January 27, 1956. Today would have been his 59th birthday. Each year I try to remember Art on his birthday with a Mixed Meters post.

This year I'd like to highlight a concert by The Antenna Repairmen, a percussion trio.  The members, Robert Fernandez, M.B. Gordy and Art, started playing together in 1978.  Yes, they were all CalArts students back then.

This particular concert was given at Roski School of Fine Arts at USC on November 5, 2009.  It was organized by Karen Koblitz an artist and professor there.

There is a fine video of the concert available online, in two parts.  It is well worth watching if you're interested in Art's music.

More importantly for those of us who knew the man, Art talks to the audience after the first set of pieces.  (You must listen carefully however because he isn't miked well.)  He describes the music, reveals the origins of the instruments and gives some insight into the ideas behind the compositions.  At one point he says:

Much of what we're playing is inspired by world music.  But it is all original music of our own, sort of filtered through the sensibilities of other world cultures that we politely borrow from.

Here is Part One of the video:

It begins with an introduction by Karen Koblitz.  At about 6 minutes the Repairmen make an processional entrance playing simantrons and chanting a Zen Buddhist proverb, Nichi nichi kore kōnichi.  It means "Every day is a good day."  Art adds "Some days are better than others."  At the end of his life Art was studying to be a Zen Buddhist.

Simantron?  That's an Eastern European instrument, little more than a shaped board hit with a hammer.  Art was fascinated by it.  He wrote In Search of the Simantron at the New Music Box website.  I guarantee, there is more information about simantrons than you are expecting.  Art ends his article with this:

Bells can be solemn; I can play a bell with solemnity. But I have yet to learn how to play the simantron solemnly or in sadness.  Maybe it’s only because I’m a percussionist, but damn do I love to play the simantron!  I compose for it, I improvise on it for fun, and I beat it on July 4th to announce that the roast pig is ready. And whenever I play it, people seem to lighten up and enjoy it.

A lo-fi video of Art playing a simantron to announce that the pig is ready can be seen here.

This is followed at about 10 minutes by a performance on a "big fake rock" The California Gaval Dashy created by Karen Koblitz.  It is initially wrapped in paper but the Repairmen remove that with scissors.  Rock?  Paper?  Scissors?  (Yes, that's the reference.)  They also play the rock with sticks and stones.  Then Bob clips Art's hair while M.B. waits his turn.  (The remaining pictures are captures from the video.)

The third piece on Part One (at about 15 minutes) is called Bong's Garbo, for three gongs.

After a spoken introduction by Art, Part Two of the video consists of a performance of the major sections of Ghatam, composed jointly by Fernandez, Gordy & Jarvinen.  It is a most satisfying and successful piece.  (That's my opinion of it.)

Here are some excerpts from the liner notes of Ghatam:

Ghatam is a collaborative work by percussion group The Antenna Repairmen and sculptor Stephan Freedman.  It is a sculptural/musical performance piece ... played entirely on ceramic instruments designed and built especially for this situation by Freedman.  Some of these are unique, while others are variants on instruments found in non-western cultures.

Ghatam is an interaction between sculpture, music and theatre.  Besides standing on its own merits as a purely musical work, it is meant to be beautiful to watch.

Ghatam is a remarkably well paced work. It bubbles with rhythmic vitality and musical sophistication. There are some surprising performance techniques - watch for flip flops and ping pong paddles. The theatricality and ritualistic sensibility is essential to the piece.

There is a wonderful commercial recording of Ghatam.

Here's an interview with Art on the Composer's Voice series. (Real Audio)

This link will reveal all Mixed Meters' posts about Arthur Jarvinen.  (There are a lot.)

The Invisible Guy (Art's surf music movie sound track presented with commentary and images)

Another performance video of M.B. Gordy and Bob Fernandez on the Gaval Dashy is here.

Adult Party Games and Bad Poetry

After Arthur Jarvinen's death in 2010 I decided that I needed to commemorate his life and work here on Mixed Meters. Today would have been Art's 58th birthday. Mentioning him like this isn't much. It is something.

Last summer an adventurous group of composer performers called Varispeed played selections from Art's piece Adult Party Games from the Leisure Planet. They did this somewhere in New York State at a place called Mount Tremper Arts.  Here's a picture (which I found on Facebook, there are more):

Each of the suspended cards you see is one of the 'games'.   These are short text pieces which Art described as:

a growing collection of works which don't fit conveniently into any particular category.

I don't know exactly which games Varispeed chose to perform but it looks as though they found a beautiful place to play them.  Here's the list of some Adult Party Games:

Eskimo piece --
Illegal music --
White painting for Robert Rauschenberg --
The valedictorian squats and scurries --
First principles of aerodynamics --
Haed --
Schematic --
For Bill Mullane --
For Giovanna Caicco --
For Mark Cunningham --
Zone --
No --
For myself --
For Linda Tadic.

Of course  Varispeed blogged about their performance.   They included one game called Advice for Young Composers:

Click on any picture for an enlargement.  The text to "Advice for Young Composers"

Tonight, astrally-project to Aaron Kernis's work place and plagiarize the last three measures he wrote.  Repeat as often as necessary.

The first game on the list, Eskimo piece, is available for you to watch online.  It is performed by another of these endlessly mysterious New York composer/performer ensembles, this one called thingNY.  thingNY is probably from Brooklyn.  (I'm told that anybody who's anybody in the new music world these days comes from Brooklyn.)

Eskimo Piece by Art Jarvinen from thingNY on Vimeo.

An excerpt from a performance art piece from a 1970s collection called "Adult Party Games from the Leisure Planet". This work was part of a string of fluxus-like sound and performance works composed by the late CalArts composer Art Jarvinen.

Eskimo Piece calls for loads of "Eskimos" to run around on stage while floor mics pick up their footsteps, creating feedback. Art originally thought of this work as absurd and chaotic, but we decided to "premiere" it in a pulse-driven style, letting the feedback ring out a bit after each clash.

It remains absurd though. There are no real Eskimos in this piece. There are no Inuits. There are a few Canadians

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Closer to home and less musically, I discovered a small cache of "memorabilia" from the mid-nineties.  This was about the time Leslie and I moved into our current home. The cache, actually a basket, included a stack of old mail - things like birthday cards and invitations.

One invitation was to a party on January 27, 1996, at the home of Lynn Angebranndt and Arthur Jarvinen.  The occasion, although it doesn't say so on the card, was their shared birthday. Yes, Art and Lynn were a married couple both born on the same date.

First, here are quotes from the card:

O openers of the way, openers of the roads to bad poetry,

perfected in the house of Art and Lynn.

It's time once again

The event of the season:

THE BAD POETRY SOIREE

May the divine beings, who make men to stand fast, cause my poetry to stink.

May my mouth be opened and pour out really bad poetry.

But the best part of the card was that it was a pop-up.  I remember Art once telling me that he had gotten into pop-ups, so I assumed this card was his work.  Recently, however, Lynn told me that the pop-ups were actually her idea and her work.  A lot of work.  And very cool work, to be sure.  Of course the two faces on the card are those of Art and Lynn:

I don't remember whether I was able to attend this particular Bad Poetry Soiree.  I did attend some of them.  At one of them I read from the works of William McGonagall.  Here, in honor of the Bad Poetry Soirees, is some bad poetry by that poet.  This one is about the eternal war between rich and poor:

THE CHRISTMAS GOOSE

Mr. SMIGGS was a gentleman,
And he lived in London town;
His wife she was a good kind soul,
And seldom known to frown.

’Twas on Christmas eve,
And Smiggs and his wife lay cosy in bed,
When the thought of buying a goose
Came into his head.

So the next morning,
Just as the sun rose,
He jump’d out of bed,
And he donn’d his clothes,

Saying, “Peggy, my dear.
You need not frown,
For I’ll buy you the best goose
In all London town.”

So away to the poultry shop he goes,
And bought the goose, as he did propose,
And for it he paid one crown,
The finest, he thought, in London town.

When Smiggs bought the goose
He suspected no harm,
But a naughty boy stole it
From under his arm.

Then Smiggs he cried, “Stop, thief!
Come back with my goose!”
But the naughty boy laugh’d at him,
And gave him much abuse.

But a policeman captur’d the naughty boy,
And gave the goose to Smiggs,
And said he was greatly bother’d
By a set of juvenile prigs.

So the naughty boy was put in prison
For stealing the goose.,
And got ten days’ confinement
Before he got loose.

So Smiggs ran home to his dear Peggy,
Saying, “Hurry, and get this fat goose ready,
That I have bought for one crown;
So, my darling, you need not frown.”

“Dear Mr Smiggs, I will not frown:
I’m sure ’tis cheap for one crown,
Especially at Christmas time –
Oh! Mr Smiggs, it’s really fine.”

“Peggy. it is Christmas time,
So let us drive dull care away,
For we have got a Christmas goose,
So cook it well, I pray.

“No matter how the poor are clothed,
Or if they starve at home,
We’ll drink our wine, and eat our goose,
Aye, and pick it to the bone.”

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Mixed Meters has many posts about the life and music of Arthur Jarvinen. All of them can be found by clicking this link.

Last year I wrote at length about Art's massive solo piano piece Serious Immobilities.  This has become one of Mixed Meters' most popular posts.

Art's anonymous blog Mister Composerhead is still online.  (Art told me that Aaron Kernis, referenced above in Advice for Young Composers, was the original model for "Mister Composerhead")

Art's lavishly annotated surf-music opera was called The Invisible Guy.   Listen.

Serious Immobilities (first post)

On the fifty-seventh anniversary of his birth, I'd like to write about Arthur Jarvinen's longest piece of music. Possibly anyone's longest piece of non-repetitive music.  It lasts one day.  The score takes up 301 pages.

The piece is entitled Serious Immobilities.  It is a huge set of variations.  It has different layers.  It has different versions.  A piece this large requires two separate posts.  Find the second one here.

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To understand Serious Immobilities you must first know the work on which it is based, Vexations by Erik Satie. Vexations is a short twisted piano solo for which its composer provided this (capricious, in my opinion) instruction:

"In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." 

Vexations was resurrected from obscurity and elevated to high art by composer John Cage.  It is now widely known.  Satie's instruction is interpreted to mean that the music must be repeated exactly 840 times in order to finish one entire live performance.

(Recently Mixed Meters presented this article about two early performances of Vexations here in Los Angeles.  It includes a 6-hour excerpt you could listen to.)

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the cover of Serious Immobilities, 840 variations on Satie's VEXATIONS for piano solo by Arthur Jarvinen

Here's a bit of Art's own introductory program notes to Serious Immobilities:

Late in 1996 the Paris New Music Review sponsored a competition for piano solos of no more than one minute in duration.  I responded with a variation on the longest piano piece I could think of - Vexations, by Erik Satie.  ...  No sooner had I written my first variation than I realized the implication; I had to write 839 more.

Structurally the work unfolds as a sort of convoluted palindrome.  The first two hundred and ten variations form the core of the work, and can in fact be performed as a separate piece - Serious Immobilities, Part One.  Variations 211 through 420 are variations on the first two hundred ten in reverse order.  Then the entire piece retrogrades (though not very literally.)

Besides a piano and pianists, Serious Immobilities requires other equipment on occastion: an old-fashioned metronome (associated with references to composer Randy Hostetler, found in variations 33, 388, 453 and 808), a typewriter (as a rhythm instrument in variations 192, 229, 612 and 649) and a small portable cassette tape recorder (for the playback of parenthetical text in variations 686 and 704).

A number of variations have text which are spoken or sung by the performer.  Many texts were written by Erik Satie and others by Andrea Loselle, a professor of French, and by Arthur himself.  Variation 816 is entitled "A Mason Hymn" with text by H. Adamson (Perth, 1638), whoever that is.  Art tells us that these texts undergo variation much as the music does.

For variations employing my own texts I decided to treat the sentences as "language objects" for manipulation.  I tried to find the exact opposite of each individual word, and if that was too difficult, the smallest possible group of words.  This accounts for the somewhat bizarre, though still completely sensible, aspect of some of the later texts.

Some variations involve musical styles and theatrical presentation.  A lounge act with a performer who talks to the audience, a waltz to be played with Straussian feeling and a jazz pianist all appear periodically.  Improvisation, carefully restricted by the composer, is required of the pianist in spots.  Variation 19 Shadow Play carries this instruction:

This variation is to be "played" silently.  Finger the notes, but do not depress the keys.

(click any sample for a closer look)

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Variation 1, that one he wrote for the one-minute music competition, is entitled Hexations.  It consists of a very slow variation of Satie's music (the tempo marking is quarter equals 13) plus a Composer's Note to be read simultaneously by the performer.

Variation 840, the final one, entitled Transvexions, has tempo indication of quarter note equals approximately six and one half beats per minute.  Art adds "Way Damn Slow!" to drive home the point.

Here's the text to Hexations:

I have thought a lot about the subject of the lengths of musical pieces, long ones in particular.

The late works of Feldman, for example, seem to me to be arbitrarily long.

As much as I admire and enjoy them, I remain unconvinced of any real reason for their extreme lengths, beyond the composer's desire to make them long.

To specify that a work for solo piano be no more than one minute in length seems equally arbitrary, especially since it can be as short as one second and still qualify.

In approaching this project I decided to base my work on the longest solo piano piece I could think of, Vexations by Erik Satie.  This is the quintessential arbitrarily long piece, requiring 840 literal repetitions of the basic material.

Vexations is composed entirely of three-note chords.  I have retained the original rhythms, but combined adjacent sonorities into hexachords, thus Hexations.  I also eliminated the repeats.

(The text from Variation 840, Transvexions, in it's linguistic palindrome, is included in the second post.)

Half of Hexations can be heard in this video:

Variation 420 (one of those in Art's palindromic structure which corresponds to Hexations) is entitled Hexplanation.  In it he reveals more about the Paris New Music Review competition.

The competition judges chose fifty winning works.  Hexations was not among them.

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In an article like this it's tempting to discuss only the variations which stand out, to emphasise those that grab our attention with theatricality or other means.  It is important to remember that those moments which use text or sound effects or musical style references are really a small minority of Art's 840 variations.

The overwhelming majority of Serious Immobilities is music clearly in the spirit of its source material - simple, slow, spacey piano music.  Static music that is somehow always moving.  Variation after variation washes over us one after another - like waves, each one is slightly different, some are very different, but most are the same as the last, the same as the next.

Art takes the puzzling Vexations harmonies as a starting point for his own concerns as a composer.  He deals with pitch, tonality, consonance, dissonance, tension and release.  His compositional "games" - that's a word he himself would use - are at work throughout Serious Immobilities.  Although these processes are hard to unravel afterwards, through them we sense Art's own spirit.

Finally, after a while, it starts to dawn on us that hearing this music could be compared to the mythical act of nailing jello to a wall.  Under the assault of analysis, it will always morph in messy, unpredictable ways.  A work of this scope naturally avoids easy description.  By combining Satie with Jarvinen this effect increases exponentially.  Its very elusiveness is the attraction.

Serious Immobilities is never going to explain the conundrum which is Vexations.  I suspect Art may never have expected such an outcome.  I wonder if he himself claimed to understand the Satie better once he had finished.

What Serious Immobilities does is to take up residence inside the sound world of Vexations.  From there it takes its own sweet time to explore the strange Vexations countryside.  We can hear many unusual musical "sights" filled with exotic audio "flora" and unconventional acoustic "fauna".

Arthur Jarvinen has shown us this landscape where Satie's vision is mixed with his own.  Knowing the sources, it should come as no surprise that the final result is just as puzzling as the original.  Whereas Vexations made us scratch our heads, Serious Immobilities also makes us scratch our heads.

Jarvinen may give us a more animated and colorized experience than Satie but we are none the wiser because of it.

I'm pretty certain that was never the point.

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There is more about Serious Immobilities in the second post.  You'll read about various versions and  layers (e.g. Spineless Dog).  There will be audio samples and a history of the several performances of Serious Immobilities.  Also watch for information about the 77 minute long compact disc, performed by Bryan Pezzone, available on Los Angeles River Records.   If you want that disc there's even a special Mixed Meters discount offer. So read on ...

Mixed Meters could not have produced these posts without the help of Lynn Angebranndt.  She gave me permission to post excerpts of the piece.  Thanks, Lynn.   Also major thanks to Daniel Rothman of Los Angeles River Records.

Visit Arthur Jarvinen's own website.  His music is available from the Leisure Planet.  Another epic Jarvinen work (very different than this one) is The Invisible Guy.

Mixed Meters wants to do what I can to celebrate the life and work of Arthur Jarvinen.  Here are all MM's Jarvinen posts.

840 Tags: Arthur Jarvinen. . . Serious Immobilities. . . Erik Satie. . . Vexations. . . solo piano music. . . extended piano works

Serious Immobilities (second post)

This is the second of two blog posts on Arthur Jarvinen's gigantic solo piano masterpiece Serious Immobilities.  You might want to read the first one first.

In this segment I'll document as much as possible the performances and recording of Serious Immobilities.  There are audio samples ahead.  And later on there'll be a special offer for Mixed Meters readers who want to purchase the Los Angeles River Records compact disc. So read on.

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Spineless Dog


Spineless Dog is a composition by Randall Woolf.   On Randall's website he describes Spineless Dog:

Spineless Dog 24 hours (A 24-hour set of variations of Erik Satie's 24-hour long Vexations. To be played with Art Jarvinen Serious Immobilities (another set of 24-hour variations on Erik Satie's Vexations)) or alone) elec kybd setup (PC88, casiotone, fx processor, sampler)

The composer added a bit more information privately: "It was sort of a guided improv, using a keyboard set up with samples on certain notes, and elec. fx."

In the piano score of Serious Immobilities Arthur Jarvinen offered this explanation:

SERIOUS IMMOBILITIES in its fully-realized form consists of two "layers" of music performed simultaneously.  These are:

1) Serious Immobilities - 840 variations on Erik Satie's Vexations, for piano solo, by Arthur Jarvinen, and

2) Spineless Dog - variations on Satie's Vexations, for MIDI keyboard controller, MacIntosh computer, and electronics, by Randall Woolf.

The performance notes go on to say that if Jarvinen's 840 variations are played without Spineless Dog it is properly entitled Serious Immobilities sans Spineless Dog.  The two pieces can also be played simultaneously with Vexations, Satie's original piece. (I've tried listening to Serious Immobilities and Vexations simultaneously.  The combination works quite well.)

In the previous post we learned that the first 210 variations can be performed for six hours by a single pianist under the title Serious Immobilities, Part One.  Later in this post we'll learn about Serious Immobilities, Petit.

There's a level of confusion about the title Serious Immobilities.  Satie, I expect, would have been proud.

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Performances of Serious Immobilities

The piano score to Serious Immobilities also details a performance history of the work.

While still a work in progress, Serious Immobilities was performed on March 22, 1997, at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C.  This concert was a memorial for composer Randy Hostetler, a close friend of Art's, who died at an insanely young age.  Four variations in Serious Immobilities are labeled "for Randy".  All of them involve the use (or misuse) of an old wind-up metronone.

The first performance of all 840 variations was at the Kitchen in New York City, "simultaneous with an incomplete version of Randall Woolf's Spineless Dog." on January 17 and 18, 1997.  Art adds:

This performance could be considered a preview, but not an official premiere, since the staging was not as intended. The piano and electronic keyboard were adjacent [to] one another in a single small room, besides which there was other music happening all around.

Finally, on June 4 and 5, 1998, from 5 p.m. to 5 p.m., Serious Immobilities was officially premiered by nine pianists in Los Angeles CA.  It was part of a festival called Resistance Fluctuations, with the two layers of Serious Immobilities properly positioned in separate but adjacent galleries.

That evening was reviewed by L.A. Times Music Critic Mark Swed.  Here's his mention of Serious Immobilities:

It was a different story down the street at neighboring galleries. At 5 p.m. in Works on Paper Inc., Arthur Jarvinen unleashed "Serious Immobilities," a 24-hour piece in which a relay team of pianists play Jarvinen's 840 variations on a one-page score by Erik Satie, "Vexations." A hundred years ago, Satie had written the instruction on his piece that it be repeated 840 times, but no one took him seriously until John Cage arranged a marathon performance of it in 1963, and it became the avant-garde rage.

Next door, at Dan Bernier Gallery, was Randall Woolf's companion piece, "Spineless Dog." Along with piped-in Jarvinen, a relay team of pianists performs a more conceptual work on an electric keyboard, set up with all kinds of unpredictable samples, taking Satie very far afield.

Well, there's not much actual music criticism there.  Mostly just reportage.

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Los Angeles River Records recording

There's another version of Serious Immobilities: entitled Serious Immobilities, Petit, whch (by no coincidence at all) is exactly the length of one compact disc, 77'42" to be exact.)  It was recorded on Los Angeles River Records by the fine pianist Bryan Pezzone.  He also took part in the Los Angeles premier.  The album was released in 2003.

At a website called the New Music Online Library, Art wrote about this version and about one particular variation, number 179, one of the jazzy ones to which he added a special title:

The complete version of Serious Immobilities, for piano solo, consists of 840 variations on Erik Satie's Vexations and takes twenty-four hours to play. For practical reasons, and because the music easily lends itself to such treatment, I have published shorter alternative versions of the piece. Serious Immobilities, Petit is a recital-length version (ca. 78 min.). It was recently recorded by Bryan Pezzone on a beautiful Fazioli 9' concert grand, in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. The recording was funded by a grant from the Los Angeles chapter of the American Composers Forum and will soon be released by Los Angeles River Records.

Ennui In the Martini Lounge is the title I have recently appended to one variation from Serious Immobilities which occurs in all of the various versions. Deliberately evocative of cocktail lounge jazz, it is one of the few "stylistic variations" in the piece. Astute listeners will notice that Satie's original chords are there, but with notes added so as to give them a jazzy flavor, and his "theme of the bass" still occupies the left hand, but dressed up. Of course, all the rhythms have been changed, and extra ornamental flourishes added. But I must confess I was actually a bit surprised at how little it took to turn Vexations into a cheesy lounge piece. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Satie was himself a cabaret musician; bar music was always a part of his oeuvre. In any case, I like to think he would find this particular take on Vexations amusing.

Ennui In the Martini Lounge can be heard online.

Here are some memories Bryan Pezzone wrote about the recording session:

I was extremely honored that Art chose me to to record his CD of this, which was an hour long.  He selected the material from his 24 hour version.  Art was so cool at the recording. We did it at Zipper Hall in one take.  It was a magical experience that I will never forget.

We got the sound dialed in first, then I played from beginning to end, unbroken performance, finished and Art goes ..' I'm happy with that'....it was incredible. The one and only take.  I loved Art for appreciating that, not beating it up, slicing and dicing, and on my end, I had it pretty well prepared. As time has gone by, I treasure more and more how special an experience it was:)

Here's a link describing the first concert performance of Serious Immobilities, Petit by pianist Judith Gordon in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 10, 2004 on the Santa Fe New Music series.

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You can buy the album!

Do you want to hear Serious Immobilities, Petit?  Well, here's good news: Daniel Rothman, of Los Angeles River Records, has made this special offer to Mixed Meters' three readers:

you may give losanagelesriver[at]aol.com for direct sales — with a mixed meters reference I'll sell them at 10/CD plus S+H.

In other words, write to him at that address (substituting @ as appropriate) and mention Mixed Meters.  He'll tell you how much "S+H" is.  Send him that amount plus $10.  Tell him your address.  He'll send you the recording of Serious Immobilities by Arthur Jarvinen.

Such a deal.

Daniel has allowed me to extract an excerpt of the recording and post it here.  I tried to limit myself to just a few minutes of music.  My choice hinged on finding a passage that conveyed both the variety of the music and the sheer repetitiveness of it.

click here to hear Arthur Jarvinen  Serious Immobilities (excerpt), performed by Bryan Pezzone, pianist

© 2003 Los Angeles River Records - 419 seconds

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If you remember the text of the first variation in Serious Immobilities (which I included in the first post) and if you remember Art's description of manipulating "language objects" (also in that post), then you might be curious about the final variation, number 840, entitled Transvexions, the one with tempo of quarter equals 6.5.  Here's that text which the pianist reads while playing "Way Damn Slow!"

You aren't likely to do much that's predicated on the depth of a literary fragment, and such a short one at that.

With your total lack of respect for it, and the extent to which you despise it, you were always certain there was ample justification for its moderate brevity, the audiences' not wanting to keep it short notwithstanding.

Denying the possibility of any motif occupying a full twenty-four hours is of course absolutely necessary, although falling even one second short would disqualify it anyway.

As you leave this performance perhaps you can't make up your mind whether or not to plagiarize several rather short works for mixed ensembles, none of which you can actually recall, such as any of those by this composer.

None of them are merely crude approximations of necessarily short motifs, with even one unique, fully-realized idea strictly prohibited.

Serious Immobilities is not deconstructed only from rests and single notes.

You obliterated any new sense of timelessness with widely separated silences; so why Vexations?

And you didn't introduce even one unique event.

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Mixed Meters could not have produced these posts without the help of Lynn Angebranndt.  She gave me permission to post excerpts of the piece.  Thanks, Lynn.   Also major thanks to Daniel Rothman of Los Angeles River Records.

Visit Arthur Jarvinen's own website.  His music is available from the Leisure Planet.  Another epic Jarvinen work (very different than this one) is The Invisible Guy.

Mixed Meters wants to do what I can to celebrate the life and work of Arthur Jarvinen.  Here are all MM's Jarvinen posts.

In June 2015 Serious Immobilities was performed in New York City.  Here's MM's promo to that performance Five Reasons Why Serious Immobilities Is Being Performed In New York Soon.

840 Tags: Arthur Jarvinen. . . Serious Immobilities. . . Erik Satie. . . Vexations. . . solo piano music. . . extended piano works

Arthur Jarvinen Birthday Concert

There was a time when Venice, home of canals, was an independent city.  Then in 1925 it was swallowed up by the voracious mega-metropolis Los Angeles.  Today the old Venice city hall is the home of the Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center.

Beyond Baroque hosts the very adventuresome new music concerts called Beyond Music.  This series is "curated" (to use a trendient word) by composer Daniel Rothman.   Daniel deserves much credit for his programming.  It is cutting edge and it is a showcase for local artists - at the same time.

Daniel deserves even more credit, in my opinion, for making complete videos of some presentations available online on the Beyond Music YouTube page.  These include both works on the Beyond Music Art Jarvinen birthday concert, Conspiracy of Crows (for three oboes) and 100 Cadences (for string quartet).

You could go back and read the two Mixed Meters posts I wrote before that concert.  One was entitled Beyond Baroque, Arthur Jarvinen and Me - about performances Art and I had given of each other's music there over the years.  The other, Preparing to Hear a Concert of Art Jarvinen's Music, briefly discussed the music and history of each piece.

But now, thanks to the combined miracles of consumer video, YouTube and the Internet, you can watch and listen to the performances of Arthur's music right in the comfort of your own ... well,  these days I guess you can listen almost anywhere.

Arthur Jarvinen: A Conspiracy of Crows - Kathleen Pisaro, oboes - January 27, 2012, Beyond Music

Arthur Jarvinen: 100 CADENCES with four melodies, a chorale, and a coda ("with bells on!") - The Formalist Quartet (Andrew Tholl, Andrew Mcintosh, Mark Menzies, Ashley Walters) - January 27, 2012, Beyond Music

The Jarvinen Birthday concert was reviewed by our own newspaper of record, the L.A. Times.  Critic Josef Woodard concluded:

One couldn’t escape the feeling that this meditative lament of a work was looping back to reflect on its very creator, except that his inventive spirit was alive and well in this intimate room. As if to accentuate that notion, after the applause, someone in the back bellowed out “Happy birthday, Art.”

The "intimate room" - it's small, painted completely black, even the windows - continues to host music and poetry events.  There's two Beyond Music concerts next weekend (March 23 and 24) performances by the youthfully intense "modern music collective" wild Up.

To prepare you for that event, you might watch this beyond-hyper performance video from a previous Beyond Music wild Up concert.   It's just one of the gems posted on Beyond Music's YouTube page.  I hope there'll be more to come.

Clarence Barlow:  Septima de Facto - wild Up - November 19, 2011, Beyond Music

Beyond Tags: Beyond Baroque. . . Beyond Music. . . Formalist Quartet. . . Kathy Pisaro. . . wild Up. . . new music concerts. . . Daniel Rothman