Stockhausen Dreams: My Story "A Sleep"

 My collection of short fiction called "Fronds" includes this chronicle of a single night's sleep and dreams. Most of the dreams were ones I remember having, though the story itself is fiction and has the barest hint of a plot: the protagonist (Andre) has an argument with his wife (Kim), goes to a concert of Stockhausen's Piano Pieces I - XIV, and comes home and goes to bed. The two characters reconcile sometime during sleep.

I'm including this story here, not in my other blog with samples of writing, because it's about music. Specifically, I've organized the (otherwise quite random) dream sequences around Stockhausen's solo piano pieces. (There are five more Klavierstücke after XIV, but they use electronics and thus are not for “solo piano”.) Generally the dreams match the music as if it were “program music”. This includes the tranquil and mysterious VII, the nightmarish X, the aleatory XI (where the impressions are arranged randomly in the story), and the bizarre XIII (where the pianist, playing the devil, shouts, stomps, and slams the lid of the piano closed). XII and XIII are in fact program music, featuring archetypal characters who are rendered here as Mike, Luke, and Eva. Lastly, the last line of V in this story is an inside joke: when I was thirteen or so, my music teacher convinced me to listen to Stockhausen by showing me an album on a coffee table by the piano and telling me it was “junk”, so, naturally, as a teenager, I was drawn to what “the adults” supposedly disliked.

A Sleep

Part One: Stockhausen Klavierstücke I - IV

I

Soft, loud, upward cascade of splintersounds, impressions come into focus. Hazes, blue-green, red cuts into opacity, shatters clearness.

I emerge into unconsciousness. I remember little from that time before times. Maybe there was something blue. Maybe it was LOUD. Maybe it was yellow-orange. Was it shapeless? Or did it have a form, coalesced from the void, or from other forms? Maybe there was a bridge. Or a tree or a stone. Or was it a tunnel, or it was a mattress, upside-down and sideways.

Sounds. Dark resonances. Bright bells peal. Gongs. Clusters of clangs and clip-clops, shadows of echoes.

Lights. Flickers. All colors. Turn off and on, bright, dim, inverted noises, vibrations are sounds are frequencies of hue. I hear and see only a little. Senses are not differentiated. I know nothing yet. I wait.

II

Learning. Hesitant. Reverberations come together. Jangles. One note here, two there.

One of those notes is me. Maybe I am a high C-sharp, brilliant and shining against the others. Or I am a low E-flat, dark and shadowy, deep in the sleeping world of protosound. It does not matter now, which note I am. Just know that I am one of the notes in these pieces.

The sounds are random. Or not random. These pieces are complex, mathematical beyond the perceptions of the ear. It is for that reason that I am learning. Comprehension grows as clang-clusters disentangle.

 

III

I become aware of other notes in a zigzag stream. I join them stepping upwards, sideways, turned around, downwards, louder, quieter. Then I retrace my steps.

 

IV

Remembrances. Hesitant. Resonances grow apart. Jingling. Two tones here, one there.

Others of those notes are not me, but I don’t know them yet. Maybe one is a high E-flat, glittering and glaring against the others. Or it is a low C-sharp, but bright and luminous, shallow in the waking world of aftersound. It does not matter now, what notes they are.

The sounds are not random, or they are random. These pieces are complicated, algebraic or geometrical beyond the sensing of the ear. It is for that reason that I am still learning. Understanding grows as cluster-clangs entangle.

 

 Part Two: Stockhausen’s Piano Pieces V-X

V

Momentary lucidity. Melodies form and dissipate. I am not a note in these pieces. I am dreaming. Images of memories form: I heard a concert; a pianist played these pieces. Before that, there was an argument with Kim.

Thoughts mist over, darkness swells. Deep sleep returns. Shadows of the concert appear. Shadows of Kim’s frown appear. The mind traces its own picture.

(fference is that vision if you will then let my arm znornk begin in each sentence musical aesthetic gather and g/in/ath/tegr/er/ate integrate integreat contempt of the roll of dice same composer who from injury, from of K’s book – thump! Way I can’t really control it the bar geese doesn’t dozens of strange creatures crawlswim, more important is of the teeth of vertetraveler if I didn’t) (know no の that the shapes of this report would later become limited, presented in this music by Stock Housing seper ate papers o n because I so and unknown patterns of phenomen on with Kim watching in the wrong place, swimming like the swimming souls of shoes)

Thoughts depart disorganized. For a moment there is nothing. “Don’t listen to Stockhausen!” said the music teacher, “It’s absolute junk!”

 

VI

Sounds cluster and make new sounds.

 

First Iteration:

Lights dim, sounds dim

Single distant hornsong

Emergence of keyboard dronenotes: microtones shift inside grains of watersound

Yellowhite trumpet

Bigbells, churchells, splintersounds of smallbells in wind

Then loud horn in fog, trombone’s dark grey didgeridoo

Answered by aviary, left side

Answered by people speaking, right side

Answered by clangclunks, middle side

Answered by didgeridrone fade, no side

Answered by high halfstep semichord, upward

Trum(crow)pet

Drumming toward chaos, downward

Blue French horn mourns end of ambience

 

Long silence. I sit in a sunlit room, gazing out the tall window at the bark of fir trees beyond. The wood makes no sound and there is no sound in the woods, but the white light refracts into green and dark outlines. The forest is thrown into sharp relief.

I stand, and pace back toward the now-unknown wakeworld.

 

Second Iteration:

Waves filter through cement pipes

Nocturne — cricketsong

Cold shooting stars in darkness

 

Now sounds get strange:

Trombone belches, French horn farts, trumpet squeeeeeeeels

 

Eww! Ewww! Ewwww! cries a strange bird

(While they sing in church)

Waves cresssssst, trumpet says Oooooowup!

Long darkness. I stand in the same unlit room, gazing out the same squat window at the luxuriant growth of algae beyond. The fronds make no sound and there is no sound in the pond, but moonlight reflects into red and midnight-blue silhouettes. Clouds and buildings fade into dim relief, pasted across the indigo sky.

I sit, and my mind forms images of the other realms of the half-remembered sleepworld.

 

Third Iteration:

Quieter gray water

River of yellow bells

Tributary of tawny trumpet-tones

Volume increases, violence begins

Car horns blare red

Answered by bass bells

Answered by wailing French horn

Answered by announcement: splatter voice, language unclear

Clatter chaos!

Subsides.

Lake of allcolored bellsound

All sounds dwindle except one ghostly whooshwail complicated hum

 

Over hall, outside: airplane

Thundroar in night sky

Adds silence as music fades deeper.

 

I alternate the latter moon by her horizon.

VII

I hear the tangled moon by her door.

I read the crackling moon by her window.

I catch the dancing moon in her garden.

In her room, she is reading a book I know from my childhood. She is reading only the punctuation.

 

.     ,                                                 .              

       .               .               ?                               

                                       .                 .

?    .                               ,                 .               ?

                                                         .?

“                     “                                                 “

“     !              !                                 !!             !

(     (.!?)                       ?...&(!)    .              

                       ,                                 .               )

.                                     .                                 +.

 

Stars have entered through the walls, each twinkling in response to her exclamation points. Each is barely there but brighter than light, darker than night, louder than noise, and quieter than silence.

I reach the braided moon by her bookcase.

I fold the purring moon near her ceiling.

I answer the languid moon by her lamp.

I embrace the honeyed moon by her side.

 

VIII

Anger! Kim stands in ambiguous space, and there are chills at her feet. She scolds the howling moon in her room. Her voice reaches an appalling high-pitched screech. “I don’t care if it was only forty dollars! It was forty dollars that we don’t have! Why do you always do this? Why do you always spend money on me for something I don’t want? If I want to hear somebody play random notes on a piano I can sit at home and listen to those stupid CD’s of yours! I don’t need to go hear it somewhere else! And with an epidemic going around! You want to go sit there with people you don’t even know listening to music and passing viruses around! And you want to spend our money! No, I don’t want the ticket you bought. You, just go, just… go… you already spent your twenty. But find somebody else for my ticket! I’m not going!”

So I sold the other ticket for thirty dollars to a man passing by, and went in. I sat away from others in the cavernous concert hall. I put Kim’s tirade out of my mind, and listened to Andreas Sollberger (a coincidence of names, since mine is Andre) play fourteen of the solo piano pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

 

IX

Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord.

Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord. Chord.

 

is the sound of a July parade marching in the donzerlight is the sound of bombs bursting in air is the sound of Mr. Sollberger playing, pounding, those notes incessantly over and over on the piano, fading.

 

Slow semitones, quiet, ascending, is one me?

Chord chord chord chord chord.

is the sound of wind chimes is the sound of rain is the sound of people chatting amiably in the next room is the sound of bread baking is the sound of a snail sliding across the path.

We had to lock our keys in the post office box but I forgot my password. I wrote it on that paper with my dreams during childhood: Ankyloswas making you tifyaurus: “fuseahs composedd lizard”. Dimetrodon: “two layers of teeth”. What did and there it wasany of that ein spite ofven mean? TyrannosauI wrotlittle thinge wrote little things the thirdrus Rex: “tyrant lizand half leopard asleepard king”. Apatosaurus.

Chord chord chord chord chord. chord chord chord Clang clang.

would have to alter it slightly. Hmmm. She could see it there, I was certain, but

Chord chord chord chord chord.

Usually thosandre toyrobot piecese words end. Misspellings in this report are common; need to adjust the typos. Are you looking? There’s the skyline.

Chord chord.

to hear me!  Charts that’s thwayitwasplannd. then they have .Fixed Hubblescope bet ter thatthey-thoughtitcouldbedone music as if eternal the hairlike projenemy’s misfortune Orinoebula shows new knew detail, discs of gasandustroundrotatingroundstars imanaka which is, therefore lacks the exhaustive big report! Is new. (planets, thisishowitwasbeganbegun “Let there be Light!” was the BigBang through I continue to sleep

Chord chord.

let’s see main feature disintigra

Chord disintegrates into crystalline geometries. Ethereal high notes quiver over two bass gongs which transmogrify into silent light holy light.

Thoughts depart. No thing is inside no sound.

 

X

Chaos! Red-orange fireglow of fear. Attack! Din! Klatter and racket. Tremble! Roar and crash. Smash. Pound. Break apart. Ram together in flames. Crash. Burn. Collide. Careen. Clamor and clang. Clash. Clank and jangle. The center cannot hold. It breaks apart. Colors spew out: lurid yellow-green, fluid splashes or black, liquid splatters of crimson and white. The edges cannot hold. They break apart. Glaring lights rend sound into noise. Crack! Tear asunder! Klangklongklingblangblong-blingklakkkkk!

Bundles of notes have become pain and colors: stabbing which is red-orange, flecks of pink and white aches, blows of yellow-violet. Piercings set against a pervasive crackling of breaking bones, splatters and splinters, pinpricks and stabbings. Dappled with grim light, shining in fire from elsewhere. It is a war.

Other conglomerations of tones have transformed: now bursts of booms, screams, explosions, curses: cries of dying, howls of war-trumpets and wolves surround the horror, echo across as ghastly showers of pulsation, as gleams, as patterns, as the stink of gunpowder and poison and death.

There are drums too, and gongs, and percussion made of bone and blood and fire, booming, braying, reverberating, screaming, screeching, thumping, thudding, thuddering in infinity (but deafening and near). These images are too horrible. That clatter of bronze trumpets is the red running of a river of blood, liquid gurgling and glugging as it flees the battleground. A vulture glides above in crimson sky.

A long silence. Black, no sight or scent. I wail! How have I come to this place? My journey has led me here. My journey has led me to hear. (Wait! Something pursues me! It is an unfriendly shadow.)

Clamor begins anew. Vision returns, gathers into another scene. Bundles of notes have become colors: dead brown, flecks of grey and mud-green, glimmers of oozing white. Monstrosities set against a sickening wash of moss-green and maroon, patina of tinted rust, cracks of black, rhizomes, tumors and blobs of bone-brown.

Blasted with pale light, gleaming from somewhere unseen. It is a pestilence in the war’s aftermath.

Other bunches of tones have transformed: now howls of wind, moans, silent decay, rustles: stinks or mold and moss sigh across slime as unearthly glares of vibration, as colors, as patterns, as the stench of rot.

There are ghosts too, howling, screeching, whispering, whistling, thumping, thudding, clamoring in that soft clatter of an undefined space. Another tone is the scamper of rats; they crawl with mangy legs along the sludge-encrusted skin of corroded metal. Worms slither on mud cracked into polygons leaking pus. Those other clashing notes are the creeping steps of something unknown, slipping by in dark fog, sliding into new repulsive and bulbous shapes.

A long silence. Black, no sight or scent. How have I come to this place? I am nauseous. My journey has led me here. My journey has led me to hear. (Horror! The unfriendly shadow is looming again.)

Notes begin anew. Vision returns, gathers into another scene, but it is not a scene.

It is nothing. There is no sound, no echo, no silence. There is no color, no opacity, no clearness. There is no scent, no feeling, no up or down, left or right, no forward or back. There is no memory or premonition. There is not even nothing. It is a void devoid of voids.

And yet my senses now begin to detect something growing. Something blue-black and loathsome, caked with fear, blistered and cracked, radiating unnamable dread. It is a thing of such darkness that it casts my shadow towards itself; it pulls, it devours, it grows. It reaches for me.

A clangclump of resonances. One of those notes is me, and now I do as notes do: I sound out. At first I am a low D, near the bass. I repeat and echo and reverberate. The shadow consumes my sound. I cry in a higher tone. Now I am a high E, trembling, shimmering, repeating longer. Five tones of G, then a trill on D-sharp. My voice creates crystals in the vacuum. The horrible thing engulfs me; clustered cacophony extends in my song. I scream out: high E. I shudder. Now I am a middle F. I am fading. The vile thing is swelling. I wail my highest D-sharp, and the dark thing is all around now. Clatters. Bangs. The violent tones of war and pestilence and void. I give off a high but weakened tremolo on A.

 

I sense Someone is trying to take this pain from me. I give it to him, and retreat upward into shimmering silence.

 

My senses are gone again. The void without voids is gone as well. A long silence. An echoing sound. New noises, beautiful vibrations. Sparkle-lights. Starlights. I embrace them. A relief, to hear silence, and to hear sound! How have I come to this place? My journey has led me here. My journey has led me to hear. But this part of my journey has ended. It all trails away, settles into a quiet murmurmurmer like Kim. She is different. She is a beautiful person and I shouldn’t have quarreled with her, about what? There was a war and a pestilence but it is gone. The shimmering form of the composition is finished. Sounds fade and I argued with her earlier but she has gentle eyes.

 

Part Three: Stockhausen’s Piano Piece XI

XI (Aleatory)

A red river, its sunset waters spinning through gullies. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

Orange rain streaming from a red-pink sky. Flowers close for the night. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A field thick with grain, its windsound reverberating through a valley. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A singing moon reclining on the horizon. Someone says, “Listen to the moonsong.” The stars answer with a refrain. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A still pine, retreating into darkness as the light fails. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A green mountain, a dream-castle suspended above mists. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A blue sea, echoing and ending arguments about its nature: it is a sea, it is always a sea, it always has the shimmering of waves, the cries of shorebirds, the tang of salt, and an unseen world in its deep. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A thin line of a train, sleeping in a station, fantasizing of its journey tomorrow. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A little breeze, silent but singing in my mind. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A book called “Fronds”, a story called “Fronds” which is a dream, and here, a dream of a dream, repeating, the adjectives and nouns have been randomly scrambled to created new circumstances. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A bush with long arms, their flapping in the wind is recitations in an ancient language. Friends have gathered: there’s Kevin, and Sil, and Tony; Hiromi, Howard, Gregory and Serena Joy from the future. Amiable chatter about movies and flowers. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A lake of purple water, saying nothing as it enlarges from a spring. Boats cluster on its mirror surface, gazing at themselves, unfazed by the lake’s color. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A low castle, its ruined walls flowering with red and blue blooms. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A sunrise, unfolding and undulating in the shimmering orange light. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A tuft of grass: it should be silent but it clamors and clangs with crickets. And laughter. Friends are here too and they brought tacos and ice cream for a picnic. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

Filamentous streets, growing a city and culminating over land. Cars pass by in lines, their drivers seeking a way away from the streets. Calm? Calm. The drivers will remake their city. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A cloud, yellow in the sparkling light, washing over the air: ocean upon the sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?” asks Kim, embracing me. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A hermitage, high on a mountain, hidden by ages. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

A desert of folded dunes, creeping closer as the cultivated fields dry. The sky has filled with green and yellow spheres, drifting on the wind. They are curious about the desert; they smell of emeralds and they carry no threat. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld.

 

Part Four: Stockhausen’s Piano Pieces XII-XIV

XII and XIII

Long time lingering deep in the void of sleep. Images — mythic images — appear from beyond space. The slow road to wakeworld broadens into a blue sunny field. Grass shines with wildflowers; the sky blazes with sun, moon and stars. Crystal light is everywhere. A grove of trees stands nearby: oak, apple, pine; scents of rose and mint waft by.

I see human figures. I do not know them. They exude mystery, but I hide behind the nearest oak tree. They do not see me.

Two of them are not humans; they are giants. Both are handsome men, muscular like those in Renaissance paintings. One is a warrior of ancient times; he holds a spear and a shield. Music surrounds him: a long, winding melody; a whistling; legato neumes. The other is more mysterious; his form casts light yet is hidden in encroaching darkness. Noise surrounds him: jagged notes; a scream, staccato thuds. I sense he is the jarring void and shadow from Piano Piece X; later, he will pull into himself and cast shadows toward him.

They are arguing but their voices are strange to me, their meanings carrying portents of nothing I know.

 

Lou: No one else offered to help me move the desks, so I set my desks down and started to play a game.

Mike: You knew the rules?

Lou: Yes, though it was a complicated game. I needed to fill in square holes on the top of the game board with tiles of various colors. I thought I had lost, then I saw a move that I could do if I had the right pieces of cloth. I got a stack of cloths from beside me; one was blue-green and the other was white and blue. I put them in the right order, then spun the thermometer to see who would move next.

Mike: I know the game. Was the thermometer actually a small top?

Lou: When it stopped spinning, it would land on the game board pointing in a particular direction. This time, however, it bounced off the board. I tried again, and it bounced off again; this time all the way off the table and onto the floor.

Mike: The thermometer didn’t want to thermomet the way it was supposed to.

Lou: I tried one more time. It bounced off, and someone caught it. Now it was a brown glass bottle like a Coke or beer bottle. It was chipped, and I looked around the kitchen and decided I needed to make another one with the glasscutter.

Mike: You needed to get a new glasscutter.

Lou: I got in the car and drove down the road. I stopped at a gas station convenience store, and opened the front of the car.

Mike: Was it that car? I mean the one where you get out by taking the whole front section off, including the steering wheel, dashboard, hood, and engine.

Lou: It was very claustrophobic. I had a brief image of myself sitting in the car with no doors which got smaller and smaller, and the outside was yellow and dimply like the skin of a lemon. So I went home. My upstairs neighbor and a friend were in my apartment, dressed in stocking caps, puffy down jackets, and baggy pants. They were here to help me cook the stew for the party, which had some vegetables and I knew had to be cooked in the toilet. I objected because of the smell. They also had a mechanical doll, which they put in the fruit basket on the table in the living room. It started to dance. I commented that it would probably knock something over, so they put it on the floor. It whistled.

Mike: It’s a similar story. I exited from the store by different door, and went back out into the parking lot. I wasn’t sure which car was mine, so I suspended myself about three feet from the ground and flew, by swimming with one hand. A car passed by. I still couldn’t find my own car, so I flew up to about twenty feet into the air. There it was: there were two cars there, both dark green. One was a mini-van but I thought it was my car. The other one I knew actually was my car. An alarm began to sound. A narrator said, “And so he began to wonder about the oxygen,” and I landed next to the minivan. A man drove up on a motorcycle. I didn’t pay attention to him. I went over to the other car and told the alarm to turn off. It didn’t obey my voice command. I told it again, louder. Still it continued. I shouted at it. I took the keys out of my pocket and yelled at them. The alarm continued. The narrator said, “Having failed to turn off the alarm with his command, he turned,” and I looked at the man who’d driven up on the motorcycle. “I was wondering if you could float me a ride,” he said.

Lou: I saw him. There was also a woman standing outside of the apartment.

Mike: She said that her two sons had become intelligent flies for a while.

Lou: She asked me if I could please take care of them for a day. I don’t remember what happened to her, but the two flies came in the door of the apartment with me. They looked like quite ordinary bugs, which normally I would have tried to shoo out of the apartment. I shut the door behind me, and then saw that the dining room had become a TV show. The talk-show host was wearing a bright blue suit, and he was about to interview a brownish-colored hound dog. Before he could ask anything, however, the dog started counting in German and wildly took a bite out of something in the air. “Oh—show’s over!” said the talk-show host, “The dog just ate one of the intelligent flies!” In another second, the talk-show host and the flies were forgotten, and the dog had become a rocket which blasted off into the apartment. The apartment held all the vastness of the universe; it looked like a 3-dimensional version of one of those Hubble deep-field pictures though the walls were still visible beyond it. The rocket (now a giant spaceship) was voyaging outward to see if it could find the big bang. There was a brief and fantastic show of bright colors spray-painted across the universe. Then I was lying down, looking at the inside of a window that was both vertical and horizontal, and I commented that this was my favorite resort.

Mike: Was that when you decided that you didn’t like the big bang?

Lou: That was it. The yelling in German had continued. We were eating at an outdoor restaurant. I picked up a spoon and it started fluttering up and down like a flag in the wind. I put it down and picked up a fork, and it did the same; then got loose from my hand and sped along the edge of the picnic table, away from both of us, and stuck into the stucco wall.

Mike: …And so you don’t like outdoors or restaurants or colorful flags or wind or anything else.

Lou: We went down a long hallway. I was back in my old dorm at college. I was on the 6^th floor, which was wrong, so I walked down the hallway to the 5^th floor. I went into a room with several other people. I didn’t know any of them. We talked for a while, I don’t remember about what, and while I was sitting against the wall at the back of the room, I saw that the man next to me had a guitar. He had a glass slider on the strings, and I said, “Yeah — play us a blues solo!” He responded, “No way!”. He put the glass slider in his pocket and played a long avant-garde piece, rather like these Stockhausen pieces, with an electronic accompaniment. He kept screaming. Just as he finished, I walked down the road towards the east. The sky was blue and there were views of snowy mountains all around. I knew that the guitar piece I had just heard related to the scenery in some way, but by now I was shut off from beauty. I turned up a dirt path heading north; here there was a tangle of thick brown branches, some of them growing out the ground, blocking my way. I commented to myself that they were just like alien spider webs, and I cut them apart. I walked past them to the beach. The water lapped at my feet, and then I realized I had to turn away from the beach and continue heading east, to start to undo the big bang. I did so, and passed several houses into a dirty-looking town square, with old ugly abandoned houses all around. There were two or three men there, who looked vaguely threatening. One of the showed me a pair of scissors, and yelled, “This is not a weapon!” He threw it at me, and missed. The other showed me a pocket knife, and screamed, “This is not a weapon either!” and he threw it at me, and missed. Then they turned away from me and walked down the elevated walkway. I did not feel particularly intimidated, but I decided to do something theatrical anyway, maybe to frighten them. So I flew over their heads, down the dimly lit hallway, crashed though the wall at the end, landed on the pavement and waited for them. They climbed down a rope to street level and congratulated me for quite a show. …So I decided that I don’t like rooms, or people, or music, or roads, or spider webs, or beaches, or any of my friends (I have no friends now), or towns. I don’t like anything I didn’t make, and I didn’t really make anything. I don’t like men, or women. I don’t like Andre or Kim! And everyone is against me now. So I will wreck everything.

Mike: Let me remind you of beautiful mystery. In a sunny mid-afternoon, there was an osser clinging to the wall above my bed. An osser was an animal but it didn’t look like an animal. It was a vertical rectangle, roughly the size of a shoebox lid. Over the top half of its front surface, there was a perfectly hemispherical dome. It had no other features, and it was all the same color. Ten or fifteen people had gathered to look at the osser and comment that it was singing, a long, twisting, aching melody; but nobody knew where its mouth was or why it was singing. Then as I woke up, the people and osser disappeared out of the room.

Lou: No, I don’t like it. It all must end.

 

During their exchange of words, I remain hidden. I concentrate on the third figure; a woman. She is not Kim, nor any of Kim’s friends, nor anyone I know or have ever seen. She is beautiful and her hair would, in future ages, drive men wild with entanglement. The giants sense her presence as she stands knee-high in the grass between them and does not move.

 Eva: I saw their hands outlined in razor water. Their words cut and flow.

 There is a loud crack sound; Lou has slammed down the lid of a piano and silence ensues. I sense a tragedy is about to unfold, or already has occurred, or both; for this is another dream of another time. Light enfolds me and I find myself back on the rise to wakeworld.

 

XIV

Quiet now, upward cascade of melodies, impressions come into focus. Hazes, blue-green, red cuts into opacity, and the dream is gone. I emerge into consciousness. I recall from that time during times. There was something blue. Maybe it was yellow-orange. Was it light? Or was it a song? There was also a void. Was it darkness? Or was it merely the absence of light? Maybe there was a war. Or two giants. Or it was a tunnel, leading away from fire, upside-down and sideways, growing into a different and brighter fire.

Kim’s voice settled into a quiet murmur as she stood in the morning sun’s glow and there was warmth in her hands. She whispers the pale moon in our room. “I thought that the next time you bought me tickets for a concert you’d ask me first. I was planning to surprise you with a nice dinner because you’d spent the last two weeks working so hard on that report at work, and I felt let down that I couldn’t do that. I listened to one of the CD’s while you were at the concert — this one, right? Stockhausen Piano Pieces. The pianist makes a lot of noise there, but it all relaxes at the end. Is that what you think of me?”

Sounds. Bright resonances, and one of those notes is me. So I kissed her. She has caressed me into the waking world.

Lights. Flickers. All colors. New sounds, bright, dim, inverted noises, vibrations are sounds are frequencies of hue. I hear and see only a little. Quiet. Harmonious. Calm. Slow rise to wakeworld, but I know nothing yet. I sleep again.

 

Misty morning light outside of somewhere. Glimpses of piano music fade into a bright void. The notes are hesitant, forgetful; the song, unfinished and diminishing. The pianist ends his playing. He closes the lid of the piano and shuffles away into the glow, going to somewhere. Tonight he will be back, and other song-visions will grace the newly darkened atmosphere.

 

Concert Review: Celebrating Stuart Dempster at 90

“Coming together to listen deeply; to move and to sound playfully, and to attend to a performance in tribute to beloved master musician and teacher, Stuart Dempster.”
--Promo on Facebook

Time and Place:
Saturday, July 11
4:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Good Shepherd Center, Seattle WA.

If you haven’t heard Mr. Dempster’s classic “Great Abbey of Clement VI” recordings or any of his work with Deep Listening Band, please give them a listen. I’d heard these years ago, and then when I met him when he played on a couple of pieces for my “StormSound Cycle”, his calm enthusiasm for the music (not to mention his playing!) were a highlight of that concert.

Stuart attended the concert. (This was a happy surprise after some incorrectly-placed Facebook posts indicating he might not be able to make it.) He was not there as a performer per se, but as an audience member. Or maybe not as an audience member; in following his ideas about “deep listening” and performance, there was no distinction between audience and players.

The first part of the concert was a circle of Seattle musicians/listeners/audience (some well-known) following instructions to spontaneously compose music of grunts and shouts, leading to mysterious choral music recalling Ligeti’s LuxAeterna. The last piece of this part was “DidjeriDempster”. Here, the serious was fun and the clowning around was very serious (but still fun): all of the forementioned people (this time including me) walked around and greet each other in eccentric (and/or loud) manners to the accompaniment of a chunk of plastic plumbing being played as a didgeridoo. Hilarious, fun, yet at the same time both strangely primal and strangely sublime: a perfect way to “break the ice” which I’m going to have to try the next time I throw a party.

After this, the long piece. We all went outside to a covered wooden pavilion, where an aleatory installation had been set up: there were small blocks of ice hung from the overhang by wires. When the sun melted the ice, it dripped onto empty soup and coffee cans below, producing a continuous environment of intermittent percussion. At first we just listened. Then Neal Kosaly-Meyer began a recitation from Finnegans Wake, during which he commented, “This is just to get you started,” and at some point we all started improvising music. It began with more drips of sound: hollow thumps and percussive thuds, gradually interspersed with more traditionally “musical” percussion (bells, gongs). Bonnie Whiting strolled around, listening intensely and adding a bell-tone from a cast-iron lid at exactly the right moments. Stuart joined in later, doing the same with a cowbell. Drones built up from trombones and a ‘cello. Someone started throat-singing. From there, the collective composition advanced and receded in waves of sound, always fading away into the continuous percussion from the ice installation. I added some gongs and cymbals, from a collection of instruments on a picnic table. As the sound progressed, it formed into galaxies of reverberation, always changing, always just on the edge of the realm of pure imagination. I didn’t check the time but I guess it lasted about fifty minutes, though it seemed short (it could have gone on for years). I left refreshed.

I could not attend the next part of the celebration due to a previous commitment. But if it’s any indication of how the part of this concert was able to attend made me feel, I am listening to some of Stuart’s music as I write this. May he continue to make such music for a long time to come.

An Imaginary Music: A Recital on the Emb Tembuk

These recordings are the first time one of the great Tondish musical traditions has been heard outside of Tond.

The Performer
S’Arik Dãelil is a recognized master of the tembuk. One of the leaders of the Sawarsh style of performance, he was raised in the southern Emb Lands by his musician family and trained for nine years at the Great Klemon. He now gives concerts all over the Emb Lands, and has over one hundred students.

The Instrument
The tembuk is a tuned percussion instrument similar to a marimba. It has wooden keys and is played by striking with various small mallets, but it also has metal (usually bronze) resonators for each key. These vibrate sympathetically with the note struck, adding a metallic “reverb” to the sound of the instrument. The higher register in particular stands out like chimes; these notes are reserved for climactic moments in the performance lest they overwhelm the other sounds.

Similar instruments are found throughout Tond (particularly in the Sherványa territories, where the onomatopoeically-named ketatang is a major part of the Nocturnal Music) but the Emb tembuk is by far the largest, covering nearly five octaves. Its keys are arranged in five banks (like the manuals of an organ), one octave (twelve notes) each, progressing from lowest, nearest the performer, to highest, farthest away.

The Music
Emb classical music is modal and often improvisatory, thus it has more in common with Asian classical musics than their Western counterparts. Harmony and “chords” are unknown, but the solo performer often adds his own fragmentary heterophonic accompaniment in different octaves. Meter is free; there is no recognizable pulse. The scale is more or less the familiar chromatic scale, though the Emb division into “keys” and “modes” is somewhat different than music outside of Tond.

This is music for active listening, not for dancing. It is often performed at formal concerts. Incomprehensible to the non-Tondish at first, the music will nevertheless reveal itself immediately to be in more than one style.

Bolsã are modal pieces, based on ancient melodies. When played on the tembuk, the melodies are slowed down and decorated (and sustained) with irregular tremolo. A subgroup are the sanosã, which use the compositional and performance techniques of the bolsã repertoire but are based on variously rhythmed and accented single pitches, sometimes with a hint of bolsã melody as a kind of coda. In both styles, the high notes (called ewaz or “stars”) are used sparingly to great effect; their first appearance in a concert is seldom without notice.

More esoteric are the esremsã pieces. These appear to the casual listener to be nothing more than random notes. More careful listening reveals that on one level, these pitches are in fact random; that is, they have no discernible pattern; but on another level they are carefully chosen. Esremsã music is derived from the Emb concept of lagofã (“backing off and finding”); in the mystical Emb interpretation of the pan-Tondish Shar-Lan religion, one is to assume the mindset of a small child and trust Shar (the Tondish deity) to show what to do. In the performance of esremsã music, this takes the form of exploring the instrument as if one has never seen it before, playing notes and savoring their sounds without linking them to any others. The audience attempts to assume the same frame of mind, listening without preconceptions or expectations. Despite this highly-concentrated casualness, most esremsã pieces are composed: the existence of “multiple” esremsã confirms this, where phrases repeat later (in double, triple, or even quadruple patterns) while further “explorations” are occurring.

A collection of bolsã, sanosã, and esremsã, lasting for about an hour, makes a sanso or “concert”. Usually the performer begins with bolsã and esremsã styles being very distinct, but the musical forms gradually merge as the bolsã simplify and become more concentrated, changing into sanosã, while the esremsã become more complex and move into the “multiple” styles. During all of this, the master musician also takes into account all four of the Tondish “aspects” of created reality, attempting to both remind the audience of their beneficial natures while avoiding their detrimental features. Thus, kullándu (“fire”) is said to link to the “burning” creative aspects of the music itself, but without discordant notes (or “enemy tones”) that would indicate fiery destruction; likewise, tándáalis (“stone”) indicates the immobile parts of the music (its form and set pitches) without large, ponderous sounds or motifs that would indicate earthquakes or landslides. Lórnáalis (“air”) is shown by the imagination of the artist and the distance between himself and the audience (though this is the most dangerous of “the Four”, the abode of spirits, and the Emb are careful to avoid any ideas of “manifesting”); Kewándii (“water”) is shown as the flow of notes in time, while avoiding loud rushes of sound that would indicate floods.

These philosophies make the music more interesting on a deeper level; however, they are unlikely to be appreciated by the non-Tondish listener. It is my advice that one assume the attitude of lagofã, whether or not it is understood completely, and simply sit back and take in the music without ideas or preconceptions.

 

Okay, this is a fascinating thought experiment, but what is this music really?

It's part of my "Another This World" series. I’ve been messing around with electronic music, musique concrète, and field recordings. I ran some Gregorian chants through a MIDI plug-in and set it to produce a virtual marimba. Adding deep reverb resulted in this mysterious music. The MIDI, interestingly, picked up overtones and resonance of the cathedral recording space, and rendered them as the fragmentary heterophony and “stars” I mentioned in the Emb music. I’m having fun listening to the result, but the original chants are copyrighted material so it is unlikely I will be able to post any of it for the public. Maybe the reader, if curious, can try it themself.

As for the Emb, they are a civilization in my imaginary world of Tond, the setting for my series of fantasy novels. To read those books, follow this link or read this blog's sisters, The Fronds in Tond and the BookWords Blogg (book reviews and fun for "werd nerds"!) Although I don't play anything resembling a marimba, "S'Arik Dãelil" (Mr. Eric, son of Dan) is a reasonable rendering of my name in the Emb language.

Update: 6/22/2026

I am currently looking into "fair use" laws as a way to post a little of this "Emb" music online. In the meantime, if you want to try the same kind of remix yourself, here are the instructions.

1. Find a recording of Gregorian or similar Medieval liturgical chant. It is important that you find one that was recorded in a very resonant, echoing cathedral or other space; the reverberations of high overtones (not actually sung in the music!) will be processed into the “stars” I mentioned above. (Medieval singers sometimes wrote of instances where angels sang along in liturgical music; this may be literally the case but it may also be that the singers heard some of these reverberations. Or both.) My particular favorite recording (and the one I used for the Emb music) is the album Hispaniae Musica: Altspanische Liturgie, available legally for free download here.

2. Upload one or more tracks to a website (such as this one) that converts audio files to MIDI. After the conversion is completed, set the instrument to “marimba”. Download the result, or if there is no download button, record it onto a digital recorder from your computer. Note: at this point, the track will sound quite dry and uninteresting. The reverberations from the original recording will appear to be missing but there will be “stray” high tones that seem to appear at random above the lower notes.

3. Open the file in Audacity. Adjust the volume level and use noise reduction if necessary (I found there was quite a bit of white noise in the background at this point).

4. Now comes the part where the music is transformed. Still in Audacity, add reverb, with most of the controls set on maximum, as in this screen shot. This will result in the virtual “bronze resonators” I mentioned, and the higher pitches will stand out like chimes.

However, adding this reverb will result in an extremely high volume level with a lot of distortion. Readjust the volume back to tolerable levels (if you click on “Amplify”, the setting should already be to reduce it back to the level it was before the reverb).

5. Listen to the piece, and cut, paste, or rearrange any sections you want. Then save the file with an evocative title (something you make up) and you’re done. You have successfully created a (virtual) Emb classical composition. Surprise your friends and enemies with ethereal music from another world: they may think you've found the answer to all of life's mysteries or they may think you've gone off the edge. Or both. (Keep in mind that the orginal pieces are protected under copyright laws, so do not broadcast or post your "remixes" publicly without permission.)

Four Albums on Bandcamp and Four of My Own

Brief album reviews this time: everything here is on Bandcamp.com.

Aki Takahashi: Piano Space 4
I used to listen to the “Piano Space” series on vinyl back in the day. Now they’re on Bandcamp, but the pieces are arranged into different albums. No matter. These are mid- to late-20th century avant-garde piano music. Most do indeed have a lot of “space” in them (though Toshi Ichiyagani’s “Piano Media” is a frenetic exception) and all feature the delicacy of Ms. Takahashi’s touch. If you thought this stuff was all stark and forbidding, give this a listen.

Alan Hajduk: Arasynth
I once commented that classical music followed (or follows) a particular historical timeline until the present day, where it “sort-of merges with electronica”. There’s not that much difference, I said, between Steve Reich and EDM. This statement would have some people screaming in horror, while others would probably nod quietly in agreement but not say anything out loud. This electronica has a heavy bass beat and a cyberpunk backstory, but the repeating and gradually shifting riffs are of similar ilk.

Infusion Baroque: 1747: C.P.E. Bach
I should have paid more attention to the “other” Bachs before now. Judging by the musicians' expressions on the album cover, they're enjoying the music too.

Kayhan Kalhor and Toumani Diabate: The Sky is the Same Colour Everywhere
A meeting of minds and a meeting of cultures resulted in this gemlike, meditative improvised album. Listen to it all in one sitting: the pieces are linked so stopping in the middle produces a jarring cut-off, and besides, it's better to let the music flow over you like waves. My only complaint is that some of it gets a bit repetitious (once those four desecending notes appear, neither musician is willing to ever let them go) but moments of exquisite beauty occur throughout. 

The fifth review today is one (or four!) of my own.

I’ve been working on a huge musical project lately (it’s rather frightening how such things can get out of control) and I’ve posted some of it on Bandcamp also. Called “Another This World”, and it draws inspiration from field recordings, or perhaps I should say it is (but at the same time is not) field recordings. What’s going on here is that I took recordings of nature, urban sounds, and some old cassettes of experimental sounds I’d made years ago, ran them through filters and through a MIDI plug-in to produce “instruments”, and remixed and re-processed the result. This made four albums of what could either be old-school musique-concrète or avant-garde chamber music (though not meant to be played “live”). Each of them features a different virtual instrument: one is titled “Mallets” and has a virtual marimba up front; one (called “Renderings”) features a (similar) vibraphone; one is obviously electronic; and one features a piano (this latter one may change around in a week or so; I’m waiting for permission to use some copyrighted material). They may be played in any order, though I would recommend listening to the "piano" one somewhere in the middle and saving the “electronic” one (called “Ancient Forest”) for last. All of my music is free to listen at this link (and another of my albums is on Right Brain Records, here). Please comment, and if you really like one or more of them, purchase it. Thank you!

Us and Ussers at Jack Straw, 2/22/2025

On a rainy afternoon last Saturday, five musicians including me gathered for a quiet protest against the noise which has been coming from the top lately. Two of the musicians couldn’t make it, so the “band” was different than expected, but we made quite a lot of quiet anyway.
Yes, we made a lot of quiet. Not a lot of noise. The music was improvised and aleatory, incorporating a lot of subtle sounds and silences, and sometimes tentative in sound (though not in intent). It was not “mellow”, however. We are not mellow; neither are we in compliance.

Location: Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle
Personnel:
Me (S. Eric Scribner): piano, hammered dulcimer, percussion
Keith Eisenbrey: piano, percussion
Karen Eisenbrey: percussion
Bruce Greeley: bass clarinet, random little instruments
Patrick Cunningham: synthesizer, percussion
Zeos Greene: sound engineer

The concert was watched over by an appreciative usser.
Ussers (rhymes with bussers and cussers) are a private symbol of mine, though I have yet to determine what they symbolize. Domed rectangles, animals but not recognizable as such, vaguely ominous, clinging to walls, associated with deep bass hooting and coughing sounds: they seem to be derived from an early hypnogogic vision or a long-forgotten synesthetic response to the sound of owls. (I am not a synesthete, though I have read that children may perceive sounds in this manner but later lose the ability.) I often connect ussers to sleep and dreams; I use them as such in this piece and in my novel “Ussers and the Echo of Nothing”. The one in this concert rested on the back wall. I’d made it from a cardboard box and a Styrofoam pincushion; I’d spraypainted it all the same color the day before and it still reeked of acrylic paint in the car all the way to the concert. In the somewhat larger space of the Jack Straw studio, the smell drifted away. As usual per ussers, nobody in the audience even noticed it until I pointed it out late in the concert.

We played four pieces.

Free Improvisation (I’ll call it “An Usser Watched Us”)
We made this up on the spot. Kieth provided a matrix of mysterious piano chords in a quasi-rhythm while the rest of us fazed in and out of silence with drones, percussive taps, and occasional hints of a groove.

Tree and Stone
Percussion made of stones and tree branches or paper “rustlers” to imitate the sound of wind swishing in leaves.
Graphic scores made from paintings subdivided into thirty one-minute sections.
Sounds played “in appreciation of the trees and stones that God made”.
Patrick added an electronic drone piece of his own composition: beginning as trembling bass squawks, evolving into a mountainous drone and subsiding into a series of bell-tone waves.
Most of our stones were small and clicked when we knocked them together, but one musician brought two large stones which boomed. The sound of an avalanche over the sound of leaves? One of these stones broke on the last strike and a piece clattered to the floor. Yes, an aleatory avalanche.
The YouTube version of this, from several years ago, is outside (not in a concert venue) and nearly silent.

SoundScroll X (10)
Much like “An Usser Watched Us” but based on a graphic score like a landscape. Keith and I traded places for this one.

Ussers of Sleep
The reason for the usser sculpture revealed.
“There was a luminous white mattress floating in the air in a room off to the side of the church sanctuary, and to the other side of the room there was a pool where I took a bath (it wasn’t the church’s baptismal). I took my shoes off, slipped my foot off the mattress where I was sitting, and complained how cold the water was, then I determinedly plunged both feet into the same warm water. I stood there for a few minutes, then I walked around to the side of the house and went in the back door by the kitchen. My shoes were on again. There was a child, a little girl with blonde hair, sitting on the dinner table; she wasn’t looking at me so I concluded that the owners of the house had told their children not to look at strangers. I went to the refrigerator, looked at some of the pictures that had been posted there; two were of people wearing a round head brace. I went back outside to the pool and put some shampoo on the washcloth and started to wash my hair. There were some guys at the other end of the grassy hard who started laughing at how my hair looked. I could see my own head, and my hair was plastered in feather-like shapes exactly like the feathers of female mallard duck. The men in the yard said it looked like something from a comic strip. I commented that I’d seen something like it on a minor character in Calvin and Hobbes. That minor character appeared; a smooth-haired yellowish-colored wiener dog. It put its paws on the picnic table next to me and jumped up, then looked at me, begging for something. I didn’t want it following me around, so I blew in its face to annoy it. It didn’t want to leave and it followed me.”
We read dream sequences like this in random order (one audience member read one too) over my prerecorded electronic drones.

Afterward
Some of the audience hung around for a half-hour chatting with us, talking about music in general, this music in particular, how the microtonal intonations in some of the pieces were reminiscent of Harry Partch, and how meditative and quieting the whole thing was despite its unconventionality. One woman told me I had been her substitute teacher in middle school some years ago but I probably didn’t remember. As I took down the usser sculpture from the wall, another said, “Oh, that’s what you were referring to.” But it had been there all along. Just like in my novel, an usser is seldom seen.
The next day, on a social media site, Karen (who writes a blog on band names) suggested our “band” should have been called Usandussers (Us And Ussers, after a band called You and Ewan). Works for me, or, for us (or uss).