René Clausen / Brian Ferneyhough

Episode 11: Burt Bacharach, Nested Tuplets, and Beep Beep I’mma Dump Truck

Josh brings some Whitman settings from his homeland of Minnesota and we finally let Jon off the leash to do some wildin’ out about that sweet, sweet Ferneyhough music.

Featuring performances of René Clausen’s Three Whitman Settings by The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists and Brian Ferneyhough’s Exordium by the Arditti Quartet.

Check out the works Josh and Jon discuss in full below (including a score follower for Exordium) and read some of Jon’s (excellent!) writings on Ferneyhough’s music he references in the ep:

• Let’s Talk Rhythm Part 1: Rationalizing the Irrational

• Let’s Talk Rhythm Part 2: Nested Tuplets

Alfred Janson / Panayiotis Kokoras

Episode 10: Swooshes, Booshes, and Shakespeare

Josh tries (and fails) to speak Norwegian and Jon justifies the existence of all the acousmatic music ever written (because—and this has been made official—he speaks for all acousmatic composers).

Featuring performances of Alfred Janson’s Sonnet 76 by the Norwegian Soloists Choir and Panayiotis Kokoras’s Anechoic Pulse by the composer himself.

Check out the works Josh and Josh discuss in full below (score follower for the Janson here):

György Ligeti’s 100th!

Episode 9: Ligeti Split

Y’all, it is György Ligeti’s centenary, so the guys break from tradition and bring two works by the same composer (while still somehow maintaining their podcast thesis statement of loving on something wildly different).

Featuring performances of Ligeti’s Two Unaccompanied Choruses by the London Sinfonietta Voices and Ramifications by Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Read some extra notes and listen to some clips from the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Episode notes:

• Score follower video of Ligeti’s Ramifications below!

Dominick Argento / Heather Stebbins

Episode 8: Dario Argento and Super Balls

Josh gets attacked by an 83-year-old composer and Jon brings a piece that looks as good as it sounds.

Featuring performances of Dominick Argento’s Dover Beach Revisited by The Singers—Minnesota Choral Artists and Heather Stebbins’s Things That Follow by Adam Vidiksis.

Read some extra notes and preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Episode notes:

• Read NPR’s brief (and beautiful) article paying tribute to Dominick Argento at his passing in 2019.

• Heather Stebbins’s Instagram page where you can watch her experiment with new ways to make music.

• Some links below for watching:

1. The score for Things That Follow so you can see the fascinating notation Heather Stebbins uses.

2. An interview with Argento by the brilliant composer, Abbie Betinis. He takes Josh (anonymously) to task beginning around 26:00.

Nico Muhly / Cenk Ergün

Episode 7: Pioneer Women and a 'Rabid' String Quartet

Josh takes the pod to the prairie via a work for choir and twelve guitars while Jon wants to talk to you about a very serious, important issue: packs of stray wild dogs that control most of the cities in North America (and show up during a passage in the piece for string quartet he brings).

Featuring performances of Nico Muhly’s “The Night Herders” (from How Little You Are) by Conspirare, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the Austin Guitar Quartet, and the Texas Guitar Quartet, and Cenk Ergün’s Sonare by the JACK Quartet.

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Michael Torke / Christopher Chandler

Episode 6: Disney Minimalism, Smoke, and Mirrors

Your hosts prove they’re not too old for this sh*t by discussing two wildly different works.  Josh makes a Disney memory through one of his favorite pieces of post-minimalism and Jon gives everyone a nerd class on convolution using a whiskey flask. 

Featuring performances of Michael Torke’s Boast Not of Tomorrow by the Netherlands Radio Choir and Philharmonic Orchestra and Christopher Chandler’s Smoke and Mirrors by the [Switch~ Ensemble].

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Knut Nystedt / Kaija Saariaho

Episode 5: Josh and Jon Do Scandinavia

The guys barrel through pieces that set them afire for music when they were but mere youths.  Josh stumbles on the doctoral dissertation of one of his choral idols and Jon makes sure we all know the difference between Swedish and Norwegian metal.

Featuring performances of Knut Nystedt’s O Crux by the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir (Nystedt’s own!) and Kaija Saariaho’s Cendres by Mikael Helasuvo, Anssi Karttunen, and Tuija Hakkila.

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Adolphus Hailstork / Liza Lim

Episode 4: Spirituals and Strings

Josh hips Jon to a choral banger and the guys go deep on Jon’s favorite articulation on wildly different pieces that both interact with folk traditions.

Featuring performances of Adolphus Hailstork’s Crucifixion by the Brigham Young University Singers and Liza Lim’s Ochred String by Soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Notes:

• Josh accidentally refers to Old Dominion University as an HBCU. He was thinking of nearby Norfolk State University (Go, fightin’ Spartans!). The campuses are three miles apart.

• While there are a few albums of the Lomax recordings Josh mentions on Spotify, you’d do way better to head over to the Lomax Family Collections at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress if you really want to dive in Scrooge McDuck-style.

• Jon mentions some works by composers who are often categorized as members of the New Complexity. Here are some works he recommends if you’re curious to listen more:

Brian Ferneyhough - Time and Motion Study II (cello and live electronics) performed by Neil Heyde (cello) and Paul Archbold (electronics)

1. Massive piece for cello and live electronics; uses two tape loops at different rates, numerous microphones attached to the cello and one to the cellist’s throat

2. Commentary on the various technologies in the post-WWII era that led to workplace efficiency time and motion studies, and the way they break human beings into quantifiable data points to maximize efficiency (and therefore profits), and the overall dehumanizing character of these studies. The commentary extends to the extensive electronics setup which literally straps the performer into a network of wires and devices. The performer struggles through the dense score while the tape loops and electronics are being handled by at least one or two other people. The imagery is intended to evoke an electric chair, the performer as someone whose struggles are viewed as entertainment by onlookers and whose fate (success of performance) is ultimately controlled by those running the electronics no matter the effort the performer puts into realizing the score.

 Chaya Czernowin - Sahaf (for chamber ensemble) performed by Ensemble Nikel

1. Part of her “shifting gravities” set of pieces. The piece explores the behavior of various laws of physics and how those can be explored with musical materials.

2. The work introduces the theme of a clicking ratchet surrounded by a collection of other musical ideas. Over time the different strands of development begin to coalesce into a crystallization of the ratchet idea taking over as the primary theme, but mapped onto pitch and registral space.

Richard Barrett – “II. Politeia” from Construction (large chamber ensemble) performed by ELISION Ensemble

1. This work is divided into two ensembles: a quintet and an octet (designated by different ‘fonts’). These ensembles are often juxtaposed while playing starkly disparate textures and meters. The contrast is so substantial that the two ensembles cannot be represented in a vertical format in a traditional score; indeed, Barrett wrote them out sequentially, providing instructions for when the ensembles should play simultaneously.

Franklin Cox - viz. (ensemble) performed by SONAR Ensemble (of UC San Diego, c. 1991/92) 

1. Explores the concepts of narrative and syntax through the Neoplatonic hierarchy, dividing instruments of the ensemble into various categories of activity based on melodic or textural themes that unfold at varying rates (read more about this piece here).

Morten Lauridsen / Frank Zappa

Episode 3: The Zappanale

Josh challenges Jon with the poetry from a choral classic and Jon (deservedly) just talks Zappa…Zappa…Zappa.

Featuring performances of Morten Lauridsen’s Contre qui, rose by The Singers—Minnesota Choral Artists and Frank Zappa’s The Girl in the Magnesium Dress by Ensemble Modern.

Note:

• Josh couldn’t come up with the name of the festival of Frank Zappa’s music featured in Rock School during the taping. It’s called Zappanale, and it takes place annually in Bad Doberan, Germany. Check out their website for more info.

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below:

Wolfram Buchenberg / Lee Hyla

Episode 2: Next! Song!

Jon judges a (German) book by its cover and Josh falls hard for Lee Hyla’s music.

Featuring performances of Wolfram Buchenberg’s Vier geistliche Gesänge by Cantabile Regensburg and Lee Hyla’s Pre-Pulse Suspended by Speculum Musicae.

Notes:

• Josh accidentally misquotes the speaker of the Buchenberg piece as being in the fourth movement; it’s actually in the third.

• Link to the charity for gigging musicians that Josh mumbles through: the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.

Preview clips of the pieces Josh and Jon discuss below:

Joshua Shank / Jon Fielder

Episode 1: New Music Hug Factory

Welcome to Have You Heard This? w/ Josh and Jon! In this opening episode, the guys start things off by talking about their own music a bit. Despite their stated mission, they can’t help but make fun of each other.

Featuring performances of Josh’s Musica animam tangens by the University of Pretoria Camerata and Jon’s Think by the composer himself.

Preview clips of the works Josh and Jon discuss below.