Ancient Streams... for Piano Accordionist was written for Ross Bolleter to play at the first [and only] performance of ZuT: a trio consisting of Ross, Jonathan Mustard and myself. This work was in part a playful homage to Ross's notoriously inspired improvisational skills and his charming stage presence, characteristics that I hoped would range freely within what I thought was a suitably labyrinthine structure. [For example at one point he is instructed to play a perhaps non-existent tango while projecting a range of emotional states ranging from 'neurotic infatuation' to 'deeply ingrained reserved hatred'.]
Ancient Streams... was written in the 'birthhouse' of Hungarian Physicist Leo Szilard [later the subject of another of my pieces], which was at that time used as student accommodation for the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. It includes a 'cutup' text loosely concerning the act of musical composition, excised from the writings of Larry Polanski, Anton Webern and Luciano Berio amongst others.
lyrics
Ancient Streams Deep and Beautiful
[those who have ears let them hear!]
I think we go about it this way
I begin by outlining my plan
I walk around in it
make my first tentative steps
and the secrets of the language are wrestled to the surface
like slowly drawing a needle through a thick leather sack
[and the secrets are wrestled like slowly drawing]
anagramma
a tale: those that master these storms must rest at the last wave
a tale: her straw hat moves at last!
a tale all to see the vast hole where heroes rot
mors est
that which engenders the decay of information
that which retards the decay of information
la dolce vita [est]
originally it was to last 3 months, but the degree of polarization which followed, became more of a personal laboratory, thus a step away from the text
excursions into sentiments or ideas of order... this of course necessitates a rather greater procedure of paraphrasing
In this view then, all those interpenetrations which at first glance appeared to be hellish,
history for example
are to be espoused
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