Alban Berg | Richibi's Weblog

Tag: Alban Berg

November 24, 2023

November / Month of the Sonata – 24

Franz Liszt - Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

“Franz Liszt“

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

______

Alban Berg isn’t the only composer to

write a sonata with only one movement,

nor even the first, Franz Liszt, some

sixty years earlier, 1853, wrote this one,

his Piano Sonata in B minor, listen

Franz Liszt was an entertainer, more

performer than poet, you’ll hear more

bravado in this piece, to my mind,

than substance

but then again, sometimes, that is

the substance

though the finger work here is magical,

entirely worth the price of admission

earlier still, during the Baroque era,

sonatas had consisted of only one

movement, but the term had referred

to, then, the structure of the piece, its

inner workings, not so much the form,

the intention, the change happened

during the Classical Era, starting

around the middle of the Eighteenth

Century, the mid-1700s, which has

been the focus of this month’s

investigation, therefore excluded

from my survey, not being of the

modern era

but listen to a sonata of Scarlatti,

1685 to 1757, an exact contemporary,

incidentally, of Bach, 1685 to 1750,

except for the extra seven years,

who wrote over five hundred of

them, all available on the Internet

listen to one only of them, however

contextually peripherally, you’ll

be utterly enchanted, the Baroque

is not an era to be easily overlooked

R ! chard

November 23, 2023

November / Month of the Sonata – 23

The treachery of images (This is not a pipe), 1928 - 1929 - Rene Magritte

“***The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)*“ (1928 – 1929)**

René Magritte

_______

when is a sonata not a sonata, when,

to my mind, it has less than two

movements, but here’s Alban Berg

doing just that in his Sonata, Opus 1

Alban Berg was a student of Arnold

Schoenberg, the composer who did

the most to break down the pillars

of Classical music, tempo, tonality,

and repetition, you’ll here it all here

Berg was working on a piece he

expected would be a sonata, but

after the first segment, he couldn’t

find the inspiration to continue,

Schoenberg replied that that must

mean his work was complete,

and Berg went along with that,

calling it, nevertheless, a sonata,

playing fast and loose with the

definition, poets do that, also

painters, see above

here’s Glenn Gould playing it, the

pianist I believe the greatest who

ever lived, Gould admired the

Berg, how could I argue with that

R ! chard

July 10, 2016

up my idiosyncrasies – a bio

“Marcel Proust”

Richard Lindner

___________

for a bio with which I’ve been asked

to provide an online poetry magazine

I’ve been encouraged to apply to, I’m

submitting the following text

I thought you might enjoy it

Richard

______________

my name is Richard Bisson, from

which you’ll intuit my French

Canadian background, though I

write mostly in English, with no

trouble however in French, my

mother tongue is le français

I am thus imbued, undoubtedly,

with that sensibility, my peers

have been Hugo, Flaubert, and

most of all Marcel Proust, whom

I imbibed for 33 years, in French,

page by page, reading each out

loud as though it were my own, I

cannot but be replicating now his

rhythms, his aesthetic, his view

of the world

it didn’t take me as long to read

Homer, in the thunderous Robert

Fitzgerald translation, – a mighty

roar resounding still from the

ninth century before the Christian

Era – from him I learned to speak

from the heart, it’s not one’s style

one has to master, but one’s

humanity

Robert Browning gave me the

dramatic monologue as a poetic

device, a gift he’d received from

Shakespeare

Shakespeare himself, of course,

the unbridled freedom of his own

literary imagination

Carl Sandburg‘s “Chicago“ taught

me to talk about every wo/man,

about things even my own folks

were doing

Frank O’Hara‘s “Lana Turner Has

Collapsed“ showed me that even

apparently inconsequential acts

can be poetry, poetry in the

apparently humdrum

Mary Oliver is a strong present

influence

the cadence is entirely Beethoven,

with some help, I must admit, from

the atonalists, Schoenberg, Berg,

and Webern, commas are my bar

lines

I call what I do prosetry, a word so

new my computer won’t even let

me write it, I’m a prosetrist, this

word either

I want to link everyday experience

with poetry, make poetry in the eye

of the beholder, where truth and

beauty lie

if people can see what I see, they

can see that way themselves, it’s

something one learns, and it’s all

in the way one entrenches words

and ideas

I eliminated the word “if” from my

vocabulary once, for being then

too speculative, it changed my life,

I’ve replaced it since with the word

“miracle”, that has also changed

my life

I am 67 years old

I live in Vancouver, Canada

I consider myself to be, at this

point in my life, bibliosexual, I

sleep with my books, and we’re

all still getting along just fine

may you be so blessed

Richard

psst: also Anaïs Nin, for the

intimacy of her diaries

o, and Woody Allen, for

giving up before his

nihilism and just

laughing

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

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Tag: Alban Berg

“Franz Liszt“

______

Alban Berg isn’t the only composer to

write a sonata with only one movement,

nor even the first, Franz Liszt, some

sixty years earlier, 1853, wrote this one,

his Piano Sonata in B minor, listen

Franz Liszt was an entertainer, more

performer than poet, you’ll hear more

bravado in this piece, to my mind,

than substance

but then again, sometimes, that is

the substance

though the finger work here is magical,

entirely worth the price of admission

earlier still, during the Baroque era,

sonatas had consisted of only one

movement, but the term had referred

to, then, the structure of the piece, its

inner workings, not so much the form,

the intention, the change happened

during the Classical Era, starting

around the middle of the Eighteenth

Century, the mid-1700s, which has

been the focus of this month’s

investigation, therefore excluded

from my survey, not being of the

modern era

but listen to a sonata of Scarlatti,

1685 to 1757, an exact contemporary,

incidentally, of Bach, 1685 to 1750,

except for the extra seven years,

who wrote over five hundred of

them, all available on the Internet

listen to one only of them, however

contextually peripherally, you’ll

be utterly enchanted, the Baroque

is not an era to be easily overlooked

R ! chard

“The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)“ (1928 – 1929)

_______

when is a sonata not a sonata, when,

to my mind, it has less than two

movements, but here’s Alban Berg

doing just that in his Sonata, Opus 1

Alban Berg was a student of Arnold

Schoenberg, the composer who did

the most to break down the pillars

of Classical music, tempo, tonality,

and repetition, you’ll here it all here

Berg was working on a piece he

expected would be a sonata, but

after the first segment, he couldn’t

find the inspiration to continue,

Schoenberg replied that that must

mean his work was complete,

and Berg went along with that,

calling it, nevertheless, a sonata,

playing fast and loose with the

definition, poets do that, also

painters, see above

here’s Glenn Gould playing it, the

pianist I believe the greatest who

ever lived, Gould admired the

Berg, how could I argue with that

R ! chard

“***The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)*“ (1928 – 1929)**