Nico
Muhly,

I just finally got the recordings from the Aurora orchestra concert in London last week, and the violin concerto is now available here. I am going to figure out a way to organize these two William Byrd arrangements, but until then, I’m just going to slap them up here. Basically, we were trying to figure out a way to dominate the first half of the program with my music, or, at least, music that would be sympathetic to my 25-minute concerto. It seemed like the best thing was for me to arrange something; John Adams did this trick a few years ago with these Busoni and Liszt arrangements for orchestra that pair very nicely with his own music – it’s a smart move! I decided to look at two of the most beautiful pieces from Byrd’s choral output: Miserere Mei, Deus and Bow Thine Ear (otherwise known as Civitas sancti tui). I took some textural liberties.

Byrd arr. Muhly
Miserere Mei, Deus
Nicholas Collon conducting Aurora Orchestra

Byrd arr. Muhly
Bow Thine Ear
Nicholas Collon conducting Aurora Orchestra

I was also pleased to see that Sasha Frere-Jones had my friends’ band’s name in his mouth online, with linking! Check it out here – they’re called Apes and Androids and they are great. He writes:

If you are still in the mood to hear the eighties recycled, I recommend Apes and Androids. Their song “Nights of the Week” sounds like LCD Soundsystem and David Sylvian, of Japan, covering Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes.” If that combination sounds like its own problem—it is not—you can listen to “Nights of the Week” here.

It is sort of fascinating the way he somehow manages to make everything about him and yet says nothing; he once said about Grizzly Bear, ”the band’s sound suggests a group of eunuchs singing next to a music box on a sunken galleon.” I read that shit when I was in Iceland in October and seriously freaked out; you can read my extended freakout here but you don’t really have to. Anyway, with SFJ you get the sense that the synapses in his mind bounce around from reference to reference without actually settling on the Thing long enough to properly describe it, and what you end up with is self-portraiture and awkward grammar (check out the boxiness of “If that combination sounds like its own problem” followed immediately by the un-contracted pretension of “it is not” – wild times!) conspiring against his ideas, which themselves are not always that bad! It’s just this weird issue where we have to be observing him observing rather than letting him gently guide us. In any event, it’s good that he’s focusing on young bands, and I’m glad he didn’t feel like he had to plot them on his deliberately provocative racial Kinsey scale and I’m glad he linked to their myspace so maybe I should just shut up and post the mp3:

Apes and Androids
Nights of the Week

What I like about this song is that it is, in a very controlled way, harnessing all these 80’s references and being funny about it. The guitar thing at the beginning, with all this delay, moves downwards in 3rds, while the bass moves upwards in contrary motion, creating a little undulating wedge. There is a bonus hiccup bar before the first chorus, which is underscored by this funny synthesized glissando from the top of the scale to the bottom that obscures the bass line (which is hidden in another synthesizer in mid-range, so not really a bass line at all, very Prince); we get out of the chorus with this brilliant throw-away “ding.” After the second chorus, instead of getting the ding, we get this crazy pedal point (a low note that holds over various chords) accompanied by this robotic voice incanting “nights of the week / these are the” – the order of the words has broken down and a rapturous guitar solo ensues, sliding out into the stratosphere from high Eb to Queen-of-the-night F. Recapitulation and fade. So, there. A description that only uses one parenthetical reference; I hope people like the song and you should go see these guys live if you ever get the opportunity; we are discussing major glitter and latex.