Music Is Finally In The Air - Stitt, Nono, and Stockhausen

I discovered a Sonny Stitt disc in cyberspace entitled Moonlight in Vermont. It features a very formidable rhythm section consisting of Barry Harris, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; and Tony Williams, drums. Quite a swinging thing indeed. This disc was unknown to me.

In the summer of 1952, when the Darmstadt summer courses reconvened, they were intellectually dominated not by Leibowitz and Messian but by Stockhausen, Nono, and Boulez …. (Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After, p. 41)

   Luigi Nono's (1924 - 1990) recorded music has been in my vinyl stacks for quite a while - three DGG discs, an RCA, and a Wergo. The last few days I've been listening to a remarkable (and cheap) Wergo CD presenting his compositions Polifonica - Monodia - Ritmica, Canti per 13, Canciones a Guiomar, and "Hay que caminar" sonando I - III.

   I have also returned to my vinyl Nono discs. I haven't been thinking enough or clearly about this wonderful, beautiful, engaging, and engaged music to do more than pull my reader's coat. I like the expression, "pull someone's coat". It sounds like one of Prez's things. But somewhere back there, a memory trace (true or false) suggests to me that's this is an expression from a Socratic dialogue. But this locution, notion, image has been with me - my later and former selves - for at least half a century. And it sounds like something I heard on the corner, as it were. Nevertheless, it's an arresting notion and a very hip thing (Iceberg Slim?).
   I've been listening and enjoying Karlheinz Stockhausen's Contra-Punkte, Refrain, Zeitmasze, and Schlagtrio. His Gruppen, composed for three orchestras, and Zeitmasze, for five winds are on my all-time-all-time list of tunes. Why? Because I grew up with this music; it's grown-up music - "And my new 'loves' all seem so tame". I wore out Robert Craft's Columbia (budget!) recording of Zeitmasze and Pierre Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître. Well I wouldn't count minimalism as a love interest at all.
    It is a very interesting ("coat pulling") exercise to read Paul Griffiths' account of Zeitmasze and then listen to the recording a few times (See Griffiths, op. cit., page 92 or don't). Indeed, it's complicated music; but it sounds so fine; and that's all that matters. Schlagtrio is a very slow and meditative conversation between piano and percussion. Very fine ….