I’ve subscribed to be notified whenever the Eastman School of Music posts new items to their online collection of rare musical scores. All kinds of stuff, most of it heavily obscure and more or less forgotten for the past 100 years, turns up here. Much of it is for piano solo, and I usually try to play through it all. Today I decided I’d let my computer record me as I zipped through the most recent batch of pieces, and here’s the result, in midi format.

My sightreading isn’t bad for an amateur, but passable sightreading still makes for terrible listening. These files are full of serious mistakes and bad choices; even the accurate parts are generally clumsy and lifeless. No, seriously, read that again so that you truly understand: these files are a mess. Why then am I posting this?

I have a childish compulsion to share the things I find interesting with anyone I can grab, and I am able to imagine, naively, that by pointing readers of this site toward these scores, I am also passing on part of the interest they hold for me. Playing through them is the way I make these scores accessible to myself, so of course I have to make my rough realizations of the music available if I want people to experience what I experienced.

This is all silly, I know. As with the Moby-Dick business elsewhere on this site, I understand that nobody will get interested in something just because I am interested in it in a noisy way; and yet I also understand that some tiny portion of my interest does in fact come through. Basically, what I really want to do is communicate something of my interest in this music (and Moby-Dick, etc. etc.) but I don’t feel like taking the time to work out that communication. So I’m just taking the easy (and ineffective) way out and dumping “what I did” on the web, where it will be worth whatever it happens to be worth.

The real reason I am posting this stuff goes back to my original intent when I started using this webspace – I wanted to turn outward (and thus legitimize) the stuff I found myself doing with my time, which would otherwise disappear into my computer. So that’s what this is. Something I did and why not. Maybe I’ll keep doing this for later installments from the Sibley Music Library. Maybe not. If anyone out there actually wants to chat about any of the pieces there/here, I’d be delighted.

scores posted 5/25/06:

Ethelbert Nevin:
May in Tuscany, suite, Op. 21 (1895). bad midi (18:18)

Vladimir Rebikov:
Trois Idylles, Op. 50 (1910) bad midi (5:48)

Chanson blanches, Op. 48 (1910) bad midi (4:52)

Dans la forêt, Op. 46 (1910) bad midi (6:57)

Une fête, suite, Op. 38 (1907) bad midi (3:50)

Tableaux pour enfants, Op.37 (1900) bad midi (5:35)

Brief thoughts: Nevin’s suite is exactly in keeping with his other works that I’ve heard. I mean, exactly. I get the sense that his talent was pretty narrow. The frothier stuff here has that same appeal as “Narcissus” – I particularly enjoyed the singing nightingale movement (is it famous? have I heard it before? it seemed familiar) – but the more lyrical romantic stuff falls awfully flat. I don’t know what to make of that plodding slow movement – seems like he was trying to do something bold and Lisztian but couldn’t pull it off. The “naive” last movement, on the other hand, mostly works. His melodies aren’t amazing but on the whole, they have more charm and grace than those of the average salon composer.

These pieces show Rebikov doodling with whole-tone and modal scales in primitive ways that Debussy, Stravinsky and others had already gone well beyond. But there’s something endearing, to me, about the simplistic spirit of experimentation behind these tiny pieces. Like, say, Cowell, they have that quality of being discoveries put to eager use rather than mature art. What’s delightful is that he seems overwhelmed by the novelty of things that don’t seem to have overwhelmed anyone else. The bitonality and diatonic clusters in Op. 50 are treated like strange, exotic beasts, and playing through the music, I was able to rediscover some of the awe in these timeworn devices. Even the children’s suite, Op.37, seems like it’s going to be a standard turn-of-the-century trifle, and turns out to be a seriously wacky assemblage (check out the clowning “Piano Lesson” movement). I was reminded of the early Edison films, whose charm lies in the fact that they are absolutely astounded by their own dumb achievements.

The whole-tone stuff is the weakest, and some of the “white-key” stuff seems like a childish impression of Scriabin (in exactly the way that most Antheil is a childish impression of Stravinsky), but there’s definitely something intriguing about how raw these works are. In this respect, I particularly liked Opp. 50 and 38. Looks like Sibley’s working their way through a collection of Rebikov’s work, and more seems to be on the way.