Gordon Mumma: Music for Solo Piano (1960-2001)
Liner Notes   Cat. No. 80686     Release Date: 2008-01-01

Daan Vandewalle, piano

Gordon Mumma (b 1935) is best known for his pioneering role in the development and evolution of electronic and live-electronic music. The piano has played a significant if underestimated role in his career. With a few notable exceptions, this collection by pianist Daan Vandewalle marks the first commercial recordings of Mumma's music for solo piano composed over more than forty years. It provides an important new perspective on his work as a composer.

The spare textures, irregular rhythms, and pungent dissonances of Bartók's Mikrokosmos echo in Mumma's piano music. The keyboard music of Bach and Haydn, of Schoenberg, Webern, Ives, Krenek, Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford also shaped his early piano ideal, as did the experience of superb recitalists in Detroit and Ann Arbor, including Walter Gieseking, Dame Myra Hess, and Glenn Gould.

The works of the early 1960s were written for the concert hall, but much of the later piano music is more personal-the solitary dreams of a long musical life. And like dreams it filters memories-of music of the distant and recent past, of artistic friendships and loved ones living or dead-to create a uniquely contemporary approach to the piano.

In contrast to Mumma's epic electronic works, his keyboard music is predominantly poetic in its brevity, concentration, and psychological depth. It is music of high specific gravity, each piece a microcosm of finely etched ideas that unfold without literal repetition. For Daan Vandewalle, it is also "music of dialogue" that communicates-both with the listener and within itself-through its deep concern with sound, phrasing, color, dynamic range, and rhetorical nuance.

Daan Vandewalle

Gordon Mumma: Music for Solo Piano (1960-2001)

WAV $17.99
2xCD $31.98
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Jardin: coulisse pour Michelle
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Jardin: lunar asparagus, d'après Max Ernst
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Jardin: planted song 1
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Jardin: planted song 3
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Songs without Words: for Jon Barlow
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Songs without Words: for George Exon
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Songs without Words: for David Revill
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Suite for Piano
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Graftings: II. recitative
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Graftings: IV. scion
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Graftings: V. grafting & slipwaltz
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Graftings: VI. scion
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Basket of Strays: Treble Song
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Basket of Strays: Soft Saloon Song
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Basket of Strays: Tearing off: a piece
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5 Sushiverticals: for Merce Cunningham
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5 Sushiverticals: for Lou Harrison
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5 Sushiverticals: for William Colvig
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5 Sushiverticals: for C. T. Mumma
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3 Perspectives: Perspective 1
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3 Perspectives: Perspective 2
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3 Perspectives: Perspective 3
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Jackson Mac Low
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Agnes Martin
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11 Sushihorizontals: for James Klosty
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11 Sushihorizontals: Erdös number . . ., for Paul Erdös
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Christopher at 15
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Carolyn Brown
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Bun-Ching Lam
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Anatole Leikin
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11 Sushihorizontals: for Charles Shere
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Sixpac Sonatas: for H. Wiley Hitchcock
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Sixpac Sonatas: for Julia Wilson Jones
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Sixpac Sonatas: for Homer Keller
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Sixpac Sonatas: for David Bernstein
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Sixpac Sonatas: no dedication
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Sixpac Sonatas: (no dedication)
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Threesome: 1 of a Threesome
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Threesome: 2 of a Threesome
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Threesome: 3 of a Threesome
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Luigi Dallapiccola
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Durand Begault
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Diane Carlson
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Graciela Paraskevaídis
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Padre Mujica
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Jacques Bekaert
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Pauline Oliveros
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Eduardo Bértola
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Linda Burman-Hall
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Corún Aharonián
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: à  Robert Ashley
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Eleven Note Pieces & Decimal Passacaglia: Decimal Passacaglia, à  Carolyn Cook
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Large Size Mograph 1962
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