#What happened sublime mp3 series#

In the visual arts you’re scanning a 2-D work or a sculpture, it’s very dispersed, you can’t really control how events unfold. I mean, sure, when you’re reading a novel, things happen in a sequence, but the exact timing of the words: that’s determined by the reader, whether it’s being read aloud or silently…. And so, I was interested in that.ĬO: Well, how do you do that? That nifty trick…?ĮM: I think the reason why music is so much better at inducing the Sublime is that it’s so much better (than other art forms) at organizing time, in a very controlled flow. That experience, that’s what I mean by Sublime.Īs a performer you want to induce that, to bring an audience to that, and as a composer trying to make that happen – well, it’s quite a nifty trick, when you can pull it off. Can you tell me more about what you mean by Sublime?Įric Moe: The thing that’s always interested me in music as an art form, and what it delivers reliably that I don’t get from other art forms is: when you hear something and the hair on the back of your neck stands up, or a shiver runs down your spine or you forget to breathe for a while, and you feel chills…that’s what I’m talking about. That might seem like an oddly dated word to use for your music, which I find anything but dated: it’s intense, fresh, consistently surprising, smart and frequently funny as hell. I met Eric and his wife, the artist Barbara Weissberger, in residence at the Ragdale Foundation, where this interview was conducted as we strode across a muddy prairie at dusk.Ĭarolyn Ogburn: When we talked about doing this interview together, you suggested the Sublime. Like Wallace, Moe’s music is always reminding us, “Alas, we no longer get to say ‘Alas’ with a straight face…” Like Wallace, Moe seeks for new ways in, to write music that will both express and convey the depth of emotional experience in a way that’s genuinely meaningful to audiences today. It’s not surprising that Moe should be linked with another postmodernist, the masterful David Foster Wallace, whose short story, “Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko,” Moe used as a libretto in his sit-trag one-woman opera TRI-STAN. There’s often a playful sense of danger about his work, nothing of the sartorial remove that’s so often the case with postmodern work. Of course, as has been famously observed, it’s but a short step from the Sublime to the Ridiculous, a hazard which, Moe might suggest, could enhance the experience. Of these two, Beauty has garnered the most praise, but it’s the Sublime that sustains Moe’s interest. Edmund Burke famously distinguished between the Sublime and the Beautiful. He’s also an avid hiker, at home in the outdoors like many of his Romantic predecessors, much of his inspiration comes from the natural world. His music conveys a physical awareness that the piano is both a string and a percussion instrument. Moe is a skilled pianist and performer as well as a composer. Įric Moe’s OBEY YOUR THIRST, excerpt - Mari Kimura, violinįrom Harmonic Constellations: Works for Violin and Electronics

#What happened sublime mp3 series#

Like a practiced storyteller, Moe can launch a series of subtle echoing patterns before surprising the listener with abruptly garish amusements, or follow a line of jazz-inspired riffs to a sudden, wrenchingly vulnerable, conclusion. He’s alert to the textures and timbres he skillfully skeins through the framework he’s created, as well as the implied context of the listeners’ own association with the instrument see, for instance, I Have Only One Itching Desire, which draws from drummer Mitch Mitchell’s work with Jimi Hendrix.

Consider, for example, On the Tip of My Tongue, his sonata for bass clarinet and synthesizer, which invites the listener both to feel the pulsing rhythm of the performer’s tongue against the reed of the instrument, as well as the stammer implied by the title idiom or listen to some of his percussion works, such as Danger: Giant Frogs, or Gong Tormented with their evocative titles (the first from a sign Moe spotted, and remembered the second a fragment from Yeats’ Byzantium) and their thrillingly intimate clamor. His musical compositions teem with lyric moments, never far from laughter, or bright-eyed despair. It’s also work which is filled with a lively post-modern intelligence that dazzles and surprises. Eric Moe (1954) is a contemporary American composer and pianist whose work rests quite comfortably upon the traditional classical concert stage.