howie&scott‘s piece “At its Rising” is part of Mr. Furious Records’ XMAS compliation, released today at mrfuriousrecords.com.
This musical venture is “free jazz,” meaning there are virtually no rules. In free jazz, musicians take many liberties concerning harmony and tempo in the improvisation. Within this realm of music, the concept of “At its Rising” is to portray the setting of the Christmas star in an impressionistic way. Even though the improvisation lacks a specific form it does have two main sections. The beginning section represents the gift and sacrifice from God to the earth, as the latter portion depicts the newborn star as it gleams in the world.
The piece begins with the sounds of Earth. At 0:53, a descending melodic motion indicates God’s gift of presence from above; incarnation in the form of a baby. This passage includes all twelve tones of the tonal system, representing the universality of the gift. The absence of time (tempo) indicates the eternal qualities of this gift, and its Giver. From 1:29-45, a low note grounds the presence firmly in our world. Then, a star begins to glimmer; the ascending pattern of notes is coming-into-being, familiar in an unexpectedly new way. Time starts in the latter section (2:34) as a tempo/beat is set and the star finds its place in the world. The constant presence of the low note symbolizes the simplicity of the gift, as the harmonic content and shifts over it are used to describe the star shining, and the images of the Christmas story it shines its light on.
Comments
3 responses to “h&s' "AT ITS RISING"”
I wish I had something this meaningful to say about my song! BUT REALLY, I JUST LIKE X-MAS STOCKINGS!
Actually it’s really honkey way of saying “One Love! Ooooh yay!”
HOWIE PLAYED THE PIANO WITH HIS FREAKING FACE! AND IT SYMBOLIZED A BABY AS WELL!
Ok seriously, I really like analyzation of the song. It is cool. I am just bored at work !!!!
Goddamn it, why doesn’t somebody do something about all the spammers writing their spam on the Mr. Furious [blog]???
Who is this guy, anyway? He makes
“X-mas stockings” sound… well, I can just *hear* those two extra “XX”‘s in his tone.
Would someone play Jon Bon Jovi’s bed of nails with Cory Alan’s face, please?
we killed a gigabyte of bandwidth this afternoon at mrfuriousrecords.com, currently adding up to 1.086 Gb for the month. new high. it’s the 11th of december.
from what i can tell, eighteen full copies of the XMAS EP have been downloaded, with bunch of extra “Merry Christmas”es and a few extra “How We Can Know”s. i’ve handed out about 10 burned ones too, and have 20 more to give away.
once again, we never know how many people go ahead and file-trade/burn copies for their friends. it may be one person, or it may be five times for every download. probably somewhere in between.
thank you for your art, and your generosity in sharing it. your work gives me hope, that as we create & give our love’s labor away, we connect with people and begin growing tiny seeds of something too good to name; something uniquely valuable and objectively worthwhile.
i’m going to post this message to the [blog], because i know some people will want to celebrate with us.
Be.
-h