The prototype for the following document was graphic designer Bruce Mau's “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth” from his book Life Style. While our music listening manifesto is a new document designed to challenge and excite music listeners everywhere, points 1, 7, 18, 21, 24, and 27 were paraphrased with appreciation from Mau’s source. Other sources of inspiration: music, our personal experiences, and the incredible beauty that surrounds us.
 

MUSIC LISTENING: AN INCOMPLETE MANIFESTO

by Greg Anderson & Elizabeth Joy Roe
 

1. Allow music to transform you. The prerequisites for transformation: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Embrace the new. It takes courage to depart from familiarity and escape your comfort zone: only with change is there life.

3. Make every encounter new. Every listening adventure – no matter how seemingly familiar or repetitive – is new. All musical occasions are an opportunity for transformation, growth, and discovery.

4. The musical experience is yours. You live it. You create it. Your engagement is a vital ingredient.

5. If you are bored, see points 1, 2, 3, and 4.

6. Woah. The music doesn’t always happen where we think it ought to. Instead, it happens somewhere else – in the silence, in the reverb on the walls, in the performer’s gasp for air. Music comes charged with a palpable energy created by its surroundings at that very moment. Under any other circumstance, it would be different.

7. Go deep. Really deep. Some treasures are freebies, but many more are buried in the sand, perceived only under the microscope, or clouded in the murky depths of the mind. The deeper you go, the more likely you will find something of value.

8. Listen as if it were the last time your ears could hear. Savor it.

9. Nature is beautiful because it is untouched by humans, but music is beautiful because it is a human creation. Music is direct interaction with the human spirit.

10. Be open to other life, whether it be the composer’s life, the performer's life, or the lives of those around you (…yes, even the noisemaker to your left). Other people’s lives are more weird and wonderful than we could ever imagine. By absorbing the musical complexity of the human condition, you will walk away transformed.

11. Join the party. Music is an interactive event that serves our primordial need to share in something greater than ourselves.

12. As E.M. Forster said, “Only connect.” Music is a pliant collaboration actively involving all participating factors: performers, composers, listeners, and musical elements. Relish the conflict, euphoria, frustration, and innumerable creative possibilities that arise with collaboration.

13. Liberate yourself from technological trappings and to-do lists. Just be present with and within the music.

14. Close your eyes. Focus on the sonic essence of the music.

15. Feel the music course through your body. One of the most amazing sensations when listening to music is the “shiver.” Experiences with music can be thrillingly visceral.

16. Lack judgment and postpone criticism. Free yourself from labels.

17. If something strikes you as strange or incomprehensible, don’t panic. Welcome the confusion and enjoy the music without preconceived ideas or predetermined goals.

18. Drift. Allow the music to guide your listening. Explore aimlessly.

19. Think for yourself. Take chances and mess up. The well-intentioned guidance of others doesn’t always lead you in the direction you need to go because music is intensely personal and thus impacts each listener differently.

20. Music is not universal. It is a myth to believe that there is one “correct” way to respond to a musical experience. Human beings are too sophisticated and music is too subtle to be whittled down in this manner.

21. Work the metaphor. Beyond the obvious exists a myriad of alternate meanings and interpretations.

22. Listen for polarities. Music is at once mundane and surreal, cerebral and sensual, trivial and significant, ephemeral and everlasting, raw and refined, profane and sacred, etc., etc.

23. Laugh. We, Greg and Liz, laugh our way through rehearsals. Joy is a natural reaction to the realization of overwhelming, authentic communication.

24. ______________________. (Allow space for the unknown.)

25. Abandon any notion of “clock time” – you may find your sense of time shifting. Some pieces or experiences may even strike you as utterly timeless.

26. If you are bored, use it to your listening advantage. Strange and marvelous things happen in unusual states of being.

27. Rely on gut instinct. Go where it feels good.

Blue Danube Fantasy
for Piano/Four-Hands by Anderson & Roe, based on the waltzes by Johann Strauss, Jr. (2004)

• Watch "A New Account of the Blue Danube Waltzes" on the music video page!
• Buy "Reimagine," the CD/DVD combo featuring this work!

The kaleidoscopic Blue Danube Fantasy takes the elegance of the Viennese waltz as a point of departure and plunges headlong into the passions that undulate beneath the dance's restrained façade.

Be sure to watch for the choreography of the four hands, illustrating the striking resemblance between a couple dancing and two pianists nestled at one piano. It’s a monstrous challenge that resulted in many injuries during rehearsals!

Also, be sure to listen for the musical combining of themes. At times, melodies are layered atop one another, most notably at the climax. Believe it or not, seven melodies from throughout the piece are played simultaneously (9:09 - 9:30 on "Reimagine," 7:49 - 8:10 in the video), a real compositional feat.

Quotes from a review regarding "A New Account of the Blue Danube Waltzes" in the Southampton Press, April 21, 2005:

A pièce de résistance...

...at once a small satire on and an act of homage to the great Viennese master of the frivolous and the joyous. It has an elegance and a romance that is of another time. The seduction paid off.

Their hand movements and the intertwining of arms, and it seemed at times of fingers, was elaborately and brilliantly choreographed. There were times when their hands seemed magically to occupy the same space, though they were playing different notes. The entire process was a small ballet of the hands, as wonderful to watch as to hear.

 

This score is available for sale. Purchase a PDF file of the score on the score page, or buy a paperback copy of the sheet music on amazon.com.

The Cat's Fugue
by the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo

• Watch a graphic representation of "The Cat's Fugue."
• Buy "Reimagine," the CD/DVD combo featuring this work!
• Buy the sheet music instantly on the score page.

According to eighteenth-century legend, Domenico Scarlatti received a flash of inspiration after a cat tiptoed across the royal harpsichord at the Spanish Court. He composed a fugue, and for the fugue's theme he used the succession of discordant pitches produced by Miss Pussy’s paws. This is our own fugue -- a joyous romp over the keys -- using the very same theme.

It is no simple task to compose a fugue, after all, they tend to involve examples of incredibly complex contrapuntal procedures! As a result, fugues sometimes have the reputation of being stodgy, severe, and academic. However, it can be an amazing experience to listen to several (in this case, four) unique musical voices coalesce into something bigger. In The Cat's Fugue, all four voices maintain their independence and can be heard in dialogue with one another, but ultimately they are working together harmonically, melodically, and structurally to produce a complete musical picture.

 

This score is available for sale on the score page!

The Cuckoo in Sussex
composed by Louis-Claude Daquin and the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo for two pianos

• Buy "Reimagine," the CD/DVD combo featuring this work !
• Buy the sheet music instantly on the score page.

This is Daquin's "The Cuckoo" (performed by amateur pianists around the world) like you've never heard it before; we transplanted the bird from its original setting in 1735 to a new environment of dreamy timelessness.

Deep in the woods, we heard the cuckoos calling to one another. What are they saying? We don’t know, but for some reason their simple song seems to be tinged with a sense of nostalgia.

The cuckoo's call is often used to designate the passing of time. Cuckoo clocks signal a new hour with the famous chime, "cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo," and many cultures await the cuckoo's call after the snow melts as an indication that spring has truly come. For years, the London Times celebrated the arrival of spring by publishing the first documented hearing of the cuckoo. John Clarck's letter to the editor in 1923 is one such example:

Sir,
Some of your readers may be interested to know that the cuckoo was heard at 7 o'clock this (Tuesday) morning. It was in a wood just outside my house.

Yours faithfully, John Clark
Rockmead, Halland, Sussex, March 22, 1923.

 

This score is available for sale on the score page.

Duettino Concertante (based on the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 459)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Ferrucio Busoni

 Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) led an exceptionally multifaceted musical life, from his origins as a child prodigy to a distinguished career as a formidable pianist, composer, teacher, writer, and even philosopher. He left an especially significant legacy behind with his masterful transcriptions, most famously of works by J. S. Bach.

As the adage goes, everything old becomes new again. Transcriptions are simultaneously retrospective and forward-looking, as the transcriber takes a gem of the past and re-imagines it into an entity that resonates with the present. The art of transcription used to flourish as an essential element of the pianist’s prowess, whether for purposes of modernization, virtuosic display, or as a conduit for large-scale ensemble works before the age of recording. As the Busoni pronounced:

Transcription occupies an important place in the literature of the piano; and looked at from a right point of view, every important piano piece is the reduction of a big thought to a practical instrument. But transcription has become an independent art; no matter whether the starting-point of a composition is original or unoriginal. Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, and Brahms were evidently all of the opinion that there is artistic value concealed in a pure transcription, for they all cultivated the art themselves, seriously and lovingly.

The Duettino Concertante is a brilliant example of Busoni’s prowess as a transcriber. Based on the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in F major, K. 459, this piece is full of effervescent virtuosity. Cascades of scintillating figurations are tossed back and forth between the two pianists in a seamless stream; such writing is a testament to Busoni’s pianistic facility. More importantly, Busoni’s writing underscores the mischief, vivacity, and joy that make Mozart’s music so irresistible. To us, the Duettino Concertante is the musical encapsulation of laughter and light.

Danse Macabre
by Camille Saint-Saëns, transcribed for piano duo by Anderson & Roe

• Buy "Reimagine," the CD/DVD combo featuring this work.
• Listen to an excerpt of the piece while watching the second "Reimagine" trailer!

Danse macabre, the third of Saint-Saëns’s four symphonic poems, was premiered in 1874. The broad waltz theme in the Danse macabre may be recognized as a variation on theDies Irae, the ancient liturgical chant for the dead. While theDanse macabre is Saint-Saëns’s most frequently performed orchestral work, it was not originally conceived in orchestral terms. Saint-Saëns adapted it from one of his songs for voice and piano. The song was originally set to a verse by French poet Henri Cazalis (translated in English below):

Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence, 
Striking with his heel a tomb, 
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune, 
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin. 
The winter wind blows and the night is dark; 
Moans are heard in the linden trees. 
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass, 
Running and leaping in their shrouds. 
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking, 
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack— 
But hist! of a sudden they quit the round, 
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.

With vividness and verve, Saint-Saëns depicts the fantastic tale of Death’s frenzied dance. The work begins with the tolling of midnight bells, after which Death, portrayed as a fiddler, tunes up and commences his waltz. A second theme evokes the roused skeletal celebrants who become increasingly energetic until, with the cock's crow, they disperse and vanish.

The musical material in Danse macabre proved to be ideal for a two-piano version. In our transcription, the pianists enact the characters of Death and his gathering of skeletons whirling around a graveyard. We exploit the capabilities of the piano, illustrating the rattling of bones with percussive rhythmic drive and creating atmospheric effects through deft uses of pedal and swirling harmonic figurations.

Danse Macabre: remix
composed by the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo

• Buy "Reimagine," the CD/DVD combo featuring this remix !
• Buy the sheet music instantly on the score page.

An emperor, a beggar, a monk, a mother, a musician... No matter one’s station in life, the dance of death unites us all. Can we, the living, dance with the same unbridled revelry as these white skeletons who pass through the gloom? How fragile life is, how vain its earthly glories.

In creating “Remix” we crafted a modernized homage to the music of Camille Saint-Saëns, namely his Danse macabreand the “Fossils” movement from Carnival of the Animals.(Speaking of Carnival of the Animals, the “Remix” is actually an excerpt from our very own Zoological Fantasy.)

The “Remix” is just that -- a remix of Saint-Saëns’ music into a new composition, one that forays into adventurous harmonic territory and virtuosic pianistic exploits. We melded the bone-rattling humor of “Fossils” with the demonic drama of Danse macabre and created a work of flair and fury. An unyielding pulse underlies a series of increasingly ferocious outbursts, passed between the two pianos. Like a microcosm of the album (which begins and ends with versions of Danse macabre), the “Remix” ends as it began, but with a newfound sensibility.

To underscore the theme of “Reimagine” in our debut album and to reflect the cyclical nature of all things, we decided to frame the album with two versions of Danse macabre. These contrasting "reimaginings" showcase our versatility of approach as well as our dual interest in tradition and modernization.

 

The sheet music to this two-piano work is available for sale on on the score page.