Word: counterpoint
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Bengt Hallberg (Pacific Jazz EP).Lars Gullin's baritone sax sounds something like Gerry Mulligan's, Hallberg's piano is light and feathery, and the progressive counterpoint eked out by the eight-man ensemble adds up to some fine modern jazz. Imported from Sweden...
Mozart: Motets (Soloists, chorus and orchestra directed by Felix Raugel; L'Anthologic Sonore; Haydn Society). Seven religious choruses-six jubilant, one melancholy-in Mozart's flowing counterpoint. Not up to highest recording standards, but a unique item. From Volume VII of the anthology's "Living History of Western Music from the 9th to the 19th Century...
...Mulligan was great. Still using no piano, counting on drums and a bass to carry the rhythm, he skillfully traded melodic lines in fluid counterpoint with valve trombonist Bobby Brookmeyer. They played all the old Mulligan numbers--Motel, Lullaby of the Leaves, Sextet, My Funny Valentine--old because in only three years they have made their arranger famous for his style. The Mulligan sound is a low sound, a tense sound. Unlike Dixieland, it reaches no climaxes, and explodes in no blasting solos. Instead, it edges back and forth, finds harmony for a few lines, then slips off into exciting...
Composer Schütz was one of music's 17th century giants*; known as "the father of German music," he composed the first German opera (Dafne), and was the man who managed to fuse solid German choral counterpoint with Italy's exciting new "concerted" style that combined voices and instruments. Schütz's music has long been shadowed by Bach, but once modern ears are accustomed to it, its impact is dramatic as well as spiritual...
Three Pieces for string quartet by John Bavicchi exemplify music in this state of transition. They contain measures of unrelated, ugly chords; plunks and scrapes that communicate little; and involved counterpoint that moves convulsively yet musically gets nowhere. Such passages appear to be willful "modernizing," a stubborn and out-dated refusal to compromises between method and expression. But Bavicchi does create some powerful climaxes. The second piece is touchingly lyrical, recalling the best of his songs. Here the treatment is still dissonant, but it is dissonance that grows logically from the melodic line, and our sensibilities have long ceased...