INDUSTRIAL ARTS: ETHER GAME PLAYLIST (Indiana Public Media)

Ether Game is a weekly music guessing game on WFIU. This week’s quiz on machines in music, features nine pieces—including a composition by Joan Tower, No Longer Very Clear: II. Or Like a....an Engine, in which each movement is named for a line from a poem by John Ashbery…

Industrial Arts: Ether Game Playlist

March 14, 2023

By CHRIS BURRUS

"Industrial Arts," our show all about machines and music.

Tonight we quizzed on machines in music. Bleep Bloop Bleep! Browse nine rounds of industrial artistry below.

Joan Tower (b.1938) No Longer Very Clear: II. Or Like a....an Engine 

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American living composers today. Although she has written music in most classical genres, she returns to her roots as a pianist for her suite of four solo piano pieces titled No Longer Very Clear. Each movement of the piece is named for a line from a poem by John Ashbery, although Tower writes in her own introduction that, like Debussy’s Preludes, the music came before the poem.We heard the 2nd movement performed by Ursula Oppens, the pianist for whom this piece was written. It is based on line 11 of the poem, and depicts what Tower describes as like a “motorific” version of a Chopin etude.