Having finally set down some detailed thoughts on the actual album, I can now do something I always planned to do afterwards, which is to say: return to the vexed question of the trio's interpretation of Comp. 61. (After all: as far as the trio was concerned - and let's include Carl Testa as well, acting on behalf of TCF - this is precisely what they were doing, i.e. premiering a work that had been "left over" from the seventies and was unrepresented in the recorded catalogue.)
Here's how this has panned out so far, from the point of view of the blog:
1. Early in 2021 (or was it very late 2020?) I bought the Thumbscrew CD - this now seems about two hundred years ago, although I didn't buy it as soon as it came out, or even as soon as I was aware of it. Nothing remains in my memory now of the first couple of listens - but I did register straight away that the piece listed here as Comp. 61 was already known to this listener as Comp. 29(a). (As previously mentioned, this latter is not massively well known, and was presumably not known to the band - or to Testa - at all. It just happens to be a piece which charmed me the first time I heard it, enough that I stuck it on a playlist back in 2008; hence, notwithstanding the completely different voicings in this trio arrangement, I recognised the tune at once.)
2. After an inordinate amount of faffing around (even by my standards), I finally got some frustrations related to the album out of my system, preparatory to saying something (hopefully) constructive about it. I flagged up the confusion (under point 3 of that post) and explained why this had been causing me to have nagging doubts about the reliability of the numbering in the case of previously-unrecorded pieces. I also said that I would delve into the published Composition Notes for the two works before writing anything else on the subject.
3. Using said reference material - but without even attempting to look anywhere else (such as on TCF) - I made an assessment of which opus number is more likely represented by the short interpretation on the album. Given that in neither case do the (brief) Composition Notes include any actual sheet music, I concluded that the written description of Comp. 29a is a closer match for the recorded music than the entry for Comp. 61.
4. I was almost immediately "set straight" on this in a comment by Jeff Schwartz (who had previously commented on the first Thumbscrew post - although he didn't mention anything about TCF at that time, or indeed anything about the album itself). Jeff pointed me to Carl Testa's short essay, which confirms that the original idea behind Thumbscrew's Braxton project was to showcase previously unrecorded material; and sure enough, right at the top of the article, a few staves of hand-written sheet music are reproduced, with "61" scribbled above them - this "matches what's on the record" as Jeff confirmed.
This did have a very deflating effect on me, once I'd properly taken in what the comment contained and had looked at Testa's article. I'd just put my name to a firm declaration that of the two compositions in question, Comp. 29a was a closer match and more likely to be a correct attribution - and immediately I was being shown proof that I was wrong.
Or was I..?
Let's be clear: all the article actually establishes for sure is something I never seriously doubted to begin with, namely that the band acted in good faith when they put the title Comp. 61 to their recording. I even said explicitly in my first article that they "genuinely believed that they were reading and playing Comp. 61, even while B. himself had already recorded it under a completely different premise". What's more, they must not have been aware that they were doing anything potentially controversial in the process, since there is no mention - either on the CD or in Testa's article - of any sort of "revised numbering" taking place here. Apparently, none of them were familiar with the earlier duo recording. What the article does confirm is the exact same thing I had previously inferred by an educated guess: that the scores were sourced via TCF, with Testa's help. (I did not actually know about Carl's official role within the foundation, but it was pretty obvious just from the wording of the band's thanks that he was directly involved in locating and selecting the materials.)
So, we know that the band was provided with a written score marked "61" and that they were also given copies of the composition notes. Between the two, they arrived in this case at a recording which uses elements of both without being fully explained by either: whilst I am happy to take Jeff's word for it that the written theme "matches what's on the record" - I don't read music, as I have already made very clear, but I can muddle through it well enough to be able to work out that he's right, it does - but the notes refer very explicitly to some things which don't appear on the score at all. The recorded piece is a march, as confirmed by Tomas Fujiwara's rattling, military-style snare drum; but this element of the recording comes purely from the composition notes, not from the score (which includes no time signature). The written score also contains no bar lines, despite the fact that the composition notes include extremely specific instructions regarding this (as I have previously explained). Testa's article rather implies - though does not explicitly state - that the written score and the composition notes are contemporaneous; but if that had been the case, why was the score (which is after all very short) not included with the published notes?
There is really no firm indication of where the "score" comes from at all, and I think it very unlikely that it dates from the same time as the notes, and even less likely that it dates from the actual time of composition.
I don't even know for sure whether that's B's handwriting; but let's just say for the time being that I'm happy to take it on trust that it is. I also know, however, that B. has never pretended to be infallible when it comes to this sort of thing and it's entirely plausible that he might at some point (years after the fact) have scribbled down this fragment of melody and put "61" on it, as a "best guess", having forgotten that he ever recorded the same piece as something else. Stated baldly like that, this sounds faintly ridiculous, even insulting, but two points about that: first, B. has been a hugely - relentlessly - prolific composer for more than five decades, and (as we know!) not all of his work has been recorded, nor was all of it properly written down at the time it was composed; even the numbering system itself was only applied retrospectively, to anything which now bears an opus number below (about) 90; and second, how the hell else are we to explain the facts as we now find them?! It's all very well pointing out that the band were working from a scribbled score with "61" on it, but this completely overlooks the fact that the exact same tune* was already recorded under a different opus number, and no explanation for this has been given. As far as I can see, nobody other than me is even aware of the issue, never mind attempting (probably badly, in my case) to sort it out. No; in a sort of inversion of the "Sherlock Holmes principle": however unlikely the above hypothesis may sound, I cannot think of any other way of explaining the existing facts. It's a lousy theory, in other words... but it's also an inference to the best explanation, as they say in academic philosophy.
What TCF are now doing is great, and I wish Carl Testa himself every success in curating the written material. But we can hardly rely on him for an accurate account of what went down at the time, given that his own involvement with B's music begins in the present century - and in this case, we are talking about music which was composed several years before he himself was even born**. Unfortunately, records of B's considerable output before he began work with Martinelli to draw up the present numbering system can be a little sketchy at times; and even the published Composition Notes were not necessarily written at the same time as the actual music was composed. Memories may fail, and details can be confused or even lost, over time; even a composer such as B. - who does not just plunge remorselessly onwards, leaving the past behind, but who continually returns to his own prior work for inspiration*** - can be excused if he occasionally gets certain details mixed up, just as was (after all) the case with one of his most famous albums #. The matter has not, in fact, been definitively cleared up at all; the only person who can realistically shed any further light on it is the maestro himself... and until such time as he does that, I think this is as far as we can go with this discussion.
* It's very frustrating, but my current technical set-up does not permit me to upload an audio recording of the duet with Mario Pavone in support of my argument. I am aware that in the absence of this, readers may presume that I am mistaken - that I am just mixing up two somewhat similar themes. I'm not; but for the time being you will all have to take my word for it. (That needn't actually be as hard as it sounds. Flawed scholar though I most definitely am, if my ears were once deemed good enough for B., they are good enough for everyone else.)
** As far as I can determine, Carl was born in 1984 in Chicago. (The waters were muddied somewhat by the presence of another professional musician of the same name, a pianist from Atlanta; but it wasn't overly hard to figure out who was who.)
*** - and why wouldn't he? He also regularly returns to jazz standards. (The only aspect of his playing, as far as I can tell, which marches (almost) exclusively forwards is his solo saxophone work.)
# Discogs perpetuates the familiar mistake with this album, and Restructures is (alas, alas) no longer around to correct it, but as I've previously discussed, the dedications for the individual pieces here were a bit mixed up on the original release. Notably, the furious firestorm (which got Phil Woods all hot under the collar, causing him to lose all perspective) now designated Comp. 8f is dedicated to Cecil Taylor, not to John Cage.
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