Earle Brown - Contemporary Music

Earle Brown - Contemporary Music

Excerpts from the liner notes by Earle Brown:

TIMES FIVE (1963)

Govert Jurriaanse, flute; Arthur Moore. trombone; Teresia Tieu, harp; Jaring Walta, violin; Harro Ruijsenaars, cello, and 4 channels of tape sound. Earle Brown, conductor

Not being over-charmed by purely electronic sounds or by the environmental concrete sounds for which the French Radio Studio is best known, I took this commission as an opportunity to multiply and transform more traditional instrumental and vocal sound sources. The title refers to this process of multiplying a given potential through superimposing and accelerating recorded material on tape, as well as to the fact that the work is produced (in concert) from five sound sources in the shape of an "X" at the front of the auditorium - four loudspeakers with a live group at the center point. The taped material is "choreographed" to move between and across this space as a kind of kinetic wall of sound.

OCTET I (1953) for 8 loudspeakers

This work was composed and realized (assembled by splicing and synchronizing exactly to the specifications of the score) within the "Project for Music for Magnetic Tape" in late 1952 and the early part of 1953. The first performance was at the University of Illinois Arts Festival in March 1953. The work is for eight separate channels of sound to be heard through eight independent sound sources spaced equidistantly (360 degrees) around the audience. A stereo disc recording is obviously not the very best way to hear this work (spatially speaking) but here and now seems a not unreasonable context for its 22nd birthday [1975]. I have combined the tracks by twos, and distributed these four sound sources equidistantly from far left to far right in normal stereo reproduction.The compositional technique used in OCTET I is based on statistical procedures applied almost exclusively to horizontal and vertical attack density; a concept very much influenced by my studies (and teaching) of Schillinger techniques. The library of sounds from which the Project drew its sound materials contained very long tapes catagorized as "city sounds," "country sounds," "electronic sounds," "instrumental sounds," etc. in frequently very identifiable form. In prefering to make a work that would be highly abstract and non-referential in character I worked out a "programm" which would allow only very brief fragments of these sources to appear in complex density patterns and sequences that would obscure their natural origins; to have them exist as sheer sound.

DECEMBER 1952

David Tudor, pianos

This work is the center piece of a group of works published as Folio (1952-53). The collection is described as "experiments in notation and performance process." Having enjoyed the esthetic benefits and poetic exhilarations of solo and collective improvisation as a jazz musician for many years, and being very much under the influence of Alexander Calder's mobile (variable-but-always-the-same) works, I had been searching for a way to this world within the environment of the classically trained (Western oriented) musician. From the totally organized and specific Perspectives (1952) for piano, into the progressively more vague and collaborative Folio works, October 1952, November 1952 and December 1952, I was attempting to find a notation and verbal conditioning (processing) that would provoke the performer into a more creative role than is usually the case in serious music; at least more than was characteristic of that kind of music in 1952.

DECEMBER 1952 is the most extreme "provocation" and seems to be the first example of what came to be called "graphic music." It is extreme to the degree that a performance of it can no longer be said to be a composition by the composer.

NOVARA (1952)

Ton Hartsuiker, piano and leader; Govert Jurriaanse, flute; John Floore ,trumpet; Harry Sparnaay, bass clarinet; Jaring Walta and Roelof van Driesten, violins; Gerrit Oldeman, viola; Harro Ruijsenaars, cello; Earle Brown, conductor

NOVARA is an open-form work and uses many of the less characteristic sounds of the instruments that are sometimes referred to as "noises" but are, nevertheless, instrumental sounds which can extend the formal and expressive potential of a work. "Openform" means that all of the sound materials in the work are notated and controlled in the score but that their sequence, juxtaposition, tempi and repetitions are left to the spontaneous decisions of the conductor, during the performance, as the performing process develops and unfolds between himself, the written sound materials and the musicians; an immediate and direct feed-back condition of response and forming. The form of the work is therefore unique in each performance but it is always NOVARA because only those composed sound events may be used.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Times Five {14:57}

2. Octet I {3:19}

Side 2

1. December 1952 {6:07}

2. Novara {14:48}

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Variations IV Volume II

John Cage - Variations IV Volume II

John Cage, with assistance by David Tudor gave a 6 hour performance at Feigen-Palmer Gallery in Los Angeles. This performance is Variations IV, an early experiment in audio collage and excerpts from this performance were released on the recording Variations IV. Volume II of Variations IV was released afterwards containing material not on the original Variations IV recording.

Tracklisting:

Side A

1. Introduction {3:56}

2. Variations IV Volume II Part I {15:13}

Side B

1. Variations IV Volume II Part II {14:12}

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International Electronics

various artists compilation - Contemporary Music: International Electronics

From the liner notes:

This record contains fine examples of three different types of electronic music: "pure" synthesized sounds (Perera), natural sounds modified by electronic processing (Johnson and Grippe), and sounds created by a computer (Melby). Both the Melby and Johnson pieces require that a live performer combine real time performance with that of the tape.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. John Melby - Two Stevens Songs {8:59}

2. Ronald Perera - Alternate Routes {8:00}

Side 2

1. Ragnar Grippe - Musique Douze {13:20}

2. Bengt Emil Johnson - Disappearances {8:20}

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Music of Varèse

Edgard Varèse - Music of Varèse

Déserts for four orchestral groups and tape - performed by Paris Instrumental Ensemble for Contemporary Music and conducted by Konstantin Simonovitch; Electronic Tape realized by Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

Hyperprism for small orchestra and percussion - performed by Paris Instrumental Ensemble for Contemporary Music and conducted by Konstantin Simonovitch

Intégrales for small orchestra and percussion - performed by Paris Instrumental Ensemble for Contemporary Music and conducted by Konstantin Simonovitch

Density 21.5 for flute alone - performed by Michel Debost

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Déserts {27:45}

Side Two

1. Hyperprism {4:23}

2. Intégrales {11:09}

3. Density 21.5 {3:57}

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Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman - Morton Feldman

A collection of Feldman composed pieces

From the liner notes (these are quite technical but helpful):

It is therefore not merely of anecdotal interest to document Feldman's
playing and that of his first interpreters, for here it is made clear how
much Feldman's entire oeuvre developed from this approach. He shifted the implicit precedence of artistic realization from a negligible peripheral issue to the center of his focus. From here on, the traditional musical parameters of harmony, form, time, instrumentation and arrangement are stripped of their essential features and in Feldman's playing, are heard again anew. The present recordings, primarily from Feldman's early period, present different solutions to the same problem.

One of the earliest pieces of the series, "Intermission 5" from 1952,
could be regarded as the germ cell for later works. In fact, it is the
opposite of Cage's musical process that Feldman notates here: not
progression, not variation, but the uncovering of something which is at
first hidden by clusters and chord attacks. From an irregular rhythm and density, tone repetitions and ultimately, a figure that recurs 9 times are shed - metaphor of periodic movement within an inner space. The figure itself - comprised of the tones G, G-sharp, A , B-flat in an orchestration characteristic of Feldman, that is, distributed among different octaves - plays with the most extreme reaches of the hands and with the "Fort" and "Da" which creates the basis for the repetition of the self-contained figure, the module.

"Extensions 3" from the same year also reflects this structure. Here, the play of horizontal and vertical symmetries in repetitions and
displacements form the starting point that is not interrupted until the
very end with a gesture encompassing the entire keyboard and all pitches. The octave obtains special significance as an axis of reflection in this performance and therein anticipates Feldman's later technique of "bridge building" between different modules.

In "Piano (Three Hands)", the problem of transition appears to withdraw
completely into the verticality of the sounds and their sequence. The
three "voices" come together in a flexible and unpredictable harmony,
which likewise exhibits unsystematic moments of repetition and
correspondence. The harmony which has disappeared is restored again by the play of position and distance.


"Vertical Thoughts 2 for Violin and Piano" combines a harmonically
conceived texture with an extremely differentiated temporal structure:
freely notated sections, in which the duration of the tone is defined by
the duration of the sound itself, alternate with segments that translate
the inherent tension of the sounds into rhythmic weights. The elastic
temporal structure is a result of the tactile quality of the sound
complexes.

In "Piano Piece 1956 A" and "Piano Piece 1956 B", the sounding tones are surrounded by numerous silently depressed keys which, through the resonances of sympathetically vibrating strings, convey the sound space like a second dimension. Though not sounding themselves, they first define the form of what is to be heard. It is the shadow that first makes light possible. Here too, octaves link tone groups together.

In his Darmstadt lecture "Indeterminacy", Cage defined "Intersection 3"
as an example of an indeterminate music, that is, a music which in
relation to its performance presents indeterminacies. Feldman notated the number of tones to be played on a time grid within the general limits of high, medium and low. The exact placement of the chords within the grid is left up to the performer. Cage's indeterminacy, however, aims more at the abolishment of fixed relations, while Feldman constructs here a sequence of unconnected sonic "weights" - as he himself called them - a oneness of harmony and contact.

Both ensemble pieces, "Four Instruments (1975)" and "Instruments 1",
transfer the experience of the "weight" from the early pieces onto other
instruments: "Four Instruments (1975)" to the reflections between piano and strings whose values articulate time and "Instruments 1", to an almost single-voiced line that is defined by instrumental oscillations.

Tracklisting:

1. Piano (Three Hands) {8:03} [Morton Feldman & John Tilbury - piano]

2. Intermission 5 {3:52} [Morton Feldman - piano]

3. Vertical Thoughts 2 {6:48} [Janos Negyesy - violin; Cornelius Cardew - piano]

4. Extensions 3 {8:05} [Morton Feldman - piano]

5. Four Instruments {8:11} [Edna Mitchell - violin; Harry Zaratzian - viola; Stephen Kates - cello; Frank Glazer - piano]

6. Intermission 5 {2:11} [David Tudor - piano]

7. Piano Piece 1956 A {2:23} [David Tudor - piano]

8. Piano Piece 1956 B {3:06} [David Tudor - piano]

9. Intersection 3 {3:07} [David Tudor - piano]

10. Instruments 1 {24:15} [Eberhard Blum - flute; Nora Post - oboe; Garrett List - trombone; Joseph Kubera - celesta; Jan Williams - percussion]

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Match für 3 Spieler/Musik für Renaissance - Instrumente

Mauricio Kagel - Match für 3 Spieler/Musik für Renaissance - Instrumente

*the photo is not the actual cover of the release

Match für 3 Spieler (1964)

performers:

Christoph Caskel - percussion

Siegfried Palm - cello

Klaus Storck - cello

Musik für Renaissance - Instrumente (1965/66)

performed by Collegium instrumentalis

Production: West German Radio, cologne, at the world premiere on the 26th April 1967 (The work was commissioned by the WDR)

Tracklisting:

Side A

1. Match für 3 Spieler (Match for 3 Players) {16:07}

Side B

1. Musik für Renaissance - Instrumente (Music for Renaissance Instruments) {24:51}

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