Japan Revisited

Mamoru Miyagi and the Graduates of Tokyo's University of Arts - Japan Revisited

More Japanese music. This blog's visitors have shown much interest in the past posts about Japanese/Asian music. From the liner notes:

Recorded in Tokyo in astonishingly modern studios, the music features the great Mamoru Miyagi, son of the late - and internationally noted - Michio Miyagi, the favorite Japanese composer and koto virtuoso of the Twentieth Century. Young Mamoru is renowned as a shakuhachi (bamboo flute) soloist. Along with him are heard graduates of the University of Arts, in Tokyo, playing authentic Japanese instruments and songs.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Sakura Sakura {3:15}

2. Tanko Bushi/Kagoshima Ohara Bushi {3:48}

3. Echigojishi {1:52}

4. Kojo No Tsuki {1:36}

5. Kappore {3:05}

6. Oedo Nihombashi/Ishin March/Miyasan Miyasan/Ishin March/Noge No Yama Kara {5:43}

Side Two

1. Matsuri Bayashi {3:31}

2. Kazoe-Uta {3:02}

3. Kiso-Bushi/Aizu Bandisan {3:33}

4. Shishi No Kyoku {3:32}

5. Chugoku-Chiho Komoriuta {3:23}

6. Shinnai Nagashi/Nozakimura {3:19}

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Railroad Sounds, Steam and Diesel

Railroad Sounds, Steam and Diesel

Let's take a break from the music and enjoy some train sounds.

released in 1958

Excerpts from the liner notes:

Steam engines ... huge black monsters shuddering under loads of coal and compressed steam ... lumbering masses of iron and steel that blast the air as they spit black smoke to the heavens ... tons of metal shaking the earth as wheels churn over gleaming tracks, bearing witness to man's genius for harnessing power ... immense drive shafts that grind in rhythmic strokes as the "iron horse" plows along the rails ... wailing whistles that echo through silent countryside as people sleep in their beds....

Diesel engines ... oil-driven behemoths that pack the energy of a thousand whales ... leviathans of the rails whose purring belies their capacity to haul a hundred loaded freight cars ... iron bulls that can push railroad cars around the tracks like balloons in the wind ... giants whose deep-throated horns rend the air as the train rumbles past crossings ... goliaths that make the ground tremble as they churn around curves....

These are sounds of a vanishing era. And so is the piercing hiss of the steam engine as it pauses to reduce pressure ... the cacophony of the switching engine as it lurches back and forth in the switching yard ... the coupling of freight cars as they are shunted from track to track ... the shriek of steel against steel as thousands of tons of metal grind to a stop on rails ... the ear-splitting blasts of steam as the engine gathers momentum ... the mighty clang of the bell as it reverberates over the din ... all are sounds of a vanishing era.

Shall these sounds of a vanishing era be forgotten, the days when the din of the steam engine and diesel were so much a part of the rhythm of daily living? Shall we carry with us the memory of picks and sledges that marked the extension of the American railroad frontier? Will we think of the many heartbreaking failures that marked the early days of pioneering, when trains ran on wooden rails topped by strips of metal, when horses and mules had to take over in place of steam engines that developed kinks, when passengers had to take to the fields for wood and water to replenish fuel supplies?

sounds of a vanishing era.... They become dimmer and dimmer as the sounds of a new and greater power age grow to be more of a reality with every passing day. They are part of the romance of America that will always be with us, in spite of atomic power and new technical wonders. For here, through the process of full frequency range recording, every nuance of this sound world of railroading is captured with earth-shaking dynamism. Here is a galvanic auditory experience for high fidelity enthusiasts to enjoy as they contemplate the rich pageantry of railroading and its mighty impact on the growth of an industrial world.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Steam Locomotives and Some Diesel Locomotives {11:22}

Side 2

1. Diesel Locomotives and Some Steam Locomotives {14:23}

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Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano

Morton Feldman - Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano

performers: 

Rene Berman - cello; Kees Wieringa - piano

Excerpts from the liner notes:

It is useless to debate the question '...Is the music of Morton Feldman "good" or "bad"...' John Cage stated in his book Silence: 'Feldman's music Is...' This is not just another cryptic remark by probably the most famous American avant garde composer of this century. On the contrary, it is one of the most sensible things ever written about the music of Morton Feldman. When listening to his Untitled composition for cello and piano (1981) too, one can be surprised by the feeling that this music escapes a judgement of value. Only those who dare to really listen with an open mind (both a challenge and an invitation) get a chance to understand Feldman's music, a chance to enter a new world of sound.

The concept of 'tempo', as meaning the structuring of time in music, is almost destroyed in Feldman's music: in his music the measurement of time, the perception of metre and rhythm becomes practically impossible. In Untitled composition metre has lost its traditional meaning, it just serves as a tool that makes it possible to determine the duration of the notes. This implicates that the listener has to listen to this music with a different attitude than he is used to do. The concept of music as a language that can be molded into a logical, linear form has been put aside by Feldman. To him composing was no longer the ordering of sounds in time. Feldman's works are about the unfolding of individual sounds in total freedom, not hindered by metre - an instrument to order sound in a time structure.

Untitled composition confronts the listener with contradictions. The piece is long, but no clear musical form can be discerned: the composer uses traditional and wellknown instruments, but in a very different way than usual; the music sounds anonymous, but it unquestionably bears the mark of Morton Feldman's musical personality.

Tracklisting:

1. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.1 {5:35}

2. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.2 {6:32}

3. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.3 {6:45}

4. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.4 {12:03}

5. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.5 {10:48}

6. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.6 {10:17}

7. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.7 {5:31}

8. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.8 {8:09}

9. Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano: 1.9 {6:24}

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Complete Piano Music Vol. 1: The Prepared Piano 1940-1952

John Cage - Complete Piano Music Vol. 1: The Prepared Piano 1940-1952

performer: Steffen Schleiermacher

From the liner notes:

It made the composer John Cage especially famous, more so than his percussion pieces, more so than his famous tecet 4:33, more so than his philosophy of music or his unique late oeuvre, more so than his performances. For many his name, insofar as it is a known quantity, is still bound up with it today. And yet hardly any other of his inventions has set so little of an example, has had so few imitators: we are referring, of course, to the prepared piano.

Cage's invention or discovery of the preparation potential of the grand piano owed more to practical considerations than to deliberate artistic intention. Cage was supposed to compose a piece of ballet music for Syvilla Fort in 1940. The performance space was simply too small for the percussion music intended by him, and so he got to thinking about experiments conducted by Henry Cowell. These experiments has employed the piano in an unconventional way and involved playing on the strings. Continuing along these lines (half in jest, in part with kitchen gadgets), Cage hit upon the all-important solution: one was not to lay something on the strings but to insert suitable objects between the strings (erasers of all sorts of different sizes, screws of all sorts of different types, bamboo, cloth, pieces of wood, etc.) In Bacchanale, his first piece for prepared piano, the preparation is very simple, and the sound recalls percussion instruments such as bongos or drums. Cage exhibited increasing refinement in his quest for the most unusual sorts of sound combinations. He employed prepared tones alone in his first pieces but included nonprepared tones in his later pieces as a sort of special form of preparation. They sounded very strange in this connection and at least as unusual as the prepared tones (cf. And the Earth Shall Bear Again, Our Spring Will Come, Two Pastorales).

Cage composed almost all his pieces for prepared piano for dance performances. As was often the case with him, there were practical reasons behind this: a bag containing screws and nuts, erasers, and pieces of wood is much easier (and cheaper!) to transport than a whole percussion ensemble, and every performance space has room enough for a small grand piano. Cage traveled throughout the country a great deal during the 1940s as a piano accompanist with a number of dance groups, in particular with Merce Cunningham.

Tracklisting:

CD1

1. Bacchanale {8:05}

2. Totem Ancestor {2:19}

3. And the Earth Shall Bear Again {3:31}

4. Primitive {4:12}

5. In the Name of the Holocaust: I {4:19}

6. In the Name of the Holocaust: II {2:12}

7. Our Spring Will Come {4:49}

8. A Room {2:42}

9. Tossed as it is Untroubled {2:50}

10. The Perilous Night: I {2:28}

11. The Perilous Night: II {0:52}

12. The Perilous Night: III {4:17}

13. The Perilous Night: IV {1:19}

14. The Perilous Night: V {0:40}

15. The Perilous Night: VI {4:05}

16. Root of an Unfocus {5:01}

CD2

1. The Unavailable Memory Of {2:21}

2. Spontaneous Earth {3:17}

3. Triple Paced {2:35}

4. A Valentine Out of Season: I {1:35}

5. A Valentine Out of Season: II {1:00}

6. A Valentine Out of Season: III {1:13}

7. Prelude for Meditation {1:21}

8. Mysterious Adventure {9:11}

9. Daughters of the Lonesome Isle {9:39}

10. Music for Marcel Duchamp {6:01}

11. Two Pastorales: I {6:16}

12. Two Pastorales: II {7:34}

CD3

1. Sonata I {3:17}

2. Sonata II {1:59}

3. Sonata III {2:21}

4. Sonata IV {2:02}

5. Interlude I {3:27}

6. Sonata V {1:45}

7. Sonata VI {2:37}

8. Sonata VII {2:15}

9. Sonata VIII {3:36}

10. Interlude II {4:44}

11. Interlude III {2:52}

12. Sonata IX {4:39}

13. Sonata X {4:00}

14. Sonata XI {3:35}

15. Sonata XII {3:22}

16. Interlude IV {2:29}

17. Sonata XIII {4:02}

18. Sonata XIV {3:28}

19. Sonata XV {3:26}

20. Sonata XVI {5:15}

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Moment

Hans Tutschku - Moment

Brief background from liner notes:

Hans Tutschku began to study music at an early age. In 1982 he joined the Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar, playing synthesizer and live electronics. He studied electroacoustic composition in Dresden, and accompanied Karlheinz Stockhausen on several concert tours during 1989-91 for the purpose of studying sound diffusion. With the Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar he has realized several multimedia productions, conceiving projected images and choreography for dance as well as the music. Together they have given numerous concerts in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Hans Tutschku has composed instrumental works, works for tape, works for musicians and electronics, and music for theatre, film and ballet.

Excerpts from liner notes by Tutschku:

extrémités lointaines

extrémités lointaines uses recordings I made during a four-week concert tour in Asia in the summer of 1997. I recorded city sounds, the music of churches and temples, and the songs of children in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. These unexpectedly rich sound worlds, quite different from ours, remain inscrutable even if they open doors for us.

... erinnerung ...

In recent years the use of speech has been a central compositional concern. In ... erinnerung ... (... memento ...) the recorded poem forms the starting point for acousmatic transformations. Apart from this text there is a second group of sources, which include bells and tam-tams. I used granular synthesis to cut the sounds into small pieces and played them back polyphonically to create dense sound textures. The resulting sonic intensity is a musical translation of the central phrase of the poem Yo os lo aseguro... (I assure you...) by Antonio Bueno Tubia: "I assure you/ the prison is there/ I recall it like a lash to the face."

Les invisibles

Les invisibles is a composition based on vocal and instrumental sounds which create a soundscape corresponding to the text. It was not my intention to illustrate or 'set' the text, although I do use speech as a sound source, and the comprehensibility of the text remains secondary. Les invisibles uses recordings of twenty-five short melodic gestures and five longer sequences, as well as a layered four-part vocal polyphony on the text of Es wird später [by Karl Lubomirski].

Sieben Stufen

Sieben Stufen (Seven Steps) uses the poem Verfall (Decline, Decay) by Georg Trakl (1887-1914). All sounds are derived from electronic manipulations of two recordings of the poem spoken by four different voices (two in German and two in French), as well as four German key-words sung in seven pitches and their four corresponding French translations in seven different pitches: Verfall-ruine (decline); Abend-au soir (evening); Glocken-cloches (bells); Vögel-oiseaux (birds).

Die zerschlagene Stimme

All sounds in Die zerschlagene Stimme are derived from the human voice and from percussion instruments. These sources were then transformed with the help of customized computer programs.

Tracklisting:

1. extrémités lointaines {16:42}

2. ... erinnerung ... {10:22}

3. Les invisibles {12:43}

4. Sieben Stufen {13:11}

5. Die zerschlagene Stimme {10:16}

(1) (2) [maybe reposted soon]

Rothko Chapel & Why Patterns?

This one is for Hortense. Morty-time again, with an excellent version of "Rothko Chapel", backed with a spacey sounding "Why Patterns?". Gotta love the beautiful Glockenspiel.

* * *

MF: The Rothko Chapel piece was a very interesting commission because it was the only score where other factors determined what kind of music it was going to be. For example, it leaned very heavily on me that the first time I met Rothko, which must have been around 1962, I remember him standing against the wall talking to me about Mendelssohn. He liked the combination of the youth and the lyricism of Mendelssohn, all the fantastic pieces he wrote as such a young man. Rothko got a big kick out of that. So when I wrote the Rothko Chapel I remembered that Rothko did a lot of paintings with the WPA, social realist, and then I saw the whole life of this guy. So what I decided in the Rothko Chapel was to treat it very - not biographical, but my identity was such that I decided to write an autobiographical piece. The piece begins in a synagoguey type of way; a little rhetorical and declamatory. And as I get older the piece gets a little abstract, just like my own career. Then in the middle of the piece there is one thing that is really at odds with the other parts but which makes the piece a very interesting trip: where I just have the same chords, and I'm tripping for a long time, and it's very monochromey.

GB: Are those the vocal harmonies?
MF: Yes, that is a very monochromey section. It's going on for a long time and that's where I reach this degree of abstraction. Not that I'm imitating Rothko but I'm certainly closer to the late pictures that are in the Chapel in that kind of one hue of a colour, and the piece ends with the memory of a piece that I wrote when I was fourteen.

GB: There are a few features about that ending which are strange: for example, that very tonal extended tune with a very steady, vibraphone accompaniment.
MF: Then there is a tune in the middle of the piece, a dialogue between a soprano and timpani and viola, which was a little Stravinskyish on purpose: I wrote that tune the day Stravinsky died. So it was Stravinsky, Rothko, dead. It was the only piece - and it will never happen again - when all kinds of facts, literary facts, reminiscent facts, came into the piece.
FO: You wrote it for the chapel.
MF: I think the orchestration was to some degree affected by the fact that I was writing it for a big production at the chapel. I went down there and I just walked around the chapel. It is built in a kind of glamorous idea of his studio. Actually the studio was bigger than the chapel, and it just cried out - the octagonal situation - to do something at the sides. That's where the antiphonal chorus came in, and something in the middle, and then they had the benches in the middle and they could bring in others. Visually too the whole battery of percussion looks nice.

From: Morton Feldman Interview, by Fred Orton and Gavin Bryars, conducted in London on 27 May 1976

* * *

Feldman wrote "Why Patterns?" for himself to play with Eberhard Blum, flute(s) and Jan Williams, glockenspiel. The score consists of three completely notated but metrically unaligned parts. Theoretically one could say the notation is thus fixed but in playing the piece many times, one discovers a fair degree of latitude concerning vertical coincidence. The musical material consists largely of differentiated, overlapping ostinatos, hence the title. Originally it concluded when the last player completed their part. This was always Feldman, not only because the piano part is the longest but also because he invariably played the slowest. The present ending (the vertically aligned pulsing with the glockenspiel playing a descending chromatic scale) was added after the first performance. (Nils Vigeland)
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[maybe reposted soon]

Pierre Boulez Conducts The Domaine Musical Ensemble

The Domaine Musical Ensemble - Pierre Boulez Conducts The Domaine Musical Ensemble

Excerpts from the liner notes:

Arnold Schoenberg - Verklaerte Nacht, Op. 4

Arnold Schoenberg composed the string sextet VERLAERTE NACHT in three weeks during a holiday he took in September of 1899, when he was twenty five years old. The premiere performance took place in Vienna in 1903. Together with Guerrelieder and the symphonic poem Pelleas at Melisande, Verklaerte Nacht is one of the most significant works of Schoenberg's first creative period, full of the flamboyant expressiveness traceable across the metamorphosis of his musical language and that of the Vienna School. Undeniably, there are traces here of Wagner: harmonically, we are reminded of Tristan. The specific nature of Schoenberg's chromaticism, however, unlike Wagner's is linear and transcends tonal control.
Although cast in a unified mould, Verkaerte Nacht is in five parts that follow closely the construction of the poem by Richard Dehmel, that inspired the work. On the one hand, the work is rhythmically unstable and modulates constantly when the two persons express themselves (the woman's confession, etc.). On the other hand, when presenting the idea of place (moonlit universe, gently starlit night, etc.) the tonalities become fixed and rhythms more stable.
The work is often performed in Schoenberg's own transcription for string orchestra, but the version here presented is the original one for string sextet.

Jean-Claude Eloy - Equivalences

The title "Equivalences" refers to numerous aspects of the piece and should be interpreted in the sense of an equilibrium between contrasting forces. In the simplest terms, there is the deployment of musical instruments: A triple symmetry in an arc formed by 6 percussionists, 3 groups of winds and piano-celesta with harp. On a higher plane, we may regard it as a depiction of the contrasting elements that make up the work; density: zero to maximum; registers: fixed to mobile; coordination: absolute to relative, etc. The whole form itself reflects these oppositions, this dialectic play, whence derives a contrasting sonority, an extension of the dynamic field.
Certain structures are variable from one performance to another, utilizing modifiable intensities that affect mainly the duration of the percussion instruments' resonances, to illustrate: a contrast is created between wind instruments producing long held sounds on the one hand, and on the opposite side are percussion instruments, piano, harp, etc., producing sounds of rapid growth and decay. Bit by bit, these sounds are drawn closer until they are confronted. The movement continues, until the sounds are at their initial state, but on opposite sides: the winds producing "pointed" sounds, while the percussion instruments, by means of complicated trills, etc., produce long held sounds. Henri Pousseur describes this development as an "arc of duration".
Equivalences had its premiere performance at the Darmstadt Festival in July 1963 under the direction of Pierre Boulez.

Henri Pousseur - Madrigal III

HENRI POUSSEUR was born at Malmedy, Belgium in 1929. He studied at the Liege and Bruxelles Conservatoires from 1947 to 1953. From 1954 to 1957 he worked at the electronic music studios of Radio Cologne and Milano. He is co-founder and, since 1958, director of the APELAC studio in Bruxelles. He has authored important theoretical works on contemporary music, and has given lecture cycles at Darmstadt and other centres.
Madrigal III for clarinet, violin, cello, 2 percussion instruments and piano was composed in the spring of 1962 and dedicated to the memory of Wolfgang Steinecke, since 1945 the daring promoter of the Darmstadt Festival.
This work comprises almost all of Madrigal I, written four years earlier for clarinet solo. For Pousseur, the earlier work represented a first and almost unconscious attempt to reactivate the harmonic values that post-Webernian music had almost neutralized. Pousseur made a more resolute attempt in this direction in Votre Faust. In Madrigal III, this reactivation is still dependent on dodecaphonic material, and crystalizes around a process of frequent and variable repetition of the constituent notes of an harmonic "field".

Tracklisting:

SIDE 1

1. Arnold Schoenberg - Verklaerte Nacht, Op. 4 {28:27}

SIDE 2

1. Jean-Claude Eloy - Equivalences {8:28}

2. Henri Pousseur - Madrigal III {12:00}

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Tautologos and Other Early Electronic Works

Luc Ferrari - Tautologos and Other Early Electronic Works

The selections on this recording are abstract musique concrete pieces from Ferrari's early part of his career before he started to use environmental recordings in his work. At the time, he was a cofounder of Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), an organization researching musique concrete and electronic music and worked with GRM cofounder and fellow electronic music pioneer, Pierre Schaeffer. On "Tautologos 1", electronic sounds were transformed by feedback and Doppler effects. The entire studio, including random objects and a piano were used in "Tautologos 2". "Und so Weiter" revolves around an electronically amplified piano and a four-track tape and it sounds like there are about four of these pianos being played at the same time. The performer on the piano is Gerard Fremy.

Tracklisting:

1. Etudes aux accidents {2:19}

2. Etudes aux sons tendus {2:55}

3. Visages V part 1 {2:14}

4. Visages V part 2 {4:16}

5. Visages V part 3 {4:08}

6. Tete et queue du dragon part 1 {4:39}

7. Tete et queue du dragon part 2 {4:41}

8. Tautologos 1 {4:27}

9. Tautologos 2 part 1 {2:12}

10. Tautologos 2 part 2 {5:11}

11. Tautologos 2 part 3 {7:38}

12. Und so weiter part 1 {4:39}

13. Und so weiter part 2 {8:45}

14. Und so weiter part 3 {2:05}

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Mieskuoro Huutajat 10th Anniversary Concert

Mieskuoro Huutajat are the Finnish shouting choir. Sometimes they perform in concert halls, sometimes on ice. As usual, a video is worth a thousand words. (Not to mention a documentary.)

Nevertheless, the CD booklet (included in this download) contains a fascinating essay by the conductor, which starts with the sentence: "I think that an artist explaining his work is a repulsive spectacle." He then goes on to detail at length the beginnings of the choir, and the cultural underpinnings of their activities.

This album is a recording of their 10th anniversary concert from 1997. Now twice as old, they still tour regularly: according to their official website, their last gig was only a month ago.

I have ripped this CD at a lower bit rate than normal, as it appears to still be available, so if you enjoy it, buy it!

[may or may not be reposted soon]

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

A new series of live-mixes is starting on my blog "Hush! Caution! Echoland!" today. Contemplative and textural, something like sonic wallpapers for open ears. I hope I can keep it up for a long time.

If you like the "Closet of Curiosities", you need to check it out. Pronto.

Imaginings

Jonathan Harvey and Frances-Marie Uitti - Imaginings

Jonathan Harvey - synthesizers

Frances-Marie Uitti - cello

The 9 tracks on Imaginings were chosen from a few hours of taped material where ideas arose spontaneously. The liner notes say that the selctions are "concentrations on various musical materials, timbric sources and musical ideas." There is no electronic treatment on the cello, but it is retuned. The synthesizers are the Yamaha SY77 and DX7 II.

Highly recommended.

Tracklisting:

1. 1 {12:44}

2. 2 {4:43}

3. 3 {0:58}

4. 4 {3:47}

5. 5 {5:14}

6. 6 {5:44}

7. 7 {8:28}

8. 8 {10:30}

9. 9 {3:38}

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Rune: Nexus Plays the Music of Hawkins Tenney and Mather

Nexus - Rune: Nexus Plays the Music of Hawkins, Tenney and Mather

Dance Variations composed by John Hawkins

performers:

Bob Becker - marimba

Robin Engelman - xylophone

Russell Hartenberger - glockenspiel, bongos, congas

John Wyre - vibraphone, roto-toms

Rune composed by James Tenney

performers:

Robin Engelman - Part I (objects of metal with short decay)

Russell Hartenberger - Part II (wooden objects)

Bill Cahn - Part III (rattles of various types, including snare drums and tambourines)

Bob Becker - Part IV (drums)

John Wyre - Part V (metallic objects with long decay)

Clos d'Audignac composed by Bruce Mather

performers:

Bob Becker - solo marimba

Robin Engelman - marimba

Russell Hartenberger - vibraphone

John Wyre - glockenspiel, cowbells, tubular bells, bass drum

James Tenney's piece was the one that drew me to this recording as I am interested in his work and hope to have more on this blog from Mr. Tenney in the future. Meanwhile, "Rune" and the other material is quite enjoyable (for me) and worth checking out especially if you're interested in percussion music.

Tracklisting:

1. Dance Variations: I {1:46}

2. Dance Variations: II {1:19}

3. Dance Variations: III {7:11}

4. Dance Variations: IV {6:51}

5. Dance Variations: V {2:11}

6. Dance Variations: VI {1:35}

7. Rune: 0' (first part) {8:06}

8. Rune: 8' (second part) {12:09}

9. Clos d'Audignac: (solo marimba) {4:40}

10. Clos d'Audignac: (ensemble entrance) {2:21}

11. Clos d'Audignac: cadenza I {3:15}

12. Clos d'Audignac: (interlude) {1:46}

13. Clos d'Audignac: cadenza II {2:07}

14. Clos d'Audignac: (coda) {1:37}

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A Message from the Management RE: We're Late For Class

Recently, I've learned about a band named We're Late For Class from the comments section of this blog. We're Late For Class describes itself as "an all-improv college band, pro-herb, anti-contract and some cut & paste". I've heard some of their music and liked what I heard so far. The band has its own blog on Blogger. There are several albums' worth of material available for free and it has even already posted a "greatest hits" collection including a Faust cover. Go over to their blog and check em out: We're Late For Class

Madrigals/Makrokosmos III

George Crumb - Madrigals/Makrokosmos III

Madrigals

performers:

Anne-Marie Mühle - soprano

Ulf Bergström - flute

Seppo Asikainen - percussion

Ǻsa Lännerholm - harp

Robert Röjder - double-bass

From the liner notes:

The Four Books of Madrigals were composed in the latter part of the 1960s. The texts are selcted fragments from the poems of Federico Garcia Lorca, as in some of Crumb's earlier works such as Night Music I and Ancient Voices.

It may seem peculiar to compose music to disconnected, sometimes seemingly meaningless sentences. However, Crumb has chosen these texts for two different reasons. On the one hand each fragment is about something one might call an archetype of our existence: life, death, love, child, woman (but not man!), angel, stars, phenomena closely related to the astrological conceptions - earth, air, water and fire - the four elements. On the other hand there is also a musical reason for Crumb to choose these sentences, namely the inherent rhythm and structure of the text sounds. The solo voice presents this text in a most varied way, from whispers to shouts, from speech to song with a broad vibrato or "straight" intonation. The instruments are often used to create nuances of sounds, thus creating an atmosphere for the voice to "live" in.

Makrokosmos III


performers:

Barbro Dahlman and Ingrid Lindgren - pianos
Seppo Asikainen and Rainer Kuisma - percussion

From the liner notes:

In "Makrokosmos III", completed in February 1974, George Crumb has expanded his scoring from the single piano used in "Makrokosmos I & II" to two pianos and percussion.

The battery of percussion instruments used in "Makrokosmos III" is large, containing for example vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, crotales, maracas, sleighbells, wood blocks, triangles and a great variety of drums, tam-tams and cymbals. The unconventional piano effects are produced in several ways, one of them being playing with the strings covered by paper sheets, and in addition to the usual percussion instruments mentioned above, a metal-thunder-sheet, Tibetan prayer stones, an African thumb piano, a variety of whistles and many other things are employed.

Much more information about George Crumb here.

Tracklisting:

1. Madrigal Book I: a) Verte desnuda es recordar la tierra {2:00}

2. Madrigal Book I: b) No piensan en la lluvia, y se han dormido {3:04}

3. Madrigal Book I: c) Los muertos llevan alas de musgo {4:04}

4. Madrigal Book II: a) Bebe el agua tranquila de la canción aneja {1:45}

5. Madrigal Book III: a) La noche canta desnuda sobre los puentes de marzo {2:53}

6. Madrigal Book II: c) Caballito negro ? Dónde llevas tu jinete muerto? {1:37}

7. Madrigal Book III: a) La noche canta desnuda sobre los puentes de marzo {1:41}

8. Madrigal Book III: b) Quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas {2:12}

9. Madrigal Book III: c) Nana, nino, nana del caballo grande que no quiso el agua {3:41}

10. Madrigal Book IV: a) Por qué naci entre espejos? {2:20}

11. Madrigal Book IV: b) Tu cuerpo, con la sombra violeta de mis manos, era un arcángel de frio {2:12}

12. Madrigal Book IV: c) La muerte me está mirando desde las torres de Córdoba! {3:40}

13. Makrokosmos III: Nocturnal Sounds (The Awakening) {5:56}

14. Makrokosmos III: Wanderer-Fantasie {5:49}

15. Makrokosmos III: The Advent {10:13}

16. Makrokosmos III: Myth {4:45}

17. Makrokosmos III: Music of the Starry Night {12:26}

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Toshio Hosokawa: Sounds of Silence

This is my own compilation of two pieces by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. His works often feature Japanese instruments or ensembles and are oriented towards traditional Japanese musical concepts. Of course, these compositions are always "contemporary" or "New" music regarding their conceptions, properties and techniques; yet many of them equally represent a direct continuation of musical traditions of Hosokawa's native Japanese culture. This seems to be a quality unique to Eastern cultures; most Western traditions are dreadfully immune to any kind of renewal or development.

In the 1980s, under the influence of his teacher Klaus Huber, Hosokawa began to focus on traditional Japanese music (even learned to play the mouth organ Shô). As a kind of "New Wave Takemitsu", his work centers around the idea of the sound-silence continuum and concepts inherent in Japanese calligraphy, concentrating on the energy before and after the brushstroke - the hand moving towards or away from the paper.
The shortish "Koto-Uta" ("Koto Song") from 1999, for voice and koto (one performer), seems like an elaborate study on calligraphy. The sounds attain a very graphic quality here, especially in the silences.
"Koto-Uta" sets the listener's mood perfectly for the nearly 50 minutes of "New Seeds of Contemplation" (1986/95), a Mandala for Shomyo and Gagaku.

Ensemble Yusei performing "New Seeds of Contemplation"

Shomyo is used as a general term for different schools of traditional Buddhist chants and prayers. For "New Seeds", Hosokawa introduces a group of four singers from the Tendai sect with their unique style of chanting. Gagaku is Japan's traditional orchestral court music, one of the oldest forms of (notated) orchestral music in the world. Hosokawa's Gagaku ensemble uses two Ryûteki (traverse bamboo flute), one Shô, one Hichiriki (oboe), and one kugo (harp). 

BTW, the Shô is played by Miyata Mayumi, who worked with Western musicians like Björk, John Cage, accordionist Stefan Hussong, and many more. If you come across a contemporary Western composition featuring the Shô, most likely it was written for Miyata.

"New Seeds of Contemplation" was premiered on July 31, 1998 in Donaueschingen. The title was borrowed from Trappist monk Thomas Merton's book "New Seeds of Contemplation" from 1961. The sequence of the composition's seven parts is:

1. Preludio - Pneuma (Atem) / (Breath)

2. Werden - Frühling / Genesis - Spring

3. Ausstrahlung - Sommer / Emanation - Summer 

4. Meditation - Herbst / Meditation - Fall

5. Tiefe Versunkenheit - Winter / Deep Absorption - Winter

6. Drehung im Kreis - Gebet / Rotation in circles - Prayer 

7. Letzter Satz - Abgang / Last movement - Departure

"New Seeds of Contemplation" doesn't sound as otherwordly static as most Gagaku music, but employs basic principles like circling around a center or radiating outward from a center, which literally pull the listener INTO the music, Silence and Sounds. Energies interchanging between Silence and Sounds, increasing perception and the degree of concentration. Hearing and seeing like never before. Here's a piece that actually delivers what the title promises. 

Cover by H.C. Earwicker

[maybe reposted soon]

A Young Person's Guide To Phill Niblock

This double CD selected compilation of Phill Niblock's sustained tone pieces (drones, if you like, although somehow the music transcends such a simplistic description) was released in a limited edition of 1000 by Blast First and The Wire magazine in 1995. The microtonal interactions of the tones are an integral part of each composition, creating inner rhythms and fluctuations. The result is mesmerising, and can induce something akin to a meditative state whether or not the listener intends to enter one!

Phill's career as a film-maker and musician is neatly summed up on Wikipedia, and his official site is here.

Download all 4 zip archives for the full compliment of tracks.

EDIT: It's in two parts now. [06/23/2014]

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Harry Bertoia - Unfolding

Harry Bertoia (1915 - 1978) was a furniture and jewellery designer who went on to explore sculpture, and its sound-making possibilities. In the 70's, he released a series of LPs under the title Sonambient, now rare collectors items. This compilation of four pieces culled from the albums was released in Japan in 1993. There are three official websites devoted to his work: Harry Bertoia Research Project, bertoiaharry.com, and Bertoia Studio.

Presented in two .zip archives, download both for the full compliment of tracks.

Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2

[maybe reposted soon]

Hans Reichel: Lower Lurum

Hello everyone, Telvin here. Thanks to Grey Calx for the introduction and extending the honour of contributing to this blog. I intend to post some nicely obscure treasures, and where appropriate urge you to support the artist!

For instance, the subject of my first posting, Hans Reichel, is very much still going strong, and has an extensive discography, although this album from 1994 is the only one I own. "Lower Lurum" is mind-blowing, with many unique sounds and textures. Hans builds his own stringed instruments, and also plays his own creation: the daxophone, which is a shaped piece of wood played with a bow, that can sound eeriely vocal. Wikipedia has some extensive information about his talents, which also include typography and web design... check out his totally amazing website at www.daxo.de!

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