The Ghost Orchid: An Introduction to EVP

various artists compilation - The Ghost Orchid: An Introduction to EVP

I suppose that I should post something related to Halloween today. Here are some recordings of voices from beyond along with commentary explaining EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). These voices have appeared on the tapes of paranormal researchers seemingly in an attempt to communicate to the living.

Tracklisting:

1. Leif Elggren - Introduction {2:10}

2. Raymond Cass - untitled {7:09}

3. Leif Elggren - Polyglot Voices - Commentary {0:39}

4. [unknown artist] - Sonja Liepina {0:16}

5. [unknown artist] - Where's Mable {0:25}

6. [unknown artist] - Cold Soldart {0:13}

7. [unknown artist] - Gorgeskov {0:11}

8. [unknown artist] - Dawson {0:14}

9. [unknown artist] - Germans Visit Frederic {0:17}

10. [unknown artist] - You're Very Good {0:16}

11. Leif Elggren - PSB Interrupt - Commentary {0:45}

12. [unknown artist] - She Doesn't Bother {0:42}

13. [unknown artist] - Aircraft Intercept {0:29}

14. [unknown artist] - Elvis {0:21}

15. [unknown artist] - Put It on Ice and I'll Mend Your Feet {0:36}

16. [unknown artist] - Jesus {0:18}

17. [unknown artist] - Radio Luxembourg {0:18}

18. [unknown artist] - Raudive {0:24}

19. [unknown artist] - Not Enough There to Copy {0:11}

20. [unknown artist] - Oliver {0:07}

21. [unknown artist] - Don't Do It! {0:12}

22. Leif Elggren - Singing Voices - Commentary {0:43}

23. [unknown artist] - Out of This World {1:15}

24. [unknown artist] - All Your Sorrows {0:59}

25. [unknown artist] - Only Sonja Will Make It {0:21}

26. [unknown artist] - Uppsala Sun Countess {0:14}

27. [unknown artist] - I'm Joined to Many Countries {0:17}

28. [unknown artist] - I've Made It! {0:28}

29. [unknown artist] - Copyist {0:35}

30. Leif Elggren - Instant Response Voices - Comment {0:17}

31. Raymond Cass - Prometheus Passademus {0:38}

32. [unknown artist] - Of Unknown Origin {0:17}

33. Raymond Cass - Raudive 2 {0:52}

34. Raymond Cass - Mrs. Green {0:21}

35. Raymond Cass - Waistcoat {0:06}

36. Raymond Cass - Justified Theft {0:36}

37. [unknown artist] - Philip Larkin {0:13}

38. [unknown artist] - Tramping {0:21}

39. Raymond Cass - Unknown Possible {0:23}

40. [unknown artist] - So Strange I Remember You {0:06}

41. [unknown artist] - Bruckerby {0:06}

42. [unknown artist] - Burned With Force {0:21}

43. Leif Elggren - Alien Voices - Commentary {0:43}

44. Raymond Cass - Alien Voices {2:41}

45. [unknown artist] - Dead Machines {0:13}

46. Raymond Cass - Mysterious Voices {0:47}

47. [unknown artist] - Cosmic Race {0:17}

48. Raymond Cass - Wacky Shout {0:35}

49. [unknown artist] - We are Eagles {0:22}

50. Raymond Cass - Less Weird {1:02}

51. [unknown artist] - We Can See Edith by Radio {0:16}

52. Raymond Cass - Referring to Me {0:23}

53. [unknown artist] - He'll Be Ready to Be a Hero {0:25}

54. Raymond Cass - Exalted Visitor {0:31}

55. [unknown artist] - The Duke of Biarritz {0:10}

56. Raymond Cass - Prophetic Voice {0:18}

57. [unknown artist] - Carefully With Nerve Gas {0:12}

58. Raymond Cass - The Evil Struggle {0:48}

59. [unknown artist] - Monopoly Asian {0:06}

60. Raymond Cass - Intriguing Female {0:09}

61. [unknown artist] - Here Ist Astauder {0:09}

62. Raymond Cass - Gutteral Male {0:12}

63. [unknown artist] - We Originate on a Planet {0:13}

64. Raymond Cass - This Pressure {0:16}

65. Raymond Cass - More Pleasant Female {0:23}

66. [unknown artist] - Schallplatten {0:11}

67. Raymond Cass - Mysterious Females {0:20}

68. [unknown artist] - Una {0:32}

69. Raymond Cass - Male Entity {0:19}

70. [unknown artist] - Sistrenatus {0:09}

71. Raymond Cass - Gutteral Entity {0:14}

72. [unknown artist] - They'll Never Believe Us {0:10}

73. Raymond Cass - There are Probably Millions Now {0:24}

74. Leif Elggren - New Research - Commentary {0:28}

75. Johannes Hagel & Margot Tschapke - New Techniques and Interpretations: A Preliminary Report on a Scientific Investigation of EVP {1:10}

76. Leif Elggren - Archive - Commentary {0:21}

77. Michael Smythe & Nadia Fowler - Breakthrough 7" side A {10:47}

78. Michael Smythe & Nadia Fowler - Breakthrough 7" side B {10:31}

79. Leif Elggren - Conclusion {0:26}

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Togo - Musique Kabiye

Our last two posts of African music ("The Music of the Ba-Benzélé Pygmies" and "The Pygmies of the Ituri Forest") were well received by our visitors, so here's another record, this time from the Ocora label, featuring music of the Kabiyè people in Togo, documenting their unique and amazing society and culture. You'll get to hear lithophones (percussion instruments made from stone), whistle flutes (not unlike those of the Ba-Benzélé pygmies), driving drumbeats, polyrhythms, archaic counterpoint of the minimalist kind, and more.

The Kabiyè have lived since time immemorial in northern Togo, in mountains of chaotic and ruined appearance that served as a refuge from invaders, raiders and slave traders. Little by little they have deforested the mountains and, to subsist, have had to labor stubbornly to subdue this rocky land by concentrated agricultural development along the slopes creating veritable hanging gardens, mainly of millet and jams.

This society of incomparable farmers was devoid in the past of traditional chieftains (and professional musicians), but despite this it was not anarchic, because it was organized by age groups, each one having its own function.

These two characteristics determine the role of music in this society: on one hand the relationship with the agricultural cycle, on the other the organization by age groups.

Primarily, the music accompanies the principal feminine and masculine labors. This explains its seasonal character - each agricultural festival is associated with its particular music - and the ban on the use of certain instruments except for established celebrations, like the lithophone and the water flutes. Music's place in agricultural ritual also explains its special role in the worship of the dead, promoters of fertility. Secondarily, music is associated with the age groups, especially the efala and the kondona who, after five years, reach the staus of free man and citizen. The heavy bell, made of paired hoes, is the prerogative of the chief initiates, who present themselves to the people by climbing up an earthen hill, at the top of which they strike the bell.

Recordings, text and photos: Raymond Verdier and Anne-Marie Lavilléon
Recorded between 1960 and 1972

- Lithophone solo -
- Songs -
- Xylophone solo -
- The donga drum -
- Burial music -
- A rain dance -
- Musical Bow solo -
- Flute and horn: message transmission -
- The Orchestra of Landa -

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Studies for Player Piano

Conlon Nancarrow - Studies for Player Piano

I should be back to regular posting now. I was very busy offline the past week that I was unable to post much or check the comments. I'll start another run with something by a composer who has some highly interesting work. This is from an LP that came out either in 1967 or 1968.

Excerpts from the liner notes by Gordon Mumma:

The first of Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano was composed in 1948. Since then, he has composed 37 Studies, three of which (Nos. 34, 35 and 36) are still incomplete.
...
Nancarrow achieves the precise rhythmic control of his Studies for Player Piano by punching the player piano rolls directly. All of the studies were composed with a punching machine that the composer has specially built during a visit to New York City in 1947. The machine was used for Studies 1 through 21. Nancarrow then made modifications in its design to facilitate the more elaborate requirements of the Studies that followed.
Within specific limits, the loudness of a player piano can be controlled by holes punched on the roll that change the striking force of groups of hammers. For example, the treble notes can be loud while the bass notes are quiet. These inherent limitations, which allow only abrupt dynamic changes, have been overcome in the more contrapuntal Studies by Nancarrow's clever doubling of notes and radical use of register to achieve the effect of subtle changes of loudness.
The composer owns two Ampico player pianos on which he has modified the particular timbres that he likes for his Studies. The hammers of one of the pianos are made of metal. The hammers of the other are a combination of leather and metal. The Studies for Player Piano are intended for performance on one or the other of these special pianos, and this recording was made under the composer's supervision in his own studio in Mexico City.
Conlon Nancarrow was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, in 1912, and subsequently lived in Cincinnati and Boston. Following a period of time in Spain during the late 1930's, he became a resident of Mexico City.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. #2 {1:58}

2. #7 {6:22}

3. #8 {4:01}

4. #10 {4:05}

5. #12 {4:07}

6. #15 Canon 3/4 {1:02}

7. #19 Canon 12/15/20 {1:09}

Side 2

1. #21 Canon X {2:58}

2. #23 {3:50}

3. #24 Canon 14/15/16 {3:32}

4. #25 {6:07}

5. #33 Canon √2/2 {6:09}

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Dawn at Trout Lake

Bernie Krause - Dawn at Trout Lake

I meant to have this posted on Sunday, but there was a delay in posting. Anyway, the Sunday nature/environmental sounds posts are back.

This is a recording on cassette that I found at one of the local Salvation Army thrift stores. This is part of the Habitat Series where Kruase has recorded in rare natural habitats during the late 80s and early 90s. Some of the habitats in the series may no longer exist.

Here is a description of Dawn at Trout Lake: Springtime at Trout Lake and birds begin to sing at first light of dawn. Just after sunrise a raven circles high above the lake calling to his mate and the echo of his voice reverberates and carries for over a mile. A trout leaps at low-flying insects. The beautiful songs of redwinged blackbirds, chipping sparrows, steller's jays and an American robin can be heard throughout.

Tracklisting:

1. Dawn at Trout Lake {29:17}

Both sides of the cassette are the same.

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Tietchens: Seuchengebiete 2

A seminal record by German electronics pioneer Asmus Tietchens. Born in 1947, and having worked with Cluster (on "Cluster & Eno", 1977) and Peter Baumann from Tangerine Dream (on Tietchens' own first LP "Nachtstücke" from 1980), it would be easy to put Tietchens into one of the late-Krautrock drawers (marked "experimental electronic"). But his unique career and the fact that he's been active for more than 40 years now, still performing and releasing inspiring new music today, invalidate any such categorization.First of all, Tietchens is an autodidact, in the best sense of the term: "No studies, no academic education no scholarships just pure learning by doing = self-taught appropriation of creative skills and handling of analogue and digital studio technology. I am my own Tonmeister." Second, and no less important, he was never led astray by the temptations of commercialism. From his first experiments with tape recorders in 1965 on, he developed a strong urge to explore extremes, blending and merging electronics and concrete sounds something new, exciting and unheard.In the early 80s, with groups like Throbbing Gristle already having left their marks and traces in the newer music history, a close stylistic affinity of Tietchens' work to Industrial Music became evident. After his LP "Formen letzter Hausmusik" (1984) (on the Nurse With Wound/Current 93 label "United Dairies"), numerous releases on labels of the international Industrial scene such as Esplendor Geometrico, Hamster Records, Multimood and A-Mission, followed.Invited by the Goethe-Institute, Tietchens did a series of lecture-concert tours through South America. Since 1989, he teaches sound design, communication design and sound research at the Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften in Hamburg (HAW).From 1991 on, the list of his CD-releases on international labels such as Staalplaat, Soleilmoon, Selektion and Mille Plateaux has grown steadily, alongside numerous collaborations with other composers ranging from "Noise" and "Post-Industrial" to "Ambient", like Merzbow, Achim Wollscheid, Thomas Köner, Vidna Obmana, and many more. Also, Tietchens was repeatedly awarded the important "Karl-Sczuka-Preis für Akustische Kunst" by the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) (that's like the German Grammy for Radio Plays).
http://www.tietchens.de/

***

"Seuchengebiete 2" ("epidemic territories") is a very dark affair: concrete sounds, disfigured beyond recognition by filters and other effects, open up vast spaces the listener crosses not with delight, but with awareness and attention to the minute details that come up here and there. Each piece is a continuum, slowly evolving and dragging you on, not unlike one of the late abstract texts by Samuel Beckett. Landscapes that range from metallic stasis to fluid movements and dripping, deep cavern-like ambiences rumble past, leaving only ghostly traces...

1 Hydrophonie 13
2 Hydrophonie 8
3 Hydrophonie 11
4 Hydrophonie 12

***

Which curse has befallen the occident so that, at the end of its jaunty career, it spawns nothing but business-people, pepper-sacks, boondoggles with wasted smiles, whom you encounter everywhere, in Italy just as in France, in England like in Germany? Did a civilisation as delicate, as capacious have to end at this vermin?(E.M. Cioran: History and Utopia)

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Zyklus/Refrain/Transición II

Karlheinz Stockhausen/Mauricio Kagel - split release [S/8001]

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Zyklus (1959) for one percussionist

Performed by Christoph Caskel - marimbaphone, guiro, two wood drums, African tree drums, suspended Indian bells, side drum, four tom-toms, two cymbals, high hat, two triangles, vibraphone, four cowbells, gong, tam-tam, soft and hard sticks of different materials

In ZYKLUS the primarily static, open form of my KLAVIERSTUCK XI - which literally depends on the "Augenblick," the instantaneous glance of the eye - has been combined with the idea of a dynamic, closed form, resulting in a circular, curved form. Sixteen pages of notation have been spiral-bound to one another, side by side; there is no beginning and no end; the player may start on whichever page he pleases, but he then must play a cycle in the given succession. During the performance the player stands in the center of a circle of percussion instruments and turns, from one playing position to another, once around his own axis, clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on the direction in which he has chosen to read.

Areas containing dots and groups of notes and symbols vary from one another through differences in the number of possible combinations; they mediate continuously, in their composed succession, between the entirely unequivocal and the extremely ambiguous. The structure with the greatest indeterminateness - the most ambiguous form - is shaped in such a way that it comes to be almost indistinguishable from the immediately following most firmly fixed structure.

Thus one experiences a temporal circle in which one has the impression of moving constantly in the direction toward ever-increasing ambiguousness (clockwise) or certainty (counterclockwise), although at the critical point at which the extremes touch, one of them imperceptibly turns into the other. The purpose is to close the open form through the circle, to realize the static state within the dynamic, the aimless with the aimed, not to exclude or destroy one aspect or another, not to seek a synthesis in a third state, but rather to attempt again to eliminate the dualism and to mediate between the seemingly incompatible, the utterly different. (Karlheinz Stockhausen)

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Refrain (1959) for three performers

Performed by Aloys Kontarsky - piano wood blocks; Bernhard Kontarsky - celeste, antique cymbals; Christoph Caskel - vibraphone, cowbells, glockenspiel

Those who wish to understand what I have written for the three players in REFRAIN must read the score.

Those who wish to understand how the players interpret my score must know the score and compare performances.

Those who simply wish to hear (not understand) a piece of music need only listen.

What is left to be explained?

(Karlheinz Stockhausen)

Mauricio Kagel - Transición II (1959) for piano, percussion and two magnetic tapes

Performed by David Tudor - piano; Christoph Caskel - percussion

"Transición II" already has been posted not too long ago by H.C. Earwicker on his Kagel tribute compilation. However, as this is also performed by the same musicians, this is a different performance as this version is about three minutes longer than the one H.C. included in his post. I hope that he doesn't mind if I post this version here.

side 1

1. Karlheinz Stockhausen - Zyklus {11:41}

2. Karlheinz Stockhausen - Refrain {8:04}

side 2

1. Mauricio Kagel - Transición II {17:25}

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Piano Music of Erik Satie Volume 5

Erik Satie - Piano Music of Erik Satie Volume 5

It's finally here. Several months ago, I posted the other 5 volumes of Aldo Ciccolini's performances of Erik Satie's piano pieces (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 6). Volume 5 was missing, until now.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Jack in the Box {6:32}

2. Six pièces de la périodé 1906-1913 {8:08}

3. Prélude de la porte héroïque du ciel {3:21}

4. Musiques intimes et secrètes {2:54}

Side Two

1. Carnet d'esquisses et de croquis {14:30}

2. Premier menuet {2:00}

3. Nocturnes Nos. 4 & 5 {4:04}

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Earth's Magnetic Field

Charles Dodge - Earth's Magnetic Field

"Earth's Magnetic Field" is a computer-generated musical piece using the recorded observations of the Earth's magnetic field from 1961. It is made up entirely of electronic sounds. The observations were programmed into a computer by using a sound synthesis program. These observations are the notes of the piece.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Earth's Magnetic Field {13:50}

Side Two

1. Earth's Magnetic Field [continued] {15:00}

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New Electronic Music from Leaders of the Avant-Garde

various artists compilation - New Electronic Music from Leaders of the Avant-Garde

"I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments that will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."

This statement was made by John Cage as long ago as 1937. Yet, with a few "pre-historic" exceptions, it was not until the development of magnetic recording tape around 1950 that the fulfillment of this prophecy began to be truly realized. The establishment of tape studios in Paris, Cologne, Milan, New York and elsewhere enabled composers to create finished works directly on tape, utilizing both electronically generated signals and live sounds recorded through microphones. In both cases, the sounds could be further processed by electronic modification or tape manipulations. Henri Pousseur's "Trois visages de Liège" elegantly illustrates the refinement which can be achieved with such "classic" studio practice.

With the aid of such new musical resources, composers have pursued two increasingly divergent interests, the first leading toward the invention and discovery of "any and all sounds that can be heard," the second toward precise control over musical materials beyond the limits of the human performer. To facilitate such control, particularly over rhythmic problems, sophisticated programming devices, such as the RCA Music Synthesizers, the Moog Synthesizers and high-speed digital computers have been employed. Enabling the composer to specify precise values of frequency, amplitude, duration and succession of all sound events, such devices produce a completed tape composition requiring little or no editing. Milton Babbitt's "Ensembles for Synthesizer" is an eminent example of works in this genre.

To composers whose demands had already exceeded the capabilities of most instrumentalists, the elimination of the performer was most welcome, assuring a perfect "performance" every time. To others, more interested in questions of of process and change, chance and indeterminacy, plus the actions and interactions of human performers, the medium of fixed tape music seemed increasingly "deadly." Thus, in the late 1950's, a number of musicians began experimenting with "live" electronic performances. Foremost among these were John Cage (whose live electronic works actually extend back to "Imaginary Landscape No. 1", of 1939) and David Tudor. (From the liner notes by Richard Teitelbaum)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. John Cage - Variations II {26:02}

David Tudor - piano

Side 2

1. Milton Babbitt - Ensembles for Synthesizer {10:32}

2. Henri Pousseur - Trois visages de Liège {17:35}

I. L'Air et l'eau

II. Voix de la ville

III. Forges

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Electronic Music/Musique Concrete

various artists compilation - Electronic Music/Musique Concrete: A Panorama of Experimental Music, Volume 1

Recorded under the supervision of Pierre Henry, in collaboration with the sound laboratories of the West German Radio, Italian Radio, French Radio and Television, and Studio Apsome in Paris.

The liner notes say:

Electronic music and musique concrete offer incredible possibilities to composers of imagination and vision. The works of eleven such composers are represented on these two discs and the rich diversity in approach and achievement testifies to the full blown presence of a new and vital art form.

In our century, one of a composer's principal functions has been to explore his environment and translate his discoveries into meaningful sonic symbols. Viewed from this angle, the development of electronic music and musique concrete over the past twenty years has followed a course of inevitability; creative artists are interpreting our contemporary life with sounds uniquely expressive of man's flight into technology and space.

In this album the listener will encounter some fascinating music that gives exciting artistic expression to the moods and tenors of today.

Note: There is a fragment of the first LP that has been broken. That means only the first tracks on each side of this LP are unplayable. All other tracks play okay. Apologies in advance for those missing tracks, but the music on this compilation is essential electronic music which makes this still worthy of posting.

UPDATE: Check the comments for the missing tracks. Thanks hamor.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The missing tracks provided by hamor are provided in the files.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Luciano Berio - Momenti {7:06}

2. Luciano Berio - Omaggio a Joyce {6:16}

3. Bruno Maderna - Continuo {8:03}

Side 2

1. Luc Ferrari - Visage V {10:37}

2. Iannis Xenakis - Orient-Occident {10:38}

3. Francois Dufrene and Jean Baronnet - U 47 {3:28}

Side 3

1. Mauricio Kagel - Transition I {12:55}

2. Herbert Eimert - Selection I {9:45}

Side 4

1. Pierre Henry - Entité {5:40}

2. György Ligeti - Artikulation {3:45}

3. André Boucourechliev - Texte I {6:12}

4. Henri Pousseur - Scambi {6:16}

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Transformations

Hildegard Westerkamp - Transformations

Background of Hildegard Westerkamp from the liner notes:

The majority of her compositions deal with aspects of the acoustic environment: with urban, rural or wilderness soundscapes, with the voices of children, men and women, with noise or silence, music and media sounds, or with the sounds of different cultures, and so on. She has composed film soundtracks, sound documents for radio and has produced and hosted radio programs such as Soundwalking and Musica Nova on Vancouver Co-operative Radio.

In a number of compositions she has combined her treatment of environmental sounds extensively with the poetry of Canadian writer Norbert Ruebsaat. More recently she has written her own texts for a series of performance pieces for spoken text and tape.

A testimonial from Pauline Oliveros:

Sound surrounds us. We are sound inside and we resonate with the soundscape even if we are not listening. Hildegard Westerkamp is sensitive to soundscape. She ably shapes fanciful, imaginative music from her recordings, mixing and transformations of the soundscape. Westerkamp creates new possibilities for listening. One can journey with her sound to inner landscapes and find unexplored openings in our sound souls. The experience of her music vibrates the potential for change. Her compositions invite interaction - a chance to awaken to one's own creativity. One can transform through listening as she has. In the music and soundscapes of Westerkamp we feel memory and imagination as we hear through to the future.

Notes and anecdotes from Hildegard Westerkamp:

I feel that sounds have their own integrity and need to be treated with a great deal of care and respect. Why would I process a cricket's voice but not my daughter's? If the cricket had come from my own garden, had a name and would talk to me every day, would I still be able to transform it in the studio? Would I need to?

The moment of recording the cricket in the Zone of Silence (a desert region in North Eastern Mexico) had been a magical moment. So, studio 'manipulation' of the sound seemed somehow inappropriate. Its transformation into a composition had to become a new sonic journey of discovery to retain the level of magic first experienced. I remember when I had to say 'Stop' to electroacoustic experimentation: the cricket was in danger of being obliterated.

...

I hear the soundscape as a language with which places and societies express themselves. In the face of rampant noise pollution, I want to be understanding and caring of this 'language' and how it is 'spoken.'

I compose with any sound that the environment offers to the microphone, just as a writer works with all the words that a language provides. It is in the specific ways in which the language is selected, organized and processed that composition occurs.

I like to use the microphone the way photographers often use the camera, searching for images, using the zoom to discover what the human eye alone cannot see. I like to position the microphone very close to the tiny, quiet and complex sounds of nature, then amplify and highlight them for radio or any other electroacoustic medium : to make them audible to the numbed urban ear. Perhaps in that way these natural sounds can be understood as occupying an important place in the soundscape and warrant respect and protection.

...

These compositions are now on this disc, an altogether abstract place, far away from the places in which the sounds originated. They now may have to put up with bad playback equipment and noisy living rooms, with car radios or distracted ears. A forest piece in an apartment by a freeway...can it draw the listener back into the forest? An urban piece in quiet country living...is it necessary?

Other credits:

Norbert Ruebsaat - poetry and reading (track 1)

Brian G'Froerer - French horn (track 2)

Tracklisting:

1. A Walk Through the City {16:05}

2. Fantasie for Horns II {13:07}

3. Kits Beach Soundwalk {9:48}

4. Cricket Voice {11:02}

5. Beneath the Forest Floor {17:23}

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Saariho's Chamber Music

Kaija Saariaho - Chamber Music

Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho is an exceptional person in more ways than one; not only in her own country but also within the international new music scene, in which she has asserted herself amidst the middle generation of the avant-garde, with performances in Salzburg, London, Paris and New York. Beginning with her childhood dream of becoming an organist in a small provincial town, she has developed into a composer whose works include a more traditional violin concerto for violinist Gidon Kremer as well as pieces that utilize the newest computer technologies. The secret of her success lies perhaps in the fact that she has given music a new sensuality.
...
The first piece that Kaija Saariaho today characterizes as completely her own is the flute solo Laconisme de l'aile. The essential elements of her later compositions are already found here: the sensuous shaping of tone colour, the dream-like subtlety in the continual changing between tone and colour and the reference to the various dimensions of a musical space in which tone colour and harmony take on the predominant structural roles. The title Laconisme de l'aile - "Aphorism of the Wing" - refers to a poem by Saint-John Perse, the rhythm and textual sound of which have been directly incorporated into the composition.
...
The piece Noa Noa for flute and live electronics is based on certain flute mannerisms which the composer felt unhounded by for years. As she was always unhappy with the concert halls in which her music was performed, she began, with the help of the electronics, to create the acoustics she needed.
...
For the composing of Petals she and the cellist Anssi Karttunen first examined the various bowing techniques and expressive possibilities of the cello in order to create, on the one hand, a flowing transition between tone and noise and on the other hand, tension through the contrast between these two "opposites".
...
In Spins and Spells for violoncello it's more about the interpretation of two basic gestures: the one being what the composer calls "spinning top" motifs which spin in place or can run through changes, and the other being moments without strict tempo which concentrate on colour and texture.
...
The piece Cendres - "Ashes" - which was created in 1998 for the three musicians of the Wolpe Trio is also a balancing act between two extremes: on the one hand the instruments should try to come as closely together as possible in terms of range, rhythm, dynamics, articulation and tone colour, on the other hand they should each be able to express their own idioms. In this way, according to the composer, musical tension is created and controlled.
...
The composition Mirrors for flute and violoncello is based on fragments which can be assembled in different ways. The musicians however are to approach the combinations in such a way that there are always reflections within one or more of the dimensions of rhythm, range, instrumental gestures and tone colour.
...
Even though the piano doesn't particularly interest the composer in regards to her sound research, she responded to the request of Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi to adapt a Beatles song for her with the little "Improvisation", Monkey Fingers, Velvet Hand for which she used a characteristic bass line from "Come Together" and a modulation from "Happiness is a Warm Gun". Her real specialty is and remains however that of tone colour composition, as Saariaho realized in Six Japanese Gardens for percussion and computer driven electronics. In each of the six sections of the composition she is occupied with a specific rhythmical apsect of her material. The tone colours of the instruments are enriched by electronically adapted natural sounds, ritual vocal and percussion sounds which were recorded by Japanese percussionist Shnti Ueno. If one considers the fact that the Finns are an Asian people in Europe, then Kaija Saariaho has herewith gone a bit back to her roots.

(Above information from the liner notes.)



Performers:

Wolpe Trio: Lesley Olson - flute, Scott Roller - violoncello, Susanne Achilles - piano

Thomas Neuhaus - live-electronics (tracks 2, 6 and 8)

Andreas Boettger - percussion and live-electronics (tracks 9-14)

Tracklisting:

1. Cendres {9:09}
for alto flute, violoncello and piano (1998)

2. Noa Noa {8:28}
for flute and electronics (1992)

3. Mirrors {3:38}
for flute and violoncello (original version 1997)

4. Spins and Spells {6:05}
for violoncello solo (1996)

5. Monkey Fingers, Velvet Hand {3:06}
for piano solo (1991)

6. Petals {9:00}
for violoncello (electronics ad libitum) (1988)

7. Mirrors {3:37}
for flute and violoncello (version Lesley Olson 1998)

8. Laconisme de l'aile {10:30}
for solo flute with optional electronics (1982)

9. Six Japanese Gardens: Tenju-an Garden of Nanzen-ji Temple {3:07}
Six Japanese Gardens for percussion and electronics (1993/95)

10. Six Japanese Gardens: Many Pleasures (Garden of the Kinkaku-ji) {1:36}

11. Six Japanese Gardens: Dry Mountain Stream {3:22}

12. Six Japanese Gardens: Rock Garden of Ryoan-ji {3:55}

13. Six Japanese Gardens: Moss Garden of the Saiho-ji {2:48}

14. Six Japanese Gardens: Stone Bridges {3:42}

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The Bewitched

Harry Partch - The Bewitched-A Dance Satire (1955)

This is a recording of the first performance of Harry Partch's dance-satire, THE BEWITCHED, which took place at the University of Illinois' Champaign-Urbana campus in 1957. The performance featured musical instruments designed and built by the composer and played by the University of Illinois Musical Ensemble. This recording was originally released on Partch's own label, Gate 5.

Excerpted notes and synopsis by Harry Partch:

The Bewitched is in the tradition of world-wide ritual theatre. It is the opposite of specialized. I conceived and wrote it in California in the period 1952-55, following the several performances of my version of Sophocles' Oedipus. In spirit, if not wholly in content, it is a satyr-play. It is a seeking for release - through satire, whimsy, magic, ribaldry - from the catharsis of tragedy. It is an essay toward a miraculous abeyance of civilized rigidity, in the feeling that the modern spirit might thereby find some ancient and magical sense of rebirth. Each of the 12 scenes is a theatrical unfolding of nakedness, a psychological strip-tease, or - a diametric reversal, which has the effect of underlining the complementary character, the strange affinity, of seeming opposites.

Generally, the Witch occupies a throne near the front of the stage, facing the opposite entrance, draped in robes which assume different colors with the changing lights. She is frequently a dark silhouette, creating the illusion of a presence which the dancers hear but cannot see. She sits immobile, she stands, she moves rhythmically on the throne. Singing wordlessly in a male and female voice, she occasionally assumes command of her Chorus as ostensible conductor.

The instruments dominate the set. They are on risers of different heights, the risers being connected by a stairway, or a nexus of stairways, which mature into an ascent without evident end, at one of the far corners of the rear. This is a true story.

Gravitating to my instruments and to an idea, the "lost musicians" discovered that they were not relegated to a pit, but obligated to fulfill an integral element of ritual, on stage, and they did so. From the viewers' standpoint, the dynamism involved in seeing them as a tumultuous part of a modern whole, along with dancers, actors, singers, medicine-men, or whatever, opens a road to the rediscovering of Western man's ancient past and his present brothers.

The original lost musicians were never involved in a formal staging of The Bewitched, but I found willing proxies at the University of Illinois, and this was the locale of its debut, at the Festival of Contemporary Arts of 1957.


Argument We are all bewitched, and mostly by accident: the accident of form, color, and sex; of prejudices conditioned from the cradle on up, of the particular ruts we have found ourselves in or have dug for ourselves because of our individual needs. Those in a long-tenanted rut enjoy larger comforts of mind and body, and as compensation it is given to others who are not so easily domesticated to become mediums for the transmission of perception, more frequently. Among these are the lost musicians. The present-day musician grows up in a half-world between "good" music and "not-so-good" music. Even when he has definitely made his choice between the two, he is still affected by the other, and to that extent he is dichotomous and disoriented. His head is bathed in an ancient light through a Gothic window while his other end swings like a miniature suspension bridge in a cool right-angle gale. The perception of displaced musicians may germinate, evolve, and mature in concert, through a developing at-one-ness, through their beat.

Tracklisting:

1. Prologue: The Lost Musicians Mix Magic {18:08}

2. Scene 1: Three Undergrads Become Transfigured in a Hong Kong Music Hall {5:29}

3. Scene 2: Exercises in Harmony and Counterpoint are Tried in a Court of Ancient Ritual {5:07}

4. Scene 3: The Romancing of a Pathological Liar Comes to an Inspired End {5:31}

5. Scene 4: A Soul Tormented by Contemporary Music Finds a Humanizing Alchemy {5:40}

6. Scene 5: Visions Fill the Eyes of the Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room {4:19}

7. Scene 6: Euphoria Descends a Sausalito Stairway {4:16}

8. Scene 7: Two Detectives on the Trail of a Tricky Culprit Turn in Their Badges {5:30}

9. Scene 8: A Court in Its Own Contempt Rises to a Motherly Apotheosis {5:26}

10. Scene 9: A Lost Political Soul Finds Himself Among the Voteless Women of Paradise {5:56}

11. Scene 10: The Cognoscenti are Plunged into a Demonic Descent While at Cocktails/Epilogue {9:17}

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International Computer Music Conference 2000

various artists compilation - International Computer Music Conference 2000

I came across a second hand copy of this recording. This is a collection of tracks selected by a jury during the (ICMA) International Computer Music Association's annual conference in 2000. One would get the impression that this is all computer music, but actually these are some nice electroacoustic pieces that incorporate acoustic instruments with the computers. Instruments sometimes take center stage. The sounds of the instruments are digitally treated and manipulated such as the hi-hat cymbals on Cort Lippe's "Music for Hi-Hat and Computer". Acoustic instruments also interact with the computer such as the viola on Gerhard Eckel and Vincent Royer's "Traverse" and the string quartet on Agostino di Scipio's "5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions."

The ICMA website explains the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC): The ICMC is the preeminent annual gathering for computer music practitioners from around the world and its unique interweaving of professional paper presentations and concerts of new computer music, refereed by ICMA-approved international panels, creates a vital synthesis of science, technology and the art of music.

Tracklisting:

1. Horacio Vaggione - Agon {8:47}

2. Cort Lippe - Music for Hi-Hat & Computer {13:52}

3. Marc Ainger - Shatter {8:07}

4. Agostino di Scipio - 5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions (1) {1:36}

5. Agostino di Scipio - 5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions (2) {2:20}

6. Agostino di Scipio - 5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions (3) {2:19}

7. Agostino di Scipio - 5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions (4) {2:19}

8. Agostino di Scipio - 5 Difference-Sensitive Circular Interactions (5) {3:01}

9. Richard Nance - Between Dog and the Wolf {5:34}

10. Gerhard Eckel & Vincent Royer - Traverse {11:18}

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Earle Brown: Synergy (hatART)

Another one of those out-of-print hatART discs from the 90s. This one offers three compositions by Earle Brown, with the oldest one, "Event: Synergy II" from 1967/68, in two different versions.

from the liner notes by Art Lange:

The score of "Event: Synergy II" offers five possible instrumentations; an ensemble of nineteen (eleven winds and two string quartets), only the winds or strings, or combinations of six or five winds with one string quartet. It is suggested that two conductors divide the material between them, in order to create additional complexities of density, interplay, and unrelated activity. (These two versions use only the designated "B" material, with the composer conducting the five winds and Steffen Schleiermacher conducting the string quartet.)The notation consists of four "events" or types of activity:
- a sequence of five numbered sections which specify pitches and dynamics with only relatively proportional durations,
- graphic and less rigid pitch indications on staves without specifying instrument,
- five chords to be used as fermatas, and
- a page of notes on staves without clef, barlines, tempo, dynamic, or durational indications.

Following the composer's detailed instructions and using these pages as a map, each conductor must direct his ensemble through the score, choosing who plays what, and when, with or without regard for what the other ensemble is doing. The assures that each performance will be drastically different from any other, as the two performances here reveal.

Page from "Tracking Pierrot"

"Windsor Jambs" (1980) and "Tracking Pierrot" (1992) extend these concepts even further, specifying the instrumentation (the latter using the same as Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" - composed 80 years earlier! - with the substitution of percussion for the voice; it's title is an homage though the music doesn't otherwise refer to the earlier work in substance or atmosphere) but providing a more complicated interweaving of "closed form" and "open form" sections and wider range of possible instrumental combinations to the lone conductor.... The music is no longer intended as a one-dimensional icon, but an unpredictable tracking of the "dynamic process" of form as it is created. It is not a statement of being, but of becoming...

The manner in which Brown has opened up the score to ambiguous aspects of formal organization does not lessen the demands of instrumental accuracy required of the musicians, nor does it dismiss the personal qualities of Brown's compositional efforts. There is an undeniable lyricism, as well as a quickness of line and gesture... His inventive scoring creates sounds and, more importantly, attitudes of performance that are unavailable in conventional notation; moreover, there results from the spontaneous measures a heightened level of creative tension and energy that is unobtainable from normal classical procedures.

1 Event: Synergy II (1967/68) - 1st version
2 Tracking Pierrot (1992)
3 Windsor Jambs (1980)
4 Event: Synergy II (1967/68) - 2nd version

Ensemble Avantgarde Leipzig
conducted by Earle Brown

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Hindustani: A Panorama of North Indian Music

various artists compilation - Hindustani: A Panorama of North Indian Music

Excerpts from the liner notes:

To most people in the West, Indian music is played either on the sitar or the sarod, and of course, the tabla. That other instruments exist is hardly suspected, while singing, in many ways the most important aspect of Indian music, is wholly ignored. And so in this record, in order to give a wider view of what India has to offer, I have included music for several lesser known (in the West) instruments or combinations of instruments, and a typical devotional song, most of which will never be heard outside their country, and even their region, of origin.I have avoided the word "classical" in the title, because it would apply strictly to only 4 of the recordings [tracks side1 track1, side1 track3, side2 track2, side2 track3).

Surbahar, Rag Kirwani

The surbahar is a larger version of the better-known sitar, and because of its deeper tone and slow tempo, is seldom accompanied by drumming. It has the same number of strings, four playing, three tuned to the tonic and serving as a tonic drone, and up to 13-sympathetic strings which are struck across like a harp from time to time, but mainly at the beginning.These are tuned according to the rag to be played. It has frets and is plucked with a wire plectrum. Both the surbahar and the sitar, in their present forms, date only from the mid-19th century.

Mirabai Bhajan, Rag Madh

This is a music of the heart, not of the head. He [singer Mohanlal Rayani] is accompanied by a dugal, the name used in Kathiawar (on the West coast, just above Bombay) for a pair of small kettle drums, similar to the tabla; a ramsagar, a one or two-stringed drone used in those parts instead of the tambura; and two men each playing two pairs of small cymbals.

Mirabai (1403-1470), a Queen of Udaipur, is revered by Indians as a great saint and for her marvellous devotional songs. One has no idea to what tunes she sang them. She left her kingdom, going to live in Dwarka on the West coast, a famous place of pilgrimage associated with Krishna.

This is a rough translation of the song:

1. I am from every point of view unhappy
2. I have been caught in a whirlwind and blown over into this world, though really I belong to another place.
3. I am not a dweller in these shallow waters and cannot survive here as I am a creature of the great unfathomable ocean.
4. Truly I am in love with that great One of the other world. Here I am a foreigner. My eyes are swollen with my constantly gazing at Him.
5. Mirabai says that (she) has an unswerving faith in His excellence, and as a result, she has become blissfully happy by the mere repetition of His holy name.

At this private performance before a small audience of music lovers, there are the usual enthusiastic cries of pleasure.

Jaltarang, Rag Gunakri

The jaltarang, consisting here of 15 porcelain cups of decreasing size, are filled with water to the precise level to give the correct pitch. They are said to be of ancient origin and originally of metal. Either they are struck with sticks, as here, or else the lips are rubbed with a finger to produce a note.

Naubat Shahna'i, Rag Sindhu Bhairavi, Tintal

Here the word 'naubat' means keeping watch and in particular, the sounding of drums to mark the hours. It has in fact become synonymous with 'naqqara', the drums used for this purpose. 'Shahna'i' is the North Indian oboe, so that 'Naubat shahna'i' denotes a specific kind of music for oboes and drums played to announce the eight watches into which the 24 hours were divided in India before the introduction of clocks. The musicians are seated in a gallery (naubat khana) over the outer gateway of palaces and shrines, and this recording was made at the most famous Muslim shrine in India, that of Moyinuddin Chishti (1142-1256) at Ajmer, in Rajasthan.

Tabla Solo, Tintal, Rag Pilu

'Rag Pilu' uses all the notes of the chromatic scale: in this case, since the rag is not developed, the player confines himself to the notes that form its characteristic constituents.
'Pilu' is said to express pity and sorrow.

Sarangi, Rag Maru Bihag

The sarangi is a fiddle carved out of a single block of wood, having 3 gut playing-strings, and up to 36 metal sympathetic strings. Its front is covered with a skin. The player, instead of stopping the strings with the finger-tips, from the front, uses the finger-nails, from the side. It is held with the neck pointing upwards.
'Maru Bihag' is a night rag, and its creation is attributed to the late Ustad Allaudin Khan.


Tracklisting:

Side A

1. Chandrashekar Naringrekar - Surbahar, Rag Kirwani {8:43}

2. Mohanlal Rayani - Mirabai Bhajan {7:33}

3. Chintamani Jain - Jaltarang, Rag Gunakri {8:25}

Side B

1. [uncredited artist] - Naubat Shanna'i, Rag Sindhu Bhairavi {11:28}

2. Fayyaz Khan - Tabla Solo, Tintal, Rag Pilu {5:31}

3. Sabri Khan - Sarangi, Rag Maru Bihag {9:02}

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