Ilhan Mimaroglu-TWO COMPOSITIONS FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC TAPE (1976) Folkways

Another great record from Ilhan Mimaroglu, who celebrates his 86th birthday today.

Notes excerpted from the insert (enclosed):To Kill A Sunrise
Although this is a piece of program music, the listener needs no program text as what is meant to be said is said in plain words which are part of the music....I wish to avoid, however, one possible misinterpretation. The piece is a dirge, a "song of mourning" for those who are murdered by the lackeys of the ruling class. It is not a criticism of the killers. I am not saying to them "you shouldn't have done what you've done to all those people who who wanted to change the world and and overthrow what you represent," or it would have been like saying to the enemy general "you shouldn't have killed our soldiers." such a criticism would amount (to) changing sides and trying to come to terms with those who are fought against.
The piece was composed in September through December, 1974, and first heard publicly in one of the evenings of electronic music given by the Ripert Center at The Kitchen, NYC, January 29, 1975(...)La Ruche
The piece is titled after a famous Paris building where such painters and writers as Picasso, Modigliani, Mac Orlan and Appolinaire had lived and worked.
At the time I was proceeding with the first experiments on on a new piece commissioned by the GRM, I learned that this historic building, still used as working and living quarters by many artists was facing demolition, to be replaced by a high-rise. My nocturnal visits to the environs soon turned into near-pigrimages, and the music I was composing developed under the influence of that place described as "unwonted, mysterious,phantom, a castle of mists(...)
Ilhan MimarogluIlhan Mimaroglu - TWO COMPOSITIONS FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC TAPE (1976) Folkways Records
Side One:
To Kill A Sunrise (A Requiem For Those Shot In The Back)
Composed in the studios of the Columbia-Princeton Center For Electronic Music, New York, 1974

Side Two:
La Ruche
Composed in the studios of the Groupe De Recherches Musicales,ORTF, Paris, France, 1975
(Jacques Wiederkehr-Cello
Michel Merlet-Harpsichord
Martine Joste-Piano)






















Please Note:
I am offering this record in two separate files,as La Ruche has some
distracting and persistent crackle in some sections; If you are annoyed by such vinyl artifacts, I suggest that you do not grab this particular file (#2).

If anyone can identify any of the music used for punctuation in "To Kill", (other than Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band's "Sun Zoom Spark") I'd appreciate it.
Dr I

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Doris Hays (Plays Various Artists)-ADORATION OF THE CLASH (Finnadar 1979)

Doris Hays- ADORATION OF THE CLASH

Notes excerpted from the cover (enclosed) by Doris Hays:

Tone clusters: ideal rebellious gesture to topple the sacred Western muse off its sacred pedestal. A forearm bangs, and the tedium of linearity is broken, its intractable logic punctuated by the rude rough mass of second intervals- fingered, palmed, armed, and fisted for the clash.

Doris Hays: Sunday Nights (1977)
...Sunday Nights in Rossville, Georgia, at McFarland Memorial Methodist Church, when I was a teenager, and Mr Hudgeons led the hymn singing with his fist and the bass line. Sunday Nights is a recollection of those 4th and 5th intervals and tune fragments and a memory of the boredoms , tyranny and uncertain promise of church religion.

Henry Cowell: Piece For Piano Paris 1924
uses strumming, plucking, damping, and hitting the strings inside the piano (hence his term "string piano') in addition to fist, forearm and palm clusters.

Russell Peck: Suspended Sentence (1973)
Peck's own ideas about Suspended Sentence:
"...of desperate flight, a trip down blind alleys, trying to get started but can't get started. I was trying to write a piece that was purely pornosonic, had no structural coherence whatsoever. Hopefully this is not achieved. Definition of pornosonic: titillation of the senses without any deeper significance."

Ilhan Mimaroglu (1926) has written much music for traditional instrumental, as well as his better-known electronic music, which often contains collage, thick texture,overlay of different musical events. A surprise to those who know only the latter, his music for piano, string quartets, etc, is characterized by lyrical line and an expressive quality not often associated with composers of electronic music. Rosa reflects in its title and expressive intensity, as do all his compositions, Mimaroglu's deep passion for personal action towards the changing of society.

Morton Feldman: Vertical Thoughts IV; and Piano Piece (to Philip Guston) both composed in 1963. Marked extremely soft, both pieces record louder than they might be heard in live performance. Even at very soft dynamic levels, the minor seconds in this fingered cluster harmony prick the ear, often not lasting long enough to mellow out before the next vertical aggregate is quietly piled into place.

Leo Ornstein: Impressions De Notre Dame, I and II
Ornstein began his life as a piano virtuoso, but left public performance fairly early to give his time to writing music. His performances in the teens and twenties caused much excitement because of the music's dense harmonies, ferocious in loud passages; particularly one piece for which Ornstein is well known- Danse Sauvage or Wild Man's Dance.
In the past several years his music has been again brought to the attention of a larger public with frequency in performances of his keyboard music, notably his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra performed at Yale University in 1976.
Born in 1892 (or 1894) in Kremenchug, Russia, Leo Ornstein lives with his wife in Brownsville Texas.

(Addendum: Ornstein died Feb 24th 2002, aged 108 or 110 years.)
























Doris Hays-Adoration Of The Clash (Finnadar 1979)

Side One:
1- Doris Hays– Sunday Nights (5:17)
2- Henry Cowell– Piece For Piano Paris 1924 (5:32)

Side Two:
3- Russell Peck– Suspended Sentence (9:24)

Side Three:
4- Ilhan Mimaroglu– Rosa (5:10)
5- Morton Feldman– Vertical Thoughts IV (1:30)
6- Morton Feldman– Piano Piece (To Philip Guston) (2:52)

Side Four:
7&8- Leo Ornstein- Impressions De Notre-Dame (11:41)
7 – First Impression (5:09)
8– Second Impression (6:32)


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Ilhan Mimaroglu / Freddie Hubbard Quintet- SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY (A FANTASY FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC TAPE) 1971

Ilhan Mimaroglu / Freddie Hubbard Quintet

SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY (A FANTASY FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC TAPE) 1971

The Personel is: FREDDIE HUBBARD,trumpet & flugelhorn; JUNIOR COOK,tenor saxophone; KENNY BARRON,piano; ART BOOTH,bass; LOUIS HAYES,drums.
THE BARNARD-COLUMBIA CHORUS;DANIEL PAGET, conductor.
String orchestra under the direction ofGene Orloff and Selwart Clarke; ARIF MARDIN, conductor & Hammond organ
RECITERS listed in Track listings.
Synthesized and processed sounds,Mix components and final mixes realized by Ilhan Mimaroglu.

Some quotes from the gatefold (enclosed):
"The eclectic approach provides the essential condition for creative freedom".
"You can't write music right unless you know how the man that'll play it plays poker" -Duke Ellington
"I'm one of the world's greatest trumpet players".-Frederick DeWayne Hubbard, introducing himself in a television interview.
"Criminology doesn't pay".
"Before asking what you can do for your country, ask what your country has done for you".

SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY (A FANTASY FOR ELECRTOMAGNETIC TAPE)

Side One:

SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY, Part 1 (time: 19:43)

(a) THRENODY FOR SHARON TATE
(Prelude & Comment)
The Quintet, string orchestra, synthessized & processed sounds,Mary Ann Hoxworth, reciter
(b) THIS IS COMBAT,I KNOW
Trumpet,tenor saxophone, piano, string orchestra, synthesized & processed sounds
Fazil Husnu Daglarca's poem 'Poverty', recited by NHA-KHE.
(c) THE CROWD
TheQuintet, string orchestra, chorus, Hammond organ, synthesized & processed sounds.
Quotations from Soren Kierkegaard's essay,'That Individual' recited by Mary Ann Hoxworth, Additional textrecited by Charles Grau, Fazil HusnuDaglarca's quatrain,'Bloodless' recited by Gungor Bozkurt, Musical quotation from Scriabin's 'Etude in B flat minor, Op.8.
(d) WHAT A GOOD TIME FOR A KENT STATE
The Quintet, chorus & string orchestra, Musical quotation from Brahms' 'Ein Deutsches Requiem'.

Side Two:

SING ME A SONG OF SONGMY, Pt.2 (Time: 21:15)

(a) MONODRAMA
Trumpet solo, processed trumpet sounds.
(b) BLACK SOLDIER
String orchestra, processed string and percussion sounds, Fazil Husnu Daglarca's poem, 'Colored Soldier' recited by Freddie Hubbard
(c) INTERLUDE I
The Quintet
(d) INTERLUDE II
Synthesized and processed sounds, chorus, string orchestra, Hammond organ, NHA-KHE's poem,'Lullabye for a Child in War'
recited in Vietnamese by the poet.
(e) AND YET, THERE COULD BE LOVE
Trumpet solo, chorus, string orchestra, synthesized sounds,
Fazil Husnu Daglarca's poem 'Before The Bombs Struck The Dark Breasts' recited by NHA-KHE.
(f) POSTLUDE
Trumpet solo, processed trumpet sounds & synthesized sounds. Final words quoted from a poem by Che Guevara and recited by Gungor Bozkurt.



















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The Avant-Garde Violin

* sorry, no cover or artwork available

various artists compilation - The Avant-Garde Violin

performed by Gabriel Banci - violin on all pieces; Zita Carno - piano on "Duo for Violin and Piano"; Ilhan Mimaroglu - electronics on "Music Plus One for Violin Solo and Electromagnetic Tape"

released in 1970

Duo for Violin and Piano: This work was written in 1963. It was one of a group of bravura works for solo strings and keyboard I embarked on at that time. All these works (the others are for solo viola and solo cello) employed proportional notation - that is, a method of writing which depends on the distance between the notes on the page to indicate their duration, instead of the traditional form of metrical division. This method of notation enables these works to have a fluidity of rhythm impossible in the conventional system of notation. (William Sydeman)

Music Plus One for Violin Solo and Electromagnetic Tape: A verbal description of the piece would be superfluous; everything happens here on musical grounds, just like in any other piece of music. From a programmatic standpoint too there is nothing to say, for there are no hidden meanings, no extra-musical connotations.
The title, "Music Plus One", may, however, need clarification. By "Music" only the tape part is meant, that is, that which has already been conceived and realized in terms of sound, to which the indefinite and abstract "One" is added. It is represented by what is written down on paper, which, although commonly referred to as "music", is not music unless translated into sound by a violinist. It should follow that the title does not apply to the present recorded realization, for the "One" too became music here, but to all other possible realizations, which should not greatly differ from the one heard on this recording because the notation I used is thoroughly conventional.
The style of writing too is "conventional", at least in the sense that it reflects my response to a certain brand of conventional violin-writing. Along with my recently developed inclination to use the past as the fantasy of the present, the fact that the piece was intended for a virtuoso player of Gabriel Banat's stature also determined the character of the violin part.
"Music Plus One" was written in the winter months of 1970, and the tape part was realized in the studios of Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City. (Ilhan Mimaroglu)

Sonata for Violin Solo: [Robert Hall] Lewis's "Sonata" was composed on request from Gabriel Banat for a recital of twentieth-century violin music given at Lincoln Center in June, 1968. The composer writes as follows concerning the work:
"The creation of diverse musical situations and the development of interesting, expressive material were foremost in my thinking during the period when I composed the 'Sonata'. Thus strong, dramatic statements are sometimes found in juxtaposition to short phrases of quiet, more restrained mood; strummed four-note chords later give rise to passages of driving staccato character. In the 'Sonata', as in my other recent works, the basic method is that of elaborating a few musical gestures, which, gradually increase in scope and intensity.
"Originally, the 'Sonata da Chiesa' was an influence in structuring my composition, although as the work progressed, it assumed more flexible characteristics than those of the Baroque prototype. Four contrasting sections form the basis of the 'Sonata', the first of which is slow, in the manner of a 'Fantasia'. A second area, containing more rapid motion, later develops into a frentic 'Scherzando', involving multiple stopping, left hand pizzicato and saltando bowing. Expansive lyricism is primary in the third section, wherein a semi-contrapuntal texture in the upper register is achieved. A brief cadenza leads into the final 'Allegro Moderato', with its sharply profiled theme. Following some development, materials from previous sections are either alluded to or re-stated in literal form. The 'Sonata' concludes 'Meno Mosso' with the quiet dissolution of a six-note motive."

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. William Sydeman - Duo for Violin and Piano {22:27}

Side 2

1. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Music Plus One for Violin Solo and Electromagnetic Tape {10:31}

2. Robert Hall Lewis - Sonata for Violin Solo {11:49}

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Piano Music of the Near East

various artists compilation - Piano Music of the Near East

Amiram Rigai - piano

In the countries of the Near East, as in any other country where occidental culture is adoptive, musical composition modeled after its occidental counterpart came into being out of an intellectual necessity: that of finding a substitute for a traditional music which, under the dictate of its very essence, resisted evolution and was consequently in decay.

It was logical, as far as both the ideals and the basic methods of this process of substitution were concerned, that the fashioning be done after the examples of the national schools of the late nineteenth-century Europe. The first stream of the westernized near eastern music was therefore romantic (or post-romantic, or impressionist) in its overall gesture. Regardless of the composition date of each individual opus, all of the works recorded here fall into this category: music inspired by national traditions (musical, or other), displaying at least that intangible called "national character" whenever a national element is not evident, but employing a language and a medium belonging to western music. (liner notes)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Manolis Kalomiri - Prelude to "Magic Herbs" {2:12}

2. Paul Ben-Haim - Sonatina, Op. 38 {11:17}

3. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Pieces Sentimentales {8:13}

Side 2

1. Andre Amine Hossein - Prelude No. 1 {5:11}

2. Andre Amine Hossein - Persian Legend {4:41}

3. Anis Fuleihan - "From the Aegean" {7:06}

4. Amiram Rigai - Israeli Rhapsody {5:23}

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Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961-1973

various artists compilation - Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961-1973

CD released in 1998

This is an excellent and essential compilation of vintage first-generation electronic music from one of the most well-known electronic music studios.

The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was the first electronic music center of its kind to be established in the United States, and from 1959 to the late 1970s it was one of the premier sound facilities in the world. The history of the EMC falls into four sections: 1951-59, as the original experimental studio begun by Vladimir Ussachevsky; 1959-1983, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, directed by Ussachevsky, and the leading electronic music studio in the United States; 1983-1994, as the Columbia University Electronic Music Center, directed by Mario Davidovsky; and 1994 to the present, as the Columbia University Computer Music Center, directed by Fred Lerdahl and Bradford Garton. [now directed only by Bradford Garton] From 1951 to 1983, the function of the EMC was the teaching and production of electronic music, and the vast majority of pieces composed at the Center - approximately three hundred - were composed during this period. Some of these compositions have become classics of music history.
...
In 1959, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was founded, with Ussachevsky as director, and his colleagues Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt, and Roger Sessions on the committee of direction. A number of composers were invited to do the first work at the Center, including Bulent Arel (Turkey), Halim El-Dabh (Egypt), Mario Davidovsky (Argentina), and Charles Wuorinen, who was then a graduate student at Columbia. The Center presented its first concert in May 1961, the program consisting of Ussachevsky's Creation-Prologue, Arel's Stereo Electronic Music No. 1, Halim El-Dabh's Leila and the Poet, Milton Babbitt's Composition for Synthesizer, Mario Davidovsky's Electronic Study #1, Otto Luening's Gargoyles for Violin Solo and Synthesized Sound, and Charles Wuorinen's Symphonia Sacra. [all of these pieces with the exception of Wuorinen's piece are on the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center LP] This wide variation in musical style and aesthetic continued at the Center for the next twenty years, until Ussachevsky's retirement.  (Alice Shields)

Tracklisting:

1. Bulent Arel - Postlude from "Music for a Sacred Service" {4:01}

2. Charles Dodge - Earth's Magnetic Field {14:08}

3. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Prelude No. 8 (To the Memory of Edgard Varese) {3:59}

4. Bulent Arel and Daria Semegen - Out of Into {16:38}

5. Ingram Marshall - Cortez {8:35}

6. Daria Semegen - Electronic Composition No. 1 {5:52}

7. Alice Shields - Dance Piece No. 3 {5:53}

8. Alice Shields - Study for Voice and Tape {5:17}

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Electronic Music [1967]

various artists compilation - Electronic Music

* originally posted on August 9, 2006

Write-up by muse1453:
This is another compilation called "Electronic Music" released by the same label (Turnabout) as the Electronic Music compilation a few posts below. Not sure why this is not called "Electronic Music 2" or has another name. Anyway, it's more wicked stuff from Mimaroglu, Cage, and Berio. Enjoy.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Agony {9:06}

2. John Cage - Fontana Mix {11:14}

Side 2

3. Luciano Berio - Visage {20:23}

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Electronic Music [1965]

various artists compilation - Electronic Music

* originally posted on August 4, 2006

From the back cover:

This recording of electronic music presents the works of four authors who come from four different countries with quite varied musical backgrounds. Two of them have considerable knowledge of electronics which stems from a formal engineering training in one case, and from a high degree of practical experience in the other. Diversity of styles is in evidence, as each composer's style is his own concern. The common experience for these composers has been the use of technical resources at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and the investigation of specialized methods for the evolution and transformation of recorded sound materials, conducted in my course at Columbia and further demonstrated in private sessions by technicians. This work is done in Studio 106, located in McMillin Theatre on the campus of Columbia University in the same room where the older Columbia University Tape Studio was housed. The present studio has been considerably expanded in recent years and had become a part of a complex of three studios and a small laboratory established under a Rockefeller Foundation Grant given to Columbia and Princeton Universities in 1959.

With the notable exception of the very unique possibilities offered by the RCA Sound Synthesizer located in Studio 318, the standard and specialized equipment of the Center is devoted to the production of sound materials by "Classical" methods, common to all electronic music studios. Thus, materials (of either purely electronic or non-electronic origin) recorded on tape, may be subjected to manipulation by tape speed variation, electronic filtering, several types of frequency modulation, artificial reverberation, etc. Tape cutting and splicing by hand still occupies a good deal of time in preparing the sound patterns and arranging them in longer sequences. Techniques are available to create certain types of rhythmic patterns and timbre variations by semi-automatic methods, but the materials thus produced are of limited usefulness. Much time in classroom discussion is devoted to the structural considerations which we believe to be quite challenging and of paramount importance in the electronic music medium, rich as it is in unusual timbres and opportunities for the realization of complex rhythms.

It is hard to imagine that there is much occasion any more for claiming that electronic music is "dehumanized" in its content. Electronic music simply undertakes to express, by different means, human situations, ideas, and emotions. VLADIMIR USSACHEVSKY, PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Tracklisting:

1. Andres Lewin-Richter - Study No. 1 {3:30}

2. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe {7:08}

3. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Intermezzo {2:59}

4. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Bowery Bum {2:41}

5. Tzvi Avni - Vocalise {5:35}

6. Walter Carlos - Variations For Flute and Electronic Sound {3:54}

7. Walter Carlos - Dialogues For Piano and Two Loudspeakers {3:54}

Note: Wendy Carlos was Walter Carlos when this record came out so the name will be credited accordingly.

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