Ligetti, Berio, Nono, Feldman, Takemitsu

nono's an interesting one -- cos it's all so political, Italian Communist Party meets concrete meets ligeti-chorale

(who else is political avant-classical? mimaroglu [spelling?]? any tips)

yeah i've been on a bit of a binge w/ the old avant-C of late,

(last time i went on a binge with it -- shortly before rediscovering postpunk)

current binge, as then, surely not unconnected with the boringness of so much stuff out there, or at least, not exactly boring (often enjoyable, reasonably interesting/inventive , etc) but modest in scale and ambition... part of the buzz with the avant-C is the sense you get of the vastness of the vision, that will to make Giant Steps.... the sobriety of those back covers with their sleevenotes... the pics you see of the guys at Columbia Princestone electronic lab toiling with their circuitry, all dressed in suits and ties!

there was this ambition to both reinvent music completely, and to continue/uphold classical music

those electronic dudes were typically trying to be the latest stage in/contribution to Western Civilisation/High Culture/Art, there's this record by this chap Andrew Rudin (i think) i've got, Tragoedia or something -- an electronic/computer album on nonesuch in the Sixties-- and it's all inspired by Greek tragedy

also there is the pathos and poignancy of the Lost or Abandoned Frontier.... you get the sense they thought that by 2005 their music would just be totally accepted and part of the everyday fabric of life

this is an interest of mine (and the prewar modernists stravinsky, varese, bartok, webern, debussy, schoenberg, berg, messiaen etc)....

berio's 'sinfonia' is incredible, as is his concerto for 2 pianos, and other orchestral scores like eindrucke and formazioni. ligeti's micropolyphonic scores (lontano, san francisco polyphony, atmospheres, requiem, lux aeterna) and the more recent piano etudes and violin concerto are probably his best. stockhausen's gruppen is amazing.

trying to think of any other 'political' avant garde composer without much success. there's always nancarrow who was effectively exiled from america for his political sympathies although afaik this isn't part of his musical identity. xenakis was also left wing.

blissblogger said:

(who else is political avant-classical? mimaroglu [spelling?]? any tips)

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Cornelius Cardew innit.

hmm

i get a chill down my spine just reading those names.

for me there are two key moments regarding this music. one is around '94 or so sitting in zebëhn discos, a defunct local shop run by madman javier chandia. he sets the needle on xenakis' bohor* and the light-deprived cubicle that is his shop becomes a massive chamber, waves of sound crashing and rumbling through me. i still remember this. the other is '97 or so, again sitting in a room (though this time ample and illuminated), entranced by one of feldman's 80s pieces**.

i don't know. to me this music is the product of an era of unprecedented human suffering and destruction, but also of unprecedented knowledge and spiritual insight. it knows that opposites are intimately linked. and so melds beauty with horror (even the horror of things stretching into infinity, which must be the antithesis of pop). i think this is why it never became fully accepted and incorporated into the mainstream. because, ultimately, no one wants to be tortured in their leisure hours

* different mix available in xenakis - electronic music (electronic music foundation, 97)
** something from morton feldman - piano (hat art, 89)

blissblogger said:

(who else is political avant-classical? mimaroglu [spelling?]? any tips)
...
those electronic dudes were typically trying to be the latest stage in/contribution to Western Civilisation/High Culture/Art, there's this record by this chap Andrew Rudin (i think) i've got, Tragoedia or something -- an electronic/computer album on nonesuch in the Sixties-- and it's all inspired by Greek tragedy

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Hans Werner Henze was into the greek tragedy thing as well as communism.

can someone please make a DRONES mix?

Bone Idol is all you need to hear.

but seriously folks......
if its Drones you are after all 4 trax on this are excelent (3 cold,1 warm)

its a whole world isnt it.

actually have found myself most attuned to the avant-classical when ive felt most generally alienated, though the strange thing ive always found is that when one is past the first hurdle then they're no harder to listen to than anything else.

confucius (leo!) the band of brothers you've chosen, i guess they're what you'd call "Contemporary Classical Music", personally I've always given more attention to the Electronic/Minmalist/Concrete crowd. Someone like Stockhausen sits in both camps as does Xenakis (and I've as many non-electronic works by this lot as electronic)

off the top of my head:



thats sort of remarkable for being just voices and this one is very much chamber music too:



i suppose Stockhausen is most celebrated these days for Kontakt, Gesang der Junglinge, Telemusik and Hymnen (his electronic works)

i do put xenakis's electronic works above his orchestral ones, just because in things like "la legende d'eer" he's totally unrestrained creatively/sonically. orchestras are fairly loud, but not as loud as amplified music and likewise the timbres of the electronic stuff are so impossible. that said often the electronic stuff sounds kind of neatly orchestral (often like string quartets in a landslide to be precise)

i have this non-e xenakis amongst others:



as for your other lot (scrathes head) i've some ligeti, the piece they used in space oddyssey in a set conducted by leonard bernstein

just a little feldman (penman is mad about feldman)



and some takemitsu, the one with the messaien and the robert indiana cover.

i so rarely listen to this stuff at the moment. i used to find smoking grass added to my appreciation of it....

confucius said:

Stimmung is amazing. I am completely obsessed with overtones. has anyone ever heard David Pyke's harmonic choir? he takes the Tibetan and Mongolian throat singing traditions and brings a catholic sensibility to it... like the Gyoto Monks meets Gregorian chant.

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Yeah, that's good stuff (both Stimmung and Hykes). Hykes is part of a tradition of minimal and drone-like music within the most serious/academic end of new age... Stephan Micus and Peter Michal Hamel in particular worth mentioning here. There's also lots of (church) organ composers doing similar stuff, the organ being the closest you get to a non-electronic synth, so it's quite obvious that some would use it in this way.

confucius said:

what about Górecki, Kancheli, Lutoslawski, and Schnittke?
(not sure if they are prewar)

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They're not (well, I don't know Kancheli, but the others are not). I'm becoming more and more fond of Lutoslawski all the time. His stuff is so strange.

As for the pre war composers... what about Leos Janacek? The most underrated of them all, totally idiosyncratic and yet totally listenable.

ligeti is full of emotion but it's almost like non-human emotion -- the pangs and yearning of planets and moons -- the mineral kingdom -- course this is probably autosuggestion on account of its use in 2001: A Space Odyssey but then again there must be a reason Kubrick was drawn to it for those scenes

love that David Hykes record 'hearing solar winds'. later stuff goes new-age scary but that record goes deep. definitely crucial if you like 'stimmung'.

recently transferred these, having given up hope that they'll ever be reissued on CD. my favorite recordings of each piece. could have declicked, but kinda like those clicks.

the third movement of berio's sinfonia, the original recording conducted by the composer with the original (classic) lineup of the swingle singers

http://s32.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2LZO0GCDNZGWS040V2YADMTKFB

too much has already been written about this for me to add more, I like Tim's take:
http://johnsons-rambler.blogspot.com/2004/10/music-since-1960-berio-sinfonia.html


also berio's differences, amazing chamber ensemble / tape work.

http://s22.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2RHGWLUODF25O0J7PW5E8BJC6G

great early piece where the tape work magnifies the classic instrumental sounds into an acoustically impossible hyper-orchestra. pre-dates Dockstader & Reichert's piece, heralds things like Paul Dolden... actually many people ended up trying things like this, but Berio's piece is the one that really works, I'm surprised it doesn't come up more often. though it has been recorded several times, I think that this is not only the first recording, but the one he actually prepared the tape pieces from. All the other versions, far far less seamless, the illusion doesn't work as well as it does here; if you're trying to blur the lines between instruments and a taped remix, it helps if the tape was prepared from the exact instrumentalists you're listening to. Though clearly this is only going to be possible the first time around. I wish I had more information on it, but this was a download from the shortlived Orktorrents server, no additional liners...


& the first full recording of Varése' Déserts, conducted by Robert Craft. still my favorite by _far_, though I've heard great things about the old out of print one on CRI

http://s32.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=304C8TM2HGTRZ1DH7FSC9Z0UIE

the original piece was finished in 1954, but he gave the concrete interludes a huge makeover at Columbia-Princeton in the 60's for this version. the interludes are so different they basically qualify as different pieces; the original versions made at GRM Studios are much less transformed, it's more about simple editing of the materials: field recordings made at industrial refineries, a maniacal distorted organ solo, feedback sounds, and interestingly, chopped up tapework sourced from a 1950 recording of several of his earlier pieces -- self-sampling Varése! It's only logical. The Columbia-Princeton revisions are so severe they basically qualify as different pieces. Everything's been smoothed out and crossfaded, lots of reverb, ring modulation and filtering, beautiful transitions.

The original interludes appear by themselves on 'The Varése Record' on Mimaroglu's Finnadar (which also reissues the original 1950 first recordings of Ionization etc.) -- just the original tapes without reverb, every splice raw and exposed. The only full recording of Déserts that uses these tapes, I think, is Kent Nagano's recording, though the liners don't even mention this. The orchestra sounds a little stiff but the interludes sound great with room reverb, i.e. how I think Varese was intending them to be heard. I'm trying to write up a study comparing the two versions of the interludes, mainly because I tried to find one and couldn't... you'd think by now...

seriously though, i'd really like someone to compile an hour long mix of drone-based pieces which they like.. have them overlap and one slide off to the left as the next one comes in.... find parts which overlap well.. add some no-input-onyko people's crackle and tweet here and there.. something nice to read a book to. i used to love blaring playthroughs while studying for exams...