I am Music

[Tzara]

Piano Music

• Cage: Suite for Toy Piano. Cagean goofiness.
• Cowell: The Tides of Manaunaun. Tone clusters.
• Reich: Piano Phase, Played solo (!) by some kid with crazy rhythm skillz.
• Satie Vexations. Yes, I know. Noodling, kind of. Except that the complete performance should be this repeated 84 times, or roughly lasting something over fourteen hours. What makes it Art.

 

[pelegrino]

•

I adore Julian Bream. His tone is like a bell.

I absolutely agree with you, Ange, He is one of my heroes. Thanks for this great fugue you've chosen!



thank you also, Tzara, I find all your selections entertaining (although I'm at odds with some of them)

• Cage: Suite for Toy Piano. Cagean goofiness.
• Cowell: The Tides of Manaunaun. Tone clusters.
• Reich: Piano Phase, Played solo (!) by some kid with crazy rhythm skillz.
• Satie Vexations. Yes, I know. Noodling, kind of. Except that the complete performance should be this repeated 84 times, or roughly lasting something over fourteen hours. What makes it Art.

Cage: Suite for Toy Piano. Cagean goofiness.
For such limited medium at his disposal here Cage works miracles in just A minor (but not a minimalist perception of A minor) in a quasi pentatonic mood!
I know nothing about "Zen Style". Does it forbid the use of black keys? They don’t seem to be used at all in this composition.

Cowell: The Tides of Manaunaun. Tone clusters.
A great composer and a great work that still sounds new and refreshing to me. We all learnt something from Cowell and we all benefited.

Reich: Piano Phase, Played solo (!) by some kid with crazy rhythm skillz.
what a glorious 14'58" of a single B minor riff! (minimal variation added by imperceptible processes)
As usual a minimalist falling into a minimalist self trap (assuming that he is composing). I don’t
think Reich could ever write a tune to save his life.
He knows how to write B minor chord/scale though, doesn't he?

Satie Vexations. Yes, I know. Noodling, kind of. Except that the complete performance should be this repeated 84 times, or roughly lasting something over fourteen hours. What makes it Art.

I've heard it only once.
Should be perhaps speeded up 84 times and have done?
(ie, if crotchet = 60, then should be crotchet = 60 * 84 = 5,040. In a modern powerful sequencer like Cubase, Logic Audio etc should be possible).

 

[KathrynWM]

The soundtrack to my life I feel is: Clubbed To Death by Rob Dougan
it's such a beautiful and chaotic instrumental


listen here

 

[pelegrino]

Just some piano music.

Allegro Barbaro (Sz.49) - Béla Bartók

Erik Satie - Sonatine bureaucratique
you may laugh but this is serious satire of classicism.


ERIK SATIE Gnossienne 1 - Alessio Nanni, piano

but see here if you like the guitar version better. Most composers were unaware of the guitar's capabilities back in the time of Satie.
(nice video with some ancient Roman market place shots in Athens).

 

[Tzara]

(Cage) For such limited medium at his disposal here Cage works miracles in just A minor (but not a minimalist perception of A minor) in a quasi pentatonic mood!
I know nothing about "Zen Style". Does it forbid the use of black keys? They don’t seem to be used at all in this composition.

Some toy pianos, particularly older or cheaper ones, don't have black keys--the black keys are simply painted on the white keys and, obviously, are non-functional. I don't know if that's the kind of toy piano Cage used when he was composing the work, or whether it was an aesthetic decision not to use black keys.

(Reich) What a glorious 14'58" of a single B minor riff! (minimal variation added by imperceptible processes)
As usual a minimalist falling into a minimalist self trap (assuming that he is composing). I don’t
think Reich could ever write a tune to save his life.
He knows how to write B minor chord/scale though, doesn't he?

I really like minimalist music, and early Reich especially. No, he doesn't write tunes. He isn't trying to. But the emergence of little cells of rhythm from the general chum of the music is quite beautiful to me.

Not for everyone, I know.

(Satie) I've heard it only once.
Should be perhaps speeded up 84 times and have done?
(ie, if crotchet = 60, then should be crotchet = 60 * 84 = 5,040. In a modern powerful sequencer like Cubase, Logic Audio etc should be possible).

The problem is that the tempo is described in manuscript as très lent, or very slow.

"Slow" is, though, a relative term.

 

[Tzara]

Multiple piano works:

• Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
• Bolcom: The Serpent's Kiss
• Cage: Music for Amplified Toy Pianos
• Messiaen: Visions de l'Amen

 

[Tsotha]

I was listening to Reich, above, and while it's interesting (and even entrancing, in a way), it sounds too much like an exercise (or machine generated patterns and sounds) for me to want to listen to again. It's a sound pattern to listen to, not music (for me).

Now, the serpent's kiss I enjoyed.

 

[pelegrino]

Italian Renaissance Music for Viola da Gamba Consort,La Gamba

 

[Angeline]

Here is a real find, if you love jazz: a complete recording session of Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges, two saxophone giants. The recording session happened in LA in 1961 and also includes awesome side work from folks like Lou Levy, Herb Ellis, Ray Nance.

Of course this may mean nothing to you and be forewarned it goes on for more than an hour. So maybe it's not your thing. But I love it because Webster and Hodges played together in Duke Ellington's orchestra and you can hear that influence, but you can also hear the history of jazz in it, from blues to bebop and hard bop. That would have been contemporary in 1961.

Yup. I sure do love jazz.

 

[pelegrino]

Here is a real find, if you love jazz: a complete recording session of Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges, two saxophone giants. The recording session happened in LA in 1961 and also includes awesome side work from folks like Lou Levy, Herb Ellis, Ray Nance.

Of course this may mean nothing to you and be forewarned it goes on for more than an hour. So maybe it's not your thing. But I love it because Webster and Hodges played together in Duke Ellington's orchestra and you can hear that influence, but you can also hear the history of jazz in it, from blues to bebop and hard bop. That would have been contemporary in 1961.

Yup. I sure do love jazz.

thanks for this link, Ange, I enjoyed it greatly and I'm going to listen to it many times!
I tried to downloaded it cause I want to use it for a special purpose, but my downloader throws me always a "video error detection".
Well, I suppose I'll have to instal a newer version of my dowloader first, but it's a hot summer down here and who has time for that sort of thing?

 

[pelegrino]

Medieval Music "Vox Vulgaris - StellaSplendens"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Fleischer


This is a long one.
Chant & Polyphony from Medieval England

 

[Tsotha]

Here is a real find, if you love jazz: a complete recording session of Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges, two saxophone giants. The recording session happened in LA in 1961 and also includes awesome side work from folks like Lou Levy, Herb Ellis, Ray Nance.

Of course this may mean nothing to you and be forewarned it goes on for more than an hour. So maybe it's not your thing. But I love it because Webster and Hodges played together in Duke Ellington's orchestra and you can hear that influence, but you can also hear the history of jazz in it, from blues to bebop and hard bop. That would have been contemporary in 1961.

Yup. I sure do love jazz.

Thanks for the link, that was pretty good.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks for the link, that was pretty good.

They were both such wonderful artists, each with his own distinctive sound.

Here's some Monk. It's awesomeness.

 

[Tzara]

String Quartets

Mostly longish works. Sorry.

• Babbitt: String Quartet No. 2: Big-time serialism. Intellectual, logical, and probably incomprehensible to most of us. As it is to me, too, though I like it anyway.
• Crumb: Black Angels, for electrified string quartet: Music as ritual. Crazy good. Kind of a hoot to watch.
• Penderecki: String Quartet No. 1: What does it mean to be a "string" quartet? Also crazy good.
• Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15, Op. 144 Sadness as art. I think of this as Shostakovich's elegy to himself. Slow, stately, and profound.
• Stockhausen: Helicopter Quartet: Exactly what its title says it is, however weird that might be. Cool to the nth degree, however intrinsically silly it is.

 

[pelegrino]

Mostly longish works. Sorry.

• Babbitt: String Quartet No. 2: Big-time serialism. Intellectual, logical, and probably incomprehensible to most of us. As it is to me, too, though I like it anyway.
• Crumb: Black Angels, for electrified string quartet: Music as ritual. Crazy good. Kind of a hoot to watch.
• Penderecki: String Quartet No. 1: What does it mean to be a "string" quartet? Also crazy good.
• Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15, Op. 144 Sadness as art. I think of this as Shostakovich's elegy to himself. Slow, stately, and profound.
• Stockhausen: Helicopter Quartet: Exactly what its title says it is, however weird that might be. Cool to the nth degree, however intrinsically silly it is.

Milton Babbitt: String Quartet no. 2

Great!
Very formal and very hard on the players, almost text book serial orthodoxy, much contrapuntal writing and many thematic ideas used with exploration of a lot of string techniques. The pointillist influence of Webern is obvious here (in my opinion). I would like to study it thoroughly and learn from it if I get the chance in terms of free time.


Crumb, Black Angels, Ensemble Intercontemporain

Symbolism and ritual? Nothing new to it for the time it was written, in those two aspects at least.
That is how all important music movements begun in the beginning of 20th century, including atonal, neo-classicism,serialism, perhaps even dadaism, etc: With symbolism and ritual.
This one probably uses frame notation in the beginning. later some melodies have to be notated properly. Strange placement of players on stage, is it really needed? Does it improve the overall sound of the quartet as perceived by the listener? Not really exciting in terms of electric sound. It does not explore electric sound as such till towards the end of the piece, so why bother for just ordinary acoustic string techniques?
Going more tonal later on , what does it try to say? Nostalgia for the past? Which past? Here the theatrics of the players don't really work and they have been used with more clarity and more successfully by earlier composers, I believe. the dramatic effect achieved is quite laughable with the added speech and glasses filled with liquid or other more percussive effects.
If you cannot say it all by using the 4 best string instruments that exist then you've got a problem.
all in all a typical modern(ist) work that does not really work well.

The Ensemble Intercontemporain is quite professional and they deserve applause for their brilliant realization of an uninteresting score.


Penderecki: "String Quartet No.1"

Although I appreciate that Penderecki has always the best intentions, his music never persuaded me as been anything beyond artificial. And I feel the same about this string quartet.
The biggest failure of all Avant guard composers up to c. 1975 who choose to use orthodox instruments and time honored combinations of them in these quite unorthodox ways is that they became overnight obsolete by the advent of synths and sequencers. Today a composer can create those sounds and thousands more electronically in his studio without help from or dependence on any instrumentalist.
Perhaps we deserved after all the curse of minimalism and "new simplicity" that ensued.


Emerson String Quartet: Shostakovich, Op. 144 No. 15 in E flat minor (1974)

I agree with you, Tzara, here. This is an elegy of extreme beauty. No words for it.


Helikopter-Streichquartett (Helicopter Quartet) [Full Piece] - Karlheinz Stockhausen

I leave this one out of comment cause I am not concerned with self obsessed megalomaniacs.
Good music though, and brilliantly played!
He uses some of the techniques that Crumb used earlier in "Black Angels", but here I feel that they work perfectly. Maybe it is a matter of taste after all.



After hearing so much of bowed strings (did I really? Sure I did!) I miss again some plucked sounds:

Robert Johnson (c. 1583– c. 1634) Lute Works,played by Nigel North

 

[pelegrino]

Luigi Nono - Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz (1988)

 

[pelegrino]

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Tango - Oblivion

 

[Angeline]

Good afternoon music lovers. Some jazz for tsotha and whoever else wants to listen. It's lovely stuff.

Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, More Than You Know.

 

[pelegrino]

Good afternoon music lovers. Some jazz for tsotha and whoever else wants to listen. It's lovely stuff.

Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, More Than You Know.

Thanks, Angeline, for a great track!
I have said that that I cannot listen to tonal music not modulating after 3-4 minutes. Well that is for pseudo-classical. Jazz like this is a different and far more fulfilling affair!

 

[pelegrino]

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No 94 G major (Surprise) Vienna Philharmonic contacted by Leonard Bernstein

 

[Tsotha]

That's it, my guitar is going into the fireplace.

 

[pelegrino]

That's it, my guitar is going into the fireplace.

Don't burn it yet, Tsotha.
Try to think of it devoid of electrified sound and percussive effects (not the player's but the actual rhythmic accompaniment played by some sequencer or sampler of some sorts).
The technique, without been elementary, is within your grasp (and I don't even know your technique), in the space of two years regular practice. Good but not above average.
What he does is that he places a capo on the fourth fret and he is strumming and picking in F# sharp minor in the same style as we would do it in D minor without a capo. (in open position)

How is this for actual virtuosity in the service of musical substance? (I reckon the kid is no more than sixteen and she does make some little mistakes but the result is all the more beautiful!)

 

[pelegrino]

Tango en Skai by Roland Dyens - Cordoba Master Series Hauser Model

 

[Tsotha]

They were both such wonderful artists, each with his own distinctive sound.

Here's some Monk. It's awesomeness.

Good afternoon music lovers. Some jazz for tsotha and whoever else wants to listen. It's lovely stuff.

Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, More Than You Know.

Thanks again, Ange. I was listening earlier today, during work. Jazz is one of the few types of music that do not distract me.

 

[Tsotha]

Don't burn it yet, Tsotha.
Try to think of it devoid of electrified sound and percussive effects (not the player's but the actual rhythmic accompaniment played by some sequencer or sampler of some sorts).
The technique, without been elementary, is within your grasp (and I don't even know your technique), in the space of two years regular practice. Good but not above average.
What he does is that he places a capo on the fourth fret and he is strumming and picking in F# sharp minor in the same style as we would do it in D minor without a capo. (in open position)

Pel, I did not notice any rhythmic accompaniment. As far as I can tell, that's all him - except for the end, where he starts using the pedal to record and play to his own playback. You're right, there is nothing there that is out of reach, with practice. But still, the guy shows quite a bit of familiarity with the instrument, right? Also, he is 22, if I'm not wrong. Not as awe-inspiring as a teenager, but still.

How is this for actual virtuosity in the service of musical substance? (I reckon the kid is no more than sixteen and she does make some little mistakes but the result is all the more beautiful!)

And now I'm burning it.