Posted on 07/23/2020 11:09:55 PM PDT by texas booster
This is a video of the October 5, 2013 note change that took place as part of the 639-year-long performance of John Cage's "As SLow aS Possible" (ASLSP) at the St. Buchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany.
The note that had been playing since July 5, 2012 is very quiet and hard to hear in this video, but the 3 notes that make up the new chord are clear.
Check it out in this 4 minute video.
This is a video I found on a ridiculous discussion - how slow can we write a piece of music? One YT performance played a note daily for a month, and uploaded it for your 24 hour, 30 day pleasure(?).
So if you have a student interested in music, this will either get a "cool" or a series of eye rolls that will immediately help you discern your pupils' interest in music theory.
Hey, at least it's not a discussion about the Beatles!
Here is a BBC article which gives some more details:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2728595.stm
Please make your travel arrangements in the next month to be one of the folks that see the performance in person.
The performance follows a legal case in which composer Mike Batt was forced to pay a six-figure sum to Cage's publishers, who accused him of plagiarizing a silent piece of music.
Seriously - how do you plagiarize a piece of music that is silent?
And lose the case?
The most difficult part of teaching classical music to non-majors for me has always been 20th century non tonal stuff. Over the past five years or so I came up with the idea of combining it with 20th century movie music scores, and that has become the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. One particularly effective example is playing a concert video of Ligeti’s Requiem with the class discussing how “weird it sounds,” then showing the same passage used in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But they love Herrmann and Jarre and North and Morricone and Ifukube, helps them get through Schonberg and Crumb and Glass and Poeme Electronique.
>> 20th century non tonal stuff.
The early part was very much an extension of the Romantic era with American cinema driving the well-known soundtracks thereafter.
My initial exposure to Glass was in my earlier twenties, and it was very painful. The ability to orchestrate isn’t necessarily a skill that can present beauty where it doesn’t otherwise exist. But it’s a skill nonetheless.
Did you know that Shostakovich was thoroughly dissatisfied with Bernstein’s production of his 5th symphony? A spectacular disaster of tactless celebration — paraphrasing of course...
>...how slow can we write a piece of music?
In my case I’ve been working on my “Kitchen Sink Concerto #1” for over a decade.
As far as John Cage, I’m sure that, had he been composing a few decades later he would have taken advantage of the wonderful tools that the computer affords in aiding the musical process.
I’m sure he would have taken advantage of “Paulstretch”, a free piece of software found here http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ that allows one to slow down audio files. There are a lot of examples on YouTube that use a factor of 800%, such as the following...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phAVrw11GNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0LCYspTN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDI4Vm9tAys
I find it quite useful for making drones and ambient beds for pieces, as well as allowing me to smooth out technical mistakes I make on keyboard.
To get results that positivly dwarf ASLSP one can use hyperstretch mode. The user can slow things down by 1e+18x so that a one minute audio file will take 1.90129 trillion years to play ! The only problem is that if one were to try to render the file as a .wav a solution would have to be found for storing the rather large file size.
>The most difficult part of teaching classical music to non-majors for me has always been 20th century non tonal stuff.
Very much an acquired taste, although, in the right setting it works. In the wrong setting it’s the musical analog of Vogon poetry. I also think that the classical orchestra is the last vehicle/format I can think of for this type of music.
In terms of micro-tonality, I’ve just recently discovered somebody named “Sevish” who is using electronic music to great effect. I highly recommend his work.
https://www.youtube.com/user/sevishmusic
Finally, a blast from the past - my take on a piece of modern music I wrote a decade or so ago. Since I wrote this I have found the film that the piece in question is a soundtrack to and in that setting it works.
The Cleveland Orchestra preforms Dream/Window by TÅru Takemitsu
A review 9/26/2010
I was riding in my car with the radio tuned to WCLV. It was announced that the Cleveland Orchestra would be playing a work by TÅru Takemitsu. Shirley and I looked at each other and we each said “Who?”. Perhaps it would have been better had I remained ignorant of this composer
A few days later, WCLV broadcast the entire performance. It appears that TÅru Takemitsu was commissioned by a Kyoto bank, or perhaps an industrial firm or civic institution to write a piece celebrating the city. I cannot help but think, that, upon hearing this work, the commissioner would have asked Takemitsu to return the commission and then commit seppuku to atone for the embarrassment he caused not only to the institution but the city and the artist as well.
The piece is entitled Dream/Window and purports to envision the view of a Japanese garden through a window and through the window of a dream. A 55 gallon drum of Windex would have done a great deal to help this piece, as the view from this window at high noon with not a cloud in the sky is darker than that of the deepest twilight, but then, after a good cleaning you would have seen nothing but dead flowers over-run by weeds.
Mind you, I like weird music, very weird music, hell, I make music myself that is so far out of the mainstream that most listeners would run out of the room rather than listen to another moment of one of my works. It gives me hope, though, perhaps someday my noodlings will be given a performance by one of the great orchestras on the planet as they are no worse (or better) than Takematsu’s.
I would probably like this piece by TÅru Takemitsu in another setting, as chill-out music or as a film score. It does not belong at Severance Hall in the company of giants, and, sadly, it was a colossal waste of the talented musicianship found in the Cleveland Orchestra. This is not to say anything bad about the Cleveland Orchestra, as I believe that their true genius shone through in this performance in that they were able to play such execrable music with such virtuosity.
Normally, the orchestra tunes up, the conductor comes on stage and the music starts. I can only assume that the orchestra tuned up beforehand, but after the conductor came on stage and started playing Dream/Window, it sounded like the orchestra was tuning up all over again, not that one could have easily noticed the difference when listening to this piece. This marks the first time that I’ve heard the orchestra tuning up just before the work was over. In fact, I wounder if the orchestra ever stopped tuning up throughout the performance.
Takemitsu was obviously a Trekkie, as in this piece the Enterprise quickly becomes lost in the Nebulous Nebula and nobody can find their way out. Not once did the Captain (or the composer) consult a road map, stop at a gas station to ask directions or use his GPS. While wandering aimlessly through this piece, the listener is, on one occasion, attacked by huge minor chords that go on for far too long, (as did this piece), and is occasionally aware of disembodied bits and pieces of melodies floating by outside the window, but which never stop in and say hello. One just knows that the Atomic Mutant Monsters will be showing up any moment now, and although a little change of pace would have been welcome, sadly, in the end they never did.
“Daddy, Daddy, are we there yet”?
“Shadup ya little So & So or I’ll feed you to Godzilla”
“Oh please do, at least I won’t have to listen to any more of this”.
Not all of YT teaching videos are useful or even especially accurate. But there are many which add flavor to homeschooling in areas that the teacher will need help.
And Lo! Here are serious comments from folks that know what they are talking about or have composed in the past. This is the one of the beauties of Free Republic, to have such a collection of talent on a single board.
And I shudder to think, that if Cage had lived past 1992, what could have come from the depths of his mind ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.