# Blind Listening #3 (12 min.)



## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Here's something else to listen to and discuss. Guessing the composer, nationality, time period, etc. is encouraged. This is potentially more well-known than the previous two "mystery pieces," so I've included a poll to gauge whether I should go more obscure. (Obviously, no spoilers if you already know the work.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/plusnebyn3twpt9/Mystery3.mp3?dl=0

(listening time ~12 min.)


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Why would you listen to that? Isn't this gloomy feeling easy enough to find in any modern city? I feel contemporary art as a whole will be much better appreciated 100 plus years from now, to remember how dark this present moment got, how degenerate and amoral we were. 

While we're in it though everyone just wants beautiful music to escape it--that's why contemporary art is so unpopular--even those in the thick of it don't enjoy it. Of course there is a different message that can be told with music, rather than just mirroring society, and that's what I'm working on.

Hopefully, contemporary music will in the near future be seen as something else, something looking towards the future rather than the present.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

1996D said:


> Why would you listen to that? Isn't this gloomy feeling easy enough to find in any modern city? I feel contemporary art as a whole will be much better appreciated 100 plus years from now, to remember how dark this present moment got, how degenerate and amoral we were.
> 
> While we're in it though everyone just wants beautiful music to escape it--that's why contemporary art is so unpopular--even those in the thick of it don't enjoy it. Of course there is a different message that can be told with music, rather than just mirroring society, and that's what I'm working on.
> 
> Hopefully, contemporary music will in the near future be seen as something else, something looking towards the future rather than the present.


And here I thought this was on the tamer side. I think that the music is very evocative, not "gloomy" but rather atmospheric and mystical-I, for one, escaped my sofa.

Let's not derail this thread with a discussion on why classical music is no longer a commercial genre. The topic has been beaten to death.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Not commercial, just relevant art that can influence society.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Pretty campy stuff. I liked it. Sort of fit my mindset with watching Bunuel films lately, and defying expectations.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

I hear a wide range of percussive instruments (all played by one person, as you never hear any two played simultaneously), a violin, a flute, a harp, some brass instrument with a low range (I couldn't tell what), and maybe a cello. That's a somewhat odd combination of instruments, even by modern standards. 

None of the instruments other than the violin have sustained parts to play: they seem to come and go routinely and play small fragments of music while it's their turn (or single-note drones in the case of that brass instrument). This indicates to me that these particular instruments were chosen for their timbres more than anything else -- i.e. the composer chose them to evoke a particular atmosphere. It's interesting, however, that I don't really hear any extended techniques (there was one in the harp and another that I can't recall, but that's really it), which tells me that either this composer is rather conservative or that this piece was written before extended techniques became a thing with Berio and Lachenmann (yes, I'm aware that just because a piece is modern or contemporary doesn't mean that extended techniques have to be used, but this just seems like a piece that needed them).

A final thing: From about 7:00 to 9:30, I get whiffs of folk tunes in the violin. However, it's not front and center.

Given all of this, I'm going to guess this piece is from the late 60s or early 70s and that the composer is Crumb or a composer similar to Crumb. I lean towards the latter because, on the whole, the piece seems too tame for Crumb.


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## Machiavel (Apr 12, 2010)

I do know the work and will help. You said no spoilers but not for how long. SOrry if this defeat the purpose of the game.


Nationality, work and name but which one is it, find it yourself:devil:

J.......
H.....
E......
J......


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Machiavel said:


> I do know the work and will help. You said no spoilers but not for how long. SOrry if this defeat the purpose of the game.
> 
> Nationality, work and name but which one is it, find it yourself:devil:
> 
> ...


Yup, that's definitely it. Spoilers below:

The piece is _Jubilus_ (2003) viola and chamber ensemble of 8 players by Jonathan Harvey. The composer's interesting program notes are as follows:

"As so often with artistic creation, mingled images merged to produce something different, yet bearing vestigial traces. A solitary chanting monk, perhaps in a chapel on Mount Athos, was at the back of Chant for solo viola, a brief piece written in 1992. Jubilus is an expansion of that piece (from 2 to 14 minutes), just as medieval Christian plainchants were extended by interpolations on certain syllables in ecstatic soarings of the voice called jubili. Mingled with that image is an image of a buddhist monastery built high in the precipitous and barren rocks of a Tibetan or north Indian mountain. I imagined how, in such isolation and awe-inspiring austerity, a contemplative monk would pour out his longing and rapture. In fact the piece I wrote, for ensemble with solo viola, has the soloist rising gradually from the modes of the chant to a Tibetan ritual chant of the Drukpa Order called Flower Rain. This sings out in the very highest register of the viola at the end. The work is dedicated to Christophe Desjardins and was commissioned by Radio France for the Ensemble L'Itineraire in honour of their 30th anniversary."


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I don't know it but did like it. It sustained by interest and the shifting moods were attractive. I suspected a fairly big name contemporary composer ... and then read the spoiler above. I do know a little of the work of this composer but can't recall a similar piece from him.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

1996D said:


> Why would you listen to that? Isn't this gloomy feeling easy enough to find in any modern city? I feel contemporary art as a whole will be much better appreciated 100 plus years from now, to remember how dark this present moment got, how degenerate and amoral we were.
> 
> While we're in it though everyone just wants beautiful music to escape it--that's why contemporary art is so unpopular--even those in the thick of it don't enjoy it. Of course there is a different message that can be told with music, rather than just mirroring society, and that's what I'm working on.
> 
> Hopefully, contemporary music will in the near future be seen as something else, something looking towards the future rather than the present.


But we are living in the best times ever! Compared to the unspeakable ugliness and horrificness of the reality in the 19th or early 20th century, this is a damn Golden Era. Especially for music, with so much information exchange, rediscovery, preservation, research and listening everywhere going on. Why can't composers look at the present day and think: Yeah! Way to go!

Maybe some can, but are very young and just at the beginning of their path (like Alma Deutscher)

The "piece" in the OP, I presume, is a cheeky recording of an orchestra gathering and warming up before a concert, right?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I'm not sure about our living in the best times ever. And we are certainly not living in the happiest time (not at all the same thing) ever. But I also do not hear all or most contemporary music as miserable or doom-laden. We've had that discussion too many times already. It comes down to a matter of how people who don't know a genre cannot be relied on to report on what it is like. Commenting on the contemporary without knowing it is like a kid who has only ever heard pop music commenting about Beethoven - the comments lack perception.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Wow. I own the piece in question yet couldn't even recognize it. How embarrassing.

But my detective work wasn't that far off, especially the part where I say that the choice and use of instruments suggests the music is meant to evoke certain images or atmospheres. My guess on the instruments was partially wrong: there were 9 instruments instead of 6, and what I thought was a low-range brass was actually a contrabass clarinet.

Also, knowing the composer behind this work is making me rethink this composer's overall style. Whenever I think of this composer, I usually think of the work M.P.V.V. (to follow Machiavel's example of using initials) and not a piece like this.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

calvinpv said:


> Also, knowing the composer behind this work is making me rethink this composer's overall style. Whenever I think of this composer, I usually think of the work M.P.V.V. (to follow Machiavel's example of using initials) and not a piece like this.


His later work is definitely tamer than the earlier stuff, but he always seemed pretty beauty-oriented. One piece in particular-"S." (2008)-is a highlight from this period.

Whoever posts next can let the cat out of the bag.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Upon my first listening of the piece, I was like "WTF, this sucks". But as I listened to it the second and then the third times I found it an interesting work. I didn't know it, and didn't expect to know at all because my current knowledge of modern music is minimal (I'm not even sure if the word "modern" applies to this piece). I... like it. But for this kind of music to work with me, I need to imagine some kind of program for it - anything that comes to my mind and that somehow seems to relate to what I'm listening to, even if it actually doesn't.

Somehow this music made me remember of a certain moment of an adventure game I played many years ago, particularly in the booby-trapped car scene. Perhaps it was the nostalgia that made like it:


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