# Contemporary Music Listening Group



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Welcome to the Contemporary Music Listening Group — formed for the exploration of music from the last 50 years. Anyone can take a turn presenting a work for us to explore and discuss. If you are interested in presenting you can either indicate it in the thread or message 20centrfuge.


Guidelines for Presentation 

1. There is no max time limit on a presented work though if it is longer than 60 minutes we will allot two weeks. 
2. In the case of a work that is shorter than 30 minutes, the participant may add a second shorter work to their program. The combined total of the two works should not exceed 60 minutes.
3. Latecomers to the group can be added to the end of the schedule. 
4. After everyone has had a turn, we can start a new round if there is sufficient interest.
5. Works from roughly the last 50 years.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Current Schedule and Order

Each participant will present on a Sunday, beginning April 3, 2022

Mandryka
Calvinpv
Philidor
20centrfuge
Allaroundmusicenthusiast
Enthusiast
San Antone
Mmsbls
Simon Moon


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Jürg Frey's _I Listened to the Wind Again_. Stream here

https://louthcontemporarymusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/i-listened-to-the-wind-again

Promo (which I haven't seen) here






If anyone finds the text please let me know.

I just think it's a nice, relaxing, sensual piece of music. I like the harmony, I like the melody and I like the form. I hope you enjoy it too.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Listening for the first time. 

From Wikipedia:

“Jürg Frey’s music is characterized by sparse, quiet, soundscapes. In a review in The Guardian, Frey has been described as a “master of calm instrumental textures… who explores silence as much as sound and writes egoless music that feels as though it’s always existed”. Writing in The New Yorker, Alex Ross compared Frey’s music to a “Mahler Adagio suspended in zero gravity”.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

A couple thoughts about the Frey piece:

1. For some weird reason, I was constantly reminded of four different string quartets when listening, which I guess isn't too weird considering a string trio makes up a part of the ensemble in the present piece. Specifically, I was reminded of Harvey's SQ 4, which also moves from a state of disjointed fragments to more cohesive melodies, although there's a lot more going on in the Harvey than here. The wispy bow strokes at the beginning with a harmonic at the top of the bow stroke reminded me of Lachenmann's 2nd SQ, although Lachenmann uses them far more aggressively. The sparsity of texture, especially in the first half, reminded me of Nono's Fragmente Stille; both composers seem to be engaging in a titanic struggle to construct meaning and order out of chaos and nothingness. And the changes in texture reminded me a bit of Peter Garland's 1st SQ, where often you'll hear the same material repeatedly but parts get swapped between the instruments. I don't know why my mind went to these four works in particular, it just did.

2. Besides the relaxing tranquility of their music, one thing I really like about the Wandelweiser composers like Frey and certain minimalists is that their music offers a good training ground in deep/acousmatic listening for someone like me who knows a little bit about music but has no formal training. Their pieces tend to have few individual voices that move rather slowly and that tend to revolve around the same basic material, so I'm able to follow interval and chord changes fairly easily, and yet, there is enough textural variety to add a bit of a challenge as well.

I was doing this throughout the Frey piece, and I felt like I learned quite a bit, for example about the "weight" of certain instruments and how they can dominate or be hidden in a piece of music. Or how the harmonics underlying a single note can play with your psychology and trick you into thinking you're hearing one interval/chord when really it's another interval/chord that being played. Or how my brain can track and record certain pairs of notes better than others (e.g. many of the chords revolved around G# as a sort of "pivot" note; for some reason, I was able to track the frequent stepwise motion from G# to Bb more easily than the step motion from G# to F#).

I just like how these works really teach you about the sonic world around you and also teach you about yourself and your own psychological limitations. A lot of contemporary music is capable of humbling you and your ability to listen -- and of course, there is nothing wrong with that -- but works like this also give you a means of building yourself back up with new resources and tools.

3. As for the text, I couldn't quite follow it. I heard a couple of words, but that's it. So instead, I just treated the voice as another instrument.

4. The program note to the piece can be found here.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I feel as though I should be into this kind of stuff more then I am.

I get sucked in by the descriptions used: fragility, frequent silences, sparse, soundscapes, etc. And when I first listen to Wandelweiser, the mysterious nature sucks me in, initially. But over and extended period, there isn't quite enough to keep me interested. I think the concept is more interesting to me, than the results.

When I hear pieces like "Listen to the Wind", there are so many snippets I like, but just not strung together for 40 minutes. But then, I guess it is that slow development that is a signature of this type of music. 

I can see it used for art installations, or filling architectural spaces. But I can't see myself sitting down to listen to it.

I might be listening to it with the wrong expectations, or with too many preconceived biases. So, with that being said, I will continue to return to it (and other Wandelweiser pieces) frequently. It wouldn't be the last time some composer, band, or musician has become a favorite, despite not initially 'getting it'.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Simon Moon said:


> I feel as though I should be into this kind of stuff more then I am.
> 
> I get sucked in by the descriptions used: fragility, frequent silences, sparse, soundscapes, etc. And when I first listen to Wandelweiser, the mysterious nature sucks me in, initially. But over and extended period, there isn't quite enough to keep me interested. I think the concept is more interesting to me, than the results.
> 
> ...


Stay with it at least once, the entry of the cello at the end is impressive I think. And you can always do other things while it's playing, no need to focus 100%!

Frey used to write very conceptual music, but recently the stuff he's been producing has been melodic and accessible, and I think quite original - I mean, not just Cage ripoffs.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

When a person hears a piece for the first time they have expectations of what they will experience. You bite into this red sphere and expect it to be an apple. Then when you realize it’s not an apple you make a judgement. "What a weird, bad, strange apple…. " for example.

And then you listen a second time and you say to yourself "I’m eating a non-apple" I’ll see what this non-apple is all about.

And so it goes. 

First listen I couldn’t get very engaged in the work. On my second listen I’m just letting it wash over me.

Sparse music, atmospheric…good music for walking the neighborhood on a cold day.

I’ll keep listening


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Jürg Frey's _I Listened to the Wind Again_. Stream here
> 
> https://louthcontemporarymusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/i-listened-to-the-wind-again
> 
> ...


I'm sorry, but I couldn't listen to the entire work. My interest began to wane after about five minutes mainly because I didn't enjoy the sound of the music.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

One of Frey’s weakest works and not comparable to the far greater SQ3, More of Less Normal and Circular Music…


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ludwig Schon said:


> One of Frey's weakest works and not comparable to the far greater SQ3, More of Less Normal and Circular Music…


That's interesting. Why do you say that? I think I enjoy his music with voice most, he gets some committed singers I think. From the instrumental music, I very much like Late Silence for some reason. The only thing that stopped me picking it was I couldn't see it streaming anywhere, so access is a problem.

(By the way, what is circular about the pieces in circular music? Do you rate them all equally highly? There are quite a few of them, I've only heard less than a handful. I quite like the quartet - though I see it as a Cage ripoff. And thanks for pointing out More or less Normal, which I have just downloaded.)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I'm sorry, but I couldn't listen to the entire work. My interest began to wane after about five minutes mainly because I didn't enjoy the sound of the music.


Try a bit harder.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Try a bit harder.


I may go back to it later in the week if I have time.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I may go back to it later in the week if I have time.


The form of it, the way it reaches a climax, is successful I think.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Stay with it at least once, the entry of the cello at the end is impressive I think. And you can always do other things while it's playing, no need to focus 100%!
> 
> Frey used to write very conceptual music, but recently the stuff he's been producing has been melodic and accessible, and I think quite original - I mean, not just Cage ripoffs.


I certainly plan to.

My entire music listening history is rife with examples of: bands, genres, composers, and musicians, that I did not initially like, that later became some of my favorites*.

Even the possibility that I may find a new composer, or type of music, to add to my listening, is certainly enough to motivate me to listen at least another time.

*My first experience with this, was with the prog band, Gentle Giant. I was just not ready for their use of dissonance and counterpoint. I put their recordings on my shelf for at least several months, then when I returned to listen after a bit more musical exploration, they made sense. And they remain, one of my favorite prog bands.

Since this experience so long ago, I have been open to new music, since I learned that not all music is instantly understandable, or enjoyable.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Not that it matters at this point because Mandryka already provided a link, but _I Listened to the Wind Again_ is also on youtube.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I listened to the youtube version twice. I agree with Simon Moon, that there were parts I found interesting and quite enjoyable, but I was not fully engaged. I will say that I usually do not greatly enjoy works described as exploring silences or having frequent silences. I did listen to Frey's string quartet #3, and although I did enjoy it slightly more, I see it as roughly comparable to _I Listened to the Wind Again_. Like Mandryka, I would be interested to know why Ludwig Schon feels the two works are not comparable.

Overall I liked the vocal portions more than the instrumental parts. I have no idea what words were spoken so I listened, as I almost always do with vocal parts, simply to the notes and timbre of the voice.


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## Ludwig Schon (10 mo ago)

Mandryka said:


> That's interesting. Why do you say that? I think I enjoy his music with voice most, he gets some committed singers I think. From the instrumental music, I very much like Late Silence for some reason. The only thing that stopped me picking it was I couldn't see it streaming anywhere, so access is a problem.
> 
> (By the way, what is circular about the pieces in circular music? Do you rate them all equally highly? There are quite a few of them, I've only heard less than a handful. I quite like the quartet - though I see it as a Cage ripoff. And thanks for pointing out More or less Normal, which I have just downloaded.)


Obviously, it comes down to personal taste, but I cannot think of two more contrasting works than SQ3 and ILTTWA.

The former is clearly influenced by late Morton Feldman chamber pieces, such as P&SQ and P,V,V&C. However, while both Feldman & Frey interweave and subtlety change patterns of sound in these pieces, Frey does so in identifiable clusters with silences arced in between, so that the overall effect is that one is listening to an accordion rather than a SQ.

ILTTWA (to my ears) is just a complete mess, in which shards of unsophisticated sound are cobbled together, and where nothing organically evolves or is allowed to coalesce even for a moment, especially on account of that wretched voice.

An equally awful dissonant piece by Frey is Ephemeral Constructions.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ludwig Schon said:


> Obviously, it comes down to personal taste, but I cannot think of two more contrasting works than SQ3 and ILTTWA.
> 
> The former is clearly influenced by late Morton Feldman chamber pieces, such as P&SQ and P,V,V&C. However, while both Feldman & Frey interweave and subtlety change patterns of sound in these pieces, Frey does so in identifiable clusters with silences arced in between, so that the overall effect is that one is listening to an accordion rather than a SQ.
> 
> ...


This isn't the place for the discussion, but I don't hear the Feldman pieces quite like you do. I think there's a lot more going on in Feldman's late pieces than in the Frey quartet. For me the most apt comparison for some of Frey's music, not the one under discussion but the quartet, is what comes out of some performances of the number pieces.

Re Ephemeral Constructions, do you know what it is, what the score looks like? I wonder if Wolff is an influence on Frey. The Wolff of Stones.

I wonder if you, or anyone else, have heard Weites Land Tiefe Zeit. Not for me, but I can't imagine anything more organic!

And given what you say about dissonance, I wonder what you make of Feldman's For Samuel Beckett.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

My first hearing was enjoyable! A pleasant sound world and, yes, the use of voice makes it. I need to listen again.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I found the recording on Spotify and was able to have it playing allowing me to move away from my desk and more easily to listen to the entire work.

The piece has a cumulative effect, which would not be possible without the length - and the juxtaposition of the sections with voice and those without offered just enough variation in texture, increasing in force, leading up to what I interpreted as the climax was successfully carried off by the composer. 

The work was deceptive in that a superficial or partial listening would compromise an understanding and fair appreciation of the work.

:tiphat: to Mandryka for suggesting this work and encouraging me to stick with it.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

SanAntone said:


> ...The piece has a cumulative effect, which would not be possible without the length - and the juxtaposition of the sections with voice and those without offered just enough variation in texture, increasing in force, leading up to what I interpreted as the climax was successfully carried off by the composer.
> 
> The work was deceptive in that a superficial or partial listening would compromise an understanding and fair appreciation of the work....


I did enjoy the juxtaposition of sections with voice and without, and I was somewhat aware of a an increasing intensity. I did not sense a climax though but will try to listen again since a climax was suggested by others.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I did enjoy the juxtaposition of sections with voice and without, and I was somewhat aware of a an increasing intensity. I did not sense a climax though but will try to listen again since a climax was suggested by others.


 I think there's a slight shift in intensity at 15 minutes in and then again at about 33 mins in. But for me the most extraordinary thing happens at about 35:10 when the cello comes in. If that's not the start of a climax I'll eat my hat.

I know this is stupid, but the last section makes me think of Richard Strauss, the same vibe as in the four last songs. I know it's a stupid thing to say . . . Probably to do with some sort of tonal shenanigans going on, tension and resolution sort of thing.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

What I pick up on my third listening is the melodic line that is presented, which really starts to come into focus at about the 12 minute mark.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Jürg Frey's _I Listened to the Wind Again_. Stream here
> 
> https://louthcontemporarymusicsociety.bandcamp.com/album/i-listened-to-the-wind-again
> 
> ...


You can find the score including the text here.
https://wandelweiser.de/freyscores/ew02.169.pdf


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

This work by Frey was surprising to me. Frey's works I had heard before were so austere and devoid of sentimentality, although there seems very subtle lyricism in it. I Listened to the Wind Again starts with desolate sounds, but as the music progresses, it becomes more and more emotionally affecting, almost as sensuous as some of postminimal composers' works. (Bryars I was listening recently came to my mind.)


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tortkis said:


> This work by Frey was surprising to me. Frey's works I had heard before were so austere and devoid of sentimentality, although there seems very subtle lyricism in it. I Listened to the Wind Again starts with desolate sounds, but as the music progresses, it becomes more and more emotionally affecting, almost as sensuous as some of postminimal composers' works. (Bryars I was listening recently came to my mind.)


He's become more accessible recently. The days of very conceptual material seem to be behind him. Not sure why - maybe he wants to make money.

I don't hear those sounds at the start of I Listened to the Wind as desolate actually. They're the sort of sound you hear quite often in Nono (the flute interludes in Das Atmende Klarsein and Io) and Sciarrino too I think (though I'm not sure why I think Sciarrino - too late to check!)

For desolate, you need the sounds in For Samuel Beckett!


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

I listened to _I Listened to the Wind Again_ for a second time, following the libretto and score this time around. The poems are pretty traditional, though their subject matter is pretty fitting for the music. I'm trying to figure out whether the poems are either redundant or under-utilized by Frey, I can't figure out which side of the fence I'm on. But I feel like I enjoyed the piece a lot more when I focused solely on the music; the poetry somehow lessened the emotional impact of the work for me because I feel like it didn't say anything over and above what I heard in the music, if that makes sense. Maybe different poems would've worked. Frey uses four poems, and they all pretty much say the same thing.

Anyways, I guess I'll present my works for the next week starting tomorrow?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tortkis said:


> You can find the score including the text here.
> https://wandelweiser.de/freyscores/ew02.169.pdf


Very good find!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> I listened to _I Listened to the Wind Again_ for a second time, following the libretto and score this time around. The poems are pretty traditional, though their subject matter is pretty fitting for the music. I'm trying to figure out whether the poems are either redundant or under-utilized by Frey, I can't figure out which side of the fence I'm on. But I feel like I enjoyed the piece a lot more when I focused solely on the music; the poetry somehow lessened the emotional impact of the work for me because I feel like it didn't say anything over and above what I heard in the music, if that makes sense. Maybe different poems would've worked. Frey uses four poems, and they all pretty much say the same thing.
> 
> Anyways, I guess I'll present my works for the next week starting tomorrow?


Frey has done quite a few settings of Gustav Roud's poetry, and given an interview about it (I think for Another Timbre) - I have quite enjoyed the music.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> He's become more accessible recently. The days of very conceptual material seem to be behind him. Not sure why - maybe he wants to make money.
> 
> I don't hear those sounds at the start of I Listened to the Wind as desolate actually. They're the sort of sound you hear quite often in Nono (the flute interludes in Das Atmende Klarsein and Io) and Sciarrino too I think (though I'm not sure why I think Sciarrino - too late to check!)
> 
> For desolate, you need the sounds in For Samuel Beckett!


This thought prompted me to revisit Das Atmende Klarsein. I'm not sure I was right about the feeling of the flute music, and it's similarity to the Frey. But I do want to say that the Nono is a lovely bit of music and well worth hearing again. Nono was a great composer and I wish I'd chosen Das Atmende Klarsein for this group now!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

(( Currently not having the energy for a lot of focused listening, I'll nonetheless use this fine thread for some inspiration at times. I don't own any Jürg Frey, but am now listening to Nono's _Das Atmende Klarsein_ (Fabricciani recording), that rather evasive and amorphous work ... )).

It will be interesting to follow the thread's suggestions.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

joen_cph said:


> (( Currently not having the energy for a lot of focused listening, I'll nonetheless use this fine thread for some inspiration at times. I don't own any Jürg Frey, but am now listening to Nono's _Das Atmende Klarsein_ (Fabricciani recording), that rather evasive and amorphous work ... )).
> 
> It will be interesting to follow the thread's suggestions.


I was optimistic when I volunteered to participate in this thread, as well. My head is just not in contemporary music right now.

Sorry, but I must bow out.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

So I guess I'm up. Here are two pieces that in the past several months have really made me rethink the basics of music and art in general. Hopefully you enjoy them.

*Michel van der Aa: Up-close (2010) (30 minutes)*
*Simon Steen-Andersen: Black Box Music (2012) (30 minutes)*

****(Both works have an essential visual element, so you'll have to watch the youtube videos in addition to listening to the music.)****

*If you want to listen to the music a couple times before reading what's below, I fine with that. You don't even have to read it if you don't want to. I just wrote all this down yesterday afternoon to help myself approach these pieces more rigorously, and you might also find it useful.*

In my opinion, these are probably two of the most innovative works from the last 10-15 years because of the way they utilize the visual arts with the music. There's nothing superficial here. Although two very different pieces on the surface, _Up-close_ and _Black Box Music_, in fact, are attempting to answer the same basic question. Namely, how to get the visual arts to express forms and functions that are normally found in music? Or better yet, how to fold the visual field itself into the musical discourse so that you are "listening" to the moving picture?






In van der Aa, this question is tackled more indirectly and is perhaps more suggestive than real. The film component is not tightly organized according to any sort of musical motivic development that you see in Steen-Andersen. And yet, both film and music point to some common subject shared between them. That shared subject is an age-old philosophical question: what is the nature of identity? In other words, what makes two _different_ things in fact _not different_, or _the same_?

A very difficult problem to begin with, but van der Aa takes it one step further by asking what happens when we pit reality itself against its virtual doppelgänger. By placing the two into a contrapuntal dialogue, van der Aa wishes to show that a gray area exists between full identity of the two and full separation, where one can only tenuously ground reality and virtuality as separate at any given time before they slip and slide into the other. Tensions between the music, visuals, and soundtrack, as well as tensions within each dimension, serve to illustrate the overarching tension between reality and virtuality; it should be stressed that reality and virtuality are _not_ the stage and screen, respectively, but are rather theoretical ideas that the listener ponders while deciphering the tensions between ensemble, stage theatrics, screen, soundtrack. Hence why you cannot listen to the music in isolation: everything is interconnected.

Some examples of this tension between the real and virtual:

First, a meta-level example. Although the work can be viewed live and in the flesh, the fact that we are currently watching it through a computer screen as a video (created by van der Aa himself), with its own edits and perspective shifts, already places the cellist in a precarious relationship with reality. As far as we're concerned, she is just as much a virtual object as the other woman on the screen within the screen, and both the stage and interior screen make up a singular stream of consciousness. For example, at 8:10-8:45, when the older woman looks around the empty stage in confusion, we get the impression that she is actually hearing the ensemble play (or perhaps hallucinating it), and therefore, that the ensemble resides in her world; if anything, her presence may even appear more real than the music she hears because we never see the ensemble in this time frame. Also notice the change in camera angle frequently happens on the accents in the music, as if camera angle and music were conceived together.

And then there are the more obvious examples. At 12:18, when the older woman looks at the lamp, she gets lost in some sort of reverie with the shimmering soundtrack chords in the background. What she dreams (or perhaps remembers) is what the cellist currently does on stage when the latter carries the lamp over to the screen. But suddenly at 12:30, causality flows in the other direction and the actions of the cellist directs the older woman to do the same (notice the change in soundtrack at this moment). Other causal relationships exist, for example, at 14:30, when the music making machine "creates" a luscious chord in the soundtrack; or at 20:28, when the older woman turning the dial coincides with the increasing intensity of the soundtrack; or at 25:55 when the cellist places the chair in front of the screen only for the older woman to stumble on a chair in the forest. And then there is the fact that the ebb and flow of kinetic energy in the music mostly coincides with the ebb and flow of anxiety in the film. Or, if you pay close attention, you can hear some of the ambient sounds from the film reappropriated into the soundtrack for musical use; conversely, some of the electronic noises are vaguely reminiscent of the scratchy, shuffling sounds from the film.

As an aside: regardless of the real or virtual status of the two women, I do think there's enough evidence to suggest some sort of relationship between them, but what that relationship is remains a mystery. Is the older woman a projection of the cellist's future? Or is the cellist's performance a memory of the older woman's past? Or maybe there is no biographical connection at all: perhaps the older woman's journey is but a fantastical projection by the cellist to match the frenzy of the music (much as we sometimes dream up scenarios to match the music we listen to); conversely, perhaps the older woman is conjuring up a sub-conscious soundtrack to match her predicament. The lack of any resolution on this account leaves the personal identities of the women suspended between multiple possibilities, a suspension that should leave the listener a bit uneasy and unsettled. If you've ever read any noir fiction or watched any film noir or, say, the surrealist films of David Lynch, you'll know that the infinite revolving of the personal self and its shadowy alter-ego around each other is a core theme. _Up-close_ continues in that tradition.

But the crises of identity can also be heard within the music itself. This is where _Up-close_ becomes really interesting. Not because van der Aa revolutionized some new compositional technique but because he re-examines old techniques in a new light. The ensemble portion of the music is in a standard 3-movement concerto format with an introduction by the cello that presents the basic material. Going by the score: Introduction start-4:06, 1st movement 4:06-14:30, 2nd movement 14:30-21:50, 3rd movement 21:50-end. You can easily hear in the 3rd movement direct references to the material in the introduction; it's a bit more difficult with the first two movements except occasionally, but I trust that the connections exist.

I can also vaguely hear many basic musical transformations like inversion, rotation, transposition, durational changes, etc., but unfortunately, my listening ears aren't good enough to analyze them in real time. That said, I do hear a preponderance of maj/min 7ths and their inversions, which tells me they form a core organizing principle (the intervals of the 7th and the 2nd, both being one step away from the octave/unison, respectively, are about as symbolic of "fractured identity" as you can get).

While these musical transformations can be found in classical music going back centuries, what van der Aa is demonstrating to us is that issues of alienation, fractured identities, reality/virtuality are built into the very fabric of all music just from using these techniques. When one transposes a musical line upwards or inverts a chord, for example, one is thereby creating a copy of the original that is simultaneously the same and different; this tension between opposing polarities is what allows the copy to itself produce a copy and so on, driving the musical fabric forward into greater and greater complexity. The potential to explore these issues was always there, but it took someone like van der Aa, who's had a longstanding interest in these topics, to push them to the fore.

Finally, the electronic soundtrack is like an amniotic fluid surrounding the other dimensions and exchanging their material. By and large, the soundtrack is made up of recordings of live instruments playing the ensemble material overlaid with some special effects. And as I said earlier, the soundtrack also incorporates some ambient sounds from the film. In both cases, we have the real and the virtual getting confused, especially in the occasional moments when the electronic echoes seem to precede their originals. And if you listen closely, you'll often hear clicks and switches from the soundtrack choreographed with sudden pauses and repeats in the ensemble or with sudden disruptions in the film; a good example is 5:40-6:10. It's as if the soundtrack is turning the ensemble on and off like a recording. As if the soundtrack is the true puppet master running the show, determining everyone's fate.

If the above speculative issues aren't interesting to you, that's okay, because I think van der Aa's music has a lot to offer besides that. For example, I think his music has some of the most gorgeous harmonies I've ever heard, whether we're talking traditional or contemporary classical music. They're icy and brittle to the touch, not just in their tone colors and their evocation of a desolate, lonely tundra but also in their aristocratic refinement. And yet despite this cool restraint, his music simultaneously possesses a flair for the dramatic, not only in the virtuosic writing for both soloist and accompaniment, reminiscent of the staple concertante repertoire, but also in the subtle influences from pop music, although his pop influences admittedly show themselves more forcefully in other works, such as his operas and song cycles. If you want to listen to more van der Aa, my favorite works of his after _Up-close_ are the song cycles, the _Here Trilogy_ (part 1, part 2, part 3), _Spaces of Blank_ (part 1, part 2, part 3), and _The Book of Sand_. They all explore themes of anxiety, claustrophobia, loneliness, alienation, infinity, split personalities, and fractured identities.

_Black Box Music_ begins at 11:44 in the video below and goes until the credits around the 42:30 mark.

EDIT: There's another recording of this on DVD by Decapo Records, and I think it's a little better than the one below (the DVD also includes _Run Time Error_). But the one below is all I could find on youtube.






In contrast to the "alienated identity" of _Up-close_, the identity between music and visuals in _Black Box Music_ is more of a direct one-to-one relationship. That is to say, whenever a musical sequence or block of sound is played, it is accompanied by the same image every time. This strong association between sound and visuals has some pretty important implications for musical development, which I'll get to in a moment, but in _Black Box Music_, Steen-Andersen chooses sounds that are strongly associated with the visuals even outside a musical context.

This should be pretty obvious in the 1st movement, where the squeaks and squalls of the ensemble imitate the sounds you normally hear from certain real-world objects, which are represented by hand gestures. For example, the gestures for a pistol, the phone ringing, and the talking hand are accompanied by noises that sound like a pistol, phone, and talking person, respectively. There are also gestures like thumbs up, rock/paper/scissors, and middle finger which signify the abstract notions "everything's good", the game rock/paper/scissors, and "**** you", respectively; yet, they are accompanied by noises which we have been culturally conditioned to associate them with. There is, of course, the issue of different cultural upbringings, so not every hand gesture will have a universal meaning. For example, there's a gesture in the 1st movement which, to an American like me, stands for "O.K."; yet, the score says it stands for "zero", which for me is slightly different. Steen-Andersen probably should've reconsidered a couple of the hand gestures because of their ambiguity, but it's not the end of the world.

Now one of the implications from this strong relationship is the possibility for narrative. If music is able to possess semantic meaning over and above abstract musical relationships and is able to signify real, concrete objects in the world, then the question of whether extra-musical programmatic narratives are truly possible is answered in the affirmative. Composers of operas and tone poems should be happy to hear this. Since all you would have to do is choose the right sounds with the corresponding visuals and sequence them in such a way to get a coherent story. It's quite fascinating how just adding a _visual_ element can change our _hearing_; putting aside its entertainment value, I think a multimedia piece like _Black Box Music_ has a lot of insights to offer for psychologists of music.

Now admittedly, _Black Box Music_ doesn't explore any extra-musical narratives except obliquely, which is perhaps a missed opportunity for the work. If you want to hear a Steen-Andersen work tackling narrative structures in greater detail, you should listen to _Double Up_, which, while not using any visual elements, does use some incredibly ingenious orchestration to imitate real-world sounds, sequenced in such a way to narrate a story about a day at work and a night out at the casino. Here in _Black Box Music_, I can only think of two places where extra-musical narrative is suggested. First, at 17:15-18:00, the phone gesture and talking gesture get closer and closer in proximity until they appear back-to-back, at which point they suggest a phone conversation. Second, the entirety of the 3rd movement can be thought of as a sacrificial ritual for the destruction of the black box, where the repetitive striking of the rubber bands and cards by the fan acquires the significance of a percussive chant.

But there's a second implication to the strong identity between music and image, one that's inverse to the first. If the first implication is about the possibility for music to signify extra-musical narrative, then the second implication is about the possibility for the real world to be organized musically. Real-world objects can now be arranged according to abstract musical themes and motives and be filtered through contrapuntal and harmonic development. Here is where Steen-Andersen is indebted to the musique concrète tradition of Pierre Schaeffer and Helmut Lachenmann, who also attempt to organize the world musically. But whereas for the two older composers, their notion of "world" was still restricted to world of sounds, albeit one liberated from all convention, for Steen-Andersen, the world that needs organizing extends to the visual realm as well. In some ways, Steen-Andersen is Lachenmann's true successor (and not any of Lachenmann's own students) because he accepts the latter's core principles but pushes them into unchartered territories.

Some examples? Again, there are other works by Steen-Andersen that explore this issue more carefully, such as _Double Up_, _Run Time Error_, _TRIO_, and _The Loop of the Nibelung_ (I initially planned to present _TRIO_ instead of _Black Box Music_ this week, but it was too long to pair with _Up-close_). But here's a couple I found right away; no doubt there are others:

1.Returning to the phone and hand gestures at 17:15-18:00, notice how they belong to a repeating sequence of gestures that gets shorter and shorter by one gesture per repetition. A simple example of "musical" development in the visual realm.

2.Shortly after, from 18:20-19:20, we have another type of development where, with a few exceptions, the hand and wrist remain motionless other than the fingers. Here, Steen-Andersen is attempting to show the close similarities between various gestures by holding one "musical" parameter still (wrist motion) while changing another parameter (finger extension).

3.Further on at 20:20-21:20, but especially from 20:45-21:20, we have a third development where gestures are arranged according to the timbral qualities of their musical counterparts. To see what I mean, shut your eyes during this section and focus only on the shapes of the sounds; although not the greatest example, you should be able to hear a gradual change in timbre from one gesture to the next. This is a very common form of motivic development in Lachenmann's music, where entire sections of music are driven forward by continuous changes in timbre from one extended technique to the next.

Again, if the above speculative issues aren't interesting to you, hopefully you'll still find some entertainment value. I think it's very interesting watching the lead role at the black box playing the dual position of conductor and participant; I don't think it's as easy as it looks, considering how fast you have to move through those gestures. And I just like the light-hearted humor of it all. I can't think of many other works where it's okay to play with rubber bands and balloons.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> (( Currently not having the energy for a lot of focused listening, I'll nonetheless use this fine thread for some inspiration at times. I don't own any Jürg Frey, but am now listening to Nono's _Das Atmende Klarsein_ (Fabricciani recording), that rather evasive and amorphous work ... )).
> 
> It will be interesting to follow the thread's suggestions.


Elusive is an interesting choice of word. It is ineffable. Someone suggested that there was something in common with the Frey and Jonathan Harvey's SQ4 - which I heard today. The string quartet is also ineffable .


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What's the amp?


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> View attachment 166275
> 
> 
> What's the amp?


What's the timestamp for this image?

By "amp" do you mean which plug-ins sound effects he's using in the soundtrack? I couldn't tell you, but the score might tell me which pitches are getting emphasized.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> What's the timestamp for this image?
> 
> By "amp" do you mean which plug-ins sound effects he's using in the soundtrack? I couldn't tell you, but the score might tell me which pitches are getting emphasized.


I just mean, which valve amp was used as the prop there?


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I just mean, which valve amp was used as the prop there?


I couldn't tell you because I don't know much about that stuff. But van der Aa is also a guitarist, and from what I've read, a lot of guitarists prefer valve amps, so it's probably the one that was in his closet when he built the prop. Though it does look like an older model.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Ok, here's some thoughts. First of all I wish that I were as articulate and eloquent a writer as calvinpv. I feel like a caveman trying to communicate after reading what you wrote. Bravo.

I am a Van der Aa fan, having heard Up-Close before and also being a fan of his piece Hysteresis for Clarinet and Ensemble. 

Up-Close is a genre bending work. In fact, I think it may roughly mark the historic beginning of a new art form that crosses genres between live performance, film, and multi-media. I don't know what this new art form would be called. Anyway, I think it is very interesting. I ask myself out loud, not-knowing the answer, what the performance requirements of this work would be. Is it something that could be replicated by a professional chamber ensemble anywhere or would it require extraordinary technical assistance? Or is it something that can only be enjoyed 'after-the-fact' - as in not-live? It seems like it can be replicated, but I haven't looked into it.

I find the Black Box work to be enjoyable, but whereas I view the Van der Aa work as primarily music, I view that Black Box work as primarily theatre. It is entertaining but the music is not something I would listen to on its own (as I would with Van der Aa).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> This should be pretty obvious in the 1st movement,


Which begins 10 minutes in. I enjoyed the piece by Ioannotta, and I enjoyed the Steen Anderson, the Aa less so, though I think Aa is agreeable music, the video effects too are agreeable -- reminds me of the Blair Witch Project. Aa is writing for the audiences who go to the Concertgebouw -- bourgeois stuff.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> If music is able to possess semantic meaning over and above abstract musical relationships and is able to signify real, concrete objects in the world, then the question of whether extra-musical programmatic narratives are truly possible is answered in the affirmative. Composers of operas and tone poems should be happy to hear this. Since all you would have to do is choose the right sounds with the corresponding visuals and sequence them in such a way to get a coherent story.



The sort of language which would result from associating musical sounds and objects would be at best like the rudimentary languages at the start of Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_. There's one he discusses where someone says "brick" and then someone gets a brick. This is not a suitable language for narration, there isn't enough grammar for narration.

Have a look at _Philosophical Investigations_ I, §2 ff.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> But there's a second implication to the strong identity between music and image, one that's inverse to the first. If the first implication is about the possibility for music to signify extra-musical narrative, then the second implication is about the possibility for the real world to be organized musically. Real-world objects can now be arranged according to abstract musical themes and motives and be filtered through contrapuntal and harmonic development.


I don't understand this and I'd like you to give me an example, just arrange some objects musically, and upload an image for us to see.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> Here is where Steen-Andersen is indebted to the musique concrète tradition of Pierre Schaeffer and Helmut Lachenmann, who also attempt to organize the world musically.


I don't like this way of expressing what's going on, I think it's misleading.



calvinpv said:


> But whereas for the two older composers, their notion of "world" was still restricted to world of sounds,


So it's not "world" so much as sounds taken from the world in the case of the musique concrete composers at least. Field recordings, the sort of stuff Luc Ferrari did etc. I think that it's a bit misleading to say that they're organising the world musically. They are presenting sound samples taken from the world, and in Ferrari's case at least, organising them in a way he judges to be poetic -- I don't know if he'd say he's arranging them musically, I have a book by him so I may look later. I think this was a big difference between Ferrari and Schaeffer.

They're not arranging the world musically, they're arranging sounds borrowed from the world and offering it as art.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> It's quite fascinating how just adding a _visual_ element can change our _hearing_; putting aside its entertainment value, I think a multimedia piece like _Black Box Music_ has a lot of insights to offer for psychologists of music.


Can you say some more about this please?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

calvinpv said:


> Again, if the above speculative issues aren't interesting to you, hopefully you'll still find some entertainment value.


I think it's a fun piece, I've enjoyed lots of things by him in the past, he's doing fun work.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Which begins 10 minutes in. I enjoyed the piece by Ioannotta, and I enjoyed the Steen Anderson, the Aa less so, though I think Aa is agreeable music, the video effects too are agreeable -- reminds me of the Blair Witch Project. Aa is writing for the audiences who go to the Concertgebouw -- bourgeois stuff.


I'm not sure having your music performed in a concert hall makes you bourgeois. Do you think the Frey work was bourgeois? Because _I Listened to the Wind Again _contained some pretty traditional major and minor (7th) chords and some traditional voice leading in places.



Mandryka said:


> The sort of language which would result from associating musical sounds and objects would be at best like the rudimentary languages at the start of Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_. There's one he discusses where someone says "brick" and then someone gets a brick. This is not a suitable language for narration, there isn't enough grammar for narration.
> 
> Have a look at _Philosophical Investigations_ I, §2 ff.


I would agree that the narration wouldn't be sophisticated; you'd be lacking the ability to express predicates or conditional relationships, for example, and the number of simultaneous voices "speaking" would be limited to a couple at most before the music overwhelms the ears. But I don't see how you wouldn't have narrative at all. Think of it like a picture book for children. A sequence of musical "images" to which our brain overlays some causal relationships to make sense of the transition from one image to the next. If you think our brains supplying the links between images is a bit of cheating, okay, I guess, though it wouldn't be too different from our brain filling in the gaps with spoken/written language.



Mandryka said:


> I don't understand this and I'd like you to give me an example, just arrange some objects musically, and upload an image for us to see.


I was being a little careless in the wording there. But what I mean is that whatever relationships we can find between sounds have parallels in the visual realm.

Go watch Steen-Andersen's Run Time Error. I can't speak for all the performances of that piece, but some of them (whether in whole or in part) involve arranging objects by the timbre of sound they emit when struck. Which is a relationship between objects, even if that relationship is sound-based, not visual-based. In the performance below, the video is duplicated, giving us 2-part counterpoint like a Bach invention. And there's retrograde motion, change in duration, cyclical motion. If I were to analyze the piece more closely, I'd probably find some other things like rotation, inversion, transposition. And if I can't find those things, I can easily imagine a variation to Run Time Error that does involve them.

But why limit it to sound-based relationships like timbre? What about organizing by the color of the object, or the height, or thickness, or by spatial distance, or by the shape? For example, create a “scale” of shades of colors like the diatonic scales in music from which you can derive diatonic “melodies” (sequences of horizontal colors from the scale) or chromatic melodies (sequences containing colors not from the scale). Vertical “chords” are simultaneous colors. And so on.








Mandryka said:


> I don't like this way of expressing what's going on, I think it's misleading.
> 
> So it's not "world" so much as sounds taken from the world in the case of the musique concrete composers at least. Field recordings, the sort of stuff Luc Ferrari did etc. I think that it's a bit misleading to say that they're organising the world musically. They are presenting sound samples taken from the world, and in Ferrari's case at least, organising them in a way he judges to be poetic -- I don't know if he'd say he's arranging them musically, I have a book by him so I may look later. I think this was a big difference between Ferrari and Schaeffer.
> 
> They're not arranging the world musically, they're arranging sounds borrowed from the world and offering it as art.


I don’t know Ferrari too well. I also haven’t listened to too much Schaeffer (I should return to him soon). But I’ve read a little about him, and it seems he does organize “concrete” sounds by their musical parameters, and he edits his tapes analogously to building up forms found in music, though I'm sure he also has more "poetic" intentions as well (I'm not sure what you mean by "poetic"). Splicing a tape, for example, is like splicing fragments of motivic cells together to create longer sequences. Speeding up the tape is like increasing the tempo. Rewinding is like retrograde motion. Etc.

Lachenmann is doing something similar, if you were to think of his traditional instrumental acoustic palette as malleable as a roll of magnetic tape recording "concrete" sounds, malleable in the sense that it can be edited. Listen to Guero which is basically an interplay between two "themes": a gliding motion and a knocking/flicking motion on the piano. The themes are subjected to transformations and development.



Mandryka said:


> Can you say some more about this please?


This is admittedly a throw-away comment, not well thought out, but I wanted to say that I think a lot of our ability to make sense of the world relies on acquiring meaning from different sensory modalities and synthesizing it all in our brain. If I hear a boulder about to fall on my head but I can't hear it as a boulder falling, then the information conveyed through sound is too weak and amorphous to dictate a response. I need some other information to corroborate my suspicions that it's a boulder, assuming I have suspicions, or just more information to help me make sense of that alien-sounding noise. Information like looking around to get a visual of a boulder falling.

Same thing here. By itself, the music is chaotic and meaningless except for some occasional musical relationships that I mentioned above (assuming you have a good ear to pick them out). The black box visual gestures puts the seeming chaos into focus by telling you what those sounds stand for, putting aside the fact that the sounds may still be too weak to suggest anything (for example, the sounds accompanying the rock/paper/scissors gestures are a bit of an arbitrary decision by Steen-Andersen). I guess there's an issue of what's the threshold from when a sound can represent a visual object and when it cannot. I'm sure some smart psychologist has looked into it.

There are, of course, opposite scenarios, where receiving information from all sensory modalities may blind us to hidden relationships within a single sensory modality. I give an example in my long post introducing the two works, bullet point #3 near the end.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Writing stuff to be played in the Concertgebouw absolutely does make you a producer of commodities for the bourgeois. And yes, Frey has sold out, he's one too now.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I'm not getting a response from Philidor, so I am next in line.

I'm going to do these two works:

1) John Adams: Son of Chamber Symphony, and
2) Wolfgang Rihm: Phantom und Eskapade (for violin and piano)


*John Adams: Son of Chamber Symphony*













Movement One is loosely based on a rhythmic figure (long-short-short) that is featured in the scherzo of Beethoven 9. Scherzo means "joke" and there certainly is a humorous light-hearted air to the movement. It is a fun movement to follow the rhythmic interplay between the instruments. There are a lot of ricocheting rhythms, with sinewy clarinet-ish runs weaving a delightful tapestry. It's a work that, for me, becomes more and more enjoyable after several times hearing it.

The second movement is a classic John Adams musical scene (similar ideas are heard in Naive and Sentimental Music and elsewhere). There is a floating "endless melody" above an accompaniment that is roughly formed with pizzicati. In this movement the pizzicati seems to become more insistent towards the end and dominates the music at that point.

Movement three is a raucous trope loosely based on the themes and harmonic progression of the "News" portion of the opera "Nixon in China."

Lastly, I will say that I like seeing how often this work is being performed nowadays. If you go on YouTube you will encounter a bunch of live recordings from various groups. It is, dare I say, becoming standard repertoire for chamber orchestras.




*Wolfgang Rihm: Phantom und Eskapade*





I find this work to be a bridge between the past and present. Rihm evokes the spirit of the classical tradition but manages to infuse modernity into the work. I think you will understand what I am saying when you hear the work. There are 3 or 4 professional recordings of this work available. I included this one because it is the one that I imprinted on. I think it is a fine work that I have grown to really love. I hope you enjoy it.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Writing stuff to be played in the Concertgebouw absolutely does make you a producer of commodities for the bourgeois. And yes, Frey has sold out, he's one too now.


"Sold out" is a pejorative put down that I doubt you are qualified to make.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

20centrfuge said:


> I'm not getting a response from Philidor, so I am next in line.


Sorry, I wasn't in the forum too much these days for seasonal reasons ... and I suffered froim neglecting this wonderful thread. Please go ahead, I will try to join later these days! Enjoy! Rgs Philidor


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> "Sold out" is a pejorative put down that I doubt you are qualified to make.


Here’s Michael Pisaro’s essay on the original Wandelweiser ideals.









Wandelweiser


by Michael Pisaro Wandelweiser is a word Wandelweiser is a word for a particular group of people who have been committed, over the lon...




erstwords.blogspot.com





Read it and then listen to that Frey piece again.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

20centrfuge said:


> I'm not getting a response from Philidor, so I am next in line.
> 
> I'm going to do these two works:
> 
> ...


Always good to be prompted to explore a bit of Rihm. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with his music.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I understand that. I have a bit of that love/hate as well. The guy wrote sooo much music and for me, it's tough to sift through it all to look for the real gems.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Looking forward to the Adams and Rihm. I feel like I know very little of Adams's more recent music, though I might've heard this before. Rihm is one of my favorite composers, even though there's still a lot of it I need to explore. I don't think I know any of his chamber pieces beyond the SQs and piano works, so this will be new to me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The title of the Rihm suggests a way into the piece. Phantom, I suppose, because it’s aim is to conjure up the spirit of dead musics. Eskapade because it aspires to be a daring escape from conventions.

So we can now ask, how successful is it? Does it conjure up old dead styles? Does it break free from them in a bold way?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The Adams seems like just a nice bit of music. What more could anyone want?

The mother of son of chamber symphony, as it were, seems to me slightly more interesting to hear. Less dumb. He should have called the new one _ $on of Chamber Symphony. _


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Just listened to the Rihm for the first time. Perhaps "phantom" and "escapade" refer to the violin and piano, respectively? Brief outbursts aside, I'm hearing the violin play a semi-continuous line throughout with traditional phrasing at the appropriate moments, like legato at and around the jumps, vibrato at the top of an ascending motion, cresc.-decresc. swells on the long notes. Very reminiscent of the 19th century; the violin is the phantom from the past. The piano, on the other hand, sounds very 20th century. In some ways, it sounds like a playful caricature of his other piano writing. Very sharp and sudden accents, extreme shifts in the register, and a percussive palette towards the end with the sostenuto pedal.

I guess the title of the work could also stand for the contrasts in the narrative between contemplation over something lost in time and breakout into semi-ritualistic dance. A very Rihm-ian thing to do if you've heard his other music.

EDIT: And I just want to say Rihm writes some of the sexiest chords in all of music. This piece is no exception. They don't make their way to the front of the stage in this case because they reside solely in the piano as a rhythmic accompaniment, but they're very nice nonetheless. Very dissonant and yet each inner voice of the chords is carefully chosen to bring out the timbral richness of the piano. Rihm is very much a harmonist, harmony that is beyond my paygrade. And yet his chords also reveal an ear for orchestration that resembles someone like Varèse.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Mandryka said:


> The Adams seems like just a nice bit of music. What more could anyone want?
> 
> The mother of son of chamber symphony, as it were, seems to me slightly more interesting to hear. Less dumb. He should have called the new one _ $on of Chamber Symphony. _


That's the second remark you've made about composers and money. Are you suggesting that Adams wrote the piece strictly for profit? Is 'composers making money' a sore point for you?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

20centrfuge said:


> That's the second remark you've made about composers and money. Are you suggesting that Adams wrote the piece strictly for profit? Is 'composers making money' a sore point for you?


I am suggesting that this piece of music by Adams is a commodity designed to be sold into large concert halls, and get air time on classic FM etc. Those institutions exist primarily to make money from large markets. That’s very different from the target market of, to take an example I’ve been thinking about recently, music by Walter Zimmermann or Christopher Fox. Fox and Zimmermann have a target markets and peer groups - other writers of pure, experimental music - and those peer group hadpve very different values from, for example, the shareholders of large symphony halls and the reviewers in popular classical music channels. 

In my opinion this is one of the most important things to think about when trying to make sense of what’s going on in a work of art. The Adams is a fundamentally different type of commodity from the Fox, which is more “art for art’s sake.” That’s why they sound so different!

What a composer does to be positively received by his peers isn’t a sore point for me. For me, it’s a key factor to consider. 

In some groups that approval consists in small performances, encouragement from like minded friends, positive notices in specialist journals., seminars and festschrifts. In others groups that approval consists of a cheque.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I see your point, though I would say Adams is no less “art for arts sake” than Glass, just that maybe you don’t like his music as much.
Peace


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I am really not much of a John Adams fan, but I did like the last movement from Son of Chamber Symphony. 

I am a bit more impressed with the Rihm piece.

As 20thcentrfuge states, pretty accurately it would seem, it has a good dose of tradition, with great moments of the modern.

I may have to explore a bit more of his work.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I don't think this thread is one I can participate effectively in. I tend not to analyse what is happening in a piece of music when I am getting to know it - well, I can't! - and am not terribly informed by noting structural points ("it starts like this and then becomes like that until ..."). It takes me quite a lot of time for a piece that I am attracted to to begin to actually make some sort of sense (and even then not a sense I could describe well or that anyone would be remotely interested in). Sometimes I can't even begin properly for months. And when I do it can take more months to take shape. 

So, I am still with the Frey, which I am finding rewarding to listen to every week or so. The Michel van der Aa and the 
Simon Steen-Andersen didn't appeal to me (and I have never been taken by Steen-Anderson) but I might still find myself wanting to listen to one or other at some point and perhaps it will grow inside me. I just can't tell. I might enjoy the Rihm but tend not to be excited by Adams. I will try them both and see where that takes me.

So, that's it for me - I will follow this thread and hope to discover some new music. But I doubt I will have a lot to offer so my presence will be more loitering than participating I think.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Here’s Michael Pisaro’s essay on the original Wandelweiser ideals.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Frey is not bound to the original Wandelweiser ideals, especially if having his music played in a world class concert hall violates them. This is hardly selling out; it is becoming successful. 

Sometimes mediocre talents hide behind esoteric mission statements and styles in order to avoid competing and failing in the real world.


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> I am suggesting that this piece of music by Adams is a commodity designed to be sold into large concert halls, and get air time on classic FM etc. Those institutions exist primarily to make money from large markets. That’s very different from the target market of, to take an example I’ve been thinking about recently, music by Walter Zimmermann or Christopher Fox. Fox and Zimmermann have a target markets and peer groups - other writers of pure, experimental music - and those peer group hadpve very different values from, for example, the shareholders of large symphony halls and the reviewers in popular classical music channels.
> 
> In my opinion this is one of the most important things to think about when trying to make sense of what’s going on in a work of art. The Adams is a fundamentally different type of commodity from the Fox, which is more “art for art’s sake.” That’s why they sound so different!
> 
> ...


It seems to me that we have two musical tribes who consider the other side as an existential threat and yet can't see past the end of their own noses and live in reality. On one side you have those who shun any music that give off a whiff of "theory" and "experimentalism" in favor of "music for the people", "emotion", and "the market", whatever the hell that means; on the other side, those who proudly identify with "theory" and "experimentalism" and wear them like cloves of garlic to scare away the "money-sucking" vampires and in the process water down the meaning of those terms to something nebulous. Neither group seems to understand that all pieces of music have theoretical and experimental tendencies lacing through them as well as a potential to be commoditized.

I think what 20centrfuge, SanAntone, and I have a problem with is that your view of true authentic art is just the mirror image of the mouthpieces defending the big concert halls. The pieces you choose as authentic may be different than theirs, but your reasoning is the same: one side is "pure", the other "impure". Of course, that doesn't make what the other side is doing any better; but it seems to me you're falling into the same trap. What you're ignoring is:

1. The Walter Zimmermanns and Christopher Foxes of the world are also selling music on the market. You sort of recognize this by identifying their "target market" but then try to have it both ways by saying there is something "fundmentally different" about their commodities. But there is no difference. Like John Adams, they are also curating their music to the tastes of a dedicated audience in exchange for money. For example, have you noticed that many of the Wandelweiser composers share many surface features, despite all their rhetoric of individuality: slow, quiet, fragmented music using everyday objects as instruments? There is nothing inherently "experimental" about any of those surface features compared with their opposites, which makes me think they serve as nothing more than signifiers of group identification and as a means to signal to their consumer base that "I'm one of you". Or rather, if there is true experimentalism, it resides elsewhere in the work. It also makes me question whether they or their fans truly understand their core messages about deep listening and the interactions between silence and sound. I've read a couple of essays about Wandelweiser (I don't remember which offhand), and I agree with a lot of what they say, but a couple questions always linger: why am I restricted from listening to non-Wandelweiser composers in the same way as a Wandelweiser work? Is their core message really just a re-branding of a type of listening that was always required for music? (see point #2 below)

You're also forgetting that the small performances, seminars, journals, and festival circuits all take place in a capitalist economy: people pay money to get a seat in the auditorium, universities purchase expensive subscriptions for those journals so that academics can read them for free (a nobody like me can never afford one of those subscriptions), those seminars and festivals all take place in rented out venues built for more mainstream purposes, the recordings are distributed as CDs and mp3s through 3rd party vendors, etc.

2. Every single piece of music throughout history can be listened to as an experiment. Not just concert hall composers like John Adams or Michel van der Aa, but even pop artists like Taylor Swift or Drake. The reason every piece of music is experimental is because every piece of music possesses a form or structure through which ideas are expressed about the world and ourselves and society. Sure, some pieces may be more interesting than others from this perspective, in the sense that they're exploring more than one thread simultaneously or teasing out a single thread to its logical conclusion. Some forms are simple and straightforward while others are complex and elusive. Some works show meticulous craftsmanship to ensure the ideas get transmitted to the listener while other works possess more disconnect between form and idea. But in both cases I am learning something, however small that "something" is. There is always something to discover. The question then becomes, "Do I choose to seek out the experimental potential in the music or not? Do I choose to listen according to the composer's intentions or perhaps beyond their intentions in the event the experimentation was unintended?". These are questions for the listener to answer, not the composer. If we ever want to use "bourgeois" as a pejorative -- and I'm open to whether we should or shouldn't -- it should be restricted to the consumer of music, not the producer or laborer.

A random example: the last couple nights, I've been listening to some orchestral works by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, a lesser known Russian Romantic who sounds like a hybrid between Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov except he's writing 20 years after their deaths. Very melody driven music with standard chord progressions. We're not talking about anything groundbreaking like Stockhausen or Cage. And yet I can't say I learned nothing. For example, the second theme of the first movement of Ippolitov-Ivanov's first symphony was presented in a retrograde-inversion right after the direct statement of the theme, giving a mirror-like effect that was initially confounding, as it sounded like the direct theme itself. Which raised questions in my head about identification of themes: What is it that I look for in a theme in order to separate it from the rest of the musical fabric? The question has a simple answer in this case -- the second theme contained an easily identifiable perfect fourth interval that stood out like a sore thumb -- but in other contexts, it can be quite difficult. But the fact the question was even raised in my head by a Romantic symphonist is proof enough that these "traditional" works can become very interesting if one approaches them with potential for experimentation. And just to be clear, I also engaged in pure emotion-driven listening with these pieces, enjoying the catchy tunes and rhythms.

By the way, if this post sounds aggressive, that's not my intention. I actually learn quite a bit from your posts in this thread and others, for example your questions about the Steen-Andersen piece forced me to clarify and think through my own positions on his music. And just remember that everything I wrote above can be applied to the opposite side of the conflict. I have just as much of a problem with the anti-experimentalism position. I'm just getting tired of tribal loyalties, which I see a lot of on TC. All music is wonderful, and I want to hear what every composer has to say, even those I may not agree with.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Who said anything about authenticity? Not me! I don't think it's a clear or helpful concept.

I think Fox and Zimmermann are playing to their peers in their chosen niche, just as Adams is. Each group has its own criteria for evaluating musics, all three composers are aware of those criteria and all three have the skills to produce commodities which meet the requirements.

The difference is that the raison d'etre of the group which produces music for traditional concert venues, radio stations etc is financial. Fox, Zimmermann, I am sure, are making very little money from their music. The raison d'etre of their peer group is not financial.

By the way, I never said, or if I did I shouldn't have said, that Adams's or Aa's stuff isn't interesting per se. I'm not interested -- but I'm not interested in Beethoven or Liszt either -- nothing follows about their music!


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

There is nothing wrong from a composer having as a goal to make a living from writing music. I also think it a flawed premise that if a composer is making a living from his composing that he is undoubtedly compromising his artistic integrity.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> There is nothing wrong from a composer having as a goal to make a living from writing music. I also think it a flawed premise that if a composer is making a living from his composing that he is undoubtedly compromising his artistic integrity.


This is a straw man in the context of the discussion.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> This is a straw man in the context of the discussion.


No straw man. I was responding to these statements in your post:



> The difference is that the raison d'etre of the group which produces music for traditional concert venues, radio stations etc is financial. Fox, Zimmermann, I am sure, are making very little money from their music. The raison d'etre of their peer group is not financial.


You also accused Frey of "selling out" because his work was to be performed by a major concert institution, implying that he had violated his principles as a member of the Wandelweiser community.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> No straw man. I was responding to these statements in your post:
> 
> 
> 
> You also accused Frey of "selling out" because his work was to be performed by a major concert institution, implying that he had violated his principles as a member of the Wandelweiser community.





Mandryka said:


> I think this is a straw man in the context of the discussion.


No. Neither of those posts say that there is anything wrong with Adams’ belonging to a peer group where financial values are paramount. Nor that Frey is wrong to have sold out on Wandelweiser.

Don’t confuse me with that guy who shouted “Judas” when Bob Dylan took out his electric guitar.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Your use of the phrase "sold out" is not neutral. I am surprised you don't understand how it is a negative judgmental put-down. In Jazz circles it certainly was used in that manner, e.g. when Miles Davis went electric.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Your use of the phrase "sold out" is not neutral. I am surprised you don't understand how it is a negative judgmental put-down. In Jazz circles it certainly was used in that manner, e.g. when Miles Davis went electric.


I expect the Wandelweiser hard core see it like that. And I've already said many times how much I enjoyed hearing that Frey piece, and indeed how agreeable the Adams is, and indeed the Aa -- from some points of view (not mine), nothing is more important that that.

For my part, I'm mostly concerned to see how well sociological concepts like belonging to a peer group, and possessing social capital can be used to make sense of what's happening in recent "classical music"


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Philidor
Allaroundmusicenthusiast
Enthusiast
San Antone
Mmsbls
Simon Moon


Would any of you like to share a work or two this week?


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## maladie (Oct 14, 2015)

I have to admit my confusion as to why Aa gets so many good reviews. There's nothing inherently wrong with his music but it does bore me to tears. He also keeps talking about innovative he is, but most of his ideas have been done before. His use of electronics is often incredibly poor and uninteresting as it's mostly just synth backing tracks or video. The innovation of how it stays in tempo is literally just someone pressing space bar on a MaxMSP patch he didn't even make. In the world of avant-garde theatre, his use of live 3D cameras is also nothing new, innovative or interesting. I've seen one of his operas, heard a few CDs and an ensemble I work with has played his music. His opera was mind numbingly boring and insipid, but some of his chamber music does have its charm. He really is a smart man when it comes to marketing but talk about the emperor's new clothes.


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