# Aaron Cassidy 1976 -



## Edward Elgar

http://www.aaroncassidy.com/

Here's another obscure composer, although he has achieved international recognition. Check out his upcoming performances and if one of them is near where you live he's worth a listen. Failing this, if you click on the "music" link you can view scores and notes from his solo and chamber works including audio samples.

He is my composition tutor at university and I've heard some of his music, although I've not been moved yet, his music is the most academic you're likely to find. In his string quartet I'm going to see on the 26th, instrumentalists must read off 3 individual staves, each one a set of physical instructions. The finely wrought structures of these instructions results in an exiting musical collision between these parameters.


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## purple99

It sounds like a mouse eating a piece of cheese inside a violin, then running up and down the soundboard. Clever of him to have got that effect.

http://www.aaroncassidy.com/soundclips/crutchexcerpt.mp3


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## purple99

This composition mimics Dyno-Rod clearing a stubbornly blocked drain.

http://www.aaroncassidy.com/soundclips/metallicdustexcerpt.mp3


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## purple99

Finally, an imaginative evocation of rain dripping through a leaking roof.

http://www.aaroncassidy.com/soundclips/miniatures1-3.mp3


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## Edward Elgar

Its remarkable you were able to use the music as stimulus for your own imagination (despite your examples being hillarious lol!). If more people could do this, contemporary music would be much more acceptable.


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## Edward Elgar

Here's a conversation between two American contemporary composers. Aaron Cassidy and Michael Pisaro. These composers are at the cutting edge of new music and it's interesting to know what they think.











purple99 has provided helpful hyper-links to examples of Aaron Cassidy's music. Does the music or the interview give you new insight into contemporary music? What are your opinions about the issues raised in the interview?


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## Argus

Edward Elgar said:


> purple99 has provided helpful hyper-links to examples of Aaron Cassidy's music. Does the music or the interview give you new insight into contemporary music? What are your opinions about the issues raised in the interview?


I didn't watch the interview.

His music sounds like the oxymoron of 'composed free improvisation'. Sure, the notation guides the musician towards whatever the composer is driving at, but I hear nothing that an adept free improviser couldn't create on their own. A score is best used when a 'wrong' sound would be out of place, otherwise greater freedom makes more sense. Like trying do drink an ice cube.

Well, that's my overly intellectualised load of ******** take on the music (well not actually the sounds but their creation), anyway.

I like how all the Google ads on this page are for blocked drains and plumbers.


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## Edward Elgar

Argus said:


> A score is best used when a 'wrong' sound would be out of place, otherwise greater freedom makes more sense.


This is quite an interesting. Watching the interview gives some idea of the insane level of detail that Aaron Cassidy includes in his scores. the question is: it so much detail necessary if simpler or freer notation could produce the same sound?

I suppose if simpler or freer notation was used, each performance would be very different depending on the artistic sensibilities of the performer. Detail ensures that the piece is consistently complex with the same "wrong notes" every time!


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## Edward Elgar




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