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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:36:10 -0700, Kevin Wampler wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>>> John Cage? ;-)
>> I'm sure he at least wouldn't mind 4'33" ;-)
>
> I think it rather depends on what occurs during that period of time. The
> premise of that score is interesting, though. The thing I found funny
> about Cage's scores was that they tended to look more like they came off
> an EKG machine rather than musical notation. I remember one that had
> three graphs - one for pitch, one for amplitude, and one for rate (IIRC).
Nonstandard notation of this sort is not uncommon in a lot of
contemporary music and cage is certainly not the only person to use it.
It is pretty strange to look at coming from traditional western notion
though. Once you start getting into Aleatoric music (as Cage did) you
get even more bizarre notations.
>> Along these lines I was very surprised to find that a professor who was
>> sitting in on a computer science seminar with me was actually a pupil of
>> Xenakis. He had some amusing stories to tell about how Xenakis once
>> cleared out an entire concert hall save for three of his students
>> (including the professor) in the front row.
>
> LOL - so how does the story go?
About like it sounds. I was giving a sort presentation on some computer
music topics and I played an example of Xenakis' Myceane Alpha. The
professor then related how Xenakis had given a concert at some music
conference and played this or a similar piece at about 120dB.
Apparently the audience did not last long and by the end only his
students were left. I'll need to remember to ask him next time I see
him if this was Xenakis' intent from the beginning (and if Xenakis
thought it was humorous).
>> I was also lucky enough to hear a good reproduction of La Légende d'Eer
>> in an actual concert a couple of years ago. My girlfriend who I'd
>> dragged to the event was somewhat less enthusiastic.
>
> I'm going to have to look that one up - I don't think I've ever heard of
> it before.
Unfortunately none of the recordings do it justice. The piece was
initially composed for seven tracks each playing from a speaker in a
different part of the concert hall (actually, it was composed for a
particular concert space which Xenakis himself designed). This allowed
Xenakis to make heavy use of the three-dimensional placement of the
sound, and this is more or less totally lost in the available
recordings. This was one of the reasons why it was so cool to hear a
proper reproduction in a concert hall.
My girlfriend was amused that he was able to create an entirely new form
of musical suspense when she realized that a really loud sound somewhat
like a rocket taking off was slowly moving over to our side of the theater.
Side note: This piece was written to celebrate the opening of Pompidou.
Another side note: It's not easy listening.
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