Ted Norman (1912-1997) era un chitarrista e compositore canadese dotato anche di sense of humour.
Infatti, dopo aver partecipato all’esecuzione del Marteau diretto dallo stesso Boulez, ha prodotto lo schizzo che vedete sotto e che trovate qui in dimensioni originali.
Da vari giorni, ormai, tutti parlano dell’iniziativa dei Radiohead che hanno deciso di tagliare fuori le major del disco e vendere il nuovo disco, In Rainbows, direttamente dal proprio sito.
Hanno colpito anche le modalità della vendita, con il pubblico chiamato a fare un’offerta libera per la versione digitale del disco.
In breve, i prodotti in vendita sul sito radiohead.com sono due, l’uno fisico, l’altro digitale:
Non si tratta di una novità: gia la netlabel Magnatune (di cui abbiamo già parlato) e il negozio canadese Sheeba, fanno così (anche se Magnatune ha un’offerta minima di € 4). Quello che è importante, però, è che a farlo sia una delle più famose band del pianeta, il che dà coraggio anche agli altri e se non bastasse, offre alla gente un argomento sensato: “questo significa che vendere un disco a pochi soldi è possibile, quindi, perché dovremmo pagare € 18?”.
In effetti, come riferisce il Times, la notizia, annunciata con 4 righe sul blog della band, ha lasciato attoniti parecchi dirigenti delle major. Sempre secondo il Times, uno di loro ha dichiarato:
Sembra un’altra campana a morto; se la migliore band del mondo vuole andare avanti senza di noi, qual è il futuro del business musicale?
Fra le star, aveva cominciato Prince, vendendo il proprio disco come allegato a un periodico, anche se in cambio di un sostanzioso assegno.
Ora Thom Yorke ricara la dose spiegando la posizione della band con parole educate, ma pesanti (all’inglese):
I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say ‘F___ you’ to this decaying business model.
Trad. mia
Mi piace la gente della nostra compagnia discografica, ma è venuto il momento di chiedersi se qualcuno ha ancora bisogno di loro. E sì, probabilmente c’è anche un certo piacere perverso nel mandare questo decadente modello di business a farsi fottere.
Passages of the Beast (1978) by Morton Subotnick
From 1977 Subotnick began to explore the relationship between performers and technology in a series of “ghost” pieces for instruments and interactive electronics. In these compositions, the ghost score is a silent digital program which activates electronic modules to modify the instrumental sounds with regard to pitch, timbre, volume, and location of the sounds. Each work has its own digital program which controls a standardized ghost box. The ghost electronics were designed by Donald Buchla and built by John Payne according to the composer’s specifications; funding was provided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are fourteen ghost works (composed between 1977 and 1983), and, at present, Subotnick feels he has finished this series. While the ghost pieces have used electronics to modify instrumental sounds, it appears Subotnick’s next compositional period will involve having instruments control computer generated sounds.
Subotnick states:
The title Passages of the Beast refers to the rites of passage, of beastness to humanness, the passion of the beast and human awareness joined. The clarinet is treated as both a very old instrument (through a series of invented fingerings to get some of the non-diatonic qualities back into the technique) and a modern instrument, paralleling, more or less, the transition or passages from beast to human. The almost programmatic quality of the work is in keeping with the mainstream of my work for more than a decade. Passages, in particular, deals metaphorically with the evolution of the human spirit, and was one of a group of works which led up to the final (as of this writing) piece in the series, The Double Life of Amphibians, a ninety minute staged tone poem which received its world premiere at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles.
La prima composizione per pianoforte con massiccia presenza di cluster.
Henry Cowell (1897-1965) – The Tides of Manaunaun (c. 1912) – Sorrel Hays, piano
The Tides of Manaunaun was written as a prelude to an opera based on Irish mythology. In Irish mythology, Manaunaun was the god of motion and of the waves of the sea; and according to the mythology, at the time when the universe was being built, Manaunaun swayed all of the materials out of which the universe was being built with fine particles which were distributed everywhere through cosmos. And he kept these moving in rhythmical tides so that they should remain fresh when the time came for their use in the building of the universe.
[Henry Cowell]
George Crumb – An Idyll for the Misbegotten (1986)
per flauto amplificato e 3 percussioni
Kristen Halay flauto, Brian Scott, W. Sean Wagoner, Tracy Freeze percussioni
I feel that ‘misbegotten’ [trad: figlio illegittimo, bastardo] well describes the fateful and melancholy predicament of the species homo sapiens at the present moment in time. Mankind has become ever more ‘illegitimate’ in the natural world of plants and animals. The ancient sense of brotherhood with all life-forms (so poignantly expressed in the poetry of St. Francis of Assisi) has gradually and relentlessly eroded, and consequently we find ourselves monarchs of a dying world. We share the fervent hope that humankind will embrace anew nature’s ‘moral imperative.’
[George Crumb]
Crumb suggests, “impractically,” that the music be “heard from afar, over a lake, on a moonlit evening in August.” (Crumb) Over a slow bass drum tremolo, the flute begins its haunting melody, which over the course of the piece includes quotations of Claude Debussy’s solo flute piece Syrinx and spoken verse by the eighth-century Chinese poet Ssu-K’ung Shu: “The moon goes down. There are shivering birds and withering grasses.” Far from a traditionally peaceful idyll, the music’s energy and dynamics gradually rise and fall, with a sense of desolation throughout.
Un pensiero per la Birmania.
Uno dei brani più famosi della musica classica birmana. Anticamente veniva eseguito a palazzo reale e nelle occasioni in cui il re si rivolgeva al popolo.
E mentre ascoltate leggetevi
Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay
che avrà anche degli accenti un po’ da romantico colonialismo d’altri tempi e a tratti è buffa, però ha rappresentato per molto tempo la Birmania nell’immaginario occidentale…
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!
‘Er petticoat was yaller an’ ‘er little cap was green,
An’ ‘er name was Supi-yaw-lat — jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen,
An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot,
An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ‘eathen idol’s foot:
Bloomin’ idol made o’mud —
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd —
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ‘er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
When the mist was on the rice-fields an’ the sun was droppin’ slow,
She’d git ‘er little banjo an’ she’d sing “Kulla-lo-lo!”
With ‘er arm upon my shoulder an’ ‘er cheek agin’ my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis pilin’ teak.
Elephints a-pilin’ teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence ‘ung that ‘eavy you was ‘arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
But that’s all shove be’ind me — long ago an’ fur away,
An’ there ain’t no ‘busses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay;
An’ I’m learnin’ ‘ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
“If you’ve ‘eard the East a-callin’, you won’t never ‘eed naught else.”
No! you won’t ‘eed nothin’ else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay . . .
I am sick o’ wastin’ leather on these gritty pavin’-stones,
An’ the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho’ I walks with fifty ‘ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an’ grubby ‘and —
Law! wot do they understand?
I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be —
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!
MORTON SUBOTNICK (b. 1933, Los Angeles) is a pioneer in the field of electronic music as well as an innovator in works involving instruments and other media. He was the first composer to be commissioned to write an electronic composition expressly for phonograph records, Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967), a work that was later choreographed by the Netherlands Ballet, Ballet Rambert of London and the Glen Tetley Dance Company. Subotnick was co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (now at Mills College) and was Music Director of Ann Halprin’s Dance Company and the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop. He served as Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre during its first season and was director of electronic music at the original Electric Circus on St. Mark’s Place in New York City. Subotnick has held several faculty appointments, including Yale University, and was Composer-in-Residence in West Berlin under the auspices of the DAAD. Since 1970, he has chaired the composition department of the California Institute of the Arts.
PARALLEL LINES is one of Subotnick’s “ghost” pieces for live soloist and electronics. The ghost series is a unique method of blending electronics with live performances so that the effect of the electronics is not audible unless the performer is making a sound. The electronic ghost score is a digital control system which activates an amplifier, a frequency shifter, and a location device. These process the instrumental sound according to the plan of each composition. The ghost electronics were made possible by a Creative Arts grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and were designed by Donald Buchla to the composer’s specifications and constructed by John Payne at the California Institute of the Arts. Other ghost pieces include Last Dream or the Beast for singer and tape, Liquid Strata for piano, The Wild Beasts for trombone and piano, Passages of the Beast for clarinet, and Two Life Histories for male voice and clarinet. The composer writes:
PARALLEL LINES was commissioned by Laurence Trott and the Piccolo Society. The title has to do with the way in which the ‘ghost’ electronics interact with the piccolo. In previous ‘ghost’ pieces the electronics were used to produce an acoustic environment within which the solo manifested itself, but in this case the ‘ghost’ score is a parallel composition to the piccolo solo. The ghost score amplifies and shifts the frequency of the original non-amplified piccolo sound. The two (‘ghost’ and original piccolo sounds), like a pair of parallel lines, can never touch, no matter how quickly or intricately they move.
The work, a continuation of the butterfly-beast series, is divided into three large sections: (1) a perpetual-motion-like movement in which all parts play an equal role; (2) more visceral music, starting with the piccolo alone and leading to a pulsating ‘crying out,’ and (3) a return to the perpetual motion activity, but sweeter.[from ANABlog]
Morton Subotnick – Parallel Lines – Laurence Trott, piccolo soloist
Members of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Buffalo Creative Associates; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
L’Arnold Schönberg Center e gli eredi del compositore, di cui abbiamo già parlato elogiandone la politica di apertura, hanno recentemente piazzato su YouTube vari spezzoni video con esecuzioni, testimonianze storiche, interviste e altro materiale tratto dall’archivio.
Si trovano facilmente cercando in base al nome dell’utente che è ascvideo (Arnold Schönberg Center video). In ogni caso, cliccate qui.
Una delle cose belle è che i video storici hanno spesso come sottofondo la sua musica. Guardandoli pensavo che ormai mi sembra quasi melodica e mi è tornata in mente una citazione di Cage a proposito della sua Winter Music:
We’ve played ‘Winter Music’ quite a number of times now: I haven’t kept count.
When we first played it the silences seemed very long and the sounds seemed really separated in space, not obstructing one another. In Stockholm, however, when we played it at the opera as an interlude in the dance programme given by Merce Cunningham and Carolyn Brown early one October, I noticed that it had become melodic.
Tutto è destinato a diventare melodico, prima o poi….
Via Alex Ross
Quando li ho rivisti in YouTube non ho resistito alla tentazione di piazzare qui un video dei primi Devo, gruppo degli anni ’70 che già allora esplorava il concetto di Devolution, dandogli il corretto significato di inversione del processo evolutivo; in soldoni: stiamo tornando alle scimmie.
Eccoli eseguire con fare robotico la loro cover di Satisfaction.
BLOGRegular pubblica questa dichiarazione di Mirella Freni, intervistata da Leonetta Bentivoglio su Repubblica di qualche giorno fa
Sia io che Luciano abbiamo studiato col maestro Campogalliani, e quando dissi a quest’ultimo che sapevo poco di musica lui m’intimò: guai a te se impari il canto scandendo uno-due-tre-quattro! Hai sensibilità, doti naturali, non perdere la tua naturalezza!
Sarà…
Lungi da me l’idea di criticare Mirella Freni e/o il suo maestro, ma capisco bene i pianisti che, quando si trovano ad accompagnare i cantanti, si lamentano perché questi ultimi “non vanno a tempo neanche a pagarli in oro”.
Accidenti, andare a tempo non significa scandire uno-due-tre-quattro. Significa sentire e assecondare con naturalezza una pulsazione interna al brano, senza però andare dove si vuole solo perché la tua sensibilità ti ci porta. La sensibilità va assecondata, ma anche controllata. e soprattutto educata.
Per esempio, penso che molti pianisti, all’inizio, da piccoli, tendano a suonare uno “smelenso” Chiaro di Luna, ma poi si capisce il pezzo e la sensibilità si adegua senza sentirsi costretta. Un interprete non deve seguire solo il proprio istinto del bello, ma anche interrogarsi su quello che sta facendo.
Secondo me, idee come “non contare, segui la tua sensibilità”, magari hanno prodotto un Pavarotti, ma anche decine di pessimi musicisti.
Forse ne vale la pena, ma non ne sono sicuro…