Il pianoforte ben temperato

la monte youngThe Well-Tuned Piano is La Monte Young’s magnum opus, the work in which many of his theories are crystallized and laid out for the listener. It’s a massive solo piano performance, lasting a little over five hours, during which Young displays virtually every combination of chords that he deems special, seguing one into another. At the end of the day, the question is: Given the formal system and obviously huge amount of time devoted to its investigation, is the resultant music beautiful enough to justify the large amount of hype accompanying the project? The first thing that strikes the listener is the sound of the piano itself, a Bosendorfer that has been tuned in just intonation. [here is a page about the tuning]
The sounds of the notes themselves are fascinating and, to Western ears, exotic enough to compel attention; one hears harmonies that sound strangely alien yet apropos. Young keeps the sustain pedal pressed almost throughout, the harmonics surrounding each chord like a cloud. The music itself, to the extent that one can dissociate it from the theory involved, is where things get a bit chancy. The themes tend to alternate between idyllic ruminations and rumbling, pulsating passages, each of which more than a bit reminiscent of the often overindulgent solo work of Keith Jarrett. The titles to the sections may impart an idea of the new age-y drift that sometimes occurs here. There’s simply not a great deal of meat to it, as though Young expects that the sheer beauty of the tuning system is enough. Once one gets acclimated to it and accepts it as an alternative (and quite attractive) way to tune a piano, inevitably one comes back listening for deeper meaning and structure. And there’s not much there. Indeed, there’s more than a whiff of arrogance to the project, such as in the “Playback Suggestions” printed at the beginning of the large (and very informative) booklet accompanying the set. When one has found the correct volume setting, allowing the sound of the loudest sections to fill the room, it suggests that the listener “may eventually want to mark [the setting] in order to avoid adjusting the volume control as you listen.” Yeah, OK. Young was a vitally important figure in the genesis of minimalism as a musical movement, and contributed numerous crucial ideas to the avant-garde from the late ’50s onward. Fans of his will obviously require The Well-Tuned Piano in their collections. Newer listeners may be better served by picking up smaller-scale releases like The Four Dreams of China before making the commitment. There’s certainly a danger otherwise that, after five hours of music that has more than its share of noodling, the listener might well wonder what all the fuss was about.
Brian Olewnick, All Music Guide

Notes: Eb E F F# G G# A Bb B C C# D
Ratios: 1/1 567/
512
9/8 147/
128
21/
16
1323/
1024
189/
128
3/2 49/
32
7/4 441/
256
63/
32
Cents: 0 177 204 240 471 444 675 702 738 969 942 1173
Temp Cents: 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100

La Monte Young – The Well-Tuned Piano (excerpt from section 1)

Se un suono non ti piace è perché non l’hai ascoltato abbastanza

Difficile scrivere poche righe su La Monte Young.
Nato nel 1935, considerato come uno dei primi minimalisti e celebrato dalla suddetta scuola, sebbene formalmente abbia molto poco in comune con compositori come Glass e Reich, i suoi lavori sono considerati fra i più importanti e radicali nel panorama dell’avanguardia post-bellica e sperimentale.
Ispiratore del gruppo Fluxus, le sue composizioni concettualmente minimali investono la stessa definizione di musica. Molti dei suoi pezzi, infatti, sono costituiti da un eterno bordone.
Ricordo che, nella mia ormai lontana gioventù, 8) rimasi colpito da una sua partitura costituita unicamente da due note in 5a (mi pare SI e FA#), con la scritta “to be held for a long time”. Probabilmente il brano più lungo con la partitura più corta mai composto.
Rimasi anche colpito da una sua riflessione che investiva la nostra considerazione del tempo:

Se un giro di blues dura 12 battute, perché non può durare 12 giorni? 4 giorni in DO, 2 giorni in FA…..

Autore del Well Tuned Piano (il pianoforte ben temperato), un’opera monumentale per piano solo accordato secondo la scala naturale (just intonation), la cui durata in alcune esecuzioni supera le 6 ore ed è documentata in una edizione in 5 CD da Grammavision (e poi in DVD per la sua etichetta Just Dreams), è stato un pioniere dello studio degli effetti generati da intervalli musicali naturali mantenuti a lungo e insieme con Marian Zazeela ha realizzato una serie di Dream Houses, ambienti in cui si combinano i suoi tappeti di onde sinusoidali in just intonation con le sculture di luce in forme simmetriche e quasi calligrafiche di Zazeela.
Ha anche studiato musica classica indiana con Pandit Pran Nath a cui è dedicato questo brano composto unicamente da un bordone di tampura e messo in linea da AnaBlog.
È lungo e sempre uguale e ricordate, se un suono non vi piace è perché non l’avete ascoltato abbastanza.

La Monte Young – The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath