Edgar Froese (1944-2015)

Edgar Froese è morto a Vienna il 20 Gennaio, ma l’annuncio è stato dato solo il 23.

Unico membro stabile dei Tangerine Dream e a tratti anche unico membro tout court, nel senso che numerose pubblicazioni uscite a nome Tangerine Dream sono in realtà lavori solisti di Froese stesso, è stato l’ispiratore delle sonorità più sperimentali del gruppo, quelle dei primi album legati alla cosiddetta Kosmische Musik degli anni ’70, ispirata da un lato alla psichedelia e dall’altro alla musica minimale e alle composizioni strumentali del Ligeti degli anni ’60 da cui i primi Tangerine Dream pescavano a piene mani.

Tangerine Dream Tangerine Dream 1974 Bordeaux

Holly Herndon

herndon

Holly Herndon (born Tennessee, 1980s) is an American composer, musician, and sound artist based in San Francisco, California. She has released two albums on the record label RVNG Intl. She often uses the visual programming language Max/MSP to create custom instruments and vocal processes, and has collaborated with artists such as Reza Negarestani. Her 2014 single “Chorus” was named Best New Track by Pitchfork, who stated “few artists have managed to meld the dark thump of techno with the intricate constructions of post-minimalist new music quite like Holly Herndon”.
[wikipedia]

Tutto sommato, mi sembra partire da certe performance vocali di Laurie Anderson, quelle più legate alla canzone piuttosto che al teatro, tipo O’ Superman, per intendersi.

Qui ascoltiamo proprio Chorus del 2014.

Music for 18 musicians

Una delle non molte composizioni di Steve Reich e di tutta la minimal music che mi piacciono veramente.

Per me, il problema del minimalismo è che si basa su una idea che non ha mai avuto un vero sviluppo. In altre parole, questa musica si basa essenzialmente sulla sovrapposizione di pattern che, nel tempo, possono

  1. cambiare melodicamente, per esempio sostituendo via via le note (Glass) o invertendo note e pause (Reich)
  2. cambiare ritmicamente, introducendo, ogni tanto, una mutazione nelle figurazioni
  3. cambiare timbricamente,  sostituendo gradualmente i gruppi strumentali che eseguono i vari pattern
  4. sfasarsi temporalmente accelerando o rallentando il metro (a volte usando metronomi diversi fin dall’inizio)

Non mi sembra ci siano altri espedienti e a mio avviso, il tutto diventa estremamente prevedibile. Ciò non toglie che, a volte, il risultato possa essere affascinante e coinvolgente, ma non si può continuare per una vita così.

 

In C

In C continues to receive numerous performances every year, by professionals, students, and amateurs. It has had repeated recordings since its 1968 LP premiere, and most are still in print. It welcomes performers from a vast range of practices and traditions, from classical to rock to jazz to non-Western. Recordings range from the Chinese Film Orchestra of Shanghai—on traditional Chinese instruments—to the Hungarian “European Music Project” group, joined by two electronica DJs manipulating The Pulse. It rouses audiences to states of ecstasy and near hysteria, all the while projecting an inner serenity that suggests Cage’s definition of music’s purpose—”to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.” In short, it’s not going away.
[Robert Carl]

An interesting analysis/commentary about Terry Riley’s seminal composition by Robert Carl.

The original recording by Terry Riley dated 1964

Here is the execution by the Shanghai Film Orchestra

A funky peformance by Band On A Can group from NYC

2015-02-10 Tate Modern and Africa Express

Boiler Room Amsterdam Live Performance

2022-10-20 The Young Gods present Play Terry Riley In C Documentary & Live from Les Forces Motrices, Geneva

4 notes

Tom Johnson is really a minimalist composer; in fact, he coined the term while serving as the new music critic for the Village Voice.

He works with simple forms, limited scales, and generally reduced materials, but he proceeds in a more logical way than most minimalists, often using formulas, permutations, predictable sequences and various mathematical models.

The Four Note Opera (1972) is a work written using four notes only (D, E, A, B). It is scored for 5 singers and a piano (no orchestra) and the singers play the role of singers in a way similar to Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search of an Author:

The only sure thing is that the crucial moment in the evolution of the piece was that evening very long ago when I read, with great excitement, Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search of an Author. Normally characters are not even conscious of their existence on a stage. They are completely obedient to the author, they conform totally to the world the author creates, and they have no thoughts of their own. But Pirandello’s masterpiece was different. His characters knew they existed in a theatrical space, and only for a couple of hours. They were aware of the audience, and of the author as well. It was not the kind of theatre that asks you to believe something that is not true. It was the kind of theatre that you have to believe, because everything is true.

Pirandello’s vision had a strong impact on me, and for years one question lingered in the back of my mind: what would happen if, instead of Six Characters in Search of an Author, there happened to be some opera characters looking for a composer? It happened that some opera characters were looking for a composer, and about 10 years after reading Pirandello they found me and came to life in The Four Note Opera.
[Tom Johnson]

Here are some excerpts in french and italian:

and the whole

Polina Voronova

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSK_ZM3_qLS1_rJ8V8-nEUhf-oGfQ5LAC2i4wTV3lFlFhw72c8klpJtcm9MAw&s
Russian sound artist Polina Voronova creates shimmering tapestries that walk the fine line between pretty and mystical. Minimal and drone oriented, her compositions are often delicate and full are bell-like tones; a city of chimes and tuning forks.
The album is free available from the Excentrica netlabel in 320kbps MP3.

Download all album in from here.

Piano phase

Phasing can be described simply as playing two identical phrases with a slight metronome difference (one slightly faster than the other). As a result, the two phrases initially sound in unison. Then, when the difference is still very small, a strange perception occurs, as if the notes were stretched out or had a reverb. Later the difference becomes clearly perceptible: the melody also splits in number of notes (2 notes in the time of one). Finally the melody returns in phase, but while one pianist plays the first note, the other plays the second: we thus have bichords instead of the initial unison.
In this piece the process continues through various stages of phase and antiphase, until the two pianists are out of phase to the point where the first note of one overlaps with the last of the other. Thus a small phrase of 12 notes generates a piece of about 20 minutes.
On the October 2006, Peter Aidu (one of the most highly acclaimed modern pianist in Russia) performed the legendary Steve Reich’s composition Piano Phase with an absolutely unique technique. While playing on two pianos, with a left hand on one instrument and the right hand playing separately on the second piano, Peter was recreating the sounding of two performers! This tremendous performance was accurately recorded, and now is available exclusively from Internet Archive.
More in this Internet Archive page.

Steve Reich – Piano phase (1967) – Peter Aidu, 2 pianos
Download mp3.