"Weird" Instruments in Classical Music

Started by Grazioso, May 28, 2011, 05:01:56 AM

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MDL

The original 1921 version of Amériques by Varèse, first recorded by Chailly and the Concertgebouw in the 1990s, includes a boat whistle, a crow call, three wind machines and four lion's roar instruments.

Full details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9riques 

Grazioso

Quote from: westknife on June 03, 2011, 06:12:12 PM
Is synthesizer weird? John Adams used it in Nixon in China and other works.

I don't know about weird, but there's still a seemingly large segment of the classical audience that looks askance on any electronics in classical music, even though there's now a long history of it. (Reminds me a bit of the border status of the electric bass in jazz.)

Quote from: MDL on June 04, 2011, 02:42:24 AM
The original 1921 version of Amériques by Varèse, first recorded by Chailly and the Concertgebouw in the 1990s, includes ... a crow call...

Someone should write an Appalachian Symphony, where all the woodwinds are replaced with hunting calls: you get your turkey slates and your double-reed duck calls, your buck grunts ...

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

listener

I've found a didgeridoo concerto!
[asin]B000W2FICQ[/asin]
"Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail as you walk through life's pathway."

Grazioso

Quote from: listener on June 12, 2011, 11:25:26 PM
I've found a didgeridoo concerto!
[asin]B000W2FICQ[/asin]

You know what might sound cool together: a didgeridoo with a berimbau, for a rather bizarre cross-cultural concerto. I wonder how on earth a composer would notate it.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

not edward

Quote from: Grazioso on June 13, 2011, 04:27:12 AM
You know what might sound cool together: a didgeridoo with a berimbau, for a rather bizarre cross-cultural concerto. I wonder how on earth a composer would notate it.
Well, there's Terterian's 3rd, for duduk, zurna and orchestra. (I've got a sneaking fondness for this work, though it's not very subtle.)
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

MDL

Bump!

Just found the details for Penderecki's Utrenja Part II. The orchestra includes:

Hyoshigi  (wooden clappers used to announce the start of a sumo match).

An "eisenbahnschiene", which, unless I am very much mistaken, is a railway track.

VonStupp

#66
The Lithophone.

I ran across this one in Carl Orff's Catulli Carmina some time back.

"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."

Cato

Truly, it is Wayback Machine Day!   8)

This is the CD and book to have, if you are interested in "weird instruments."



e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/v/Xt56toUF-Vk
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)

VonStupp

#68
Quote from: Cato on July 22, 2021, 04:01:07 PM
Truly, it is Wayback Machine Day!   8)

This is the CD and book to have, if you are interested in "weird instruments."



Your book touts the Daxophone, an instrument inspired by the sounds of a badger!



I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but there are many books based on strange instruments, although it is nice they are accompanied by musical examples as well as printed pictures.

 
"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."

Florestan

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

milk

#70


Two very interesting recordings on a strange instrument. It sounds a bit like a tangent piano to me; it's very pleasing. The Rosen recording is especially good.
This "piano" has a very strange creation story and had an equally strange journey around Europe, Northern Africa, Israel and North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siena_Piano

pjme

#71
Quote from: VonStupp on July 22, 2021, 11:59:12 AM
The Lithophone.

I ran across this one in Carl Orff's Catulli Carmina some time back.


the object shown here is a "lithophone sculpture" ,apparently shown in Freudenberg castle/Germany

What Orff asks for in his percussive orchestra is probably something like this - :
limestone slabs arranged chromatically


pjme

#72
A rather sad story about Daniel Ruyneman (Amsterdam 8 August 1886 – 25 July 1963)
"In the 1920s he worked in Groningen, where he became associated with the expressionistic De Ploeg group of artists. Ruyneman made a special study of Javanese instruments. As part of this work he invented the Electrophone, an instrument consisting of various electric bells, playable from a keyboard. The unique cup-bells used for this were (according to some), specially cast by the bell foundry John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, England, though others say they were found by the composer in a London junk shop. The instrument was used in his 1918 chamber work Hiëroglyphs and later in the Symphonie Brève of 1927. However, the Electrophone was destroyed during World War II in an air raid on Rotterdam, so subsequent performances have substituted vibraphones" (or a celesta, AFAIK).

https://www.youtube.com/v/pWzlfiw0LFM

http://waltercosand.com/CosandScores/Composers%20Q-Z/Ruyneman,%20Daniel/Ruyneman-Hieroglyphs.pdf
And there is Nicolas Obouhov: https://120years.net/wordpress/la-croix-sonore-nicolai-obukhov-france-1929-1934/
and his "croix sonore".

Maestro267

Quote from: MDL on June 04, 2011, 02:42:24 AM
The original 1921 version of Amériques by Varèse, first recorded by Chailly and the Concertgebouw in the 1990s, includes a boat whistle, a crow call, three wind machines and four lion's roar instruments.

Full details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9riques

Could just be that four players have the one lion's roar in their part. So they can take it if other players have other things to do at that point in the score.

LKB

Resurrecting this thread just so l can give a shout out to:

< drumroll! >

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_beam


Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen...

Maestro267

It hardly needs "resurrecting" It's been active often lately.

LKB

My bad, Maestro267 is correct.

But l don't feel guilty since nobody had posted regarding the blaster beam, my all- time favorite among weird instruments.  ;D
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen...

relm1

Quote from: LKB on July 25, 2022, 10:12:50 AM
Resurrecting this thread just so l can give a shout out to:

< drumroll! >

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_beam

Ha...I was at that event!  trivia, he also was a cast member on the original Star Trek tv show in the 1960's when he was a kid.

pjme

#78
Mahlers huge hammer has easily acquired iconic status and Alban Berg uses the same sound (large hammer with non-metallic sound) in his Drei Orchesterstücke (1929 version).
Darius Milhaud and Charles Koechlin both use the term "marteau" = hammer(s) to be struck on a plank in some of their scores.
Milhaud in the ballet "l'Homme et son désir", Koechlin in "Les bandar log".

Galina Ustvolskaya asks for a wooden box struck by two hammers:

https://www.youtube.com/v/pnZ0UBC07Ow

Possibly Ernst Tochs third symphony has been mentioned already. The orchestration includes a "hisser", a carbon dioxide tank that makes a hissing noise. The use is optional.
Weird: Jean Louis Nicodé  uber-colossal "Gloria! -  Ein Sturm- und Sonnenlied" asks for various  "Trillerpfeifen" to represent a swarm of birds.

vandermolen

Theremin used in Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher by Honegger comes to mind. Flugelhorn in Vaughan Williams's 9th Symphony.
The Hoover (vacuum cleaner) in Malcolm Arnold's Grand, Grand Overture.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).