Everyone knows that Lachenmann was interested in taking ordinary musical instruments and using them in new ways to produce an augmented range of sounds. This is a thread to explore the impact of that idea, either pieces which use Lachenmann type extensions in un-Lachenmann ways, or pieces which find ways of extending instruments in ways Lachenmann had hardly dreamt of.
And here's a lovely example to kick it off. In Pietà Lisa Streich attached motors to the strings of the instruments, they turn pieces of paper producing sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/v/Ei6Yk7dngpI&ab_channel=nadarensemble
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Pauline Oliveros's music for King Lear,
Crone Music, uses an expanded accordion
QuoteThe expanded accordion
Pauline Oliveros has developed a unique style of accordion playing through her interest in electronics. The expanded accordion is her concept. Oliveros uses four digital delay processors. During performance each output from the right and left hand is sent separately to a processor which she controls to accomplish layering, pitch bending or modulation. Pitch bending is controlled with foot pedals. The results are sent to two other processors for reverberations which simulate a variety of aural experiences from landscapes and indoor spaces. The second pair of processors and the mixing is controlled by Panaiotis.
The accordion used by Oliveros for Crone Music is a custom-built Titano Emperor V with an extra large sound chamber designed for concert use. The bass range is extended down to C2 and the right hand registration includes a quint stop which sounds the twelfth above the fundamental. The reeds are handmade with precision-cut tongues designed to fit the reed blocks exactly. The resulting airtight seal in the instrument rewards the performer with superb response. Attention to tuning was a labor of love
https://www.dramonline.org/albums/crone-music/notes
The CD is excellent, I recommend it very enthusiastically. When you start to listen you can't stop and when it's over you want to play it again, that sort of thing.
Quote from: Mandryka on February 02, 2021, 04:37:55 AM
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The CD is excellent, I recommend it very enthusiastically. When you start to listen you can't stop and when it's over you want to play it again, that sort of thing.
+1000
A truly transformative piece, when it gets to
Let It Be So, I always wish it would continue forever.
Thanks, Mandryka and Rinaldo, for the enthusiastic recommendations. I like Oliveros a lot, as well as the accordion, so this is quite appealing.
--Bruce
I've also been listening to stuff from the 60s, Big Mother is Watching You.
She has no fixed style -- I think that's the sign of a great composer -- an curious mind, always ready to experiment.
We need a thread on electroacoustic music.
I've been playing a few early Pierre Henry works recently, I think he started to get good about 1953 after he cut loose from Pierre Schaeffer and started using actual magnetic tape.
Does prepared piano qualify?
I'm inclined to think not, because the literature is so extensive.
Recently, as mentioned in another thread, I found Cor Fuhler's magnetic preparations pretty neat.
See for instance the first video clip on https://www.corfuhler.com/piano
The way Stockhausen used live electronics to emphasise the overtones of the piano parts in Mantra counts. Like the Ferneyhough uses live electronics controlled by the cellist with a pedal to modify the cello sound in Time and Motion Study X (3 maybe) -- not for nothing is it called Electric Chair Music.
Has anyone composed a piece for piano and notated coughing from the audience?
Quote from: steve ridgway on February 05, 2021, 08:20:36 AM
Has anyone composed a piece for piano and notated coughing from the audience?
I doubt it, but it's conceivable that someone from the Fluxus movement ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus ) composed something similar.
Speaking of Fluxus, Philip Corner's
Piano Activity[
ies?] might vaguely qualify ;) for this thread:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127342
https://www.soundohm.com/product/piano-activity
https://www.youtube.com/v/DxrmlsiOwlo
Jupiter Philippe Manoury's Jupiter, for flute and live electronics, was realized at IRCAM and first performed by Pierre-Andre Valade in April 1987.The piece was inspired by the flutist Laurence Beauregard, who had developed a flute with fifteen switches on its keys to aid a computer in tracking its pitch quickly. Barry Vercoe invented a score following program to accompany Beauregard's flute. The combination of a flute pitch detector, with a piece of software allowing live electronic processing and synthesis to be controlled by an event stream from a live instrument, seems to have been Manoury's main inspiration in writing Jupiter. It forms part of a series of three works for called Sonus ex Machina for solo instruments and real time computer processing -- Jupiter, Pluton, and Neptune
https://www.youtube.com/v/H9XG0pJN4c0&ab_channel=MeganBeugger
Megan Grace Beugger's Liason. A pulley system is built into the piano and wire runs under several piano strings, up through the pulleys and attaches to the performer's limbs. It's really compelling stuff because of the interplay between the movement and the sound.
Peter Ablinger's Quadraturen series use a player piano which is modified and controlled by a computer to make something which resembles the human voice. Example (listen without the text and with)
https://www.youtube.com/v/BBsXovEWBGo&ab_channel=trzanmaria
Some technical details here, which I don't understand. Maybe someone can explain what's going on
https://ablinger.mur.at/docu11.html
Crone is interesting--in my Amazon cart. It also reminds me of Ellen Fullman and the long string instrument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEqvpnsE1bs
Can you recommend any recordings of Lachenmann himself and/or his music?
Quote from: steve ridgway on February 05, 2021, 08:20:36 AM
Has anyone composed a piece for piano and notated coughing from the audience?
You'd need a professional singer or actor who would know how to cough without accidentally injuring themselves. Fluxus and their fellow-travellers were generally fine with
intentionally injuring people (there's at least one piece out there which requires a hand grenade to be thrown into the audience) but accidental injury I suspect was rather contrary to their worldview. There are of course plenty of vocal pieces with notated coughing e.g. Xenakis Nuits.
Ligeti created a sort of toolbox of electronic sounds when he was working in Cologne, and one of them was called the coughing sound. I think (but I'm not sure) you can hear it at bar 121 of Artikulation here
https://www.youtube.com/v/71hNl_skTZQ&ab_channel=DonaldCraig
James Whittle's got the right idea about what to do with scores. And whatever you think of Ian Pace's piano playing, you've got to agree, he's a good sport.
https://www.youtube.com/v/BcD-GHTQHG0&t=35s&ab_channel=JamesWhittle
I enjoyed it very much, Mandryka :P
(Fortunately, Ian Pace doesn't use some tablet computers to play scores)
Ensemble Intercontemporain is a good sport too ! :D
https://youtu.be/3xicApY2AmI
Francesco Filidei : Love Story (2020) for 7 rolls of toilet paper
Performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xicApY2AmI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xicApY2AmI)
Hypnagogia (after Bach)
Hynagogia is about being sleep-deprived on long-haul flights, listening to Bach in this state of half-sleep, where dreams begin to intrude on waking life (ie hynagogia). In one of these states, during one of many long trips to Australia, I heard the last movement of Bach's Matthew Passion in the revving of the engines – when inside the cabin, one can hear these descending 3rds and 6ths in their harmonics, falling but never resolving. Hynagogia is a remix/recomposition of an earlier approach to this material, Lines of Flight, but with the expanded possibilities of MiMU sensor gloves, which allow the lines of delays to be controlled through motion, and allow samples of the synthesizers to be played, allowing me to take flight from the instrument. The work and its predecessor are part of a series I've called Transformations, in which musical materials transitions between a synthesizer and keyboard, with various technologies facilitating this fluidity of identity. As with all the works in this series, it is dedicated to my partner, George, and his strength and courage when undergoing his own transition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lmGtmoULLY&ab_channel=ZubinKanga