Extreme instrumental musique concrète

Started by Mandryka, January 10, 2021, 02:50:04 AM

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Mandryka

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.
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Mandryka

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
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#2


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.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Rinaldo

Quote from: Mandryka on February 02, 2021, 04:37:55 AM


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.

bhodges

Thanks, Mandryka and Rinaldo, for the enthusiastic recommendations. I like Oliveros a lot, as well as the accordion, so this is quite appealing.

--Bruce

Mandryka

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.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

steve ridgway

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.

T. D.

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

Mandryka

#8
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.

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steve ridgway

Has anyone composed a piece for piano and notated coughing from the audience?

T. D.

#10
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

Mandryka

#11
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
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

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.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

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
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

André Le Nôtre

#14
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?

amw

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.

Mandryka

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
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Mandryka

#17
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

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mabuse

I enjoyed it very much, Mandryka :P

(Fortunately, Ian Pace doesn't use some tablet computers to play scores)

mabuse

#19
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