Quiz: Mystery scores

[Luke]

Disappointed at the echoing void which has received all but one of my recent mystery score excerpts, I can only respond in a like manner:

[Florestan]

Disappointed at the echoing void which has received all but one of my recent mystery score excerpts

So, Luke, what is the barbed-wire/honeycomb score?

[Luke]

I'm not sure enough people have tried to work it out yet...

[Luke]

Re my last one, I hope true lovers of music will notice the very different, more Germanic soundworld of this one:

[Florestan]

I'm not sure enough people have tried to work it out yet...

Okay, I'll patiently wait but I doubt you'll be flooded with guesses.   

[Florestan]

Re my last one, I hope true lovers of music will notice the very different, more Germanic soundworld of this one:

Reminds me of Rossini's Chi disprezza gl'ínfelici from Ciro in Babilonia, one of hist most famous and succesfull pranks.



    "In one opera, Ciro in Babilonia," Rossini told his friend Hiller, "I had a horrible seconda donna. She was not only impossibly ugly, but her voice, too, was beneath contempt. After the most careful investigation I found that she had one single note, the B flat above middle C, which did not sound bad. I therefore wrote her an aria in which she had no other note than this to sing, with everything in the orchestra, and when this pleased the audience and was applauded, my one-note singer was extremely happy with her triumph."

    The "seconda donna" in question was Anna Savinelli, who sang the role of Argene.

[Luke]

Okay, I'll patiently wait but I doubt you'll be flooded with guesses. 

*sigh* in the old days we would...

[Luke]

Reminds me of Rossini's Chi disprezza gl'ínfelici from Ciro in Babilonia, one of hist most famous and succesfull pranks.



    "In one opera, Ciro in Babilonia," Rossini told his friend Hiller, "I had a horrible seconda donna. She was not only impossibly ugly, but her voice, too, was beneath contempt. After the most careful investigation I found that she had one single note, the B flat above middle C, which did not sound bad. I therefore wrote her an aria in which she had no other note than this to sing, with everything in the orchestra, and when this pleased the audience and was applauded, my one-note singer was extremely happy with her triumph."

    The "seconda donna" in question was Anna Savinelli, who sang the role of Argene.

Great story!

The two pieces I snipped from above are two of three known precursors to Cage's 4'33". Here's the other one - none of them are really mysteries as they are quite easy to track down

 

[Florestan]

Great story!

The two pieces I snipped from above are two of three known precursors to Cage's 4'33". Here's the other one - none of them are really mysteries as they are quite easy to track down

 

Okay: the first Erwin Schulhoff, the second Alphonse Allais. Viva Wikipedia! 

[Luke]

Reminds me of Rossini's Chi disprezza gl'ínfelici from Ciro in Babilonia, one of hist most famous and succesfull pranks.



    "In one opera, Ciro in Babilonia," Rossini told his friend Hiller, "I had a horrible seconda donna. She was not only impossibly ugly, but her voice, too, was beneath contempt. After the most careful investigation I found that she had one single note, the B flat above middle C, which did not sound bad. I therefore wrote her an aria in which she had no other note than this to sing, with everything in the orchestra, and when this pleased the audience and was applauded, my one-note singer was extremely happy with her triumph."

    The "seconda donna" in question was Anna Savinelli, who sang the role of Argene.

Found it! I can't imagine how he got away with it, but it's true. Here's the beginning:

[Luke]

Okay: the first Erwin Schulhoff, the second Alphonse Allais. Viva Wikipedia! 

Not quite. The second (Germanic!) one is the Schulhoff.* The third one is the Allais. The first one by an almost unknown 'composer.'


*I have a strong feeling I posted it on this thread before, many years ago.

[Florestan]

Not quite. The second (Germanic!) one is the Schulhoff.* The third one is the Allais. The first one by an almost unknown 'composer.'

Oh, I forgot about the first one --- it doesn't match any Wikipedia description of Cage's precursors, though. 

[Luke]

A couple of years ago I wrote an enormous book - not the 'Music and Place' one I have been banging on about, but one that is essentially about 20 long essays on a series of musical topics connected to metaphor. They are very idiosyncratic things, but there's is, I think, quite a lot of interesting stuff in them. Three of the chapters - for some reason - are studies of ways in which music deals with the metaphor of silence, and one of them (which really focuses on another aspect of silence) includes quick looks at these three pre 4'33" pieces. So I can tell you the following about my first Mystery Silence piece:

...in 1896 an unusual piece of Augenmusik, Satie-like in its playfulness and mockery, but predating any of Satie's similar works,  was published in the Italian journal La Nuova Musica, under the pseudonym 'Samuel.'  'Samuel' explained himself in a supplementary 'letter to the editor' (who was in fact himself):

Dear Director,
Diogenes, who wasn't that fool everyone believed, said, don't know in which place or moment, but he said (at least Seneca, Plutarco, Svetana* and yet others assure), that 'the best part of our existence is the one we spend in silence' and I add: the best part of a musical composition is that which makes no noise. Well, since I'm not used to not practicing what I preach, I took the liberty to write a piece of music that, above all others, has the required quality. I named it just 'Il Silenzio' thinking on Diogenes and reminding me of that Arabian saying that you know: Music is made of copper, the Word of silver and the Silence of gold. I've written a characteristic and above all descriptive [piece]; never has a title been so well suited to a composition. You, who are [a] composer – and not among the last –, will judge and if you are of the opposite opinion, it means that... you don't understand. Anyway, a lot of new music was printed in Nuova Musica, it's true, but worthless music, so you can welcome this piece of mine with equal value. However, I desire that it doesn't get published among other works: better alone than in bad company; hence, a special supplement is needed, if not, I'd rather put it in the trash...

Il Silencio, then, is exactly what its title suggests – a composition consisting only of silence. 'Samuel' is making any of number of sly jabs at what he sees as trends in modern musical society, and he does so with a barbed wit that is truly Satiean in its pointedness. One could pore endlessly over this brief score, discovering multiple layers of (non)meaning and (non)sense, each of them puncturing what Samuel saw as compositional clichés of the time...

*The 'Svetana' who 'Samuel' mentions ins unknown but probably a version of Suetonius.

[krummholz]

Fascinating! I never knew that the Cage 4'33" had any precursors...

[Luke]

The differences are interesting, too - and equally interesting is that three four pieces of silence can carry such different connotations! 'Samuel' and Schulhoff love the paradox of cramming their silent notation full of encoded gestural meaning - Samuel's is rather sarcastic, Schulhoff's is quite nerve-wracking! Allais is just having fun: his funeral march for a deaf man is the musical equivalent of the single-colour paintings he created for the album from which all are drawn - paintings with titles like First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls in the Snow and Apoplectic Cardinals Harvesting Tomatoes on the Shore of the Red Sea (guess the colours!). Cage's much-discussed piece is all about emptying the form of sonic content, but also about how content creeps in anyway. In all of them, nothing happens.

[Florestan]

Schulhoff's is quite nerve-wracking!

That Zeitmaessig-Zeitlos is indeed something else. 

Is Samuel's real name known? That's the most complete info I could find:

https://ripm.org/index.php?page=JournalInfo&ABB=NMU

[Luke]

That Zeitmaessig-Zeitlos is indeed something else. 

Is Samuel's real name known? That's the most complete info I could find:

https://ripm.org/index.php?page=JournalInfo&ABB=NMU

Yes, he was the Edgardo Del Valle de Paz mentioned in your link. I mention a b it more about him elsewhere in that book, and whilst I was doing my research I hunted down a bit of 'normal' music by him, too, which I can't remember much about at the moment!

[Luke]

It can't have been a long hunt, he's here on IMSLP:

https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Del_Valle_de_Paz%2C_Edgardo

[Luke]

The cello pieces I am looking at seem rather nice - unsurprisingly Italianate, vocally singing lines

[Florestan]

Yes, he was the Edgardo Del Valle de Paz mentioned in your link. I mention a b it more about him elsewhere in that book, and whilst I was doing my research I hunted down a bit of 'normal' music by him, too, which I can't remember much about at the moment!

He must have been of Spanish origin, the surname is typical.