Free talks by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and others (LCMF 2015)

This year at the London Contemporary Music Festival there will be a few free talks on 12th and 13th December with, among other speakers, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick. (!!!) It's happening alongside the 'West Coast Night' which will feature compositions from the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. Pretty cool. (more info here)

However, a tiny note of caution is due about these kinds of events: they can be either completely mind-blowing or completely anticlimactic. The last time I went to an evening dedicated to mostly minimalist music, held at Café OTO earlier this year, it was definitely the latter experience. The highlight of the night was supposed to be a performance of Terry Riley's 'In C'. A massive orchestra assembled, a Moog Voyager was placed proudly in the center -- it certainly looked like it would be exciting.

As it happened my idea of what was to follow was very vague, and little did I expect that my main thought for the whole pain-staking 45 minutes (and 57 seconds) would be "this is time I will never get back". Those were actually the very first words my sister said me to me when we were out of earshot of my friend, who was really enthusiastic about the whole thing, and who had taken us to Café OTO in the first place. Incidentally the Moog was used about once every 10 minutes solely to play a drone note; one could ask, very rightly, how it is possible to use such an innovative instrument so unninovatively. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but, more importantly, everyone is entitled to their informed opinion. So my personal informed opinion is that sometimes experimental music can feel a little too understated when played live. Though perhaps everything changes when the composer plays his/her own pieces themself, which wasn't the case at Café OTO.

At any rate, the LCMF talks are bound to be interesting. And they're free!

One of the most underrated indie-pop albums?

.... Featuring a kaleidoscope that my mum gave me on my tenth birthday and music by the inimitable Alexey Rybnikov. This particular excerpt is from an old animation of Comet in Moominland, based on a book by Tove Jansson.

Update: have only just realised how atrocious the video quality is... My advice - don't try full screen.

Just another Radiophonic reminiscence

Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by Louis Niebur was my first proper cover-to-cover read of a book in the electronic music field. Like anything it has more and less successful aspects, but generally it provides just the right level of detail -- just enough to understand the inner workings of the RW, the people involved and its general development over time. Occasionally the book slips into cinema lingo that isn't really of interest to musicians; is it really necessary, for example, to know the definition of terms such as "acousmetre" and "synchresis"? I'd have much preferred some more in-depth information about how the music was actually produced rather than long analyses of its effects and functions on British TV.

Still, there are several really neat things about this book, one of which is that it's linked to a website which has some rare audio and video examples; these are then used as a basis for explanation and analysis in the book itself. The website is password-protected, which is strange considering it's possible to view both username and password on the first page of any preview from Google Books or Amazon. With that in mind, I hope no one kills me if I share the website and login details (which are the same for every copy of the book)

www.oup.com/us/specialsound
Username: Music2
Password: Book4416

The "Cloud Burst" excerpt featuring music by Roger Limb is definitely a favourite (see 5.1 of the Video section). It's perfectly representative of that time in the early 70s when the RW was at its prime because at long last it was not being held back by shortages of equipment and funding. And when I say "at its prime" I mean the Workshop at large. In terms of individual achievement Delia's work in the 60s is always going to beat anything produced later, in my opinion. Incidentally the excerpts from Amor Dei (3.7-3.9 of Audio), mostly done by Delia in 1964, are also quite unqiue in that they shed light on her working process. It's almost unthinkable how the voice of a solitary boy soprano (3.7) became the formless and ethereal swell of voices in 3.9.

Know who you are at every age

... One of the most valuable lessons I've learned. And hardly a year passes when I don't have to re-learn it.

Autumn and Melancholia have landed

It always seems that autumn, unlike summer, arrives "tout d'un coup", in other words very suddenly. I'm not really complaining because autumn is a very beautiful (and in some ways my favourite) season, but autumnal melancholy hits every year almost without fail.

The Kishi Bashi song seems perfect for exactly this transitional period between summer and autumn. And somehow this early-16th-century engraving by Albrecht Durer is a very suitable match to the music -- I can almost imagine the figure of Melancholia (melancholy personified) playing that song on the stringed instrument he/she is holding, though I don't think there are any reverb or delay pedals in the picture...

Durer wrote in his notebooks that he characterised "melancholia" or melencolia (the title of the painting) not only as a feeling of sadness but also as a loss of artistic inspiration. According to What Great Paintings Say by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, he advised the students in his workshop to turn to music and to play a stringed instrument when this came upon them. That's probably the reason why melancholia personified is holding one in the picture. It's an interesting principle; when art goes stale and loses its vitality, turn to other art forms to be inspired!

In view of all this, where does the British expression "highly strung" (meaning very nervous and easily upset) come from? Is there some kind of fundamental connection between melancholy and the strings?!

The formative years

Hm... I wonder if getting an SK-10 was as useless and temporary as buying clothes for a toddler. No CV, no Gate, very limited controls...Well, it happened anyway, and I'm actually glad it did, in many ways. The formative years are only just beginning.