NPR: So Called "Composer"
Opus47
I heard the most riduculous think yesterday on National Public Radio.
There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
of rap music.
If you want to know why classical music is dying just listen to NPR.
Fred
Halvard Johnson
Welcome to the great world of music, Fred. John Cage and
others have been doing this sort of thing for more than
half a century now and classical music ain't dead yet.
Hal "Don't just do something. Sit there!"
--Zen quip
Halvard Johnson <hjoh...@umbc2.umbc.edu>
AT
On 21 Jun 1997 13:49:36 GMT, opu...@aol.com (Opus47) wrote:
>There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
>compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
>sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
>of rap music.
Really? They have now developed cows that can mow? My lawn badly needs
mowing. And are you sure those pigs weren't puking?
AT
Alan Swindells
In article <Pine.SGI.3.95.970621...@umbc7.umbc.edu>,
Halvard Johnson <hjoh...@umbc.edu> wrote:
> On 21 Jun 1997, Opus47 wrote:
>
> > I heard the most riduculous think yesterday on National Public Radio.
> >
> > There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
> > compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
> > sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
> > of rap music.
> >
> > If you want to know why classical music is dying just listen to NPR.
> >
> > Fred
>
> Welcome to the great world of music, Fred. John Cage and
> others have been doing this sort of thing for more than
> half a century now and classical music ain't dead yet.
Yup. Add Gavin Briars, and Steve Reich, and Terry Reilly and ...
(it's a long list). Now I didn't hear the broadcast (obviously
being over 2000 miles from the nearest NPR station) and it may
indeed have been rubbish. That should not, however cause Fred
(or anyone else, for that matter) to damn the whole idea.
And should some folks think that this sort of practice is in some
way peculiar to 'classical' music, try listening to Pink Floyd's
'Dark Side of the Moon', Jean-Michelle Jarre's 'Zoolook' or any
number of tracks in later Beatles albums.
Those musical genres ain't dead yet, either.
--
Regards: Alan * alan...@argonet.co.uk *
Quote of the week: 'I hope scientists will get a move on and find the
gene which makes women unable to have their money ready by the time
they reach the front of the queue.' (From a letter to The Telegraph)
Ryan Hare
Opus47 (opu...@aol.com) wrote:
: I heard the most riduculous think yesterday on National Public Radio.
: There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
: compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
: sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
: of rap music.
So, are you objecting to the form of the piece, or the sounds it uses?
Do tell. A discussion of both, and how the sound events that unfold in
time are disatisfying to you would be most interesting.
: If you want to know why classical music is dying just listen to NPR.
Uh, yeah. O.k. You're right.
Ryan Hare
rh...@u.washington.edu
Lindy Mayfield
Opus47 wrote:
>
> I heard the most riduculous think yesterday on National Public Radio.
>
> There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
> compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
> sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
> of rap music.
Check your history. Musique concrete was a movement that started in
1948 in France. It consisted of cutting and splicing pieces of recorded
music on tape, playing it slow, fast, backwards, sideways, etc. (Well,
maybe not sideways, but they would have if they could have. (-: )
> If you want to know why classical music is dying just listen to NPR.
>
> Fred
Does NPR actually play music? Or do they just do the news and stuff? I
don't know.
I do know that Connecticut Public Radio plays the same sounding 17th and
18th century crap day in and day out. And I know that Mississippi Public
Radio is the best I've heard. Unfortunately I live in Connecticut. And
of course it is personal preference, but I'm sick of hearing Mozart and
Haydn and C.P.E. Bach and Stamitz over and over and over.
I don't know if classical music is dying or not. It's certainly not for
me, and certainly not in the rest of the world. And how many people do
you know that you can talk about classical music with? I can think of
two or three people, not counting my piano instructor. So I can
sympathize with you there.
Lindy
Lawrence Faltz
Lindy Mayfield wrote:
> Opus47 wrote:
> > There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
> > compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
> > sampled a man talking. It sounded like an old farmer doing his own form
> > of rap music.
> Check your history. Musique concrete was a movement that started in
> 1948 in France. It consisted of cutting and splicing pieces of recorded
> music on tape, playing it slow, fast, backwards, sideways, etc. (Well,
> maybe not sideways, but they would have if they could have. (-: )
Musique concrete when done properly is really not different from
"regular" classical music: there are themes, developments, etc. Some of
the best examples were by Turkish-American composer Ilhan Mimaroglu, who
had "Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe" (from Mallarme's poem) released on a
Turnablout LP in the mid-60's. The sounds used were taken from a
recording of the poem. There are distinct themes, a development,
recapitaltion and coda. A wonderful piece of real music. Mimaroglu also
created "Twelve Preludes", a tape of which I obtained from him in 1966.
Each prelude was made from a distinct sound source (a guiter's open
strings being strummed, a rubber band, etc.) Each of these pieces has
distinct thematic material and can be listened to from a "classical"
perspective.
The late Vladimir Ussachevsky once told me that he was worried that the
synthesizer would kill electronic music, and perhaps he was right. His
point was that the manual manipulation of tape was part of a creative
process that would be too facile and too diatonic with the synthesizer
and its keyboard. But one should not dismiss music just because its
compositional process seems radical. There's a lot to be said, by way of
example, for cubism or even Jackson Pollock!
LLF
James H. Haynes
>> There was this "Composer" who sampled sounds digitally and made
>> compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
>others have been doing this sort of thing for more than
>half a century now and classical music ain't dead yet.
On the other hand, it could be a return of the genre of the BBC program
"The Strange Case of Pyotr Zack" of the early 1960s. (In which a couple
of BBC staffers made up a story about an obscure but brilliant composer
and his perilous escape from an Iron Curtain country, then played
selections of his compositions which they had fabricated by going into
a studio and banging around on various things while a tape recorder ran.
A week or so later they revealed the hoax; but in the interim some
critics had taken "Zack's" music seriously, while others had denounced
it as rubbish.)
George Eldred
Lindy Mayfield wrote:
>
> Opus47 wrote:
> >
> >
> > compositions out of them. You know cows mowing, pig oinking, and even
> > of rap music.
>
> Check your history. Musique concrete was a movement that started in
> 1948 in France. It consisted of cutting and splicing pieces of recorded
> music on tape, playing it slow, fast, backwards, sideways, etc. (Well,
> maybe not sideways, but they would have if they could have. (-: )
>
> >
> > Fred
>
> Does NPR actually play music? Or do they just do the news and stuff? I
> don't know.
NPR does have a classical music program, Performance Today, hosted by
Martin Goldsmith. They play pieces often recorded only days before a
given day's show. Radio stations and other recordists submit
performances from all around the country. They also run radio "columns"
e. g. "Basic Record Library" where you can hear 3 reccommended
recordings of a given piece on mudic. A favorite of mine is "What Makes
it so Great" where the fellow sits down at the piano and plays &
explains (quite enthusiastically and understandable) how some well-known
piece "works". I'm an announcer/classical producer for WKMS-FM in
Murray, KY and Performance Today runs during my air-shift.
> I do know that Connecticut Public Radio plays the same sounding 17th and
> 18th century crap day in and day out.
I couldn't listen to 17/18th century music all day, either. In my
programming I mix it up with more emphasis on the Romantic and 20th
century.
George Eldred
Robert Fink
I heard the program (it was on NPR as a News item--on "All Things
Considered", in the "just before the end human interest isn't this cute"
slot).
The composer was Philip (?) Bimstein, and the piece featured was "Garland
Hershey's Cows", which evidently has been getting a certain amount of play
in the alternative radio world. (It's a real piece--I've seen the CD.)
The piece was pretty lame, and the composer was being ever-so-gently
played for laughs. The report took care to mention that Bimstein was also
the mayor of the little Utah hamlet he lives in. (Those wacky hicks...)
Sad, but hardly indicative of the fate of classical music. The whole
reason the report got done was that this kicky little number (it sort of
sounds like a cross between rap, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and those
novelty Christmas records where sampled dogs barking "sing" carols) has
become a novelty hit within a certain section of the pop world.
Monks of Santiago, meet Philip Bimstein.
Philip, your 15 minutes starts now.
<sigh>
rwf
--
"I notice that I am still very hestitant to delve into the nineteenth century. All kinds of things happened in music then that I don't think are good. After Chopin and Mendelssohn, we landed in a mudbath that only got cleaned up with the _Sacre_" -- Louis Andriessen
Opus47
Someone mentioned Pink Floyd.
Someone else mentioned Music Concrete.
I've heard these versions that are more tastefully done in my opinion than
this barnyard venture on radio. I'm a tremendous editor myself
incorporating Eric Satie's Parade into a pizza commercial!!! (this was
just a student work)
I don't know if what I heard over the radio makes me jealous or I just
think it's plain stupid.
I guess I was just personally turned off by this piece on NPR.
And yes it does seem like NPR is playing more and more music.
Most of which I find personally distasteful and usually which seem to have
some kind of agenda that has to do with broadening one's mind.
I hate when my mind is broadened it hurts my brain.
Fred
Lawrence Faltz
James H. Haynes wrote:
> On the other hand, it could be a return of the genre of the BBC program
> "The Strange Case of Pyotr Zack" of the early 1960s. (In which a couple
> of BBC staffers made up a story about an obscure but brilliant composer
> and his perilous escape from an Iron Curtain country, then played
> selections of his compositions which they had fabricated by going into
> a studio and banging around on various things while a tape recorder ran.
> A week or so later they revealed the hoax; but in the interim some
> critics had taken "Zack's" music seriously, while others had denounced
> it as rubbish.)
In the mid 60's I was an undergraduate at Columbia and spent most of my
time at WKCR, then a classical music station. Walter Carlos (now Wendy
Carlos) was a graduate student in music and one day he, Ben Folkman (now
writes program notes for NY Phil) and another fellow sat down at a
piano, started whacking away at the instrument, and recorded a "Sonata
for Piano, 6 hands" by one Murat Kockaruchian (I may have the name
slightly wrong) which they proceeded to play on the air apparently with
a mock biography in hand. Perhaps they got the idea from the effort
described above. Carlos also recorded a (somewhat mediocre) performance
of the Beethoven Violin Concerto made by the Columbia U. Orchestra and a
student soloist (now a well-known physician) and filtered it, added
hiss, scratches, pops, removed occasional segments to simulate a
skipping needle at 78 rpm speed, and played it over the air attributing
the performance to Fritz Kreisler with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted
by Richard Strauss recorded in 1926. The usual adulatory telephone calls
poured into the station, as Walter knew they would.
Lawrence Faltz
Robert Fink wrote:
[snip]
> The piece was pretty lame, and the composer was being ever-so-gently
> played for laughs. The report took care to mention that Bimstein was also
> the mayor of the little Utah hamlet he lives in. (Those wacky hicks...)
>
> Sad, but hardly indicative of the fate of classical music. The whole
> reason the report got done was that this kicky little number (it sort of
> sounds like a cross between rap, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and those
> novelty Christmas records where sampled dogs barking "sing" carols) has
> become a novelty hit within a certain section of the pop world.
We weren't helped all that much by the recent discovery and recording of
Mozart's aria about the cats. If the uneducated think that _that_ was
what Mozart was all about, we lost a big opportunity.
LLF
Victor Eijkhout
Lawrence Faltz <lfa...@pol.net> writes:
> > of BBC staffers made up a story about an obscure but brilliant composer
> writes program notes for NY Phil) and another fellow sat down at a
> piano, started whacking away at the instrument, and recorded a "Sonata
Et cetera.
On one of Adrian Belew's solo albums (AB used to play guitar
with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, the Talking Heads) there is an
absolutely charming piece of piano music, hammered out
by his infant son, with AB holding down the sustain pedal.
Even knowing the story, it's really a piece quite worth hearing.
Once. But still.
> hiss, scratches, pops, removed occasional segments to simulate a
> skipping needle at 78 rpm speed, and played it over the air attributing
> the performance to Fritz Kreisler with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted
> by Richard Strauss recorded in 1926. The usual adulatory telephone calls
Yee ha! I like this one.
Victor.
--
405 Hilgard Ave ............................. `Mostly because I did not fancy
Department of Mathematics, UCLA ............... to predict drama and death on
Los Angeles CA 90024 .......................... Mother's day.' [Psychic quake
phone: +1 310 825 2173 / 9036 ............... predictor Dr. Tury about having
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~eijkhout missed the big 7.0 quake in Iran]
Opus47
I'm the originator of this thread.....
Well if you are talking about how amazing electronic music is why not
include the accomplishments of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank. They have
created some of the best electronic music I've ever heard. In fact I have
every CD they've ever put out.
Their early pieces have songs and abstract creations. Later just songs
only.
Oh did I forget to tell you. They go under the name of Yello and are a
pop group. Their most famous piece is called "Oh Yeah" which was made
famous by the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" which starred Matthew
Broderick.
After listening to Yello I really wonder if electronic music is classical
music's domain.
I also had LP's of Walter Carlos, and Tomita got me interested in
classical music.
For the curious I suggest Yello's Solid Pleasure CD. One of there earlier
recordings that I have. Stanztrigger is probably the most interesting
thing on the CD. It sounds like an airplane taking off and then landing
at the same time. Throughout there are syncopated electronic beats.
There is even broken Beethoven played on syntheiser. The whole
composition is very visual even though it is an audio conception. The end
kind of sounds like an Old TV set turning off and shrinking to a small dot
on the screen. At first I didn't like Stanztrigger because it sounded too
busy, but now I like it.
I'm not endorsing electronic music. I'm just stating that I do like it on
a certain level. For me personally then electronic music is popular
music.....classical music is acoustic.
After all when is the last time you went to a performance with four reel
to reel tape players and two CD players on stage. Of course you would
applaud at the end if none of them broke down.
Fred