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Looper's Delight
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warning: this is a long msg... This is a great thread...Having come to looping through a classical background (graduate school in composition), I've watched as a number of composers who I've spent countless hours listening to and analysing works of go by. I'd like to add a few things to the discussion: 1. Someone asked about the pronunciation of Varese: I've only ever heard it pronounced vah-REHZ (rhymes with "says") (incidentally, also rhymes with Boulez---which doesn't rhyme with Robert Goullet) 2. Rick, you mentioned Ravel's "Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis", but it's actually by Vaughn Williams 3. Outside of grad school, a few of us in central Iowa get together weekly to do "score study" of modern pieces. Given the current discussion, I'll share the list of composers we've looked at recently: Webern, Symphony, Op. 21; Wonderful economy of means, and the structure of the 12-tone row is incredible. His extension of Schoenberg's idea of "klangfarbenmelodie" (tone color melody) is inspiring/inspired. Webern's music is so crisp, that it does stand in fairly stark contrast to Schoenberg's more Romantic flights of fancy. Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony; Messiaen should be on every looper's listening list. This piece is replete with recycled themes, isorhythms (mutating loops, if you will), and straight-up loops. Eliott Carter, String Quartet #2; Staggering piece...very dense textures, non-tonal...at times the ear becomes saturated and there's a feeling of stasis, and then he moves ya somewhere else...no looping here, this is the modernist ideal: constant variation. D. Martin Jenni, Cucumber Music; A piece written by a former professor of mine at the University of Iowa. First part of the piece uses strict application of isorhythms, with independence of parts that makes your head swim. The second part of the piece is primarily an application of heterophony. Stravinsky, Octet; A textbook example of Stravinsky's block form. This piece is analogous to working in Acid. Other composers we've looked at: Toru Takemitsu (RING), Morton Feldman (Coptic Light, Rothko Chapel), Boulez (Le Marteau sans Maitre), Charles Ives (Tone Roads Nos. 1 and 3), Gorecki (String Quartets), Lutoslawski (Concerto for Orchestra, Symphonies, Trois Poems du Henri Machaut, Novellette), Darius Milhaud (Cinq Symphonies, Le Creation du Monde), Peter Maxwell Davies (Ave Maris Stella, 8 Songs of a Mad King, St. Thomas Wake), George Crumb (Ancient Voices of Children, Songs Refrains and Drones of Death, Makrokosmos), Luciano Berio (Sinfonia, Thema-Omaggio a Joyce, Visage, Sequenzas), Davidovsky (Synchronisms), Stockhausen (Kontakte, Gesange der Junglige, Klavierstucke), Xenakis (Pithoprakta, Metastasis, Tetras, Tetora, Plekto, Nomos Alpha), Kendrick (Psalms), Southwood (Cobwebs), Burrier (II for cello), Roy Harris (Symphonies), Howard Hanson (Symphonies), Varese (Ionisation, Density 21.5, Integrales, Hyperprism), Ligeti (Lux Aeterna, Atmospheres, Aventures, Piano Etudes).... Whew...that should plenty of ideas for stuff for people to listen to...incidentally, there's not a piece listed in this message that hasn't had some sort of impact on my own looping and non-looping music, even (and probably especially) the music that is non-loop-friendly. At a recent looping recital I held, I incorporated a sound-mass improvisation (a la Ligeti, Xenakis, and Penderecki), a block-form improvisation (a la Stravinsky), and some early experiments in polytonality (a la Mihlaud). Cheers, Jon Southwood jon@gamutstudio.com P.S. Miko, if you happened to make it through to the end of this e-mail, know that by the end of this coming weekend, I'll be ready to send off the lounge tracks that are woefully overdue...evidently too much listening and not enough playing/writing...