mmm017 Sunday, August 12, 2012: Ilhan Mimaroglu Memorial (pt 2)
Attendees:
tENT
Amy
Ben
Frank
tENT & Amy sit on stoop drinking beer & waiting for folks.
Ben arrives w/ 2 Sun Ra CDs & LPs he got from ReStore.
Frank arrives.
tENT plays tape of:
"Sleepsong for Sleepers" - 1985 - 3:34 ("Sleepers" LP - Goode; Hays; Johnson; Knowles; Lockwood; Mimaroglu; Silsbee; Oliveros - Finnadar Records) ("Ilhan Mimaroglu Retrospective" K7)
Ben: "Nutty"
Amy talks about falling asleep to the Spermbirds.
tENT plays CD of:
"Bleaker Streets" - 1986 - 7:53
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Amy initiates a sortof conducting motion dance wch we all pick up on.
Ben: "Drier than the others."
Frank: "Didn't do it do it for me." '
Amy: "Like moon music."
Talking about Apollo 11 moon landing.
tENT plays CD of:
"Fanfare" - 1988 - 2:54
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
tENT touches Amy w/ 5 pounds of simulated human fat.
Ben talks about fat in relation to Cronenberg - "disgusting things that happen to human bodies".
tENT talks about a similar piece he did in 1994 (or thereabouts) where the maximum polyphony allowed by the equipment is experimented w/.
Ben: "Greater variety of activity, alternate tunings."
Frank heard a note drop out so maybe it was what tENT was saying.
tENT plays CD of:
"The Lost Largo" - 1989 - 9:33
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Cicadas sound outside & are heard thru the open window.
Amy calls attn to this as "part of the song".
Ben: 1980s synth techniques + more classic analog stuff.
Amy: imagining them played on different planets, cocktail music on Mars.
Ben: "Forbidden Planet" (1956) - soundtrack by Louis & Bebe Barron.
tENT brings up Ian Hugo's "Bells of Atlantis" (1952).
Frank talks about how this association sticks.
Amy will only exercise w/ her "5 pounds of fat".
Talking about ANS. Ben talking about Theremin's Terpsitone.
It's like Terpsichorie (the muse of the dance).
Frank talking about Schnittke (who did ANS music).
tENT plays O. Buloshkin's "Sacrament" as an example of ANS music.
tENT plays Sofia Gubaidulina's "Vivente-non Vivente" also using the ANS.
Ben talking about the Xenakis "UPIC" system (1978) for making graphic notation music. Ben heard him lecture on letting kids use & he sd the blind kids did the most interesting stuff. Xenakis did "Mycenae Alpha" w/ it. This is on YouTube w/ images & sound:
Ben talks about Ben's friend Donna Amato releasing 1 CD of Scriabin.
Donna will be playing a Messiaen piece in PGH soon.
tENT shows Opus One records under black light.
Ben says Richard Felciano gave him what may've been an Opus One CD.
[from a clarifying email from Ben:
"There are apparently quite a few Opus One CDs, this is the one I have:
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=2741745&style=music]
tENT plays CD of:
"Prelude No. 19" - 1990 - 1:51
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Ben: "That sounded like you." (meaning tENT)
tENT says: "Sounds more like Zappa."
Ben concurs.
tENT plays CD of:
"Melody Lost and Found" - 1990 - 2:55
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Ben: "Nice, kinda atypical."
Ben: "Birmingham Opera is performing one of the "Licht" opera (possibly "Mittwoch") possibly webcast, possibly August 22nd.
tENT: "This has got flanging in it."
Amy leaves.
tENT shows Quay Brothers' "In Absentia" & discusses Stockhausen's mom being a mental institution patient killed by the nazis. tENT explains 2 pencil thing as reference to Adolf Wölffli.
Ben explains that Stockhauen's mom thought the radio was speaking directly to her. He wrote a paper on Stockhausen's use of radio & shortwave & Morse-code, etc..
Frank saw Stockhausen perform in 2004 in Bologna.
"He came out, he was wearing all-white. {..} He was just.. I was sitting up all the way in the 3rd row. {..] He was a force.. [..] There was some piano music & some electronic piano music. [..] Everybody was fixated on him. [..] Probably from "Licht"." Maybe seating 500. Tickets were expensive.
[from a clarifying email from Frank:
"I found the program of the concert I attended. I saw
DÜFTE - ZEICHEN [ScentSigns] (2002)
and
four scenes of SONNTAG aus LICHT for 7 vocalists, baby voice, and synthesizer
Karlheinz Stockhausen performing projections of sound"]
tENT plays CD of:
"Prelude No. 20" - 1992 - 3:09
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
tENT plays CD of:
"Cipher Casting" - 1992 - 5:54
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
When the drum machine type stuff pops in tENT compares it to Zappa again.
tENT plays CD of:
"Prelude No. 21" - ? - 2:10
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
tENT plays CD of:
"Prelude No. 22" - 1993 - 2:49
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Talking about Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" performed simulating the original POW conditions (not actually done).
Talking about Crumb piece for flute & 3 percussionists.
Ben talking about Cage's 4:33 as an extended ending to the Messiaen.
tENT telling KBZ story about their version of 4:33 "Quiet Village" wch tENT conducted in München in 1994.
[from a clarifying email from Ben:
"Also of interest: maybe you know more about this than I. I read the following passage in Andrew Hugill's "The Digital Musician" (ed. 2): "There is a tradition of 'silent' pieces of music, of which the most famous is John Cage's 4'33". However, that was not the earliest example: the first was probably the humourously titled "'Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Large Deaf Man' composed in 1884 by Alphonse Alliais.""
tENT interpolation: I have the Evergreen Review # 13 (volume 4) "What is Pataphysics?" issue in wch Allais is listed as one of the "patacessors".
Here's his wikipedia bio:
"Alphonse Allais (20 October 1854 28 October 1905) was a French writer and humorist born in Honfleur, Calvados.
He is the author of many collections of whimsical writings. A poet as much as a humorist, he in particular cultivated the verse form known as holorhyme, i.e. made up entirely of homophonous verses, where entire lines rhyme. For example:
par les bois du djinn où s'entasse de l'effroi,
parle et bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid.
Allais wrote the earliest known example of a completely silent musical composition. His Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man of 1897 consists of nine blank measures. It predates similarly silent but intellectually serious works by John Cage and Erwin Schulhoff by many years. His prose piece "Story for Sara" was translated and illustrated by Edward Gorey.
Allais participated in humorous exhibitions, particularly in those of the Salon des Arts Incohérents of 1883 and 1884, held at the Galerie Vivienne. At these Allais exhibited arguably the earliest examples of Conceptual Art. Of his art, perhaps the most influential were his plain white sheet of Bristol paper Première communion de jeunes filles chlorotiques par un temps de neige (First Communion of Anemic Young Girls In The Snow) (1883), and a similar red work Apoplectic Cardinals Harvesting Tomatoes on the Shore of the Red Sea (Study of the Aurora Borealis) (1884).
He died in Paris."
Note that Erwin Schullhof IS ALWAYS MENTIONED AS THE COMPOSER OF A SILENT PIECE. Schullhof seems more & more interesting. Some of you might remember him as the one who did the piece based on the Communist Manifesto who dies in a concentration camp.
"News to me, it never occurred to me there had been all-silent pieces prior to Cage. I know of silent-piece records, such as Whitehouse's "Birth[d]eath Experience" to name but one."
tENT interpolation: I have that Whitehouse record. When William Bennett, the main Whitehouse guy, performed in PGH recently, the advertising emphasized his classical training.
In the liner notes to "birthdeath experience" written by david charles it's written:
"the album marks the beginning of a second coming - the nascent dawn of electronic music as fathered by throbbing gristle and cabaret voltaire in 1976 until now electronic music has lacked two things - first aggression and force - it has always been laid back, unashamedly muzak - secondly it has lacked feeling intensity and relevance"
Ignorance is bliss, right? In other words, this stupid shit only listened to the worst pop electronic music & knows NOTHING about the original music. Having just listened to Mimaorglu's "Agony" & "Bowery Bum" I bring them up as obvious refuting examples but David Tudor's incredible "Untitled" (much like a track by Esplendor Geometrico but, of course, before them) & J. K. Randall's "Mudgett: monologues by a mass murderer" (1965) are even more astonishingly appropriate examples. charles' ignorance rambles on in regards to the track Ben's referencing: "6. birthdeath experience last but not least the title track to conclude the album as perhaps stockhausen would" I suspect he meant Cage but didn't know any better.]
tENT plays CD of:
"Prelude No. 24 ("Doomsayer's Doomsday") - 1994 - 5:08
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
tENT: "most articulated" in a particular way.
tENT plays CD of:
"La Belle et la poubelle" - 1995 - 17:07
("Outstanding Warrants" CD)
Immediately starts off march-like. Then changes dramatically.
Talking about Michael Pestel's faux-Messiaen performance.
Noticing faux-string sounds in "La Belle et la poubelle".
Talking about Oliveros appearing at CMU followed by Annie Sprinkle.
Sprinkle did a piece w/ a Oliveros soundtrack.
tENT mentions Oliveros piece in homage of Valerie Solanis.
Talking about Solanis.
Ben & Frank leave.
to the mm index
forward to mm 18
backward to mm 16
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)