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Laibach: “Contrapunctus 1”
From the album Laibachkunstderfuge (2008)
What do you get when you mix the Slovenian industrial band Laibach with the German Baroque composer J. S. Bach? A bizarre yet undeniably appropriate musical hybrid that only the young 21st century could create.
Bach is almost certainly the most frequently “covered” composer of the European classical canon, among both 20th-century art music composers (see my earlier post on Anton Webern’s arrangement of a piece from Bach’s other late magnum opus, The Musical Offering) and popular musicians. Because Bach left The Art of Fugue without directions as to what instruments should play the various parts, the work has presented later musicians with the ideal tabula rasa for “remixes” of various sorts. Laibach envisions Bach’s contrapuntal permutations in The Art of Fugue as a premonition of the music of the electronic age:
Since the work is very much based on mathematic algorithms, Laibach decided to use computer and computer program as the key »instrument«, providing a very special electronic interpretation and showing that J.S. Bach with his work could as well be understood as the pioneer of electronic, techno, and computer music.
Played 111 time(s).
December 06, 2009, 11:09pm
