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François Bayle: “Grande Polyphonie 2” (1974)

From the album Vibrations Composées / Grande Polyphonie

Along with Bernard Parmegiani, Luc Ferrari, and others, François Bayle was one of the foremost composers of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales (Musical Research Group) in the years following the departure of founder Pierre Schaeffer.  Bayle was director of the of the GRM from 1966 to 1997, during which time he created a large body of works under the rubric of musique acousmatique or “acousmatic music.” Among his many contributions to the art form is the Acousmonium, an orchestra of loudspeakers designed to give the composer control of the spatial distribution of sound in playback (known as diffusion).  Bayle is still composing as of this writing.

Bayle’s music is typically more harmonically conscious than most electronic art music.  While many of his colleagues throw out harmonic considerations in order to develop an “art of noises” entirely freed from the pitch dimension, Bayle uses harmonic tension in a manner wholly distinct from traditional notions of tonal centers.  (In this respect he could be compared to Gyorgi Ligeti, who frequently pursued similar ends in the domain of instrumental and vocal music.)  Consonance and dissonance fluctuate in cloud-like agglomerations, coexisting in a true dynamic equilibrium, unlike the fixed match of preordained harmony that is Western tonality.

Characterized by a strangely compelling fusion of lush, almost psychedelic timbral excess with an acute sense of form and proportion exemplifying the proverbially French aesthetic of clarté, Bayle creates a sound-world teeming with birdsong-like electronic twitters, bells, gongs, and all manner of resonant bodies joined together in a joyous, childlike clangor. 

August 06, 2010, 10:00am

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Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: “Cento mani e cento occhi”

From the album Darwin! (1972)

In the dubious estimation of musical common sense, the 1970s are typically represented as years of sorrow, a vast artistic wasteland.  The unfortunately prominent developments of adult contemporary and disco helped stain this decade with the reputation of slick, soulless overproduction. But— aside from the fact that there is a time and place for Giorgio Moroder and yes, even Barry Manilow— beneath the surface, the 1970s is one of the most rich and varied periods in the entire century, spanning everything from the brilliant funk/soul fusion of Curtis Mayfield in the U.S. to the groundbreaking works of “acousmatic music” presented in France by composers such as Francois Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani.

One of the most fascinating phenomena of the decade is the international diffusion of progressive rock, which had been launched by a handful of (mostly) British bands in the late 60s.  Prog rock, with its classical and jazz influences, its sophisticated song structures, and its expansion of the sonic palette beyond the tired, guitar-dominated sound of conventional rock, quickly spread across the European continent, and took on distinctive new forms far removed from its often cloying and affected Anglophone incarnations.

One of the most impressive products of this development was Banco del Mutuo Soccorso (roughly, “Bank of Mutual Aid”), an Italian prog-rock band founded by the brothers Vitorio and Gianni Nocenzi in Rome in 1969.  Their eponymous debut album was released in 1972.  Later that year, Banco recorded what is widely regarded as one of the defining works of the genre, a concept album inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and entitled simply Darwin!

“Cento mani e cento occhi” (“A hundred hands and a hundred eyes”) is to my ears the album’s highlight.  At just over five minutes long, the song is quite compact by prog-rock standards, but its modest length compresses a multi-sectional, developmental structure of compelling dynamism, from the pseudo-classical fanfare of the opening to the stripped-down, two-chord intensity of the outro— all of it held together by the powerful operatic vocals of singer Francesco Di Giacomo.

July 27, 2010, 1:34pm

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P-Model: “Art Mania”

From the album In a Model Room (1979)

P-Model was a self-described “techno-punk” band from Japan founded in 1979 by Susumu Hirasawa.  Their first two albums— In a Model Room (1979) and Landsale (1980)— exhibit a twitchy, electronically-infused punk/pop style that powerfully demonstrates the global dimensions of the New Wave phenomena circa 1980.

The band’s next two releases, Potpourri (1981) and Perspective (1982) took a turn into more diffuse stylistic territory, less punkish and in many ways more experimental, with the earlier albums’ hard-edged production values traded in for a high-reverb sound-wash. These albums are not as immediately engaging as P-Model’s first works, but they represent some of the strangest and most fascinating musical endeavors of the early 1980s.

In addition to his work as the frontman for P-Model, Hirasawa has also had a prolific career as a solo artist, releasing 13 albums since 1989.

July 18, 2010, 10:31am

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Roland Kayn: “Isotrope,” Part II

From the album Infra (1978-79)

Roland Kayn is surely one of the most fascinating and obscure composers in the history of electronic music.  Kayn was a journeyman in the avant-garde European music scene in the 1950s and 60s: he made appearances at several of the newly-founded electronic music studios, undertook advanced composition studies with Boris Blacher in Berlin, and had works premiered at the famous summer courses in Darmstadt.  

In 1964 Kayn joined the Gruppo d’Improvvisatione Nuova Consonanza, a collective of composer-performers founded by Franco Evangelisti in Rome.  He was a member of the group until 1968, when he left in order to pursue his vision of “cybernetic music,” which had haunted him since his first contact with electronic sound production at the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne in 1953.  In 1970, Kayn was invited to work at the Instituut voor Sonologie (Institute of Sonology) at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.  The composer Gottfried Michael Koenig, director of the studio since 1964, had recently overseen the installation of a state-of-the-art analogue system of independent modular units, such as oscillators, filters, envelope generators, and logic circuits. At the center of this configuration was a “variable function generator,” essentially a primitive sequencer that could be programmed to store a series of voltages which were then used to control the various components of the studio.  With this system, Kayn was able for the first time to realize his ideas of cybernetic music, which involved elaborate configurations of connections and feedback loops that create complex and unpredictable sonic interactions.  Kayn “composes” the initial setup of the studio components, but once the sound is set in motion, it is allowed to take its own course.  In this way, Kayn believes thatthe electronic system develops a sort of capacity to think for itself, a capacity which in a sense can be described as artificial intelligence…. Existential Being, as it were, takes the place of a logically functioning consciousness.”

For more Roland Kayn, check out my earlier post and his official website.  MP3 rips of several out-of-print LPs of Kayn’s music from the 1970s have been made available on the blog No Longer Forgotten Music:

Elektroakustische Projekte

Infra 

Makro 

Simultan

Here are some lovely images from the liner notes to Kayn’s albums (with the exception of the picture of Kayn himself, which is from the 1967 documentary film Nuova Consonanza: Komponisten improvisieren im Kollektiv):

Excerpt from the score for Allotropie (1962-64)

Excerpt from the score for Galaxis (1962)

Excerpt from the score for Cybernetics

A glimpse into Kayn’s studio

Roland Kayn in 1967

July 12, 2010, 3:41pm

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Demetrio Stratos: “Flautofonie ed altro”

From the album Cantare la voce (1978)

Born in Alexandria of Greek parents, Demetrio Stratos (1945-1979) spent most of his adult life in Italy.  He was one of the founding members of the Italian band Area, an experimental progressive rock/jazz fusion outfit that released five studio albums between the band’s founding in 1972 and Stratos’ death in 1979.  (Beyond their music, Area was noted for their left-wing political stance, expressed not only in the band’s lyrics, but also in their appearances at political events such as a concert with Joan Baez in protest of the Vietnam War in 1975.)

Stratos released two studio albums of solo work: Metrodora (1976) and Cantare la voce (1978).  These recordings are remarkable documents of Stratos’ uncanny vocal ability.  Even for those with adventurous ears, this music can be excruciating to listen to.  One cannot help but feel the visceral effort required to invoke these sounds, the incredible duress under which Stratos’ voice is laboring.

(Although Stratos was supposedly able to use overtone-singing techniques to sing up to four parts at once, the distinct vocal sounds on this track were produced through overdubbing in the recording studio.)

Through his research into vocal production, comparative musicology, phonetics, and psychoanalysis, Stratos developed a theory in which the expressive, unconventional, and non-signifying use of the voice as explored in his music came to symbolize the potential for personal and political liberation:

If a new vocality can exist, it must be lived by all, and not singularly: an attempt to get free of the condition of listener and spectator to which the culture and politics have accustomed us. This work cannot be taken up as passive listening, but rather as “a game in which life is at risk.” 

A trove of Stratos’ recordings is available at the ever-resourceful UbuWeb.

May 03, 2010, 3:17pm

Cosmogony in sound: A review of Iannis Xenakis’ The Legend of Er (1977-78)

As released on DVD by Mode Records (2005)

The Pompidou Center in Paris: a monument to modernism erected at the historical moment of that movement’s decline.  It was here, at the inauguration of the Pompidou in 1978, that the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis presented his “gesture of light and sound” known as Le Diatope. 

Made of red vinyl stretched over a metal frame, the Diatope’s curvilinear form recalls the famous Philips Pavilion designed by Xenakis and Le Corbusier for the Brussels World Fair in 1958, which housed the Poème électronique of Edgard Varèse.  Indeed, the immersive multimedia plan of the Philips Pavilion was the model for a number of later works Xenakis called Polytopes.  He created four of these prior to the Diatope: the Polytope de Montreal in 1967, an open-air spectacle in Persepolis in 1971, and two Polytopes in the Parisian Abby of Cluny in 1972 and 1973.

Inside the Diatope Xenakis arranged a light show involving 1600 flashbulbs and four lasers guided by four hundred adjustable mirrors.  Both abstract and representational figures were meticulously choreographed and traced by light. Xenakis’ sketches for the light show mention shapes such as “lotuses,”galaxies,” and “wheels.”

In the program booklet for the original 1977 presentation, Xenakis included five quotations that together capture the metaphysical ambiance of the work.  I reproduce them here in the order in which they originally appeared:

Each group would spend seven days in open country, and on the eighth, they had to break camp and head out for four days to finally reach a place where one discovers, stretching all across the sky and over the earth, a beam of light straight as a pillar, akin to a rainbow, but much more radiant and pure. – Plato, The Republic

From there emerged a crying out, indistinct, one I likened to a voice of fire,  just as there emerged from the light…a holy Word blanketing all of Nature, and the purest of fire was thrust out of the humid natural world toward the sublime area above. – Hermes Trismegistus, Pymander

For indeed, what is man within nature?  A void in the face of infinity, a whole before the void, a center between nothingness and wholeness…unable to perceive the void from whence he came, nor the infinity in which he is submerged. – Blaise Pascal, Pensées

 Christ went on: “I traversed the worlds, I ascended into the suns, and soared with the Milky Ways through the wastes of heaven; but there is no God. I descended to the last reaches of the shadows of Being, and I looked into the chasm and cried: ‘Father, where art thou?’ But I heard only the eternal storm ruled by none, and the shimmering rainbow of essence stood without sun to create it, trickling above the abyss. – Jean-Paul Richter, Siebenkäs

 In the first stages of the explosion, the general distribution of the star’s energy closely matches the distribution known for theoretical black holes at a temperature of 12,000 degrees Kelvin.  In the case of SN 1970g the radius was measured at 3x10¹⁴ centimeters, in other words, as large as the orbit of Uranus.  Once the supernova’s radius is known, it is possible to determine its absolute luminosity.  For SN 1970g, this was calculated at 10⁴² ergs per second, or one trillion times that of the sun…  During the 30 days following the explosion, the radius of the surface from which the light was emitted increases at a near-constant speed of 5,000 kilometers per second.  At the end of this period, the star’s photosphere, in other words, its visible surface, reaches a radius of 2x10¹⁸ centimeters, a much larger radius than that of our solar system. – Robert P. Kirshner, Supernova

These quotations offer no program or story, but rather, at best, set a mood for the spectacle: a sort of saturnine melancholy tinged with childlike wonder.  The first quote, taken from the end of Plato’s Republic, demands explanation, as it the source of the title Xenakis chose for the musical component of the Diatope.  It concerns a soldier named Er who returns from the dead and describes what he saw on the other side.  The vision culminates with Er’s sighting of the “Spindle of Necessity,” a great shaft encircled with eight rings representing the eight celestial spheres known to ancient astronomy.  On each ring is perched a siren singing a tone corresponding to the circumference of its orbit and together forming a cosmic harmony.  Seated on thrones amidst the sirens are the three Fates, or “daughters of necessity,” who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens: Lachesis, singing of the past, Clotho of the present, and Atropos of the future.

Finally, there is the music: comprised of seven tracks distributed over 11 loudspeakers placed throughout the Diatope, Xenakis’ tape composition La legénde d’Eer (The Legend of Er) is a sprawling, 46-minute journey in sound.  (For the DVD release, Xenakis’ original seven-channel mix has been reduced to a 5.1 version.)

Given Xenakis’ reputation as a composer of fearful complexity, the form of the music is remarkably transparent: beginning with pure, high twinkling tones that Xenakis described as “sonic shooting stars,” layer upon layer of sound is added, from harsh, wailing industrial noises, to recognizable instrumental timbres such as thumb piano and mouth harp, to a throbbing electronic vortex that emerges midway through the composition.  These sound layers enter at lower and lower registers, suggesting a descent from the rarefied upper realms into the chthonic domain below.  Hearing this music at high volume over a surround-sound system in a large room, one is confronted with the sublime aesthetic terror of sensory overload.  As one listener described the experience, it is the auditory equivalent of staring directly into the sun.

Finally the density of sound subsides, and at the end the listener is left once again with the shooting stars.  These too gently fade away into a now-resonant silence. The emergence and passing of these distinct sonic textures gives the music a powerful if extremely dilated sense of motion.  Indeed, the time scale of The Legend of Er, and the primal violence of its sounds, are suggestive less of human music than of natural phenomena: as if we, like Er himself, are here witness to some vast cosmological process otherwise inaccessible to human ears and eyes.

April 20, 2010, 5:39pm

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Armando Sciascia: “Circuito Chiuso”

From the album Psych Funk 101 (1968-1975): A Global Psychedelic Funk Curriculum (2009)

February 09, 2010, 10:39am

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Magma: “Ork Alarm”

From the album Köhntarkösz (1974)

For those who just can’t get enough Francophone prog-rock, and as a follow-up to my recent post on Univers Zero, I offer a sampling of music by one of the bands that seems to be at the root of the western European prog-rock movement beginning in the 1970s.

Founded by classically trained “drum hero” Christian Vander in 1969, Magma has been hailed as ”the ultimate progressive rock group” by anonymous internet oracles.  What musical glory could possibly live up to such hype, you ask?  How about a concept band whose premise is the future colonization of the planet Kobaia by a group of enlightened émigrés who have fled an Earth doomed to war and destruction? (Perceptive readers will note that this is essentially the same scenario behind Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s 1959 “space opera” Aniara, recently featured on this blog.)

If that’s not enough, Magma’s lyrics are sung in a constructed language called Kobaian.  Their music has apparently spawned a sub-genre of global prog-rock known as “Zeuhl,” which is a Kobaian word meaning “celestial.”

Although bearing many of the familiar characteristics of the more familiar Anglophone brand of prog-rock (extended, quasi-symphonic song structures, sci-fi or D&D lyrical obsessions, and a certain bombastic theatricality), Magma’s music is distinctive, accomplished, and significantly less obnoxious than many of its English language equivalents.  Perhaps it helps that the lyrics are indecipherable.

Magma also seems to have a more diverse stylistic pedigree than many prog-rock bands, whose classical training is often all too conspicuous.  Front man Vander played as a jazz drummer before starting Magma, and has named John Coltrane as a primary, enduring influence.  (The album Köhntarkösz includes a track called “Coltrane Sündia”— Kobaian for “Coltrane Rest in Peace.”)

November 20, 2009, 4:11pm

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Henry Flynt: “Violin Strobe” (1978)

From the album New American Ethnic Music Volume 3: Hillbilly Tape Music

The title says it all: American experimental musician and freelance art-theorist Henry Flynt combines Steve Reich-style tape loops with furious virtuoso fiddling in an ecstatic hybridization of the radically disparate.  In fact, the convergence of the extremes of so-called “high” and “low” culture—“the image of the untrained ‘folk creature’ as avant-gardiste,” which Flynt attributes to Ornette Coleman— is at the root of many of the most vital cultural expressions of the 20th century.

“My music is a sophisticated, personal extension of the ethnic music of my native region of the United states.  In all of my experimentation, I assert myself as an autochthon (colloquially, a “native” or “folk creature”)—siding with the emotional experience and the musical languages of the autochthonous communities.  In particular, I assert that the objective sound elements of blues and country music are demonstrably incommensurate with the categorization of sound in European musicology—as for example in the use of an unaccented glissando on the beat as a “note”—and in non-arithmetical division of the beat.”

October 03, 2009, 1:41pm

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Conlon Nancarrow: “Study No. 36” (c. 1970)

From the album Studies for Player Piano

Born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas, Conlon Nancarrow was an American composer in the grand experimentalist tradition.

After fighting in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, Nancarrow returned to the U.S. but was denied a passport, likely due to his membership in the Communist Party.  He moved to Mexico City, taking with him a copy of Henry Cowell’s book New Musical Resources, in which the author speculated on the possibility of new forms of musical writing that would allow the notation of rhythmic patterns in any imaginable temporal ratio.  (I have written previously on Cowell’s experiments with the Rhythmicon.)

Cowell mused that many such complicated rhythms could perhaps be performed only by a player piano.  Nancarrow took this idea and ran with it: from 1940 until the 80s, he wrote exclusively for this mechanical instrument, meticulously punching tiny holes into piano rolls in order to create music of stunning complexity, often integrating funky dance rhythms and canonic structures.

In its virtuosic precision and expressive frenzy, Nancarrow’s music anticipates trends that would emerge much later with the appearance of MIDI and digital sequencing technology.

August 19, 2009, 9:19am