a phenomenology of electronic music
May 11th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: a phenomenology of electronic music :: perhaps a phenomenology of discursive practices as well as electronic musics? :: A phenomenology of electronic music :: perhaps a phenomenology of discursive practices as well as electronic musics?
Hi Malcolm, you wrote:
>Hey anyone here interested in a phenomenology of music? My research
>interests have turned towards electronic music ala Cage/Stockhausen
>and Schaeffer’s French phenomenological interpretation of
>acousmatics. I intend to keep playing on even as the deck is tilting
>and the good ship modernity starts its long painful slide into the
>icy waters.
Yes, i’m very interested. I’m a real fan of Karlheinz Stockhausen, have
20 or so records of him, not so much the electronic music, but a lot of
orchestral and vocal work. Have you heard (parts of) his gigantic 7-day
opera “Licht”, that’s truly amazing music. Stockhausen is very spiritual,
maybe even very Heideggerian, in intention and scope. Stockhausen is
a musical onmivore, he is (or better let himself be) influenced as much
by new electronics as by mediaeval chants, by modern jazz as by ancient
chinese instruments. I also have 4 cds with Pierre Schaeffer’s “Oeuvre
Musicale”, his compositions of musique concrete have alway fascinated
me. I used to listen to them in class, students were amazed and delighted
to hear how ordinary everyday sounds could be used and mixed in such
a way that a true aesthetic composition developed. John Cage i also like
alot, for years he came to Holland to perfrom on a festival dedicated to
him. He would then play his newest compostions and lecture about the
zen philosophy behind it. There was a kind of cultstatus created around
him, i didn’t dig that. But his sonatas & interludes for prepared piano is
still one of my favorite modern piano pieces.
With regard to electronic music in general there so much that i don’t
know where to begin. Of course you will be familiar with the work of
major composers as Edgar Varese, Luciano Berio, Gyorgy Ligeti and
Krzysztof Penderecki who all in parts of their career experimented with
electronic music. Interesting to mention here is the early experimental
work of Oskar Sala, the inventor of the trautonium. He was one of the
first in Europe who build his own electronic studio. He and his friends
have written numerous electronic compostions and sound-studies and there
was also a connection with Stockhausen i believe. His electronic
tonal illustration to Hitchcock’s film “The Birds” became well known.
In the seventies and eighties electronic studios originated everywhere
in Europe and the U.S. Well known in Europe became the cybernetic
music of Roland Kayn and in the U.S. there were Mario Davidovsky,
Karl Korte and Meyer Kupferman to name a few. Also in Holland we have our
own electronic music tradition. One of the first electronic
studios was build in the early sixties in Eindhoven (the city of Philips)
and it quickly became a centre of gravity for various composers. Edgar
Varese realised his famous “Poeme electronique” there and Hans Kox,
Henk Badings (the pioneer of Dutch electronic music) and Jan Boerman
composed there their first electronic works. Jan Boerman, who later on
set up his own private studio in The Hague, i find the most talented. His
“Kompostie 1972″ really sounds beautiful, it’s a masterpiece. You know the
problem i have with a lot of modern electronic music is that it is …..
interesting, i.e. in the sense of technically ‘interesting’, but it
seldomly sounds good. What i often hear are wierd, brute, agitated and
outlandish
timbres and rhythmic structures, but where is the acoustic beauty ? With
Jan Boerman’s “Kompostie 1972″ that is different, it is a truly beautiful
piece, the work sounds very light and with its warm tone-colours, highly
spontaneous, sunny and optimistic. Music to melt the icy waters of modernity.
yours,
Jan
