Obscure #8: John White/Gavin Bryars ‘Machine Music’

John White
01 Autumn Countdown Machine (5:30)
02 Son of Gothic Chord (10:04)
03 Jew’s Harp Machine (2:31)
04 Drinking And Hooting Machine (4:42)

Gavin Bryars
05 The Squirrel and The Ricketty Racketty Bridge (20:45)

Total time 43:30
LP released by Island Records, UK, 1978

Two slices of pure Systems Music by the inventors of the genre. John White (born 1936) is a composer, pianist and tuba player. He founded Promenade Theatre Orchestra in 1969 along with Christopher Hobbs, Alec Hill, and Hugh Shrapnel. He was also a member of The Scratch Orchestra, Garden Furniture Music and the Farewell Symphony Orchestra (see Systems Music Timeline). The John White’s Machine Music featured on this LP refers to a set of rigid rules imposed on the interprets in order to limit their selfishness, exuberance, virtuosity and showmanship. In Son of Gothic Chord, the scale of the music is limited to one piano octave only, while Jew’s Harp Machine is written for an extremely limited instrument, as is Drinking And Hooting Machine, for glass bottles. Exquisite, self-restrained music, in any case. Gavin Bryars‘ Ricketty Racketty Bridge is for 4 guitarists playing 2 table top guitars each. Interprets play the strings with fingertips like a keyboard. Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars play different kind of guitars (see liner notes above). The result is a steady, semi-aleatoric web of soft notes where all personality and selfishness from the guitarists have been erased. Calling this Minimalist Music would be to miss the point entirely. The process is much more ironic.
Music offered by koshka. Thanks.

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See also:

• Obscure #2: Hobbs/Adams/Bryars ‘Ensemble Pieces’ >
• Obscure #4: David Toop/Max Eastley >
• Obscure #6: Michael Nyman ‘Decay Music’ >

Wayne Siegel ‘Autumn Resonances’

1. Autumn Resonances (26:05)
   For piano and delays
   Wayne Siegel: piano
2. Domino Figures (18:36)
   For 42 guitars
   Guitarists from the five Danish Academies of Music
   Erling Møldrup: conductor

Total time 44:41
LP released by Paula Records, PLP 21, Give, Denmark, 1983

Between 1974-77, American composer Wayne Siegel (b. 1953) studied composition with Per Nørgård in Aarhus, Denmark, where he then settled to work as a composer. In the 1980s, he was appointed administrative director of the West Jutland Symphony Orchestra and in 1986, director of the newly-founded DIEM, the Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music, in Aarhus (see offical web presence). Though Siegel is not considered a Minimalist composer as such, some of his works include phase patterns and simple, repetitve melodic lines, as is the case in the present LP.

On Autumn Resonance, composed 1979, Siegel uses the technical possibilities of the newly launched AKG TDU 7000 stereo delay unit (pictured left). The device is set to produce 2 different delays through the right and left speakers. During the first 10 minutes, the piano is on atmospheric mode, the delays creating a bath of enchanting sounds around the listener while the pianist plays fast chord successions on high pitched keys. Starting at 10:50, a short sequence of staccato notes create strong rhythmic patterns based on vivid delay effects. At this point, the piece reminds Steve Reich’s ‘Piano Phase’ (1967) and its rapid, pulse-based lines. The whole passage is quite intoxicating. A ritardando at 16:30 brings us back to the former enchanting piano layers.

‘Domino Figures’ is perhaps more a sound installation than a proper music composition. Simple acoustic guitar chords are passed from player to player with a 1 beat delay, creating a slowly evolving, impressionistic mass of chords. The classical guitar properties (plucked, detached notes and long resonances) disappear in favor of a new sound organism with completely different characteristics: sustained notes, massive sound, spatial effects. The transformation is as radical as, say, Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In A Room.

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Various ‘Eh bien, la Norvège…’

Sigurd Berge (1)
01 Månelandskap 2:55
02 Munnharpe 2:04
03 Humoresque 3:38
04 Eg beisla min støvel 2:37
Bjørn Fongaard (1)
05  The Space Concerto 14:15
Alf Hurum (2)
‘Three Aquarelles for piano’
06 The Water Lilly 3:52
07 Miniature 1:26
08 Aquarelle 1:28
Arne Nordheim (1)
09 Fem Osaka-biter – a 4:27
10 Fem Osaka-biter – b 3:33
11 Fem Osaka-biter – c 3:43
12 Fem Osaka-biter – d 3:21
13 Fem Osaka-biter – e 3:14
Geir Jenssen (4)
14 ‘Shhoctavoski’ 14:30
Jøran Rudi & John Persen (3)
15 ‘Untitled 1′ 7:56
Sto (5)
16 ‘Spiegelei (åmmage)’ 6:41

SOURCES:
(1) Contemporary Music from Norway, LP, Philips 6507 034 (1973) [+]
(2) Contemporary Music from Norway, LP, Philips 6507 004 (1971)
(3) Things Take Time, LP, Norwegian Composers label, ref NC4930 (1987)
(4) Personal live recording, 2009
(5) Unreleased, 2009

Total time 80mn
Track selection by sto, 2009

This compilation was specially selected for and offered to the readers of this blog by ’sto’ (born 1965), a reader from Bergen, Norway, himself a scientist, photographer [+] and clarinet player. The selection includes some of our reader’s favorite electroacoustic and contemporary music tracks from Norwegian composers and can work as a fine introduction to this country’s avantgarde music output. He added some of his own photos and gave the whole package a facetious French title: ‘Eh bien, la Norvège…’, before sending it to my home. As sto is a vinyl aficonado, tracks were culled from various vinyls, including two rare Philips LPs from the 1970s, but also from personal recordings. Things start with powerful, monophonic electronic tonalities by Sigurd Berge (1929-2002), whose 4 tracks are build on long, fascinating sounds from vintage synth circa 1971, possibly an EMS Synthi AKS (see bio here). Bjørn Fongaard (1919-1980) was a microtonal composer and guitarist (see bio here) whose most famous piece is arguably ‘Galaxy’, 1965, for 3 self-build guitars in special tunings, featured on another Philips LP on their Prospective 21e Siècle series titled ‘Musique Electronique Norvégienne’ (read Lasse Marhaug’s enthusiast comments on the piece here). The Space Concerto, for piano and tape, is another great piece by Fongaard, a dialogue between atmospheric piano chords and gorgeous, pre-recorded electroacoustic sounds apparently entirely sourced from microtonal guitar. Alf Hurum (1882-1972) was a conductor in Bergen before relocating to Honolulu in 1924 (nice photo here). He ceased composing in 1930 to indulge into silk painting. ‘Three aquarelles’, published 1912, are short piano compositions inspired by French impressionism, particularly Debussy. Fem Osaka-biter (Five Osaka Fragments) is a musique concrète sound installation by Arne Nordheim (b.1931) which ran for 6 months during the Osaka World Fair in Japan, 1971 (where Stockhausen famously presented his entire work during a 51-hours performance in the much publicized spherical auditorium). The composition uses 6 continuously running cassettes of various lengths and contents: electronic sounds, field recordings, orchestra rehearsal, conversations, radio transmissions, etc. The vast yet aleatory sound collage of modern life thus created reminds of Walter Ruttmann’s Weekend and Edgar Varèse’s Electronic Poem, no less – though with Nordheim’s specific, atmospheric style. Next is ambient Shostakovich by Geir Jenssen aka Biosphere (b.1962). The latter was commissionned an orchestral score for the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and created it from Shostakovich samples and an electronic notation program. Critics were left unconvinced: ‘Sjostakovitsj-biter’, says this Norwegian article (or Shostakovich Fragments). This unreleased recording works fine as atmospheric orchestral music with its never ending crescendos. Jøran Rudi (b.1954) started recording electroacoustic music in 1986 (see bio here), teaming up with John Persen at the time. On the latter’s official website, the piece is titled 7′56”, its actual duration, and using: Roland Jupiter 6 and Korg synths plus TR 808 rhythm box. Through tape manipulation and sound effects, the composers constantly alter pitch and height, creating striking surreal effects. Sto himself contributes a collage piece from a live performance of the Bergen University Symphony Orchestra, including intermission audience noises, conversations, the orchestra tuning and various moments when you’re not sure the music has started. In this exquisite piece, non-music arises from musical samples.

A big THANK YOU to sto for the fantastic music!

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Hermann Nitsch ‘6. Sinfonie – Allerheiligensinfonie’

6th Symphony ‘Allerheiligensinfonie’

01 Side One (30:50)
02 Side Two (30:30)
03 Side Three (27:50)
04 Side Four (28:10)

Total time 1h57mn
2xk7 set released byEdition Freibord, Wien, Austria, 1988

Icelandic Symphonic Orchestra
Hermann Nitsch: conductor
Frank Dolch: organ
Recorded at the Museum of 20th Century Art, Wien, October 30th, 1980.

In the 1970s, Hermann Nitsch used to make music with the free improvisation group Selten Gehörte Musik, a collective of Berlin artists including Günter Brus, Oswald Wiener or Dieter Roth. This group included some Austrian expats (with Arnulf Rainer sometimes joining in) who had fled from the oppressive, ultra-conservative Austrian atmosphere and found a haven for their creativity in the cosmopolitan German capital. Nitsch didn’t actually emigrate to Berlin, yet he was sentenced several times in his home country for his offensive 1960s Aktions. While most Austrian artists have a strong love-hate relationship with their country, Nitsch is a somewhat different case since he came to mythologize his heimat with pagan concepts bypassing contemporary Austria’s ignoble compromises. Hence, one entry door to the artistry of Hermann Nitsch is to consider his art as fighting back the ignoble with the ignoble.

This recording of Nitsch’s 6th Symphony, titled ‘Allerheiligensinfonie’, or ‘Halloween Symphony’, was made during the dress rehearsal that took place on the Haloween night from October 30th to November 1st, 1980. It was released to 200 signed copies by Nitsch on Edition Freibord, Wien. His own Das Orgien Mysterien Theater (or ‘Orgies and Mystery Theater’), is the name he gives to his public performances. ‘Allerheiligen’ is the German for All Hallows’ Even, the original name for Halloween. The 6th Symphony celebrates the pagan Halloween ritual with festive orchestral music – the more paganist, the better for Nitsch who loathes the Catholic religion prevalent in Austria. The first tape sounds like incidental music, possibly a fill-in before midnight. The second tape is the real meat, with its obsessive repetition of a familiar drinking Schlager (melody). The excessive ball music orchestration includes a profusion of bassoons, accordions, whistles and flutes, but various horns, drums and bass guitar also contribute. The sound is massive, anarchic, unceremonious, almost demagogic, the orchestra sounding everything but philharmonic. To illustrate the Symphony’s mood, the few pictures bellow seem appropriate. They come from Munich’s Oktoberfest, the annual festival of funfairs and beer drinking. The last picture shows Nitsch with his own cépage of Austrian white wine.

Thanks to Rainier for lending me these exceptional tapes.

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Ansamblul Hyperion conducerea muzicală: Iancu Dumitrescu

1. Iancu Dumitrescu ‘Movemur Et Sumus II + V’
   pentru violoncel, contrabas şi percuţie (13:35)
2. Octavian Nemescu ‘Combinaţii în Cercuri’
   pentru ansamblu de cameră şi mediu electronic (11:52)
3. Ştefan Niculescu ‘Sincronie’
   pentru ansamblu de cameră (9:10)
4. Corneliu Cezar ‘Rota’
   pentru ansamblu de cameră şi mediu electronic (12:27)

Total time 47:02
LP released by Electrecord, Bucarest, Romania, 1980

Formed in 1976 by industrious Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu, Ansamblul Hyperion (Hyperion Ensemble) was to be the vector of his Spectral music experiments until today, more than 30 years later. This fine LP, possibly the first to showcase the Ensemble’s remarkable skills, introduces some Hyperion associate composers as well, in various offerings of orchestral music, with added electronic on 2 tracks. For Romanian composers, moving easily from chamber music to electronic, from symphonic to vocal and everything in between, is a specific national trait. The first electroacoustic studio in Romania was created in Bucarest in 1967 by Iancu Dumitrescu, Dinu Petrescu and Dan Mercureanu. The former himself is a brilliant composer in all music genres, as his solo discography on Edition Modern amply demonstrates. He conducts the Ansamblul Hyperion on 4 beautiful compositions, representative of the Romanian national style: clarity of writing inspired by French classical music, bold orchestral gestures familiar from the Darmstadt school, plus unusual instrumental combinations where the orchestra sounds, at times, like a solo instrument and later on, the solo instrument sounds like an entire orchestra. To my knowledge, this LP has not been reissued on CD, but Muzică Românească, the online archive for Romanian contemporary music, offers hundreds of mp3s for free download. One hour worth of Corneliu Cezar’s music (including the resplendent ‘Rota’, from the present LP) and more than 4 hours of Octavian Nemescu are available as high quality mp3s here and here.

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Chez Pierre Henry

It’s now an enduring tradition in Paris: Pierre Henry’s house opens to the public every summer evening during impromptu electroacoustic concerts. It’s a narrow, 4-storeys building whose rooms (including kitchen and toilets) are full of Henry’s collages and assemblages, in the Nouveau Réalisme style (Arman, César, Tinguely). The walls are completely covered with artworks, the house is stuffed to death. On Saturday Aug. 1st, ‘09, Henry was at the console for a live mix of Dieu (1977), with French actor Jean-Paul Farré reading from Victor Hugo’s poem. Small speakers were installed in each room through an excellent sound system. In case you’d be interested by the pictures above, the following link directs to an archive of 37, high-resolution photos I took this evening.

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Leo Küpper ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’

1. Kouros et Korê, 1979 (23:40)
   Jeannette Inchauste: phonemes
   Jean-Claude Frison: phonemes
2. Innominé, 1974 (21:17)
   Allessandra Mihail: voice
   Foreign students from Brussels Free University: vocals

Total time 45:00
LP released by Igloo, Belgium, 1981

Belgian composer Leo Küpper (b.1935) started to experiment with electronic music in 1959 as a student at Liège University, Belgium, using two Brüel & Kjaer oscillators and a tape recorder. From 1961, while studying musicology in Brussels, he worked at Brussels Apelac electronic music studio, founded by Henri Pousseur in 1959. Küpper founded his own ‘Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives’ in Brussels in 1967. He created interactive sound installations he called ‘Public Computer Music’ (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma, 1977) and various electronic instruments like the ‘Automates Sonores’, the Kinephone in 1987, or the ‘Ordinateur Musical’, a voice-activated computer with electronic sounds interacting with the audience. These interactive musical events sometimes took place in Sound Domes (1977-1987), architectural structures with up to 100 speakers, like in Linz, Austria, 1984. Küpper was always fascinated with the human voice and some of his best works use it as source material. He researched the world of phonemes and glossolalia, or speaking in tongues in Christian and Orthodox liturgy. He founded the Phonemic and Vocal group in 1982, with singers using the musical machines described above. One of his compositions of 1974 is based on Antonin Artaud’s poem ‘L’enclume des Forces’. He often worked with actors and students, more rarely with professional singers (like mezzo-soprano A.M. Kieffer), in which case his music is comparable to Luciano Berio’s compositions for Cathy Berberian. In 1973, Küpper traveled to Iran to study santur with Hossein Malek. Since then, he has been a noted santur player, performing abroad during festivals and composing for santur and electronics.

‘Kouros et Korê’ (1979) is constructed from the extraordinary performances of dancer Jeannette Inchauste and actor Jean-Claude Frison, whose ability to produce a wide array of microscopic vocal sounds is used by Küpper to build a delicate, complex architecture of intertwined phonemes. The latter include such sub-categories as (in French): allophones, phonatomes, logatomes and phonetic micro-sounds. The close-up miking goes inside the sub-atomic structure of sound, while the studio montage organizes the phonetic sounds into a fascinating voicescape. No surprise sound poet Henri Chopin found the piece beautiful when Küpper played it to him in the 1980s (from a 2009 interview). Retrospectively, the works of Anna Homler, David Moss or Phil Minton seem to be inspired by these experiments.

‘Innominé’ (1974) uses the ‘Ordinateur Musical’ to process the utterances of a group of students. At the beginning, the program reacts with semi-aleatoric electronic sounds to the inchoate, indistinct ushed vocals. Then the seductive voice of Allessandra Mihail expresses the interrogations of an isolated individual. A fascinating electronic passage of dignified computer interjections follows at 6:00. Vocals return on 17:00, when all the students proposes new words and phonetic sounds according to their mother tongue (Chinese, Arab, Danish, French) during a collective performance using the interactive computer’s electronic treatment. In the end, the beauty of ‘Innominé’ impresses more than the technology used, which is indicative of its musical accomplishment.

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Discography:
1971 ‘L’Enclume Des Forces/Électro-Poème/Automatismes Sonores‘, LP, Deutsche Grammophon
1981 ‘Kouros et Korê/Innominé’, LP, Igloo 007
1985 ‘Amkéa/Aérosons’, LP, Igloo 032
199? ‘Litanea’, CD, Harmonia Mundi CM 2023
1996 ‘Electro-Acoustic’, CD, Pogus 21009-2
1999 ‘Ways of the Voice’, CD, Pogus 21018-2
2003 ‘Complete Electronic Works 1961-74′, CD, Sub Rosa

Appears on:
1991 ‘Cimbalom World Congress’, CD, Hungaroton HCD 18209

Dubravko Detoni ‘Graphies I,II & III / Phonomorphia 1,2 & 3′

1. Graphie II (5:45)
   For instrumental ensemble
   Zagreb Biennial workshop orchestra
2. Phonomorphia 1 (4:13)
   Electroacoustic music, recorded at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, Warsaw
3. Phonomorphia 2 (7:42)
   For piano and tape
   Piano: D. Detoni
4. Graphie I (5:30)
   For organ
   Organ: Andjelko Klobucar
   Recorded in Zagreb Cathedral
5. Graphie III (15:28)
   For chorus, instrumental ensemble and tape
   Choir and ensemble from National Radio-Television Orchestra,  Zagreb
   Conductor: D. Detoni
6. Phonomorphia 3 (8:25)
   For voice, instrumental ensemble and tape
   Voices: Neva Rosic, Tonko Lonza
   Ensemble from National Radio-Television Orchestra,  Zagreb
   Conductor: D. Detoni

Total time 47:00
LP released by Philips, France, 1971

Dubravko Detoni transcends the clichés of European contemporary music with an almost surrealist theatricality and an ear for interesting sounds, whatever the instrument (for more info on Detoni, see previous post). This LP on Philips’ Prospective 21e Siècle series [+] is no exception, the first to introduce Detoni to the Western world. Graphie I and Phonomorphia 2 won first prize during the 1969 Paris biennale, and during the seventies, Detoni became a familiar figure of the European contemporary music festivals (Warsaw, Venezia, Paris, Nürnberg…). The parallel cycles Graphie and Phonomorphia, for solist, group of instruments and/or tape, were all written between 1967 and ‘71. The Phonomorphia cycle makes constant use of electroacoustic tape music presumably recorded in the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, Warsaw.
The LP was kindly ripped for us by reader Rainier. Thanks.

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More Eastern Europeans:
Arsenije Jovanović >
King Elf >
Jaroslav Krček > & >
Myriam Marbe >
Merzdow Shek >
István Szigeti >

Phonomorphia