Akio Suzuki ‘Soundsphere’

01 De Koolmees Suzuki Type Glass Harmonica, 1973 (23:46)
02 Analapos A – Voice Composed, 1970 (14:44)
03 Analapos B – Multiple Stand, 1973 (22:33)
04 Analapos C – Object For A Single Person, 1970 (9:20)

Total time 70:23
Book+CD released by Het Apollohuis, The Netherlands, 1990

‘Soundsphere’, Akio Suzuki’s acclaimed masterpiece, was meant by Paul Panhuysen, director of Het Apollohuis, as an introduction to his sound work, with a book detailing various instruments Suzuki created, as well as diagrams and documentation on previous performances from the 1970s and 1980s. It was conceived during an artist-in-residence time Suzuki spent at Het Apollohuis. The 36-pages booklet edition came in an oversized cardboard box and was limited to 1,000 copies. The disc focuses on 2 instruments only: the De Koolmees, a self-build glass instrument already described in a previous post, and the Analapos, a long spring attached to a pair of cylinders, played either by plucking the string or singing through a cylinder. As customary with Suzuki, all sounds are out of this world, hardly ever sounding like man-made music at all. On track #1, Suzuki uses 2 of his glass instruments at the same time, making various use of them: rubbing or percussion, or a combination of both. The whole disc is extraordinary.

Music (133mb) and pictures (13 scans) provided by Olivier Prieur. Thanks!

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William Penn ‘Crystal Rainbows’

01 Reflections in a Plastic Vase (6:20)
02 Interlude: Crystal Rainbow (2:18)
03 Moonshine (7:22)
04 Gossamer Looms (6:58)
05 Iridescent Stillness Through Curved Space (6:36)
06 Reprise: Crystal Rainbow (2:32)

Total time 32:00
LP released by Sounds Reasonable, Inc. (SRI) SR 7801, Washington, D.C., 1978

This record is based on an exhibition held at the Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C., home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s craft and decorative arts program since 1972. The exhibition was titled ‘The Harmonious Craft: American Musical Instruments’, and was on show in 1978 and 79, including ‘unique and esoteric American handcrafted musical instruments’. Composer William Penn (b. 1943) was asked by Sounds Reasonable Associates to compose music based on the instruments on display. Penn graduated from Buffalo University in 1967 where he studied Northern Renaissance music, Theater Music with Maurizio Kagel and serialism with Belgian composer Henri Pousseur. At one point, he played in a band called The Creative Associates including Lukas Foss, George Crumb and Kagel. He turned to more academic music as a composer and producer for Arizona University Recordings, and nowadays writes scores for theater productions. Penn has records out on CRI, Smithsonian, Hebra, Advance, etc. On a side note, in 1974, the Washington, D.C. Sounds Reasonable label released an intriguing 7” single by The Stereofernic Orchidstra, an orchestra of plants triggering electronic sounds from an ARP 2600 synthesizer. The Orchidstra was the brain-child of physics student Norman Lederman with help from Jeff Bagato and Gary Burke. It seems S.R.I. producer Edmund Barnett was quite an adventurous person as a producer.

To compose the tracks on Crystal Rainbows, Penn grasped some of the instruments on display at the exhibition: the Cloud Chamber Bowls built by Skip LaPlante and designed by Harry Partch; the Single String Stainless Steel Cello by Robert Rutman; the Electronic Jawbone by Bob Natalini; the Triple Ocarina by Susan Rawcliffe; the Steel String Guitar by Max Krimmel; the Bicentennial Turkey Tambourine by Jan Brooks Loyd; the Portative Organ by John Brombaugh and George Taylor; the Music By The Inch by Bob Hanson or the Appalachian Dulcimer by Rufus Jacoby. To this Penn added his own rubber piano, jaw harp and ARP 2600 synth. Dominick Labino plays Glass Harmonica on two solo tracks (#2 & 6). All other instruments are played by Penn himself, except:

• Carol J. McCloud: bagpipes
• Magruder Dent III: Steel String Guitar
• Tom McCarthy: Fender bass
• Elizabeth Garrett Bunker, Robert Wieczorowski: voice
• Dominick Labino: glass harmonica
• Jim Harmon: piano (on Reflections)

The music is unlike any other music from self-build instruments I can think of, for William Penn is a trained composer, making full use of counterpoint and other elaborate techniques in composing. Some passages are freely improvised, like the powerful sounds emitted by the Stainless Steel Cello on #4 Gossamer Looms. In this case, the menacing sounds are counterbalanced by Jew’s harp and Sanza Finger piano. #3 Moonshine gets very close to a Jean-Jacques Perrey hit on self-build instruments. While this LP is far from the avantgarde of the time, its charm lies in the exquisite arrangements and originality of instrumentation.

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Below: instrument builders

Radical Glass Music #3

01 Meredith Monk/Collin Walcott Prologue (2:29)
02 Osso Exotico & Verres Enharmoniques Untitled #2 (7:12)
03 Christina Kubisch Armonica (excerpt) (12:59)
04 Michael Vorfeld Light Bulb Music (4:12)
05 Miguel Frasconi Issue Solos For Glass (22:25)
06 Akio Suzuki Ha Go Ro Mo (15:24)
07 Meredith Monk/Collin Walcott Unison (4:36)

Total time 63:30

Radical Glass Music is a series of specially curated compilations appearing on this blog from time to time and documenting creative use of glass in music, a field that is of particular interest to special tunings and microtonality lovers, but also to those who simply crave magical sounds and continuous music. While previous issues have featured long duration, mesmerizing sounds extensively, this 3rd installment introduces some percussion sounds as well, and I’d like to include more of them, hopefully, in the future

On ‘Our Lady of Late’, recorded 1973, Meredith Monk confronts her voice with high pitched crystal glass tonalities by Collin Walcott, a reknown NY percussionist who played with Miles Davis, Oregon or Don Cherry. The opener ‘Prologue’ (included here) is a minimal solo for crystal glass hit with a stick. On ‘Unison’, the singer tries to adjust her pitch to that of the crystal’s pure continuous tone, producing delicious harmonics on the way.

French duo Verres Enharmoniques, known today as Orbes, teamed with Portuguese drone masters Osso Exotico to record this wonderful disc in 2006 for Phonomena. Using their usual instruments (guitar, organ, percussion), Osso Exotico engage into a risky dialogue with the ambiguous tuned glasses. On this track, the awkward pumping mechanism of an harmonium is heard producing long-held notes, building up on the massive glass tonalities (6 large glasses).

The ‘Armonica’ CD, published 2005, seems at odds with Christina Kubisch’s usual sound artwork, the latter usually focusing on amplified electric fields in public spaces. Whether she considered the traditional glass harmonica an appropriate tool to reveal room acoustics or simply wanted to indulge into the magical sounds of the instrument, the disc shows the artist obviously delighting in the bath of tones produced by the rotating bowls. The recording enhances the mechanical noises of the Glass Harmonica, appropriately making it sound like the industrial age invention that it originally is.

Michael Vorfeld is a very original German percussionist and sound installation artist. His Light Bulb Music was developed during live performances using a collection of colored amplified light bulbs and electrical apparatus. The electricity is used to make the glass bulbs resonate, however briefly, and the music arises from the multiple clicks and pops of bulbs and electrical switches. Vorfeld plays on the bulb’s fragility on one side, and the danger emanating from his less than secure electric installation on the other. Soundtrack from this video.

Miguel Frasconi is a founding member of The Glass Orchestra, whose first 1978 LP was previously featured on this blog. He’s still a champion of glass music today, with a distinct, un-dogmatic conception encompassing all kinds of glass sounds. This track is a solo from a live performance with John Morton at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, 2007, available at Archive.org. Frasconi uses a large array of jars, bowls, rods and even water for what sounds like an exploration of the entire range of glass sounds. What the track lacks in focus it more than compensates with original sounds and exploratory spirit.

The De Koolmees is a self-build glass instrument consisting of 6 hollow glass tubes suspended over a frame. Akio Suzuki apparently rubs the glass with his hands from above and bellow, and even sings into it. As often with Suzuki’s music, the process has an organic feel, the composer only revealing latent sounds (or so it seems) from the materials. The result is pure magic. Track from the ‘Odds and Ends’ 2xCD, MIMI, 2002.

Thanks to harps for the Kubisch suggestion.

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Doyen/Lasry ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’

01 François Villon ‘La Ballade Des Pendus’ (3:20)
02 Edgar Poe ‘Annabel-Lee’ (4:20)
03 Jean Cocteau ‘Batterie’ (2:25)
04 Frederico Garcia-Lorca ‘La Femme Infidèle’ (3:02)
05 Colette ‘Nonoche’ (4:30)
06 Guillaume Apollinaire ‘Gui Chante Pour Lou’ (1:30)
07 Walt Whitman ‘Chant De La Grand’ Route’ (2:20)
08 Pierre Emmanuel ‘Je Sais’ (2:12)
09 Luc Bérimont ‘Un Feu Vivant’ (2:50)
10 Charles Vildrac ‘Visite’ (4:49)
11 René Barjavel ‘Farendol’ (2:42)
12 Paul Eluard ‘Le Dit De La Force De L’amour’ (1:35)
13 Henri-François Rey ‘Le Rachdingue’ (3:31)

Jacques Doyen: voice
Jacques Lasry: Structures Sonores Baschet

Total time 39:40
LP released by Disques Alvarès, ref. C 475, France, ca 1972-75

Poetry reading by legendary raconteur Jacques Doyen, famous for his recordings with Jac Berrocal in the 1980s. Half of the tracks have musical accompaniment by Jacques Lasry, a Baschet brothers collaborator playing some of the Structures Sonores – the Crystal immediately recognizable on tracks #2, 4 and 5. The music reaches sublime heights on the latter, the haunting, hallucinatory ‘Nonoche’, yet Colette’s poem is almost comical, telling the story of an old, battered cat calling for the female ‘Nonoche’, no less old, to meet him in the woods, leaving her little kitty alone. The tone reminds of Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?’[+]. Elsewhere, particularly on the Gothic Edgar Poe poem, Lasry’s insidious, louche tonalities perfectly fit the Decadent, dubious tone of some of these turn of the century poems. 4 of them (Villon, Edgar Poe, Garcia Lorca and Cocteau) already appeared on Doyen+Lasry’s first disc, a 1957 released 7” single – fellow mp3 blogger Airform Archives posted some mp3s. The versions on this LP include new recordings with better sound quality. Another blog, Alice Rabbit, posted a 1966 LP worth checking out. Note: my copy of ‘Poèmes dits par Jacques Doyen’ is almost free of clicks. The noticeable tape hiss comes from the recording technology, not from background LP noise.

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Jacques Doyen’s discography:
1957 w/Jacques Lasry, 7”, Ducretet-Thomson 460 V 316
1966 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poésie à mi-voix’, LP, Barclay 88006s
1968 Jacques Doyen ‘Récital de poésie’, LP, BAM La Fine Fleur #06
1972 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Claire’, LP, BAM
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Bertin ‘Chansons et poemes’, LP, Alvares C 470
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Contes de la Cinquieme Saison’, LP, Alvares C 472
ca 1972-75 w/Jacques Lasry ‘Poèmes Dits Par Jacques Doyen’, LP, Disques Alvarès C 475
1982 w/Jacques Lasry, LP, Structures Sonores,

Doyen appears on:
1983 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Paris Tokyo’ cassette, Tago Mago
1997 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘Sacré !’ (Allen Ginsberg) on ‘Fatal Encounters’ CD, Megaphone Records
2004 Jac Berrocal & Jacques Doyen ‘L’union Libre’ (rec 1985) on ‘Prière’, 10” vinyl, Alga Marghen

Radical Glass Music #2

01 Frédéric Nogray ‘Nekli – #01′ (18:09)
02 Zach Wallace ‘Glass Armonica – #2′ (19:05)
03 Michel Redolfi & Thomas Bloch ‘Ptyx’ (9:46)
04 Angus Maclaurin ‘Drunken Nightmare’ (11:30)
05 Annea Lockwood ‘Mini Mobile’ (2:13)

Total time 60:43
See also Radical Glass Music #1.

• Frédéric Nogray ‘Nelki #01′ (18:09)
  A track from Nogray’s 2008 ‘Nelki’ CD on Prêle Records. This is music made entirely on crystal singing bowls, played with a wooden stick I assume. Nogray makes full use of the glasses purity of tone in this extremely restrained track. He could almost be using a sine wave oscillator for that matter. Another striking aspect is the floating quality of glass sounds: they are not grounded, they float. I think the Vermeer painting above has something of these pure colors and  suspended time.

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• Zach Wallace ‘Glass Armonica – #2′ (19:05)
  Wallace is a member of Sun Circle duo with Greg Davis. This track comes from a glass armonica CD released by Root Strata in 2009. Wallace apparently build his own version of the glass harmonica whose sound is quite unique, with properties close to a hurdy-gurdy, say – expect more grating sounds than your average Mozart. Some info here and here.

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• Michel Redolfi & Thomas Bloch ‘Ptyx’ (9:46)
  From a live recording in a Lille swimming pool, France, 2004. Bloch plays Cristal Baschet and glass harmonica, while Redolfi takes care of sound treatment and spatial effects. As this comes from a YouTube video, the stereo effects are unfortunately lost. See this article for more info.

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• Angus Maclaurin ‘Drunken Nightmare’ (11:30)
  The ‘Glass Music’ CD by US composer Maclaurin was recorded on tuned glasses, with occasional sampler and vocals and released on the Bubblecore label, 2000.  Maclaurin is interested by the poetry and mystery of glass sounds, building short, atmospheric tracks with unusual density for glass music. He’s also using rerecording, sound treatments and effects in a rather un-dogmatic way for glass music standards that is.

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• Annea Lockwood ‘Mini Mobile’ (2:13)
  An excerpt from Lockwood’s landmark ‘Glass World’ LP released on Tangent Records, 1970. The LP is a collection of very short tracks from ephemeral glass sound sculptures including glass rods, sheets or bottles.

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The Glass Orchestra 1st LP

01 A1 (10:01)
02 A2 (3:56)
03 A3 (6:57)
04 A4 (2:33)
05 B1 (7:55)
06 B2 (15:19)

Total time 46:40
LP released by Toronto Music Gallery Editions, 1978

On their first album, Toronto’s Glass Orchestra (members: Paul Hodge, John Kuipers, V. Eric Cadersky, Miguel Frasconi, Marvin Green) explore all the sonic possibilities of glass objects and glass instruments, sometimes with the addition of vocals or water sounds as well. Thanks to the variety of instruments used (incl. glass harmonica, flutes and xylophones, found bottles and objects, etc), the Orchestra is able to produce a large array of sounds, from percussion to whistles, from bowed glass to shaterred glass, from ringing glass to blown into glass. When they started in late 1977, The Toronto Music Gallery was their live venue of choice, but they soon toured worldwide starting 1980. On their first LP, the Glass Orchestra is exploring its unique instrumentarium through improvisations where sonic discovery, unconventional tuning, attention to details and mutual listening are key elements. The philosophical and musical influence of R. Murray Schafer is obvious, as most players here studied with him during the 1970s. No surprise then to hear Far East and gamelan influences, communal playing techniques, the quest for magic sounds. The Schafer connexion can be felt especially in the last track (#6) where the Orchestra uses ringing glasses to mesmerizing effect. Talking about magic, Schafer notoriously included a transcription of a wolf’s howl in his awesome String Quartet #5, 1989.

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Discography:
1978 The Glass Orchestra, LP, Music Gallery Editions Number 10
1980 Tales from Siliconesia, 12”, GO-01 (GO=Glass Orchestra records)
1980 Live In Frankfurt, radio broadcast (see Closet of Curiosities)
1989 Human, CD, GO-MUSE Si-02
2000 Girl, Interrupted, film soundtrack
2007 Live From the Archives Vol I, CD, GO
2007 Live From the Archives Vol II, CD, GO

AG Neue Musik ‘Glasmusik’

01 Glasmusik – Teil 1 (22:32)
02 Glasmusik – Teil 2 (21:57)

AG Neue Musik with Walter Sons, conductor

Total time 44:30
LP released on Disco-Center, Germany, 1982

Inspired by Josef Anton Riedl’s 1977 ‘Glas-Spiel‘ (for glass tubes) and the activities of the then newly launched Toronto Glass Orchestra, Walter Sons created his own glass music ensemble in 1981, at first named AG Neue Musik (New Music Workshop). It was composed of students from the local Kassel University who were training to become music teachers. Walter Sons had been teaching new music, collective improvisation and direction at Kassel University since 1973. He later created an other ensemble titled Metalmusik (1987). Glass materials were collected thanks to a gift from the local Glashütte Süßmuth Gmbh company (in Immenhausen near Kassel), a company specializing in traditional glass manufacturing. The glass elements and objects are mostly used in their original state, neither re-build nor re-shaped, except for home-made glass flutes. The Glasmusik LP is based on several collective improvisations, from which 8 distinct parts emerged that were re-enacted for the recording. Additionally, post-production montage is noticeable on side B when the drum section slowly fade out.

The performance and recording site – the foundry house of the Henschel factory (where once the melted steel was put into shape) – adds to the acoustics of the instruments here. It is a rotunda (a building of circular shape), about 200 square meters big, with a dome-shaped roof, made up of clay tubes. The text mentions the ’supra acoustic’ (probably a lot of reverb and sound reflections) that, while being critical for conventional instruments, was an advantage for the glass sounds.
[Email from Vespucci, Feb. 10, 2009]

The full range of glass sounds is used from hitting glass, blowing bottles, rubbing glass objects with ustensils or wetted hands, etc. Instrumentation is varied and include: glass tubes, sheets of glass, marble glass, hanging glass rods, glass flutes, various bottles and big jars reminiscent of Harry Partch’s Cloud-Chamber Bowls. In later Glasmusik Ensemble incarnations, glass harp, Plattenverrophone or Verrophone (see here and here) were added. Note: I’m adding a new category on this blog titled ‘glass music’ so as to include previous posts François et Bernard Baschet and Radical Glass Music. More to come, hopefully. Thanks to Vespucci for generous help with this post.

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Bernard & François Baschet ‘Les Sculptures Sonores’

01 Daniel Ouzounoff ‘Marche’ (2:51)
02 Jacques Lasry ‘Paludisme’ (3:16)
03 Jacques Lasry ‘Cosmotonie’ (5:47)
04 Jacques Lasry ‘Danse Du Crystal #2′ (2:04)
05 Jacques Lasry ‘Chronophage #2′ (17:15)
06 Bernard Baschet & Michel Deneuve ‘Errance’ (19:16)
07 Michel Deneuve ‘Empreinte De Figures Impressionistes 1st Mvt.’ (4:52)
08 Toru Takemitsu ‘Seasons – excerpt’ (6:45)
09 Michel Deneuve ‘Le Vol Des Flamants’ (2:43)
10 Michel Deneuve ‘Laudes & Annonces Aux Bergers’ (1:49)
11 Michel Deneuve ‘Comme Une Autre Réalité’ (3:25)

Total time 70:00
CD released by Soundworld, UK, 1999

François and Bernard Baschet started creating metallic sound sculptures in the 1950s (also known specifically as Structures Sonores). Interestingly, none of the brothers had musical background ; François studied sculpture in art school when he came back from war and Argentina and Bernard (pictured above with Thomas Bloch) was an engineer. Their unusual music instruments gained immediate recognition and fame among musicians and the audience. During the 1970s, they had exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Mexico, Stokholm, etc. The Baschets also created outdoor sculptures, decorative art, special outfits (e.g. Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, William Klein, 1966) and nowadays educational workshops for children. From the start, they had contemporary composers writing music for their instruments, more often than not Jacques Lasry and Michel Deneuve. They issued a dozen albums between 1958 and the end of 20th c. This CD is a retrospective disc offered with François Baschet’s Les Sculptures Sonores book, published in english by Soundworld Publishing, UK, 1999. It includes excerpts from previous LPs and CDs and is the best introduction to the Sculptures Sonores. Most sounds have this special retro-futurist appeal, so to speak, as if music of the future heard from the heart of the 1970s. Track #3 is the closest France has ever come to Harry Partch’s microtonality on self-build percussion instruments, and is a delight. The Takemitsu is an enchanting sound garden of bell chimes floating around and soft breezing wind, in which ‘the percussion timbre effects are often indistinguishable from electronic music’, writes “Blue” Gene Tyranny.

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