WWII Avant, Part 3/5: John Cage MP3 (1941, 1942, 1945)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Charles Amirkhanian’s Ode to Gravity radio program broadcast in December 1987 an evening of John Cage‘s music, in part recorded in 1983 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Among the pieces featured were several that Cage composed during World War II, including “Double Music” (1941), a collaboration with Lou Harrison, heard here in a performance by the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble; “Credo in US” (1942), a collage of a work performed by Musica Negativa on the album Music before Revolution (EMI); and Experiences No. 2 (1945-1948), which takes its text from “Tulips and Chimneys” by e.e. cummings, performed by Robert Wyatt on the album Jan Steele/John Cage: Voices and Instruments (EG Obscure, the same label that released Brian Eno’s early solo work).

All were composed fully or in part during World War II, the run up to which led to the emigration of many composers and other artists from Europe to the U.S. And in an interview with Amirkhanian that’s part of the recording, Cage talks about the influence of one such émigré, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, on his development (MP3). More info at archive.org.

Not heard in this program is perhaps Cage’s second most famous work, Imaginary Landscape #1 (second, that is, to his “silent” piece, 4’33”). Streaming audio of a performance of that work, along with a reproduction of the score, is available at medienkunstnetz.de.

Tomorrow: Part 4/5, Toying with Conlon Nancarrow.

WWII Avant, Part 2/5: Harry Partch download (1941)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The half-spoken, half-notated text that accompanies the percussion instruments in Harry Partch‘s Barstow (1941) may be a bit off-putting to folks whose primary listening more easily serves as background. But speaking of background, all that twangy percussion back there is essential to the history of homemade music. Partch created an extensive collection of instruments in his lifetime, each forged, often out of spare parts, with the intent of matching the sound in his head and in his score.

Barstow was one of three tracks included on the album The World of Harry Partch, which served for many as an introduction to his work. The full album is available for free download at avantgardeproject.org. Barstow is a set of anecdotal text set in a sing-songy format against tuned mallets and otherwise plucked and bowed accompaniment. The words, their cadences moving between hobo banter and classified advertisements, have a found quality that matches the thrift-store instrumentation.

The file is available not as an MP3 but as a FLAC, a so-called “lossless” file, which is to say it is many times the size of an average MP3, in the interest of maintaining fidelity to the original recording. More info on Partch at harrypartch.com and on the FLAC format at flac.sourceforge.net.

Tomorrow: Part 3/5, An evening with John Cage.

WWII Avant, Part 1/5: Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell et al. MP3 (1939)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“What did you do during the war, Daddy?” It’s a question that sums up the collective national consciousness of World War II, whether that is a matter of heroism, guilt, victimization or some combination thereof. Ken Burns’s new WWII documentary, The War, is running currently on PBS. It documents the engagement from 1939 through 1945. Seeing the names Wynton Marsalis and Gene Scheer credited with the series’s score brought to mind what music was actually being written while the Axis and Allies battled — that is, what the composers of experimental music were doing during the war.

The soundtrack album to The War includes two contemporaneous classical pieces, one by Aaron Copland (his Clarinet Concerto, written for Benny Goodman a few years after the end of the war) and the other by William Walton (his The Death of Falstaff, written shortly before the end of the war), as well as Arvo Pärt’s Variations for the Healing of Arinushka, which dates from 1977. Pärt was born in 1935, the year the Nurenberg Laws in Germany revoked the citizenship of Jews. Much of his work, with its attenuated structures and off-kilter harmonies, provides a self-evident score to mourning and remorse.

All five Disquiet.com Downstream entries this week will focus on music composed and/or performed during those seven years of global conflict. First up is an installment of Charles Amirkhanian’s Ode to Gravity radio series. The program includes percussion work by Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Johanna Beyer and William Russell, much of it recorded live in 1939 in a concert at the Cornish School in Seattle under Cage’s direction (MP3). Credit any surface noise to provenance: the rare acetate recordings come from Harrison’s own collection. The compositions are almost uniformly searching — note how the percussion is less tribal than meditative, and how the melodic components are kept remote and secondary to the emphasis on pulse and motion. More info at archive.org.

Tomorrow: Part 2/5, A shopworn Harry Partch.

Quote of the Week: Playing House

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“You ever tighten a guitar string really really slowly, past the point it can handle the strain? It makes this weird sound, almost like a scream.”

That’s Robert Sean Leonard‘s Dr. James Wilson, in the TV series House, addressing Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House, whose electric guitar he has taken hostage — from the episode “Alone,” which aired September 25, 2007.

Royal Trans’s Buddha Machine MP3 Album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Buddha Machine is a collection of loops that keeps on giving. The original device, a cheap little plastic box available in a variety of colors, was developed by the China-based duo FM3. It contains nine short loops of sound that are rendered with lo-fi grit thanks to the machine’s thrift-minded construction. Since its release, the Buddha has become something of a sleeper hit, reportedly selling more than 50,000 copies by this past summer.

It’s also served as an inspiration for numerous musicians. Minimal techno artist Robert Henke (aka Monolake) has recorded a full album of remixes of the Buddha Machine loops, Layering Buddha. Another album, Jukebox Buddha, contains mixes by Henke, dub figure Adrian Sherwood, sludge metal band sunnO))) and others. The Iowa-based musician Mark Rushton has performed with his laptop and the Buddha Machine, and released the music for free download. And FM3 themselves have been touring the world, using the machines in a variety of performance settings.

Now comes Royal Trans and the nine-track In an Expression of Form: The FM3 Experiments album, available for free download from the Internet Archive (aka archive.org). There isn’t much information on the release at that page, but the Royal Trans myspace.com page includes this explanation: “we recorded in different environments including our home studio, the kitchen, by the lake, in abandoned buildings, outside, alongside crazy people… etc you get the picture.”

Oh, and they used “the pink one.”

The tracks range in length from range from a minute and a half to five and a half. In each, the short loops trace the contours of whatever space they fill, mixing with crickets in the back of “Black Mother Teeth” (MP3), echoing beautifully in “Ceramic Disposure” (MP3) and at times taking on the breathy quality of a flute improvisation (R. Carlos Nakai comes to mind) on “Familiar Capsules” (MP3). The resulting pieces are elegant, yes, but there’s a richness to them that benefits from listening on speakers rather than headphones — and at a room-filling volume. (Thanks to Larry Johnson for the tip.)