Music: Two Sleepers

[Cyrus]

Greetings, Mark.

"The correct title is 4'33" for that composition."

Thanks for the correction. I would not want you to think that I skip the last minute! [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

Thanks for your commentary, as well: most informative. For my money, the Cage piece is literally one of a kind; it can actually be performed only live : the audience is engaged into a hyper-conscious perception of the performance's physical environment, including the ambient sounds, the smells, the whole package, and does the same to the performer. (Notice absence of brackets in last word.) I am certain that whoever said what John Cole quoted was not being clever at all ("The most intense performance of my career").

"Surprised that you equate a composer like Stockhausen with the term Atonal."

Well, I cannot think of any term that more immediately denotes the avant-guard movement of the 20th century in music than 'atonal'. I stand by my description of that music category for want of a better one -- and I'm looking forward to having you prove me wrong about the ranking of the poker ability of its aficionados!

The thread brought back memories. I had met once in person but briefly Iannis Xenakis (to all the people who saw High Fidelity and chuckled at Jack Black's T-shirt : No, not that Yanni!) but never managed to meet Yannis Christou, atonal music's glory boy, who naturally died young. I have also seen one live performance of Xenakis, an accomplished architect and mathematician -- and I missed one that actually never happened: Xenakis was setting up his equipment in a leftist-controlled university in the early 70s, and he had of course Marshall amps and IBM computers set up, prominently displaying their logos. A shout went up "Down with American imperialism!" and soon the auditorium was in pandemonium. Xenakis didn't flinch but as calmly as he had set up, he dismantled his equipment carefully and left the stage without speaking once.

The left part of Xenakis' face was mangled and scalped, and he avoided, out of narcissism, to be photographed from that side. (The fool, he didn't know that that was his beautiful side!) The scarring came about from his time in the Greek Resistance against the Nazi occupation, when Xenakis was with the (communist and leftist) guerillas. Xenakis had taken a grenade too close, if I recall correctly. In other words, Xenakis had actually walked the walk, when the times called for it.

That was one great lesson to me, reading it in the papers, about dignity and about individual freedom and about the blindness to which fanaticism, even righteous fanaticism, can lead.

--Cyrus

PS : I was enticed to listen to Boulez from Frank Zappa citing him among his favorite composers in his interviews. Then I saw the French TV documentary about him preparing a piece and explaining at the same time what was going on.

[Mark Heide]

Cyrus,

Here's a link to a CD with John Cage's 4'33" with sound samples:

http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=1070911

The best description I can give a listener when listening to Iannis Xenakis' music is to think what architecture would actually sound like. You could classify this as atonal also, but it's really just density of blocks of sound scupltured into masses that could resemble architecture.

By the way, I have not heard of Yannis Christou or any recording by him, but would be interested if you have any links to sites that have information on him.

Pierre Boulez was part of that same group of composers and was known as a total serialist. Anyway, here is what I think is one of his best CDs (with sound samples):

http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=1915367

Here's a link to some sound samples that cover a majority of 20th century composers, and I think would be a good introduction to modern music:

http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=1909671


Mark

[Cyrus]

"Here's a link to a CD with John Cage's 4'33" with sound samples."

Hmmm. Sound samples of 4' 33'' of silence. I'm clicking. [img]/forums/images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

About Christou: The spelling defeats the search engines! The name is spelled variously as Yannis, Yanni, Janni, Jani, Ianni, etc. They are all acceptable spellings in English.

Check out the Jani Christou website, it might interest you.

And thanks for the CD pointers.

--Cyrus

[Mark Heide]

Cyrus,

Thanks for the name correction. I found a record company that records his music. After listening to Pheonix Music I would not classify him as Atonal, because it has a repetitive bass motif that firmly defines the tonal center, but the violins do play a tone row, so you could classify it as serial. Here's a link:

http://www.sirius.gr/diskography/alb...sp?AlbumID=293

Thanks.

Mark