Re: New Thread: Classical Music Influences on Us

[Jon Southwood <jon@gamutstudio.com>]

warning: this is a long msg...

This is a great thread...Having come to looping through a classical 
background (graduate school in composition), I've watched as a number of 
composers who I've spent countless hours listening to and analysing works 
of go by.  I'd like to add a few things to the discussion:

1.  Someone asked about the pronunciation of Varese:  I've only ever heard 
it pronounced vah-REHZ (rhymes with "says") (incidentally, also rhymes 
with 
Boulez---which doesn't rhyme with Robert Goullet)

2.  Rick, you mentioned Ravel's "Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis", 
but it's actually by Vaughn Williams

3.  Outside of grad school, a few of us in central Iowa get together 
weekly 
to do "score study" of modern pieces.  Given the current discussion, I'll 
share the list of composers we've looked at recently:

Webern, Symphony, Op. 21; Wonderful economy of means, and the structure of 
the 12-tone row is incredible.  His extension of Schoenberg's idea of 
"klangfarbenmelodie" (tone color melody) is inspiring/inspired.  Webern's 
music is so crisp, that it does stand in fairly stark contrast to 
Schoenberg's more Romantic flights of fancy.

Messiaen, Turangalila Symphony; Messiaen should be on every looper's 
listening list.  This piece is replete with recycled themes, isorhythms 
(mutating loops, if you will), and straight-up loops.

Eliott Carter, String Quartet #2; Staggering piece...very dense textures, 
non-tonal...at times the ear becomes saturated and there's a feeling of 
stasis, and then he moves ya somewhere else...no looping here, this is the 
modernist ideal: constant variation.

D. Martin Jenni, Cucumber Music;  A piece written by a former professor of 
mine at the University of Iowa. First part of the piece uses strict 
application of isorhythms, with independence of parts that makes your head 
swim.  The second part of the piece is primarily an application of 
heterophony.

Stravinsky, Octet;  A textbook example of Stravinsky's block form.  This 
piece is analogous to working in Acid.

Other composers we've looked at:  Toru Takemitsu (RING), Morton Feldman 
(Coptic Light, Rothko Chapel), Boulez (Le Marteau sans Maitre), Charles 
Ives (Tone Roads Nos. 1 and 3),  Gorecki (String Quartets), Lutoslawski 
(Concerto for Orchestra, Symphonies, Trois Poems du Henri Machaut, 
Novellette), Darius Milhaud (Cinq Symphonies, Le Creation du Monde), Peter 
Maxwell Davies (Ave Maris Stella, 8 Songs of a Mad King, St. Thomas Wake), 
George Crumb (Ancient Voices of Children, Songs Refrains and Drones of 
Death, Makrokosmos), Luciano Berio (Sinfonia, Thema-Omaggio a Joyce, 
Visage, Sequenzas), Davidovsky (Synchronisms), Stockhausen (Kontakte, 
Gesange der Junglige, Klavierstucke), Xenakis (Pithoprakta, Metastasis, 
Tetras, Tetora, Plekto, Nomos Alpha), Kendrick (Psalms), Southwood 
(Cobwebs), Burrier (II for cello), Roy Harris (Symphonies), Howard Hanson 
(Symphonies), Varese (Ionisation, Density 21.5, Integrales, Hyperprism), 
Ligeti (Lux Aeterna, Atmospheres, Aventures, Piano Etudes)....


Whew...that should plenty of ideas for stuff for people to listen 
to...incidentally, there's not a piece listed in this message that hasn't 
had some sort of impact on my own looping and non-looping music, even (and 
probably especially) the music that is non-loop-friendly.  At a recent 
looping recital I held, I incorporated a sound-mass improvisation (a la 
Ligeti, Xenakis, and Penderecki), a block-form improvisation (a la 
Stravinsky), and some early experiments in polytonality (a la Mihlaud).

Cheers,

Jon Southwood
jon@gamutstudio.com

P.S.  Miko, if you happened to make it through to the end of this e-mail, 
know that by the end of this coming weekend, I'll be ready to send off the 
lounge tracks that are woefully overdue...evidently too much listening and 
not enough playing/writing...