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independentartistbuzz · 1 year

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Indie 5-0: 5 Questions with Sebastian Reynolds

Sebastian Reynolds, in his latest album "Canary," conjures a mesmerizing soundscape where haunting drones intersect with pulsing rhythms, leaving listeners torn between surrendering to the groove or seeking refuge.

Inspired by his deep appreciation for bands like Liars, Public Service Broadcasting, and Radiohead, Reynolds offers a tantalizing glimpse of the album's essence in tracks like "Cascade." "Canary" unfolds as a sonic tapestry of foreboding drones, mirroring a world teetering on the brink of collapse. His compositional approach draws influence from the likes of Susumu Yokota, Luigi Nono, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Once again, Reynolds deftly straddles the boundary between modern classical composition and retro-futuristic production. This time, his creative journey delves into profound themes encompassing the tragedy of stillbirth, the profound loss of parents, the enigmatic nature of consciousness, the intricate relationship between mind and body, the fragmentation of our collective psyche, and the emergence of machine intelligence.

Throughout his musical odyssey, Reynolds weaves references to figures like John F. Kennedy, Carl Jung, and Robert Monroe, whose influential book "Journeys Out of the Body" punctuate his contemplative narratives. Contemporary voices, including Sam Harris, Lex Friedman, and Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, guide and disorient the listener, contributing to the rich tapestry of his compositions. As always, Reynolds remains dedicated to infusing his art with profound meaning, skillfully merging programmed and organic sounds.

Notably, Reynolds has collaborated with esteemed German classical/expressionist musicians and composers such as Anne Müller (Erased Tapes) and Alex Stolze (Bodi Bill) through their Solo Collective project. He has also joined forces with Mike Bannard at The Aviary and undertaken commissions for Neon Dance. His recent projects include captivating works like "Puzzle Creature," "Prehension Blooms," the Thai-inspired "Mahajanaka Dance Drama," and "Manuals for Living and Dying." Currently, he is embarking on a film commission for Oxford University. Reynolds' music has received extensive acclaim across the BBC's networks and enjoys recognition beyond. Originating from Oxford, he honed his craft during his formative years, contributing to the UK cult acts Braindead Collective and Keyboard Choir.

We chat with Sebastian, below.

"Fetus" incorporates a variety of instruments and vocal samples to create its unique soundscape. Can you walk us through the process of selecting and blending these elements to capture the desired emotional and auditory experience?

With Fetus there was not a pre-planned, desired musical outcome when I started working. I just had the idea to start playing around with some samples from my Thai gong circle, and the track very naturally evolved by adding elements on a purely feeling basis. Sometimes when you are going through a trauma and working through it with music as art therapy, it's not always so conscious, it just flows out of the unconscious, and it can even be in hindsight that you realize where you were working from.

Your upcoming album "Canary" tackles profound themes such as the awakening of machine intelligence and Buddhist notions of consciousness. How do you translate these abstract concepts into tangible musical expressions that listeners can connect with?

I think it's just about gesturing to themes and ideas musically. So with Fetus the main percussion instrument is the Thai Gong Circle, which is often used for Buddhist religious rituals and ceremonies. The use of Sarah Tresidder's vocals gesture at a lament, the classical western music of tragedy, and cello and piano support this lamentation. The use of computer and digital tech gestures at the development of machines evolving consciousness. How tangible or consciously these ideas come through I'm not sure, but hopefully the feeling that the track evokes will make its point.

The single "Fetus" and your album "Canary" both explore deeply personal and emotional experiences. How do you navigate the balance between expressing your own feelings through music and creating a space for listeners to find their own resonance?

I think because I only use very sparse snippets of vocals, and the track titles gesture in certain directions, but are quite abstract, so hopefully I strike a good balance of giving people food for thought, without telling them what to think, or even what I think in too explicit terms.

Collaboration is evident in your work, involving musicians and vocalists. How do you approach collaboration as a means of enhancing your creative vision, and how does it influence the direction your music takes?

The main thing for me with working with collaborators is to plug the gaps in my own ability and skill sets. I can play keyboard and piano to a certain degree, and my production talents are more in terms of coming up with ideas and having a rich imagination, but technically I'm pretty limited, so I work with my producer and mix engineer Mike Bannard at Safehouse studios in Oxford. And I have a very ambitious mindset in terms of instrumentation, and I have a pool of incredible musicians who are up for collaborating with me. The skill is working out what instruments you want for a track, and which instrumentalists have the right style for the track.

The upcoming video for "Fetus" is set to release soon. How do you envision the visual representation enhancing the overall impact and storytelling of the song, and what kind of imagery can listeners expect to see in the video?

Because my music has a very strong atmosphere, and it's mostly instrumental, a powerful image or set of images can help support communicating the feeling behind the music, and help people to hold their attention to it. The videos that we've released for the Canary tracks so far, Cascade and Fetus, are both fairly abstract, but I would like to produce more narrative led videos in the future. And I have some full length film commissions in the pipeline too, watch this space.

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lifeafterthelayoff · 1 year

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Life after the layoff: DAY 41

The Space Between I put this LP on tonight — it's the 1981 ambient masterpiece "The Space Between" from Joanna Brouk. The title cut unfolds slowly for just under 22 minutes, not rushing, not lagging. If you listen to it, you'll hear a piano, mostly, with some subtle textures of a warm, organic synth. Imagine a world where Brian Eno took lessons on transcribing birdsongs from Olivier Messiaen. It's just magical. Now that the dust has settled from my layoff, I’m feeling more of this meditative vibe. I turn to music often to match the mood, and the mood swings have given the turntable whiplash. We've gone from bleak ambient hellscapes to joyous jazz, from sunny dub reggae compilations to sad pop songs. That's the beauty of music as a coping mechanism, a healthy thing on which we ride the waves of emotion. I'm feeling like the chaos is behind me, and while the new adventures aren’t here yet, I'm certain they’ll arrive. (Thanks to all of you and your kind assurances in this department.) Meanwhile, I’m in the space between. If you have a minute or twenty, go find this song online and give it a listen. Maybe you’ll find yourself in the space between with me, a little cooler, a little calmer than when you started. 🎵

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sheetmusiclibrarypdf · 1 year

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Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) La Colombe (Piano sheet music)

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) La Colombe (Piano sheet music, partition) from Préludes for Piano Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) Biography Please, subscribe to our Library. Thank you! Best Sheet Music download from our Library.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) La Colombe (Piano sheet music, partition) from Préludes for Piano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqpEm12EEh8

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) Biography

OLIVIER-EUGENE-PROSPER-CHARLES MESSIAEN (b. Dec. 10, 1908, Avignon, France.d. April 27, 1992, Clichy, near Paris), Olivier Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen, a scholar of English literature, and of the poet Cecile Sauvage. Soon after his birth the family moved to Ambert (the birthplace of Chabrier) where his brother, Alain was born in 1913. Around the time of the outbreak of World War 1, Cecile Sauvage took her two sons to live with her brother in Grenoble where Olivier Messiaen spent his early childhood, began composing at the age of seven, and taught himself to play the piano. On his return from the war, Pierre Messiaen took the family to Nantes and in 1919 they all moved to Paris where Olivier entered the Conservatoire. From very early on, it was clear that Messiaen would be a composer who would stand alone in the history of music. Coming not from any particular 'school' or style but forming and creating his own totally individual musical voice. He achieved this by creating his own 'modes of limited transposition', taking rhythmic ideas from India, Ancient Greece and the orient and most importantly adapting the songs of birds from around the world. He was a man of many interests including painting, literature, and the orient where he took in not only the musical culture but theater, literature and even the cuisine of foreign countries! The single most important driving force in his musical creations was his devout Catholic faith. MESSIAEN AND SYNAESTHESIA This is what Messiaen had to say regarding his relationship with colours and synaesthesia " When I was 20 years old I met a Swiss painter who became a good friend by the name of Charles Blanc-Gatti, he was synaethesiac which is a disturbance of the optic and auditory nerves so when one hears sounds one also sees corresponding colors in the eye. I unfortunately didn't have this. But intellectually, like synaethesiacs I too see colors- if only in my mind - colors corresponding to sound. I try to incorporate this in my work, to pass on to the listener. It's all very mobile. You've got to feel sound moving. Sounds are high, low, fast, slow etc. My colors do the same thing, they move in the same way. Like rainbows shifting from one hue to the next. It's very fleeting and impossible to fix in any absolute way. It's true I see colors, it's true they're there. They're musician’s colors, not to be confused with painter's colors. They're colors that go with music. If you tried to reproduce these colors on canvas, it may produce something horrible. They're not made for that, they're musicians colors. What I'm saying is strange, but it's true. I believe in natural resonance, as I believe in all natural phenomena. Natural resonance is in exact agreement with the phenomena of complimentary colors. I have a red carpet that I often look at. Where this carpet meets the lighter colored parquet next to it, I intermittently see marvelous greens that a painter couldn't mix - natural colors created in the eye". Messiaen's particular condition was chromesthesia, a type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape and movement.

He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of eleven and stayed until his early twenties learning his 'craft' from eminent teachers including Georges Falkenberg, piano, Jean Gallon, harmony, Noël Gallon counterpoint and fugue, professor Baggers, timpani & percussion, Paul Dukas composition & orchestration, Maurice Emmanuel history of music and Marcel Dupré organ and improvisation, of which Messiaen excelled, becoming organist of La Sainte Trinité in Paris when he was 22 and remained there until his death. It's sometimes easy to forget that Messiaens' contribution to the organ repertoire is probably the greatest since Bach. The term 'craft' is purposeful here as Messiaen developed into a true craftsman in every respect with immensely detailed scores including string bowing, woodwind articulations, fingerings for keyboards and even sticking for percussion. Since the age of eighteen, Messiaen had been collecting the songs of thousands of birds throughout France and the world. Early works showed an inkling of birdsong influence but after the war in the late 40s and 50s he began notating their songs in great detail and this became a vital musical source for him. An important event in 1952 was his meeting with ornithologist and author Jacques Delamain, of which Messiaen declared: 'It was Delamain who taught me to recognize a bird from its song, without having to see its plumage or the shape of its beak.' Messiaen would begin by selecting a bird, say a warbler where he would notate hundreds of different warblers and then creates a composite of the best elements of all the warblers notated, thus ending up with an 'ideal' warbler. The song is usually combined with the birds' habitat, surroundings and time of day. 'It's the process of transformation' that Messiaen enjoys and relates this to the paintings of Monet, who is not interested in putting say a water lily directly on the water of a picture but representing one variation of the light on the water lilies. His researches were so intense that he became an authoritative ornithologist, able to recognize almost any bird that he heard. Several works have been devoted entirely to birdsong namely Catalogue d'Oiseaux, Réveil des oiseaux, Oiseaux Exotique, Le merle noir, Petites esquisses d'oiseaux and almost all other works include substantial references to the songs of birds. At the age of 19 the young Messiaen witnessed the death from consumption of his beloved mother. He moved to his paternal aunts in the countryside of the Aube region of France where, in Yvonne Loriod's words, 'the aunts took their nephew in to revive his taste for life and restore his health with good country air whilst he continued to compose'. Messiaen married his first wife Claire Delbos in June 1932. The daughter of a Sorbonne professor, she was a member of La Spirale, a prominent new music society, an accomplished violinist and composer (works include Primevere 5 Songs for soprano and piano, Deux Pièces for Organ 1935, Parce, Domine {Pardonnez,Seigneur, à votre peuple...} pour le temps du Carême for organ and Marie, toute-puissance suppliante for 4 Ondes Martenots) she sadly became physically and mentally ill and entered a psychiatric hospital (where she eventually died in 1959) leaving Messiaen a single parent bringing up their only son Pascal (born in 1937 a teacher of Russian, died 31st January 2020) throughout the late 30s and 40s. Olivier Messiaen and Claire Delbos gave many recitals in and around Paris during the early 1930s featuring the Romantic repertoire for violin and piano and in 1932 he composed Theme and Variations for her, and they premiered the piece at a concert held by the Société Nationale. A second work for violin and piano recently came to light entitled Fantaisie composed in 1933. His song cycle Poemes pour Mi is also dedicated to Claire Delbos, Mi being a 'pet' name for her. Both music and words were written by Messiaen and celebrates the joy and sanctity of marriage. Messiaen was to continue to write the texts for most of his choral and vocal works, including the Trois Petite liturgies de la Presence Divine, which caused some negative if not hostile reactions from many critics at the first performance. He believes that this reaction was due to the fact that the work is full of passion but with a deep religious foundation and this took the critics by surprise and much of the criticisms were not directed at the music. In 1936, with the composers Andre Jolivet, Daniel Lesur, and Yves Baudrier, he founded the group La Jeune France ("Young France") to promote new French music. From 1934 to 1939 he taught piano sight-reading at the École Normale de Musique and an organ improvisation course at the Schola Cantorum. Undoubtedly it has been Messiaens' devout Christian faith and Catholicism that has driven his compositional output through the years and there was no greater test of his faith than in June 1940 when he was captured by the Nazis and interned in prisoner of war camp Stalag 8A, Gorlitz, Poland. He recalls that at the time he and everybody in the camp were freezing, starving and miserable. The starvation was such that it heightened his 'colored' dreams and this coupled with the experience of seeing the 'aurora borealis', colored waves of clouds, led him to compose what is probably his most performed work: Quatour pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the end of Time). He befriended a German officer Carl-Albert Brüll who smuggled him manuscript paper, pencil and eraser which enabled him to retreat to the priest's block after morning duties and compose. The instrumentation was governed by the musician friends that were with Messiaen in the camp. These were; violinist Jean Le Boulaire, cellist Etienne Pasquier, clarinetist Henri Akoka and with himself on a rather dilapidated piano premiered the work on January 15th 1941 in front of fellow prisoners who although maybe never understood the new harmonies etc. it took them away from the routine mundane life in the camp. He says that his music 'is not "nice" - it is certain. I am convinced that joy exists, convinced that the invisible exists more than the visible, joy is beyond sorrow, beauty is beyond horror'. He returned from captivity in March 1941 and became a teacher and lecturer at the Paris Conservatoire giving his first class on 7th May the same year. He held classes in analysis, theory, aesthetics and rhythm but it wasn't until 1966 that he was officially appointed Professor of Composition (although he had in effect been teaching composition for years). Many famous 'names' passed through these classes including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Alexander Goehr and later George Benjamin who Messiaen had a particular fondness and admiration of. Perhaps the one thing that rubbed off on all these composers is Messiaen's' avoidance of regular meter, citing it as artificial relating to marches and more popular music. Messiaen supports his argument by pointing out that in nature things are not even or regular. For example, the branches of a tree and the waves of the sea are not even patterns. However, what is true is 'natural resonance', and this true phenomenon is what his music is based on. This period produced a great outpouring of music including the Trois Petite liturgies de la Presence Divine, the song cycle Harawi, Chant des deportes for choir and orchestra, Turangalila Symphonie, the mammoth piano cycles Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus and Visions de l'Amen for two pianos. These last two works and many more to follow were dedicated to Yvonne Loriod a young and highly gifted pupil who turned up in Messiaens' first class held at the Conservatoire in 1941. She says of that first encounter that 'all the students waited eagerly for this new teacher to arrive, and finally he appeared with music case and badly swollen fingers, a result of his stay in the prisoner of war camp. He proceeded to the piano and produced the full score of Debussys' Prelude á l'apres-Midi d'un Faune and began to play all the parts. The whole class was captivated and stunned and everyone immediately fell in love with him'. Messiaen never imparted his own compositional techniques in his classes but rather steered students along their own paths. Messiaen has not always been in the favour of the musical establishment not least by the BBC who broadcast next to nothing on the then Third programme (later Radio 3) right up until the sixties by which time the composer was in his 60s. It was Felix Aprahamian who brought Messiaen to London in the late 30s to play La Nativite and has been a champion and formidable writer on Messiaen ever since. In the forties and fifties, Messiaen was shunned on the one hand by the new 'avant-garde' as too sweet and sentimental and on the other hand by the more conventional musical public as too austere and discordant. Boulez in particular could not come to terms with and reacted against works like Turangalila with its rich mix of tonal and atonal language saying that he prefers the ones that remain true to one style or the other. However, one gem of a composition was to turn 20th century music on its head. This was 'Mode de valeurs et d'intensites' part of four studies in rhythm for piano. It took Schoenberg's theory of serializing pitches a whole leap forward whereby Messiaen effectively serialized all musical parameters i.e. pitches, durations, dynamics and articulations. Thus, each note has a character and identity all of its own which is maintained throughout the piece. For example, middle C will always appear as a dotted minim value, forte dynamic and have a tenuto articulation mark. Although this paved the way for the young generation of composers such as Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono etc. to explore previously uncharted territory, Messiaen himself never pursued the idea beyond that study but continued to turn to nature and his faith as the inspiration and starting points for his music continuing to use his own modes, complex rhythmic ideas and the songs of birds. Having said that, there are occasions when, for instance, he wanted to describe the horror and blackness of the night in the opening of "The Tawny Owl' from Catalogue d'Oiseaux where he uses a 'Mode de valeurs et d'intensites' in a poetical sense to portray this. Indeed, it must be said that Messiaen did more to advance rhythmic forms and ideas than any other composer of the 20th century. In 1975, Olivier Messiaen embarked on his most ambitious project of his life, the opera Saint Francois d'Assise, a work that would occupy him for the following eight years. Saint Francois represents his life work, combining all his compositional techniques gathered over fifty or so years. Scored for 22 woodwinds. 16 brass, 68 strings, 3 ondes Martenot and 5 keyboard percussions playing xylophone, xylorimba, marimba, glockenspiel & vibraphone. There are 6 percussionists playing tubular bells, claves, wind machine, snare drum, triangles, temple blocks, wood blocks, cymbals of various kinds, whip, maracas, reco-reco, glass chimes, shell chimes, wood chimes, tambourine, tôle (thunder sheet), gongs, tam tam, crotales tom toms and geophone (sand machine) together with 7 main solo characters and a choir of 150 it is certainly the largest forces Messiaen considered. Among the best essays on this work are Paul Griffiths' account in The Messiaen Companion and Messiaens' own comments in an interview with him. Soon after Messiaen's death I happened to be visiting Paris and felt the need to pay my respects at La Sainte Trinité, the church where Messiaen conceived so many of his great organ works. I was lucky enough to meet Father Yves de Boisrehen, who for many years read the lessons etc. and said how he would be amazed when his words would suddenly 'come to life' for the congregation through the improvisations of Messiaen responding at the organ. Some would say 'an impossible act to follow' but in 1993 Naji Hakim entered that revered organ loft at la Trinité as successor to Messiaen. An accomplished composer and improviser, Naji Hakim was the one-person Messiaen felt comfortable in the knowledge that the great French tradition of organist - composer and improviser would continue at la Trinité. Naji Hakim's reign came to an end in 2008 the centenary of Messiaen's birth. Fragments of Messiaen's music have found their way into several feature films including: Ken Russell's Dante's Inferno (Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum), Oren Moverman's The Dinner (Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu's The Revenant (Oraison-L'eau from Fêtes des Belles Eaux). Messiaen received many honours and prizes globally including: 1959 Nomination as an Officier of the Légion d'honneur 1967 Member of the Institut de France 1969 Calouste Gulbenkian Prize 1971 Erasmus Award 1975 Ernest von Siemens Award 1975 Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Art of Belgium 1975 Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society 1978 The White Cliffs in Utah were renamed Mount Messiaen 1980 Presentation of the Croix de Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown 1983 Wolf Foundation of the Arts Prize (Jerusalem) 1985 Inamori Foundation Prize (Kyoto) 1987 He was promoted to the highest rank, Grand-Croix, of the Légion d'honneur 1989 Primio Internazionale Paolo VI 1988 Read the full article

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werewolvesandaccordions · 2 years

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Messiaen – Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) Holy Saturday is the day between the somber Good Friday and the joyful Easter Sunday. It is the day when Jesus’ body lays dead in the tomb. Nothing happens except for Christians to wait for the inevitable feast of Resurrection. And Jesus’ Resurrection is supposed to reflect how all of humanity will be resurrected at the end of time; the title of this piece is referring to the line in the Apostle’s and Nicene creed of this specific belief, “And I await the resurrection of the dead”. That’s the main reason I chose to write about this work for today, but originally it wasn’t related to Holy Week at all. Messiaen was commissioned by France’s office of cultural affairs to write a memorial piece for those who died during the great world wars. Originally he was going to write a large scale choral and orchestra work, but around the time of writing he was vacationing in the Alps and felt more inspired by the open air, the outdoors, the grandeur of the forest and the mountains. Traditionally, wind music and wind ensembles were preferred for outdoor events because the sound travels better than other instruments. Messiaen wanted something that could create a full sound both inside a church and out in the open air, so he reduced the soundscape to winds and percussion. The effect is like a recreation of organ stops, and Messiaen was a church organist all his life who used that instrument for most of his religious music. But typical for Messiaen, the “religious” music doesn’t sound like Palestrina, Bach, or Bruckner. The first movement, “Out of the depths of the abyss, I cry to you, Lord: Lord, hear my voice” is named after the opening of Psalm 130. It starts in the lowest winds, crawling up in unison until breaking out with the full ensemble in large crying chords. The next movement, “Christ risen from the dead,” is a quote from Romans. It opens with chattering winds in Messiaen’s birdsong style, and then goes into a slower and somber passing of a melody between flute, oboe, clarinet, and cor anglais. The closeness of color between these instruments gives the effect of listening to a duet (at least to my ears it does). The next section gives us a more upbeat rhythmic dance with the larger ensemble, including chimes and cow bells. Most interesting is that this rhythm is a Simhavikrama from 13th century India. The word means “power of the lion” and refers to the Hindu god Shiva, god of Death and the end of the eternal life cycle. Messiaen uses this reference in a unique way to tie it in with the Christian symbolism of Jesus as “the Lion”, and the theological idea that Jesus has defeated death. The third movement, “The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God”, quotes the Gospel according to John. It brings back the ‘birdsong’, and brings in an awesome and fear-inducing might after a ‘summoning’ with bells; horn blasts, fanfare, marching, and a gong crescendo, act as the procession of God’s arrival. The fourth movement holds the longest title, “They will rise again, glorious, with a new name – in the merry concert of the stars and the acclamations of the sons of heaven.” is quoting Corinthians, Revelations, and Job. It tries to reflect the joy and color of the universe after the resurrection at the end of time. It is the most upbeat dance of the work, especially the second half with blazing horns and ringing bells, a fluid chorale, and ending with what feels like gargantuan chords, the loudest sounds of the work. The last movement, “And I heard the voice of a huge crowd …”, quotes Revelation, acts as a closing chorale of the innumerable voices that constitute the risen dead, proceeding along with bells until a magnificent coda. Movements: 1. “Des profondeurs de l’abîme, je crie vers toi, Seigneur: Seigneur, écoute ma voix!” 2. “Le Christ, ressuscité des morts, ne meurt plus; la mort n’a plus sur lui d’empire.” 3. “L’heure vient où les morts entendront la voix du Fils de Dieu…” 4. “Ils ressusciteront, glorieux, avec un nom nouveau – dans le concert joyeux des étoiles et les acclamations des fils du ciel.” 5. “Et j’entendis la voix d’une foule immense…”

mikrokosmos: Messiaen – Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1964) Holy Saturday is the day between the somber Good Friday and the joyful Easter Sunday. It is the day when Jesus’ body lays dead in the tomb. Nothing happens except for Christians to wait for the inevitable feast of Resurrection. And Jesus’ Resurrection is supposed to reflect…

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tinas-art · 2 years

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dariaandjanelanefanboy · 2 years

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hushilda · 2 years

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legobiwan · 5 years

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Whumptober #9 (shackled)

TW: THIS GETS SCHMOOPY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I RARELY WRITE ROMANCE BUT YOU KNOW, TIMES CHANGE, THEY COME TO AN END, FOR A START.

Fandom: Good Omens (Aziraphale/Crowley)

Notes: This not at all what I generally write, but these two have hijacked my brain in some weird ways. Less angst than usual, far more schmoop than I amn generally comfortable writing but it’s good to expand one’s horizons. Still grappling with these characters and universe, so thank you for bearing with me, the bar has been set high in the Gomens fandom, dear gods.

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To shackle (v.): to chain with shackles. See: shackles (n.)

Shackles (n.): a pair of fetters connected together by a chain, used to fasten a prisoner’s wrists or ankles together

Aziraphale hadn’t been there when it happened. He fought in the war, of course - everyone had fought in the war. The actual Fall had went by unwitnessed, however, save for the small tug Azirapahle had felt in his chest when Heaven had opened to that great maw, flinging no less than one-third of his angelic siblings into the impenetrable void.

No one knew for certain what happened after, and first-hand accounts from demons were rather hard to come by. Rumors spread - some had tried to crawl back to Heaven, they said, the enormity of their error made real by the loss of Her Grace. Others welcomed their Fall, dancing, reveling in the maelstrom of indignity and damnation, internalizing their pain to use as a cudgel against others. Still some struggled in the new order, neither desperate for a return nor willing to accept their new fate with open arms.

Soon enough, they all came to know their place, essences shackled to Hell, to their new master.

That, at least, had been the rumor in Heaven.

But Aziraphale had seen the angry, red welts on Crowley’s wrists and ankles in the beginning, and wondered if the rumors were true.

To bind (v.):

1. To tie or fasten (something) tightly

2. To cohere or cause to cohere in a single mass

3. To impose a legal or contractual obligation on; be hampered or constrained by

All things being equal, it wasn’t that difficult to summon and bind a demon. Aziraphale found this perplexing. For a mortal to summon and bind an angel - well, it just didn’t happen and woe betide the angel who found themselves caught in such an embarrassing (and dangerous) situation. One would think Hell might take better precautions, but if the multitude of accounts regarding demon-summoning in the 1800s were anything to go by, this type of activity was categorized more as an occupational hazard than existential threat.

Still, Hell almost always came out on top, as the humans did have a tendency to enter into ill-conceived arrangements with whatever demon they had managed to wrest from the occult plane. The maths worked out in Hell’s favor (between the two sides, it was widely accepted Hell had better accountants. The devil was in the details, after all), and the house always wins. Doubly so when it came to making bargains with the agents of Hell.

And besides, the humans - well, one generally didn’t call upon a demon to do good deeds, now did they? It wasn’t a net loss for Heaven - those sould had been written off the ledger years before Hell got involved.

(Not that demons were called on to do good deeds, in general. That was, excepting certain situations involving Aziraphale and one particular demon.)

Crowley had disappeared three decades into the 16th century.

And then one day, he staggered into Aziraphale’s quarters, complexion chalky, his hands shaking as he grasped the flagon of wine on the angel’s table, downing the contents in one long gulp.

“Where were you?” Aziraphale asked, hours later, neither he nor Crowley having moved from their spots on the floor.

“Summoned. Humans. Nasty business,” Crowley croaked, laying his head on the angel’s thigh. It took less than a minute for the demon to still, mouth open, snores soft as his chest rose and fell with a regular rhythm. Aziraphale wrapped an arm around Crowley’s chest, eyes shuttering closed with uncharacteristic sleepiness.

The next morning Crowley was gone.

To chain (v.): to fasten, bind, or connect with or as if with a chain. See: chain (n.)

Chain (n.): a series of usually metal links or rings connected to or fitted into one another and used for various purposes (such as support, restraint, transmission of mechanical power, or measurement)

Most humans used a calendar to mark time. Aziraphale, being an angel and therefore accustomed to thinking of events in terms of decades and not weeks, used Crowley as his personal calendar. Or more precisely, Crowley’s clothing.

Linens gave way to fitted garments. Heels rose, then tapered in concert with bottoms, which peaked and fell like the tides. And as fashion changed, so did Crowley, a serpent in new skin.

By the 1970s, Crowley had recycled his pants from the Victorian era (“Reusing pants, Crowley?” “Eh, everything comes back, angel. Besides, think of it as Sloth in action, er...non-action, this is. Why make the effort to miracle up something new when I can use something old?”) The long velvet jacket had been a nice touch, although Aziraphale had not been convinced by Crowley’s hair, and certainly not the mustache. It was during the contemplation of said facial hair (and how he might tempt - persuade, rather, the demon to shave it off) that the angel noticed the glint of silver, evidence of a long chain looped around Crowley’s neck. Aziraphale, having lost track of fashion fads somewhere in the eighteenth century, took it as another adaptation of the times and thought nothing more of it.

Except it was now the 1980s, and wide lapels and polyester had given way to egregious shades of neon and tight spandex pants that left little to the imagination. Cheeks flushed, Aziraphale was keeping his gaze trained on the demon from the waist-up, thank you very much, when something caught his attention. A raised outline, on the demon’s chest. If he concentrated, Aziraphale could hear the subtle scrape of metal against metal as Crowley sauntered through Soho.

By the time the 90s had rolled around, (and had thankfully ended the spandex era, there was only so much temptation the angel could withstand), Aziraphale had a working hypothesis.

“It’s nothing, angel,” Crowley responded to his inquiry. They were two bottles of wine in, inhibitions fading with the afternoon sun.

“Crowley, you’re been wearing that - that thing for the past three decades. You can barely keep the same style for five years! Just tell me what it is.”

The demon glanced down at his chest, silver links showing just above his collarbone. Crowley tucked the chain under his black shirt, not meeting Aziraphale’s eyes. “Why does it matter to you?”

The angel frowned. It didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter, but - two bottles of an exquisite Shiraz was making it difficult to remember why. It was something about consistency. Something about being marked, about the symbolism. It was like wearing an amulet, or...Aziraphale’s mind searched for an appropriate metaphor.

Or like a wedding ring, he supposed.

Crowley sagged in his chair.

“It’s Hell, angel.”

“What?” Aziraphale’s stomach sank.

“I mean, literally, Hell’s idea. A way, uh,” Crowley pulled at his collar, muttering at the floor. “A way of reminding me who I belong to.”

Oh.

“Crowley, this isn’t some kind of punishment, is it?” Aziraphale bit his lip, casting his eyes upwards. “For our, uh - you know?”

“Oh, well. No, I mean. The Arrangement - no one knows you’re involved, angel, don’t worry.” Crowley made a show of looking at his watch. It was new, large, and incredibly fancy. “Oh hey, look at the time, angel, I’d better be going.” The demon was already halfway across the room by the time he finished the sentence.

“Still on for the theater tomorrow?” Crowley called over his shoulder, jacket crumpled over his arm.

“Yes, but Crow - “

“Super! Great! See you later, angel.”

The door slammed shut.

“No one knows you’re involved, angel.”

But Crowley hadn’t said Hell didn’t suspect one of their own.

To cuff (v.): to handcuff. See: handcuff (v.)

To handcuff (v.):

1. to apply handcuffs

2. to hold in check; to make ineffective or powerless

They had both been cuffed, dragged to their respective organizations, wrists locked together, hands immobile, rough, celestial and demonic rope playing the part of handcuffs. An angel in the guise of a devil, at the mercy of Hell’s whims. A devil, masquerading as an angel, offering himself to a second Judgement.

A simple snap would have broken their bonds. The line between angel and demon was not the thick, measured boundary both sides pretended (they were of the same original stock, after all), but in this case, there was an important difference. Simply put, bindings for an angel would not contain a demon and vice versa.

There had been no other choice but to go ahead with the plan. If they ran, Heaven and Hell would follow, track them through every city, star system, every nebula of the universe. If they went to their respective offices as themselves, feigning contrition, they would be destroyed. And fighting, no matter how much Crowley protested otherwise, was not an option.

And so they went willingly, bound not in body, but to the promise they made each other.

To hold (v.):

1. to support in a particular position or keep from falling or moving

2. to cover (a part of the body) with one or both hands (as for protection or comfort)

3. to have or maintain in the grasp

It took a week after the cancelled Apocalypse for Crowley to break down.

Nothing of note had precipitated the event. They had gone to dinner - an adorable French cafe nestled at the edge of Hyde Park. It boasted a crepe bar, truffle gnocchi, and a delightful Rosemary Vesper cocktail, of which Crowley had partaken of three before hurriedly moving on to the wine list with more frantic zeal than seemed appropriate for the occasion.

Still, the dinner passed with idle conversation and the scraping of silverware, an altogether pleasant experience. Bellies full, they ambled through the park, Aziraphale chatting about nothing at all as the London sun gave up its struggle to break through the haze of mid-winter, ceding its territory to dusk, then to evening’s dark blanket.

A few ducks huddled near the Round Pond, no doubt to find warmth in the cooling air. Aziraphale envied their closeness, his gaze flitting towards the thin, shivering figure at his side. Ridiculous, really, to be jealous of animals only acting according to their nature.

Crowley shoved his hands further into his jacket pockets, shoulders taut, high around his ears.

“Crowley, is everything okay?” Aziraphale worried at his hands. The demon had been - well, for lack of a better word, off the whole night.

“Mmnnit’s fine, just a little chilly out here. You know, sssnake and all.” Crowley shrugged, kicking at some loose dirt.

“Really, Crowley just - “ In two steps Aziraphale was at Crowley’s side, arm poised above the demon’s shoulders, protective instinct hijacking his better judgement.

Crowley’s eyes went moon-wide.

And then the demon deflated, burying his face in his hands.

“I can’t do this anymore, angel.”

The next moment were a blur. Hands grabbed at thick, woolen clothing, wet eyes found sanctuary in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, mumbled, broken confessions whispered into his shoulder.

They were on the grass, Aziraphale leaning against a sturdy oak tree, a tangled mess of demon in his arms. The angel stroked the soft, fiery air, whispering nothing syllables as he held Crowley in his arms.

It’s going to be alright, he said. And for the first time in centuries, Aziraphale believes it.

To tie up (v.):

1) To restrain from normal movement.

Aziraphale tightened the final knot. The demon certainly wasn’t going anywhere. Not without his help, that was.

2) To keep busy.

The angel chuckled to himself, running a hand through Crowley’s hair, tugging lightly at the roots. They would both by rather busy for next few hours.

3) Preempt the use of

Yes, well, Aziraphale flushed. That was rather the point, was it not?

4) To connect closely

It was a gesture of trust, all of this, the way Crowley allowed himself wholly into Aziraphale’s care. It was a responsibility, a solemn duty, to be gifted with the small, glowing orb of Crowley’s trust, and Aziraphale swore to never breach, never break what he had been given. Later, he’ll wrap Crowley in his arms, when it was all done, when love poured from the demon in tired, euphoric waves, their limbs tangled together, cocooned by thick, soft duvets and softer emotions.

Aziraphale smiled.

To secure (v.): To make permanent.

Aziraphale held his hand to his face, silver band gleaming in the moonlight. Long fingers intertwined with his own, the metal of Crowley’s own ring cool against the angel’s lips.

“You’re trapped now, angel,” Crowley hummed, waggling his ring finger. “Shackled by a demon.”

Aziraphale wrapped his arms around his husband’s neck.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

legobiwan does whumptober

#WELL THAT HAPPENED #whumptober #whumptober 9 #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens spam #yes i'm behind trying to catch up #i'm not sure if i will #whumptober might go into novemebr #i think i can churn out one more tonight but i gotta get to some applications first #as i listen to messiaen organ music #writing #the eternal struggle #honestly i'm not sure how much i like this one but i am committed to finishing this damn whumptober even if i do it late

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mikrokosmos · 2 years

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I guess my question to you is what classical piece gives to you or makes the largest emotional response ?

I only ask because of the millions of times I have listened to Beethoven's Symphony #9(the whole thing)

had a huge response to it recently because of my mental issues that has happened to me in the past months :(

I guess I have grown a greater appreciation for Classical music and it's healing powers :)

Sorry for the way too much information ;) Have an excellent day :)

that's a tough question, what's given me emotional response has changed over the years.

Mahler - Symphony no. 8. Really any of Mahler's symphonies can go here, he's a very "emotional" composer. I only chose the 8th because of the amazing moments that happen across its runtime, and its melodies always tug at my heart

Schubert - Sonata in A Major D.664 mov.2 Andante. I also could have put in any Schubert piece. While Mahler is large and bombastic, Schubert is way more subtle. And when he's at his most delicate, it sounds like the sublimity that people gush over Mozart for. The slow movement of this sonata is short but pretty moving

Chopin - Prelude op.28 no.13. Posted about this one recently, but it's a prelude that I hadn't really thought about much listening through the set since high school. Only this past couple months did I really listen to it and feel mored by the atmosphere it creates

Schoenberg - Transfigured Night. The darkness of the strings moving around in murky harmonies eventually turns into shimmering stars.

Messiaen - Le banquet céleste. For organ, has a gorgeous meditative air to it

#recommendations #music #classical #Mahler #Schubert #Chopin #Messiaen #Schoenberg

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thekingofgear · 3 years

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Jonny Greenwood’s ondes Martenot Tone

Jonny losing himself in a performance of Messiaen’s Vocalise Etude at RHK Dublin in 2015. Photo by Isabel Thomas for The Thin Air.

Written in response to the following anonymous question:

Hi TKOG! When Jonny uses his Ondes Martenot/Ondomo/French Connection etc. does he usually use the Sine Wave function or to produce a basic sine wave sound? I am trying to build my own similar instrument so was wondering what sound I should try and aim to produce. Thank you!

Despite how often the sound of the Martenot is described as a “sine tone”, you will only very rarely hear just a sine tone from the instrument. Jonny’s ondes sound on If You Say The Word for example (more on that later) is far richer than a sine wave. Most versions and offshoots of the Martenot do offer a sine wave, but players (ondists) generally combine it with other waveforms. A very common combination is the sine-wave (onde) added to a lowpass-filtered square-wave (petite gambe). This is similar to but richer than a sine wave, and often blends better with other instruments compared to the pure sine.

One reason for these combinations is that the speakers (diffuseurs) of the original Martenot added lowpass and highpass filtering. The currently-produced ondes Musicales Dierstein at one point used a guitar-oriented Celestian Vintage 30 speaker for its primary (principal) loudspeaker, which rolls off the highs at around ~5kHz and the lows at ~200Hz (full graph here). So even a rich waveform will start to sound like a sine when played at a higher pitch, because the speaker will roll off most of the harmonics of a high-pitched note. With a speaker like that, the combination of sine and filtered square will sound like a slightly richer sine wave at higher pitches. And at lower pitches where the fundamental sine sound is filtered out, the gentle square harmonics will still give definition to the note. The speaker really balances out the sound of the instrument.

Jonny’s Analog Tones

Jonny rehearsing There Will Be Blood with the Wordless Music Orchestra in 2014. His French Connection and its cabinet sit unused as he plays his original digital ondes Martenot. The amp is a rental Vox AC30CC2.

When it comes to Jonny specifically, his choice of waveform depends on both the instrument and the piece of music. For live performances of How To Disappear Completely from 2001 to 2012, Jonny used his French Connection and its Apprentice modular case (the French Connection is just a controller, and produces no sound on its own). At those shows, the instrument is connected directly to the PA, there’s no filtering from a guitar-type speaker. Perhaps that’s why he used a richer saw wave for low notes, and a purer sine-like wave for the high notes. You can hear this clearly in recordings of the band’s Saitama show. But the analog RS-95 oscillators that Jonny uses with his French Connection can’t actually produce a pure sine wave, no-matter the setting of its “shape” knob. So the RS-95′s sine wave sounds more like a triangle wave with some added even-order harmonics (the result of creating the sine wave from the saw/triangle wave). In addition, some other Analogue Systems modules like the RS-100 filter will gently overdrive when connected to a full-volume oscillator, which can add extra harmonics too. When Jonny performed There Will Be Blood with the Wordless Music Orchestra in 2014, he set the volume knob on his RS-110 filter to max, adding some overdrive to fatten sound of the RS-95′s sine output. And Jonny isn’t afraid to use the RS-95′s harmonically rich sounds too: the synthy sliding notes during the last section of the 2+2=5 recording are a great examples.

Unlike the original digital ondes Martenot he obtained in 1999, Jonny’s ondes Musicales Dierstein from 2011 uses analog transistors to generate its sounds (for more info on Jonny’s various Martenot offshoots, see this article). The Dierstein’s sine is also a slightly impure analog waveform, but it is much purer than the RS-95’s sine. It’s interesting to note that, for a performance of There Will Be Blood in 2014, Jonny did use the sine tone (Onde setting) when playing parts originally recorded with his original digital ondes Martenot. However, when playing new compositions with the London Contemporary Orchestra in 2015, Jonny instead used the clipped triangle wave, and even mentioned it sounded good in the concert hall (the Victoria Hall in Geneve). For that show, Jonny did use the Celestian speakers, which gave a warmer sound to the clipped triangle. It’s also interesting that Jonny seems to prefer using just one waveform at a time, rather than combining waveforms by turning on multiple switches.

A photo of the control drawer (tiroir) of Jonny’s Dierstein, posted on his twitter acount in 2015. Only C and D2 are active. C is a peak-limited triangle wave – imagine a triangle with the top chopped off to form a trapezoid. D1, D2, and D3 are switches for different speakers, and D2 is the reverberant speaker. On the Dierstein, D2 is a guitar-type speaker with a warm-soundng reverb emulation. This is pretty different from earlier versions of D2, which had a speaker connected mechanically to a set of large brass springs.

Stimulating Harmonics

So you may be thinking it’s best to start with a rich waveform and add some filtering. But some of the Martenot’s speakers can also add harmonics. The Palme and Metallique speakers both replace the cone of a normal speaker with a more resonant material. In the case of the Palme, the voice coil is coupled directly to the bridge of the custom-build string instrument. When the voice coil is sent into excitation by an input sound, it directly vibrates the strings. So the Palme does not simply add some stringy reverb. The strings of the Palme are actually “played” directly by the input sound, adding harmonics that were never present in the original sound (if you’re curious for more info on the Palme, see our article on building one).

Why should we care? Well, even when Jonny does use a pure sine setting, the final output we hear still might not be a sine wave. When a sine is used with the Palme speaker, the natural harmonics of the vibrating strings are added to the sound, and shaped by the resonance of the Palme’s body.

A photo of Jonny with his digital ondes Martenot and Palme speaker at the Koko in London for the Big Ask in 2006.

The studio recording of The National Anthem is a good example of a pure waveform used with the Palme. For that recording (which we transcribed in detail), Jonny used his original digital ondes Martenot. The digital instrument is able to produce a much purer sine wave than the analog offshoots of the ondes Martenot like the French Connection and Dierstein. But even so, we hear extra harmonics from the strings of the Palme, giving an ethereal haze to the notes.

Jonny also likes to use Vox AC30 amplifiers with his digital ondes Martenot, as he did perhaps most notably for the performance of Cymbal Rush on the Henry Rollins show in 2006. Overdriving the input of the AC30 adds extra harmonics to the sound, which are tamed by the lowpass filtering of the tone cut control and speaker – the same principle as overdriving an Analogue Systems lowpass filter. Jonny only had his digital ondes Martenot when he recorded his parts on If You Say The Word (2:38-3:05, 3:48-4:16). His tone on the song is much less hazy and reverberate compared to The National Anthem, doesn’t seem to have been used (unless it’s blended very softly underneath). But his tone is still fairly rich in overtones, so perhaps they were recorded through a tube amp like the AC30 for some gentle overdrive.

That said, it’s also worth noting that the digital Martenot can produce many additional sounds that his Ondomo, French Connection, and Dierstein are incapable of. Jonny’s interview with ondist Suzanne Binet-Audet for Caroline Martel documentary Wavemakers reveals some of the digital instrument’s more organ-like tones.

A long-exposure photograph of Jonny playing his digital ondes Martenot in the Round Room at Tottenham house, during the recording of In Rainbows.

Really, anything will do!

Simply put, there is no single waveform or timbre that can be attributed to an ondes Martenot. Each version and offshoot of the Martenot has its own waveforms, and they only sometimes overlap. But whether he’s playing his Ondomo or his French Connection, Jonny has nonetheless found a way to get his own sound from them. Ultimately, what matters most is the control interface. As long as one plays using the ring and intensity key (touche d’intensité), any periodic waveform will sound like an ondes Martenot – you might just need to adjust the filtering and reverb. That’s the reason VST replicas of the Martenot, such as Soniccouture's Ondes, sound so different from the real thing, despite using samples of the Martenot’s waveforms and impulse responses of the speakers. Unsurprisingly, the control interface is what matters most. Still, it might be worth playing around with the waveforms in a VST like that, just to hear what you like. You can also listen to the timbre samples on Josh Seman’s website, though you can’t use that to test blends of waveforms.

You seem interested in Jonny’s timbre specifically, but things are equally muddy when creating a historically-correct instrument. Most modern derivatives of the Martenot are based on the MK7 instrument, which used transistors. But many of the most famous pieces for the Martenot were written for earlier version of the instrument that used tubes. Those versions had a much fatter sound due to the tubes overdriving, and had a different range of waveforms and timbres. But this doesn’t stop modern ondists from performing Turangalîla beautifully with a MK7. As long as the instrument has enough timbres to cover a good range of moods, the specific waveforms are ultimately fairly unimportant.

#ondes Martenot #ondes Musicales #Analogue Systems #Ondomo #Jonny Greenwood #Radiohead #How To Disappear Completely #The National Anthem #cymbal rush #there will be blood #Kid A #Wavemakers #If You Say The Word

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independentartistbuzz · 1 year

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Electronic Composer Sebastian Reynolds Debuts Thought-Provoking Release “Cascade”

Sebastian Reynold’s "Cascade" is a pulsing, claustrophobic paean to surviving a bomb attack. "If you hear the bang, you've survived" intones a disembodied voice as forbidding drones ring against throbbing rhythms, leaving listeners unsure whether to dance or to duck. The video only hints at terrorism and random violence, which further accentuates the chilling quality of the subject matter. Inspired by Reynolds' love for bands such as Liars, Public Service Broadcasting and Radiohead, "Cascade" is an electrifying taste of what's to come from his upcoming full-length Canary — taught, dystopic drones for a civilization in collapse marked by a compositional approach influenced by composers like Susumu Yokota, Luigi Nono, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Once again, Reynolds traverses modern classical composition and retro-futurist production, this time visiting upon the stillbirth of a child, the death of one's parents, the nature of consciousness, the relationship between mind and body, the fragmentation of our collective mindscape, and the awakening of machine intelligence.

References to John F. Kennedy, Carl Jung, and Robert Monroe's influential book Journeys Out of the Body pepper Reynolds' meditations as samples from contemporary figures Sam Harris, Lex Friedman, and Navy SEAL Jocko Willink both guide and disorient the listener. As always, Reynolds is keen on preserving a sense of meaning in the mélange of programmed and organic sounds he's come to be known for. Reynolds has collaborated with German classical/expressionist musician/composers Anne Müller (Erased Tapes) and Alex Stolze (Bodi Bill) in their Solo Collective project, as well as Mike Bannard at The Aviary and others. He also continues to work on commissions for Neon Dance. Recent works with the company include Puzzle Creature, Prehension Blooms, the Thai-inspired Mahajanaka Dance Drama, and Manuals for Living and Dying. He is currently working on a film commission for Oxford University. His music has been widely supported across the BBC's networks and beyond. He hails from Oxford, where he spent his formative years cutting his teeth in the UK cult outfits Braindead Collective and Keyboard Choir. (More details here.)(photo: Miles Hart)Born to a computer-engineer mom who worked for Research Machines, Sebastian Reynolds grew up "surrounded by dusty, strange machines that played games from cassettes." Naturally, he was drawn to electronic production before he ever picked up a "real" instrument. But when he started kicking around in bands, his music acquired a living-breathing-sweating essence that it's maintained over his 25-year. This is, after all, an artist who named one of his releases Nihilism Is Pointless...

His new album Canary, however, raises the bar with soul-stirring meditation on life, death and the afterlife in the wake of his mother's passing, followed not long thereafter by the stillbirth of his son. Influenced by what he describes as the aural "dreamworld" created by Susumu Yokota, as well as the post-traumatic shell shock that galvanized the compositions of Luigi Nono, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Reynolds is especially adapt at blurring the line between mechanical and organic sound sources. Reynolds hybridizes programmed and played sound sources not like some gleeful modern-day Frankenstein/Kurzweil who's lost perspective on what it means to be alive, but as someone who sees electronic music as a fertile medium to express meaning. As a teenager growing up in Oxford, England during the '90s, Reynolds was close to ground zero when Radiohead showed that they could conserve the humanity of their music, even as they plunged head-first into a kind of digital abyss. Similarly, though Canary peers over the edge of the precipice we all find ourselves facing today -- a bomb going off, the fragmentation of our collective mindscape, the awakening of machine intelligence, a child's life cut-off at birth, and the quotidian reality of living the rest of one's life without their parents — Reynolds always manages to locate the heartbeat in his electro-organic mélange of sounds.

Watch the video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0vJa2CXAkI

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nonstandardrepertoire · 4 years

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Hello! I've been given some Messiaen to learn (specifically, some of the Vingt Regards), and have never actually worked with Messiaen before. I was wondering if you had any advice/listening/reading suggestions?

OH HELLO

i hope this turns out to be a timely answer and not like, “tumblr only decided to give me a notification about this now, several years after it was sent, womp womp”, but either way, here goes:

if you like listening to pieces you’re working on, obvs obvs obvs go do that to get the rhythms in your ear, but i’m also gonna recommend listening to Eastern European folk music (which might sound like a Very Weird Suggestion at first, but bear with me), like, if you want a specific rec, the band Värttinä’s album Ilmatar

the thing is, when you start digging in to Messiaen’s own writing about his music (a lot of which was only available in French as of like, 2012, tho that may have changed by now!), he talks a lot about how his symmetrical rhythms are meant to echo the symmetries of the natural world — he mentions butterfly wings specifically quite a bit, if memory serves. and a lot of the local rhythmic irregularity is obviously also echoing (or literally transcribing) birdsong

so where composers like Stravinskii are often using irregular rhythms and mixed meter to conjure up something violent or mechanical — i really do think you’re meant to feel the irregularities at the end of the Rite of Spring as irregular, as violent, jarring ruptures in the even flow of time suggesting a frail human body being tossed abruptly to and fro to its destruction — Messiaen, i think, is after something much more fluid and organic: his rhythms are symmetrical in the way a flower is, irregular the way a cliff face is, full of little hiccups the way water flowing over a bed of pebbles is

(which, i think, points to an aspect of his theology, altho this is perhaps a little less rooted in his own writings and more in what i hear in his music, but: i think a lot of Messiaen’s music taps into this idea that like, G-d is celebrated and adorned by all the ecstatic filigree of Nature, that “Nature” and “the celebration of G-d” are actually Not Really Distinct Concepts, but also that the natural world, necessarily, doesn’t really respect the strict rules and frameworks of arbitrary cultural conventions like “4/4 meter” or “the European system of major/minor tonality”. and so his works are breaking free of those strictures as a way to try and bring that Natural unruliness into his music, as a way of encompassing all the various forms of praise of G-d into one ecstatic, mystical hymnic rhapsody)

and Eastern European folk music, to my ear, is often a lot more fluid and organic about mixed meter than classical music is? listening to a lot of Värttinä is how i learned to think of musical time from the bottom up (ie as an even stream of constant eighths or sixteenths that are grouped into 2s and 3s to build up into a meter) as opposed to the top down (ie you start with the meter and then subdivide down to get to eighths or sixteenths), and i think that way of thinking about musical time is much more conducive to playing Messiaen’s funky little rhythms as fluid, organic, living gestures than as angular, stilted, awkward things

which i guess ultimately boils down to an underlying feeling of: lean into the expressivity of it. Messiaen looks so daunting on the page, and i think a lot of people get caught up in the math, but he’s ultimately this lush, indulgent, hyperexpressive dude writing extravagantly emotional works, and i always think that if you lean into the sheer celestial intoxication of it, a technical hiccup here or there won’t be the end of the world

#asks #normallyparenthetical #squeezing the life from a flock of angels #theology #music #i only count to four #mixed meter #Varttina #are hella rad musically and i love them very much #i hope they are not politically Terrible i have done no research #thinky thoughts #how to art

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johnjpuccio · 3 years

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New Releases, No. 12 (CD Reviews)

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time; Kurt Rohde: one wing*. Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (Jerome Simas, clarinet; *Anna Presler, violin; Tanya Tomkins, cello; *Eric Zivian, piano). AVIE AV2452.

It was a real blessing to receive this CD for review, for I had almost forgotten what an amazing piece of music this is. I can’t quite remember what my first encounter with Messiaen’s music was. It may have been his organ music, or it may have been his massive, sprawling Turangalila Symphony. But the Messiaen composition that has made the deepest impression on me is his Quartet for the End of Time, which I first purchased on LP back in the late 1970s on LP in the form of the famous release by Tashi (Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Fred Sherry, cello, Ida Kafavian, violin, Peter Serkin, piano), the recording that has long stood as the touchstone version (now of course available on CD). It is not a mellifluous piece that falls easily on the ear, especially on first hearing; however, it is a piece of great beauty that rewards serious, repeated listening, and there are many lyrical passages of deep, affecting beauty. Messiaen wrote the piece while a prisoner of war in a German concentration camp and it was first performed by his fellow prisoners. I won’t go into the full story here but it is a fascinating tale well worth investigating for those so inclined.

To read the full review, click here:

https://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2021/07/new-releases-no-12-cd-reviews.html

Karl W. Nehring, Classical Candor

#Classical Music #Classical Music Reviews #Classical Music Albums #Classical Music Album Reviews #Music #Music Reviews #Music Albums #Music Album Reviews #CD #Compact Disc #Orchestral #Piano

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dustedmagazine · 5 years

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Olli Aarni/Grand River/Nickolas Mohanna/Antti Tolvi — Longform Editions 11 (Longform Editions)

Longform Editions is a label curated by Andrew Khedoori, and the music, released in groups of four pieces each of which this is number 11, poses and answers questions that reach the core of musical expression and experience. Khedoori speaks, in interviews, of slowing down, of taking the time to listen in a world in which such pursuit is diminishing. Similarly, the composers all speak of various modes of listening that go beyond mere absorption into a realm of activity, or depth. The briefest of these four pieces is 20 minutes and the longest 45, so some commitment is expected, and, even in a market saturated with music of similar pretensions, this is the real deal! The trick for the writer experiencing these composers and their singular visions for the first time is to heap verbiage on experiences meant to transcend it. Here goes!

If there is a model for Olli Aarni’s Haalea, it might be the opening minutes of Yes’s “Close to the Edge,” meaning the long bird-song-imbued fade-in to the track proper. Aarni expands a similarly but much more broadly and enigmatically constructed sonic universe to encompass forty-five minutes, chronological time, but the effect is vast and infinitely more colorful. Pedantically, the piece exists somewhere among chord, scale and drone, beholden to none while never quite circumventing them. He eschews the glacial harmonic changes and barely audible motivic development, hanging amidst nowhere, that we hear in Eliane Radigue’s synthesizer pieces in favor of singly emergent pitches. While a single tone pervades the first six minutes, others in lower register gradually swim into focus, and even that most prominent pitch shimmers, swells and fades in overtonal motion. The beauty of hearing that pitch slowly assimilated, other related tones taking its place around the twelve-minute mark themselves then gently to be usurped, is palpable but indescribable in a few words. Even to posit that the rest of the piece involves that chord, or mode, slowly shattering into bright, hard but deliciously transparent upper partials says nothing about experiencing its slow ascent toward a peak and gradual descent toward silence.

The first impressions of New York composer Nickolas Mohanna’s Throwing the Chain involve grit and power, but even these are superficial when engaging in a bit of the deep listening he mentions in his notes. A post-Angus MacLisian take on fractiously free-form rhythm and on the encroachment of extramusical timbre is enhanced by attention to delicately internal and sometimes external rhythmic structures that never quite congeal into a meter. By internal, I mean that pulse emanates from the drone itself rather than from percussion. Faint looping and juxtaposition are paramount as this music weaves a non-conventionally formal and stark path forward, any semblance of pitch finally replaced by one of those insect-riddled landscapes such as Naked City was exploring in the early 1990s.

In Olivier Messiaen’s early organ piece “Celestial Banquet,” rhythmically falling drops of blood slowly pervade the texture. Something bordering on similar happens in the Dutch-Italian composer Grand River’s Light Index Opening, but that’s only one facet of the constantly evolving space she creates, a hybrid world in which articulations of all sorts joust and blend, from the dull shocks of what might be rasped guitar and plummy piano to the up-ramping of enigmatic reversals, all set with surprising ease against a droning backdrop. The rhythmic interjections become orchestral and part of the fun is guessing where they might land on the soundstage before the low-register beats change the entire rhythmic landscape of this extraordinary environment. Eventually, even tonal center becomes problematic, and those up-ramping reverses turn the sound world into the raw Romantic place it becomes before, like one of James Joyce’s Nighttown apparitions, all recedes.

Finnish composer and performer Antti Tolvi’s Just Gong is, on one level, the most easily explained offering of this batch, as it’s made on only one instrument, but of course, nothing is quite as straight-forward as might appear to be the case. Drone doesn’t even begin to describe the sound emerging from the instrument Tolvi’s playing. It absolutely cannot encompass the myriad vibrations, in and out of pulse and rhythm, the choral or organ tones ebbing and flowing in transitory stasis, all frequency spectra united, or the staggeringly slow dynamic flux that isn’t really flux at all but a kind of expansion, at least until the twenty-minute mark. There, remarkably, delicately, the all-enveloping sound fades but does not disappear. Its subsequent slow ascent and descent, unbelievably exquisite, leads ultimately, incredibly, to a single pitch. Is it the fundamental?

That word certainly does describe something about all four of these pieces and about everything I’ve heard from this label, which is now becoming one of my favorites when only music that fosters deep listening will do. This is music of fathomless depth but somehow also music laid bare. A directness of purpose emanates Even from the most elaborate soundscape, creating areas of experience in which Eliane Radigue might be at home to create her unique blend of melody and harmony. The vision Khedoori fosters seems healthier than ever in a time of rather stunning upheaval and, time permitting, really should be experienced.

Marc Medwin

#olli aarni #grand river #nickolas mohanna #antti tolvi #longform editions 11 #longform editions #marc medwin #albumreview #dusted magazine

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yasminfogarty0-blog · 5 years

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Exploring The Cultural And Linguistic Blending Of Widespread Music Genres

^ F. Holt, Genre in Fashionable Music (College of Chicago Press, 2007), ISBN 0226350398 , p. 56. There have been entire tutorial papers dedicated to figuring out why Swedes so disproportionately rule in style music. There are less-than-scientific theories - it is darkish a lot of the 12 months, so let's go inside and be creative! - and plenty of more reasonable ones. Those embody a nationwide tendency to be earlier adopters; role models resembling Martin and ABBA, and the globalized audiences they captivated; and a profound national proficiency in English, the unofficial language of pop. Hindustani Classical Music in Fashionable India is a crucial part of the cultural landscape of Northern India. The custom of Indian Music has developed simultaneously in two cultures. One is within the north, masking the entire region of Dwarka to Manipur and Srinagar to Belgaon, and the opposite is in the south, prevalent in Andhra Pradesh, mickisabella77433.mobie.in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Both of these streams of music developed virtually parallel melodic practices, in sync with the widespread musical heritage and customary musical ideals, http://www.magicaudiotools.com similar to the language construction in the North anSouth. The pre-eminent British composer George Benjamin additionally hints that the creation of music will be less mystical and extra mathematical than we would assume. Benjamin - who, at sixteen, was compared to Mozart by Olivier Messiaen - says an novice interest in science is his recurring preoccupation". Although he too had no formal science coaching past college, he says that reading books on subjects as diverse as chaos idea, symmetry, the notion of time, prime numbers and code-breaking has proved unexpectedly stimulating". Through the years he has developed quasi-mathematical methods which can act as a software to assist the creation of complicated structures … which the intuition alone could not manage". This book traces the development of pop from the seven-inch forty-five rpm single, introduced within the late forties, to the decl I vacillated on the score for this lengthy book. It's a broad survey of well-liked music for the reason that mid-fifties. Every of the 5 dozen chapters covers a narrow interval, title dropping and cramming music titles along the way in which, giving the sense of a surface history whizzing by. The early chapters come throughout as deeper and extra satisfying than the late ones. Three and a half stars. Rhythm and blues (or R&B) was coined as a musical advertising time period in the late Forties by Jerry Wexler at Billboard magazine, used to designate upbeat standard music carried out by African American artists that combined jazz and blues. It was initially used to identify the fashion of music that later developed into rock and roll. By the Nineteen Seventies, rhythm and blues was getting used as a blanket time period to describe soul and funk as effectively. Right this moment, the acronym "R&B" is sort of all the time used as a substitute of "rhythm and blues", and defines the trendy version of the soul and funk influenced African-American pop music that originated with the demise of disco in 1980. I do not know that you will cowl this, but I've no doubt that for songs with primarily classic rock instrumentation resembling guitar, bass, keyboards, C main or sharp keys equivalent to G, E and D major are most common. That is so because because of the development and tuning of guitars, they sound greatest and feel most comfy to their players in these keys. Additionally, whereas the guitar is without doubt one of the most difficult devices to play with actual virtuosity, it is without doubt one of the best instruments to study to play with out formal instruction, thus most guitarists are guitar gamers, but not musicians; they don't know music principle and might't read music. And lo and behold, among the first chords any self taught guitarist learns are C, G, D, F and E. Non-sightreading guitarists-most of them-normally have great problem taking part in in flat keys (apart from F) and sharp keys with more than four sharps.

The music usually layered soaring, typically- reverberated vocals, usually doubled by horns, over a background "pad" of electrical pianos and "rooster-scratch" rhythm guitars performed on an electric guitar "The 'hen scratch' sound is achieved by lightly urgent the strings against the fretboard after which rapidly releasing them just sufficient to get a barely muted scratching sound while continuously strumming very close to the bridge." 71 Other backing keyboard devices include the piano , electric organ (during early years), string synth, and electromechanical keyboards such because the Fender Rhodes electrical piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, and Hohner Clavinet Synthesizers are also pretty widespread in disco, especially within the late Seventies. These '80s remixes are also renegade efforts, albeit made with love, and too exist solely inside a restricted framework. They're not on the market, and most often can only be streamed, not downloaded. Sifting by way of dozens of re-dos to search out the true gems requires endurance, and leaves room for the chance that a listener might detect one thing enchanting and totally different. Especially for listeners too younger to have firsthand '80s nostalgia, the longing they provoke is for the early promise of music on the Web: the pre-streaming, pre-algorithm days when throwing yourself into exploration yielded mind-increasing dividends. From its earliest days the rock & roll label lined a broad musical terrain. The cliché is that rock & roll was a melding of nation music and blues, and if you're speaking about, say, Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, the outline, by way of simplistic, does fit. But the black innercity vocal-group sound, which itself was diverse sufficient to accommodate the tough, soulful Midnighters and 5 Royales, the neo-barbershop harmonies of fowl teams" like the Orioles and the Crows and the kid sound of Frankie Lymon and the Youngsters or Shirley and Lee, had little to do with both blues or nation music of their purer kinds. The idea of a inflexible, two-dimensional Carta, however related on the edges by bending the airplane to a cylindrical form, results in different fascinating projections and visualizations. As a result of there are so few genres in the beginning of time (19th century, early twentieth century), and the quantity of new genres has dramatically decreased within the last two decades, it's solely a small step away of wanting at the Carta as an actual projection of a sphere, thus seeing the world of in style music as a three-dimensional, planet-like structure: the Music Globe. On this globe, the north pole" represents the origin of all genres (the past), where the south pole" represents the (theoretical) endpoint (the longer term). The equator is right in between, at the cut-off date where essentially the most completely different genres emerged, across the 80s or 90s.

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Anyone Can Play Guitar: Jonny Greenwood

The Radiohead guitarist was born on November 5, 1971 in Oxford, England. One interesting fact was his father had worked as a bomb disposal expert in World War II. His brother Colin would also become a member of Radiohead. As a young child, Greenwood listened to tapes in the family car including Mozart concertos, The Flower Drum Song, My Fair Lady, Simon and Garfunkel. His older brother and sister would soon introduce Jonny to bands like New Order and the Beat. In 1988, he would attend his first concert, the Fall, which Greenwood would observe that it was “overwhelming.” At the age of four or five, the guitarist would be given his first instrument, a recorder. He also learned how to play the viola, even joining The Thames Vale youth orchestra. He spoke about the experience in an interview. “I'd been in school orchestras and never seen the point. But in Thames Vale I was suddenly with all these 18-year-olds who could actually play in tune. I remember thinking: 'Ah, that's what an orchestra is supposed to sound like!” Another hobby Greenwood had as a child was dabbling in computer programming as he built computer games using BASIC and other languages. The young musician would attend the Abingdon School, where he joined what would become Radiohead initially as a keyboard player, but later as lead guitarist. On a Friday did not represent his first band as he had played in a group previously called Illiterate Hands.

In 1991, Jonny Greenwood enrolled at Oxford Polytechnic for a degree in music and psychology. Three weeks into his courses the band signed their deal with EMI, so he immediately dropped out. The guitarist gained notoriety from the very beginning with their huge hit, “Creep.” Critics singled out his playing on that song as something to make the band stand out from the rest of the crowd. With his classical music background, Jonny has served as the arranger for several Radiohead tracks over the years. The first one came on their second album The Bends with “My Iron Lung.” The string arrangement for “Climbing Up the Walls” on OK Computer was inspired by his favorite composer, Krzysztof Penderecki. He contributed greatly to the experimentation on Kid A including employing a variety of unconventional instruments like very early synthesizers for this LP.

In 2003, the guitarist released his first solo work with the soundtrack to the film, Bodysong. For this album, he combined guitar, jazz, and classical music. A year later he wrote Smear, his first full piece written for an orchestra. He premiered it in March 2004 at the London Sinfonietta. Two months later, Jonny was named the composer in residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra, which led him to create another work entitled “Popcorn Superhet Receiver.” The piece would go on to win an award at the 2006 BBC Composer Awards. The process in which he wrote it was to record individual notes on his viola, then rework them through ProTools software. In 2007, he composed the score for the Paul Thomas Anderson film, There Will Be Blood. This soundtrack would go on to win a Critics Choice Award and an Evening Standard British Film Award. Unfortunately, due to the fact it included his previous work “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” the score was ineligible for an Academy award. Rolling Stone said this in the review of the film about the music. “A sonic explosion that reinvented what film music could be.” In 2016, composer Hans Zimmer sang the praises of the same soundtrack in an interview saying it was "recklessly, crazily beautiful.” Greenwood remained busy that same year releasing a compilation album through Trojan Records of his favorite reggae tracks, Jonny Greenwood Is the Controller. For the next several years, the musician would compose scores for several films and television shows including We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Master, Norwegian Wood, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, You Were Never Really Here. In 2012, the guitarist accepted a three month residency with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which led to a new piece entitled “Water.” That same year he released an album with composer Krzysztof Penderecki featuring music the Polish musician wrote in the 1960’s. In 2014, he performed at the London Symphony Orchestra showcasing music from his soundtracks and other originals, but no Radiohead. For his classical music work, he has been honored six times as a winner of a Ivor Novello award for composers. In 2015, Greenwood recorded an album with Nigel Goodrich and composer Shye Ben Tzu, which featured Indian music called Junjun. He would say that Tzu’s music is “quite celebratory, more like gospel music than anything—except that it's all done to a backing of Indian harmoniums and percussion". In 2019, Greenwood started his own record label Octatonic Records, which focused on classical music artists that were up and coming. The guitarist has also contributed on other artists' albums including Roxy Music, Brian Ferry, Blind Mr. Jones, and Pavement. Jonny appeared as a fictional musician in the films, Velvet Goldmine and Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire. Other members of Radiohead also appeared in these subsequent releases.

One of Greenwood’s greatest strengths as a musician is his ability to play so many instruments including guitar, piano, synthesiser, viola, glockenspiel, harmonica, recorder, organ, and banjo. In 2014, he said, "I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar ... I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play." Over the years, he has always preferred a Fender Telecaster as his guitar of choice, but never really subscribed to the legend of the instrument as Greenwood would say that they are merely tools like a typewriter or a vacuum cleaner. During the 1990’s, due to his very aggressive playing style on the guitar, Johnny developed repetitive stress injury, which led him to wear an arm brace for any live performance for the rest of his career. Like Ed O’Brien, he is also very proficient at using effects pedals on stage and in the studio, a key component of Radiohead’s sound. In 2010, New Musical Express named Greenwood one of the world’s greatest living guitarists, while in 2011 Rolling Stone named him the 48th greatest guitarist of all time. As for his influences, he has cited a wide variety from jazz to rock to classical music including Lee Morgan, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Scott Walker, Can, and Magazine. The latter asked him to fill in for a 2009 tour, but he declined most likely because the guitarist did not feel comfortable as a lifelong fan of the band. As for classical music, one of the defining pieces for him was first hearing Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony. Greenwood has said in interviews that as a teen he was completely obsessed with it after hearing it. Finally, as for his personal life, Jonny is married to the Israeli artist Sharona Katan, whom he met in 1993, while performing in that country. She has done the album covers for several of his soundtracks. The couple has two sons( 2002, 2008) and a daughter (2005).

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