Clara Rockmore Computergenerated Art Whose Work Bridged Film and Video Technologies

While the Ellipsis Arts label was all-time known for its "new age" and "world music" releases during its 1990s heyday, it did issue, in 2005, an interesting and notable triple-disc, with a bonus DVD, anthology, Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music.  Bad puns aside, this is an impressive collection spanning pre-1980s performances mainly from the and then-called "classical" world, though there are contributions from some composers outside of that generalized genre.

There is quite an array of composers represented here, from well-known figures like John Muzzle, Terry Riley, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Milton Babbitt, Edgard Varese, Olivier Messiaen to lesser-known, but important, pioneers similar Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, the MEV collective, Morton Subotnick, Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, and those outside "classical" and academic circles like Holger Czukay, Kalus Schulze, and Brian Eno.  Even the inclusion of a 1999 version of Reich's "Pendulum Music," in which suspended microphones are swung in pendulum movements to generate sound, past noise-rock legends Sonic Youth is something of a bridge between "serious music" and the pop-rock earth.

Manifestly, music similar this is going to have a polarizing effect on most people, a great many of whom would discover this unlistenable noise.  There is, however, a range of cloth with some pieces moving more than towards some class of accessibility than others.  For example, the haunting excerpt from Tchaikovsky'southward "Valse Sentimentale" pairs piano with the strange and wonderful sounds of the theremin, every bit played past its greatest exponent, Clara Rockmore.

Messiaen's "Orasion" is also other-worldly, with its "ondes martenot,"a keyboard that provides pitch changes through a ribbon and a ring, and which is also linked to traditional music.  Babbitt's "Philomel" blends the human being voice with the electronics in an highly-seasoned fashion.  Oliveros's stunning "Adieu Goodbye Butterfly" skillfully wends excerpts from "Madama Butterfly" into her improvised electronic stew.

Subotnick's "Silverish Apples of the Moon" had the distinction of being the commencement commissioned work past a major characterization, Nonesuch in this instance, for an electronic composition.  Riley's looped piece "Poppy Nogood" [really, "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band"] is an amazing piece of work using soprano saxophone, inspired by the great John Coltrane, and organ to develop a time-lag effect with a patch cord.

Czukay's mesmerizing "Gunkhole-Adult female Song" has medieval choral singing with the over-dubbed samples of simple and haunting folk singing to give it a highly memorable upshot.  Paul Lansky's computer-generated "Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion" has a warm and enveloping sounds of vocalizations of the poetic works that is quite beautiful.  Some other computer-geneated piece, Laurie Spiegel's "Applachian Grove I" has a quiet, ambient approach to creating something that has melodic associations.

Alvin Curran's "Canti Illuminati," 1 of the longer excerpts, is a fascinating aural experience with a sequencer, a VCS3 (used past some "progressive" rock groups in the early 70s) and the addition of bass tones and the add-on of falsetto vocalizations at the end softens the electronics.  Lucier'southward unplanned excursion "Music on a Long Thin Wire" has a droning, ambience quality that builds off a tuning from an oscillator and seems like a possible precursor to so-called "isolationist" electronic music.

Hassell's "Before and After Amuse (La Notte)" has an eerie and compelling repetition of percussive sound accompanying keyboard drones in varying tones and his highly effective in giving an "Eastern" vibe, thank you to the composer's interest in Indian music.  Finally, Eno'southward "Unfamiliar Current of air (Leeks Hills)" is a characteristiclly understated, notwithstanding warm, ambient piece that closes out the CD portion nicely.

The DVD is a great bonus, especially the filmed footage of performances and interviews, including one with Rockmore talking with her sister, nephew and Robert Moog, inventor of the (in)famous synthesizer, almost her work with the theremin and its inventor, as well as a snippet of a performance with her and her sister pianist.  A not bad, though very short, clip of Paul Lansky being shown how to play the eerie instrument by an anile Leon Theremin in the latter's Moscow flat in the waning days of teh Soviet Union is remarkable.

Milton Babbitt gives an entertaining and informative 1987 interview near his early associations with experimental electronic music, including the Marking I and Ii synthesizers.  A lengthy performance on picture show from Lucier dating to 1965 is of his incredible "Music for Solo Performer."  Here, Lucier is hooked by electrodes to several types of percussion, including a trash tin can, and uses his brainwaves to send waves in varying speeds and energy to play the percussion instruments.

A 2005 operation of "Goodbye Goodbye Butterfly" by Oliveros with visualizartions by Tony Martin is also something to behold--gorgeous musical formulation with a visual accessory that fully supports the functioning.

Finally, at that place is a six-minute segment from a documentary on Robert Moog, to whom the DVD is defended and who died in 2005, but prior to the release of the special edition.  This interview with Moog nearly his creation is an first-class capstone to a superb anthology (provided that the listener has any inclination towards electronic music to begin with, that is.)

One concluding give-and-take most the bundle:  Ellipsis Arts outdid itself (and it was at the end of its tether at the time) with a beautiful box for the discs in a articulate plastic sleeve, while the 112-page booklet is chock full of commentary by the composers and others about the excepted pieces and a wealth of slap-up photos.  It actually is a work of art that fully complements and serves the astonishing sounds found on the four discs.

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Source: https://americacophony.blogspot.com/2015/08/

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