Electronic Music

[Bryn]

Electronic music by Roberto Gerhard from the late 1950s/early 1960s. This must have been some of the earliest of its kind to have been created in this country - I think it's pretty good, and not difficult to identify as being by this composer.

http://www.discogs.com/Roberto-Gerha...elease/6228374

Good to see it's on QOBUZ. Importing now.

[Dave2002]

Not sure if anyone would be interested in this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIHMGymceN8

Synthmaster 2.9 offer ...

For £25 it might be quite a fun bit of software to play with - though I'm sure there are many others. This one is VST and AU and also stand alone for Windows users, so covers a few bases.

[Serial_Apologist]

Electronic music by Roberto Gerhard from the late 1950s/early 1960s. This must have been some of the earliest of its kind to have been created in this country - I think it's pretty good, and not difficult to identify as being by this composer.

http://www.discogs.com/Roberto-Gerha...elease/6228374

Sadly the Pousseur excerpts on that site would not upload today for some reason, but by way of compensation, here are two of my favourite works by this charming and much-missed composer:

Trois Visages de Liège, of 1961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m2JjX3w1ds

and the surrealistic Jeu de Miroirs de Votre Faust, as broadcast on Radio 3 somewhere around 1968; I particularly love the piano playing of Marcelle Mercenier in this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf32fOWuLD8

Pousseur's contributions to the two 1992 Radio 3 programmes "strange Brew - the 1968 Soundtrack", recalling the events in Paris of May and June 1968 as outlining their impacts on new music, were among the best from several vantage points.

[Richard Barrett]

Pousseur's contributions to the two 1992 Radio 3 programmes "strange Brew - the 1968 Soundtrack", recalling the events in Paris of May and June 1968 as outlining their impacts on new music, were among the best from several vantage points.

Henri Pousseur was a charming and warm-hearted individual, which is probably one reason why his work is underrated in comparison with many of his fellow "Darmstadt School" composers. Cross-referencing another current thread, his daughter Marianne is a very interesting vocalist whose "cheval de guerre" as she used to put it was Pierrot Lunaire, of which she made a fine recording on Harmonia Mundi.

[Mandryka]

Henri Pousseur was a charming and warm-hearted individual, which is probably one reason why his work is underrated in comparison with many of his fellow "Darmstadt School" composers. Cross-referencing another current thread, his daughter Marianne is a very interesting vocalist whose "cheval de guerre" as she used to put it was Pierrot Lunaire, of which she made a fine recording on Harmonia Mundi.

For some inexplicable reason, I’m intrigued by Dichterliebesreigentraum, maybe because I like Schumann so much, but I’ve never been able to find the text in English or French, the only two languages I can read. If anyone can help, that would be great!

Anyway, just started to listen to this, with Marianne. I’m not sure I like the music but I like Marianne’s pure voice very much - here and in Sciarrino. In Sciarrino’s Lohengrin she shows that she’s game for some extended techniques!

[Joseph K]

Current listening... https://moderecords.bandcamp.com/album/stries-mode328

[Richard Barrett]

Current listening... https://moderecords.bandcamp.com/album/stries-mode328

Pretty good, don't you think? An enormous amount of work went into recreating the sound of the electronic instruments Parmegiani was writing for in 1980. You can compare the new recording with one recorded by the original performers here: http://dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/AvantGard...p49/index.html - that original release is a much shorter version of the piece.

[Joseph K]

Pretty good, don't you think?

Yes, I think - or at least thought, listening to it yesterday - the album got better as it went along. The first track is nice enough, possibly a bit on the ambient or cool & detached side. But things got better in the second track and the last one (which lends its name to the album) was beautiful.

Anyway, I'm listening to the first track again right now, at a higher volume this time, and can already see how I ought to modify the abovementioned judgement of it...

Thanks for the link to the original release.

[Quarky]

Current listening... https://moderecords.bandcamp.com/album/stries-mode328

Listening to Strilento (mode 328). A very interesting composition. Parmegiani has imposed a strong dramatic (?) form on the music - whereas so much electronic music seems to me a flow of sounds, albeit very novel and inventive sequences - IMHO of course.

[Joseph K]

Sadly the Pousseur excerpts on that site would not upload today for some reason, but by way of compensation, here are two of my favourite works by this charming and much-missed composer:

Trois Visages de Liège, of 1961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m2JjX3w1ds

and the surrealistic Jeu de Miroirs de Votre Faust, as broadcast on Radio 3 somewhere around 1968; I particularly love the piano playing of Marcelle Mercenier in this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf32fOWuLD8

Pousseur's contributions to the two 1992 Radio 3 programmes "strange Brew - the 1968 Soundtrack", recalling the events in Paris of May and June 1968 as outlining their impacts on new music, were among the best from several vantage points.

Just getting round to the second one of these.

[Joseph K]

Just getting round to the second one of these.

Now the first. (Didn't know what to make of the Jeu de Miroirs... ).

I can tell already this one is more to my taste.

[Joseph K]

Current listening...

[Richard Barrett]

Current listening...

One of the great works of electronic music IMO.

[Mandryka]

I do find the combination of drone and distant voice really powerful emotionally. And the drones in Shânti are lovely, lots of stuff going on in them, lots to notice. There’s quite a lot of Eloy’s electronic music available on record, but apart from this and Gaku no-Michi I haven’t heard any of it yet.

https://www.corticalart.com/?s=Eloy&post_type=product&product_cat=0

[Richard Barrett]

There’s quite a lot of Eloy’s electronic music available on record

All of it is worth hearing I think. From Shānti onwards his work concentrates on what might be called meditative states, and I find the vortex-like textures of Shānti and Gaku-no-michi somewhat less, what's the word, obvious than something like Yo-in with its gongs and reverberations. But it's all done with great refinement and intelligence. I'm not very keen on the idea of subsuming work like that of J-C Eloy or Roland Kayn or Eliane Radigue under the genre of "drone music" as if there were nothing more to what they do than the common practice these days of setting up some analogue synth gear, lighting up a jazz cigarette and releasing whatever comes out.

Anyway. I'm also very fond of the sophisticated twitterings and timbral evolutions of Morton Subotnick, and this is my favourite example, the less well known Sidewinder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvok7DIEAEc