Electronic Music

[Richard Barrett]

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

Also on Qobuz for those who have it...

While Subotnick's electronic compositions are never less than engaging, I find the pieces that involve instruments much less so, and his way with instruments much less imaginative than when he's constructing and orchestrating his synthetic sounds. Of course he isn't alone in this, and conversely there are also composers of fine instrumental/vocal music who seem less fluent when working with electronics (Boulez for example). Come to think of it, the ability to move between (and combine) electronic and acoustic resources in a way where each inspires the other is something shared by several of the 20th century composers whose work I admire most: Stockhausen, Xenakis, Nono, Cage.

[Boilk]

While Subotnick's electronic compositions are never less than engaging, I find the pieces that involve instruments much less so, and his way with instruments much less imaginative than when he's constructing and orchestrating his synthetic sounds.

Agree, hybrid pieces of his (like The Key To Songs) tend to lack the engagement of earlier purely electronic work such as Silver Apples or The Wild Bull, despite the latter's primitive (by today's standards) timbres.

Of course he isn't alone in this, and conversely there are also composers of fine instrumental/vocal music who seem less fluent when working with electronics (Boulez for example). Come to think of it, the ability to move between (and combine) electronic and acoustic resources in a way where each inspires the other is something shared by several of the 20th century composers whose work I admire most: Stockhausen, Xenakis, Nono, Cage.

Those are mostly old-school (i.e. post War) composers. Amongst the younger generations there are countless composers who've cut their musical teeth fluently straddling both acoustic and electronic camps. Long-since departed from the London scene (back to his native Mexico) is Javier Alvarez, whose Papalotl and Mannam are amongst his many fine examples (from the 1980s/90s) of almost seamlessly combining electronic and acoustic resources. Needless to say, the AKAI S900 sampler proved indispensable in the making of these works - technology which some of the previous generation did not have!

[Richard Barrett]

Long-since departed from the London scene (back to his native Mexico) is Javier Alvarez

Of course I know Javier and his music, and I have a lot of time for both. But even among composers of his (my) generation and younger there are plenty of people composing electroacoustic music where one or the other element is underdeveloped, however their teeth may have been cut. I think that the all-round fluency and imaginativeness I attributed to my 20th century examples and indeed to Javier is (still?) relatively uncommon.

[Joseph K]

Getting back to Eloy's Shânti: it is definitely growing on me. At first my thought was "this is a bit ambient", but I think it helps to turn up the volume in such a case. Listening now, I am not sure why I procrastinated getting round to listening where I left off, since its vortex-like textures, as Richard describes them, are quite attractive and it does a good job of drawing the listener in. I think Tristan Murail might have been influenced by some of the ideas in this, though he uses them in a more temporally-compressed form in his works.

[Joseph K]

Opinions on Eloy's acoustic music?

[Mandryka]

Opinions on Eloy's acoustic music?

There’s one I really like, called Faisceaux Diffractions. Rich and assured.

[Richard Barrett]

Opinions on Eloy's acoustic music?

Listen to as much as you can find (which isn't much). Faisceaux-Diffractions and Equivalences are on Youtube. And it just came to my mind that if you like the former (& maybe also if you don't!), Hugues Dufourt's Saturne for a similarly mixed electric/acoustic ensemble is going to be worth hearing, much more interesting IMO than his later more ummm "classical" work.

[Mandryka]

Do you think there are three «phases» to his work - the acoustic music, Shânti and Gaku No-Michi, and the rest?

Saturne is good IMO, Dufourt is a composer who I find oppressive, heavy, but I enjoyed Saturne. There’s a great passage toward the end which is, I suppose, inspired by the God eating his son.

[Joseph K]

There’s one I really like, called Faisceaux Diffractions. Rich and assured.

Listen to as much as you can find (which isn't much). Faisceaux-Diffractions and Equivalences are on Youtube. And it just came to my mind that if you like the former (& maybe also if you don't!), Hugues Dufourt's Saturne for a similarly mixed electric/acoustic ensemble is going to be worth hearing, much more interesting IMO than his later more ummm "classical" work.

Thanks.

[Richard Barrett]

Do you think there are three «phases» to his work - the acoustic music, Shânti and Gaku No-Michi, and the rest?

I would say that there's a single "break" in the early 1970s where the music shifts from a post-Varèse pathway towards embracing "eastern" aesthetic/philosophical ideas, leading almost immediately to an expansion of the timescale of his work and a decisive move towards centring on electronic music. Yo-in which immediately follows Gaku-no-michi seems to me to be a direct consequence of it; and so on.

[Serial_Apologist]

I would say that there's a single "break" in the early 1970s where the music shifts from a post-Varèse pathway towards embracing "eastern" aesthetic/philosophical ideas, leading almost immediately to an expansion of the timescale of his work and a decisive move towards centring on electronic music. Yo-in which immediately follows Gaku-no-michi seems to me to be a direct consequence of it; and so on.

I suppose Jolivet anticipated that turn thirty years earlier in many ways in his own works of the 1940s.

[Richard Barrett]

I suppose Jolivet anticipated that turn thirty years earlier in many ways in his own works of the 1940s.

And Debussy before him, with his gamelan-inspired use of whole tone scales. But I think Eloy was following more in the footsteps of Stockhausen (to whom Shānti is dedicated) than anyone else.

I listened to the whole of Yo-in today, I can't say it had my full attention from start to finish, but it certainly contains some striking things and doesn't seem too long for what it's doing. Followed up by Javier Alvarez's Temazcal, which is more engaging to see than just to hear, although it's still attractive in recorded form. (For those who don't know, it's for maracas and tape.)

[Serial_Apologist]

And Debussy before him, with his gamelan-inspired use of whole tone scales. But I think Eloy was following more in the footsteps of Stockhausen (to whom Shānti is dedicated) than anyone else.

Yes indeed. I was thinking in terms of Varèse's influence on Jolivet, and should of course said the 1930s so as not to confuse matters! Jolivet moved more in a neo-romantic direction in the 1940s, though that Varèse influence is still there in the character of the harmonic language and the uses of tuned and untuned percussion, and it returned with no ambiguity from the mid-1950s onwards - even in the second Piano Sonata, which I was delighted to find on youtube yesterday, but overtly in the Third Symphony. I can imagine the banging of heads in the Domaine resulting from a contemporary composer - and a French one at that - writing a symphony (quelle horreur!) loudly and indisputedly proclaiming its Varèsian debt, in 1964!

Here it is: the ONF certainly did Jolivet proud, with his lordship on the rostrum, that day in 1966 - and it certainly belies my own previous charges of congested orchestration of a few days ago. There's a rather wonderful anecdote for which we have to thank Jolivet's widow, who, in an English interview, told how her husband had told her that he included police whistles in the finale, which can be heard at around 21.0" and 22.5", in anticipation of the May 1968 events!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_o0QOiouc

[Mandryka]

Biographical information on Eloy here - you have to tolerate some ads unfortunately.

https://www.yumpu.com/pt/document/read/51699525/eloy-by-ivanka-stoianova-engpdf-hors-territoires

Anyway I’m listening to l’approche du feu méditant. This seems not quite the same sort of thing as Shânti or Faiscaux!

[Joseph K]

I'm now listening to Eloy's Faisceaux-Diffractions (yes, not Electronic Music really, but I think it makes sense to continue the discussion here). I'm enjoying it - I think the electric and bass guitars have a very surreal sound in this context. I mean, I think it would sound surreal anyway, just more so; I'm reminded of Romitelli's Professor Bad Trip. Also aspects of Boulez.