Originally posted by Roslynmuse
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I remember William Mathias on his first day in the Professor's chair. -
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What a strange thing to say! It might be thought that "originality" is an objective feature of music, that something either is or isn't "original", but surely the situation is more complex than that. For example: some of the material in English Country-Tunes might be traced back to Stockhausen, or to folk-derived modality, but the way these materials are fused into a structure doesn't have such perceptible models. So one's view of the "originality" of the work might depend on which aspects of it one focuses on. The same issue arises in the context of late Feldman. To claim that it represents a "stylistic retreat" or a derivation from 1940s Cage is surely to ignore its most original and distinctive feature, namely the way that it articulates duration and memory.Originally posted by kea View PostComment
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Quite something that there are two commercial recordings of the work, the 'live' one by Mark Knoop and the studio one by Ian Pace.Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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Regarding the Ian Pace recording of Finnissy's The History of Photograph in Sound, I note that amazon.co.uk give one the choice of paying £45.49 for just a set of lossy mp3s, or just £28.37 for the boxed set of 5 CDs plus those very same mp3s. Such a difficult choice. I, however, paid somewhat more than £30 for the 5 CD boxed set at the City University launch. Still, at least all the profits went to the pianist and composer, rather than Bezos the tax manipulator.Comment
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I didn't mention montage/collage and I wouldn't describe English Country-Tunes as either of those, I was just making a general comment on structural thinking in composition being just as important a terrain for innovation as sound material. Anyway, Michael Finnissy has made it clear that there is no use of preexistent material in EC-T; there are three principal sources of material which appear as it were naked in the last three movements (gestural, modal and occupying the extremes of the keyboard respectively) and which are combined in various more or less complex ways in the first five. He has described his structural approach as having more to do with film than with models in previous music, and this I think is one of the things that makes the shapes his compositions trace out in time so distinctive.Originally posted by Mandryka View PostComment
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The Knoop sounds so much better than the Pace - which I’ve never enjoyed because of the sound.Originally posted by Bryn View PostComment
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So far, I have only listened to the first four sections of Mark Knoop's performance. I, too, prefer the way the sound of the piano is captured. I will have to return to the Pace, which I have not listened to again since purchasing it, in order to make further comparison. The incidental sounds of audience, etc., in the Knoop recording, I do not find too intrusive. I wonder what, if any, patching from rehearsals, it includes. I certainly found what I have heard of it, so far, totally engaging. It's a little unfortunate that there is no pdf accompanying the Bandcamp download but the booklet notes with the Pace I recall being fairly comprehensive. Now, where did I 'file' it?Originally posted by Mandryka View PostComment
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If you’ve got a bad heart I’d be a bit careful with Meubridge Munch. There’s a moment when it moves from very quiet to very loud which certainly made me jump.Originally posted by Bryn View Post
What has been a revelation to me is how much fire there is in History of Photography - I mean passionate music - as much as in English Country Tunes.
By the way, I noticed that Knoop has released an accordion recording on bandcamp which looks interesting.Last edited by Mandryka; 24-02-22, 10:14.Comment
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Folklore III and IV - I and II are available on commercial recordings.
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Now trying to think about the style differences (if any) between English Country Tunes, History of Photography and Folklore.Comment
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Every piece has its own distinctive features of course, although MF's pre-1980s music such as EC-T generally tends to have more extreme contrasts within a shorter timeframe (something like Song 9 being an extreme example), to be less concentrated into restricted registers, and to be less obviously alluding to other musics.Originally posted by Mandryka View PostComment
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Were you at the creation of Lokale Musik at Darmstadt? I ask because I just found this description of the event from Deborah Richards, one of the performersOriginally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
We musicians were standing around outside the school gymnasium in Darmstadt, most of us waiting to perform the intricate, ephemeral ensemble pieces that comprise Walter's extensive cycle LOKALE MUSIK. The audience had been amazingly hostile during my part in it, but I now infiltrated them because I wanted to hear the other pieces. From within the audience some French dudes started throwing paper airplanes and being generally rowdy. They thought they knew what was politically “correct” and they were behaving as if this were nazi music (without in fact even bothering to listen to it!). Backstage Walter had remained cheerful and supportive throughout, even joking about the situation. But in my row inside the hall Wolfgang Rihm and Helmut Lachenmann now began to make warning gestures toward the young Frenchmen, hoping to silence them or at least to prevent them from throwing their paper planes. When Helmut took off his shoe and began waving it in a threatening manner, it looked like as if we were heading toward a brawl ... What would have happened if Wolfgang hadn't so quickly succeeded in restraining Helmut and calming him down? And if he hadn't been waving his shoe around would those jerks ever have stopped? How could the musicians concentrate through all this hullaballoo and did Walter know what was happening out here? Although this may well have been the most undignified performance to date, after listening to the rest of the concert, I was quite proud to have taken part in LOKALE MUSIK - both on stage und off!Comment
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Radulescu sonata 4 -- Pavlos Antoniadis at the keyboard
The best performance of a Radulescu sonata that I've ever heardComment
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