In 95 years of life, Carl Ruggles composed only 84 minutes of music - including his masterpiece for orchestra,
"Sun-Treader". Charles Seeger called it "dissonant counterpoint". Charles Ives called it simply "strong, masculine music". In 1980, Michael Tilson Thomas recorded all of it for a long-out-of-print 2 LP set that has never been reissued on CD. Today, with almost none of the music from this significant American composer commercially available in any form, the Internet Archive has performed a valuable cultural service by hosting a 24-bit lossless rip of the Tilson Thomas set. It is
powerful stuff.
posted by Trurl
on Nov 13, 2011 -
32 comments
[Arvo] Pärt’s mature style was inaugurated in 1976 with a small piano piece, “Für Alina”, that remains one of his best-known works. It is governed by the compositional system that he called “tintinnabuli,” derived from the Latin word for “bells.” The tintinnabuli method pairs each note of the melody with a note that comes from a harmonizing chord, so they ring together with bell-like resonance. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Oct 27, 2011 -
53 comments
One of America's most idiosyncratic musical geniuses was, of course, the great Thelonious Monk (
Wiki), and what better way to celebrate his birthday today than viewing (in its entirety!) an excellent documentary on the man and his music?
Straight, No Chaser
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Oct 10, 2011 -
25 comments
Argentine folklore composer, pianist and director
Ariel Ramírez died last night after a long illness. Those who know of him abroad probably do so for his Misa Criolla. This is just the (deservedly famous) tip of a giant iceberg of Argentine music, as he was teacher to many, collaborator to a lot more, cataloguer and promoter of traditional folk music and dances, and defender of local composers rights since his early years of fame.
[more inside]
posted by Iosephus
on Feb 19, 2010 -
6 comments
A favorite of
John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti, the latter describing his music as "so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional...the best of any composer living today,"
Conlon Nancarrow's
musical ideas were nevertheless too complex and technically demanding for human performers, and his political ideas too radical and leftist for McCarthy-era America. Expatriated to Mexico, the Texarkana-born avant-gardeist
lived most of his life in isolation, in a cluttered, dusty
studio surrounded by records, piles of books, empty Vodka bottles, newspapers, cigarette cartons, and the tools of his trade: 2 old player pianos and a custom-built
piano roll press.
[more inside]
posted by swift
on Feb 15, 2010 -
16 comments
Luigi Russolo was a
futurist painter,
experimental composer, and
instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "
The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the
Intonarumori to bring these new sounds -
"the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them,
then and
now.
posted by fire&wings
on Oct 28, 2009 -
10 comments
British composer and TV presenter
Howard Goodall presents a documentary exploring the influences and theory behind the music of The Beatles, and the transformation of their sound over their recording career.
Part
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6 on Youtube.
But that's not all...
[more inside]
posted by Magnakai
on Sep 9, 2009 -
30 comments
You folks out there in MeFi Town been keeping up with the
water themed
MeFi Music Challenge? There's been some mighty fine uploads for you to check out! But if there was
ever a piece of music deserving the
water tag, it's
this drenching wet masterpiece by Brazil's brilliant, eccentric musical genius
Hermeto Pascual, in which Hermeto and his band play bottles full of water, and flutes full of water, and, well, the lake. Música da Lagoa: water music at its very best. And its very wettest.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jul 6, 2007 -
8 comments
Frank Zappa - The Gigantic Spoken Word Project. Numerous volumes of a very large collection of Frank Zappa spoken word releases.
They consist of radio interviews and journalist reporter type personal interviews. During the radio interviews sometimes music was played as background or added before the broadcast in between questions and answers. Sometimes FZ acts as D.J., plays records from his collection and talks to the radio audience. But the main focus of this series is FZ interviews which to me is as interesting as his music. (Just a quick warning; the download mechanism is a tad annoying)
posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Jul 5, 2007 -
6 comments
Was Richard Rodgers The Greatest American Popular Composer So Far? 2002 is his Centennial. He may be less cool and more bourgeois than the other greats like Harold
Arlen, Irving
Berlin, George
Gershwin, Jerome
Kern, Frank
Loesser, Cole
Porter and Stephen
Sondheim. But even the most cursory look at the long list of the wonderful songs he wrote(try the excellent
song search feature), with
Hart, then
Hammerstein(and some other lyricists, including himself)makes it very difficult to deny there never was - and probably never will be - a more talented and versatile tunesmith. Miles Davis was right. He
was a genius. And yet...[
Flash required for the (interesting) intro]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 18, 2002 -
41 comments
