Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Master Singers: Weather Forecast
In 1966 The Master Singers recorded a weather forecast as an Anglican chant.
An Interview With John Adams
FORA puts up an hour-long conversation with America's great composer John Adams. Touches on fascinating subjects, including which books on tape he listens to.
If there is ever such a thing as the Great American Composer (though I don't like to believe it's true), it very well might be Adams by the time he's through.
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Missing 18 1/2 Minutes
So much information became known about the major scandals of the Nixon administration during the release of the Oval Office recordings, many fascinating sub-plots got overlooked. Today is an appropriate day to draw attention to Nixon's long-term obsession with Olivier Messiaen. Nixon consistently loathed and distrusted the French musical avant garde as personified by Pierre Boulez, but his relationship with Messiaen was more complicated. Privately, he found Messiaen's music bewildering and decadent, but Messiaen's traditionalist religious outlook encouraged Nixon to view Messiaen as a "wedge" who could be used to divide and confuse his enemies. The following are key excerpts from the Nixon recordings:
-- On July 1, 1971, Nixon instructs Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to have someone break into the Darmstadt School, which refers to a group of like-minded European composers (e.g., Boulez, Stockhausen). Apparently Nixon believed the Darmstadt School had a physical location; the school was named for a series of summer courses that ended in the early 1960s:
NIXON: "I can't have a high-minded church organist ... I want a son-of-a-b----. I want someone just as tough as I am. ... We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy that will use any means. We are going to use any means.... Get it done. I want it done. I want the Darmstadt School cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that has somebody else take the blame."
-- On April 4, 1972, Nixon discusses Messiaen with Haldeman:
NIXON: "Return the calls to that poor dumb bastard ... who I know is our friend. Now do it ... We made the same mistake [Dwight] Eisenhower made, but not as bad as Eisenhower made, because he sucked the American Guild of Organists too much ... G-d damn it, don't talk to them for a while. Will you enforce that now?"
HALDEMAN: "I'll try."
-- On May 18, 1972, Nixon talks to Henry Kissinger about the National Security Adviser's meeting with Ivy League composers regarding Messiaen's oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ:
NIXON: "The Ivy League composers? Why, I'll never let those sons-of-b------ in the White House again. Never, never, never. They're finished. The Ivy League schools are finished ... Henry, I would never have had them in. Don't do that again ... They came out against La Transfiguration when it was tough ... Don't ever go to an Ivy League school again, ever. Never, never, never."
-- On Nov. 14, 1972, Nixon talks with his aide Charles Colson about his successful attempt to prevent Pierre Boulez from becoming President of France:
NIXON: "What in the hell did you think of Boulez's statement on the election? Wasn't that the sour grapes crap again?"
COLSON: "Well, it's unbelievable, the arrogance of the guy ... God, what a bad man. Just awfully glad we got him buried and put away for good. I think he is."
NIXON: "Oh, he's buried. He's buried."
From the indispensible Fredösphere
-- On July 1, 1971, Nixon instructs Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman to have someone break into the Darmstadt School, which refers to a group of like-minded European composers (e.g., Boulez, Stockhausen). Apparently Nixon believed the Darmstadt School had a physical location; the school was named for a series of summer courses that ended in the early 1960s:
NIXON: "I can't have a high-minded church organist ... I want a son-of-a-b----. I want someone just as tough as I am. ... We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy that will use any means. We are going to use any means.... Get it done. I want it done. I want the Darmstadt School cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that has somebody else take the blame."
-- On April 4, 1972, Nixon discusses Messiaen with Haldeman:
NIXON: "Return the calls to that poor dumb bastard ... who I know is our friend. Now do it ... We made the same mistake [Dwight] Eisenhower made, but not as bad as Eisenhower made, because he sucked the American Guild of Organists too much ... G-d damn it, don't talk to them for a while. Will you enforce that now?"
HALDEMAN: "I'll try."
-- On May 18, 1972, Nixon talks to Henry Kissinger about the National Security Adviser's meeting with Ivy League composers regarding Messiaen's oratorio La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ:
NIXON: "The Ivy League composers? Why, I'll never let those sons-of-b------ in the White House again. Never, never, never. They're finished. The Ivy League schools are finished ... Henry, I would never have had them in. Don't do that again ... They came out against La Transfiguration when it was tough ... Don't ever go to an Ivy League school again, ever. Never, never, never."
-- On Nov. 14, 1972, Nixon talks with his aide Charles Colson about his successful attempt to prevent Pierre Boulez from becoming President of France:
NIXON: "What in the hell did you think of Boulez's statement on the election? Wasn't that the sour grapes crap again?"
COLSON: "Well, it's unbelievable, the arrogance of the guy ... God, what a bad man. Just awfully glad we got him buried and put away for good. I think he is."
NIXON: "Oh, he's buried. He's buried."
From the indispensible Fredösphere
note from 2025: this is absoluely not original. This comes from before I knew how to properly source. Its authorship comes from a now offline wonderful blog, the Fredosphere, that was the funniest classical music thing online.
An Army of Bobby McFerrins
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
When did Bobby McFerrin get old? Whatever the answer to that, he's obviously still the same weird genius he always was.
12-tone Greatest Hits!
The greatest hits collection of the Second Viennese School. You vill enjoy it!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
We Can Haz Schoenberg
Cat piano videos are edited together to form a rendition of the first of Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke.
As accurate as any Steuermann recording....(cricket, cricket, cricket)
Hiroshima and the Care Bears
Care Bears episode plays against the score from Krysztof Penderecki's (in)famous Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.
Unfortunately embedding is disabled. But this video deserves some kind of Nobel Prize.
Yes, it's also the music used in everybody's favorite scene from The Shining.
Unfortunately embedding is disabled. But this video deserves some kind of Nobel Prize.
Yes, it's also the music used in everybody's favorite scene from The Shining.
Carmina Burana Alternate Lyrics
When Alex Ross posted this on his blog he seemed to imply that John Corgliano (guy who wrote the music from The Red Violin) was behind this....somehow that doesn't seem like his style.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Lang Lang plays Chopin with an orange...
Admit it. You like Lang Lang a little more after watching this.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Poem Symphonique by Gyorgy Ligeti
Submitted without Comment (except that non French speakers skip to 1 minute in):
Monday, August 3, 2009
A Couple More
Why not?
Dudley Moore Does a pitch-perfect Peter Pears again. This time in Schubert.
Dudley does Beethoven by way of a famous bridge. Painfully accurate.
Dudley Moore Does a pitch-perfect Peter Pears again. This time in Schubert.
Dudley does Beethoven by way of a famous bridge. Painfully accurate.
Changing Fashions: Beyond the Fringe
Nerds across America recite Monty Python by rote, yet whole British comedy troupes of equal quality have been swallowed up by obscurity.
The names Dudley Moore and Peter Cook will still ring an enormous bell today to Baby Boomer movie lovers (to say nothing of famed playwright Alan Bennett or theater director Jonathan Miller), but the troupe they belonged to: Beyond the Fringe, has been consigned to the dustbin of comic obscurity. The reason is not hard to see - Beyond the Fringe played upon the assumption that its average audience member was literate beyond today's average Ivy Leaguer. Watching them today, it is rather difficult to believe that they thought their audience was anything but Oxford Dons. And yet they were the comic stars of early-60's Britain.
Consider the infamous above clip, in which a piano-playing Dudley Moore is stopped by Peter Cook in a Bobbie hat, who proceeds to discuss Moore's piano playing as if it were drunk driving, and all the while using 400-year-old Italian musical terminology to describe it. It is utterly brilliant in an utterly obscure way.
Or consider the below clip, in which Dudley Moore not plays the piano in pitch-perfect imitations of Benjamin Britten and Kurt Weill, but also sings in pitch-perfect imitations of Peter Pears and Lotte Lenya. Clips like this made Dudley Moore the biggest name in England for a time, and yet how many people even know who Peter Pears is today?
So what can we do today to make Dudley Moore funny again?
The names Dudley Moore and Peter Cook will still ring an enormous bell today to Baby Boomer movie lovers (to say nothing of famed playwright Alan Bennett or theater director Jonathan Miller), but the troupe they belonged to: Beyond the Fringe, has been consigned to the dustbin of comic obscurity. The reason is not hard to see - Beyond the Fringe played upon the assumption that its average audience member was literate beyond today's average Ivy Leaguer. Watching them today, it is rather difficult to believe that they thought their audience was anything but Oxford Dons. And yet they were the comic stars of early-60's Britain.
Consider the infamous above clip, in which a piano-playing Dudley Moore is stopped by Peter Cook in a Bobbie hat, who proceeds to discuss Moore's piano playing as if it were drunk driving, and all the while using 400-year-old Italian musical terminology to describe it. It is utterly brilliant in an utterly obscure way.
Or consider the below clip, in which Dudley Moore not plays the piano in pitch-perfect imitations of Benjamin Britten and Kurt Weill, but also sings in pitch-perfect imitations of Peter Pears and Lotte Lenya. Clips like this made Dudley Moore the biggest name in England for a time, and yet how many people even know who Peter Pears is today?
So what can we do today to make Dudley Moore funny again?
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