Billy Idol, "Happy Holiday"

Charles Wuorinen, "A Solis Ortu" (1989)

A solis ortu usque ad occasum laudabile nomen Domini.

From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the name of the Lord is to be praised.1

1

Barak Hussein Obama

Pinheaded GOP strategist Ed Rogers actually made some sense yesterday when he dismissed Barak's chances in a presidential run.

Chip Franklin explains why.

RedHead

Longtime ANALOG friend, Jason Heinrich is premiering his first film at Studio 35 in Columbus, Ohio this Saturday. Check out the trailer at redhead-movie.com.

A Happy Thanksgiving from Kurt Weill

The Berlin Requiem (Weill/Brecht, 1929)
"Great Hymn of Thanksgiving"
"Ballad of the Drowned Girl"
"Epitaph"
"Legend of the Unknown Soldier Beneath the Triumphal Arch"
"Second Poem on the Unknown Soldier Beneath the Triumphal Arch"
"Great Hymn of Thanksgiving"

Worship the night and darkness by which you are surrounded
Come with a shove.
Look to the heaven above:
Day is already confounded.

Worship with fulness of heart the weak memory of heaven
It cannot trace
Either your name of your face
Nobody knows you're still living

Worship the grass and the beasts that have life and must perish
Lo!Grass and beasts
Like you partake of life's feasts
Like you they also must perish.

Worship the cold and the darkness and calamity dire
Scan the whole earth
You're a thing of no worth
and you may calmly expire

Cristóbal Halffter, "Noche Pasiva del Sentido" (1971)

The Game, "Compton"

Also Out Tomorrow

"Never Let Go"



"Bottom of the World"

Sufjan Stevens' Christmas Box Set Out Tomorrow

Replete with essay by Rick Moody and songs like "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!"

The Ark

"This Piece of Poetry Is Meant To Do Harm"

"Echo Chamber"

Mauricio Kagel, "Acustica" (Side Four)

The work consists of two -- almost separate -- plains; one constitutes the playback of a 4-track tape recorder with a fixed sequence, whereas the second derives from the playing of 2 to 5 musicians which can be varied from performance to performance in the construction of acoustic material and in the manner of interreaction. I have deliberately avoided combining both plains as I have always had the impression-also in my works which display similar problems-that the attempt to weld together electronic and instrumental music is more wishful thinking on the part of the listener than acoustical reality. (On the other hand, this blending is immediately attainable if the total sound comes from the loudspeaker).

The four-track tape was produced in Winter of 1969 in the electronic music studio of West German Radio, Cologne (WDR). The recording consists of purely electro-acoustically produced material as well as recordings of instrumental and vocal sounds which were not manipulated. (Apart from the instruments, the voices of Alfred Feussner and William Pearson are to be heard).

The point of departure for this tape-composition was to compound as homogeneously as possible, two categories of sounds, dissimilar in the nature of their production (a combination which seemed to me over-simplified when produced by means of a metamorphosis of the concrete recordings by filtering, ring modulation, alteration of the tape playback ). It should rather be achieved by similar treatment of instruments and electronic sound-production.

The similarity between the procedure in the composition of the electronic material and the way in which I set instruments and their playing-function, made a mechanical transformation - mechanical since electrical, but worked by hand-of the recording unnecessary.

The instrumental part of the work was written on approx. 200 filing-cards, in the top right-hand corner of which the relevant main-instrument is indicated by a symbol. Neither the order of the cards nor the manner of ensemble are specified-every action is, however, exactly predetermined. The performers always decide the point of their entries; this freedom demands, however, a perfect mastery of text and context. Thus the performers achieve more than a mere reproduction of their parts, as they incorporate influences from another in their playing as if they were audience of themselves.

ACUSTICA, one of my most extensive works of recent years, is written in memory of Alfred Feussner, my early-departed friend.

Mauricio Kagel, "Acustica" (Side Three)

...
Balloons as resonators for wind instruments and as (regained) air-supply in the production of oral processes;

Pipe-branch, a piece of narrow hose approx. 130' long with connections (on the ends of which organ pipes [mixtures] and penny-whistles are attached), which is fed by a compressed-air cylinder of 27 cubic feet capacity (an "aerophone" for collective use, where only generously-minded players can play together: should one of the performers divert the air-current for himself alone, all the others will be made silent);

Gas blow-lamp, to produce vibrations in pipes, the fundamental frequency of which is reached by altering its total length;

Mutes for wind instruments with built-in loudspeakers which permit a perfect diaphony with the simultaneous playback from the tape recorder of the blown notes;

Megaphones, likewise with built-in loudspeakers (also to be used by contestants, in which case power-saving cassette-recorders are switched on to drown the puny volume of the official side);

Humming-loudspeaker (the German term "Summenlautsprecher" derives both from "Summe" = sum and from "summen" = to hum), the diaphragm of which is worked on with various articles during the performance (so that the loudspeaker becomes more of an instrument than an actual loudspeaker).

Council for National Security Can't Guarantee Composer's Security

S.P. Somtow

And the hits just keep on coming from General Sonthi's coup. The latest gaffe in his Council for National Security's bid to rid Thailand of corruption was to pick a fight with the country's most famous composer, Somtow Sucharitkul. His new opera, Ayodhya, depicts the death of the demon-king Thotsakan (pictured below at right).



While that is a taboo in Khon, the country's traditional masked drama, it doesn't particularly extend to Westernized opera. Still, Sonthi's dunderheaded "interim government" promised that they would blame Somtow's opera if anything bad happened to them, and made him sign an agreement allowing them to ban the opera at any time.

Prelude, from Ayodhya
First Movement, from Requiem (commissioned by the previous government In Memoriam 9/11)

Mauricio Kagel, "Acustica" (Side Two)

(continued liner notes)

Some examples:

Castanette-Keyboard with a scale of diameters from 1 4/5" to 7 1/5" which can be "tuned" by means of double-bass pegs in the action-tention (with the result that even deep-sounding castanettes will sound clearly when played extremely quickly);

two sets of Bull-Roarers (one with an aerodynamic profile, the other out of plain pieces of wood), which are wielded by hand and worked by twisted rubber band.

Nail-Violin, a form of the idiophonic friction-instrument invented in the mid-18th century, with 16 iron rods of equal width but of different lengths (between 2 1/25 and 16 4/5"; temperature 15√8) which vibrate transversally when played with a cello or double-bass bow;

Roundpeg-Violin, a version of the nail-violin (9 wooden sticks between 3 23/25" and 3'; temperature 8√9);

Scabella, clapper-sandals worn by Ancient Roman choir-leaders, but fitted with a hinge in the middle of the sole, so that the performer can achieve audible results with the minimum of effort;

Hinged-board (Crepitacolo), a flat piece of wood with various handles attached which the iron parts hit according to the force with which it is shaken back and forth (a new version of the original church bell);

five-tongued Ratchet with common crankshaft, the cogwheel frequency of which is tuned in five stages, so that the loudness of the noise can be influenced by altering the tongue-setting;

Pick-ups and Diaphragms in as many forms as possible (other than the usual ones), in order to explore the devious route to higher sub-fidelity: e.g. plastic funnel and knife-feather and ukelele, sandpaper and drawing pin, matches with and without box;

Cross-blower for the timbre-modulation of the pages of a book;

-- from Avant Garde Project

Morton Feldman, "For Stefan Wolpe" (1986)

-- for chorus & vibraphones

Mauricio Kagel, "Acustica" (Side One)

From the LP: ACUSTICA (Deutsche Grammophon 2707 059)

Kölner Ensemble für Neue Musik

I. Christoph Caskel
II. Karlheinz Böttner
III. Edward H. Tarr
IV. Wilhelm Bruck
V. Vinko Globokar
Formation of the palyers during recording session:

		III
	II		IV
I				V

Produced by Karl Faust
Artistic supervision and sound direction: Mauricio Kagel
Recorded Studio Rhenus, Godof Bei Köln (28. - 31. 1. 1971)
Co-production with the West German Radio, Cologne (WDR)

Each side of the two records is to be taken as an independent section. The author does not expect the listener to follow the complete recording in one session.

ACUSTICA for experimental sound-producers and loud-speakers

One of the fundamental thoughts behind this composition is expressed in the actual invention of the sound-sources: new instruments as self-evident supplement to currently existent sound-makers (together with experimental acoustical equipment, the manipulation of which presupposes a diverse musical faculty).

George Harrison, "Dream Away"

Cartridge Music (Berlin-Style) LA Edition

Saturday, November 25, 2006
8:00 p.m.

at Dangerous Curve
an Experimental Exhibition and Performance/Live Art Space

1020 East Fourth Place
(500 Molino Street #102)
Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.

$8--12.00 sliding scale

Works:

James Tenney: Just Another Bagatelle
Istvan Zelenka : Nokturne Underground always Never Are Good
- 1 Reformation for 3 Readers world premiere

John Cage: Cartridge Music
Christian Wolff: Berlin Exercises

schematic


Performers:

Jessica Catron, cello
Johnny Chang, violin/cartridge operator
Jeremy Drake, guitar/cartridge operator
Marc Nimoy, electronics/cartridge operator
Michael Pisaro, electric guitar

Bobby Creekwater, "Let It Be"

You don't tug on Superman's cape...

You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don't mess around with Jim



GO BUCKS!!

Cold War Kids

"Hospital Beds"

"The Soloist in the Living Room"

Fritz Wunderlich

I was looking for some records to deface and make noisy. Instead? Ha, I have been searching for the music of Fritz Wunderlich for a while, especially his Viennese Songs. If you don't speak German (and mine is bad), the lyrics are about Love, Women and (when things are going well), looking at the world through the rosy rosy lense of well, these songs... ?

I posted 4 for your listening pleasure - the 4th is particularly slip-slurppery.








Wien, Wien, nur du allein



Denk dir, die Welt wär ein Blumenstrauss



Ich kenn' ein Wagerl im Helenental



In Wien gibt's manch winziges Gasserl

Josef Riedl, "Vielleicht-Duo" (1963/70)

The 'Vielleicht- Duo' (which originated from the sentence "perhaps it is so, but perhaps it is not so" from Buchner's 'Leonce und Lena') is written on the one hand for a vocalist who changes his sounds by means of water - whereby he speaks into a bowl of water or with water in his mouth - on the other hand for electronic sounds which imitate human speech by means of a Vocoder. It is a duet of alienated natural speech and naturalized artificial speech, which comes into being through the reactions of the vocalist to the tape - improvisation to a slightly improvised cantus firmus.

Animal Collective, "Winter's Love"

Josef Riedl, "Studien für Elektronische Klänge IV" (1959-62)

The Klaxons, "Atlantis to Interzone"

Jim Tenney in a water bottle

The following recording was done out at Giant Rock Airfield during Festival (6) Desert; a simultaneous performance of Mark So' haley's comet, jupiter, the stars, the open field [late summer, 1985] (2006) & jim tenney's for percussion perhaps, or ... (night)

This is one of many Jim Tenney tributes in the months/years to come. And I'm guessing the windiest...

"rooms of calarts"

James Orsher's transcriptions of 3 locations in the calarts building. Recorded in a performance at Sandpaper Books : your los angeles point for abrasive texts and other printed matter (Figueroa & 37th)

~

performers: johnny chang, lewis keller, james orsher, mark so, tashi wada

B318 mp3 (score)


Main Gallery mp3 (score)















R.O.D mp3 (score)

Josef Riedl, "Studien für Elektronische Klänge I" (1959-62)

Los Lobos, "The Valley"

These guys have had their nose to the grindstone for over two decades, and their new album is just the latest in a string of solid releases from one of America's best rock bands.

Josef Riedl, "Studien für Elektronische Klänge II" (1959-62)

Josef Anton Riedl's works are mostly remnants of functional music: when he has to write film or theater music which, as at it is, differs from that generally found in these categories - he composes it in such a way that the music can stand independently. The normal procedure of diluting an autonomous composition to fit a film or play is directly reversed: here one begins with the music and ends with an artificial independent work of art. The accidental motive which determined the choice of material is inherent to this work.

Ernst Bacon, "Alabaster Wool"

It sifts from Leaden Sieves
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road--

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain and of Plain--
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again--

It reaches to the Fence--
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces--
It deals Celestial Veil

To Stump and Stack--and Stem--
A Summer's empty Room--
Acres of Joints where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them--

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen--
Then stills its Artisans--like Ghosts,
Denying they have been--

Emily Dickinson

Josef Riedl, "Nr. 4/I" (1969)

Riedl was previously engaged in purely electronic music, in which every single passage must be prefixed and worked out in detail (as in his 'Studien'). Already here dynamic passages occurred which possessed the character of a process to a high degree, and then he worked in recordings of concrete sounds whose unprofiled contours unravelled the strict lay-out of the course - as in the 'Kompositionen 3 and 4/1'. For Riedl, electronic sounds became more and more material reservoir and generator - whether their output was added to film or theater productions, or whether the material was used as part of instrumental or vocal processes.

way better than episode 1

Josef Riedl, "No. 3" (1967)

In 1966/67 Riedl produced the film "Elektronische Musik" for the NDR in collaboration with Stefan Meuschel. For the documentary part, which dealt with the origin of this newest kind of music, Riedl made a variety of recordings of mechanical musical instruments. For instance he recorded the Wehe-Mignon-piano in the Deutsche Museum in Munich, which had retained many historical interpretations including some from Debussy, but which at the same time produced puffing noises; also the similar pneumatic action Hupfeld-Violine, a glockenspiel roll with Weber's Jungfernkranz music, and a machine which produced sounds by means of rods upon metal discs - and played La Paloma. The laughter and humming of the museum attendants also came into the recording of these singularly unusual instruments. Riedl amalgamated this and other material - chance discoveries and remains of film-work - into an electronic combination of square-wave tones, filtered and frequency-modulated sounds and other material, and added suitable concrete sounds which happened to be at hand (barking dogs, aeroplane noise, mumbling and hissing sounds etc.). By the careful integration of this material, making use of the slightest subtle variations, and by a highly differentiated treatment of the volume which imparted complicated amplitude envelopes to the processes, 'Komposition Nr. 3' was created. The origin of the work - the fortuitous discovery of a colourful world of sound - lends it freedom; the realization by means of integration secures its unity - a unity which combines strictness with sensitivity.

Matching Mole, "O Caroline"

Josef Riedl, "Paper Music" (1970)

Two performers handle various types of paper in various ways until the material has been used up. This is recorded on tape. In performance another set of paper is used up, but this time the performers improvise to their own tape, whereby the control of the reproduction is influenced by the live-performance: improvisation with feedback.

Interspecies Communications Inc. Presents:

Jim Nollman's "Realtime Interspecies Music", from the release, Belly of the Whale.

Not to be confused with the defunct Interspecies Music and Communication Research, Jim's Interspecies Communiciations Inc. sets up collaborations between animals and human artists. This tune features Jim on guitar and a pod of orcas on vocals. The lineup for the rest of the CD is pretty stellar, featuring such artists as Merzbow & Scanner.

Josef Riedl, "Polygonum" (1968)

Polygonum consists purely of improvisation to an improvisation. Two to four interpreters choose their own sound mediums, play them according to given rhythmic and dynamic structures. Then they work further with them, invent to the invention.

Josef Riedl, "Glas-Spiele" (1977)

Glas-Spiele (Glass Games) The "Glas-Spiele" were sketched in 1974 and composed in 1977 in two versions. Along with "Metallophonic Raum - Klangwerkstatt" (Metallophonic Space - Sound Workshop, 1974), this is one of Riedl's pieces for self-constructed instruments. Here the instruments are as unconventional as the manner of performance: they are made entirely of glass. The composer has described the
structure of his work as follows:

"Several systems of light metal tubes are placed in adjoining rooms, or in one large room. They are of various shapes and sizes, and resemble scaffolding systems.

Glass tubes, plates and rods varying in area (plates), length, thickness and diameter (tubes, rods) are arranged separately or in groups. Either they are freely suspended from the pipes of the system, or they lie on styrofoam in wooden 'caskets'. The latter in turn rest on tables made of light metal pipes etc. which may or may not be part of the system.

On different pipes in the system, several paths are constructed from various combinations of straight, U-shaped or other glass tubes. These paths vary in length, and resemble roller coasters.

The tubes, plates and rods have pitch, and are placed or suspended in a particular order (e. g. sequences of 'pitch', timbre and noise, continuums from timbre to noise etc.).

Tubes and rods of equal length etc. are tied together in bundles. The same is done to tubes and rods of different length (clusters).

Glass marbles of various sizes and numbers roll along the paths, falling at the end into glass containers of various shapes and sizes.

Tubes are brought into contact by hand, either individually or in groups. They are struck (lightly) against one another. Tubes, plates and rods, both lying and suspended, are struck with one or two glass marbles (per performer) and scraped for various distances (creating 'glissandi' with various numbers of pitches) and at various speeds. Sometimes, instead of marble(s), felt-headed drumsticks are used, one or two per player. The sticks may also be inverted (wood end on glass), or used in various combinations such as one normal and one inverted drumstick, marble plus normal stick, marble plus inverted stick etc.

A marble is used to write on a suspended glass plate. The 'writing' may consist of continuous texts such as letters; full stops, colons and semicolons, quotation marks, exclamation points, question marks, commas and dashes; minus, plus, percent and
paragraph signs, parentheses, slashes; individual numbers, columns of numbers, addition problem etc. It may also proceed at various speeds such as ritardando, accelerando, very slow, very fast, rubato etc. It is also possible to draw maps, landscapes, faces etc. at a quick pace. One or two marbles are used per player, and the sound is modulated by the different surfaces.

The resultant sounds and noises (including those from the containers) are electronically amplified by means of suspended and contact microphones, and are distributed to the rooms (or within the room) by means of a control panel and variously positioned loudspeakers. The amplification should never drown out the original sounds.

A tape with music obtained in a similar manner is played at the beginning of the piece.

Aluminium-coloured or 'white' metal tubes and transparent or 'white' suspended glass objects are brightly illuminated by several small spotlights attached to pipes in the system. These lights have narrow apertures and illuminate the metal or glass laterally with 'white' light so as to create colour spectra of various lengths (glissandi).

Sound/light structure(s), sound/light constructions)."

The composition proceeds along four levels. Level A is the tape containing sounds and noises similar to those called for in the piece. Once the tape has finished, level B begins. It is created by one or two players drawing angular lines on plates with marbles and thus defining the structure of the surfaces. These lines are repeated, each time with variations. The players also generate rhythms which are likewise constantly repeated, the rhythm remaining intact while the dynamics and tone colour change. Now Level C is added. It is performed by eight musicians, each playing the same program at different intervals of
time. First they strike the suspended plates and tubes, then write and draw with marbles on suspended and lying plates. This leads to a brief, very free passage using all materials in which marbles are rolled in the 'roller coaster' systems. Finally, in level D, noises take the upper hand. The piece ends with the dying out of the last sound or noise, however
soft.

Ideally, the audience should be able to move about freely in the room, discovering and rediscovering the sounds from different angles.

This disc contains an excerpt from "Glas-Spiele". Gisela Gronemeyer (Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)

Earle Brown, "Music for violin, cello, and piano" (1952)

Sunday, November 12, 8pm

Concert with guest composer and violinist, Thomas Stiegler (Frankfurt)

CalArts, ROD Hall

(1/2) Two pieces for solo violin (using very unusual playing techniques),

Sonata Facile (1993), Thomas Stiegler, violin (score)
Quasi una fantasia (1995), Johnny Chang, violin

(3) a piece for a reader (166 pages "read" in 11 minutes),
und.ging.aussen.vorüber (III), (2006), Stina Hanson, reader

(4) and one for a humming choir (exploring 'contrapuntal' breath patterns):
viel-leicht (2002), Experimental Music Workshop

+
(5) also a performance of Antoine Beuger's "Cantor Quartets" (2003)
Thomas Stiegler, Johnny Chang (violins), James Orsher (harmonium) and
Michael Pisaro (gutiar)

Earle Brown, "Music for cello & piano" (1955)

Mike Post Themes

In a tip of the hat to their newfound love of licensing, and the apparent prerequisite that all detective shows have a Who-like song as a theme, The Who have penned an ode to Mike Post on their amiable new album.

Who's Mike Post? Only the most brilliant TV theme writer of all time:

Hill Street Blues


Riptide


Quantum Leap


NYPD Blue


Doogie Howser, M.D.


Murder One


L.A. Law


Hunter


Hardcastle & McCormack


Magnum P.I.


The A-Team


Law & Order


The Greatest American Hero

Earle Brown, "Hodograph I"

Bruno Maderna, "Viola" (open form)

From Finnadar SR 9007:

Bruno Maderna: Viola

Maderna's death (on November 13, 1973, at the age of 53) did not make the front page: he was not one of your musical fossils. One obituary I remembered was in Le Monde: "The sun as well as the moon were always present in his music."

Viola was composed in 1971....[open form] is one of the many possible open-form versions. According to the composer's instructions, it can be started at any point of the player's choice, fragments and sections interpolated and any of these repeated at will, the composition played in whole or in part, and an ending found to the performer's satisfaction.

Ilhan Mimaroglu

Bruno Maderna, "Serenata 2"

Boulez, Maderna, Stockhausen

From TIME 58002:

Bruno Maderna's SERENATA # 2 (1954) reflects its author's sure mastery of practical orchestration. The composer's chief concern is with the harmonious fashioning and arrangement of delectable sonorities. The most drawn out of chords is used to catch one up in a shimmer of color, rather than in an expressionistic, functional context. In the first part, a striking use of consonant intervals suggests an evocation of the classical Italian serenade; an impression which is quickly swept away by the introduction of other, mobile sonorities, less familiar and less symmetrical, built up into good-humored, diminutive structures reminding the listener of Webern. These lead in turn to the most original pages of the score: series of repeated notes in evenly spaced rhythms, subtly varied, combined poly-rhythmically, and mixed toward the end with long, held notes stressing their figuration-a tableau of dark nocturnal towns, stirring with pulsation, of a type (judging by his many electronic works) for which Maderna seems to have a special poetic affinity.

BRUNO MADERNA was born in Venice in 1920. He graduated from the Conservatory of Rome in 1940 and subsequently attended the master classes in composition of Gian Francesco Malipiero in Venice. Mr. Maderna studied conducting with Antonio Guarnieri and Hermann Scherchen. He has composed extensively for orchestra, soloists and electronic media and has been, with Luciano Berio, co- director of the "Studio di Fonologia di Musicali" of Milan. He is one of the leading young conductors in Europe, specializing in new music, but also conducting works from all periods in the history of music.

-- from Avant Garde Project

Bruno Maderna, "Hyperion III"

Varese, Maderna
From Wergo 60029:

Of all the melodic instruments, the flute takes up a prominent position in New Music due to the interest that so many composers have shown in it. They have been stimulated by outstanding soloists and by the fact that this instrument offers a wide range of articulating possibilities. Severino Gazzelloni provides an insight into various stylistic spheres.

Bruno Maderna (1920): Hyperion III. "Hyperion III" is an interpolation of the earlier works "Hyperion I" (Aria for Soprano and Orchestra to texts by Holderlin) and "Hyperion II" (Stele per "Diotima", Serenata for Orchestra). Metrical orchestral tutti are opposed to improvised flute soli ranging from a lyrical hysterical character. This generates a fragmentary impression - the chasms between the orchestral tuttis and the flute passages are deliberately left largely unbridged.

Severino Gazzelloni has taken a decisive part in the rediscovery of the flute in contemporary music. Many works have been dedicated to him. He studied at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Now 52-years-old, he has been teaching at the Darmstadt Holiday courses since 1952, and is on the staff at the Summer School of Music, Darlington, of the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He is also solo flutist in the RAI Symphony Orchestra in Milan.

-- from Avant Garde Project

Bruno Maderna, "Juilliard Serenade"

Boulez, Maderna, Stockhausen

From Bvhaast 032-033:

Bruno Maderna April 21, 1920 in Venice, November 13, 1973 in Darmstadt. Italian composer, music researcher and conductor. After a career as an infant prodigy, he conducted the international chamber ensemble, Darmstadt, from 1958 to 1967. He conducted countless performances of modern compositions and fostered their promotion. Between 1967 in 1970 he taught composition and conducting at various courses and institutes. He was guest conductor of numerous European and American orchestras. In 1954 he founded with L. Berio the electronic music studio at Milan Radio RAI. His output includes practically all genres of present-day music: opera, solo concertos, chamber music, electronic music, works for solo instruments and symphonic music. His last work, the opera "Satyricon" 1973 was performed for the first time in Holland shortly before his death. He was unable to attend a performance, which was conducted by his pupil, Lucas Vis. Maderna published completely new versions of various works by Josquin Des Pres, G. Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Viadana and Vivaldi, demonstrating that the past does not survive merely by virtue of being revived, but by being brought up to date by the great minds of our time. These works are not "revisions" in the classical sense, but new compositions based on historical models. The proceeds of this record are for Maderna’s heirs, his widow Christina and his children.

If life had given him the fair deal Maderna had always hoped for, he would have been celebrating his 60th birthday on April 21, 1980. He died on November 13, 1973, a disillusioned and lonely man, abandoned by most of the people who have profited by his friendship. An infant prodigy who conducted the orchestra of La Scala Milan at the age of eight, he was torn throughout his life between the loneliness of fame and the loneliness of a man who gave music and musical life such powerful, impulses that those directing that musical life and their minions repeatedly spurned him whenever he looked like making things uncomfortable for them. He had perpetual doubts as to his qualities as a composer -- he, who mastered the technique of composing as no other. "I really only write Kapellmeister music", he once complained to me. My reply was that people have said the same thing about Mahler, and other great composers as well.

What made Maderna important as a composer and a spirit of his time was that he constantly and with the utmost refinement translated contemporary compositional techniques into an entirely personal musical language, passing on his experience in a highly unorthodox fashion to those he liked, to those he considered his friends. He had no "school", gave no good marks and would not tolerate a circle of chosen disciples. The new techniques and ideas which he conveyed to others were no mere fashions for them to follow slavishly. Maderna the Venetian was highly educated as no other composer of his generation, he knew the history of European music, not as a series of dead facts but as a living past, mirrored in the latest musical developments.

He treated orchestral players and soloists who appreciated him as a composer in the same way as he taught his composer-friends without lecturing them. He did not hold lengthy perorations on how to perform new music, he simply composed pieces for them. Especially in Holland, where he had the most enemies, but also the most friends, he found musicians who are willing without any fuss and with joy, to play the pieces he wrote for them. He composed them in hotel rooms when he was on tour, composed them without any doctrine whatsoever. Their language however, is so charming and personal that they deserve to be heard after his death.

The Juilliard-Serenade is one of the ultimate compositions by Maderna. It was composed in 1971. The first performance took place in 1972. This serenade is a synthesis between rigorous part-writing and free, improvised passages whose definite development can be determinated by the composer. The presentation of these four compositions resulting from musical life in Holland, two of its protagonists and Madera's activity in Holland as a composer and conductor, has just one aim: to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of this very special man and musician and to pay tribute to him on this occasion.

All those involved in both recordings have given their services free of charge to make this record possible. We are obliged and grateful to them, and with them, are convinced that Madera's spirit will continue to stimulate composers and musicians in Europe for a long time, and that it will go on fermenting their ideas.

Konrad Boehmer, translated by Ruth Koenig

-- from Avant Garde Project

From the Heart...

The news that Ed Harris is portraying the maestro in the forthcoming Copying Beethoven is welcome indeed, but the news that the story centers on (Everybody now!) the writing of the Ninth Symphony and a waifish female (of course) copyist is not. Harris put his finger on it in his query to the screenwriter, "Beethoven had a pretty interesting life, just historically, why are you introducing this other character?"

His response?

"I had to think of a way for him to express himself about what he was doing, and what he was thinking about, what music meant to him, etc. I had to give him a voice, and I felt this was a device that could work."

Pity that they couldn't focus on the concomitant writing of the 5th & 6th or the sublime Missa Solemnis:

...May it go to the heart

I. Kyrie

II. Gloria

Gloria in excelsis Deo
Quit tollis peccata mundi
Quoniam tu solus Sanctus

III. Credo

Credo in unum Deum
Et incarnatus est
Et resurrexit tertia die

IV. Sanctus

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
Benedictus qui venit

V. Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis pacem

Check out scenes from FESTIVAL (6) Desert

- as experienced by echo & mark_so


playlist

Antoine Beuger Dedekind Duos

Manfred Werder Stück 2004 (2)

Mark So 3 sounds in 3 stones [for christian wolff] (2006)

Thomas Claburn "i feel better after i type to you" (excerpt)

James Tenney for percussion perhaps, or ... (night)
&
Mark So haley's comet, jupiter, the stars, the open field [late summer, 1985] (2006)

Antoine Beuger Ba Da Duos

(also participating, folks out joyriding with crosscountry bikes & quads + a small group off to the side firing semi-automatic weapons)

Hey Do You Wanna Make Plans & Apologies?

"Two Left Feet"



"Wirez, Man!"

Paul Brill, "Don't Tell Them"

Songs of the Humpback Whales

This is the LP that launched a thousand cheesy New Age ships when it came out in 1970 (But that's not the LP's fault). Like the Interspecies Music and Communication Research recordings we've posted, it is part of the extraordinary emerging archive at Avant Garde Project.

1. Solo Humpback
2. Slowed Solo Humpback
3. Humpbacks
4. Distant Whales
4. Three Humpbacks

Liner Notes

From CRM Records SWR 118:

Listening Instructions

If possible, listen to the whale record through stereophonic headphones. Side II, in particular, becomes a totally different experience when heard through headphones. There is a lot of extraneous noise on this or any recording of ocean sounds. This can't be helped. Earphones seem somehow to reduce the distracting effect of the noise, giving a pleasant sense of vast echoey space-a mystical feeling that is very hard to describe. For some reason, this effect is seldom experienced fully with even the best loudspeakers.

When heard through headphones, the ocean noise seems a natural part of the whales' world. Some of the ocean noise is generated by waves, earth tremors, distant breakers, rain, grinding ice, stones tumbled by the tide, passing ships, various shrimp, fish, seals, and whales themselves. The sea in most places is alive with sound. The quietest parts of the sea are beneath the polar ice caps, far from industrialized man. The noises that most interfere with the Humpback whale songs are the low-pitched ones, and in recent years ship traffic noise has become a constant roar of low-pitched noise in the ocean, even far from shipping lanes.

As you will read in the booklet, noise pollution of the ocean may already be changing the lives of some whale species.

The quality of ocean sounds heard in a recording is affected strongly by the bottom topography of the area where the recording was made. In deep water there are chains of echoes from the surface and bottom following each loud sound. In shallow water the echoes return so quickly that they are seldom heard as distinct sounds. You will notice these differences in the separate tracks on the record.

Side I, Band 1 - Solo Whale

This is a portion of a recording made by Frank Watlington of the Columbia University Geophysical Field Station at St. David's, Bermuda. His underwater microphone (called a hydrophone) was in water about 1,500 feet deep, with a cable leading ashore to the recorder in his office. One day a whale happened by and remained throughout the afternoon, singing its song over and over again. Two songs have been selected for this record; they have been slightly edited by cutting out parts of two long, repetitive sections. Except for these deletions, the sounds have not been altered in any way-there is no speeding up, slowing down, or other modification of the sounds made by the whale. Presumably, this is the way the songs would sound to other whales.

You can hear the propeller noise of a large freighter passing far away; it is audible only as a very faint, high-pitched, wavering sound. You can also hear, in addition to this whale, the occasional soft, low cries of a distant whale.

Near the end of the band, there are two rumbling explosions. These were probably made by dynamite being used in acoustic experiments. The whale apparently did not respond to these sounds, for its song is the same as it was in other recordings when there were no explosions.

With the exceptions noted above, everything on this band is the song of a single whale. The sound that follows the first two cries-a noise that sounds to many people like a motor running-is part of the whale song. It is made up of a series of rapidly repeated low pulses.

Band 2 - Slowed-Down Solo Whale

This band consists of two short sections of very high notes from the songs of the previous band. They are the notes shown to the left in brackets. They have been slowed to one-quarter of the original speed. This drops the pitch two octaves and spreads the sounds out over a period four times as long as the natural sounds took. The intermediate loud, low sounds have been deleted from this version. When slowed down this much, the low sounds would be too low for most loudspeakers to reproduce.

The echoes are very noticeable in this slowed-down version, because the echoes of the earliest sounds overlap the later sounds in a very intricate and beautiful way. This band has been included to demonstrate the fantastic complexity of the highest tones in the Humpback songs.

Band 3 - Tower Whales

These songs are from recordings at normal speed of the whales that Dr. Payne and his wife heard on many occasions in 1969. They were often heard during the day near a "Texas Tower" standing on one of two shallow-water banks (underwater mountaintops) about twenty-five miles from Bermuda. Because the water is shallow, echoes return rapidly and are not heard distinctly.

The songs heard here are typical of those the Paynes recorded in 1969, and are noticeably different from the songs on many of Watlington's tapes. The Paynes are beginning to suspect that different herds or family groups of Humpback whales may have different song patterns or dialects. When one group is moving through an area, its songs would then be most frequently heard. The Paynes hope to gather further evidence to test this hypothesis on future trips.

The first whale you hear on this band makes some very low sounds. They follow directly after two high squeals. The basic notes of this low sound are actually complex pulses of sound. The low rate at which the pulses follow one another creates the effect of a very low-frequency tone.

Various creaks, groans, and sounds of ropes rubbing are heard, particularly near the end of this band. These noises are from the Twilight, the sailboat towing the hydrophones. They must be typical of the sounds that a whale hears as a sailboat passes nearby.

In fact, the Twilight is an unusually quiet sailboat. The Paynes found that their early recordings were cluttered with bangs and bumps that synchronized with the rolling of the ship. They found that even the tiniest item free to roll slightly in its place on the ship could create noises that carried through the sea to the hydrophones. Even ropes slapping against the mast produced distinct noises on the recordings.

"We spent hours hunting down various bumping noises," says Dr. Payne. "We wedged small items-batteries, cans of oil, and so on-into place until finally only one loud bang could still be heard. It occurred only in rough weather and was clearly synchronized with the roll of the boat. We searched from stem to stern, but could find nothing that was not secured. At last, one day we discovered that the rudder stock was slightly loose in its housing. As each wave rolled beneath us and tipped the boat, the stock swung from one side to the other of its housing like the clapper of a bell, causing the bang. We had to learn to live with this sound. You will hear the bang of the loose rudder stock on this recording, because the day on which the recording was made was very rough."

Band 4 - Distant Whale

These lovely, mysterious sounds are probably from a very distant whale. There is also an interesting, high-pitched tone that comes from the "singing" of a far-away ship's propeller. Acoustic engineers use the term "singing" to describe a constant loud note produced by the resonant vibration of some propellers. Other propellers, of only slightly different design, do not "sing." Propeller making is a subtle art, and the phenomenon of "singing" is one of its more obscure aspects. Trial and error remains the best method of building a quiet propeller, though we are beginning to understand some of the conditions that cause the noise.

Side II - Three Whale Trip

There are three Humpback whales singing at various times on this recording. There is also a lot of ocean noise. The winds had been strong the day before this recording was made and during the recording day the sea was still running high. Both of the Twilight's hydrophones were located near the ocean surface, where wave noise is loudest. After a few moments of listening, however, you will learn to hear much as a whale probably does, ignoring the background noises and focusing on the whale songs.

Dr. Payne made this recording from a sailboat near Bermuda during his studies of the Humpbacks there. "We found one spot," says Dr. Payne, "where the sounds of whales blended in a very lovely way. We occasionally stopped there to listen while on our way to make recordings at other locations. The Three Whale Trip was recorded at that favorite listening spot on an occasion when the whales sang all day and all night. We have deleted some repetitive sections. The material on the record is actually made up of four separate sections of our original recording spliced together. You will gain some idea from this side of the variety of whale sounds.

As you listen, you may notice a strange effect, particularly on the higher notes. A cry is heard softly at first; a moment later exactly the same sound repeats itself much louder. The first cry is probably traveling directly to the boat. The sound ray moves just beneath the surface and is soft because much of the sound energy has been deflected downward through the water. The second repetition is probably caused by sound rays reflected from the bottom and traveling directly to the shallow hydrophones on their first bounce. Because of the peculiar acoustics of this location, we have the unusual situation of an echo that is louder than the original sound.

The title of side two refers to more than the day's trip on which the recording was made or the voyage of the three whales who paused off Bermuda to sing that day. By playing on the slang meaning of the word "trip" as a mental voyage, this title also acknowledges what has been discovered time and again by people who have listened to the whales sing: the songs produce an extraordinary inner experience for anyone who lets them into his mind.

The songs seem to have a universal appeal. Dr. Payne has played whale songs for many thousands of people in a wide variety of circumstances-at lectures throughout the United States and elsewhere; at the home of influential statesmen with guests invited to hear the songs; in the living rooms of performing artists; at colleges; in concerts; in a dozen other situations-and always, whatever the occasion, the people who listened have been affected, often profoundly moved, by the songs. Folk singers have begun to sing about whales. Works of orchestral music have been composed with whale songs. Finally, through art forms and through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, lectures, and meetings of all kinds, people have begun to tell each other that the magnificent whale, now in peril of virtual extinction, must be saved. The world is "turning on" to whales.

DR. ROGER S. PAYNE, whose work produced this record and forms the basis of the accompanying booklet, has spent the last fifteen years doing research in biological acoustics and is currently at The Institute for Research in Animal Behavior operated jointly by the New York Zoological Society and The Rockefeller University. His studies began with work on the directional sensitivity of the ears of bats, which he did while still an undergraduate at Harvard University. He later received his doctorate in biology from Cornell University for brilliant work on the ability of owls to find their prey in complete darkness by hearing. He then did equally important work on moths, discovering their ability to judge the direction of bat sonar and thus evade capture. When asked how he reached the decision to do research on whales Dr. Payne replied, "The decision reached itself really. It was something I had wanted to do for a long while. Certainly, I wasn't first led to it through any particularly inspiring encounter with whales. I've had any number of wonderful days among wild whales since, but at the time I decided to study whales I hadn't even seen one. In fact, the first whale I did see was a dead one and the encounter was anything but inspiring.

"I was working in a laboratory at Tufts University one March night during a sleet storm when I heard through the local radio news that a dead whale had washed ashore on Revere Beach. I wanted to see it so I drove out there. The sleet had turned to rain when I reached the place. Many people had come to see the whale earlier but there were only a few on the beach when I arrived and by the time I reached the tidal wrack where the whale lay, the beach was deserted.

"It was a small whale, a Porpoise about 8 feet long with lovely subtle curves glistening in the cold rain. It had been mutilated. Someone had hacked off its flukes for a souvenir. Two other people had carved their initials deeply into its side, and someone else had stuck a cigar butt in its blowhole. I removed the cigar and stood there for a long time with feelings I cannot describe. Everybody has some ; such experience that affects him for life, probably several. That night was one of mine.

"At some point my flashlight went out, but as the tide came in I could periodically see the graceful outline of the whale against the white foam cast up by the waves. Although it is more typical than not of what happens to whales when they encounter man, that experience was somehow the last straw, and I decided to use the first possible opportunity to learn enough about whales so I might have some effect on their fate."

CRM RECORDS DEL MAR, CALIFORNIA 92014
Communications / Research / Machines, Inc.


The Discovery of the Humpback Whale Songs

WHALE SONGS have probably been heard, though seldom recognized as such, ever since man began to make voyages by sea. In the literature of whaling alone there are many accounts of strange, ethereal sounds, reverberating faintly through a quiet ship at night, mystifying sailors in their bunks. Long after such experiences were first mentioned, scientists were able to explain what caused them.

Sound travels by creating vibrations between molecules. How well it travels depends, among other things, upon the density of the medium through which it passes. Because water is a much denser vehicle than air, an equally loud sound travels much farther in water than in air. But although a whale sound may be quite loud and may carry great distances in water, it hardly transmits at all from the sea surface into the air because the distance moved by vibrating water molecules is very small, whereas air molecules must move a relatively greater distance (at lower pressures) for a sound of the same loudness.

Therefore, vibrations made by ocean sounds can only move the air above the surface very feebly and thus very little sound energy gets across the barrier between water and air. Wood, however, is intermediate in density between water and air so it serves, though rather poorly, as a transformer between them through which sound can travel more effectively from one medium to the other.

This process is called coupling or impedance matching. The coupling of sound from water to air occurs at all times through the hull of a wooden boat at sea, but the sounds are seldom heard, either because the vibrations that reach the air are too weak to be picked up or because there is too much noise on board for the sea sound to be noticed. Occasionally, however, when a marine sound is loud enough and the ship is quiet enough, it can be heard on board quite clearly. Thus, whalers could occasionally hear whale sounds though they often had no idea it was a whale making them.

Knowledge that whales might make sounds has evolved only in the last few decades, and it has been shown only in the last few months that the sounds of one species, at least, occur in true song forms. This discovery was made by Dr. Payne and Scott McVay.

Dr. Payne learned from Dr. H. C. Frick, a trustee of the New York Zoological Society, that Humpback whales could be found off the coast of Bermuda. He was offered the opportunity to join Dr. Frick there on his boat and, with his wife, Katy Payne, he made his first trip to observe Humpbacks in April of 1967. While in Bermuda, Dr. Payne also met Mr. Frank Watlington, an engineer with the Columbia University Geophysical Field Station at St. David's, Bermuda. Dr. Payne had learned that Mr. Watlington, while studying sound propagation in the ocean, had recorded a great number of extraordinary marine sounds, which he had later determined were made by Humpbacks. Dr. Payne and his wife were eager to hear these sounds and found Mr. Watlington more than willing to aid their research.

"We met," said Dr. Payne, "at Watlington's invitation, on an oceanographic vessel he was using that day for research. In a small compartment of the ship, among a number of items in a relay rack, Watlington had a tape recorder containing the whale sound reel. He was installing equipment in that compartment when we arrived and, since there was no place else to listen to the tape, Katy and I first heard Humpback sounds over the roar of a generator and blower. Even so, what we experienced in that crowded, noisy compartment were the most fascinating and beautiful sounds of the wild world I had ever heard. Watlington gave us a copy of the recording and when we returned to New York we played it hundreds of times.

"I was impressed by the variety of sounds on the tape. At first, I assumed they were being uttered in wholly random sequences, but after weeks of listening to the tape I one day became aware that the sequence of sounds seemed to repeat after a long interval. So I decided to go back to Bermuda and, among other things, test that idea through direct observation."

Dr. Payne returned to Bermuda the following April on a grant from the National Science Foundation. Among the other things he wanted to find out on his 1968 trip was whether he could approach the Humpbacks in a small boat and, by attaching a device that would enable him to remain near them, gain the acceptance from them that would permit closer study. During one such experiment a coincidence confirmed Dr. Payne's inference that the sounds he'd been listening to for so many hours were in fact being cycled through recurrent patterns.

Dr. Payne's discovery occurred not through the electronic equipment he later used to corroborate it but through the process of sound coupling that had brought the sound of whales to human ears for centuries.

"On that day," he recalls, "I was well off the coast in a plywood rowboat. For hours I'd been trying, with no success, to get closer than 50 feet to the Humpbacks surfacing around me. I was rowing with muffled oars so that I wouldn't frighten the whales. I was just beginning to gain on a pair of Humpbacks I'd been chasing for quite a while when they went down for a long dive. As I sat quietly at the surface I heard Humpback whale sounds, coupled directly through the speaker-like hull of my rowboat. I had no hydrophone with me then so I couldn't record what I heard, but the sounds were very clear and startlingly familiar. I recognized the sounds the diving whale was making as being like those on Watlington's tape. And I slowly realized that the sounds were occurring in the same sequence I had heard so many times on one section of the tape. Considering the great variety of sounds Humpbacks make, it was a lucky coincidence that the whale diving beneath my rowboat had produced the same sequence Frank Watlington recorded years earlier."

After he had discovered that the Humpbacks produce their sounds in song forms, it remained only for Dr. Payne to demonstrate such occurrences by spectrographic analysis of the Watlington tape. The first spectrographic printout was made by Mr. Scott McVay, an assistant to the president of Princeton University, who, though without formal scientific training himself, has taken a great interest in the conservation of whales and has worked with Dr. Payne. The spectrographs showed quite clearly the recurring sequences of sound, and Dr. Payne determined to make a third trip to the whale grounds the following April in order to make more recordings.

"The experiences I had in my first two seasons off Bermuda," he said, "persuaded me that if I wanted to learn anything more about Humpbacks, I would have to be at sea as much of the time as possible and particularly at night. I'd learned that Humpbacks are vocal both in day and night. So I needed a boat in which I could remain at sea day and night. And, of course, I needed hydrophones and recording equipment through which to listen and take down the sounds."

With a generous grant from the New York Zoological Society, Dr. Payne chartered the Twilight, a 35-foot sloop owned by E. M. Gosling of Bermuda. He outfitted the boat with amplifiers and recorders and rigged it so that hydrophones, which are underwater microphones, could be trailed behind the boat on about 150 feet of wire. The object was to hang two hydrophones off the stern of the boat on trolling polls, keeping them far enough apart to allow some sense of a whale's direction by listening in stereo. This method produced excellent stereo recordings but did not work very well as a method of finding the whales.

There were six members of the Twilight's crew on the April 1969 trip. "It was a delightful group," Dr. Payne said, "with quite varied backgrounds. The captain, Anthony Kaesbey, is a retired Canadian Naval officer who teaches school in New York City. The mate, Paul Hyslop, is a Nova Scotia forester who has had a great deal of experience aboard sailing boats. And there was Ron Johnson, an extraordinary engineer who has a laundry business in Los Angeles; Victoria Rowntree, an assistant to the curator of wasps at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology; me; and my wife, Katy, an artist and scientist who by now knows more Humpback whales by their songs than does anyone alive."

The usual pattern followed on the recording trips was to leave in the morning or afternoon, stay out the whole night, and return at dusk the following day. The trips concentrated on areas in which local observers had seen Humpbacks in previous years. On reaching such an area, the Twilight would crisscross back and forth over an offshore bank recording the sounds and testing a theory that the Humpbacks were roosting at night there in the shallow water. "During these trips," Dr. Payne said, "we began to build up a faint picture of the daily cycles of the whale's activity, but it is still very sketchy and it may be years before I have any deep confidence in what I have to say about what they are doing in the Bermuda vicinity."

When asked about the safety of the recording trips taken at night in the midst of such big animals. Dr. Payne said, "I suppose people ask about that because they've read descriptions about the perils of whaling. You know. Sperm whales biting a boat in half or smashing it to splinters with their flukes. But what most people know about such things comes out of novels and adventure stories. In fact, when events of that sort did occur during a whale hunt, it was because the whale had been harpooned and, usually, because it was being lanced-when someone with a piece of steel 6 feet long was thrusting it into the whale's body, trying to pierce its lungs or heart. Anyone near such a large animal writhing in the final agony of that kind of torture would obviously get hurt if he got in the way. It's hardly a sign of viciousness if a whale down to its last defenses bites at anything in reach.

"I have never killed a whale, nor tried, nor will I try, so my experiences with them have all been pleasant. They are like cows, really, and seem to me to be the most beguiling, gentle creatures on earth.

"The main problem in studying them is getting close enough. I don't think there is much possibility of being harmed by them. I'm sure they're too alert not to notice my boat in their area so I have never felt the slightest worry that some whale might smash into me from below when it's breaching. I have had a Humpback whale breach within a few yards of a small rowboat I was in-so close I was splashed by the spray. That's not a story of bravery but rather of a delightful encounter, and if I can survive the part of my life I spend in a city, I am sure I will survive those portions spent at sea.

"Everyone on that trip with me feels as I do about the docility and the great charm of those Humpbacks. It was interesting that, regardless of our dissimilar walks of life, we were all moved by their songs. There was often a perceptible feeling aboard that someone else had had the headphones long enough and really should pass them on.

"During our five weeks in the vicinity, we began to learn some few things about the whale's behavior and we made hundreds of hours of recordings. Every moment that we were out on the ocean someone was always listening."


The Study of the Songs

IF THE IDEA of a whale "singing" seems odd, the cause may lie in the several meanings of the word "song." Quite apart from any esthetic judgment one might make about them, the sounds produced by Humpback whales can properly be called songs because they occur in complete sequences that are repeated. Bird sounds are called songs for the same reason. Birds sing songs that are repeated fairly exactly and Humpback whales too are very faithful to their own individual sequence of sounds. Humpback whale songs are far longer than bird songs. The shortest Humpback song Dr. Payne has recorded lasts six minutes and the longest more than thirty minutes. The pauses between Humpback songs are no longer than the pauses between notes within the song: in other words, they are recycled without any obvious break. Again, in contrast with birds, who complete a song

before pausing, it doesn't seem to matter where in its song the Humpback starts or stops, although they usually start in a section that includes low frequency pulses followed by sustained tones.

Because Humpbacks appear to interrupt and resume their songs at any point in the sequence, it is impossible to say at present what is the beginning and what is the end of a song.

To see how the sounds fit into a song you can follow the shorthand representation of the song shown here. A spectrograph machine was used to analyze the sounds, and the charts it produced are very like musical notation. The pitch of a sound is represented by its vertical position on the page-the higher the pitch, the higher its mark appears on the page-and time is represented by the length of the mark. The machine advances at a constant rate, with its sensitive marking point riding on a continuous roll of paper. It keeps printing a mark as long as the tone lasts, following it through whatever pitch range it covers. Thus, a short line represents a brief note, a longer one a longer note, and the vertical position of the line tells you how high the note is.

The spectrograph prints everything it hears-all the extraneous noises as well as the sounds of the whale, plus harmonics of those sounds. If you want to see only the whale sounds, you have to copy them out, leaving the noise behind, as we've done in the second illustration here.

There are several song types. Any one song type consists of a constant number of themes given in the same order. Each theme is composed of phrases. The principal difference between successive songs is the number of phrases in each theme. No theme is ever completely omitted, but sometimes a whale will repeat a phrase many times before going on to the next theme. Thus, songs, while composed of the same number of themes sung in the same sequence, may be longer or shorter depending on how long the themes are-that is, how many times a phrase is repeated in any given theme. There is a further complication in that the phrases of some themes slowly change with each repetition, so that those near the end of a theme are quite different from those at the beginning.

Different Humpback whales sing different songs, sometimes on the same pattern of themes as Side I, Band 1, but sometimes not.

Katy Payne has analyzed a great many songs and has discovered that although there is a very rough overall species pattern, individuals have enough specificity to their songs that they can be recognized by their voice patterns. The evidence for this is indirect and is based on the fact that the Paynes have repeatedly heard the same song sung in the same place near Bermuda day after day. The simplest assumption is that it is the same whale.

We know very little about whale songs. For example, we have no idea which sex produces the songs, or whether both do. We know nothing about the behavior that accompanies the singing. We do know that whales can hear, for they dive suddenly after a loud noise, yet we really have no direct evidence that they respond in any way to the songs of other whales.

Most people who have just heard the songs for the first time seem eager to believe that the whales have some form of meaningful communication. But as yet we cannot really say whether that is true.

We do know something about the transmission of sounds through the ocean, however, and speculations based upon this knowledge may be useful in considering what the whale might be capable of.

Douglass Webb, an engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has had a lot of experience in designing and producing equipment that can be tracked in the ocean by the sounds it emits. He and Payne have made a few preliminary calculations of the distances the loudest sounds of another species of large whale, the Finback, might be transmitted under the best of circumstances. They are presently preparing a more thorough discussion of this topic, but surprising conclusions are already emerging. It seems hard to believe, but one Finback may be able to hear sounds made by another tens or-under the best circumstances-even hundreds of miles away.

In the early days of radio, it would have been hard to believe that a hand-held box weighing a few pounds would allow someone in New York to talk with someone in California. Yet under the most favorable atmospheric conditions, radio operators have communicated over that range with very low-power transmitters. As we all know, conditions can also be so bad that even powerful stations relatively close at hand are drowned out by static and noise. However, if you were a Finback whale and had a very simple message to get across with no particular urgency-say, a message that simply indicated, "someone is here"- perhaps you would be willing to wait out the long periods of unfavorable circumstances for the occasional relatively short periods when transmission over long distances was possible.

It seems possible that, like Finback sounds, the Humpback's low tones might be used to maintain some form of contact among widely scattered individuals traveling as a herd. Sounds would provide the best means for such contact in the ocean, where visibility is very limited. Such a system would work only if the animals using it were vocal much of the time and Humpbacks are. Wild Porpoise herds are highly vocal, and probably use some of this activity to keep in contact. We now know that Humpbacks sing songs during at least part of their migration in the North Atlantic and Pacific, but probably do not sing on their shallow-water summer feeding grounds. These songs may turn out. to be the way that the herds are called or kept together as they move slowly northward, while spread out over a relatively broad area of the ocean.

"These speculations may seem of little consequence," says Dr. Payne," but they give some idea of the kind of things we hope to find out in the future-the possibilities that seem worth investigating. For such investigations, I hope to develop equipment to follow herds of whales and to live with them for long periods while studying their behavior. This will require support and lots of time. The funds obtained from sales of this record will be used in part for such studies.

"My major concern at this time is to prevent the destruction of these delightful animals. It would be sad indeed if their numbers were so reduced that we could not learn more about them, now that we have reached a point in history where we may be able to learn something significant about their behavior. The other part of whatever funds we can raise will be used to push for the significant survival of whales."

Roger Payne's analysis of whale songs

Outrageous Cherry, "Paranoid World"

Interspecies Music and Communication Research Presents:

Beluga Herd: In various inlets along the Arctic shoreline, massive herds of Belugas gather to mate in the spring. Aerial photographs have shown concentration of more than 100,000 Belugas in one single area of the Arctic. Bearded seals can be heard from time to time. Moving slowly through the herd, we hear Belugas engaged in various activities and even a pod of Narwhals.

Spend Your November Alone With Hope Flies

Sun Zoo reminds us of Diddy: excruciatingly weak flow paired with strong production. Diddy's a production genius, but this kid could get there someday. He's certainly off to a solid start with Hope Flies.

Plus, you gotta love someone who samples Beethoven and takes his publicity photos in the stacks at Brown:

"November Alone"

Prokofiev's Diaries Are Out

Seven years of Prokofiev's prodigious diary have been published in the UK. Hopefully, we'll end up with the portion that covers the writing of Peter & the Wolf, not just because it's such a brilliant piece, but because it comes from that bizarre time of his life when he willfully returned to the Soviet Union, which so many of his compatriots would have gladly fled.

This recording is of his own piano reduction.

Interspecies Music and Communication Research Presents:

Orcas & Belugas: These whales (belugas) belong to the Monodontidae family and are found in Arctic waters. They grow to an average length of fifteen feet and their skin is snow white when they reach maturity. Most of our research seems to indicate that Belugas live in a loosely knit social structure, congregating at various times of the year, then separating into smaller pods throughout the remaining months to search for food when the supply is scarce. A shy whale, the Beluga seldom seeks contact with humans, and when encountered in the St. Lawrence, a few whales from a much larger pod would circle the stopped boat while the other whales moved to safer locations a few miles away from us. This behaviour seemed to indicate a form of organization aimed at protecting the largest number of whales possible. We also noticed, on other occasions, that Belugas work together, forming a line to herd schools of fish towards the shore, into schoals and lagoons where they feed, taking turns while other members of the pod keep the fish from escaping.

Orcas have always been a main enemy of the smaller and slower Belugas. In this piece, a large group of Belugas are feeding in the open sea. Orcas are suddenly heard in the distance. At first the Belugas are quiet, then, excited, they head for the shore and shallow waters in search of safety. A few older whales remain behind to act as decoys for the approaching Orcas.

who misses baseball ?

Interspecies Music and Communication Research Presents:

Orcas: This dolphin, immediately recognizable by its large dorsal fin and the white markings on either side of the head, is the undisputed master of the sea. Feared by all other creatures, its call is more than enough to send seals scampering for safety on the shore. Research seems to indicate that a male Orca has one female mate for life, and that Orcas live in pods of six or more whales, led by the oldest bull, who more or less supervises the actions of the younger members of the pod. The male Orca can grow to lengths of 30 feet, with a tall, erect dorsal fin. The female is smaller and the dorsal fin is hooked. These dolphins are the only ones to eat warm blooded sea mammals, such as sea lions and smaller dolphins, and have also been known to group together to attack some of the larger and slower whales, such as the wounded finback or sperm whale. Orcas are found in all the seas of the world, warm and cold, and seem to prefer coastal waters.

TOMORROW @ Il Corral, Thursday November 2, 2006

9.30-ish pm

662 no. heliotrope dr
(just south of melrose)
los angeles, ca 90004


Tatsuya Nakatani solo percussion

Percussionist from Japan/NYC performs a solo improvisations using bowed cymbals, prepared drums and other resonant objects. An internationally renowned improviser, he instinctively approaches sound in a ritualistic, almost shamanic manner which often results in powerful, visceral performances.



The Music of Earle Brown
(with visiting UK clarinetist, David Ryan)






An ensemble of instrumentalists performs one world premiere and several rarely heard scores from the New York School composer Earle Brown led by clarinetist David Ryan from London. New interpretations of these classic graphic and open notation scores will be performed by flutist Ellen Burr, violinist Johnny Chang, cellist Jessica Catron, contrabassist Jeff Schwartz, multi-reedist Chris Heenan, guitarist Jeremy Drake and Ryan.





Here are some tracks from Dal Niente Project to get your ears going...

November 1952 version 2
Corroboree for 3 pianos
December 1952

Also my own realization of November 1952 for violin and piano (traci esslinger).