Recommend me some Stockhausen...

[Cheesypoof]

She blatantly didn't say that. You must have misheard.

Wikipedia is your friend.

she 'blatantly' did say it, word for word right here

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco6/Bjork/bjorkfr.html

re stockhausen, i got into him from reading around the influences of her brilliant album medulla. thats how i found stockhausen, through bjork

 

[killer b]

you're right, she did say it.

she's wrong though.

 

[kyser_soze]

Yeah, she is wrong. Stochhausen was writing at a time when there were many electronic experimentalists - Moog, musique concret movement, Xenakis, BBC Radiophonic Workshop (who were among the first people to build synths)...loads of them...

 

[ViolentPanda]

Bjork is a better source on this than you, IMO

Ah, it must be that Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry never existed, that Lee DeForrest and Thadeus Cahill are mere figments of my imagination, that anyone playing one of Laurens Hammond's inventions before the 1950s was a spectre, then.
Are you even aware of how much music was written in the 1930s and 40s that was scored for electronic instrumentation (from audio frequency generators to theremins and ondes martinots)?

Bjork my hairy Yiddish arse.

 

[poului]

you're right, she did say it.

she's wrong though.

something lost in translation, more like.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Double post.

 

[danny la rouge]

I meant that to think that it all sounds the same means that he hasn't listened. Because it doesn't, regardless of whether or not one likes it.

I have no idea what happens with JC's ears, (nor indeed, between them! ) but while I agree that Stockhausen doesn't all sound the same to me, I can imagine people who don't like it thinking it does because they don't like it. Just as people will sometimes say that all dance music sounds the same, whether that be happy hardcore, indietronics, glitch, dubstep, or ambient. Now to me they are self evidently all very different. To my mate Paul, they're all "doof doof doof" at different speeds.

 

[ViolentPanda]

i'd wager that there werent synthesisers in 1952, yes.

There were.
Mostly great big dirty modular synthesisers utilising analogue circuitry rather than mini-moog type electronics, but synthesisers nonetheless.

who made electronic music before stockhausen?

Pierres Henry & Schaeffer, Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varese, Leuning and Ussachevsky (to name but a few)

All that Stockhausen did was to make use of musique concrete-style tape editing to organise and manipulate electronically generated sounds into a composition that could be "sold" to the public as avant garde music. It's arguable that if he hadn't spent 1952 in Paris with Boulez and been exposed to Henry and Scaeffer, he wouldn't even have stumbled on electronic sound generation.

 

[Cheesypoof]

something lost in translation, more like.

explain what she meant then, smartypants and translate it, im interested!

 

[perplexis]

explain what she meant then, smartypants and translate it, im interested!

No she's just wrong.
It's probably because of hyperbole rather than a desire to mislead though.

 

[Cheesypoof]

No she's just wrong.
It's probably because of hyperbole rather than a desire to mislead though.

shes very like that. Thats why i like her, she doesnt do greys, she expresses herself using extremes so its all just black and white.

back to stockhausen. The youtube interviews are good. check em.

 

[slainte]

sorry cheesy I absolutely love what stockhausen outputted in fact I really think he was a genius with the invention of speechsong and taking sounds from bird song and pitching it down several octaves etc. and creating some instruments aka types of synths for his work.
However music concrete was already in major output prior to this using loops by people such as Pierre Schaeffer and later Max Mathews from Bell Telephone Laboratories dubbed "father of computer music" so of his work was used in kubricks 2001 space odyssey.

Although I think most of the Russian composers with their darker output kicks ass probably appealing to my own moody celtic nature

 

[Cheesypoof]

you dont have to apologise to me. I only know what i like from sounds. I am just a listener though, not a music historian and have no indepth knowledge of musical history.

how did you all get into Stockhausen anyways? I got into him, as i said, from my love of Bjork's vocal album Medulla, and intrigue of its influences, one of which is Stockhausen.

How do you all know so much? Not many i know liked medulla, quite a few people hated it, and i dont know many people who can sit there and tolerate stuff like daft, abstract sounds and experimentation that extreme! no one ever lets me play medulla for example so i listen to it alone, and i suspect the same with stockhausen as its very abstract, unusual music, although different of course. i know it is a bit perhaps odd to like this kind of thing. Is it odd in the music world though?
Do other people listen to it, are you much older than me (im 30), or do/did you all study music, as lots of the answers here sound like you do?

 

[slainte]

well I am able to play quite a few instruments and classically trained in voice belcanto rather than alexander technique yes coming from a family of musicans from both sides. I used to work in the "industry" here but essentially the short version is that
1: I also had a brain and could be quite technical and didn't kiss arse

2: End of point 1 above means that if you cannot do the marketing, go to the revelant parties and socialise in the correct circles then don't do it so I didn't and opted out.

I used to work for various labels such as rising high collection with Capser pound and laurence eliot potter and others.

I also did classical music so you know you work with are friends with people and you listen
I never try to judge music it is what it is just like a painting is a painting you understand and or like it or you don't.

Now I just do boring IT network stuff and keep my own life to myself. I don't subscribe to the this is your box and therefore you must only be of this mindset and do this ....people are a mixture of abilities and viewpoints/skillsets and thats it.


Im 36 by the way.

 

[Cheesypoof]

well I am able to play quite a few instruments and classically trained in voice belcanto rather than alexander technique yes coming from a family of musicans from both sides. I used to work in the "industry" here but essentially the short version is that
1: I also had a brain and could be quite technical and didn't kiss arse

2: End of point 1 above means that if you cannot do the marketing, go to the revelant parties and socialise in the correct circles then don't do it so I didn't and opted out.

I used to work for various labels such as rising high collection with Capser pound and laurence eliot potter and others.

I also did classical music so you know you work with are friends with people and you listen
I never try to judge music it is what it is just like a painting is a painting you understand and or like it or you don't.

Now I just do boring IT network stuff and keep my own life to myself. I don't subscribe to the this is your box and therefore you must only be of this mindset and do this ....people are a mixture of abilities and viewpoints/skillsets and thats it.


Im 36 by the way.

you sound like an expert to me with loads of experience. So i aint surprised you are familar with stockhausen. Good point about the painting, thats how i try to judge music as i know nothing. I just listen and like or dont. What i like is layers and textures preferably on top of each other, as well as unusual sounds, squaks, jangles and loops. So im as likely to like stockhausen as roni size or captain beefheart, because its music built on layers and or textures, and your ear is kept in suspense.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

How do you all know so much. Not many i know liked medulla, quite a few people hated it, and i dont know many people who can sit there and tolerate stuff like daft, abstract sounds and experimentation that extreme! no one ever lets me play medulla for example so i listen to it alone, and i suspect the same with stockhausen as its very abstract, unusual music, although different of course. i know it is a bit perhaps odd to like this kind of thing. Is it odd in the music world though?

"Unusual" this is the key point , if u stuck on some music from Madagascar generally people would have the same response. People have a range of music they trust and is agreed within their peer group.

In terms of listening, you need to retrain your ears to appreciate it for sure, it's very much of the 'moment' stuff alot of it. He is intensely interested in the sonic language as opposed to the traditional melody/development.

As with alot of contemporary music John Cage provides the answer here. Sitting and appreciating 'silence' with deep listening will equip you with good ears to tackle all the sonic arts and music.

 

[danny la rouge]

As with alot of contemporary music John Cage provides the answer here. Sitting and appreciating 'silence' with deep listening will equip you with good ears to tackle all the sonic arts and music.

I'm sorry, but that's bollocks. I love some of Cage's work, and I think 4′33″ is a fantastic gag, and I have even heard Frank Zappa's "recording" of it. But anyone who sits studiously through a performance of it, perhaps following the score, is just being a ponce.

And as for Deep Listening (Ltd); it's hippy bollocks, and (as always, with these baby boomer slime bags) a money making scam for the gullible.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

He was the first person to make electronic music before synthesizers were invented, and opens your mind to brand new sounds, i have obsessively watched his stuff on youtube many times, including the old interviews which are very inspirational. Hes abstract as hell and multi layered and textured.

Get Stimmung, which is a work of several vocalists, exploring the whole human vocal range.

I think the true precursors of electronic music lie with Arnold Schoenberg, via Anton Webern, and the 12 tone atonal system.

 

[Firky]

As with alot of contemporary music John Cage provides the answer here. Sitting and appreciating 'silence' with deep listening will equip you with good ears to tackle all the sonic arts and music.

How very beatnik.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

John Cage: charlatan.

I went and saw him read something once. I don't think even he was convinced.

 

[danny la rouge]

I think the true precursors of electronic music lie with Arnold Schoenberg, via Anton Webern, and the 12 tone atonal system.

Schoenberg is the giant of music this last 250 years. Head and shoulders above everyone else.

 

[scooter]

Nah Shoenberg just built on Webern's invention. Webern was the real genius.

Re Stockhausen, anyone heard his helicopter string quartet? That's pretty interesting. All four string quartet members take off in four different helicopters and hover. You hear the musicians through speakers but in the background all the time is the low wop-wop of the helicopter blades which gets louder as it takes off and lands.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Webern was Schoenberg's student.

 

[danny la rouge]

Nah Shoenberg just built on Webern's invention. Webern was the real genius.

Schoeberg taught Webern. Webern used Schoenberg's twelve tone technique. It was that which makes Schoenberg the greatest innovator since Bach.

 

[scooter]

So the student taught the master. Big deal. It's happened before

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I agree that it's innovative, but after five minutes of listening to 12 tone atonal, I want to use a nail gun on someone's head.

 

[danny la rouge]

So the student taught the master. Big deal. It's happened before

But not on this occasion.

I've nothing against Webern. But he is some way below Schoenberg and Bach.

 

[scooter]

Noo. It's pure. Free of artifice. he wrote piano concertos that consist of like six notes on the piano

 

[danny la rouge]

Webern is great. But there's need of perspective. Webern is Snowdon. Schoenberg and Bach are Everest and K2.

 

[scooter]

I'm gonna give you Bach. That one's safe. That's yours to take home. But really, apart from a pretty decent violin concerto, what did schoenberg ever do for us?