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Questions and answers on Intuitive Music

(This discussion took place during the lecture Live Electronic and Intuitive Music given on November 15th 1971 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The lecture with discussion was filmed [Allied Artists, London], and was transcribed from the film. Preceding the discussion, Stockhausen had played a tape recording of ES and after the discussion played a recording of AUFWÄRTS.)

Stockhausen: That was IT. As I said before, I call this music Intuitive Music, because with a text like the one for IT, one should exclude all the possible systems which are usually used for any kind of improvisation if one understands the term "improvisation" in the way it has always been used. I therefore prefer the term Intuitive Music. We shall see how Intuitive Music is going to develop in the future. Does anyone have a question?

Question: How can you say that when you stop thinking, the mind is open to higher centres? Aren't you doing what the surrealists did with automatic painting in the 1920's? They said that if one stops thinking, one opens the mind to the subconscious to the unconscious, and you are saying you open yourself to higher centres. Is this because the surrealists were under the influence of psycho-analysis and you are under the influence of Eastern philosophy?

Stockhausen: I only know from personal experience that Intuitive Music should if possible have nothing to do with psychology, which means nothing to do with the subconscious and unconscious. Rather, the musicians must be influenced by the supra-conscious (we can tell from the results that they certainly are), by something which enters into them. There is certainly nothing in the entire history of music, and nothing in that which we have ever done before that even slightly resembles the results which have come out of these texts. Thus, it must be that which we call the supra-conscious, and not the subconscious or unconscious.

Question: You said there were similarities between different interpretations.

Stockhausen: Yes, it is interesting.

Question: Could you say a few words about the similarities?

Stockhausen: In IT, for example, all the different versions which we have played start with very fragmentary short actions and sounds. Then, gradually a longer sound comes into being here and there, and as soon as someone starts, his predecessor immediately stops, so that the sounds cut each other off. In all versions the superimposition of sustained sounds then increases. So, a musician plays something, then another one starts playing a sound or a certain sound pattern, and despite this, the other one can continue to play. Then it goes very quickly. In all the versions I have heard, there is never a slow transition: all of a sudden a situation is reached in which all players are obviously fascinated by something that is in the air. They are completely absorbed by the sound and act instantly without thinking I mean completely spontaneous action and thus very dense structures come into being which are maintained for some time, until there is a moment when one of the musicians plays a sound which is outside of the context. And then, abruptly there are long silences: the musicians try to carry on with what they were playing before, but it does not work.
I could now give you a description of that which is strictly con-nected with the development of organisms which develop, in no matter which region higher or lower , and one could go even further and say very distinct things about the layer- and register-changes.

Question: Were there ever any performances which in your view were failures?

Stockhausen: Do you mean, in which we couldn't play at all?

Question: No, in which something was played which to your musicians' creative sense seemed to be rubbish? Or is there such a thing as rubbish?

Stockhausen: Absolutely. The first sign of rubbish is the emergence of clichés: when pre-formed material comes out; when it sounds like something which we already know. Then we feel that it is going wrong. There is a sort of automatic recording within us, which also automatically spits out all the recorded stuff also the garbage , and then one stops.

Question: Have you any way of eliminating acoustical rubbish from the creative process?

Stockhausen: Certainly. While playing Intuitive Music it becomes extremely obvious which musician has the most self-control; the musicians soon reveal whether they are critical, whether the physical and spiritual sides are in a certain balance etc. Some musicians are very easily confused, because they do not listen. That is the usual reason for rubbish rubbish in the sense that they produce dynamic levels which erode the rest for quite some time, without realising it themselves. In certain situations some become very totalitarian, for example, and that leads to really awful situations of ensemble playing. The sounds then become extremely aggressive and destructive; they operate on a very low level of communication, and destructive elements prevail (I hope we understand one another: I do not only mean simply "ugly" or "beautiful" when I say "low" level; I mean bodily, physically destroying each other). Then they all play at once. This is one of the most important criteria, that one must constantly remind oneself: "Do not play all the time", and "Do not get carried away to act all the time".
After several hundred years of having been forced to play only what was prescribed by the composers, once musicians now have the opportunity in Intuitive Music to play all the time, they do. The playing immediately becomes very loud, and the musicians do not know how to get soft again, because everybody wants to be heard. I mean, it is easy to get loud, but how can you get soft again? Finally you think: "Nobody hears me anyway, so I might as well stop".
These are the general principles of group behaviour, of group playing.

Question: Are you saying that value standards are emerging out of this?

Stockhausen: Completely new standards which we have never learned before for playing music; values which we discover for the first time when playing in a group, and especially each time there is a new member. Generally, it takes quite a while for a new member to in-tegrate himself into our kind of ensemble playing.

Question: Concerning the collective interaction, there must be a critical number of members for this group?

Stockhausen: Right. That is why I always say that the mass begins with 7; with more than 7 all becomes too dense. Exceptional per-sonalities are needed when the group is larger than 7 say 8 or 9 players. The best number is 4 or 5. Even with 6, in my opinion, one needs a lot of self-discipline to stop playing for relatively long periods of time during the performance, and to know exactly when the right moment has come, so that also solos and duos and trios occur not just sextets all the time.

Question: Have such attempts been made by groups which have existed for a long time, such as a string quartet, for example?

Stockhausen: No.

Question: Does the quality of the performance have anything to do with the musicians' technical ability on their instruments?

Stockhausen: Yes and no. For example, when one plays awkwardly, the intuition cannot work well; the tool, the instrument is not trained. That means that the musician becomes dependent on his body and he always wants more than it can do. Then rubbish again results. In such a situation someone is best qualified who does not have to think twice about the technical aspect

Question: someone who is completely master of his instrument. How about the tam-tam? Is that

Stockhausen: Well, you know what I mean: someone who has lived and experimented with the tam-tam for a long time. I do not mean someone who can play all the Liszt études it can even be quite difficult to play with such a person, because he can't get them out of his system any more. It is almost impossible unless he really concentrates on getting away from all these pre-established techniques. Rather, I mean someone who is completely united with his instrument, who knows where to touch it and what to do in order to set it into vibration, so that the inner vibrations which occur within the player can immediately be transformed into the outer vibrations of the instrument. That is the whole secret, naturally, the shortest way.

Question: Suppose you were in a group and acted according to an assigned text. You would think nothing. How then, can you make actions to create a sound? And do you classify awareness as a form of thinking, or is it something else?

Stockhausen: If I know that I am doing this, and that my co-player is doing something else, this realisation is an act of thinking and I call that thinking. What do you mean by awareness? Do you mean that I think that I am sitting here playing? Or not even that rather, that I just play?

Question: I mean, that you are aware of the other sounds

Stockhausen: All the time, naturally one is inside the sound

Question: So you separate awareness from thinking?

Stockhausen: Yes, without a doubt. Thinking is a mental process: pre-planning, remembering, recording, calculating all these different mental activities. For example, there are pieces which demand that one makes a plan; that one should imagine the next event each time and then play it exactly the way it was imagined. One thus thinks out a musical event, then plays it.

Question: But you are reacting to each other, aren't you? That is what I mean by awareness.

Stockhausen: Actually we are reacting to or acting in the direction of what is in the air. It is not really re-action: we are busy with the sound we are working on shaping the sound which is in the air.

Question: In your theatre piece OBEN UND UNTEN you require the instrumentalists to first play KURZWELLEN, with the actors listening before they perform OBEN UND UNTEN. Why is this?

Stockhausen: I thought it would be the best training and the best stimulus. In KURZWELLEN, the players have to react to something that is unforseeable because it comes out of the radio. They have to respond spontaneously to the short-wave material. And in the theatre piece, I expect the musicians also to react instantaneously to the spontaneous verbal material that comes from the speakers from the man, from the woman, and from the child. In the same way, I expect the man, the woman, and the child to say something intuitively which is evoked by the sounds produced by the musicians. Now in order to train for this, it is best to sit in front of a radio and react to that which is heard, and then always change with whatever comes, immediately doing what occurs to you while listening to the radio because in doing this you cannot cheat yourself.

Question: You say that you call this music Intuitive Music because improvisation is always related to a certain system

Stockhausen: Style

Question: to a pattern. What about improvisation like that of the Globokar group?

Stockhausen: He calls it improvisation. I would not recommend calling it that.

Question: What would you call it then intuitive?

Stockhausen: Yes, I would say so.

Question: Do you think Globokar would call it that?

Stockhausen: What do you want to talk about now: opinions or analysis?

Question: I simply would like to know exactly where the difference between improvisation and intuition lies.

Stockhausen: In Intuitive Music, I try to get away from anything that has established itself as musical style. In improvised music, there is always, as history has shown, some basic element rhythmic, or melodic or harmonic on which the improvisation is based.
In the Globokar group it is clear, for example, that although the musicians intend to play "out of the void", and although nothing is prescribed and there also are, allegedly, no prior agreements from time to time the percussion player Drouet plays tabla rhythms familiar to us from Indian music. He once studied tabla playing for a short time with an Indian tabla player, and these stylistic elements emerge from him automatically. So there is no pre-established style for this music as a whole, but certain stylistic elements come into the music which I would try to avoid, in order to completely concentrate on intuition. The same is true of Portal, the clarinet player. Whenever he gets into a rage when the musicians are "heated up" he plays typical free-jazz melodies, configurations which he, as a free jazz player, has played for years. There are certain idioms that come from the group he played with, and from the free jazz tradition in general. At such moments, one finds oneself therefore in a certain style. Even though the musicians do not intend to play such styles, they have not eliminated them

Question: But systematized patterns are a part of improvisation.

Stockhausen: Yes, this has been so historically.

Question: No, it should be so, and it always will be so or has always been so.

Stockhausen: Now, that completely depends on us. If one calls what I do "improvisation", then it must be added: "Be careful, the term improvisation is now very broad and is no longer related to any agree- ments". But in such a case, I prefer a new term. Therefore, I suggest the following: baroque music, Indian music, some African music - for example music from Mozambique is improvised music. Let's call that improvisation and leave it at that.

Question: And free jazz?

Stockhausen: It is "free jazz" because the word "jazz" means that a certain style is aimed at. Something specific is desired, which sets into motion that which is being played.

Question: What I heard on your tape recording today was Western classical music. I could tell that it was played by people whose training was in classical music.

Stockhausen: What do you mean by "classical"? I am completely thrown by your comment, because for me, classical music is something which has been composed. It has certain characteristics as regards rhythm, harmony, melody and form, and I do not find any of this in the music which I presented.

Question: I could tell by the gestures that the players were socially sophisticated, people who come from this particular culture in which we now find ourselves as opposed, for example, to Eskimos.

Stockhausen: That is obviously the case. What shall I say now? I mean I cannot change the situation.

Question: Yes, and thus in that sense it is also improvised music, because it is narrowed by the cultural frame of reference.

Stockhausen: If someone comes from the star Sirius and hears terrestrial music, he says: "So that's terrestrial music: no matter how hard they try to be intuitive, there is certainly a very typical channelling of intuition on this Earth as compared to Sirius". Naturally one can argue like that, if you wish. We are not yet universal, if that is what you want to say.

Question: Would you like to work with musicians who have a completely different musical background?

Stockhausen: By all means. I also do it. I am not tied to this group. For years I have been trying to replace certain players, who cannot get away from what you have just described. I realise that their limitations are too great. They have reached a certain limit and now cannot surpass it. I observe that these musicians cannot develop themselves further. Their possibilities seem to have come to an end, because they are not simultaneously working on the further development of their personalities.

Question: Don't you also think that this is the right way to find one's true inner culture musically, in the same way as you make your Intuitive Music in a group?

Stockhausen: It is difficult to speak about this. Basically it means to make contact with all that has been called intuition. In traditional music we are accustomed to say that a composer has only brief moments of intuition. (Let's say he had an inspiration in a tram or during a walk, and then he worked out the so-called idea or sound-vision for the next few weeks.) One imagines such inspirations like a flash of lightning in the night. At this point, I would like to make it clear that I am searching to discover a technique for myself as composer and interpreter and also for the other musicians who work with me to consciously extend these lightning-like moments of intuition; a technique which can actuate intuition when I want to start working, so that I am not a victim, having to wait until it comes. It often used to come, namely, at the wrong moment, when I had no time, or just when someone else wanted to talk with me. I must find a technique through which the intuition can be started and stopped. And these moments of intuitive working must last longer, as long as I want. But then I have to find a completely new technique for making music. I cannot simply sit in front of a piece of paper with my pencil sharpened and my eraser ready, and then write down what my intuition administers to me, because the intuition has a very particular kind of speed, which is by no means congruent with the speed of writing.
And that is the crux: for 600, 700, 800 years we have learned to translate music which we perceive intuitively into the visual, to represent it by means of a system we have agreed upon. Most of it is mechanical work. As I have said, in all my works there are always only a few intuitive moments which determine entire sections of several minutes, as it later turns out. Then I start working like a mechanic for days and weeks, calculating the details, etc. But I always knew what I wanted from the first moment on, and thus, most of this work is actually industry. As every insider knows, genius is 95% hard work and 5% intuition. I would like to add that this conception ought to come to an end as fast as possible. It is based on the unbelievably complicated process in which we have been trapped since Gutenberg, in fact ever since the first monks started to write down music. It was necessary as a mediation between composer and interpreter to write music on paper, then give it to someone who was like a musical mailman transporting it to another city, for instance, where other musicians could read it and transform it into sounds again. And now this process somehow is coming to an end. Namely, we do not need this mail any longer. I can fly there myself by plane or send a tape.
We must therefore develop completely new processes in order to find the time inherent in intuition and to work within this time of intuition so that intuition can last, and so that one does not always have to interrupt and say, "Wait a minute, first I have to write it down", by which time naturally it has slipped away again. This "Wait a minute", has become a source of frustration for most artists in the field of music, at least for the composers, and I would say that the traditional concept of the composer as a writer of music no longer suffices.

Question: What happens if you repeat a piece like ES in the coming weeks? Surely you must be bound, having once played in a certain way, to remember certain details and thus to play it similarly?

Stockhausen: No, I do not want to repeat anything.

Question: Do you think it would be completely different?

Stockhausen: Once you are on the track to follow intuition, you even try to abandon what you have learned the features of the repetition, the mechanisms of the reproduction. Certainly a new realisation would be completely different.

Question: In your opinion, is it possible to revive the intuition of the people in the hall?

Stockhausen: You mean a feed-back with the listeners?

Question: With the listeners, yes. And that, in fact, completes the circle with the intuitive also the meditative with a

Stockhausen: Definitely. If there are people in a hall who emit bad waves, nothing works. And the stronger they are, the worse it goes. One feels very bad when one has a destructive public, or when certain elements in the public are simply in an antagonistic mood, emitting destructive waves against whatever is developing. In some places we had to just give up. The people didn't even know why; but we knew that it was not the right place to stay and to work on a process, I mean, to form something. Yes, the public becomes immensely important, but not in the sense that they sometimes imagine. The public thinks that it is a great thing, in emancipated society, that there someone is playing and that the others consume it. That it the public is to be fed with music with my music, which is fixed once and forever, and namely in the traditional one-way information, the most extreme forms of which are records, radio and television.
Those who now wish to "critically" change these circumstances say, "Well, then you'll have to bring along whistles and stomp on the floor and jump around and talk with the musicians: everyone has to participate in the music and take part in the creative process!". Then the whole thing turns into something terribly primitive, because the people are neither innerly prepared, nor do they really want to form something extraordinary; they just want to manifest themselves and participate in a noisy event. So usually when these things have been done and they have been variously tried out in recent years , little instruments were handed out, or it was announced that with the help of the voice, sounds would be made together. Sometimes, someone also gave entries here and there, or tried to articulate the whole thing. Or else there was simply no one, and what happened, happened. Within a few seconds, it normally turned into a very loud din, in which no one could hear himself any longer. And then it simply remained a loud chaos, until the people got tired out.
But there is a completely different method to participate in a new way. Sometimes you find it in Indian music. There, a small group of listeners sits around the players and "comments" using gestures and voice. The players are encouraged in a wonderful way by these signs of the listeners and respond accordingly. There is a communion between those who are listening and those who are playing. Then the separation between those who are helping to build the wave-creation with their inner generators, and the musicians who are plucking the strings, is no longer so important. One forgets about the physicality of the frantically active hands, feet or tongue. Then this incredible feed-back is reached between people who are together and similarly tuned in a wonderful way. When musicians play in the presence of such a public, the most extraordinary things can happen, precisely also be-cause of these people.

Question: Do you think it is possible also for people who have no "higher knowledge" to make Intuitive Music?

Stockhausen: Yes, certainly. It is like falling in love with someone you did not know before.

Question: I would have thought that really good Intuitive Music very much depends on the individual members of a group knowing each other very well.

Stockhausen: As the gentleman has just said that can also go wrong. Or, on the contrary, a new player can tremendously inspire. There is also a magnetism which suddenly attracts players to each other; they feel well tuned to one another. But sometimes it suddenly stops, and one feels, "Hm I was mistaken, he can't, or I can't we both can't". Generally it is best if the players know each other well.

Question: I would like to return to the relation of style and Intuitive Music. Isn't the last piece that you played for us recognisable in any way as a piece which you composed, as compared to another composer who also writes a text which gives rise to an intuitive performance? Are you not really trapped in some way by something which is recog-nisable as your piece of music and not that of another composer?

Stockhausen: Yes, there is something to that. It is impossible for people who up to now have played something that bore my name to think that I do not exist. The fact that they know I exist and that that which they are doing has something to do with my name, leads them to very specific things. There is no question about it: all the musicians have told me as much. As a name, I am a myth. There is a body, and this body has a tag: a name. When this body does not exist any more, the name will completely transform into a myth, together with all the things which have crystallised around it, including the many opinions and convictions about what it would have done, if it were still alive. There are many minds that have already made a complete picture out of me a myth; and that myth creates something of itself. So I am a myth of myself also to myself. But that means that I am not only interested in this particular body and its biography, because it is only one of many appearances, and the others are actually just as mysterious for me as the one I have now. Nor am I only interested in this one name. The name stands for something that manifests itself through me: that is all I know. Thus, whenever I do something, certain things should be right in the way I think they should be right: there is a certain integrity that manifests itself through me. It must be something with which I can completely identify. And the musicians who have worked with me even those who read a score or an article of mine feel something of this and strive to also achieve it. Even if I were just to say, "Play", I would have said it, as opposed to Mr. X having said it: that makes a decisive difference.
So, someone has come into the world with this myth, and it will remain for as long as people retain the myth or are possessed by that spirit. It is a spiritual force that manifests itself through one human being and affects many others. And this creates a world within the world: there is no question about that. Thus, no matter how "free" the playing instructions are, people will always say, "Well, I cannot help it, it sounds like your music". And even if I say that it is not my music, that I do not own any aspect of it all that does not change anything, because all the works I have composed before are also contained in this one interpretation. They have encircled certain spiritual processes, musical processes.

Question: Do you think that in time, your music will be classified as classical music?

Stockhausen: It is really a pity, but as long as people want to also pigeon-hole music, yes. Namely, these pigeon-holes have a very special function, particularly in our society, because these classifications originate from people who classify themselves. This also holds true for people who classify themselves into the realm of "pop-culture". It is very difficult for people to get out of the "class" they want to belong to, because they are, in fact, innerly against all other classes as long as they stick to this system. Actually, that is ridiculous: I belong to that, to which I want to belong. A free man does not need to belong to any class. If someone says to me that I belong to a particular class, he thus really classifies himself, just by using for instance "classic" as a tag. It has economic and social reasons classic people want to be in a classic society, classic employees in classic surroundings, they want to have a classic car, a classic suit and a "classy" partner these things have a lot to do with each other.
I am glad that the music is distributed on records I then become fairly anonymous, just a "name" and that it permeates all layers of taste and all classes. In this I have been very lucky, because my records are bought by pop fans, by lovers of classical music, by people who like modern music and also by people who enjoy oriental music or folk music. At least the record companies say that it is amazing and they actually do not understand why It seems that the music I have produced breaks out of the realms of classification to an ever increasing measure: it does not fit into these pigeon-holes. But we'll see. Perhaps you are right, that in 50 years they may again say: "He is a classical composer".

Question: Let's say there is a musician who is highly trained, but knows nothing about the sounds you make otherwise, and you would give him this music to play. What do you think is going to happen? Have you ever tried it?

Stockhausen: He will play what he has heard before. It is really a very decisive turning point in the development of a musician, to break out of his whole environment, training, and technical mechanics. So a very conscious being is needed: he must know the music of the world. He must already be a world-wide informed mind, who has travelled in many countries, or heard records of the music of all other cultures, in order to avoid it all.

Question: Would you say that a musician who wishes to play a piece like IT must by all means know your music well before he can play IT?

Stockhausen: No, this does not necessarily have to be the case. My instinct tells me that because of my instruction "Do not think anything and then start to play" he would just try out the strings of his instrument, and would stop all the time because of the instruction that he should stop whenever he thinks something. I don't know: we would have to try it. The brain can function as a filter to avoid all stylistic clichés. When therefore, this musician thinks (because the instructions say after all "Do not think, and when you have attained the state of non-thinking, start playing") he can stretch this thinking-process to as long as he likes between the moments of playing . That is what we do when we play this piece. We listen to each other and when someone thinks "What strange stuff he is playing", he stops. Then he tries to return to the state of non-thinking once more and starts again. So thinking is not excluded: it is always active when one is not playing. The thinking acts as a kind of filter: when one thinks during the performance, one can be very critical of what one has played oneself or what the others are playing. And this thinking then conditions after the thinking has been stopped the entire manner of playing during the following phase of non-thinking.

Question: I feel that all of us here could stop our thinking and our emotions the things that we are conditioned by, everything that is going on around us to simply achieve a complete calm within ourselves. Then, what there is in each of us will be the same, and the only problem would be to wipe out all the conditions created in us by television, newspapers and advertisements. So, if one took a piece like IT to its logical end, then perhaps it would always sound the same, no matter who is playing it, no matter where it is heard. Since what we have heard is recognisably played by Stockhausen's musicians, I would like to ask if you also feel that you have not yet performed this piece as perfectly as it is actually written?

Stockhausen: Please, give us a chance. Just three years of musical history have elapsed since something like this has surfaced or even been seriously considered, and none of the musicians who have par-ticipated in this music has dramatically changed his life: that is a pity. They are all continuing to live more or less the way they did before. Nevertheless, all of them have changed to a certain degree, more or less, depending on their personality. It will take time. Not just with this generation but also with the one to come. I have great confidence in what will emerge from these seeds.

http://www.stockhausen.org/intuitive_music.html

The Amstel Quartet (photo: Jamain Brigitha) who are coming to Sligo to perform with Irish musicians Maria McGarry and Cathal Roche on Saturday next, 20th September 2008

It;s hard to believe after a year of planning but we're just 8 days away from an exciting day-long series of concerts as part of Sligo New Music + model::offsite '08.  The concerts have been curated by Ian Wilson and feature works from an exciting range of contemporary composers, led by a significant body of work from Dutch avant-pop composer Jacob TV (Jacob ter Veldhuis).  Other composers featured include Horatiu Radulescu, Philip Glass, Stockhausen, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Franco Donatoni, Tristan Keuris and Cathal Roche.

We are delighted to have the Amstel Quartet coming over from the Netherlands to join irish musicians Maria McGarry and Cathal Roche (who is baased in Sligo) for what should be an outstanding day of music making.

There are 3 concerts, the first at 3.30pm, the second at 6pm and the third, which features the world premiere of a new work comissioned by the festival from Siobhan Cleary, at 9pm.  Concerts 1 and 3 will be held in the Sligo Presbytarian Church on Chapel St and Concert 2 in the Studio at St. Anne's Youth and Community Centre.

Tickets are on sale now and are €15/12 per concert, or just €30 for a ticket to all three concerts. 

All the venues are in the centre of Sligo and very walkable from each other, so it;s the prefect excuse to lave the car at home or take the train if you are travelling to Sligo for the concerts.

see our main site for full details on the composers and the performers or call  us on 071-914 1405 and talk to Anne, or check us out on facebook or lastfm or myspace.

Mustaches of the XIXth Century – El blog da lo que promete: es un compendio de fotografías de época en las que aparecen (hombres) con bigotes de todo tipo. Nietzscheanos, regios, descuidados, viriles, lamentables… Todo ello acompañado de unos comentarios ilustrativos e ingeniosos.

Lector Malherido – Un blog de crítica (destructiva) de libros, con un diseño muy cuidado.

El blog Salmón – Nombrado por las páginas salmón del periódico, es un blog divertido y explicativo sobre economía.

Las Victorias parciales de Jon Bilbao – Jon Bilbao, autor de uno de los libros más interesantes de los últimos años, en mi opinión, habla en este blog algo de libros y bastante de cómics.

Matones del brócoli – Críticas de cómics.

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Aula contemporánea - Blog argentino sobre música sinfónica contemporánea con descargas de audio, partituras, libros, artículos y documentales de música contemporánea.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
(George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman)

Many decry attacks on public subsidy of new music, but few can come up with a coherent argument for its continuation.

The argument ends up coming down to whether you believe that the mediation and articulation of the human experience through art is vitally important to contemporary social existence. Assuming that the answer conceives of art as being something more than a commodity to be savaged by the so-called free market, then I would think that the representatives of the people have an obligation to step in where other funding is not forthcoming.

In terms of whether people should be able to complain about their tax dollar/pound being spent on such things, I firmly believe that most people don’t really know what’s good for them in this regard. How many do you know who would voluntarily contribute financially to the upkeep of a police force, road maintenance, public transport, etc?

The public subsidy of contemporary music, however, places a burden on the artist to keep the public in mind and that he/she is providing a service to them, and not to music itself – whatever that is. Some musicians do not see it this way, they see themselves as having privileges that the remainder of society does not deserve. How does one solve that problem?

The notion of public subsidy is not perfect. Nothing is. But the alternatives are much worse, less democratic, less beneficial to society: art exclusively funded by and created for the wealthy, or art simply not funded at all and ceasing to exist in this form. Am I missing any other possibility?

In terms of the positive claims made for music produced under subsidized conditions, would those who make them thus argue that unsubsidized music (i.e. much pop and jazz, though perhaps not free improvisation which is heavily supported by subsidized European festivals) falls short of these musical possibilities. Is this somehow lesser music as a result of its inevitable subservience to market conditions? I actually do think so, for the most part, though there are exceptions; though conversely there’s much contemporary classical music which deserves no audience at all (those countless numbers of festival circuit pieces that know how to press all the right buttons), and in light of the relative stagnation of contemporary music today, I am starting to question whether the positive benefits of subsidy are really sustainable. But, does anyone think all music produced under market conditions amounts to nothing more than innocuous entertainment?

Issues of subsidy are not just about whether it exists, but also how it is distributed. Stockhausen can get a whole day of concerts at the Proms; Michael Bloody Nyman wouldn’t. Yet (if CD sales, tickets, public profile, etc., are anything to go on) Nyman has a vastly bigger following in this country than Stockhausen. I would much prefer to hear Stockhausen myself, but I’m just one person out of many millions of the electorate. Yet the sort of preferences I have, taken broadly, concur much more with funding policy than those of people who would prefer Nyman.

I would argue that those preferences come a little closer to the type of music the lack of which I decry; that type of music is however likely to remain a minority interest (just as are films that are not heavily plot-driven, with the compulsory Disney happy ending, and so on). But I doubt that is the type of reason many people advocate such minority music, and I’d like to know on what basis they think their preferences deserve public money any more than anyone else’s?

I’m increasingly less convinced that, at least as they are currently organized, that subsidized work is any longer able to produce anything that has a critical function (which is the only grounds upon which I would defend subsidy). Seeing the way that Stockhausen, for example, has been appropriated, through promotion, performance and critical reception, especially during that distasteful period that tends to accompany a composer’s death (it was very similar when Feldman or Nono died – Peter Niklas Wilson has written some interesting stuff on the mystical cult around these two composers and Scelsi) suggests to me no more critical function than can be found in the work of Knussen, Adès, Benjamin, or whoever. There’s no progressive social meaning in cults of personality and entertainment shrouded in mystification, much of it of the composer’s own making.

It’s at least possible that Stockhausen had a different type of meaning in the 1950s, though the more I study about that era, I wonder. Certainly not on the level of something like Lachenmann’s Gran Torso; though again, I wonder if that hasn’t become yet another commodity as well. The contradiction of composers operating in an arch-reactionary field such as classical music, and trying to produce something that does other than lend affirmation and sustenance to that very reactionary tradition (or at least what that tradition has come to represent through processes of appropriation, even if it once had different meanings and functions) is one I’m not sure if it’s possible to surmount – maybe it is, but it’s harder than ever. Whereas the critical function of punk, or some rap, seems very much more palpable. Of course they become appropriated as well, but I feel some residue of their earlier meanings does not go away, whereas it almost entirely does so in the case of much contemporary classical music, at least in a country like Britain. The decentralized system in Germany (a residue of a wider federal system put in place by the Allies during the occupation period to try and avoid the possibility of the all-powerful centralized state that had been witnessed in the Third Reich) as well as a different type of political and intellectual culture (for which there are fascinating arguments: I’ve read that this was deliberately promoted and perpetuated not least by business/industrial interests in the 1950s as an alternative to a view of “democracy” as “mass rule” which could then be associated with the Nazis – an argument that is rot, for sure, but somehow could gain credence during that era) may be different – a cartel-like arrangement (which goes beyond the boundaries of Germany into much else of Europe) between festivals and other new music organizations seems to be working against that very process in a bizarre example of institutions paralleling the tendencies of business towards monopolies.

After the previous night’s Prom – when Jiři Bělohlávek drew a lovely light, fluffy sound from the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Dvořák’s bouncy and witty Slavonic Dances, and Janáček’s beautiful but maddeningly unfocused little-known early opera Osud – what a contrast yesterday to hear the rich glowing sound of the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne under Markus Stenz.

Their weird back-to-front programme – Mahler 5, some Schubert songs, Beethoven’s Overture Leonore No. 3 – turned out to be a re-creation of the first performance of the Mahler in 1904 (I hadn’t realised it had been written for this orchestra).  Plus – to bring us up to date – a chunk of Stockhausen, which succeeded in driving a lot of the audience away after the Mahler (rumour has it that it was scheduled to be a separate late-night Prom, but perhaps the Powers That Be had thought no one at all would have turned up).  As it was, the Albert Hall was respectably full but not bursting.

From the first tutti, the Mahler had an authentically ‘European’ sound:  big, colourful and full of character, supported on the cushion of those gorgeous strings – especially a phalanx of eight double basses across the back of the platform, where they became the beating heart of the orchestra, always supporting, always making their presence felt even in the softest pianissimo (and all bowing ‘underhand’ in Continental fashion).

Varieties of orchestral layout are a continuing fasciation;  the oddity of this one was that the brass were ‘back to front’, with the trumpets on the outside and the trombones and tuba nearest the middle.  This had the bonus of placing the tuba next to contrabassoon and double basses – good idea.  If I am not mistaken, the second violins sat opposite the firsts in the Mahler, but the violas went there for the Beethoven.  (The Stockhausen had a weirdly random layout, not explained in the programme).

‘A symphony must be like the world – it should embrace everything’, said Gustav Mahler:  it could be claimed that Mahler’s Fifth is the greatest of his symphonies, and one of the greatest of all symphonies (and I'm not just saying that because of its terrific contrabassoon part!).  The Gürzenich Orchestra gave it all they’d got, which was indeed plenty, although both the first trumpet (in his opening fanfare) and the first horn (in his solos in the huge Scherzo) were not entirely accident-free – though they improved once they had got over their opening wobbles.  Yet somehow, despite tremendously characterised and colourful wind playing, the sound remained slightly one-dimensional and the performance didn’t ever quite take off.  When Markus Stenz reached the final bombastic peroration, it didn’t seem to have earned its place in the scheme of things.  And heaven knows what he thought he was beating at the beginning of the (admirably unsentimental) Adagietto.

Stockhausen’s Punkte was a kind of smudged pointillist canvas, or rather a much-reworked palimpsest; whatever you think of Stockhausen, he had a fantastically original imagination and an extraordinary ear for beautiful and strange sounds.  I found this piece more to my taste than Jonathan Harvey’s Speakings (see my previous post), perhaps because it was ‘about’ the different things that can be done with the actual sounds orchestral musicians can make.  At 27 minutes, perhaps it outstayed its welcome:  with no obvious form, it’s hard to know what’s coming next, or when, or indeed why, it will finish (but my brother detected more formal shape in it than I had.  I must hear it again).  It occurred to me that the immense range of colour and dynamics was rather what was lacking in the Mahler. 

The trouble with named arrangers is that they are always making a point – namely ‘Hear how clever I am’... The four chaps charged with providing orchestrations of Schubert songs all fell in to this trap.  Only Detlev Glanert tried to keep to a Schubertian orchestral palette, and his was the lightest and most successful of the four.  Colin Matthews went for broke, turning Nacht und Träume into an extra Strauss ‘Last Song’, complete with trombones and tuba (muted!), contrabassoon, bass clarinet and heaven knows what else.  Actually it sounded lovely.  About the other two, the less said the better.  David Matthews had arranged a ‘Serenade’ which was not the familiar one the programme editors had assumed it was, but a different, lovely one with a female chorus.  His supposedly ‘Wagnerian’ added playout was an embarrassment, sounding merely incompetent.

Meanwhile, Angelika Kirchschlager (in a stunning purple frock) twinkled, smiled, danced, shimmied and crooned her way charmingly through the four songs, oblivious of the rubbish going on behind her.

The Beethoven overture, Leonore No. 3, once again supplied a range of colour and hushed tones that the Mahler could well have done with, as well as a magnificent stentorian offstage trumpet.  The encore, from Wagner’s Parsifal, had an immense depth and richness of tone which showed the orchestra off to its best advantage.

Because of the monster-concert layout (with two intervals), the Prom had started at 7 pm, not 7.30 – a fact I hadn’t noticed until I was halfway through cooking my dinner at 5.15 and had to dash for a train instead.  So at least I had a nice late supper to look forward to!  Tonight’s (the National Youth Orchestra) is a 6.30 start, so I had better get moving...

David Tudor

Rainforest (1968 Mode)

http://www.divshare.com/download/5204323-608

This is my favorite work of Tudor's as it emulates the sounds of a natural habitat, but the end result is alien to any environment on this planet. Originally commissioned for the influential Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe, Tudor avoids the usage of field recordings and ambient frills in favor of utilizing the vibrations of hanging objects through a contact mic and loudspeaker. This setup creates a variety of electro-acoustic phenomena that results in a hopelessly complex pastiche of chattering, beeps, chirping and rich textures that create a bizarro rainforest. It is easy to get lost in the weaving patterns of sounds during these 74 minutes of ambient sound. There is something alternately soothing and jagged about these two compositions that keeps me returning to them. Depending on my mood, it either soothes me into a slumber or agitates me to no end. I would love to see a video of Cunningham's dance troupe navigating their way through such abstract territory. If anyone can point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

'...the thrill of standing on that rim of the Grand Canyon is spatial. It is the biggest space you can look out over that has an edge.'

The superwhizzyness of Kontakte does something similar for me soundwise.

As I left the Albert Hall there were three classic Routemaster buses parked outside in Prince Consort Road. Awaiting three conductors, perhaps?

Camera, sala, bagno, cucina, sala meglio, camera. Ho fatto il giro del mondo per trovare "Le piccole tragedie", ed era in camera.
No, in realtà mi sbagliavo, perché erano "I racconti di Sebastopoli".
Ma allora dov'è piccole tragedie? Torno a cercarlo. Sotto il letto, sul comò, sul baule, sotto Shakespeare, anche se è evidente che quel librino non è le piccole tragedie. In cucina mi rendo conto che ci sono tre brick vuoti di succo di mela verde. In bagno ci sono le Churchs. Torno in sala, controllo controvoglia sulla libreria. Poi le vedo quasi sotto il divano. Due copie identiche delle piccole tragedie. Avevo dimenticato di averlo e l'ho ricomprato. E' vero, me ne ero già accorta ieri, ero lì sul divano, ma lo avevo dimenticato.

This is the sort of music referred to by Sir Arthur C. Clarke as 'atonal cacophonies', and by Mrs. Underclass' mother (a classical soprano) as 'squeaky gate music'.

If I were properly English then I should be obliged to like, or at least plausibly pretend to like, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten and the rest of that sort of 'God-is-an-Englishman music'. Fortunately I'm not, so I don't have to.

Morton Feldman: "Durations / Coptic Light".

Og Earle Browne: "Folio" med mere.

Først: Hvor lækker er dén titel, "Coptic Light" ... ? Ret lækker. Og dernæst: Modtog i går mit eksemplar af "Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman". Har læst de første ca. 50 sider, og jeg er lidt overrasket over, hvor polemisk Feldman er - var - i sine skriverier. I hvert fald i begyndelsen af karrieren. Han vender - vendte - hele tiden tilbage til de samme forbilleder, frænder og koryfæer, heriblandt Webern, Varèse, Schoenberg, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Boulez og - selvfølgelig - John Cage -- og de får alle masser af anerkendelse. Men sandelig også - ind-i-mellem - én på snotten.

Feldman, fornemmer jeg, blev blødere med årene -- og måske bør det også tages i betragtning, at han var - helt enormt meget - new yorker.

Det gælder for alle kunstarter og al kunst, at det - for mig - der IKKE er interessant, er det formløse. Eller manglen på vilje til form. Slaphed. Larm. Det siges undertiden - og nogle gange er det sandt - at moderne musik er en værre omgang larm. Men Stockhausen er aldrig larm. Det er muligt, at man ikke bryder sig om musikken -- og det ville være både mærkeligt og en kende mistænkeligt, synes jeg, hvis man kunne lide det hele. Selvfølgelig. Men Stockhausens værk er resultat af og udtrykker en helt overvældene vilje til form, en enorm og utrættelig skabertrang og en imponerende følsomhed. Når man lytter til Stockhausen eller læser, hvad andre har skrevet om ham, får man nemt det indtryk, at Stockhausens musik er fortænkt -- men at lytte til musikken er virkelig, altså, som at gå BOTANISK i en nærmest endeløs have.

Som Steve Reich engang sagde: "At noget er 'spirituelt' betyder vistnok bare, at det er noget, man godt kan lide." Det var godt sagt. Hvis han ikke havde sagt det, og/eller jeg ikke havde hørt ham sige det, ville jeg nu have skrevet, at Stockhausens musik er spirituel. På den gode måde. Ikke den formløse, slappe måde. Som er en slags åndelig larm.

Der er to problemer med hensyn til Stockhausen. Eller: Der er ét problem -- og så er der et andet, som kun er et problem, hvis man SYNES ... Eller hvad man nu siger.

Det første problem er, som antydet i mit tidligere indlæg, at Stockhausens musik er lidt svær at få fat på. Og med "svær" mener jeg egentlig ikke svær, men bare dyr. Der findes en god håndfuld CDer, som er ALTERNATIVT UDGIVET og kan erhverves for små penge -- men langt hovedparten af musikken skal rekvireres direkte fra Stockhausen Verlag. For en som mig, der ikke bryder sig - mig - om kun at høre ét værk af en given kunstner, men gerne vil have et indtryk af bredden o.s.v., er det et reelt problem. Stockhausen-kataloget indeholder for nuværende hele 91 numre. Altså: 91 CD-udgivelser, hvoraf adskillige er bokse med 2-3-4-5-6-7 CDer. Standardprisen for enkelt-CDer er £27 + gebyr. "Sirius", som jeg meget gerne vil have, koster $50,-

Det andet problem er kun et problem, hvis man er en af den slags mennesker - og det er jeg personligt ikke - som foretrækker at (kunne) forestille sig, at denne eller hin kunstner, som man beskæftiger sig med, er et dejligt og rart menneske. Karlheinz Stockhausen var (vistnok) ikke noget rart menneske -- i hvert fald ikke i, sådan, kolonihaveagtig forstand. Han var - enten - fuldstændig optaget af sin MUSIK, eller han var fuldstændig optaget af SIN musik, og som et resultat heraf fremstod han - ofte - som både skrydende og med en - især for en dansker - decideret ucharmerende mangel på selvironisk distance. Stockhausen tog sig selv og sit værk meget alvorligt.

Men. Det gode ved Stockhausen ... som var det, jeg egentlig ville skrive noget om. Men det er svært, bl.a. fordi VÆRKET er så kolonormt stort. Lad mig i stedet sige: Det IMPONERENDE ved Stockhausen.

Tilbage til min noget irriterende plante-metafor.

Nogle komponister - i løbet af deres karriere - får ikke færdiggjort ret mange værker. Nogle enkelte potter. Hvis man ikke bryder sig meget om såkaldt klassisk musik, og hvis man (da) i særdeleshed ikke bryder sig om moderne klassisk - ?  - musik, men alligevel gerne vil virke, som om, man er med på beatet, så bør man - for eksempel - vælge at fokusere på Edgard Varèse. Af følgende grunde: 1. Varèse færdiggjorde kun 15 værker, hvoraf alle er ganske korte, og de 2 er ubetydelige. Hele skidtet fylder ikke mere end en enkelt dobbelt-CD. Hvis man synes, at musikken er uudholdelig, kan man i det mindste trøste sig ved tanken om, at det hele hurtigt er overstået. Og 2. Det er de færreste mennesker, der nogensinde har hørt om Varèse, og der er ikke skrevet meget om ham. Chancerne for at komme til at sidde til bords med en Varèse-ekspert, som potentielt kan afsløre dig som en kulturel svindler, er forsvindende små. Hvis en eller anden går dig på klingen og begynder at udspørge dig om andre komponister, svarer du bare, at "Jeg blev aldrig rigtig færdig med Varèse ... " Henholdende, men imponerende.

Andre komponister kan fylde et fint, lille drivhus. Iblandt de komponister, jeg selv lytter til: For eksempel Anton Webern. Weberns samlede kan være på 6 CDer.

Og så er der Stockhausen. Stockhausen er en botanisk have. Som skrevet: 91 CD-udgivelser -- og heriblandt det største operaværk, der nogensinde er skrevet, "Licht", og "Aus den sieben Tagen", der i kataloget kun tæller som én, men som faktisk er en boks med hele 7 CDer. "Licht" tæller 5-6-whatever, men består af mere end 20. Der er i alt langt over 100 CDer. Dét var kvantiteten.

Og nu skal Ane bruge min computer. Indlægget fortsættes ...

Stockhausen-indlæg i juli nr. 1. Det kan godt være, at kødet - altså mit kød - halter. I hvert fald det højre ben. Men ånden er helt galaktisk.

Jeg har fået en lille åbenbaring. Kender I det? Man kan VÆRDSÆTTE et-eller-andet, som man (derfor) dyrker, og alt er godt. Man går og vander planterne, og synes, de er fine, som de er -- men pludselig en dag er en af dem gået i blomst, og bagefter ... og så videre. Man får et andet syn. Større potentialer. Større ærefrygt. Dén slags.

Jeg har - således - dyrket Karlheinz Stockhausen, siden jeg var en teenager. No kidding. Jeg var et fremmeligt, omend ret mærkeligt barn. Og blomsten - og jeg er allerede træt af dét billede - er "Chor-Spirale" fra operaen "Freitag". Kan downloades lovligt og gratis i mp3-format her. Scroll ned på siden.

Sidder nu og overvejer, om jeg er rig nok til at (kunne og måtte) købe hele operaen på CD. Den forhandles (vistnok) kun af Stockhausen Verlag i Kürten. En 4-CD-boks til den nette sum af $113,- Hvor mange rigtige penge er det? Og de tager selvfølgelige ikke VISA-kort. Det ville vel næsten også være for folkeligt.

I’ve been spinning a certain amount of J. C. Bach over the past few days (mostly instrumental music but also Endimione, a “serenata”, really a smallish opera). One reason was to try and work out what it is I find attractive about his music, given that it consists to such an extent of the kind of textures, forms and materials which Mozart was to take up and use to more “modern” dramatic effect (playing Stockhausen to Bach’s Goeyvaerts, ahem).

The more I get to know it, though, the more individual (and in a way the more Baroque) it seems to sound: while it’s the earlier Mozart that it’s most reminiscent of, it’s also clearly the work of a more mature composer; also, his use of rather intricate instrumental obbligati in several arias (not to mention his numerous sinfonie concertante) and highly-variegated orchestration (fragmenting the orchestra in a sometimes almost Rameau-like way) are entirely his own, while the virtuosity of some of his vocal parts is some way in excess of what Mozart generally preferred. The G minor Symphony Op.6 No. 6 gives Haydn a run for his Sturm und Drang too.

So that’s been a fascinating investigation which I’d recommend others to undertake if they haven’t already.

A member of the Bigona family, the South African sausage tree (Kigelia pinnata or Kigelia africana), has hundreds of huge sausage-like fruits that hang down from the limbs on long, rope-like stalks. The fruits may be over 2 feet long and weigh 20 pounds, and have inspired a wide variety of vernacular names, including one, in South Africa, that means “the fat tail of a sheep”.

The hard, grey fruit of the sausage tree has a thin skin covering a firm, fibrous fruit pulp containing numerous small seeds. The fruit, although inedible itself, is a common ingredient in traditional beer, and is said to hasten the fermentation process. Kigelia leaves are an important livestock fodder, and the fruits are much prized by monkeys and elephants.

The fruit is also used as a cosmetic cream. The Tonga women of the Zambezi valley, for example, regularly apply preparations of the sausage fruit to their faces, to ensure a blemish-free complexion.

Jag minns att jag läste en intervju med Stockhausen, den tyske modernistiske kompositören, i tidningen Pop för en massa år sedan. Det var rätt kul läsning som visserligen aldrig fick mig att lyssna, men en sak har jag tänkt på. Som liten fick Stockhausen nämligen en trähammare och med den gick han omkring och utforskade hur världen lät om man slog på den.
Jag gillar den leken. Och någonstans i smyg bär jag på drömmen att en gång lära mig samplingsteknik och musikprogram och göra musik av ljud från naturen. Då är säkert den där trähammaren ganska användbar.
På norra spetsen av Hamburgö i norra Bohuslän finns ett litet område med en ovanlig bergart, rombporfyr. I alla fall tror jag att den är ovanlig. Stenhuggerier finns lite varstans, och också här har man provhuggit, eller i alla fall byggt något slags väg eller kaj som rasat sedan länge..
Nu ligger stenblocken som ett oordnat plockepinn, eller som en marimba som välts upp och ned med alla välljudande träklossar ovanpå varandra. För det fantastiska med denna rombporfyr är faktiskt att stenen sjunger. De låter som malm, som kyrkklockor och ger man sig ut och letar upp ett stycke drivved kan man hitta ganska många olika toner. Varje klippblock svänger med en egen frekvens. Allt på tre meters avstånd från havet. How’s that for balearic? Kyrkklockor i dansmusik? Jag tänker på Chic och I want your love.

xtrataggar: musik, Skuggan, Bohuslän, Stockhausen, marimba, Chic, balearic

Some very good things on this year’s Proms. It’s a pity that they haven’t really taken off on the Vaughan Williams 50th anniversary. I think a missed opportunity here, for example, no Sancta Civitas, no Dona Nobis Pacem. It’s good that other RVW compositions are being played, e.g. Flos Campi.

It’s a shame that a wind band is not performing, because that would be ideal for RVW’s English Folksong Suite to be played, etc., maybe c/w Holst’s Hammersmith Prelude etc., or suites for military band and some contemporary music too, which abounds with some very good pieces indeed.

Doing my shopping chores at Tesco, this morning, I saw that the Proms 2008 brochure was on sale for £4, instead of £6 r.r.p. And points, too, of course!

Having had just a cursory glance so far and (probably) not having time to go to very much, I must say the programme looks better than it has for some years – perhaps those who thought Roger Wright’s takeover would cast the Proms into the depths of dumbness will be pleasantly surprised. I’m not sure I’d be able to sit (let alone stand) through Saint François, but a whole day of Stockhausen, and no Britten – what’s not to like?

More Stockhausen in Prom 48: Gürzenich Orchester.

When I saw that triple-decker programme I thought it must be a sort of “retro” tribute to William Glock and the 1960s/1970s Proms. It’s soooooooooooo 1970s. I was thinking of growing my hair in tribute. He and Robert Ponsonby used to do a lot of these with various “bonkers” juxtapositions just to see if they worked. I might just dig out a few programmes.

Personally I’d leave after the Stockhausen, not because I don’t like the third “half” but because the first two would have given me quite enough to think about. I’d be interested to hear how having the Mahler first would affect the perception of the Stockhausen. I remember another Mahler/Stockhausen concert where Stockhausen’s Jubiläum (as close to a curtain-raiser as he ever wrote, I’m surprised it isn’t played more often) was followed by Mahler 5, which sounded distinctly odd – sparse, staccato and even somewhat monochrome in comparison to Stockhausen’s luxuriantly dense textures. It was a highly thought-provoking experience.

As a footnote to this, here is Steven Wells’ rant against the Last Night of the Proms, “The Proms pomposity and patriotism I love to hate”.

If you go back in time to my earlier entries you will find some interesting stories about Notting Hill in the 60s and 70s and also Anti-Media activities in the 80s , bits about the gigs before Club Dog etc....

However I have been having problems with technology and the Dave Russell interviews being repeatedly deleted .

Therefore I have re-issued part one of this interview on Youtube. It's the first time I have ever done anything like this so don't expect miracles!

Enjoy ! and to read onthe background to the things mentioned in this interview go back to my previous post called

Notting Hill and the Arts 1967-1972: an interview with Dave Russell - Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Gong and more…(Episode One)

This was written back in the winter of 2007 and the weather today is about the same.

here is part two of the interview for more information go to my previous post

(Episode two) Notting Hill and the Arts 1967-1972: an interview with Dave Russell -Psychedelic rock bands, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Ralph McTell, Davy Graham, lightshows, poets, and drug-taking in a crypt

Part two

Part Three

of the interview below please see this post for more details:

(Episode Three) Notting Hill and the Arts 1967-1972: an interview with Dave Russell - Jazz, Psychedelic Rock Bands, Poetry, Frestonia, Release and Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments

The final part

read more on

(Episode Four) Dave Russell - Notting Hill 1967-1972 The Free School, Destruction in Art Symposium, Friends/Frendz magazine and the Rural Retreat

Love and peace

Born2rant

1. John Cage. Credo in US (1942) for percussion; the Amadinda Percussion Group.
2. Karlheinz Stockhausen. Gruppen (1957) for 3 orchestras.
3. Eric Dolphy + Chico Hamilton, et al. Frou Frou, on Hot & Cool Latin (1959).
4. T.S. Monk. Shuffle Boil, played by John Zorn on That's The Way I Feel Now (1984).
5. Steve Reich. Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings (2005). New records = cool :)
6. Ben Johnston. String Quartet No. 9 (1988), recorded by the Kepler Quartet.
7. Battles. Atlas, recorded on Mirrored (2007).
8. John Cage. She Is Asleep I (1943) for 12 tom-toms, also recorded by Amadinda.