There is something about listening to De Yun that seems a little different to me than other composers we’ve covered in class. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s a young, talented, female composer (something we haven’t ran across much), or maybe it’s just some sort of emerging genius in her work. I’m inclined to think it’s more the latter. Listening to her music is a strange experience for me; it’s like I can feel exactly what is being communicated and yet I still don’t understand it. I feel like her music isn’t completely developed yet, it’s still amazing, but I think there’s still a long way to go. Her sense of texture is also amazing, the way she uses certain instruments in a completely new fashion blows me away. Although I have noticed that it doesn’t seem to be as cool/make as much sense when I listen to it by myself than in class. Isn’t that funny?
So since we decided to open up the blogs a little bit, and it’s probably going to snow soon, I think I’ll post today about one of my favorite songs: “Winter” by Vivaldi, part of the four seasons thing. Now, I know when a lot of people think Vivaldi, they think of the Spring movement, and maybe a late night tv infomercial for overplayed classical music, or maybe every cheesy Elizabethan period movie ever, but this movement is a lot deeper for me. I used it for an autobiographical art piece last year, and since then listen to it alot. I love how it builds, how its so dramatic and sad yet still beautiful, like winter itself. It always just makes me want to sit in a dark candlelit room, smoke a cigar and possibly contemplate how I’m going to rise up in the family to become Mafia boss. Maybe. I just find it very contemplative, with different sections in it that move between despairing to epic and hopeful. You guys should check it out sometime.
First listening to Feldman’s “Why Patterns?”, it really gives me a sense of timelessness, as does a lot of his music. It’s interesting to notice how the piece is made using such sparse instrumentation. In the beginning, there are only a few instruments, but the tone is clear and sharp, certain notes really stand out. Moving along to about halfway through the song, however, things have calmed down a bit, with less standing out, and little rhythmic chimes. Then a flute or something comes in and breaks the silence. Feldman’s style makes it seem like hardly anything is changing while all sorts of different musical things are going on. Maybe that’s what makes us lose sense of time, because he’s really only moving from one note to the next, and is not thinking about what happened or where exactly the piece is going. It all seems stuck in the present.
So it seems like most of these blogs are focusing on our listening session and all the new stuff, so I figured I’d offer my reactions as well. As interesting as drones were, it’s nice to be moving on. And minimalism seems to be easier to get used to than, say, Niblock. ”In C” was interesting, but I didn’t love it. My favorite part of the class was listening to the pieces Matt and Andrew brought in. I especially loved Andrew’s just because I love both strange expressive altered instuments and crazy cover songs. It was fun to see the reactions around the room as everyone realized what song was playing. I felt that the trumpeter was amazing, and his use of the effects was spot on. I think a lot of times musicians tend to get caught up in their effects and let them sound cool for them, but this guy was amazing. And the rest of the band too… That whole show just sounded like so much damn fun. Also the way Radiohead seemed to be so influenced by minimalism was kind of astounding, and I really thought it was kinda spooky how it came on shuffle right after “In C”…. Now I guess we’ll just have to see what else minimalism brings to us
So I was thinking about blogging about something completely different, since everyone seems to have covered “Q” and the siren piece already, but I think I’ll just write about Q since it was one of my favorites. What I liked to much about it was that it was so different from the drone pieces we’ve heard. Now, I know that a little while ago I would have considered “varying drone pieces” an oxymoron (pronounced the canadian way). But this piece seemed centered less around overtones and whatnot than a strange sort of airy rhythm. The oscillators held down the drone while the instruments played around with intonation. The way all sorts of beating patterns were created really pulled me in. It’s almost like its creating music, a song, only using random space between the tones, and the whisping of the beats. Really, really, cool.
So this blog is about Phill Niblock’s “Kontradictionaries”, also known as the piece that made an entire class (and some random guy who walked by) uncomfortable. Hearing everyone’s reaction to this song(?) was really interesting for me, as it helped me kind of piece together my own experience. During the piece, I just kind of tuned out and used it as a platform to concentrate and focus my mind so I didn’t get too bored. But as a consequence, I wasn’t really aware of all the little nuances going on. I’m actually listening to it right now, and it’s amazing how much less intimidating and gut-wrenching it feels on small speakers, as opposed to the room-filling pervasiveness of the big speakers, which make this song sound kind of like some kind of troll orchestra tuning instruments made from the bones of fallen enemies… All in all, this piece was interesting from a somewhat experimental point of view, yet I don’t know about it being music.-Chris
For some reason this piece really drew me in. It made me stop what I was doing, turn out the lights, and just… sit there. Which surprised me, because I considered ambient, somewhat withdrawn music to be conducive to listening to as a background. The first emotion in the piece: wonder. The way it starts, it makes you want to know what’s coming next. After that I felt compelled to only pay attention to the song and nothing else. My mood changed over the course of the song, as it was constantly building and coming down. I really loved the way it grabs you and makes you pay attention. I noticed that what did that for me were the ringing pitches throughout the song, because they were similar, yet you could always seperate the voices. I think that maybe I should have felt somewhat creeped out by this song, but in fact it was quite the opposite. I expected having some trouble listening to this style all the way through, yet I was enthralled. I really liked how it made soft seem hard, it made light seem dark, and scary seem inviting.-Chris
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