Not trying to be arrogant here, but who listens to this?

[computer-audiophile]

Hi Johannes - could you point me to those stands for your JBLs? Got the 305s too and they are sitting on some crappy Thoman things.

Hi,
I would love to tell you but I can't remember where I bought it. Neither in my order history of Amazon nor AliExpress I found it, sorry.
The Product is named KANTO SP6HD/SP6HDW. (from the user manual)

Stockhausen trying to outwagner Wagner is a failure imho. Four days of musical immersion is the sweet spot, trust me on that

Wagner is not my cup of tea, and neither is all the hype Bayreuth is making.

 

[bluefuzz]

few people really listen to truly free improv like that. It's just too demanding. It insists on your full concentration,

I think there is a difference between listening to (free) improv live while it's happening and listening to a recording of the performance after the fact. There are of course those who would say that a recording of free improv is missing the point completely, but I don't agree with that. In a live situation both the performer and the audience are (hopefully) maximally engaged in the performance. But a recording of an improvised piece can in some ways be regarded as having an almost 'throw away' character.

I listen to a lot of Derek Bailey as 'background' music. I find it very relaxing.

 

[bluefuzz]

I don't really agree that Philip Glass was much less serious than, say, Ligeti.

Nor do I. At least that was not really my point. My (wholly subjective) impression is that Glass's (and other modernist American composers) music is presented as an experiment that may or may not work, i.e. almost with the humility of a scientist as opposed to being presented as High Art to be marvelled at by us lesser mortals.This is in contrast to American art institutions which (again in my wholly subjective impression) seem to fetishize the High Art aspect and take themselves far more seriously than their European counterparts.

On a related note, I find it interesting that serious 'New Music' ensembles like Kronos Quartet or Bang on A Can Allstars present themselves far more like a rock band than other 'classical' musicians ...

 

[Multicore]

I think there is a difference between listening to (free) improv live while it's happening and listening to a recording of the performance after the fact.

This is true of a lot of most musical styles that can be practiced by humans. I have a bit of a problem with the effect recording has had on musical and therefore social life.

There are of course those who would say that a recording of free improv is missing the point completely, but I don't agree with that. In a live situation both the performer and the audience are (hopefully) maximally engaged in the performance. But a recording of an improvised piece can in some ways be regarded as having an almost 'throw away' character.

Bailey was onto something when he described the self-erasing recording technology he wants. The recording erases itself as you listen to it! Each copy can be heard only once.

The best I can think of as a substitute for my own needs with available technology is to build an audience on youtube, make livestreams and erase the recording 24 hours later.

I listen to a lot of Derek Bailey as 'background' music. I find it very relaxing.

Gosh. Well then.

There's very little recorded music I can listen to as background music. Things like The Orb can work but I mostly cannot be doing something else and listening to music. I think dancing is the best bet. Line dancing perhaps.

Nor do I. At least that was not really my point. My (wholly subjective) impression is that Glass's (and other modernist American composers) music is presented as an experiment that may or may not work, i.e. almost with the humility of a scientist as opposed to being presented as High Art to be marvelled at by us lesser mortals.This is in contrast to American art institutions which (again in my wholly subjective impression) seem to fetishize the High Art aspect and take themselves far more seriously than their European counterparts.

I've gotten in trouble already for talking about European institutional art music so I'm going to try to explain myself. I'm not taking sides on anything or trying to attack anything. I am only trying to explain what I see as important historical context of things we've been discussing in this thread.

Historically, the European institutions of high art (music, dance, singing, drama, opera, public art, architecture, museums, ...) served political purposes as well as nourishing the artistic and spiritual needs of citizens. The old aristocracies and monarchies etc. had a political need for superior art. Their art reflected well on them, the state, its citizens, yielding pride in their state and its ruler. Conversely the king/price/duke/etc that lets its state's art decay would lose favor. So across these states there was a great big, multi-century infrastructure investment that produced their institutions of high art. Here at ASR we can narrow down on the concert halls and opera houses, the people who work there, the schools that trained them, the traditions and knowledge (including texts) they preserve and nurture, and the audiences and their traditions/habits.

Then, post WW2, the representative democracies of Europe wound up holding the responsibility for this infrastructure, including the people who's lives depend on keeping it all going. I know this is a simplistic cartoon of what really happened, sorry, but I'll keep going. Sorry about that too.

Modern social/liberal democracies don't have the same political needs as the old kings and princes and dukes. Modern nations, states and cities don't really need to compete with each other in the arts like they did. They may choose to do so but the structural imperatives of the defunct political systems that caused the building of that infrastructure are gone. So the modern agenda for these institutions has involved a very interesting and complicated problem: What are we going to use this stuff for going forwards?

I'm not going to try to answer that but I think we can identify some of the attempts to answer it. One was to keep playing golden oldies (still a popular choice). Another was to write new music, some of which was a radical over-reaction to the extreme conservatism that constrained the arts in a lot of Europe up to the end of WW2, and some composers and musicians rushed to the most radical modernism they could find. Another popular choice was of course for individuals to make careers in them. And some of those careers ended up with a lot of power. And in some cases these things overlapped. (Plenty of other things happened of course.)

One of the things that didn't always happen was to strip away the exclusivity, the association with certain social classes, and the seriousness. (Finally I get to the point.)

In fact, I think the difficult-listening aspect of much of the new music often increased the exclusivity and seriousness. There's something esoteric about it. This was actually part of the attraction to me as a teen. What was going on in the new music ghetto was so weird and quasi-hidden, in the paradoxical way of all truly esoteric knowledge, that I wanted in.

What the Americans did is quite another story. That's for another day, if ever.

But I'll stop now with one last thought. The property of artistic greatness that was so important in the defunct political systems, I'm not sure it's always helpful now.

 

[computer-audiophile]

It's exiting to discuss the topic 'contemporary classic' in the ASR forum, but I may not always understand everything correctly. Not least because English is not my native language. This sometimes leads to misunderstandings about the subtle linguistic undertones that resonate in communication. (I hope this translates well)

A lively circle of insiders where you share common interests and experience, is more easy for me. Like tonight, for example, when there was a meeting in the neighborhood. A friend of ours Franz Peter van Boxelaer a philosopher and art historian had his 70th birthday, and our other friend, the opera singer Eleni Ioannidou, who runs the music salon 'Ars Augusta' with her partner, had invited him and asked him to talk about his rich biography as a recipient, organizer and contributor of classical and contemporary music. He told about his wandering through the world of music since his childhood. There are many parallels with me. Once again we felt very comfortable in this setting.

II International Lied Competition Bolko von Hochberg 2024 | First Round 28.5. | Ars Augusta Musikpro

Third day of the First Round of the International Art-Song Competition. Topic: Orpheus, Spirit of the Renaissance

www.arsaugusta.org

 

[McGillroy]

Hi,
I would love to tell you but I can't remember where I bought it. Neither in my order history of Amazon nor AliExpress I found it, sorry.
The Product is named KANTO SP6HD/SP6HDW. (from the user manual)



Wagner is not my cup of tea, and neither is all the hype Bayreuth is making.

Wasn't mine either until I got old

Moers, Wacken, Bayreuth - the true Teutonic sonic trinity. Been there did that. Do it again if I can.

 

[McGillroy]

Bailey was onto something when he described the self-erasing recording technology he wants. The recording erases itself as you listen to it! Each copy can be heard only once.

Interesting - could you pls point me to the source of that? Thank you!

 

[Multicore]

Interesting - could you pls point me to the source of that? Thank you!

It's mentioned in the book by Ben Watson and Derek mentions it himself in a recording that I have on an LP called In Whose Tradition? which I believe was reissued with a different title on CD.

To people used to free improvised music, it's not such a surprising idea. Imagine a live gig where no recording is made, which was perfectly normal until quite recently. The bald fact is that the music you hear has never been heard before and will never be heard again. All that's left afterwards is memory. Knowing this intensifies the experience: you should maybe listen carefully 'cos there's no second chances. And for the musicians making mistakes is less dangerous to reputation so this arrangement allows more adventurous experimentation.

But getting to a live gig can be inconvenient, costly, and maybe there's something else you want to do at that time. So recordings are interesting too, they allow artists to commune with a larger audiences. But what to do about this permanent record?

 

[JaMaSt]

I'm not going to try to answer that but I think we can identify some of the attempts to answer it. One was to keep playing golden oldies (still a popular choice). Another was to write new music, some of which was a radical over-reaction to the extreme conservatism that constrained the arts in a lot of Europe up to the end of WW2, and some composers and musicians rushed to the most radical modernism they could find.

A good paper on the development of "modernism" in the interwar period - largely in architecture (my profession), but also paralleled in music, painting, sculpture, product design, fashion, etc.

https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/files/594329/download?download_frd=1...

An excerpt:

Any attempt to link philosophy and art in the interwar period must go further than merely identifying parallelisms between movements. In fact, core members of the logical positivist and Bauhaus groups selfconsciously sought to articulate a view of the world in which both would play essential roles. Though on opposite political poles of the Vienna Circle, the philosophers Otto Neurath and Ludwig Wittgenstein each spent years pursuing architectural concerns. Throughout their writings Carnap, Neurath, and others singled out modern architecture as the cultural movement with which they most identified; their interests were reciprocated as the logical positivists were more prominent as visitors to the Dessau Bauhaus than members of any other single group outside art and architecture. Further, the two movements faced the same enemies-the religious right, nationalist, anthroposophist, voilkisch, and Nazi opponents-and this drove them even closer together, toward the conjoint life they had in mind. Both enterprises sought to instantiate a modernism emphasizing what I will call "transparent construction," a manifest building up from simple elements to all higher forms that would, by virtue of the systematic constructional program itself, guarantee the exclusion of the decorative, mystical, or metaphysical. There was a political dimension to this form of construction: by basing it on simple, accessible units, they hoped to banish incorporation of nationalist or historical features.

In music, the break from "historical" major/minor tonality was deliberate, political and philosophical.

 

[computer-audiophile]

@JaMaSt

Interesting PDF, thank you, I haven't read all of it yet. But of course the keyword Bauhaus immediately attracted me.

In 2019, the Bauhaus celebrated its 100th anniversary. This was of course a reason for us to travel once again to Dessau, Weimar etc. and enjoy the exhibitions there.
Of particular interest to those interested in architecture is the reinterpretation of the so-called Master Houses.

Meisterhäuser - Orte - Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

www.bauhaus-dessau.de

I love the design that was developed or influenced by the Bauhaus. Otl Aicher, for example (Ulm School of Design), I visited privately when he was still alive. He had designed a living environment for himself and his staff in 'Rotismühle' nearby Ulm that I found stunningly beautiful in the mid-seventies. Everything thought out to the smallest detail, several buildings, including the park and the natural garden, modern but human, without 'cold' materials. I had discovered it once when I did my racing bike tour there in the remote countryside. His wife invited me to tea. Today unfortunately destroyed, his heirs could not handle it well. I saw it again later.

Prof. Dieter Rams, who among other things is responsible for BRAUN appliance design, is also one of my heroes, from the old school. Today, of course, there is already a lot of innovation in modern design and architecture, which we admire. I say "we" because my wife is also design-savvy. As far as modern architects go, we both like Tadao Ando, but also many more. We like to visit outstanding manifestations of modern architecture. In Japan this was for example Naoshima Island and the Museum of Issey Miyake in Tokyo. (my own picture)

 

[Multicore]

A good paper on the development of "modernism" in the interwar period - largely in architecture (my profession), but also paralleled in music, painting, sculpture, product design, fashion, etc.

I recently read Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture by Malcolm Millais, the first book on the topic I ever read with an openly critical stance. It is good, provides thorough historical context, combines practical, technical, social and business perspectives, and best of all combines a dry critical text with many humorously captioned images into what ends up being polemical. The author is a friend of my podcast cohost and I hope we can interview him one day.

https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/files/594329/download?download_frd=1...

An excerpt:

Any attempt to link philosophy and art in the interwar period must go further than merely identifying parallelisms between movements. In fact, core members of the logical positivist and Bauhaus groups selfconsciously sought to articulate a view of the world in which both would play essential roles. Though on opposite political poles of the Vienna Circle, the philosophers Otto Neurath and Ludwig Wittgenstein each spent years pursuing architectural concerns. Throughout their writings Carnap, Neurath, and others singled out modern architecture as the cultural movement with which they most identified; their interests were reciprocated as the logical positivists were more prominent as visitors to the Dessau Bauhaus than members of any other single group outside art and architecture. Further, the two movements faced the same enemies-the religious right, nationalist, anthroposophist, voilkisch, and Nazi opponents-and this drove them even closer together, toward the conjoint life they had in mind. Both enterprises sought to instantiate a modernism emphasizing what I will call "transparent construction," a manifest building up from simple elements to all higher forms that would, by virtue of the systematic constructional program itself, guarantee the exclusion of the decorative, mystical, or metaphysical. There was a political dimension to this form of construction: by basing it on simple, accessible units, they hoped to banish incorporation of nationalist or historical features.

In music, the break from "historical" major/minor tonality was deliberate, political and philosophical.

I know. A couple of questions that arise from this.

First, and glaringly obviously, why would anyone think that changing the notes on the score would fix these problems in the existing systems of art production?

Second, in the other arts, modernism is usually taken to have been an interwar thing. For example in literature in the 60s it was understood to have ended during ww2. So what's going on in European composition that it should have exploded and taken over progressive though so thoroughly right after ww2?

 

[Multicore]

Wagner is not my cup of tea, and neither is all the hype Bayreuth is making.

Romanticism in general is, I find, a turn off. My wife and I don't listen to the same music much but we are very much united in denouncing romanticism both in theory and in practice. Maybe I should one day go to Bayreuth so as to better inform my critique ;^>

 

[computer-audiophile]

Maybe I should one day go to Bayreuth so as to better inform my critique ;^>

Tom, yes, please let me know, and I'll come and join you, and we can discuss the matter directly between the two of us.

 

[Multicore]

As far as modern architects go, we both like Tadao Ando, but also many more. We like to visit outstanding manifestations of modern architecture. In Japan this was for example Naoshima Island and the Museum of Issey Miyake in Tokyo. (my own picture)

View attachment 263791

I like how the picture combines different styles of architecture. The towers in the background represent one kind of cultural artifact and the foreground a very different kind, each object preserving in solid physical space the outcome of its complex of purposes and constraints through time as it came to completion, and each serving different purposes to different communities going forwards.

 

[Multicore]

Tom, yes, please let me know, and I'll come and join you, and we can discuss the matter directly between the two of us.

So long as they don't kick us both out of the opera house for laughing. Just listening to audio recordings of Wagner opera can provoke me.

 

[McGillroy]

You will laugh for sure. The language alone draws chuckles aplenty.

Wagner doesn't work on recordings. Like Freud called for psychoanalysis to have sessions on at least four days a week to make sure people don't come out of regression too much something like the Ring is a multi-day regressive experience. It's a parasocial event and when done right enables a unique form of aesthetic reflection on social cohesion, myth-making and the anomic paradoxes of individuation. You'll experience it on and off stage with the audience and your fellow peers left and right to you.

Probably not what Wagner intended.

 

[Shorty]

It's exiting to discuss the topic 'contemporary classic' in the ASR forum, but I may not always understand everything correctly. Not least because English is not my native language. This sometimes leads to misunderstandings about the subtle linguistic undertones that resonate in communication. (I hope this translates well)

A lively circle of insiders where you share common interests and experience, is more easy for me. Like tonight, for example, when there was a meeting in the neighborhood. A friend of ours Franz Peter van Boxelaer a philosopher and art historian had his 70th birthday, and our other friend, the opera singer Eleni Ioannidou, who runs the music salon 'Ars Augusta' with her partner, had invited him and asked him to talk about his rich biography as a recipient, organizer and contributor of classical and contemporary music. He told about his wandering through the world of music since his childhood. There are many parallels with me. Once again we felt very comfortable in this setting.

II International Lied Competition Bolko von Hochberg 2024 | First Round 28.5. | Ars Augusta Musikpro

Third day of the First Round of the International Art-Song Competition. Topic: Orpheus, Spirit of the Renaissance

www.arsaugusta.org

View attachment 263452

What with that wonderful photo, you had me hoping I could view a video of the evening…

 

[computer-audiophile]

What with that wonderful photo, you had me hoping I could view a video of the evening…

Thanks for the kind interest, Shorty. But I must confess to my shame that I have never made a video. Sometimes there are videos on the website of our friends from Ars Augusta.

 

[Multicore]

You will laugh for sure. The language alone draws chuckles aplenty.

Wagner doesn't work on recordings. Like Freud called for psychoanalysis to have sessions on at least four days a week to make sure people don't come out of regression too much something like the Ring is a multi-day regressive experience. It's a parasocial event and when done right enables a unique form of aesthetic reflection on social cohesion, myth-making and the anomic paradoxes of individuation. You'll experience it on and off stage with the audience and your fellow peers left and right to you.

Probably not what Wagner intended.

I have no idea what I just read here means but a phrase like "enables a unique form of aesthetic reflection on social cohesion, myth-making and the anomic paradoxes of individuation" has me hooked. That's obviously brainy af. Now I have to go to Bayreuth.

 

[computer-audiophile]

Here is another anecdote about how contemporary music can work. Yesterday we had a visit from a friend who has been living in our small town for some time now after living around the world. He is an academically trained artist, painter and photographer. We also talked about music, my audio hobby, and I thought about what I could play for him. He would know jazz or classical music, but definitely not contemporary experimental music from Japan. I was curious to see his reaction. I played him this record:

Toshi Ichiyanagi / Maki Ishii “Music for Living Process / Cho-Etsu”

Toshi Ichiyanagi / Maki IshiiMusic for Living Process / Cho-EtsuEdition RZ (Germany) 1991ED.RZ 1008 (LP) coated sleeve. w/insert, label catalog.sleeve : EX(some slightly wear.)media : M/M Split album released in 1991 on the German contemporary/electronic music label Edition RZ, run by Robert...

organicmusic.jp

Short sound sample here: http://xsvxdiscott.xsrv.jp/organicmusic/samplemp3/mp3/20230206/OMH23010086_a.mp3

What was the result? He was so impressed that he spontaneously wanted a good turntable I had left over from a former test. It is the Pro-Ject 'The Classic' in my picture. On Monday I will bring him the turntable and set it up.