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01. TOM JOHNSON - the 78 two-note chords
02. TOM JOHNSON - the 286 three-note chords
03. TOM JOHNSON - the 715 four-note chords
04. TOM JOHNSON - the 1287 five-note chords
05. TOM JOHNSON - the 1716 six-note chords
06. TOM JOHNSON - the 1716 seven-note chords
07. TOM JOHNSON - the 1287 eight-note chords
08. TOM JOHNSON - the 715 nine-note chords
09. TOM JOHNSON - the 286 ten-note chords
10. TOM JOHNSON - the 78 eleven-note chords
11. TOM JOHNSON - the 13 twelve-note chords
12. TOM JOHNSON - the 1 thirteen-note chord
ARTIST
TITLE
The Chord Catalogue
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
XI 123CD XI 123CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
4/14/2015

1999 release. Tom Johnson composed The Chord Catalogue in 1986 and has performed it numerous times around the world since then. This is the first recording. The score consists of a set of verbal instructions and is included in the CD booklet. "Extreme and, one would think, extremely simple. A lesser man would have arranged those 8178 chords in some symphonically meaningful, or else quasi-random order. But Johnson proceeded methodically up the chromatic scale from two notes at a time, three, four, and so on to 13. By the time we reach ten note chords, the information overload was such that the differences were hardly perceptible, a situation reminiscent of serial music. Far from being heavy handed minimalism, The Chord Catalogue was a pointed lesson in music history and the relativity of perception" --Kyle Gann, The Village Voice. "I have often tried to explain that my music is a reaction against the romantic and expressionistic musical past, and that I am seeking something more objective, something that doesn't express my emotions, something that doesn't try to manipulate the emotions of the listener either, something outside myself. I like to think of The Chord Catalogue as a sort of natural phenomenon -- something which has always been present in the ordinary musical scale, and which I simply observed, rather than invented. It is not so much a composition as simply a list." --Tom Johnson