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viewing 1 To 21 of 21 items
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OI 013LP
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The legendary Don Cherry with his great 1966 quintet featuring Gato Barbieri on tenor sax, Karl Berger on piano, Bo Stief on bass and Aldo Romano on drums. This quintet can also be heard on three volumes titled Live at Café Monmartre 1966 (ESPDISK 4032CD, 4043CD and 4051CD) and with the New York Total Music Company in 1968. This recording is taken from an excellent radio broadcast, presented here in a glorious vinyl release.
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OI 001-2024LP
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A live performance of four early works by Steve Reich: "Four Organs," "My Name Is," "Piano Phase," and "Phase Patterns." This 1970 performance marked an important moment in San Francisco Bay Area new music history with the triumphant return to the East Bay by Reich, who studied at Mills College with Luciano Berio and performed the 1964 world premiere of Terry Riley's seminal In C at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The resonant acoustics of the University of California at Berkeley Museum's concrete interior were especially appropriate for "Four Organs", with its long additive sustained chords over a maraca pulse. 180-gram LP. Black vinyl. Limited edition of 500.
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OI 027LP
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Modern Silence present the first ever reissue of Archie Shepp/Lars Gullin Quintet's The House I Live In, originally released in 1980. An incredible live album featuring saxophonists Archie Shepp and Lars Gullin, recorded at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 21, 1963. 180 gram, virgin vinyl; Edition of 500.
"This is a fascinating release. Tenor-saxophonist Archie Shepp would not burst upon the U.S. avant-garde scene until 1964-65 but here he is featured at a Danish concert with the great cool bop baritonist Lars Gullin and a top-notch straight-ahead rhythm section (pianist Tete Montoliu, bassist Niels Pedersen, and drummer Alex Riel). The quintet stretches out on four lengthy standards (including 'Sweet Georgia Brown' and a 19-minute rendition of 'You Stepped Out Of A Dream') and it is particularly interesting to hear the reactions of the other musicians to Shepp's rather free flights; at a couple of points Gullin tries to copy him. An important historical release" --Scott Yanow, AllMusic.
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2LP
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OI 026LP
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The Manifesto Of Futurism by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, published in 1909, still has an intoxicating force. "We want to glorify war . . . to destroy museums, libraries, and academies of all kinds," wrote Marinetti. "We shall sing to the great crowds excited by work, pleasure or rioting, the multicoloured, many-voiced tides of revolution in modern capitals." Color was as important as force to the movement, and it was a search for new sound colors that fired the ambitions of artist and instrument builder Luigi Russolo, who, though quieter than Marinetti, is now seen as the "father of noise". Russolo's work and ideas anticipated the shape of music to come: the early percussion scores of Edgard Varèse and John Cage; electroacoustic music; recording; graphic scores -- not to mention the inevitable sonic onslaught of effects and sound design in movies, TV, and computer games. In his 1913 manifesto, L'Arte Dei Rumori ("The Art Of Noises"), Russolo argued that the history of music, from primitive races through to 19th-century harmonic sophistication, was a progression that went naturally from ancient silence to modern noise: "The limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and the infinite variety of 'noise-sound' conquered." La Musica Futurista Nell'italia E Nel Mondo is a stunning anthology of true pioneers of electronic/noise music. Features works by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Antonio Russolo, Rodolfo De Angelis, Alexandr Mossolov Eiar Orchestra Victor De Sabata, Arthur Honegger, Dixon Cowell, Julius Ehrlich, Paul Whiteman, Walter Ruttmann, and George Antheil. Comes in a special "flap" deluxe gatefold sleeve, an Italian futurist newspaper replica.
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LP
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OI 025LP
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Modern Silence present a reissue of The New York Contemporary Five's Consequences, originally released in 1966. The New York Contemporary Five barely lasted a year, all told, but they recorded five albums that shaped the jazz to come. They were a super-group after the fact -- the stellar frontline of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai all being relative newcomers at the time. Cherry had recently left Ornette Coleman and was only starting to stretch into world music. Shepp was fresh off a stint with Cecil Taylor and had just found his voice as a composer and performer. And Tchicai was virtually unknown. Their scorching music -- aided by the supple and hard-hitting rhythm section of Don Moore and J. C. Moses -- is a thrilling mix of adventurous soloing and post-bop structures, memorable heads and go-for-broke improv. Shepp and Tchicai offered two different ways forward for sax players: Shepp privileged texture, density, and fragmentation -- a pointillist take on Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, perhaps. Tchicai was a master of melodic invention, teasing out hard and bright phrases that seem unpredictably off-kilter. What's still remarkable about these tunes is their sense of internal tension. They're wound tighter than a magnet coil, without sacrificing any spontaneity. There's little that's strictly free about this jazz, but it's full of reckless and unexpected drama all the same. "Consequences" is the record's barnburner, built on fiery performances and climaxing with a Don Cherry solo that sounds like the aural equivalent of a fifty foot skid mark. Their version of Bill Dixon's "Trio" is contemplative by comparison, offering a loping groove, overlapping textures, and a series of wonderfully sustained solos that show off the stylistic strengths of each player.
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LP
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OI 023LP
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"The compositions on Side I of this record represent attempts at new means of musical expression. Some utilize conventional musical instruments and sounds in startlingly new ways, giving an impression of an actual 'new' sound being created; some use instruments new to music (electrical, mechanical and natural) adding to the composers' palette of timbres and tonalities. . . . SIDE II of this record is meant as a tool for those using new sounds and techniques in composing. There are basic sounds (some of which are hard to come by) and basic sound patterns, together with examples of how these sounds and patterns may be utilized." --original liner notes by Eugene Bruck
Sounds of New Music is a legendary collection of 18 compositions from the 1920s to the mid-1950s; composers include Edgard Varèse, Henry Cowell, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Julius Meytuss, Alexander Mossolov, Halim El-Dabh, and John Cage, whose "Dance" is performed on a transformed Steinway piano that gives the music an almost primitive quality. Side B (The Experiments) includes works by Ussachevsky, Henry Jacobs, and Roger Marin & Frederic Ramsey, Jr. Originally released by Folkways Records in 1957.
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LP
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OI 018LP
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Modern Silence present a reissue of Piano Music Of The Near East, originally released in 1963. This stunning 20th-century piano music was inspired by national traditions but uses the language and form of Western music. Features pieces by: Manolis Kalomiri, Paul Ben-Haim, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Andre Amine Hossein, Anis Fuleihan, and Amiran Rigai. All works played on piano by Amiran Rigai. From the original liner notes: "In the countries of the Near East, as in any other country where occidental culture is adoptive, musical composition modeled after its occidental counterpart came into being out of an intellectual necessity: that of finding a substitute for a traditional music which, under the dictate of its very essence, resisted evolution and was consequently in decay. It was logical, as far as both the ideals and the basic methods of this process of substitution were concerned, that the fashioning be done after the examples of the national schools of the late nineteenth-century Europe. The first stream of the westernized near eastern music was therefore romantic (or post-romantic, or impressionist) in its overall gesture. Regardless of the composition date of each individual opus, all of the works recorded here fall into this category: music inspired by national traditions (musical, or other), displaying at least that intangible called 'national character' whenever a national element is not evident, but employing a language and a medium belonging to western music (...)"
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LP
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OI 016LP
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Reduced prices, last copies. Modern Silence present a reissue of Musical Offering, originally released in 1990. Features works by Oleg Buloshkin, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edward Artemiev, Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke. From the original liner notes: "(...) Please, try to imagine a score sounding by itself without a conductor, an orchestra even without musical instruments. This magic is possible by using the musical synthesizer, ANS. ANS is an instrument with which a composer can not only create but even draw his music without notes and orchestra. A Soviet scientist Evgeny Murzin spent about 20 years creating this apparatus which can join together three processes: music creation, recording and performing. All these processes are rather complicated. You can see the twinkling of different lamps, the rotation of grooved discs made of glass - notes are cut on a glass disc covered with a special layer; The drawings on the glass are 'sounding notes'. To listen to the drawn picture you should press the button and a wonderful transformation will begin. Murzin dedicated his apparatus to Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, that's why he called it ANS. Scriabin, the creator of the 'Poem of Ecstasy', used in his works a highly chromatic, new type of harmonic style designed to express his beliefs, views and wishes. Soviet music lovers already know some recordings made on ANS from the films Into Space, Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), Siberiade (1979) and others. Works of well-known Soviet composers E. Artemiev, O. Buloshkin, E. Denisov, S. Gubaidulina, A. Schnittke featured on this LP were recorded at the Electronic Music Studio (...)"
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LP
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OI 015LP
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Reduced pricing, last copies. Modern Silence present a reissue of Metamorphoses, originally released in 1980. A Russian album of electronic interpretations of "classical" pieces by Claude Debussy, Claudio Monteverdi along with John Bull, Vladimir Martynov, Sergei Prokofiev, J. S. Bach, Edward Artemiev and Yuri Bogdanov. Yuri Bogdanov is featured on every track, on some tracks together with Edward Artemiev, composer for Andrei Tarkovsky, and others. Other tracks feature Vladimir Martynov. From the original liner notes: "The record is made on the basis of a kaleidoscope: it is interspersed with pieces of various styles, genres and eras. For example, with these pieces, the authors wanted to show a variety of ways to use a synthesizer, starting with the direct simulation of now or once existing instruments, to the establishment of new not yet known sound systems. Thus, the record is like a small musical walk through time (...)"
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2LP
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OI 014LP
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Modern Silence present a live recording, originally broadcast by KPFA Radio from the sculpture court of the San Francisco Museum of Art on January 16, 1965. Coinciding with the 39th birthday of fellow pianist and longtime associate David Tudor, this historic concert with John Cage opens with a duet for cymbal with contact microphones agitated by a wide gamut of objects, and concludes with Variations IV in which loudspeakers outside the performance space interacted with speakers next to the audience. Includes a performance of Christian Wolff's For 1, 2 or 3 People. First vinyl release of this historic performance of minimalist music.
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LP
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OI 019LP
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Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales (The Group of Musical Research) of the O.R.T.F. (Office of the French Radio-Television) is known in the world principally as the promoter of an original technique of realization as well as reflection: Musique concrète. For more than fifty years, Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales has founded its experience, its methods of research and particular techniques, upon a confrontation between the musical act, reflection upon its elements, experimentation on sound sources, and the electro-acoustical means. Grouped around Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle, composers and researchers try to give new direction to musical activity through the conjugated action of a program of "Fundamental Research" on the languages of music (concrete, electronic, but also instrumental and oriental) and a program of "Expression", resulting in original compositions as well as essays for the ballet, theater, cinema, or television. In this LP, there are some great examples of the incredible production of many of the most celebrated composers of the movement: Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bernard Parmegiani, Ernst Krenek, Luc Ferrari and Ivo Malec along with Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle.
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LP
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OI 020LP
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Reduced price, last copies... Modern Silence present a reissue of Jef Gilson's Enfin!, originally released in 1963. French pianist Jef Gilson came up in the '60s and played in a straight-ahead hard bop style and also made forays into Afro-jazz and free jazz, including a noteworthy version of Pharoah Sanders's "The Creator Has a Master Plan". He featured the young violinist Jean Luc Ponty on some early recordings, and also appeared on Magma drummer Christian Vander's Vander Et Les Trois Jeffs (1973). The pianist led numerous ensembles ranging from trios to creative big bands during his career, including the Jef Gilson Nonet, Jef Gilson et Malagasy, and the Jef Gilson Orchestra. Enfin! is a French modal jazz classic featuring some of the best musicians at the time: Portal, Pontu, Tholot, Jean Claude Petit, Francois Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Henri Texier, Jean Louis Chautemps.
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LP
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OI 012LP
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Modern Silence present a reissue of Oeil Vision, originally released in 1964. One of the best albums by legendary French pianist Jef Gilson, recorded in 1963 with Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, Daniel Humair on drums, Jean-Louis Chautemps and Pierre Caron on tenor sax, Guy Pedersen and Henri Texier on bass. A superb line up for this beautiful album including two splendid versions of "Chant-Inca" (a hidden cover of Pharoah Sanders "Creator Has A Masterplan"). Essential French spirit/avant jazz. Gilson was the brilliant mind behind a number of incredible, yet over-looked recordings during the late sixties and early seventies. His music spanned from big band and large led ensemble work to his later explorations with African influenced spiritual jazz. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Edition of 500.
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2LP BOX
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OI 011LP
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Recorded live in the town hall of New York City on May 15, 1958, this historic concert (organized by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg) was a retrospective of Cage's work from 1934 to 1958. Here Cage's interest in technology, Eastern philosophies, and the concept of "silence" and "chance" as related to composition come to the fore as Cage performs some of the most significant and controversial pieces of his career, several of which ("Six Short Inventions for Seven Instruments," "She Is Asleep," "Music for Carillon," and "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra") were performed here for the first time ever. Box includes two 180-gram LPs and a 12-page book containing comments by John Cage himself. Limited numbered edition of 500.
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LP
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OI 010LP
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Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy continued his early exploration of Thelonious Monk's compositions on Evidence, originally released in 1961. Lacy worked extensively with Monk, absorbing the pianist's intricate music and adding his individualist soprano saxophone mark to it. On this release, he employs the equally impressive Don Cherry on trumpet, who was playing with the Ornette Coleman quartet at the time, drummer Billy Higgins, who played with both Coleman and Monk, and bassist Carl Brown. Cherry proved capable of playing outside the jagged lines he formulated with Coleman, being just as complimentary and exciting in Monk's arena with Lacy. Out of the six tracks, four are Monk's compositions while the remaining are lesser known Duke Ellington numbers: "The Mystery Song" and "Something to Live For" (co-written with Billy Strayhorn). Edition of 500.
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LP
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OI 009LP
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Modern Silence presents Beton-Studie / Zeitmass für fünf Holzbläser / Klavierstuck XI compositions written by Karlheinz Stockhausen. A collection of some of Karlheinz Stockhausen's earliest work, including his earliest piece of musique concrète "Beton-Studie" (aka "Étude") written by Stockhausen in 1952-53 at Pierre Schaeffer's studio at the RTF in Paris. Until 1992 this piece was believed to have been lost. The LP also includes the celebrated "Zeitmass" (1955), and "Klavierstück XI, parts I-IV" (1956), both of which helped to cement Stockhausen's role as one of the leading German composers of the 20th century. 180 gram vinyl. Edition of 500.
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LP
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OI 007LP
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Modern Silence presents Kontakte written by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Kontakte (1959-60) was Stockhausen's first piece to use both electronics and traditional instruments together, marking a turning point in his career, when his music was beginning to show the influences of American avant-garde jazz and composers like John Cage. In Kontakte, live musicians play alongside a tape recording of percussion sounds that have been altered by different electronic devices (i.e. a ring modulator or a reverberator). Stockhausen wanted the musicians to improvise over the prepared tape, but the musicians were at such a loss that Stockhausen eventually had to score the instrumental parts as well. 180 gram vinyl. Edition of 500.
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LP
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OI 008LP
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Modern Silence presents Studie I & II, Gesang der Jünglinge, Zyklus für zwei Schlagzeugern featuring compositions written by Karlheinz Stockhausen. A collection of Stockhausen's most important works from the 1950s, particularly "Gesang der Jünglinge" ("Song of the Youths") (1955-56) which is probably the most iconic piece of electronic music ever written. Only because of Stockhausen's complete understanding of electronic equipment, along with his creative genius, was he able to produce this masterwork, the first piece of music to unify vocals and electronics. 180 gram vinyl. Edition of 500.
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LP
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OI 003LP
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"Arcana" - Requires an orchestra of 120 musicians: 70 strings, 8 percussionists playing some 40 percussion instruments, 8 horns, 5 each of the standard woodwinds, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, 2 sarrusophones, heckelphone, contrabass clarinet, contrabass trombone. First performed April 8, 1927 by The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting. "Déserts" - 2 flutes (sometimes piccolos), 2 clarinets (sometimes small clarinet and bass clarinet), 2 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, contrabass tuba, piano, percussion, 2 magnetic tapes of electronically organized sounds transmitted on two channels by means of a stereophonic system. First performed in Paris in 1954 by the Orchestre National, Hermann Scherchen conducting. "Déserts" was conceived for two different media: instrumental sounds and sounds electronically produced. After planning the work as a whole, Edgar Varèse wrote the instrumental score, always keeping in mind its relation to the organized sound sequence on tape to be interpolated at three different points in the score. The title "Déserts" should not lead the listener to expect descriptive music. "Déserts" has said that there is no program, no literal reference. For him but not, he insists, necessarily for anyone else, the word, desert, suggests not only "all physical deserts (of sand, sea, snow, of outer space, of empty city streets) but also the deserts in the mind of man; not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness, aloofness, timelessness,-but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man is alone, a world of mystery and essential loneliness." "Offrandes" - Soprano voice, piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, solo strings, percussion. First performed in New York in 1922 by the International Composers Guild conducted by Carlos Salzedo with Nina Koshetz, soprano.
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LP
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OI 005LP
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2022 restock, last copies/reduced price. Electronic/avant-garde music pioneer and founder of the French musique concrète movement, Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. He was also one of the first to record music on magnetic tape. Drawing inspiration from the Italian Futurists, he emphasized the double meaning of the word "play", meaning to play an instrument, but also to have fun and enjoy oneself. Pierre Henry, a classically trained musician, was one of Schaeffer's disciples and together they co-wrote the revolutionary "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul", recorded in 1950. Despite its title, it is not a symphony in the classical sense, but a kind of suite divided into 12 movements. It is a musical collage featuring vocal fragments, that are at times recorded backwards, accelerated or repeated, and other sounds like whistles, footsteps, doors slamming, metallic sounds, and a prepared piano. However, what is important about this piece is not merely its intrinsic musical value, but its influence on so many future generations of musicians in so many genres. "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul", over half a century later, remains a pioneering experiment in the search for new aural horizons. The Concerto side reveals Henry's personal approach to dissonance, with a strong impact of illogical sequences in the piano "duel": the two instruments seem to collide in a furious rejection of the traditional idea of music, generating a clash of noises that reproduce the sonic pollution of the modern times.
"Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul" (1949-1950 - First concert performance on March 18, 1950, at the Auditorium of the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. First performance as a ballet by Maurice Béjart on July 26, 1955, at the Théâtre de l'Etoile in Paris. "Concerto des ambiguïtés' for piano and piano" (1950) - First performance on August 7, 1950, over the French National Radio. Coreographic version by Maurice Béjart under the title "Voyage au c'ur d'un enfant (Trip Into The Heart Of A Child)", first performed on September 6, 1955, with Patrick Benda, at the Théâtre de l'Etoile in Paris.
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OI 002LP
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Reissue of Music Of Edgar Varèse, originally released on Columbia Masterworks in 1960. 180-gram LP. Limited edition of 500. From the original liner notes: "Edgard Varèse belongs to the generation of Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. Each of these composers produced a music of extreme individuality, like nothing of his contemporaries, and a radical break with that of the previous century. They may be said to have carried music to the limits of atomization, where one or another of its different elements seem to predominate. 'Ionisation' (Paris, 1931) requires an ensemble of thirteen musicians who play a total of thirty-seven percussion instruments. . . . Most of 'Ionisation' is composed with sonorities of percussion instruments alone. They are pitched instruments, of course, but belong to a category of pitch that we hear only as 'high' or 'low,' 'deep' or 'shallow'; timbre, rather than pitch, is the most conspicuous property of Varèse's orchestra, and rhythm and timbre are the principal elements of 'Ionisation'. . . . The sense of progress and development the listener feels from the first bar to the last, 'Ionisation' is noble music, capable of exalting the listener. When the masterpieces of the twentieth century are enumerated, it should be on the list, not in first place, perhaps, but there, nevertheless. 'Density 21.5,' a composition for unaccompanied flute solo, was written in January 1936, 'at the request of Georges Barrère for the inauguration of his platinum flute.' . . . The 'Poème Èlectronique,' an example of Organized Sound, the technique that has come to occupy Varèse's attention since 'Density 21.5' (he rejects the term musique concrète as inapplicable to his kind of composition), was created in close collaboration with the architect Le Corbusier for the Philips Radio Corporation's pavilion at the Brussels Exposition. Le Corbusier designed the pavilion in the shape of a three-peaked circus tent externally and (to use his own analogy) in the shape of a cow's stomach internally. This provided a series of hyperbolic and parabolic curves from which Varèse could project his 480-seconds-long composition. Along these curves, placed with infinite care, were no fewer than 400 loudspeakers through which the 'Poème' swept in continuous arcs of sound. . . . The audience, some fifteen or sixteen thousand people daily for six months, evinced reactions almost as kaleidoscopic as the sounds and images they encountered -- terror, anger, stunned awe, amusement, wild enthusiasm."
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