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MEHAKAMERIQUES by EDGARD VARESE It is a testament to the international profile of musical modernism in the New York of the 1920s that one of its driving figures was born in France. Edgard Varese moved to New York in 1915 and embarked on a career as a conductor, composer, and impresario. His most prominent venture in the 1920s was the International Composers Guild, which provided a lively forum for modernist works, including many by Varese. Instruments used in this piece are : 4 flutes, 3 piccolos, 1 alto flute, 4 oboes, 1 English horn, 1 heckelphone, 4 clarinets, 1 E-flat clarinet, 1 bass clarinet, 1 contrabass clarinet, 4 bassoons, 2 contrabassoons, 8 French horns, 6 trumpets, 5 trombones, 1 tuba, 2 contrabass tubas, 2 sets of timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, xylophone, sleigh bells, cyclone whistle, steamboat whistle, siren, string drum, crow call, rattle, side drum, bass drum, 2 cymbals, crash cymbal, triangle, castanets, tambourine, slap stick, twig brush, tamtam), celesta, 2 harps, and strings Varese said that its title was “symbolic of discoveries—new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men.” It is an orchestral composition that is scored for a very large, romantic orchestra with additional percussion. It was written between 1918 and 1921 and was revised in 1927. This was the first work that he composed after moving to United States. It was premiered on the 9th of April by Leopold Stokowski and performed by Philadelphia Orchestra. The piece is structured by placing “blocks” of music against one another. The blocks are marked primarily by texture and timbre with melody and rhythm being much more malleable. The commentary on Ameriques has focused on its elemental power and its vivid representation of New York City. It did not fail to in cooperate the howling police car sirens. The piece has a slow start which speeds up within a span of 20-30 seconds. The sound quality keeps changing rapidly. At one moment the sound is soothing and in the other its completely suspenseful and murderous. While I was listening to this piece, it reminded me of the shows that we used to watch as kids. The ones that did not involve a dialogue and music was the sole communicator for what is happening to the characters. For example, an ominous sound to show suspense building up, a sharp and loud sound for a jump scare or the peak of the situation. It was almost like it has a pattern to it. There would be a loud noise which will continue to become softer and as soon as you are comfortable with the sound, there will be a loud sound which will continue to soften and this forms a loop. Even though it’s a loop, they are not repeated, its individual, unique sets of sounds playing for 24 minutes. There are parts where it almost feels like someone is screaming and there is a situation going on around her that needs her to make a quick move, all of these feeling is exaggerated because the music accompanying apart from the sound of the person screaming, compliments the situation and adds to the discomfort of the listener. I honestly got very uncomfortable in some parts because of how scary the music got after a point. Irrespective of the fact that the music is discomforting sometimes, the suspenseful parts keep the listener curious to know what’s next. TELEMUSIK by STOCKHAUSEN This piece was made in connection of the 50th anniversary of the founding of NHK in 1965. Telemusik was realized between January 23 and March 2, 1966 in the Studio for Electronic Music of the Japanese broadcasting system Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), in collaboration with the director of the studio, Wataru Uenami and the studio technicians Hiroshi Shiotani, Shigeru Satô and Akira Honma. The music is made with a combination of variety of traditional ethnic music from around the world together with electronically generated sounds. There are high pitched sounds in between which makes the listener feel like the sound is coming from a distance and then the sound slowly enters the audible range. This composition was recorded using a 6 track tape recorder custom built for NHK studios. The principal forming element of Telemusik in duration. The work consists of thirty-two structures called “moments” by the composer. Each begins with the stroke of a Japanese temple instrument. These six instruments are each associated with a moment duration according to their natural decay time: the taku (a high-pitched sandalwood clapper with almost instantaneous decay) with the shortest duration, the bokushō (a larger clapper with longer decay time) with the next longer duration, then a hollow-sounding mokugyo ("wooden fish"), higher and lower-pitched cup gongs called rin and keisu, ending with a group of four large temple bells for the longest of the six durations used. The synthetic tones which Stockhausen created are mostly very high or very low-pitched. This alone makes the sonic "band-width" of telenusik pretty unique. The equipment Stockhausen used to create the electronic layers included the following sound generators: • sine wave generators • beat frequency oscillators (creates various pulses/sine waves/bands of sound) • function generator (used to create irregular non-sine curve waves, including irregular square waves) • delta generator (low frequency pulse generator used as 2nd input to control amplitude modulator. Unless you read about the history of the piece or about music in detail, one would not know that it actually has a structure. To a listener who does not have a knowledge about the above, it will only be a set of unorganized sounds (at least for me). what I really like about the composition is that it includes the sounds of people chanting prayers in the back ground. I thought that the piece was very odd and unpleasant to the ears. Unlike the work of Edgar V. it was not very engaging. The sounds are made from Japanese instruments but if I did not have that knowledge the sound pieces would resemble sounds produced by day to day objects around us. For example, the sound of an air plane taking off, the anklet while walking, insects chirping, phone ringing, gate screeching, hammering, starting of a car engine, etc. Sounds of different loudness and frequencies were playing alongside each other which made it difficult to concentrate on one sound at a time. At some points, both outputs had a different sound playing at the same time. The sounds vary from rough to soft notes but the ending is very abruptly done with sharp notes. |