Play it again: conquering Chopin's Ballade No 1 | Alan Rusbridger. Reading on mobile? Click here to view video This all began with Gary. We were a group of strangers, who had come to the Lot valley in central France to play the piano for a week; keen amateurs all. Gary seemed the outsider – a little awkward, unfinished around the edges; at times distant, melancholy; troubled even. There had been hints about Gary's life – time spent as a Manchester cab driver; anecdotes about a pub he'd once run. And now, he'd produced business cards for his latest venture: a website for leather and PVC clothes.
A couple of days into the course, he'd broken off his masterclass – an overambitious attempt at some Liszt – saying he felt unwell. In that bare stone-floored room above the village vineyards, we were all transfixed. The final presto was both demonic and dramatic. A week or so later, I was packing for our August holiday when at the last minute I found myself slipping a score of the Ballade into my suitcase. Reading this on mobile? Saturday 30 October Meaning? 2428137. Master.15.5. Untitled. Musicofsound.co. I mentioned this book when it was recently released in English for the first time, but now that I actually own a copy and have read the first few chapters I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying reading it and highly reccomend it.
It is full of pearls of wisdom and insight, directly about its subject i.e. music/sound and the evolution of concrete music, but Schaeffers writing also reflects on perception, art, philosophy and the creative process… A few examples: April 4. Sudden illumination. Add a component of sound to noise, that is, combine a melodic element with the eprcussive element. From this, the notion of wood cut into different lengths, of approximately tuned tubes. April 5.
It is fascinating to read of his thought processes as he moves between physical workshop and electronic studio, where some of his experiments reveal attributes that many contemporary sound manipulators I am sure have also had similar revelations (in their own way & with their own material) Notes of a scandal. As a year-long festival of 20th-century classical music opens, Marcus du Sautoy discusses the link between music and math ©James Royall Marcus du Sautoy in his study at home in north London In 1908 the Austrian artist Richard Gerstl committed suicide and changed musical history. It was a flamboyant death by anyone’s standards – after burning his paintings, he hanged himself naked in front of a full-length mirror. The cause of his emotional anguish was the end of his affair with the wife of the composer Arnold Schoenberg, Mathilde. When he heard the news, Schoenberg, already traumatised by his wife’s infidelity, contemplated suicide himself but, instead, sublimated his despair in a composition that took him for the first time into atonality.
Today it’s difficult to imagine how dramatic that first lurch was but, in classical music terms, it’s fair to say it was the equivalent of the splitting of the atom. I talk to du Sautoy about the riots that greeted Schoenberg’s work. Shakespeare and Wordsworth boost the brain, new research reveals. Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks.
John Cage. Stockhausen.