[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: I don't want your pity
At 10:57 PM 12/26/00 -0500, Elmer Elevator wrote:
I ain't agin all "avant-garde" music. I have a very healthy fascination
with it and have invested quite a bit more than $14 in it. "Variations IV"
was just a jive-ass rip-off, and of innocent children at that. So says Elmer.
I'm a huge fan of Harry Partch. That should earn me my avant-garde music
bona fides. The guy was a sculptor, for god's sake.
And I don't want anyone's pity. The $14 comes from Cage's estate or heirs,
or I ain't taking a dime of it.
What if the Cage estate compensated you with a copy of the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir singing "La Bamba" and other Mexican favorites? (This
really does exist: Columbia LP M 32227 from 1973, "Cielito Lindo". For the
full details, search the Library of Congress web site for Command Keyword =
k010 73750282) Actually you probably don't need to hear this rendition at
all but can just imagine what it sounds like. The entire choir is pitted
against a solo harp, heavily miked to be audible. There are some really
dramatic choral crescendos and decrescendos. The Spanish accent is, well,
unconvincing.
Bammmmmmmm-baaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA bamba! Bamba bamba bamba!
At least it's comforting to know that revenue from this album in some small
way probably financed some contemporaneous GG albums from the other side of
Columbia's enterprise. Let's hope it wasn't vice versa.
I used to work with a guy who studied composition with John Cage. He told
me that for some of the classes Cage took the students out mushroom hunting.
Meanwhile, I think the sonatas and interludes for prepared piano are
brilliant. A whole percussion orchestra in a box under control of one
player, basically. "Indeterminacy" is also quite an album.
And of course HPSCHD is very Gouldian: the listener is expected to
participate in the composition by fussing with the stereo's dials to bring
out any desired part.
Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl or http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
clavichord CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl
trumpet and organ: http://www.mp3.com/hlduo
"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot