#messiaen

Messiaen Turangalîla Symphonie

It makes use of the Ondes Martenot which is a cool electronic instrument (cooler than the theramin in my opinion) and it especially sounds hauntingly beautiful when playing the melody with the violins at various points!

Shostakovich 13

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Oct 11, 1968: Jack at the New Haven Arena [Photo: Steve Potter]

Bruce

Jack Bruce is an incredibly serious musician. His face is young and calm but up close it hardens around intense eyes. During performances, he sings with that intensity of his eyes and then retreats to a corner while Clapton takes his solos. His conversation was the most egocentric of the three. But, after all, the man can hear four-part harmony in his head. His is unquestionably the unifying force of the group, writing most of the songs, doing 90 per cent of the singing and responsible for harnassing the explosive energies of Clapton and Baker.

While Clapton and Baker are entirely into their own virtuosity, Bruce's musciality is inexhaustible. At present he is working on the Bach Cello Suites ("the most perfect music ever written.") His art on the cello is well documented in "As You Said" on the last album. He may have the most extraordinary taste of any rock musician. "My favorite of the contemporary composers is Olivier Messiaen. I have this tape of the 'Turangalila Symphony' that I made off a radio broadcast and I keep returning to it. It's great music. I went to some of his (Messiaen's) lectures in Brighton. He's very much underrated."

Bruce also spoke of a new record he had just finished cutting called "Things We Like." All the selections on it are compositions of his written over the last five years. Bruce plays string bass. The other players are relatively unknown. "The whole album is serialized improvisation. I've written all the tops and bottoms and provided serialized rhythms and pitches for the others to improvise upon." Influences of Schoenberg? "No, probably more Webern than anyone else, especially since many of the cuts are so short. One is fifty seconds long. Webern, man, he was too much! Years ahead of his time. People still haven't caught on to him."

Bruce doesn't feel that rock will change greatly. "Rock depends very much on certain cliches. They're the essential vocabulary of rock. When-ever you add something new like, for instance, electronic sounds, you always risk destroying it." He is also anxious about whether he will be recognized apart from his Cream identity. "I had a terrible hassle just trying to find a company willing to produce my new disc." Meanwhile, Bruce continues his struggle to increase his musical powers by writing inventions in the style of Bach. "Two part inventions are hard, but it's the three-part ones that are a real gas." He does all this without the help of a piano. His songs are always conceived as total entities. Most of the cuts on "Fresh Cream" were written out in full score, again without the aid of a piano. I asked him the meaning of the title to one of these songs, "N.S.U." "That stands for nonspecific urethritis which is a disease of the urethra you catch from women... from fucking. We dedicated it to a mutual friend."

Økapi & Aldo Kapi's Orchestra - Pardonne​-​moi, Olivier! (feat. Geoff Leigh, Mike Cooper) 16 oiseaux pour Olivier Messiaen - plunderphonics + instrumental overdubs

The album is a plunderphonic parabola of the imaginary world, mystical and ornitological, of the French composer of the XX century, Olivier Messiaen. A sort of birds' catalogue, as Messiaen tried to do during his life. As always, even in this case økapi composed a little sound-collagism opera, which includes a video development. This is the soundtrack of this "movie". For this A/V-project, økapi is co-working with the italian video-artist Simone Memé, part of the collective MoreTv-V. Because of his dixit plunderphonic nature, and for the occasion, økapi involved Geoff Leigh (sax/flute) and Mike Cooper (guitar) into his phantomatic virtual orchestra. Økapi is Filippo Paolini (see also OCD032 K-Mundi), an Italian turntablist and sample cutup artist. Filippo has recorded several solo albums, as well as recording in the duo Metaxu and with the trio Dogon. He has performed live for national Italian State radio broadcasts (RAI) with renowned avant-turntablist, Christian Marclay and collaborates with numerous international artists such as Mike Cooper, Geoff Leigh, Peter Brotzmann, Mike Patton, Matt Gustafson, Zu, Damo Suzuki, Andy EX, Kawabata Makoto, Metamkine…

4. Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux

Olivier Messiaen was not only an influential composer of the 20th century, but also he was a passionate ornithologist. He was fascinated by the world of birds, and he studied and incorporated birdsong into his compositions from the 1950’s. Birdsong required an intricate system of musical notation, so Messiaen used very complex rhytms and tonal systems, from which the latter is rather difficult to be replicated on the piano because of its fixed tuning. Catalogue d’Oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds) was written between 1956 and 1958, and premiered by his second wife, Yvonne Loriod.

The composer said:

’’Each piece is written in honor of a French province. It bears the title of the bird-type of the chosen region. It is not alone: its habitat neighbors surround it and also sing (...)-its landscape, the hours of the day and night that change the landscape, are also present, with their colors, their temperatures, the magic of their perfumes.’’

The first book contains three pieces.

Cochard des Alpes (Alpine cough)

Le Loriot (Eurasian golden oriole)

Le Merle Bleu (Blue rock thrush)

From this three birds, the Alpine cough lives in the Northern region of France, the Eurasian golden oriole is present in most parts of the country, and the blue rock thrush lives in the South of France, near the Mediterranean Sea. I decided to write in detail about the second piece.

The Eurasian golden oriole is a passeringe bird which spends the summer in Europe and Western Asia, and migrates to Africa for the winter.

From the 3 pieces Le Loriot is the longest, and, in my opinion both musically and technically the most demanding one. It requires virtuosic abilities to create the sounds that Messiaen imagined. I find it very interesting that how the song of the golden oriole is very close to the music which humans make, so it is pleasant to the human ear, and for this reason, the composer uses tonal systems which are closer to the tonalities used before the 20th century. It can not be ignored either that the name of Yvonne Loriod rhymes with the French name of the golden oriole. For this reason, obviously, I chose her recording of this piece.