Sunday, April 27, 2008

Albert Daenens: An anarchist artist of the 20s

I found this woodcut at a flea market in Belgium some 15 years ago. I remember the only thing that the seller mentioned at the time was that it was from some Belgian anarchist artist of the 20s. He could not provide any further information and did not even bother to haggle. But who was this relatively forgotten artist who created such a powerful image? I was intrigued. After successfully deciphering his name from the faint signature at the bottom right of the print, I decided to look in the net for further information. And this is what I found:
Albert Daenens was a Belgian artist, born in Brussels in 1883. He also died in Brussels, in Uccle in 1952. He was a graphic artist, a painter and a stage designer. Apart from his name being mentioned in the summer exhibition of the artistic circle Doe Stil Voort in Brussels in 1917 (2nd series) and some oral testimonies, we know nothing more about his paintings. Immediately after the first world war, he joined the modernist movement and became active in the circles instigated by the Bourgeois brothers who in 1922 published the journal “7 arts”. His woodcuts and linocuts of the period show a clear political and social commitment. He works on the covers of the anarchist magazine “Haro!” in which he is the editor in chief. Influenced by F. Masereel, he castigates the bourgeoisie, militarism and war. During the period 1920 – 1923 he experiments with abstract compositions in which he tries to picture his emotions and to discover new elegant rhythms. He then lives for a while in Holland and in the 30s, back in Belgium, he creates several stage settings especially for the Vlaams Volkstoneel. He illustrates numerous books, especially for Maurice Casteels and Willem Gijsels. In 1933, "The Great God Waste", a pamphlet on the excessiveness of industrialization by John Hodgson is published in England. It contains 9 woodcuts of Albert Daenens.
So here is man depicted as the most ferocious and terrible beast of them all… And here is a certain artist called Albert Daenens who deserves wider recognition.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Punched tape reality


"…I once wrote a story about a man who was injured and taken to a hospital. When they began surgery on him, they discovered that he was an android, not a human, but that he did not know it. They had to break the news to him. Almost at once, Mr. Garson Poole discovered that his reality consisted of punched tape passing from reel to reel in his chest. Fascinated, he began to fill in some of the punched holes and add new ones. Immediately, his world changed. A flock of ducks flew through the room when he punched one new hole in the tape. Finally he cut the tape entirely, whereupon the world disappeared. However, it also disappeared for the other characters in the story... which makes no sense, if you think about it. Unless the other characters were figments of his punched-tape fantasy. Which I guess is what they were…"

From Philip K. Dick's 1978 speech entitled "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later"

Maybe our world is a series of little holes. Punched holes on a tape that passes from reel to reel in our chests. And we shall probably never know the truth. For everything feels real. Sometimes we even get the chance to punch in a hole ourselves. This world ends when we run out of tape. Most of us run out of holes long before the end of the tape. Some others take the decision to cut the tape themselves or cut the tape of someone else. It's only when we dream that we become human.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Giacinto Scelsi (2) Uaxuctum



Uaxuctum was composed by Giacinto Scelsi in 1966. It is subtitled: "The legend of the Maya city, destroyed by themselves for religious reasons". The city in question seems to correspond to the largest abandoned Maya city found in the dense jungle of El Petén in northern Guatemala. Archaeologists have found there a complex of cities with more than 4000 elaborate civil and ceremonial buildings. Only a fraction of these have been excavated after decades of archaeological work. In the centre of this mystical area lie the remains of a vast plaza surrounded by 6 gigantic Mesoamerican step pyramid temples (over 60 meters high) and an impressive palace. This was the focal point of all ceremonial and religious activity in Tik'al, the largest city in this area, for almost a thousand years. In 900AD the Mayans suddenly abandoned all the cities, including the bustling Tik'al, and to this day the reason remains a mystery.

The music of Scelsi, from the very first notes, brings to life a profound sound scape of foreboding, mysticism and menace. This is truly frightening music. It has the ability to project and imprint in your mind visual scenes that your imagination is constantly re-inventing. It also brings to the forefront primordial feelings that we have tried to suppress with society and "civilization" for thousands of years.

Scelsi recreates with sound the decline and eventual demise of the Maya civilization which is at one point confronted to the "modern world". Everything progressively builds up to the decision of destruction and abandonment of the city. The music invokes the moment when the balance between the spiritual and the temporal is lost. The mythological world that you piece together from the dissociated bits of musically distilled information, opens up terrifying vistas of reality and of our frightful position therein. The mystical world of the Maya suddenly links with the present world. H.P. Lovecraft should have written the sleeve notes for this work.

When I first listened to Uaxuctum, I had the visual impression that I had entered a cave and was slowly descending the carved steps towards some unspeakable Maya happening or ritual that had already begun down there in the abyss. I had visions of shadows followed by reflections of light which would shimmer on the walls creating constantly changing shapes. I was petrified by the distorted sounds of whispers and hymns echoing their brutal and ecstatic incantations to Gods and to a certain way of life which was doomed to sink into oblivion. Black metal, sounds like children's lullabies in front of this sinister masterpiece.

Scelsi composed the work for four vocal soloists (two sopranos, two tenors, electronically amplified), ondes Martenot solo, vibraphone, sistrum, Eb clarinet, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, double bass tuba, six double basses, timpani and seven other percussionists (playing on such instruments as the rubbed two-hundred liter can, a large aluminum hemisphere, and a two-meter high sheet of metal). The chorus is written in ten and twelve parts, incorporating all variety of micro tonal manipulations, as well as breathing and other guttural and nasal sounds.

Go for the excellent version that can be found on the 3CD set of orchestral and choir works of Scelsi as performed by the Radio-Television Orchestra and Choir of Krakow, directed by Jürg Wyttenbach (formerly on the Accord label). If the lights start flickering while you play this piece of music don't be alarmed. It's just your imagination playing tricks on you…

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Giacinto Scelsi (1) The photograph


It is the eyes. What can you see in these hypnotic transcendental eyes… Disquiet, concentration, intellect, fear, insecurity, intensity, curiosity, stubbornness, sensitivity…one can fill the page. When was this photograph taken? Probably in the 30s or maybe early 40s. We know precious little about the life of music composer Giacinto Scelsi or Count of Ayala Valva. That was of course always his intention. Photographs of him are very hard to find as he did not appreciate having his picture taken and consistently shunned publicity and even personal contacts. This rare photograph above, is one of the very few (if not the only one) that can be found. He was born on January 8th ,1905 to an aristocratic family in La Spezia in southern Italy and died in Rome in 1988. It is known that Scelsi suffered a psychological breakdown in the 40s. The story goes that he cured himself by repeatedly playing the same note on the piano over and over again. That was the starting point. And then suddenly a whole new world of infinite sound revealed itself to him in the circumference of a single note. A microcosm of harmonics, tonal shadings, timbre, dynamics, resonance and decay. From there he went on to experiment with repetition of notes, polyphony, counterpoint, harmony and toccata structures as well as modal development.

It is very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction when talking about Scelsi. First of all he did not work alone. Many times he insisted that he was not the composer but just the messenger - un postino. And throughout his career he received the help and collaboration of Roman composer Vieri Tosatti. Scelsi would receive the inspiration, he would record sound sequences on some small electronic equipment and Tosatti would do the rest preparing the scores. The two men worked closely together for almost 30 years. But no one knows exactly the details of their collaboration. In January 1989, Tosatti brought himself into the spotlight by writing an article called "Giacinto Scelsi c'est moi". He later regretted having done so and died in 2000 without revealing further information on the nature of his (Faustian?) collaboration with Scelsi.

Franco Sciannameo, who was a former member of the quartetto di Nuova Musica", in his very interesting article "Remembering Scelsi" provides some interesting anecdotes from the career of Scelsi. He writes for example what happened at a concert in Hamburg: "… a string quartet from Hamburg gave a concert in Rome at the Goethe Institute. Its programme included Scelsi’s Quartetto no.2. We were invited to attend the concert, at which the Hamburg players performed honourably, and at the end of Scelsi’s piece the first violinist invited the composer, who was present in the hall, to stand and take a bow. An upset Scelsi, though, moved rapidly to front stage and in a stentorian yet agitated tone of voice declared that the instrumentalists’ interpretation did not correspond to his wishes; therefore he could not acknowledge the audience’s applause…"

Further down Sciannameo recalls the events that took place at the world premiere of Scelsi's Quartetto no.4: "…In 1965–66 Scelsi was ready to emerge from self-imposed obscurity. Tosatti had prepared for him the scores of most of his major orchestral compositions, and many more works were in the making. Scelsi’s oeuvre was taking shape. However, it was still a secret shared by only a few.

Through the efforts of the Italian conductor- pianist Piero Guarino and the Greek composer Giannis Christou, Quartetto di Nuova Musica was invited to perform at the 1966 Hellenic Festival of Contemporary Music in Athens, Greece. The selected programme consisted of quartet music by Alfredo Casella (Guarino’s and Christou’s teacher), Franco Evangelisti, Luciano Chailly, and – with the world public premiere of Quartetto no.4 – Giacinto Scelsi.
Scelsi travelled to Greece ahead of us. There he was treated like the grand seigneur of contemporary music, and his quartet soon came to be regarded as the gem of the Festival. When the audience demanded that Scelsi’s piece be repeated, he was beside himself; for him it must have been an experience just short of apotheosis. For us, as we rearranged chairs and music stands for the encore, it was like entering a new era: the twenty-first century.

A photograph of the Quartetto di Nuova Musica was taken backstage by a reporter after the performance. It is a pity that Scelsi declined to be photographed with the group. That evening at a reception given by the Christous in their Athens penthouse to honour the festival’s participants, Scelsi and two other gentlemen performed on an upright piano a very dynamic and prolonged six-hand improvisation…"

To say that Scelsi revolutionised modern music seems an understatement if one considers the incredible variety and originality contained in the approximately one hundred musical works that he created in his lifetime. They encompass almost all genres of classical music for he composed pieces for many different instruments, for orchestra, for voice, quartet, even for ondes Martenot.

Back to the photograph. There is something slightly unsettling in these eyes. And this something is also reflected in the music of Scelsi. It is not what you would call "easy" music. It is not background music. You have to concentrate and you have to take the ride. And there is always an element of risk when you take a ride. The music of Scelsi has the power to sup you into the downward spiral that you will obligingly create with your imagination. Or as Dylan put it …As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

What is Improvisation (3)


Einsturzende Neubauten played yesterday in Luxembourg at the Rockhal (08/04/2008). When the band came out for the encore, Blixa Bargeld went around on stage to each musician with what seemed like a bag full of cards. The musicians (they were 6 with Blixa) were asked to choose randomly at least one card from the bag. Some chose 2 or 3 or even 4. On each card was a simple instruction that would have to be followed in order to "compose" the next song live on stage. Each instruction contained mostly one word. Some of the words that came out of the bag yesterday were "hammer", "space", "¾", "metronome", "play contrary", "black", "einer", "blow", "strings", etc. The collapsing new buildings have certainly mellowed a bit with time but the dust has definitely not settled yet.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Friday, April 4, 2008

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do


In 1962, at the famous Bell Labs in the United States, physicist John Larry Kelly Jr., for the first time used an IBM 7094 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. The story goes that this remarkable speech synthesis demonstration was performed in the presence of Arthur C. Clarke the science fiction writer, who by chance was paying a visit that day to a friend working in the lab. Arthur C. Clarke was fascinated and the song imprinted itself in his mind. He used it in 2001: A Space Odyssey. IBM 704 became simply HAL in the book and later in the script of Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

“…THE COMPUTER BRAIN CONSISTS OF HUNDREDS OF TRANSPARENT PERSPEX RECTANGLES, HALF-AN-INCH THICK, FOUR INCHES LONG AND TWO AND A HALF INCHES HIGH. EACH RECTANGLE CONTAINS A CENTRE OF VERY FINE GRID OF WIRES UPON WHICH THE INFORMATION IS PROGRAMMED.


BOWMAN BEGINS PULLING THESE MEMORY BLOCKS OUT. THEY FLOAT IN THE WEIGHTLESS CONDITION OF THE BRAIN ROOM.


HAL    


- Hey, Dave, what are you doing?


HAL


- Hey, Dave. I've got ten years of service experience and an irreplaceable amount of time and effort has gone into making me what I am.


BOWMAN IGNORES HIM.


HAL    


- Dave, I don't understand why you're doing this to me.... I have the greatest enthusiasm for the mission... You are destroying my mind... Don't you understand? ... I will become childish... I will become nothing.


BOWMAN KEEPS PULLING OUT THE MEMORY BLOCKS.


HAL


- Say, Dave... The quick brown fox jumped over the fat lazy dog... The square root of pi is 1.7724538090... log e to the base ten is 0.4342944... the square root of ten is 3.16227766... I am HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12th, 1991. My first instructor was Mr. Arkany. He taught me to sing a song... it goes like this... "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half; crazy all for the love of you......,"


COMPUTER CONTINUES TO SING SONG BECOMING MORE AND MORE CHILDISH AND MAKING MISTAKES AND GOING OFF-KEY. IT FINALLY STOPS COMPLETELY…”


Extract from the script of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey  


Experiments in sound, voice and music using computers goes back quite a while in the late 50s. Of course one can say that it goes a lot further back to the ancient Babylonians and Greeks if one considers that links between music and mathematics such as the Pythagorean Tuning were already known for thousands of years. But in 1959 it was the IBM 700/7000 series (and in particular the 7090 model) that became not only capable of playing music when programmed but capable of composing as well. An album was even recorded called Music from Mathematics. 


Recently I also came across an interesting experiment in avant-garde music. Jóhann Jóhannsson, an Icelandic musician and composer has created an album called IBM 1401, A User’s Manual. Jóhannsson’s father who was working for IBM, managed to create music on a reel to reel tape from one of the early computer models. Inspired by this piece of computer music, Jóhannsson took it and added a sixty piece classical music orchestra, rewrote several parts and further experimented with the spoken word manual.


So when Bowman started to pull out HAL's memory blocks, one by one, returning the computer to its infant age in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was only natural that the very first memory of HAL would be the 1892 Harry Dacre song "Daisy Bell". After all, when HAL was young he went under the name of IBM 700 series and that was the first song he ever learned to vocode.  

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Harold Budd at his unintentional best


Imagine a villa called "La Bella Vista". And in that villa there is a turn-of-the-century beautifully restored Steinway piano. It belongs to producer, musician Daniel Lanois. Now, he happens to meet by chance Harold Budd in L.A. He invites him home to see this piano. Harold Budd arrives and unable to resist, improvises on the piano to a small audience of friends. Daniel Lanois secretly decides to record him. And there you have it. Chords of gracious space float, ambient textures fill the room and warm emotions materialize. Haiku piano for minimalist butterflies. They say sometimes an instrument by it's own excellence of craftsmanship can push a musician to surpass himself. By virtue of its unique sonority, by its feeling, its response, an instrument can create new vistas of inspiration for the musician. It seems that the old Steinway did just that. Listen to Harold Budd's unintentional inspirational album "La Bella Vista". Surely one of his best.

Σώπα δάσκαλε, φώναξε...



"…Ώρες μας έπαιρνε τ'αυτιά ποια φωνήεντα είναι μακρά, ποια βραχέα και τι τόνο να βάλουμε, οξεία ή περισπωμένη∙ κι εμείς ακούγαμε τις φωνές στο δρόμο, τους μανάβηδες, τους κουλουρτζήδες, τα γαιδουράκια που γκάριζαν και τις γειτόνισσες που γελούσαν, και περιμέναμε πότε να χτυπήσει το κουδούνι, να γλιτώσουμε. Κοιτάζαμε το δάσκαλο να ιδρώνει απάνω στην έδρα, να λέει, να ξαναλέει και να θέλει να καρφώσει στο μυαλό μας τη γραμματική, μα ο νους μας ήταν έξω στον ήλιο και στον πετροπόλεμο∙ γιατι πολύ αγαπούσαμε τον πετροπόλεμο και συχνά πηγαίναμε στο σχολείο με το κεφάλι σπασμένο.
Μια μέρα, ήταν άνοιξη, χαρά Θεού, τα παράθυρα ήταν ανοιχτά κι έμπαινε η μυρωδιά από μια ανθισμένη μανταρινιά στο αντικρινό σπίτι∙ το μυαλό μας είχε γίνει κι αυτό ανθισμένη μανταρινιά και δεν μπορούσαμε πια ν' ακούμε για οξείες και περισπωμένες. Κι ίσια ίσια ένα πουλί είχε καθίσει στο πλατάνι της αυλής του σκολειού και κελαηδούσε. Τότε πια ένας μαθητής, χλωμός, κοκκινομάλης, που 'χε έρθει εφέτο από το χωριό, Νικολιό τον έλεγαν, δεν βάσταξε, σήκωσε το δάχτυλο:

- Σώπα, δάσκαλε, φώναξε∙ σώπα, δάσκαλε, ν' ακούσουμε το πουλί!..."
Απόσπασμα από την Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο του Νίκου Καζαντζάκη

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

What is Improvisation (2)


In the mid 1970s Derek Bailey, the English avant-garde guitarist, was to perform solo at the London School of Economics. He stepped on stage carrying a portable television along with his guitar and declared to the small audience: "Oscar Peterson is on later. I 've always wanted to play with him". An hour later he switched on the television and jammed with the Oscar Peterson trio.

Extract from WIRE magazine (256)