06/07/2010 58' 3''
English

Curated by Jon Leidecker

"Pastoral V.2" is a curated overview hoping to underline the history of those classic works of electronic and concrète music which sought to mimic and extend the voices and sounds of our pastoral landscape, which can be closer to the heart of the medium's inherent potential than the more common identifications with inhuman or alienated expressions of industrial culture.

The emerging medium of electronic music found its way to a wider public audience in the 1950's, accompanied by descriptions of the sounds as inherently unearthly, fantastic, or cold and inhuman. Partially this was in response to the medium's instant adoption as sound effects for science fiction films and television shows, as spearheaded by Louis and Bebe Barron in their score for the film "Forbidden Planet". But electronic musical instruments also possessed the ability to closely emulate and extend the voices of the animal world to a greater degree than any musical instrument in history.

A gated tone oscillator or untempered synthesizer gives a player a better chance at creating melodies that sound like birdsong than any violin or flute – save perhaps for a recording of a flute that's been sped up several octaves, using the techniques of musique concrète.

ResearchInterruptionsJon Leidecker birdDavid Tudor non-humanmusic selectionMix

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