PROBES #30

In the late nineteenth century two facts conspired to change the face of music: the collapse of common practice tonality (which overturned the certainties underpinning the world of art music), and the invention of a revolutionary new form of memory, sound recording (which redefined and greatly empowered the world of popular music). A tidal wave of probes and experiments into new musical resources and new organisational practices ploughed through both disciplines, bringing parts of each onto shared terrain before rolling on to underpin a new aesthetics able to follow sound and its manipulations beyond the narrow confines of ‘music’. This series tries analytically to trace and explain these developments, and to show how, and why, both musical and post-musical genres take the forms they do. In PROBES #30 artists, composers and performers make water, ice, glass, fire, wind and Styrofoam their soloists in installations, recordings and events designed for concert halls, galleries, the Phillips pavilion, TV series’ and open air gatherings.

Musical citations

01  Gregorio Paniagua, ‘Anakrousis’, 1978
02 Japanese Suikinkutsu, Kyoto
03 Tan Dun, ‘Water Music’ (excerpts), 2004
04 Waterphone demonstration
05 Vladimir Tarasov, ‘Water Music’ (excerpt), 1992
06 Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, ‘Clinamen’ (excerpt), 1997
07 John Cage, ‘Water Walk’ (excerpt), 1959
08 Tomoko Sauvage, performance at Présences électronique (excerpt), 2013
09 Hugh Le Caine, ‘Dripsody’, 1955
10 Peter Cusack, ‘Baikal Ice’ (excerpt), 2003
11 Etnobit, ‘Baikal Ice’ (excerpts), 2012
12 Max Eastley, ‘Glacial Soundscape’ (excerpt), 2005
13 Ramin Djawadi, ‘White Walkers Music’ (excerpt), 2011
14 Jörg Widmann, ‘Armonica’ (excerpt), 2007
15 Loup Barrow, Crystal Baschet demonstration
16 Annea Lockwood, ‘The Glass Concert’ (excerpts), 1968
17 Dim Sum Clip Job, ‘X-Mas’, 1995
18 Falter Bramnk, ‘Glassical Music’ (excerpt), 2017
19 Iannis Xenakis, ‘Concret PH’ (excerpt), 1958
20 Francisco López, ‘Wind (Patagonia)’ (excerpt), 2005
21 Aeolian harp. San Francisco Exploratorium: 7 strings, 27 feet high, built by Douglas Hollis in 2013
22 Alan Lamb, ‘Journeys on the Winds of Time’ (excerpt), 1990
23 Rūta Vitkauskaitė, ‘Children of the Wind’ (excerpts), 2011
24 Serge Baghdassarians, ‘Leerlauf’ (excerpts), 2007
25 Pierre Berthet, ‘Expirateur’ (excerpts), 2012
26 Thierry Tidrow, ‘Styroporos’ (excerpt), 2016