PROBES #32
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 #32 we trace the history of some newly invented instruments, including the Chromelodion, the Boo, the Mazdaphone, the Quadrangulis Reversum, the Crystal Baschets, Harry Bertoia’s Sonambiente, the unearthly Daxophone and Arthur Harris’ Mother Lap Cello Harp, Whispering Harp and the14.5 metre viol, whose lowest strings are inaudible to the human ear.
Musical references
01 Gregorio Paniagua, ‘Anakrousis’, 1978
02 Harry Partch, ‘Dark Brother’ (excerpt), 1942
03 Harry Partch, ‘The Dreamer That Remains’ (excerpt), 1972
04 Harry Partch, ‘Windsong’ (excerpts), 1958
05 Harry Partch, ‘A Court in Its Own Contempt Rises to a Motherly Apotheosis’ (excerpt), 1955
06 Erik Satie, ‘Gnossiennes No.1’ (excerpt), 2014
07 Footnote
08 Cristal Baschet, unidentified track, (excerpt)
09 Michel Deneuve, ‘Iranon’ (excerpts), 1981
10 Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet, ‘Manège’, 1966
11 Jean Tinguely, unidentified museum clip (excerpt)
12 Harry Bertoia, ‘Sonambient’ (excerpts), 1970
13 Harry Bertoia, ‘Unfolding’ (excerpt), 1974
14 Hans Reichel, ‘The Duke of Syracuse’ (excerpt), 2002
15 Harry Bertoia, ‘Unfolding’ (excerpt), 1974
16 Hans Reichel, ‘The Duke of Syracuse’ (excerpt), 2002
17 Twang
18 Hans Reichel, ‘Street Song’ (excerpt), 2002
19 Kazuhisa Uchihashi, ‘Opening Address of the King Pawn’, ‘Deep Roast’ (excerpts), 2017
20 Heavenly sound
21 Yuri Merzhevsky, Michelle Kinney, Christopher Cunningham and Philip Blackburn, ‘Ironia’ (excerpts) 2003
22 Footnote
23 Bart Hopkins, ‘Savart’s Wheel’ (excerpt)
24 Uncredited demo, ‘Voyage of Time’ (excerpts), 2013
25 Les Phones, ‘La Danse des Fourmis’, ‘Megalithe’ (excerpts), 1995/7
26 Footnote
27 Uakti, ‘Arrumacao’ (excerpts), 1996
28 Gregorio Paniagua, ‘Anakrousis’, 1978
related episodes
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In PROBES #33 we begin to trace the impact of the application of electricity on the world of music and look more closely at the Musical Telegraph, the two-hundred-ton Telharmonium (a 19th century mechanical synthesizer) in America, as well as the Theremin and the visionary Rhythmicon in the USSR.
Auxiliaries
In this new Auxiliary by Chris Cutler, we’ll find the Theremin at work in art ensembles, symphony orchestras, a jazz group, rock bands and on film and television scores – both alone and in quantity –, and there’s a rare sighting of Nikolai Obukhov’s Croix Sonore from his extraordinary Third and Last Testament.