PROBES #36
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 #36, we continue to follow wildly diverse applications of novel electronic keyboards; the shape-shifting Ondioline, the many variations of the Clavioline and the electric Sackbut – from Sun Ra to Scelsi, Al Kooper to the Marvelettes – and we definitively settle the question of John Lennon, the Beatles and the orange.
Musical references
01 Gregorio Paniagua, ‘Anakrousis’, 1978
02 Jenny demo
03 Charles Trenet, ‘L’Âme des Poètes’, 1951
04 Jean-Jacques Perrey, ‘Prélude au Sommeil’, 1958
05 Jean-Jacques Perrey, ‘Chicken on the Rocks’ (excerpts), 1962
06 Darius Cittanova, ‘Chants pour les Éternités Différentes’ (excerpt), 1958
07 Dave Grusin, ‘Married People’ (excerpts), 1968
08 Kai Winding, ‘Mondo Cane’ (excerpts), 1962
09 Al Kooper, ‘His Holy Modal Majesty’ (excerpt), 1968
10 The Marvelettes, ‘I Want a Guy’ (excerpts), 1961
11 Hans Kockelmans, ‘Le Cakewalk Infernal’ (excerpts) 2012
12 Frank Chacksfield’s Tunesmiths, ‘Little Red Monkey’ (excerpts), 1953
13 Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra, ‘Magic City’ (excerpts), 1966 (possibly earlier)
14 The Beatles, ‘Baby, You’re a Rich Man’ (excerpt), 1967
15 Phone rings
16 Bob Drake, ‘Lemon Demo’, 2021
17 The Tornados, ‘Telstar’ (excerpts),1962
18 Footnote
19 End footnote
20 Del Shannon, ‘Runaway’ (excerpt), 1961
21 Untitled Jörgensen Clavioline demo tape (excerpts), date unknown
22 Giacinto Scelsi, Ondiola fragment, date unknown 23 Giacinto Scelsi, Ondiola fragment, date unknown
24 Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Spiral’ (excerpt), 1968
25 This Heat, ‘24-Track Loop’, ‘Testcard’, ‘Triumph’ (excerpts), 1979
26 Hugh Le Caine, ‘The Sackbut Blues’ (excerpt), 1953
27 Manchester University computer recording
28 Louis Clark & The BBC Concert Orchestra ‘Telstar’ (excerpt), 1994
29 Gregorio Paniagua, ‘Anakrousis’, 1978
Auxiliaries
In PROBES #37.2, Chris Cutler opens a conversation with crooners, experimental artists, and rock legends in order to exchange notes at their EA (Electricionists Anonymous) meeting on their mutual dependency on microphones and loudspeakers (feedback welcome).
In PROBES #37, we consider the revolution ushered in by the thermionic valve and, in particular, the disorienting but transformative changes electrical amplification brought into a world until then predicated solely on acoustical laws. We then examine the cybernetic entanglement of its mirrored portals (the microphone and the loudspeaker) through the generative instability of feedback which, it turns out, has accessible expressive powers...
Auxiliaries
In PROBES #36.2, Chris Cutler encounters more claviolines, ondiolines, musitrons, solovoxes, electroniums and ondiolas as they shape-shift to accommodate the (sometimes out there) needs of pop, jazz, lounge, experimental, soundtrack and avant garde composers.
In PROBES #35 Chris Cutler examines the quiet electronic revolution ushered in by the Hammond organ and excavate traces of the visionary but short-lived Novachord - a polyphonic synthesiser born a quarter-century ahead of its time, which briefly flared - and then disappeared.