PROBES #5
Transcript
Curated by Chris Cutler
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. PROBES #5 looks at timbre and the many routes to its extension, and then explores the somewhat exotic range of modifications, preparations and ways of subverting pianos that have been tried to date.
There's no end of things that have been laid on, tied to, screwed into or otherwise attached to alter the sound of conventional instruments. This sixth programme draws a map and explores some of the outer reaches of string and wind preparations.
Auxiliaries
This music selection investigates further ways of piano preparations: will the torture never end?
This fifth programme sets the scene for a wide range of very different approaches to the exploration of timbre and looks at ways of modifying or preparing the traditional piano.
This fourth programme looks at another dimension of portamenti, and moves on into early twentieth century ideas of colour, timbre and the contested territory of noise.