VARIATIONS #1
Transition
Curated by Jon Leidecker
The idea of a completely original piece of music is fairly recent. Music was passed on through sound, through generations, even for centuries after the invention of written music.
Only in the 14th century did it become standard practice for a composer to sign his name to a piece of music and claim it entirely as his own, giving rise to the cult of the individual composer. But as recording supplanted sheet music in the 20th century, the presence of communal influence became unavoidably obvious once again as composers began to use recordings to make new recordings. We can now hear the presence of more than one voice. And there is a reason why people don’t say they listen to a record – they say that they play a record. From the beginning, recordings have been instruments.
The first episode of this overview of appropriative collage in music covers the years 1909 through 1961, beginning with Charles Ives, who composed in a cut and paste style with sheet music in a way that anticipated what later composers would do with multi-track tapes and mixers. We skip through decades to arrive at “Twisting the Dials”, the Happiness Boys’ 1928 tribute to late night radio surfing, before moving to John Cage’s proto-sampling pieces for radio and tape, “Credo in US” and the “Imaginary Landscapes”. We witness the million-selling cut-in records of Buchanan and Goodman and the resulting lawsuits, Richard Maxfield’s tape cut-ups of a sermonizing preacher, and conclude with James Tenney’s dedicated dissection of a single recording of Elvis: “Collage No. 1”, the first ‘remix’.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #1. Transition, curated by Jon Leidecker.
By Jon Leidecker
"Radio Music" connects three examples from the history of the potential of the radio receiver as musical instrument.
By Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler investigates how the fact and the practice of sound recording have transformed every aspect of production and reception in the field of organised sound, creating wholly new genres and understandings.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #3. The Approach, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #2. The Globe, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Pastoral V.2
This layered 60 minute DJ set by Jon Leidecker underlines 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.
The Approach
In the seventies the avant-garde finally crosses the line into wholesale plundering of commercial pop music, and the pop disciplines of disco and dub become increasingly comfortable with manipulating released music into new forms, narrowing the divide between art and pop practices.
The Globe
The second episode of this series presents an overview of the sixties, starting with the world music collages of Richard Maxfield, Teiji Ito and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and following through to the impact of John Cage and Marshall McLuhan on the Beatles.