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CerebralMix, Episode 10, Aug 1, 2010: Guitar World I

Download: OGG

Download the FLAC from the CerebralMix Internet Archive collection.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Track Credits
• 3 Closing Notes

1 Introduction

The guitar is possibly one of the most unique instruments in music. It’s roots can be traced back approximately 3,300 years. Throughout history, there have been many names for instruments of similar construction (if not always similar in timbre and tone): oud, lute, cithara, and vihuela just to name a few.

The emergence of what could be seen as the modern acoustic (or classical) guitar occured in about the 12th century in Europe. However, after the Baroque period, the guitar seems to have fallen out of favor until it re-emerged in the 1800′s.

The electric guitar dates from the 1930′s. It’s first application was in the country swing bands of the period, allowing it to produce sound of equal volume to the rest of the band. Adoption of the electric guitar in jazz and rock assured that it was an instrument with a long road ahead of it.

This week, the first of a series of occasional shows, we present both acoustic and electric guitars in settings as diverse as progressive rock, ambient, jazz, death metal, blues, and more. So be prepared for just about anything in the world of the guitar, this week, on the CerebralMix.

2 Track Credits

For more information on the selections in this weeks show, visit the CerebralRift website.

The Facebook, identica, and last.fm CerebralMix groups. The Twitter CerebralMix user. The CerebralMix page on MySpace. And, on the CreativeCommons Network where the licenses for each episode are posted.

The CerebralMix is a member of the OggCastPlanet. More information about the OggCastPlanet shows can be found at: http://oggcastplanet.org

3 Closing Notes

Frank Zappa once said something along the lines of the electric guitar being the one instrument capable of producing truely annoying or disgusting noises.

While certainly the instrument is capable of that, it is also capable of great beauty and highly dynamic expression. The guitar has come a long way in the past 3000+ years to become one of the predominant instruments in many cultures.

I hope you have enjoyed this journey into just a few of those cultures and spaces on the CerebralMix.

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

Today’s section is “The Abduction of the Object”. By this point, I have lost most of the narrative thread of the story, only to say that I do know what the object is, and was surprised by this turn of events, as it represents possibly the only aspect of an actual plot line that isn’t part of the setup, or a set of narrative twists and turns.

Ergo is chasing a Linnet in a part of the house he doesn’t recognize.  He doesn’t remember what he did with the parcel, and now imagines that if he happens on Dr. Faustus, he doens’t relish telling him that he’s lost the package.  As he chases the Linnet he finds himself in an auditorium with a cross dressing person on stage, reciting odd sing-song-ish poetry than rolls on and on endlessly and barely making any real sense.  The audience is a bunch of (again) people dressed in bird suits.

It’s after the cross-dresser that Faustus appears on the stage, wheeling out what appears to be a life size doll: Eloise. With the emergence of Faustus on the stage, we are presented with a series of processes for the construction of an automaton. I won’t explain here, however this section links together several of the more unusual recurring elements of the piece to give us an idea of how Faustus has accomplished a miracle:  Eloise is an automaton.

While we and Ergo have been introduced to Eloise before, now she is quite appealing to Ergo.  She has become a thing of beauty, something desirable.  So desirable that he storms the stage, knocks out Faustus (with a trombone he steals from the orchestra) and grabs Eloise and runs away with her.  And thus ends chunk 4 of The Faust Cycle, with possibly one of the most standard plot points of a narrative.  However, it doesn’t seem like a cop-out.  It works, we have seen Eloise before, and by now (nearly 12 hours into the piece) couldn’t have imagined that this was going to happen.

Much of the music and sound collages in this section were put together by James Nye & Ergo Phizmiz. And in this case, the majority of it has been used to illustrate the construction of Eloise and automata’s.  This is possibly one of more distinct and specific examples of an interweaving of the narrative elements with sound collage techniques.  Part of the sound collage reveals another source of the elements of The Faust Cycle: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Onwards..

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

The subtitle for this section is “The Bird Machines”.  I listened to part of this section over the weekend, and the whole thing again today.

This section starts with Ergo waking up in a hallway, observing Marcel Duchamp teaching a group of small birds.  A gramophone approaches, music playing, baboon like legs clanking against the floor.  Ergo watches from a corner, not wanting to interrupt the happenings.  He watches as the gramophone changes records via it’s fused in record changer.  The new record is “Dr. Faustus Book of Birds”.

The selection that is presented next is a musical interpretation / narrative of this selection of birds.  When the record ends, a book is extended from the bell of the gramophone.  Upon opening the book, Ergo finds himself in another hallway full of doors, with a film projected at the far end.  He looks through the peep holes in the doors, which is accompanied by a rather lengthy sound collage. There is a narrative about ducks, followed by another sound collage, before going into a song.  When the song concludes we are taken into another lengthy sound collage: first of birds, then bells, chimes and carnival music which concludes this section of the piece.

My attention to detail may not be quite as great in this section, as I said I listened to it twice, but was so lost in the collages and the musical interludes that I didn’t pay as much attention to the narrative relationships.  The  one thing that I did notice was the restoration of Ergo to the main house now, instead of being in the sewers or the ballroom.

The other thing that impresses me in this section is the emergence of the birds.  I’ve been thinking that many of the creatures and animals have some form of symbolic meaning.  Obviously, this is all the stuff that dreams are made of, but frequently dreams are a manifestation of our real lives.    No matter what, these narratives are thickly layered with all sorts of things that can be interpreted.  But the task of trying to assemble and interpret all of this would be a daunting task.

Onwards…

• Six articles on The Faust Cycle have been posted, and there will be six more of them.
• I posted my commentaries on: the Cowon iAudio 7 & 9 players, A Brief Word About Security, and the iPad & iBooks.
• I continued serveral series:  Finding Music Online, Shoestring Classical Series.
• I posted part two of my January Classical Listening article.
• I reviewed a new release by Pharmacore on the Pavillion36 label.
• And I started re-working the Links & Locations portion of the site.

I was highly encouraged this week to have had several wonderful conversations.  Ergo Phizmiz picked up on my series about The Faust Cycle and has been following it.  Embe from Netwaves noticed my site and has added it to his blogroll (with the condition that I not blog about U2 — not much of a risk there…), and I have added Netwaves to my Links & Locations.  Travis from Hiddenplace Music commented on the start of my commentaries on The Faust Cycle.

While I was out for dinner with a friend Saturday, we ended up in a coffee shop where I came across a magazine I hadn’t seen before.  The focus of the magazine is on contemporary African music.  Just a single issue of this magazine has given me a wealth of new labels,and material to start tracking down and researching.

The only other outstanding thing that I haven’t done yet is to write up something on my Droid.  Hopefully I will get around to that this week (I am still looking at music applications for it).

This next week will probably be a little slower.  I have the following things to do:

• Finish The Faust Cycle.
• Finish overhauling the Links & Locations section.
• Do some research for the Shoestring Classical series.
• Start checking on some newer independent material that I started reading about.
• Prep a new series for the site.
• And, I’m trying to find a new item to add to the site.

So, until next week, lets see what happens.

Oh, and if you are a fan of LOST – don’t forget the 3 hour start to this season on Tuesday.

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

So today’s listening was a turning point on The Faust Cycle for me.  Actually, it wasn’t a single turning point, but rather multiple turning points.

First was the introduction of The Faust Cycle Podcast.  My first impression about this was: what a wonderful thing to do.  Sharing this work with a group of kids, getting them the experience of making free-form music, and experimentation.  Getting them excited about the process of recording this type of work.  It’s a completely wonderful way to expand these kids horizons, but also extend the community of the Creative Commons and Libre Culture to another generation.

The inclusion of their podcast in The Faust Cycle itself adds another, very interesting, dimension to the piece.  Those who are familiar with the writings of Jorge Louis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and James Joyce, to name a very few (it can be argued that I am referring back to Laurence Sterne again as well),  have undoubtedly heard of the term meta-fiction.

Meta-fiction is typically fiction about fiction, or at least is self-aware in one way or another.  The introduction of the podcast in this context adds another type of meta-fictional element: this is now an audio piece that is aware of itself, aware of the elements that have gone into it’s production.

Of Kinetoscopes & Dung

Now, back at the main piece we arrive to the next twist of the narrative: Ergo finds that he has become human again and is no longer a puppet.  He realizes that he has no idea what amount of time has transpired: hours, days weeks?  And he realizes that he’s about to burst, and sets off to find a lavatory to relieve himself.  And, after finding an appropriate room, with one enormous push he is emptied.

While this activity is normal and necessary, he has a realization that he feels more empty than normal, that something is wrong.  While playing a harmonica, trying to figure out what is wrong, he hears wailing from the pipes beneath where his soul has gone with his bowel movement.  After noting the irony, Ergo realizes that he must get his soul back and thus flushes himself down the pipes.

What transpires in the sewage system below can only be described as hellish in ways we haven’t encountered thus far. Ergo watches several kinetoscopes of films about Lucifer, but is unable to decide what they mean.  However, after the 2nd film, he hears a piano off in the distance, and decides to follow the sound to find his soul.

The piano we hear, is the same James Nye piece that has been used throughout: An Evening In Hell.  Ergo finds himself in a ballroom, where many people are dancing and humming.  As he stands in the corner, where only the piano has noticed his presence, he suddenly hears a voice in his ear reciting nonsensical poetry.  He looks around to find the source of the voice, only to find a pig, which when patted squeals and expands to the size of the room then falls to pieces.

Lonely Violin music, and an interpretation of “Le Tango Perpetuel” and “An Evening in Hell” close this section of the piece.

Onwards…

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

This section of The Faust Cycle has been sub-titled Culinary Philosophy. The narrator, Ergo Phizmiz himself (which I have failed to mention previously), finds that while he was asleep he has been relocated in the house.  Of course, it has been difficult to realize that this has happened several times, because although he has a sense of being moved in his sleep, he still wakes up in the same room — or at least a room he thinks is the same room.

When Ergo awakens this time, he has an encounter with Mr. Suasage, after having eaten one of his suasages by mistake.  Ergo promises to replace Mr. Suasages suasage,  only to be informed that he is now 200 miles inside the house of Dr. Faustus. From here,  Ergo makes his way to the train station riding on a chair.  He attends a dinner with clocks, pigs, Mr. Suasage, and others.  And he misses the train.

The narrative of this section seems to have taken a turn.  It now seems to have been inspired, or is paying homage to Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.  And, in the same manner this section uses humor and unique visuals to put us into a new world where the impossible becomes possible.

Musically, this section is highly filled out with works by James Nye, and samples from varying classical pieces — including a very hamronically complex symphonic piece that I cannot place for the life of me (although I am certain I have heard it before…it certainly sounds Russian, so I might believe it to be Prokofiev…but I won’t swear to it).

Overall, this section reminded me of listening to a Tom Waits style piece that instead of mixing the musical and narrative elements ala Alice, leaves the pieces seperate to stand on their own, allowing the listener the space to reflect on each element individually and in relation to each other.

Onwards…

In the first of these two articles, I talked about the Grieg, Corelli and Haydn Brilliant Classics collections.  In this article, I will present some notes on the Handel, Mozart, and Thomas Tallis collections.  I also neglected to mention in part one that I had also acquired a box set of Telemann pieces, which I will try to include in this discussion.

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I have to admit up front, this wasn’t the best box for me to purchase.  First, Thomas Tallis wrote mostly vocal works which is definitely not up my alley.  Second, the works are religious in nature.  For someone that is a pretty hard core atheist, listening to a lot of religious works isn’t necessarily all that appealing.  And, third, there was my personal mistake: I thought Tallis was a Baroque period composer.

All of those things being said, the works on these recordings are good.  I tried to work my way through the eight CD’s of vocal works, but I wasn’t able to listen to them all — however, I was able to sample each of them.  I did listen to the two CD’s of Instrumental Music and Songs, and found them to be engaging.

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The four CD set of Tafelmusik and Musique De Table is an enjoyable listen, if not exactly the most demanding music.  The Six Paris Quartets were a curiosity for me: I wanted to hear something that predated Haydn’s string quartets.

Telemann was definitely a prodigy, self taught on several instruments at an early age, and writing an Opera at the age of 12.  He nearly gave up on music because of pressure his mother received from several people in the town where he grew up. Fortunately for the world, this was to change after meeting Handel.

The Tafelmusik is probably the best known piece by Telemann.  However, it is rare to hear all three “productions” of the piece.  For this alone, the Brilliant Classics box set is to be recommended.  But, it’s also recommendable for an extremely fine performance by Musica Amphion.  They manage to capture the variation between the movements of the piece beautifully, and impart the manner in which Telemann, always the musical fashionable person, composed the pieces.

When I purchased the Six Paris Quartets, I thought these were going to be similar to Haydn or Mozart string quartets.  And, while they are chamber pieces, they definitely are different in terms of their instrumentation than the string quartets I am familiar with.  These pieces typically use a continuo accompaniment along with varying lead instruments (such as a flute).  Still, these are lovely pieces, and quite high examples of the Baroque style.  The performances by Sonnerie are wornderfully mannered, and exemplify the style of the time period.

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Handel is quite well known for Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, along with the Messiah oratorio.  Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert as possibly some of the foremost interpreters of Baroque period pieces.  The Orchestral Works recording doesn’t let the listener down.  Starting with excellent interpretations of Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks and adding the Opus 3 and 6 Concerti Grossi, and the Concerto Grosso in C major.  I was familiar with some of the Concerti Grossi from other sources, but the inclusion of the complete sets in this excellent interpretation has expanded my appreciation of the form significantly.

I can honestly say that I am not a major fan of the Baroque period keyboard works.  They seem to be overly ornamented pieces that attempt to distract from the main work with their flourishes.  I’ve personally become quite a bit more enamored of Bach’s keyboard works (like The Well Tempered Clavier).  The performances by Michael Borgstede on Suites De Pieces Pour Le Clavecin might well serve to change my opinion of other Baroque period keyboard works.  These are well performed on instruments that are appropriate to the compositions, and make a more solid argument for them than other recordings I have listened to.  But, only time and multiple listenings will tell for certain.

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Obviously with a box set as large as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Complete Works I could not have possibly listened to the whole thing.  In fact, I can say that I’ve barely dipped my pinky into the collection.  I am relatively familiar with the Symphonies from the cycle I have by Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music.  Comparison between the recordings would take some time make. However, I did feel that it And, I don’t have all that much of a taste for vocal works and Opera’s. So, I purchesed this set mostly for the chamber pieces.  I have listened to some of the string quartets and other works, and have found them to be quite enjoyable.

Would I personally recommend purchasing such a large set of Mozart works?  Probably not, unless either (a) you are someone that has an extreme love of everything Mozart, or (b) you want to have another complete set of Mozart recordings to use as the basis for comparison to other recordings.  The only other argument I can make for this set is the price.  As with the Haydn set, the value that you get for the price of the set is quite wonderful.

Conclusion

So, that’s it.  I’m definitely not through all of these works at this point.  I thnk it would have been literally impossible to listen to everything that I have purchased thus far.  However, I have made it a priority to listen to several portions of these collections, and have several other portions on my list to work my way through.

And there is a footnote to this piece…  Just after finishing writing this story, I found that set of Handel’s works has been delivered to my front door.  Of course, this will allow me to delve back into the realm Handel again, and see if I can find some more appreciation for his works.  Although, I may save this for a while as a good portion of this work is vocal and opera.

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

Ergo Phizmiz & Firends have an accomplishment that is possibly the most insane thing I have seen yet: they have produced a 14+ hour piece and released it on the netlabel Headphonica.  So the question becomes, how do you listen to such a piece?  Well, for me, the best way I can think of approaching the piece is to break it up into 14 sections that are about an hour each, and try to listen to it over 14 days…  So, as I do this, I plan to try to write something each day on the experience.

Today was day one, and I was immediately amused by the piece.  We start out with a narrative about a gentlemen that has been hired to deliver a package to Dr. Faustus.  Upon arriving at the house, he is confronted with a choice of three staircases to ascend in order to find Dr. Faustus and deliver the package in person.  Our narrator has told us of his desire to actually meet, and possibly have a conversation with Dr. Faustus as he appears to be a kind of genius of a sort, the kind of person that one doesn’t meet every day.

A series of events, meetings, observations, and other things happens as the narrator goes from room to room searching for the Dr.  Some of the things include observing Marcel Duchamp lecturing a room of people in bird outfits, an encounter with another person in a hallway wearing a bird outfit, overhearing two film makers in some kind of an argument, and watching a string quartet ride into the foyer of the house, and start performing a Janacek piece behind the arguing film makers.

Welcome to the world of the truly avant garde.  By the end of the first hour, I was being treated to a collage of bells, chimes, music boxes, a barely perceptible spoken words, and a Tuvan throat singer. To be honest, by this point, I had lost the thread of narrative that linked together all of the music sections.  But, honestly, I wasn’t concerned about it.  I was engrossed with the concept of the world that I had been taken into, and the concepts of the overall piece.

My initial impression of the piece was that I was being presented with a narrative ala Laurence Sterne’s The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, using the old Adventure computer game as a starting point, and visually evoking an M.C. Escher painting.

This provides a complicated basis to work from for the artist, and makes this something of a piece that I suspect I will just have to go with the experience of.  Of course, it is too early to say if there is an overall theme that will emerge from the piece.  I suspect that I will have to make it through the complete first chunk (literally what the artist named the sections of the piece) before I will have a feeling for the overall structure of the piece.  But, my first impression, is that the narrative of the first portion that I listened to is a red herring…a hook to get me into the piece, and will likely not remain a focus during the remainder of the piece.

Building a classical music collection can be both daunting and mystifying.  Big symphonies and operas can sometimes seem quite foreign and difficult to approach and understand, and are quite lengthy and difficult to keep track of.  So, how should you start listening to classical music if you find these pieces to be too much?  Well, that’s the myth that we are here to bust, and look at some alternatives.

Bust-a-Myth: All classical music is large and complicated

There are many different types, styles, and forms of classical music, and not all of them are as complicated as people have been lead to believe.  In fact, it should be noted that the symphony didn’t emerge until the Classical Period, while the Opera emerged in the Renaisance period according to the list of musical forms.  However, as you will note from the list of musical forms, there are a lot of other forms to explore.

Today, I would like to suggest a few pieces of classical music, which you can find online free.

Grieg Lyric Pieces

Edvard Grieg is best known for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Morning Mood and In The Hall of the Mountain King.  However, as I mentioned in another article (see: January Classical Listening: Part One) he wrote a large (10 Books) collection of very melodic paino pieces known collectively as the Lyric Pieces.  These pieces range from soft, almost ballad like pieces, to well muscled fun pieces.  The first recording I heard of some of the pieces was a CD by Emil Gilels.  It was such an enjoyable CD that it didn’t leave my player for close to a month, and returned to the player for quite a few months after.  Even now, I tend to visit some of these pieces every month or two, many years after first discovering them.

Chris Breemer has recorded all 10 books of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, and made them available for download for free. Here’s a selection of the pieces based on the track order of the Emil Gilel’s recording mentioned above:

1. Arietta Op. 12 No. 1
2. Cradle Song Op. 38 No. 1
3. Butterfly Op. 43 No. 1
4. Solitary Wanderer Op. 43 No. 2
5. Album-leaf Op. 47 No. 2
6. Melody Op. 47 No. 3
7. Norwegian Dance Op. 47 No. 4
8. Nocturn Op. 54 No. 4
9. Scherzo Op. 54 No. 5
10. Homesickness Op. 57 No. 6
11. Brooklet Op. 62 No. 4
12. Homeward Op. 62 No. 6
13. Ballad Op. 65 No. 5
14. Grandmothers Minuet Op. 68 No. 2
15. At Your Feet Op. 68 No. 3
16. At The Cradle Op. 68 No. 5
17. Once Upon A Time Op. 71 No. 1
18. Puck Op. 71 No. 3
19. Gone Op. 71 No. 6
20. Remberences Op. 71 No. 7

If these pieces are appealing to you, I highly recommend going to the page listed above and downloading the whole collection.  Admittedly the whole collection is quite large, however, as I mentioned above they will likely find their way into your listening on a semi-frequent basis and are well worth the time and space.

Haydn’s String Quartets

If a single piano is not enough to satisfy your musical tastes maybe something with four instruments would be more to your liking.  I think of the Haydn String Quartets as being the classical music analog to our current popular music: four instruments, with songs written in clear, short, easily digested pieces.  The only difference between a string quartet and our current popular music is that they were generally composed as a group of three or four songs that are related to each other.  (There are some cases where there are only two pieces, or up to seven pieces in a set, but three or four pieces are more common.)

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA routinely features musical performances which are released as podcasts under a Creative Commons BC-NC-ND-SA license.  While this is not the most open of licenses, the performances are typically quite nice, and make for worth additions to building a classical music collection.  And, if you find that the music of Haydn’s String Quartest is appealing, you may wish to sign up for the the ISGM Podcast:

1. String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4
2. String Quartet No. 59 in G minor, Op. 74 (“Rider”)
3. String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 6

Conclusion

So, this has been an introduction to some of the smaller, more accessible compositions in classical music.  There are plenty more that you can check out floating around on the web.  The sites referenced in this article make an excellent starting point for exploring some freely available classical music.

In the next piece in this series, I will focus on talking about the classical music periods: explaining what the focus of each was, and why we tend to keep track of which composers were in which periods, and how that might affect the music that you are searching for.