John Cage - Organ2/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)

      Just in connection with John Cage, I'd like to mention another piece by him. Organ2/ASLSP is a piece written for organ that has no direction as to how slow it should be. The longest performance of it so far was 14 hours and 56 minutes. However, in 2001 a performance began that is not due to finish for another 649 years, until 2640!!! A special organ has been made specifically for the piece to be played in the St. Buchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany. The piece is adapted from an original piano version called ASLSP of which the average performance lasted 60-70 minutes.

         References: I got most of this info from wikipedia

4'33" - John Cage

4'33" (four minutes, thirty-three seconds) was composed by an American composer, John Cage, in 1952. The piece can be played by any instrument, with the piece having been performed by pianos, orchestras etc. The catch is that the performer doesn't play their instrument. At all. Now, this could be perceived as four minutes and thirty-three seconds of complete silence, but thats not entirely true. The point of the piece is that the listeners hear the sounds of the enviroment around them, for example, rain pattering on the windows, the audience's whispers and movement or the sounds of traffic from outside.

   The title refers to the fact that the first performance lasted for that time exactly. I'm not going to put up a video as I doubt it would be useful, but you can probably imagine it. This piece is quite contoversial in that many people don't believe it deserves to be described as music. In any case, it does prompt people to wonder exactly what is music itself.

Helicopter String Quartet

This piece of music is a great example of how the place in which the music is played can make it a masterpiece. Helicopter String Quartet, by a German composer named Karlheinz Stockhausen, "involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians." - taken from wikipedia. The audio and visual technicians are needed so that the performers can see and hear each other as they play from different helicopters. According to Stockhausen, the idea came to him in a dream, in which "he was flying above four helicopters, each carrying a member of a string quartet; he could see into and through the transparent helicopters" - taken from wikipedia. The piece is composed so that the tremolo notes played by the performers blend with the sound of the rotors to make the rotors sound musical. The microphones in each helicopter are placed so that the quartet sounds slightly louder than the rotors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1YY_BvWU&feature=player_detailpage

Water Music - Tan Dun

Water Music is a really interesting piece of music. It is an example of how almost anything can be used to make music. In this piece, taken from Water Concerto and performed by Luis Bittencourt, he only uses a bowl of water and his hands, along with various water percussion instruments. I find it really quite ingenious. Tan Dun is a composer from China. He composes a lot of music, especially using objects that are not commonly used as instuments, for example, his Paper Concerto, which uses only paper to make music.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SfWHjfkP7c&feature=player_detailpage

My name is Eric and this is my blog. (Hmm...that sounded weird and formal when I read it out loud) Anyway, I'm doing my blog on weird modern music. Not the pop, four-chord kind but weird, crazy modern music around the world. So...yeah... Hope you enjoy it.