Early ElectroMIX #47

Recorded for our series available on the platform
https://modular-station.com/modulisme/early-electromix/

Tracklist:

Ann Southam – The Reprieve (1975 / Hathor Sound) / 00:00 > 24:28
Priscilla McLean – Invisible Chariots (1975 – 1977 / Folkways) / 23:04 > 42:23
Dubravko Detoni – Phonomorphia I (1967 / Philips) / 40:30 > 44:46
Ernst Krenek – Tape And Double (1969 – 70 / Orion) / 44:05 > 60:01

Ann Southam – The Reprieve (1975 / Hathor Sound)

Ann Southam was born in 1937 and one of Canada’s first prominent women composers.
When she came of age as a composer, in the 1960s, it was comparatively uncommon for women to be recognized in the field of music composition, and for any composer, regardless of gender, to be recognized in the burgeoning field of electronic music.
She was on the vanguard of a generation, an avowed feminist, proudly – and even provocatively.
She was interested in visual arts, but she turned to composing at age 15 after attending a summer music camp at the Banff School (now The Banff Centre). After studies with Gustav Ciamaga (electronic music) 1960-3 at the University of Toronto, she began teaching at the Royal Conservatory of Music in 1966.
Her association with the New Dance Group of Canada (later Toronto Dance Theatre) began in 1967, and she became composer-in-residence in 1968.
She composed many electronic scores for this company, such as « The Reprieve » in a sequential narrative form. Its music is composed in sections which are shaped by the changing tensions and events of a drama.

Priscilla McLean – Invisible Chariots (1975 – 1977 / Folkways)

Priscilla McLean (born Taylor) is an American composer, performer, video artist, writer, and music reviewer.
In 1969, at Indiana University, Bloomington (MM), she was greatly influenced by the music of Xenakis, who was teaching there.
She sings with extended vocal techniques and plays the piano, synthesizer, violin, percussion, and Amerindian wooden flutes, as well as newly created instruments.

The first electronic work of Priscilla McLean to combine musique concrete with synthesized sound. The first movement and part of the second was created at the Indiana University of South Bend’s Electronic Music Center, where McLean was the resident composer from 1975-76. After the McLeans’ move to Austin Texas, the second and third movements were completed at the McLean home electronic studio in 1977. Several analog synthesizers were used, along with specially made percussion, the harp of a piano stroked, tennis balls bounced on the strings, a violin’s strings bounced on with a steak knife, all altered by tape manipulation.
The title refers to the intuitive creative inner force that shapes a work, inspired by the poem “Isle of Patmos” by Carl Sandburg (“The invisible chariots of the tall sky make archangels themselves invisible. I have seen these chariots. So have you, or you have missed something.” [Harvest Poems, Harcourt, Brace &World, Inc. NY]”). The movements’ titles are 1. Voices of the Invisible, 2. Archangels, 3. Chariots.

Movement I = “Voices of the invisible” whose form is similar in style to Stravinsky’s techniqueof melodies and sound events occuring and progressing in layers, with brief musical events interrupting each other.

Movement II = “Archangels” is a dreamlike movement, with musical events doing odd things, just out of range of the rational.

Movement III = “Chariots” is rondo-like in form. As in the first movement but without its foreboding, this joyous dance to life builds in intensity until near the end…

Dubravko Detoni – Phonomorphia I (1967 / Prospective 21e Siècle/Philips)

Electronic-Concrete Music (carried out by the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio, in Warsaw).

Dubravko Detoni (born 22 February 1937) is a composer, pianist and writer.
Active since the early 1970s he is the founder and leader of the ensemble Acezantez, and has performed around Europe, Asia and North America.

In his music Dubravko Detoni likes to oppose fixed (as if petrified) sound elements to turbulent music figures and he calls upon traditional instruments as well as upon the resources of « concrete » music and electronic instruments.
A juxtaposition through which he seeks to discover a new sound universe.
The « Phonomorphia » cycle was originally conceived in 3 parts and belongs to this quest.

Ernst Krenek – Tape And Double (1969 – 70 / Orion)

« Tape and Double » for two pianos and electronic tape.

One of the two pianos had been ‘prepared’ by stretching a light metal chain across the strings to modify the timbre of the instrument. The electronic sounds were realized on the Buchla Modular Electronic System and meant to project the musical ideas against a wide, so-to-speak spatial background, with connotations of growing tension and catastrophy.

Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) was born in Austria to Czech parents and was a precocious genius. Acclaimed in his homeland during his early years, he emigrated to the United States during the rise of National Socialism. Krenek was extremely prolific during his long life, producing a catalog of more than 240 works, not counting unlisted compositions. Extremely versatile, he explored all styles, including post-Romantic, neoclassical, atonal, and even experimental purchasing a Buchla 100 synthesizer in 1967, an instrument that gave a new impulse to the development of the composer’s thinking and he chose to investigate the possibilities offered by synthesizers and mixed music.