The experimental legacy

notes

Godfried-Willem Raes

postdoctoral researcher
Orpheus Institute & Logos Foundation
2022

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After having written these notes on all problems that are connected to performing, creating and recreating music involving period technology, it may appear as if such problems affect a very large number of pieces. This however, would be fully untrue. Fortunately, the majority of pieces, including the ones using technology, from the period treated here pose no problems at all.

Some examples of really experimental and even seminal compositions, that are despite their age and technology, still perfectly feasable are:

David Behrman, 'Wave Train', played inside piano using electromagnetic pick-ups as used on electric guitars.

La Monte Young, 'Pendulum Music', requiring suspended loudspeakers and amplifiers

Gyorgy Ligeti, 'Metronome piece' (only the metronome model changed, but mechnical metronomes are still made)

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 'Microphonie'

Gordon Mumma, 'Hornpipe'

 

 

Transducers:

trivial types: Microphones, contact microphones

less- trivial types: piezo disks, electromagnetic pickup's, phono cartridges

reversed technology: speakers, motors, buzzers

Vibration transducers: cfr. Warren Burt, David Tudor (Rainforest), Richard Lerman. Now made by Visaton, in the sixties: Radio Shack.

 

This article is part of a research project on Experimental Legacy financed in part by the Orpheus Institute in Ghent. Last update: May 30th 2022 www.orpheusinstituut.be