Podcasts about Water Music

The Albany Symphony is back on tour with 5 full-day free festivals culminating in Albany Symphony concerts to commemorate the Erie Canal Bicentennial. Maestro David Alan Miller will tell us about Water Music NY: More Voices Festival running from Wednesday July 2 through Sunday July 6th. We get a preview this morning and welcome David back to the RT.

Marcia Peck is an award-winning writer and accomplished musician, celebrating over 50 years as a cellist with the Minnesota Orchestra. Inspired by the rhythms and sounds of music echoed in language, her debut novel, Water Music: A Cape Cod Story, combines all her passions – music, writing, and Cape Cod. The book has received critical acclaim and numerous book awards, including Literary Titan Gold, National Indie Excellence, New England Book Festival Regional Lit, and the Feathered Quill Reviewers Choice Awards. I've read Water Music and can tell you it's a phenomenal exploration of the tribulations of a young girl on the verge of becoming a teenager, growing up in and around an emotionally challenging family, all while working to discover herself within that stressful mix.Marcia's many articles have appeared in a variety of magazines. And her short story writing has received multiple awards from various groups far and wide. A cellist with the Minnesota Orchestra for her entire musical career, she's inspired by the rhythms and sounds of music echoed in language. For more information, please see: www.marciapeck.com.

Gepresenteerd door: Saskia Voorbach Phion Alexei Ogrintchouk, dirigent Lenneke Ruiten, sopraan * J.S. Bach - Orkestsuite nr. 3 in D, BWV 1068 * F. Händel - Ombre pallide, lo so, mi udite (uit Alcina, HWV 34) * F. Händel - Lascia ch'io pianga mia cruda sorte (uit Rinaldo, HWV 7a) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Ouverture in F (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Allegro in F gr.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Andante espressivo in d kl.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Air. Presto in F gr.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Bourée. Presto in F gr.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 1 : Allegro moderato in F gr.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350) * F. Händel - Suite nr. 2 : Alla Hornpipe in D gr.t. (uit Water Music, HWV 348-350)

Episode 164 Chapter 25, Electronic Music in Japan and The Asia-Pacific. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes. This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings. There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast. Let's get started with the listening guide to Chapter 25, Electronic Music in Japan and The Asia-Pacific from my book Electronic and Experimental music.   Playlist: ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN JAPAN AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC   Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:32 00:00 1.     Toshiro Mayuzumi, “Les Œuvres Pour La Musique Concrète X, Y, Z” (1953). Early work of tape music. 13:50 01:36 2.     Toru Takemitsu, “Vocalism Ai (Love)” (1956). For magnetic tape (condensed from a 72-hour tape montage. 04:11 15:22 3.     Makoto Moroi and Toshiro Mayuzumi, “Shichi No Variation (7 Variations)” (1956). Tape music for sine wave generators. 14:51 19:32 4.     Toru Takemitsu, “Sky, Horse And Death (Concrete-Music)” (1958). For magnetic tape. 03:28 34:24 5.     Group Ongaku, “Object” (1960). Recorded on May 8, 1960, at Mizuno's house. Performers were Chieko Shiomi, Mikio Tojima, Shukou Mizuno, Takehisa Kosugi, Yasunao Tone, and Yumiko Tanno. 07:34 37:50 6.     Toru Takemitsu, “Water Music” (1960). For magnetic tape. 09:41 45:26 7.     Michiko Toyama, “Aoi No Ue (Princess Hollyhock) (Music Drama for Tape and Narration).” For magnetic tape and reader. 07:05 55:06 8.     Group Ongaku, “Metaplasm Part 2” (1961). Live performance, 1961, at Sogetsu Kaikan Hall, Tokyo. Tadashi Mori (conductor), 09:08 01:02:10 9.     Akira Miyoshi (composer), opening excerpt to Ondine (1961). For orchestra, mixed chorus and electronic sounds. 04:32 01:11:18 10.   Joji Yuasa ‎– “Aoi No Ue” (1961). For voice and tape and based on The Tale of Genji written by Murasaki Shikibu in 11th century. Tape parts realized at NHK Electronic music studio. 29:50 01:15:50 11.   Kuniharu Akiyama, “Noh-Miso” (track 1) (1962). Tape music. Hitomi-Za is an experimental puppet theatre group. They had performed in February 13-17 in 1962 at Sogetsu Kaikan Hall. This program was consisted of three parts, and Joji Yuasa, Kuniharu Akiyama and Naozumi Yamamoto composed background sound for each part. 01:44 01:45:40 12.   Toshi Ichiyanagi, “Parallel Music” (1962). Tape music recorded at NHK Electric Music Studio, Tokyo Japan. 09:12 01:47:22 13.   Kuniharu Akiyam, “Demonstration of Nissei Theater” (excerpt) (1963). “Demonstration of Nissei Theater” composed in 1963 for a public demonstration of the stage machinery of the newly opened Nissei Theatre in Tokyo. 05:15 01:56:36 14.   Toshi Ichiyanagi, “Sound Materials for Tinguely” (1963). “Music For Tinguely” was composed at the studio of Sogetsu Art Center. This rare track comprises sound materials used for that composition. 03:31 02:01:54 15.   Joji Yusa, Tracks 1-4 (1963). Incidental music for NHK Radio, based on Andre Breton's "Nadja". "The actual chart of constellations was played by three players (violin, piano, vibraphone) which was supposed as the music score. And birds' voices, electronic sound, sound generated from inside piano, through music concrete technique and constructed at the NHK Electronic Music Studio." 04:24 02:05:26 16.   Maki Ishii, “Hamon-Ripples (For Chamber Ensemble, Violin And Taped Music)” (1965). Tape piece for violin and chamber orchestra. 10:01 02:09:46 17.   Joji Yuasa, “Icon on the Source Of White Noise” (1967). Tape work using white noise as material and designed for a multi-channel system. In the original version, several sound images of various widths (e.g. three loudspeakers playing simultaneously) moved at different speeds around the audience, who were positioned inside the pentagonal loudspeaker arrangement. 12:13 02:19:44 18.   Makoto Moroi, “Shosanke” (1968). Tape work fusing electronic sounds with those of traditional Japanese instruments. 13:20 02:31:54 19.   Minao Shibata, “Improvisation for Electronic Sounds” (1968). Tape piece for electronic sounds. 09:27 02:45:12 20.   Toshi Ichiyanagi, “Love Blinded Ballad (Enka 1969)” from the Opera "From The Works Of Tadanori Yokoo" (1969). Tape collage. 06:57 02:54:40 21.   Toshi Ichiyanagi, Music for Living Space (1969, Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha), composed for the Electric Faculty of Engineering of Kyoto University. Early Computer Music combined with Gregorian chant for Osaka Expo '70. 08:49 03:01:34 22.   Toshiro Mayuzumi, “Mandara” (1969). Tape piece for electronic sound and voices. 10:22 03:10:24 23.   Takehisa Kosugi,  “Catch-Wave” (Mano Dharma '74)” (1974). “Mano-Dharma '74” is an excerpt from a meta-media solo improvisation performed by Takehisa Kosugi. From his notes: “Sounds speeding on lights, light speeding on sounds music between riddles & solutions. ‘the deaf listen to sounds touching, watching.” 26:32 03:20:42 24.   Yoshi Wada ‎– Earth Horns with Electronic Drone, excerpt, (1974). Electronics by Liz Phillips. Pipehorn players Barbara Stewart, Garrett List, Jim Burton, Yoshi Wada. Composed by, recorded by Yoshi Wada. Recorded at Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, Sunday 2-5pm, February 24, 1974. 10:51 03:47:10 25.   Matsuo Ohno, Takehisa Kosugi, “B.G.M. Parts A-F” (1963). Music and effects later used for Astroboy. 06:59 03:57:48 26.   Joji Yuasa, “My Blue Sky (No. 1)” (1975). Tape parts realized at NHK Electronic music studio. 15:43 04:05:00   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Synopsis On the popular NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, there is a segment called “Bluff the Listener” where three outlandish news stories are read to a contestant, who then has to guess which one is true. So, for the voice of Bill Kurtis on your home answering machine, which of these really happened in London on today's date in 1732:a) George Frideric Handel got into a sword fight with his Southbank wigmaker, screaming at the poor man, “Donnervetter! In dis vig I luk like ein Pomeranian hund!”b) Handel's especially smooth trip across the Thames to buy said wig provided the inspiration for his famous Water Music, orc) as part of his 47th birthday celebration, choir boys from the Chapel Royal sang and acted in a staged performance of Handel's sacred oratorio Esther in the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand.If you guessed “C” you would be correct. Extra points if you knew that this would be the only staged performance of any of Handel sacred oratorios before the twentieth century, and that in Handel's day there was a ban on presenting staged biblical dramas in public theaters — but not, apparently, in pubs.Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Friedrich Handel (1835-1921): Overture from Esther (1732 version); London Handel Orchestra; Laurence Cummings, conductor; SOMM CD-2389

Le prime pagine dei principali quotidiani nazionali commentate in rassegna stampa da Davide Giacalone. L'insediamento di Trump, il referendum sull'autonomia, la tregua a Gaza. L'attualità, commentata dal giornalista di Panorama e La Verità, Stefano Piazza. A Pontedilegno Tonale, il Water Music Festival. Ci ha raggiunti in diretta Michele Bertolini, direttore del Consorzio Pontedilegno-Tonale. Don Antonio Mazzi, fondatore della comunità Exodus, regala ogni giorno un pensiero, un suggerimento, una frase agli ascoltatori di RTL 102.5. È ricominciata l'era di Donald Trump alla Casa Bianca. Il Giuramento, gli invitati e le parole del 47° Presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America, commentati da Federico Leoni, inviato a Washington di SKY TG24. Ieri sono stati fatti ascoltare ai giornalisti i brani in gara al Festival di Sanremo. Che canzoni sentiremo quest'anno? Ne abbiamo parlato con il nostro Stefano Mannucci. Champions League. Stasera in campo 3 italiane: Atalanta, Juventus e Bologna. Su RTL 102.5 la radiocronaca integrale delle tre partite. Ci siamo collegati con i nostri inviati sui diversi campi. L'attualità, commentata dal vicedirettore vicario del Corriere della Sera, Barbara Stefanelli. All'interno di Non Stop News, con Massimo Lo Nigro, Enrico Galletti e Giusi Legrenzi.

Sitting down and talking to Marcia Peck I discover how she went from Cello Player to award winning writer. A life which started by not learning the piano, which helped Marcia find the Cello, childhood memories of Cape Cod and a salt water pond as she watched her dad build their holiday home. Ending on a high of Water Music and the great discovery of writing drafts to finally complete her book. Peck has written a moving and melodic triumph of imagination and story, a fine harmony of intimacies and passions. What happens when a writer plays cello in a professional orchestra for her entire career? Her prose soars. In Water Music, Marcia Peck traces one intricate, intimate melody through the symphonic complexity of a disintegrating family's summer on Cape Cod. Music and love are interchangeable. Here is a book worthy of reading aloud—and cherishing. Marcia Peck https://www.marciapeck.com/water-music

Filling in for Jason Wald today with all jazz selections. brianturnershow.com, eastvillageradio.comPHILIP COHRAN & THE ARTISTIC HERITAGE ENSEMBLE - Unity - Philip Cohran And The Artistic Heritage Ensemble (1969, re: Aestuarium, 2001)MELVIN JACKSON - Cold Duck Time Pts 1 &2 - Funky Skull (Limelight, 1969)ROB MAZUREK / EXPLODING STAR ORCHESTRA - White River - Live at the Adler Planetarium (International Anthem, 2024)MONK MONTGOMERY - Journey To the Bottom - Bass Odyssey (Chisa, 1971)DAVID MURRAY - Shout Song - V/A: Wildflowers 4: The New York Jazz Loft Sessions (Douglas/Casablanca, 1976)THE THIRD WAVE - Maiden Voyage - Here and Now (1970, re: Crippled Dick Hot Wax, 1999)LES DOUBLE SIX - Early Autumn - Les Double Six (Columbia, 1962)BUDDY MORROW & HIS ORCHESTRA - Staccato's Theme - V/A: Crime Jazz: Music In The First Degree (Rhino, 1997)FRANÇOIS TUSQUES -  Nous Allons Vous Conter... - V/A: Mobilisation Générale: Protest and Spirit Jazz from France (1970-1976) (Born Bad, 2013)JOE HENDERSON & ALICE COLTRANE - Air - The Elements (Milestone, 1974)STEVE MACKAY & THE RADON ENSEMBLE - Sans Frontiers (live on my old WFMU Show) - Tunnel Dinner (Qbico, 2006)CHARLES LLOYD - Moon Man - Moon Man (Kapp, 1970)JOSEPH BOWIE / LUTHER THOMAS - I Can't Figure Out (Whatcha Doin To Me) - I Can't Figure Out (Whatcha Doin To Me) (Moers Music, 1979)EDDIE GALE - Black Rhythm Happening - Black Rhythm Happening (1969, re: Water Music, 2003)KAHIL EL'ZABAR'S RITUAL TRIO w/PHAROAH SANDERS - Africanos/Latinos - Africa N'da Blues (Delmark, 2000)JOHNNY DYANI QUARTET - Dorkay House - Mbizo (Steeplechase, 1982)DON CHERRY / OKAY TEMIZ - Istanbul - Turkish Theater 1970 (Cazplak, 2024)LOL COXHILL -  Feeback / Vorblifa Exit - Ear of the Beholder (Dandelion, 1971)COMPANY - Za'id - Company 2 (Incus, 1977)

Music touches the soul, and one of the most famous musicians of all time was George Frideric Handel. He was a prolific writer of operas and oratorios. Handel's Zadok the Priest has been performed at every British coronation since 1727. His orchestral works Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks are also incredibly popular and are often performed at the BBC Proms. But he is probably most famous for his Messiah, an oratorio that is staged all around the world during the Christmas season. The stirring music causes people to leap to their feet, inspired by the magnificent words and harmonies. Join Gary Kent as we find out more about George Frideric Handel and his music, which has changed the world.

Breaking the Silence with host Dr. Gregory Williams With Guest, Award-winning writer, author of Water Music a Cape Cod Story, Marcia Peck This week's Special Guest will be Marcia Peck. "Marica is the author of Water Music: A Cape Cod Story." She is an award-winning writer and has received many awards. Her articles have appeared in Musical America, Strad Magazine, Strings Magazine, and Senza Sordino. Her work has been supported by The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Loft Literary Center, Ragdale Foundation and Hambidge Center. Guest, Marcia Peck's book, Water Music, The bridge at Sagamore was closed when we got there that summer of 1956. We had to cross the canal at Buzzards Bay over the only other roadway that tethered Cape Cod to the mainland. Thus twelve-year-old Lily Grainger, while safe from ‘communists and the Pope', finds her family suddenly adrift. That was the summer the Andrea Doria sank, pilot whales stranded, and Lily's father built a house he couldn't afford. Target practice on a nearby decommissioned Liberty Ship echoed not only the rancor in her parents' marriage, a rancor stoked by Lily's competitive uncle, but also Lily's troubles with her sister, her cousins, and especially with her mother. In her increasingly desperate efforts to salvage her parents' marriage, Lily discovers betrayals beyond her understanding as well as the small ways in which people try to rescue each other. She draws on her music lessons and her love of Cape Cod—from Sagamore and Monomoy to Nauset Spit and Wellfleet Dunes, seeking safe passage from the limited world of her salt marsh to the larger, open ocean.

La Batalla de Trafalgar, librada el 21 de octubre de 1805 frente a las costas de Cádiz, fue uno de los enfrentamientos navales más decisivos de la historia. En ella, la flota combinada de España y Francia se enfrentó a la poderosa armada británica, comandada por el legendario almirante Horatio Nelson. Bajo un cielo cargado de nubes y con el Atlántico como escenario, los cañones de más de 60 navíos retumbaron en una lucha que definiría el dominio de Europa. Para España, Trafalgar fue una tragedia cargada de heroísmo, con barcos como el Santa Ana y el Príncipe de Asturias resistiendo hasta el final. Las olas se tiñeron de fuego y sangre, y el resultado selló no solo la superioridad naval británica, sino también el declive de las flotas españolas y francesas en el escenario internacional. Esta batalla no solo cambió el curso de las guerras napoleónicas, sino que marcó el inicio de un nuevo orden marítimo en Europa. Para hablar de todo ello contamos con la presencia de Agustín Guimerá, miembro del CSIC, de la Real Academia de la Historia, y autor del libro Trafalgar, una derrota gloriosa. Música: Himno de la Coronación, Water Music, Sinfonia 1 y Música para los Reales Fuegos Artificiales de Handel

The Healing Sound Of The Fountain | Japanese Fountain | Bamboo Water | Music For Sleep White Noise For Studying | Insomnia Help | Sleep Aid | Relaxing The Healing Sound Of The Fountain – Japanese Bamboo Water for Sleep & Relaxation. Drift into a peaceful sleep or enhance your focus with the calming sound of Japanese bamboo water. The healing sound of this gentle fountain creates a soothing atmosphere perfect for relaxation, sleep, or studying. Whether you're dealing with insomnia or simply need to unwind after a long day, this relaxing white noise will help calm your mind and body. Use it as a sleep aid, background noise for studying, or just to enjoy a moment of tranquility. #FountainSounds #BambooWater #JapaneseFountain #SleepAid #InsomniaHelp #WhiteNoise #StudyMusic #RelaxingSounds #HealingSounds #CalmingMusic healing sound of the fountain, Japanese bamboo water for sleep, relaxing bamboo water sounds, Japanese fountain sounds for relaxation, white noise for sleep and studying, sleep aid and insomnia help, bamboo water music for focus, calming fountain sounds for sleep, peaceful water sounds for studying, white noise bamboo water for rest

The Healing Sound Of The Fountain | Japanese Fountain | Bamboo Water | Music For Sleep White Noise For Studying | Insomnia Help | Sleep Aid | Relaxing The Healing Sound Of The Fountain – Japanese Bamboo Water for Sleep & Relaxation. Drift into a peaceful sleep or enhance your focus with the calming sound of Japanese bamboo water. The healing sound of this gentle fountain creates a soothing atmosphere perfect for relaxation, sleep, or studying. Whether you're dealing with insomnia or simply need to unwind after a long day, this relaxing white noise will help calm your mind and body. Use it as a sleep aid, background noise for studying, or just to enjoy a moment of tranquility. #FountainSounds #BambooWater #JapaneseFountain #SleepAid #InsomniaHelp #WhiteNoise #StudyMusic #RelaxingSounds #HealingSounds #CalmingMusic healing sound of the fountain, Japanese bamboo water for sleep, relaxing bamboo water sounds, Japanese fountain sounds for relaxation, white noise for sleep and studying, sleep aid and insomnia help, bamboo water music for focus, calming fountain sounds for sleep, peaceful water sounds for studying, white noise bamboo water for rest

Georg Friedrich Händel schreibt seine "Water music" ursprünglich als Untermalung einer Bootspartie des englischen Königs. Heute zählen die Orchestersuiten mit ihrem festlich kraftvollen Sound zu Händels berühmtesten Werken und zu einem Gipfel der barocken Instrumentalmusik. Von Christoph Vratz.

Join Nicholas Kraemer and four preeminent singers for a selection of Handel's brilliant and soul-stirring vocal numbers, which explore the full spectrum of human emotions — from utmost sorrow to joy and sensuality. Plus, enjoy music fit for a king with Handel's Water Music, composed for the royal court of George I, and Mozart's grand Coronation Mass. Learn more: cso.org/performances/24-25/cso-classical/mozart-coronation-mass

On the July 17 edition of Music History Today podcast, the world loses Billie Holiday, John Lennon gets told to leave, and Handel gives us Water Music. Also, it's Phoebe Snow's birthday. For more music history, subscribe to my Spotify Channel or subscribe to the audio version of my music history podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts from ALL MUSIC HISTORY TODAY  PODCAST NETWORK LINKS - ⁠https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/support

DescriptionThe Birth of the Modern Timpani in 60 Seconds. Take a minute to get the scoop!Fun FactHandel incorporated the timpani in several of his compositions, notably enhancing the grandeur and dramatic impact. Key pieces featuring timpani include the "Music for the Royal Fireworks" and the "Messiah." In the "Water Music," timpani are used sparingly for festive occasions. The instrument's powerful sound added a majestic and ceremonial quality, underlining important moments and contributing to the overall dynamic range of his orchestral works.__________________________________________________________________About Steven, HostSteven is a Canadian composer & actor living in Toronto. Through his music, he creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his music website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.__________________________________________________________________You can FOLLOW ME on Instagram.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 1222, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Water Music 1: This song by Otis Redding mentions "the Frisco Bay" and "Watchin' the tide roll away". "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay". 2: Ike and Tina Turner were "rollin' on the river" with this song. "Proud Mary". 3: In 2016 this British woman had a hit with "Water Under The Bridge". Adele. 4: Carly Simon wrote "Let The River Run" for this film starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. Working Girl. 5: Joe Jonas of this 4-letter group described "Cake By The Ocean" as a party anthem. DNCE. Round 2. Category: Hill Of Beans 1: In a 1910 toast J.C. Bossidy called this city "The home of the bean and the cod". Boston. 2: Using the old bean, Old Bean, mean you're using this, Old Chap. your brain (your head). 3: Of navy, green or pinto, the bean not named for its looks. navy. 4: It's what Jack traded for those magic beans. a cow. 5: This word comes from Mandarin Chinese for bean and curdled. tofu. Round 3. Category: Short Story Fill-In 1: Twain:"The blank Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Celebrated. 2: Ambrose Bierce:"An Occurrence at blank Creek Bridge". Owl. 3: Annie Proulx:"blank Mountain". Brokeback. 4: Faulkner:"A Rose for blank". Emily. 5: Flannery O'Connor:"A Good Man Is blank blank blank". Hard to Find. Round 4. Category: My Baby. With My in quotes 1: "My doctor said" to take this liquid antacid from Johnson and Johnson. Mylanta. 2: It's the real first name of "60 Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace. Myron. 3: It's a trade name for biaxially oriented polyethylene terephthalate. Mylar. 4: This white fatty material insulates brain nerves in sheaths and enables enhanced transmission of impulses. myelin. 5: Agamemnon was from this region that was an important center in ancient Greece. Mycenae. Round 5. Category: Army AntS. With Ant in quotes 1: This branch of the U.S. Army is its principal land combat force. infantry. 2: AAA is this type of artillery used to defend against attack from above. anti-aircraft. 3: A 3-star general is also known as this type and somewhat surprisingly, outranks a major one. lieutenant (lieutenant general). 4: The Army of the Potomac turned back the Army of Northern Virginia at this famously bloody 1862 battle. Antietam. 5: In the U.S. Army, a WO1 is this type of officer, the army's tactical and technical experts. a warrant officer. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/ AI Voices used

Kicking off pride month with a bang! Harrison is joined by dear friend and music executive Brent Battles. Brent shares his passion as a music executive and the principals in which he founded his music management company "further music". Brent represents some of the most talented names in the business such as Noah Cyrus, SEB, ASHE, and up and coming sensation Cole Redding. Cole Redding makes a surprise visit to the studio. With three guests on this episode, things get a little out of control, but only in the best way possible. #music #artist #pridemonth

1. Ahmed Malek & Flako - Tape 27 Track 5 (Algeria) 2. Antena - Sisséxa (France-Belgium) 3. The 5, 6, 7, 8's - I Walk Like Jane Mansfield (Japan) 4. Fernando Falcão - Ladeira Dos Inocentes (Brazil) 5. Jirō Inagaki & His Soul Media - The Ground For Peace (Japan) 6. Pedro Miguel Y Sus Maracaibos - Descarga Maracaibo (Peru) 7. Roberto Musci - Water Music (Italy) 8. The Modern Tropical Quintet - Midnight In Moscow (Brazil) 9. Som Imaginário - Armina (Brazil) 10. World Standard - New Van Dyke Parks (Japan)

SynopsisIn 1985, the musical world was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Georg Frideric Handel. On today's date that year, Minnesota-based composer Libby Larsen, then in her mid-30s, was celebrating the premiere performance of her Symphony No. 1.Larsen titled her symphony Water Music and says its first movement was a deliberate homage to Handel's famous Water Music. As a resident composer of a state with over 10,000 lakes, Larsen admits her love of sailing also had something to do with the symphony's descriptive title.Since 1985, Larsen has gone on to write a few more symphonies, each with its own particular title. And she frequently gives individual movements of each symphony a descriptive tag. For example, one movement from her Solo Symphony (No. 5), from 1999, is titled “The Cocktail Party Effect.”Rather than the wallop of a stiff drink, Larsen says she means the ability of human hearing to pick out a single voice among the extraneous noise one encounters at a crowded cocktail party. “It's a kind of musical ‘Where's Waldo?'” she says. “In this case, Waldo is a melody, introduced at the beginning … then hidden amid the other music.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLibby Larsen (b. 1950) Symphony: Water Music; Minnesota Orchestra; Neville Marriner, cond. Nonesuch 79147; and Solo Symphony; Colorado Symphony; Marin Alsop, cond. Koch 7520

When unexpectedly asked about their profession, a person accustomed to remaining unnoticed until needed debates about how to tell the truth—spectacularly, or mundanely. Genre: Science Fantasy   Excerpt: I noticed him seeming to notice me, and I found that so unlikely that I almost frowned. I was extremely skilled at remaining unnoticed. The Queen of the Hollow Yellow Moon had once proclaimed that I had the power to turn invisible. Of course, there's no such thing. At least, I haven't come across any such thing in my work so far. What's the Writing Prompt that inspired the story?“A stranger asks what you do. How do you reply?” Source: A Writer's Year: 365 Creative Writing Prompts. Text by Emma Bastow. Copyright © 2019 HarperCollins Publishers   Faster FictioneerI held my first free writing workshop over Zoom to teach my method of writing short stories (an abbreviated version) on 11/8/2023. The workshop is based on my course, called “Faster Fictioneer: A Doable Method to Write a Short Story from Start to Finish in Five Weeks.” You can watch a replay of the workshop here: FASTER FICTIONEER (You can also buy the course there, for yourself, or as a gift.)    Follow my Fictioneering MischiefThe Storyfeather Gazette is a monthly round-up of my recent podcast episodes, short stories, trailers, news, recommendations, and more sent by email. Follow the link to look through old issues and to Sign Up: STORYFEATHER GAZETTE Storyfeather-themed merchandiseT-shirts, mugs, stickers, notebooks, baby onesies, and more featuring artwork from stories and art challenges STORYFEATHER TEEPUBLIC STORE   CREDITSStory: “The Galactic Analyst” Copyright © 2020 by Nila L. Patel Narration, Episode Art, Editing, and Production:  Nila L. Patel Music: “Trip-Hop Lounge Abstract Background” by Digital Emotions (Intro/Outro) Music by JONATHAN SHAW* “A Tale of Peace” “Thoughts” “Midnight Creeping” “A Tale of Water” Music by ANDREW SITKOV (MuzStation Game Music)* “Stars Talk” “Dark Side” “Last Moments of Peace” “Space Discoveries” “Another World” “A Long Way”   *These tracks were part of a music and sound effects bundles I purchased from Humble Bundle and sourced from GameDev Market.   Music by Jonathan Shaw and Andrew Sitkov licensed from GameDev Market   Find more music by Digital_Emotions at audiojungle.netFind more music by Jonathan Shaw and Andrew Sitkov at gamedevmarket.netFind more music by Jonathan Shaw at jshaw.co.ukFind more stories by Nila at storyfeather.com   Episode Art Description: Digital drawing. Central image with a top and bottom border to make the format square. Bottom left, black silhouettes of two people facing each other, seen from waist up. Behind them is a starry expanse. Above their heads are bright colored gases. At top right is a sphere, encircled by rings in symmetrical orbits. Watermark of “Storyfeather” at bottom right.

Will Munn is the award-nominated and bestselling creator of Arium, the worldbuilding RPG. He runs the Adept Icarus game design studio and has collaborated on RPGs such as Cold Shadows, Tiny Frontiers, and Zorro, the Roleplaying Game. Willalso serves as a publisher for multiple award-winning and bestselling game designers. All four continental US timezones have been his home, and he'd like to add to the list. I met Will Munn through our mutual friend and kind of mutual mentor, Alan Bahr, from Gallant Knight Games. And I immediately saw how Will is a focused and very creative person. I had the great opportunity to work with him on Arium, collaborating with a few random tables, and I am so grateful for that. On this chat we talked about many things, including how is it being a father of 4, how he has this unique way of working collaboratively with his team, how RPGs are all about exploring the weird in a safe way, how life is always changing and how sometimes we just have to wait to see where it takes us (and often it's to a batter place). We talk about games too of course, especially Arium and Cyan Starlight, a new project he is developing with Alan Bahr, which touches on very emotional and unique themes. We had a great chat. We go deep, and we get personal. I hope you enjoy it. Let's get weird with Will Munn. Check out Will Munn's links! https://linktr.ee/adepticarus Thank you for listening! Please subscribe to the show to keep up with new episodes!  If you would like to support the show, leave a reviewand/or head to our ko-fi page and pay us a coffee! It will help keep the podcast going! It would really help!  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/wgnwp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ You can also support me buy buying one of my games! Kosmosaurs just got released in print, and it is my new RPG inspired by Saturday morning cartoons about Space Dinosaur Rangers defending the galaxy from evildoers!   Get your copy right here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠bit.ly/kosmosaurs⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ Stuff mentioned in the Episode: Zorro RPG: https://www.gallantknightgames.com/zorro/ Cold Shadows: https://www.gallantknightgames.com/cold-shadows/ Tiny Frontier: https://www.gallantknightgames.com/tiny-frontiers/ Notion (app): https://www.notion.so/ Water Music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Music Gallant Knight Games: https://www.gallantknightgames.com/ Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jiangshi/jiangshi-blood-in-the-banquet-hall Haunting of Hill House: https://www.netflix.com/title/80189221

In this episode, we dive into the world of AI music-making tools and their rising popularity. My guest, Kristin Juel, did extensive research for Water & Music and had a LOT to say about why it is critical to get proactively out in front of all the AI tools that are coming to market and why it is empowering for artists to test and understand what's available. This not only alleviates the fear of the unknown but also as Kristin says “Don't wait for it to become something that's a nuisance. Get in the mindset, and start looking at the opportunities.” Different types of people, from hobbyists to professional musicians, are utilizing these AI music-making tools. While initially concerned about the future of humanity with the rise of technology, Kristin emphasizes that human creativity remains essential and that humans ultimately control the conversation. We also explore the possibility of AI influencing the creation of hit songs instead of completely writing them, the importance of people feeling capable and able to express themselves and we highlight the challenges and blessings of putting yourself at the forefront of innovation in the music industry.    List of tools, sites, and AI apps mentioned in the episode: Boomy - https://boomy.com  -  Create original songs in seconds, even if you've never made music before Grimes AI Voice Tool - https://elf.tech/connect  Magenta Studio: Free AI tools for Ableton Live https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/magenta-studio-free-ai-tools-ableton-live/  Abelton's amazing AI Tool Blog Post -  Mentions dozens of tools to know about - https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/ai-and-music-making-the-state-of-play/  Never Before Heard Sounds - https://heardsounds.com/  Midjourney - https://www.midjourney.com/ Use for story boards when creating music videos, or EP, and single covers  Landr - https://www.landr.com- Create, collaborate, master, distribute and promote your music all in one place. 

On the July 17 edition of Music History Today podcast, the world loses Billy Holiday, John Lennon gets told to leave, and Handel gives us Water Music. Also, it's Phoebe Snow's birthday. ALL MY MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday CHECK OUT MY OTHER PODCAST, THE MUSIC HALLS OF FAME PODCAST: LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichallsoffamepodcast THE MUSIC HALLS OF FAME PODCAST SPOTIFY LINK: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/Bmry9hcMxAb --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/support

Indulge in the soothing melodies of relaxing piano water music, designed to help you unwind and achieve a state of deep relaxation. The gentle and fluid sounds of the piano harmonize with the tranquil sounds of water, creating a serene and peaceful atmosphere. As you listen to the delicate notes of the piano, imagine yourself by a calm and tranquil water source, whether it's a serene lake, a gentle stream, or the rhythmic waves of the ocean. The soft and melodic tones of the piano blend effortlessly with the soothing sounds of water, evoking a sense of tranquility and inner peace. The combination of piano and water music creates a soothing and meditative experience. The gentle ripples and cascades of the water complement the gentle melodies of the piano, creating a harmonious and relaxing ambiance. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and allow the music to wash over you, melting away any tension or stress. As you immerse yourself in the relaxing piano water music, feel your body and mind enter a state of deep relaxation. Let the gentle melodies guide you to a place of tranquility, where your worries and thoughts fade into the background. Allow the music to envelop you in its soothing embrace, helping you let go of the day's tensions and find a moment of calm. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day, enhance your meditation practice, or simply create a peaceful ambiance, the relaxing piano water music is here to help you relax and find inner serenity. Relaxing Piano Water Music, Soothing Melodies, Deep Relaxation, Fluid Sounds, Tranquil, Serene, Peaceful Atmosphere, Delicate Notes, Water Sounds, Tranquility, Inner Peace, Meditative Experience, Ripples, Cascades, Harmonious Ambiance, Tension Release, Stress Relief, Meditative State, Unwind, Melting Away, Embrace, Letting Go, Calm, Meditation Practice, Peaceful Ambiance, Inner Serenity. Support our mission of spreading relaxation and wellness by rating and reviewing our podcast on your preferred platform. Your feedback helps us improve and enables others to discover the benefits of our soothing sounds. Enhance your listening experience by subscribing to our ad-free version, immersing yourself in uninterrupted tranquility.  Clicking Here  Join our community of relaxation seekers and embark on a journey of self-discovery. Subscribe, rate, and review Meditation Sounds today and unlock a world of serenity and rejuvenation.  Email List Support this podcast  https://www.meditationsoundspodcast.com Say goodbye to stubborn belly fat with our revolutionary product! Our formula is designed to target and dissolve unwanted fat, leaving you with a slimmer, more toned midsection. Try it now and experience the results for yourself. #dissolvebellyfat #slimandtoned http://bit.ly/3jV1Ip1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steph Alinsug is a brand builder, storyteller, community organiser, and media creative. Founder of VESSEL. An emergent startup designing for the onchain media ecosystem.Until recently she was the Media Steward at Seed Club. Internet native accelerator with a growing network of alumni projects including ALLSHIPS, Cabin, Forefront, Metalabel, Poolsuite, Protein, Refraction, Songcamp, Take Up Space and Water & Music.Steph helped to grow the brand, events like Seed Club Demo Day, and a media network including the CLUB podcast later renamed Building at the Edges, hosted by Jess Sloss.In this episode we talk about Broadcast - an inaugural web3 media event held in Brooklyn May 2023. An invite only summit focusing on the future of onchain media. It was a collaboration between VESSEL, and Foster which is a writers collective based in New York, and Seed Club.Participants included Zora Zine, Optimism, Gitcoin, Station Labs, Lens, Metalabel, Protein, Boys Club, Yup, Pleasr, Base, Friends With Benefits, Koop, Beem, Hypeshot, Joke, Tribute Labs, Forefront, Folklore, POAP, and IDEO ++We talk with Steph about her learnings from experiences joining the crypto space, how she became involved with the team at Seed Club and collaborating across the network as it's grown over the past years.SPONSORSZerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.ioLens Protocol is the open-source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. A permissionless and transparent social graph that is owned by the user. Lens is the last social media handle you'll ever need to create. Visit lens.xyzYup is the best of web3 all in one feed. Aggregating content across Lens, Farcaster, Mirror, NFTs, and Crypto Twitter. Search across platforms, customize your feed, and show off your NFTs and POAPS on your profile. Visit yup.io

Episode 99 Crosscurrents in Electronic Tape Music in the United States Playlist Louis and Bebe Barron, “Bells of Atlantis” (1952), soundtrack for a film by Ian Hugo based on the writings of his wife Anaïs Nin, who also appeared in the film. The Barrons were credited with “Electronic Music.” The Barrons scored three of Ian Hugo's short experimental films and this is the earliest, marking an early start for tape music in the United States. Bebe told me some years ago about a work called “Heavenly Menagerie” that they produced in 1950. I have written before that I think this work was most likely the first electronic music made for magnetic tape in the United States, although I have never been able to find a recording of the work. Bells of Atlantis will stand as an example of what they could produce in their Greenwich Village studio at the time. They were also engaged helping John Cage produce “Williams Mix” at the time, being recordists of outdoor sounds around New York that Cage would use during the process of editing the composition, which is described below. The Forbidden Planet soundtrack, their most famous work, was created in 1956. 8:59 John Cage, “Williams Mix” (1952) from The 25-Year Retrospective Concert Of The Music Of John Cage (1959 Avakian). Composed in 1952, the tape was played at this Town Hall concert a few years later. Premiered in Urbana, Ill., March 22, 1953. From the Cage database of compositions: “This is a work for eight tracks of 1/4” magnetic tape. The score is a pattern for the cutting and splicing of sounds recorded on tape. Its rhythmic structure is 5-6-16-3-11-5. Sounds fall into 6 categories: A (city sounds), B (country sounds), C (electronic sounds), D (manually produced sounds), E (wind produced sounds), and F ("small" sounds, requiring amplification). Pitch, timbre, and loudness are notated as well. Approximately 600 recordings are necessary to make a version of this piece. The compositional means were I Ching chance operations. Cage made a realization of the work in 1952/53 (starting in May 1952) with the assistance of Earle Brown, Louis and Bebe Barron, David Tudor, Ben Johnston, and others, but it also possible to create other versions.” This was a kind of landmark work for John as he explored the possibilities of working with the tape medium. It is the only work from this period, created in the United States, for which there is an original recording of a Cage realization. He also composed “Imaginary Landscape No. 5” in 1952 for 42-disc recordings as a collage of fragments from long-playing records recorded on tape (he preferred to use jazz records as the source), put together with the assistance of David Tudor. Though some modern interpretations exist, there is no recording from the 1950s of a Cage/Tudor realization so I am unable to represent what it would have been like at that time. 5:42 Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, “Moonflight” (1952) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). This record documents tape pieces played at perhaps the earliest concert of American tape music at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 28, 1952. Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:54 Otto Luening, “Fantasy in Space” (1952) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:51 Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, “Incantation” (1953) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). This record documents tape pieces played at perhaps the earliest concert of American tape music at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 28, 1952. Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:34 Henry Jacobs, “Sonata for Loudspeakers” (1953-54) from Sounds of New Music (1958 Folkways). “Experiments with synthetic rhythm” produced by Henry Jacobs who worked at radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley. Jacobs narrates the track to explain his use of tape loops and recorded sound. 9:29 Jim Fassett, track “B2” (Untitled) from Strange To Your Ears - The Fabulous World of Sound With Jim Fassett (1955 Columbia Masterworks). “The fabulous world of sound,” narrated with tape effects, by Jim Fassett. Fassett, a CBS Radio musical director, was fascinated with the possibilities of tape composition. With this recording, done during the formative years of tape music in the middle 1950s, he took a somewhat less daring approach than his experimental counterparts, but a bold step nonetheless for a national radio audience. He hosted a weekend program called Strange to Your Ears to showcase these experiments and this album collected some of his best bits. 8:15 Harry F. Olsen, “The Well-Tempered Clavier: Fugue No. 2” (Bach) and “Nola” (Arndt) and “Home, Sweet Home” from The Sounds and Music of the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer (1955 RCA). These “experimental” tracks were intended to demonstrate the range of sound that could be created with RCA Music Synthesizer. This was the Mark I model, equipped with a disc lathe instead of a tape recorder. When it was upgraded and called the Mark II in the late 1950s, it became the showpiece of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Here we listen to three tunes created by Harry F. Olsen, one of the inventors, in the style of a harpsichord, a piano, and “an engineer's conception of the music.” 5:26 Milton Babbitt, “Composition For Synthesizer” (1960-61) (1968 Columbia). Babbitt was one of the only composers at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center who composed and produced works based solely on using the RCA Music Synthesizer. Most others took advantage of other tape processing techniques found in the studio and not controlled by the RCA Mark II. It took him quite a long time to work out all of the details using the synthesizer and his meticulous rules for composing serially. On the other hand, the programmability of the instrument made it much more possible to control all the parameters of the sound being created electronically rather than by human musicians. This work is a prime example of this kind of work. 10:41 Tod Dockstader, “Drone” (1962) from Drone; Two Fragments From Apocalypse; Water Music (1966 Owl Records). Self-produced album by independent American composer Dockstader. This came along at an interesting period for American elecgtronic music, sandwiched between the institutional studio work being done at various universities and the era of the independent musician working with a synthesizer. Dockstader used his own studio and his own devices to make this imaginative music. This was one of a series of four albums featuring Dockstader's music that were released on Owl in the 1966-67 timeframe. They have all been reissued in one form or another. Here is what Dockstader himself wrote about this piece: “Drone, like many of my other works, began life as a single sound; in this case, the sound of racing cars. But, unlike the others, the germinal sound is no longer in the piece. It's been replaced by another a guitar. I found in composing the work that the cars didn't go anywhere, except, seemingly, in circles. The sound of them that had interested me originally was a high to low glissando the Doppler effect. In making equivalents of this sound, I found guitar glissandos could be bent into figures the cars couldn't. . . . After the guitar had established itself as the base line of the piece, I began matching its sound with a muted sawtooth oscillator (again, concrete and electronic music: the guitar being a mechanical source of sound, the oscillator an electronic source). This instrument had a timbre similar to the guitar, with the addition of soft attack, sustained tones, and frequencies beyond the range of the guitar. . . . The effect of the guitar and the oscillator, working together, was to produce a kind of drone, with variations something like the procedure of classical Japanese music, but with more violence. Alternating violence with loneliness, hectic motion with static stillness, was the aim of the original piece; and this is still in Drone, but in the process, the means changed so much that, of all my pieces, it is the only one I can't remember all the sounds of, so it continues to surprise me when I play it.” (From the original liner notes by Dockstader). 13:24 Wendy Carlos, “Dialogs for Piano and Two Loudspeakers” (1963) from Electronic Music (1965 Turnabout). This is an early recording of Wendy, pre-Switched-on Bach, from her days as a composer and technician. In this work, Carlos tackles the task of combining synthesized sounds with those of acoustic instruments, in this case the piano. It's funny that after you listen to this you could swear that there were instruments other than the piano used, so deft was her blending of electronic sounds with even just a single instrument. 4:00 Gordon Mumma, “Music from the Venezia Space Theater” (1963-64) (1966 Advance). Mono recording from the original release on Advance. Composed at the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This was the studio created by Mumma and fellow composer Robert Ashley to produce their electronic tape works for Milton Cohen's Space Theater on Ann Arbor, which this piece tries to reproduce. The original was a quad magnetic tape. It was premiered at the 27th Venezia Bianale, Venice, Italy on September 11, 1964 and comprised the ONCE group with dancers. 11:58 Jean Eichelberger Ivey, “Pinball” (1965) from Electronic Music (1967 Folkways). Realized at the Electronic Music Studio of Brandeis University. This work was produced in the Brandeis University Electronic Music Studio and was her first work of electroacoustic music. In 1964 she began a Doctor of Musical Arts program in composition, including studies in electronic music, at the University of Toronto and completed the degree in 1972. Ivey founded the Peabody Electronic Music Studio in 1967 and taught composition and electronic music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music until her retirement in 1997. Ivey was a respected composer who also sought more recognition for women in the field. In 1968, she was the only woman composer represented at the Eastman-Rochester American Music Festival. Her work in electronic music and other music was characteristic of her general attitude about modern composing, “I consider all the musical resources of the past and present as being at the composer's disposal, but always in the service of the effective communication of humanistic ideas and intuitive emotion.” 6:12 Pauline Oliveros, “Bye Bye Butterfly” (1965) from New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media (1977 1750 Arch Records). This was composed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center where so many west coast composers first found their footing: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender all did work there around this time. Oliveros was experimenting with the use of tape delay in a number of works, of which “Bye Bye Butterfly” is a great example. 8:05 Gordon Mumma, “The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945” (1965) from Dresden / Venezia / Megaton (1979 Lovely Music). Composed at the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Remixed at The Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College (Oakland, California). This tape piece was premiered at the sixth annual ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor where Mumma configured an array of sixteen “mini speakers” to surround the audience and project the 4-channel mix. The middle section of the piece contains the “harrowing roar of live, alcohol-burning model airplane engines.” (Mumma) This anti-war piece was presented in the 20th anniversary of the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II. 12:14 Kenneth Gaburo, “Lemon Drops (Tape Alone)” (1965) from Electronic Music from the University of Illinois (1967 Heliodor). From Gaburo: “Lemon Drops” is one of a group of five tape compositions made during 1964-5 referencing the work of Harry Partch. All are concerned with aspects of timbre (e.g., mixing concrete and electronically generated sound); with nuance (e.g., extending the expressive range of concrete sound through machine manipulation, and reducing machine rigidity through flexible compositional techniques); and with counterpoint (e.g., stereo as a contrapuntal system).”(see). 2:52 Steve Reich, “Melodica” (1966) from Music From Mills (1986 Mills College). This is one of Reich's lesser-known phased loop compositions from the 1960s. It is “composed of one tape loop gradually going out of phase with itself, first in two voices and then in four.” This was Reich's last work for tape before he transitioned to writing instrumental music. 10:43 Pril Smiley, “Eclipse” (1967) from Electronic Music, Vol. IV (1969 Turnabout). The selections are works by the winners of the First International Electronic Music Competition - Dartmouth College, April 5, 1968. The competition was judged by composers Milton Babbitt, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and George Balch Wilson. The winner was awarded a $500 prize. Pril Smiley was 1st finalist and realized “Eclipse” at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Smiley had this to say about the work: “Eclipse” was originally composed for four separate tracks, the composer having worked with a specifically-structured antiphonal distribution of compositional material to be heard from four corners of a room or other appropriate space. Some sections of “Eclipse” are semi-improvisatory; by and large, the piece was worked out via many sketches and preliminary experiments on tape: all elements such as rhythm, timbre, loudness, and duration of each note were very precisely determined and controlled. In many ways, the structure of “Eclipse” is related to the composer's use of timbre. There are basically two kinds of sounds in the piece: the low, sustained gong-like sounds (always either increasing or decreasing in loudness) and the short more percussive sounds, which can be thought of as metallic, glassy, or wooden in character. These different kinds of timbres are usually used in contrast to one another, sometimes being set end to end so that one kind of sound interrupts another, and sometimes being dovetailed so that one timbre appears to emerge out of or from beneath another. Eighty-five percent of the sounds are electronic in origin; the non-electronic sounds are mainly pre-recorded percussion sounds–but subsequently electronically modified so that they are not always recognizable.” (From the original liner notes by Smiley.) 7:56 Olly W. Wilson, “Cetus” (1967) from Electronic Music, Vol. IV (1969 Turnabout). The selections are works by the winners of the First International Electronic Music Competition - Dartmouth College, April 5, 1968. The competition was judged by composers Milton Babbitt, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and George Balch Wilson. The winner was awarded a $500 prize. Olly W. Wilson was the competition Winner with “Cetus.” It was realized in the studio for Experimental Music of the University of Illinois. Olly Wilson wrote about the work: “the compositional process characteristic of the “classical tape studio” (the mutation of a few basic electronic signals by means of filters, signal modifiers, and recording processes) was employed in the realization of this work and was enhanced by means of certain instruments which permit improvisation by synthesized sound. Cetus contains passages which were improvised by the composer as well as sections realized by classical tape studio procedures. The master of this work was prepared on a two channel tape. Under the ideal circumstances it should be performed with multiple speakers surrounding the auditor.” (Olly Wilson. The Avant Garde Project at UBUWEB, AGP129 – US Electronic Music VIII | Dartmouth College Competition (1968-70). 9:18 Alice Shields, “The Transformation of Ani” (1970) from Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center Tenth Anniversary Celebration (1971 CRI). Composed at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Alice Shields explained, “The text of “The Transformation of Ani” is taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as translated into English by E. A. Budge. Most sounds in the piece were made from my own voice, speaking and singing the words of the text. Each letter of the English translation was assigned a pitch, and each hieroglyph of the Egyptian was given a particular sound or short phrase, of mostly indefinite pitch. Each series, the one derived from the English translation, and the one derived from the original hieroglyphs, was then improvised upon to create material I thought appropriate to the way in which I wanted to develop the meaning of the text, which I divided into three sections.” (see). 8:59 Opening background music: John Cage, Fontana Mix (1958) (1966 Turnabout). This tape work was composed in 1958 and I believe this is the only recorded version by Cage himself as well as the only Cage version presented as a work not in accompaniment of another work. An earlier recording, from the Time label in 1962, feature the tape piece combined with another Cage work, “Aria.” This version for 2 tapes was prepared b Cage in February 1959 at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, with technical assistance from Mario Zuccheri. From the Cage Database website. “This is a composition indeterminate of its performance, and was derived from notation CC from Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra. The score consists of 10 sheets of paper and 12 transparencies. The sheets of paper contain drawings of 6 differentiated (as to thickness and texture) curved lines. 10 of these transparencies have randomly distributed points (the number of points on the transparencies being 7, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 29, and 30). Another transparency has a grid, measuring 2 x 10 inches, and the last one contains a straight line (10 3/4 inch). By superimposing these transparencies, the player creates a structure from which a performance score can be made: one of the transparencies with dots is placed over one of the sheets with curved lines. Over this one places the grid. A point enclosed in the grid is connected with a point outside, using the straight line transparency. Horizontal and vertical measurements of intersections of the straight line with the grid and the curved line create a time-bracket along with actions to be made.” Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For additional notes, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

Episode 164 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "White Light/White Heat" and the career of the Velvet Underground. This is a long one, lasting three hours and twenty minutes. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Why Don't You Smile Now?" by the Downliners Sect. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say the Velvet Underground didn't play New York for the rest of the sixties after 1966. They played at least one gig there in 1967, but did generally avoid the city. Also, I refer to Cale and Conrad as the other surviving members of the Theater of Eternal Music. Sadly Conrad died in 2016. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Velvet Underground, and some of the avant-garde pieces excerpted run to six hours or more. I used a lot of resources for this one. Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga is the best book on the group as a group. I also used Joe Harvard's 33 1/3 book on The Velvet Underground and Nico. Bockris also wrote one of the two biographies of Reed I referred to, Transformer. The other was Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis. Information on Cale mostly came from Sedition and Alchemy by Tim Mitchell. Information on Nico came from Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon by Richard Witts. I used Draw a Straight Line and Follow it by Jeremy Grimshaw as my main source for La Monte Young, The Roaring Silence by David Revill for John Cage, and Warhol: A Life as Art by Blake Gopnik for Warhol. I also referred to the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of the 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground.  The definitive collection of the Velvet Underground's music is the sadly out-of-print box set Peel Slowly and See, which contains the four albums the group made with Reed in full, plus demos, outtakes, and live recordings. Note that the digital version of the album as sold by Amazon for some reason doesn't include the last disc -- if you want the full box set you have to buy a physical copy. All four studio albums have also been released and rereleased many times over in different configurations with different numbers of CDs at different price points -- I have used the "45th Anniversary Super-Deluxe" versions for this episode, but for most people the standard CD versions will be fine. Sadly there are no good shorter compilation overviews of the group -- they tend to emphasise either the group's "pop" mode or its "avant-garde" mode to the exclusion of the other. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I begin this episode, there are a few things to say. This introductory section is going to be longer than normal because, as you will hear, this episode is also going to be longer than normal. Firstly, I try to warn people about potentially upsetting material in these episodes. But this is the first episode for 1968, and as you will see there is a *profound* increase in the amount of upsetting and disturbing material covered as we go through 1968 and 1969. The story is going to be in a much darker place for the next twenty or thirty episodes. And this episode is no exception. As always, I try to deal with everything as sensitively as possible, but you should be aware that the list of warnings for this one is so long I am very likely to have missed some. Among the topics touched on in this episode are mental illness, drug addiction, gun violence, racism, societal and medical homophobia, medical mistreatment of mental illness, domestic abuse, rape, and more. If you find discussion of any of those subjects upsetting, you might want to read the transcript. Also, I use the term "queer" freely in this episode. In the past I have received some pushback for this, because of a belief among some that "queer" is a slur. The following explanation will seem redundant to many of my listeners, but as with many of the things I discuss in the podcast I am dealing with multiple different audiences with different levels of awareness and understanding of issues, so I'd like to beg those people's indulgence a moment. The term "queer" has certainly been used as a slur in the past, but so have terms like "lesbian", "gay", "homosexual" and others. In all those cases, the term has gone from a term used as a self-identifier, to a slur, to a reclaimed slur, and back again many times. The reason for using that word, specifically, here is because the vast majority of people in this story have sexualities or genders that don't match the societal norms of their times, but used labels for themselves that have shifted in meaning over the years. There are at least two men in the story, for example, who are now dead and referred to themselves as "homosexual", but were in multiple long-term sexually-active relationships with women. Would those men now refer to themselves as "bisexual" or "pansexual" -- terms not in widespread use at the time -- or would they, in the relatively more tolerant society we live in now, only have been in same-gender relationships? We can't know. But in our current context using the word "homosexual" for those men would lead to incorrect assumptions about their behaviour. The labels people use change over time, and the definitions of them blur and shift. I have discussed this issue with many, many, friends who fall under the queer umbrella, and while not all of them are comfortable with "queer" as a personal label because of how it's been used against them in the past, there is near-unanimity from them that it's the correct word to use in this situation. Anyway, now that that rather lengthy set of disclaimers is over, let's get into the story proper, as we look at "White Light, White Heat" by the Velvet Underground: [Excerpt: The Velvet Underground, "White Light, White Heat"] And that look will start with... a disclaimer about length. This episode is going to be a long one. Not as long as episode one hundred and fifty, but almost certainly the longest episode I'll do this year, by some way. And there's a reason for that. One of the questions I've been asked repeatedly over the years about the podcast is why almost all the acts I've covered have been extremely commercially successful ones. "Where are the underground bands? The alternative bands? The little niche acts?" The answer to that is simple. Until the mid-sixties, the idea of an underground or alternative band made no sense at all in rock, pop, rock and roll, R&B, or soul. The idea would have been completely counterintuitive to the vast majority of the people we've discussed in the podcast. Those musics were commercial musics, made by people who wanted to make money and to  get the largest audiences possible. That doesn't mean that they had no artistic merit, or that there was no artistic intent behind them, but the artists making that music were *commercial* artists. They knew if they wanted to make another record, they had to sell enough copies of the last record for the record company to make another, and that if they wanted to keep eating, they had to draw enough of an audience to their gigs for promoters to keep booking them. There was no space in this worldview for what we might think of as cult success. If your record only sold a thousand copies, then you had failed in your goal, even if the thousand people who bought your record really loved it. Even less commercially successful artists we've covered to this point, like the Mothers of Invention or Love, were *trying* for commercial success, even if they made the decision not to compromise as much as others do. This started to change a tiny bit in the mid-sixties as the influence of jazz and folk in the US, and the British blues scene, started to be felt in rock music. But this influence, at first, was a one-way thing -- people who had been in the folk and jazz worlds deciding to modify their music to be more commercial. And that was followed by already massively commercial musicians, like the Beatles, taking on some of those influences and bringing their audience with them. But that started to change around the time that "rock" started to differentiate itself from "rock and roll" and "pop", in mid 1967. So in this episode and the next, we're going to look at two bands who in different ways provided a model for how to be an alternative band. Both of them still *wanted* commercial success, but neither achieved it, at least not at first and not in the conventional way. And both, when they started out, went by the name The Warlocks. But we have to take a rather circuitous route to get to this week's band, because we're now properly introducing a strand of music that has been there in the background for a while -- avant-garde art music. So before we go any further, let's have a listen to a thirty-second clip of the most famous piece of avant-garde music ever, and I'll be performing it myself: [Excerpt, Andrew Hickey "4'33 (Cage)"] Obviously that won't give the full effect, you have to listen to the whole piece to get that. That is of course a section of "4'33" by John Cage, a piece of music that is often incorrectly described as being four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. As I've mentioned before, though, in the episode on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", it isn't that at all. The whole point of the piece is that there is no such thing as silence, and it's intended to make the listener appreciate all the normal ambient sounds as music, every bit as much as any piece by Bach or Beethoven. John Cage, the composer of "4'33", is possibly the single most influential avant-garde artist of the mid twentieth century, so as we're properly introducing the ideas of avant-garde music into the story here, we need to talk about him a little. Cage was, from an early age, torn between three great vocations, all of which in some fashion would shape his work for decades to come. One of these was architecture, and for a time he intended to become an architect. Another was the religious ministry, and he very seriously considered becoming a minister as a young man, and religion -- though not the religious faith of his youth -- was to be a massive factor in his work as he grew older. He started studying music from an early age, though he never had any facility as a performer -- though he did, when he discovered the work of Grieg, think that might change. He later said “For a while I played nothing else. I even imagined devoting my life to the performance of his works alone, for they did not seem to me to be too difficult, and I loved them.” [Excerpt: Grieg piano concerto in A minor] But he soon realised that he didn't have some of the basic skills that would be required to be a performer -- he never actually thought of himself as very musical -- and so he decided to move into composition, and he later talked about putting his musical limits to good use in being more inventive. From his very first pieces, Cage was trying to expand the definition of what a performance of a piece of music actually was. One of his friends, Harry Hay, who took part in the first documented performance of a piece by Cage, described how Cage's father, an inventor, had "devised a fluorescent light source over which Sample" -- Don Sample, Cage's boyfriend at the time -- "laid a piece of vellum painted with designs in oils. The blankets I was wearing were white, and a sort of lampshade shone coloured patterns onto me. It looked very good. The thing got so hot the designs began to run, but that only made it better.” Apparently the audience for this light show -- one that predated the light shows used by rock bands by a good thirty years -- were not impressed, though that may be more because the Santa Monica Women's Club in the early 1930s was not the vanguard of the avant-garde. Or maybe it was. Certainly the housewives of Santa Monica seemed more willing than one might expect to sign up for another of Cage's ideas. In 1933 he went door to door asking women if they would be interested in signing up to a lecture course from him on modern art and music. He told them that if they signed up for $2.50, he would give them ten lectures, and somewhere between twenty and forty of them signed up, even though, as he said later, “I explained to the housewives that I didn't know anything about either subject but that I was enthusiastic about both of them. I promised to learn faithfully enough about each subject so as to be able to give a talk an hour long each week.” And he did just that, going to the library every day and spending all week preparing an hour-long talk for them. History does not relate whether he ended these lectures by telling the housewives to tell just one friend about them. He said later “I came out of these lectures, with a devotion to the painting of Mondrian, on the one hand, and the music of Schoenberg on the other.” [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte"] Schoenberg was one of the two most widely-respected composers in the world at that point, the other being Stravinsky, but the two had very different attitudes to composition. Schoenberg's great innovation was the creation and popularisation of the twelve-tone technique, and I should probably explain that a little before I go any further. Most Western music is based on an eight-note scale -- do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do -- with the eighth note being an octave up from the first. So in the key of C major that would be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C: [demonstrates] And when you hear notes from that scale, if your ears are accustomed to basically any Western music written before about 1920, or any Western popular music written since then, you expect the melody to lead back to C, and you know to expect that because it only uses those notes -- there are differing intervals between them, some having a tone between them and some having a semitone, and you recognise the pattern. But of course there are other notes between the notes of that scale. There are actually an infinite number of these, but in conventional Western music we only look at a few more -- C# (or D flat), D# (or E flat), F# (or G flat), G# (or A flat) and A# (or B flat). If you add in all those notes you get this: [demonstrates] There's no clear beginning or end, no do for it to come back to. And Schoenberg's great innovation, which he was only starting to promote widely around this time, was to insist that all twelve notes should be equal -- his melodies would use all twelve of the notes the exact same number of times, and so if he used say a B flat, he would have to use all eleven other notes before he used B flat again in the piece. This was a radical new idea, but Schoenberg had only started advancing it after first winning great acclaim for earlier pieces, like his "Three Pieces for Piano", a work which wasn't properly twelve-tone, but did try to do without the idea of having any one note be more important than any other: [Excerpt: Schoenberg, "Three Pieces for Piano"] At this point, that work had only been performed in the US by one performer, Richard Buhlig, and hadn't been released as a recording yet. Cage was so eager to hear it that he'd found Buhlig's phone number and called him, asking him to play the piece, but Buhlig put the phone down on him. Now he was doing these lectures, though, he had to do one on Schoenberg, and he wasn't a competent enough pianist to play Schoenberg's pieces himself, and there were still no recordings of them. Cage hitch-hiked from Santa Monica to LA, where Buhlig lived, to try to get him to come and visit his class and play some of Schoenberg's pieces for them. Buhlig wasn't in, and Cage hung around in his garden hoping for him to come back -- he pulled the leaves off a bough from one of Buhlig's trees, going "He'll come back, he won't come back, he'll come back..." and the leaves said he'd be back. Buhlig arrived back at midnight, and quite understandably told the strange twenty-one-year-old who'd spent twelve hours in his garden pulling the leaves off his trees that no, he would not come to Santa Monica and give a free performance. But he did agree that if Cage brought some of his own compositions he'd give them a look over. Buhlig started giving Cage some proper lessons in composition, although he stressed that he was a performer, not a composer. Around this time Cage wrote his Sonata for Clarinet: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Sonata For Clarinet"] Buhlig suggested that Cage send that to Henry Cowell, the composer we heard about in the episode on "Good Vibrations" who was friends with Lev Termen and who created music by playing the strings inside a piano: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell offered to take Cage on as an assistant, in return for which Cowell would teach him for a semester, as would Adolph Weiss, a pupil of Schoenberg's. But the goal, which Cowell suggested, was always to have Cage study with Schoenberg himself. Schoenberg at first refused, saying that Cage couldn't afford his price, but eventually took Cage on as a student having been assured that he would devote his entire life to music -- a promise Cage kept. Cage started writing pieces for percussion, something that had been very rare up to that point -- only a handful of composers, most notably Edgard Varese, had written pieces for percussion alone, but Cage was: [Excerpt: John Cage, "Trio"] This is often portrayed as a break from the ideals of his teacher Schoenberg, but in fact there's a clear continuity there, once you see what Cage was taking from Schoenberg. Schoenberg's work is, in some senses, about equality, about all notes being equal. Or to put it another way, it's about fairness. About erasing arbitrary distinctions. What Cage was doing was erasing the arbitrary distinction between the more and less prominent instruments. Why should there be pieces for solo violin or string quartet, but not for multiple percussion players? That said, Schoenberg was not exactly the most encouraging of teachers. When Cage invited Schoenberg to go to a concert of Cage's percussion work, Schoenberg told him he was busy that night. When Cage offered to arrange another concert for a date Schoenberg wasn't busy, the reply came "No, I will not be free at any time". Despite this, Cage later said “Schoenberg was a magnificent teacher, who always gave the impression that he was putting us in touch with musical principles,” and said "I literally worshipped him" -- a strong statement from someone who took religious matters as seriously as Cage. Cage was so devoted to Schoenberg's music that when a concert of music by Stravinsky was promoted as "music of the world's greatest living composer", Cage stormed into the promoter's office angrily, confronting the promoter and making it very clear that such things should not be said in the city where Schoenberg lived. Schoenberg clearly didn't think much of Cage's attempts at composition, thinking -- correctly -- that Cage had no ear for harmony. And his reportedly aggressive and confrontational teaching style didn't sit well with Cage -- though it seems very similar to a lot of the teaching techniques of the Zen masters he would later go on to respect. The two eventually parted ways, although Cage always spoke highly of Schoenberg. Schoenberg later gave Cage a compliment of sorts, when asked if any of his students had gone on to do anything interesting. At first he replied that none had, but then he mentioned Cage and said “Of course he's not a composer, but an inventor—of genius.” Cage was at this point very worried if there was any point to being a composer at all. He said later “I'd read Cowell's New Musical Resources and . . . The Theory of Rhythm. I had also read Chavez's Towards a New Music. Both works gave me the feeling that everything that was possible in music had already happened. So I thought I could never compose socially important music. Only if I could invent something new, then would I be useful to society. But that seemed unlikely then.” [Excerpt: John Cage, "Totem Ancestor"] Part of the solution came when he was asked to compose music for an abstract animation by the filmmaker Oskar Fischinger, and also to work as Fischinger's assistant when making the film. He was fascinated by the stop-motion process, and by the results of the film, which he described as "a beautiful film in which these squares, triangles and circles and other things moved and changed colour.” But more than that he was overwhelmed by a comment by Fischinger, who told him “Everything in the world has its own spirit, and this spirit becomes audible by setting it into vibration.” Cage later said “That set me on fire. He started me on a path of exploration of the world around me which has never stopped—of hitting and stretching and scraping and rubbing everything.” Cage now took his ideas further. His compositions for percussion had been about, if you like, giving the underdog a chance -- percussion was always in the background, why should it not be in the spotlight? Now he realised that there were other things getting excluded in conventional music -- the sounds that we characterise as noise. Why should composers work to exclude those sounds, but work to *include* other sounds? Surely that was... well, a little unfair? Eventually this would lead to pieces like his 1952 piece "Water Music", later expanded and retitled "Water Walk", which can be heard here in his 1959 appearance on the TV show "I've Got a Secret".  It's a piece for, amongst other things, a flowerpot full of flowers, a bathtub, a watering can, a pipe, a duck call, a blender full of ice cubes, and five unplugged radios: [Excerpt: John Cage "Water Walk"] As he was now avoiding pitch and harmony as organising principles for his music, he turned to time. But note -- not to rhythm. He said “There's none of this boom, boom, boom, business in my music . . . a measure is taken as a strict measure of time—not a one two three four—which I fill with various sounds.” He came up with a system he referred to as “micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure,” what we would now call fractals, though that word hadn't yet been invented, where the structure of the whole piece was reflected in the smallest part of it. For a time he started moving away from the term music, preferring to refer to the "art of noise" or to "organised sound" -- though he later received a telegram from Edgard Varese, one of his musical heroes and one of the few other people writing works purely for percussion, asking him not to use that phrase, which Varese used for his own work. After meeting with Varese and his wife, he later became convinced that it was Varese's wife who had initiated the telegram, as she explained to Cage's wife "we didn't want your husband's work confused with my husband's work, any more than you'd want some . . . any artist's work confused with that of a cartoonist.” While there is a humour to Cage's work, I don't really hear much qualitative difference between a Cage piece like the one we just heard and a Varese piece like Ionisation: [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ionisation"] But it was in 1952, the year of "Water Music" that John Cage made his two biggest impacts on the cultural world, though the full force of those impacts wasn't felt for some years. To understand Cage's 1952 work, you first have to understand that he had become heavily influenced by Zen, which at that time was very little known in the Western world. Indeed he had studied with Daisetsu Suzuki, who is credited with introducing Zen to the West, and said later “I didn't study music with just anybody; I studied with Schoenberg, I didn't study Zen with just anybody; I studied with Suzuki. I've always gone, insofar as I could, to the president of the company.” Cage's whole worldview was profoundly affected by Zen, but he was also naturally sympathetic to it, and his work after learning about Zen is mostly a continuation of trends we can already see. In particular, he became convinced that the point of music isn't to communicate anything between two people, rather its point is merely to be experienced. I'm far from an expert on Buddhism, but one way of thinking about its central lessons is that one should experience things as they are, experiencing the thing itself rather than one's thoughts or preconceptions about it. And so at Black Mountain college came Theatre Piece Number 1: [Excerpt: Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose" ] In this piece, Cage had set the audience on all sides, so they'd be facing each other. He stood on a stepladder, as colleagues danced in and around the audience, another colleague played the piano, two more took turns to stand on another stepladder to recite poetry, different films and slides were projected, seemingly at random, onto the walls, and the painter Robert Rauschenberg played scratchy Edith Piaf records on a wind-up gramophone. The audience were included in the performance, and it was meant to be experienced as a gestalt, as a whole, to be what we would now call an immersive experience. One of Cage's students around this time was the artist Allan Kaprow, and he would be inspired by Theatre Piece Number 1 to put on several similar events in the late fifties. Those events he called "happenings", because the point of them was that you were meant to experience an event as it was happening rather than bring preconceptions of form and structure to them. Those happenings were the inspiration for events like The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, and the term "happening" became such an integral part of the counterculture that by 1967 there were comedy films being released about them, including one just called The Happening with a title track by the Supremes that made number one: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Happening"] Theatre Piece Number 1 was retrospectively considered the first happening, and as such its influence is incalculable. But one part I didn't mention about Theatre Piece Number 1 is that as well as Rauschenberg playing Edith Piaf's records, he also displayed some of his paintings. These paintings were totally white -- at a glance, they looked like blank canvases, but as one inspected them more clearly, it became apparent that Rauschenberg had painted them with white paint, with visible brushstrokes. These paintings, along with a visit to an anechoic chamber in which Cage discovered that even in total silence one can still hear one's own blood and nervous system, so will never experience total silence, were the final key to something Cage had been working towards -- if music had minimised percussion, and excluded noise, how much more had it excluded silence? As Cage said in 1958 “Curiously enough, the twelve-tone system has no zero in it.” And so came 4'33, the piece that we heard an excerpt of near the start of this episode. That piece was the something new he'd been looking for that could be useful to society. It took the sounds the audience could already hear, and without changing them even slightly gave them a new context and made the audience hear them as they were. Simply by saying "this is music", it caused the ambient noise to be perceived as music. This idea, of recontextualising existing material, was one that had already been done in the art world -- Marcel Duchamp, in 1917, had exhibited a urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" -- but even Duchamp had talked about his work as "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice". The artist was *raising* the object to art. What Cage was saying was "the object is already art". This was all massively influential to a young painter who had seen Cage give lectures many times, and while at art school had with friends prepared a piano in the same way Cage did for his own experimental compositions, dampening the strings with different objects. [Excerpt: Dana Gillespie, "Andy Warhol (live)"] Duchamp and Rauschenberg were both big influences on Andy Warhol, but he would say in the early sixties "John Cage is really so responsible for so much that's going on," and would for the rest of his life cite Cage as one of the two or three prime influences of his career. Warhol is a difficult figure to discuss, because his work is very intellectual but he was not very articulate -- which is one reason I've led up to him by discussing Cage in such detail, because Cage was always eager to talk at great length about the theoretical basis of his work, while Warhol would say very few words about anything at all. Probably the person who knew him best was his business partner and collaborator Paul Morrissey, and Morrissey's descriptions of Warhol have shaped my own view of his life, but it's very worth noting that Morrissey is an extremely right-wing moralist who wishes to see a Catholic theocracy imposed to do away with the scourges of sexual immorality, drug use, hedonism, and liberalism, so his view of Warhol, a queer drug using progressive whose worldview seems to have been totally opposed to Morrissey's in every way, might be a little distorted. Warhol came from an impoverished background, and so, as many people who grew up poor do, he was, throughout his life, very eager to make money. He studied art at university, and got decent but not exceptional grades -- he was a competent draughtsman, but not a great one, and most importantly as far as success in the art world goes he didn't have what is known as his own "line" -- with most successful artists, you can look at a handful of lines they've drawn and see something of their own personality in it. You couldn't with Warhol. His drawings looked like mediocre imitations of other people's work. Perfectly competent, but nothing that stood out. So Warhol came up with a technique to make his drawings stand out -- blotting. He would do a normal drawing, then go over it with a lot of wet ink. He'd lower a piece of paper on to the wet drawing, and the new paper would soak up the ink, and that second piece of paper would become the finished work. The lines would be fractured and smeared, broken in places where the ink didn't get picked up, and thick in others where it had pooled. With this mechanical process, Warhol had managed to create an individual style, and he became an extremely successful commercial artist. In the early 1950s photography was still seen as a somewhat low-class way of advertising things. If you wanted to sell to a rich audience, you needed to use drawings or paintings. By 1955 Warhol was making about twelve thousand dollars a year -- somewhere close to a hundred and thirty thousand a year in today's money -- drawing shoes for advertisements. He also had a sideline in doing record covers for people like Count Basie: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Seventh Avenue Express"] For most of the 1950s he also tried to put on shows of his more serious artistic work -- often with homoerotic themes -- but to little success. The dominant art style of the time was the abstract expressionism of people like Jackson Pollock, whose art was visceral, emotional, and macho. The term "action paintings" which was coined for the work of people like Pollock, sums it up. This was manly art for manly men having manly emotions and expressing them loudly. It was very male and very straight, and even the gay artists who were prominent at the time tended to be very conformist and look down on anything they considered flamboyant or effeminate. Warhol was a rather effeminate, very reserved man, who strongly disliked showing his emotions, and whose tastes ran firmly to the camp. Camp as an aesthetic of finding joy in the flamboyant or trashy, as opposed to merely a descriptive term for men who behaved in a way considered effeminate, was only just starting to be codified at this time -- it wouldn't really become a fully-formed recognisable thing until Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp" in 1964 -- but of course just because something hasn't been recognised doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and Warhol's aesthetic was always very camp, and in the 1950s in the US that was frowned upon even in gay culture, where the mainstream opinion was that the best way to acceptance was through assimilation. Abstract expressionism was all about expressing the self, and that was something Warhol never wanted to do -- in fact he made some pronouncements at times which suggested he didn't think of himself as *having* a self in the conventional sense. The combination of not wanting to express himself and of wanting to work more efficiently as a commercial artist led to some interesting results. For example, he was commissioned in 1957 to do a cover for an album by Moondog, the blind street musician whose name Alan Freed had once stolen: [Excerpt: Moondog, "Gloving It"] For that cover, Warhol got his mother, Julia Warhola, to just write out the liner notes for the album in her rather ornamental cursive script, and that became the front cover, leading to an award for graphic design going that year to "Andy Warhol's mother". (Incidentally, my copy of the current CD issue of that album, complete with Julia Warhola's cover, is put out by Pickwick Records...) But towards the end of the fifties, the work for commercial artists started to dry up. If you wanted to advertise shoes, now, you just took a photo of the shoes rather than get Andy Warhol to draw a picture of them. The money started to disappear, and Warhol started to panic. If there was no room for him in graphic design any more, he had to make his living in the fine arts, which he'd been totally unsuccessful in. But luckily for Warhol, there was a new movement that was starting to form -- Pop Art. Pop Art started in England, and had originally been intended, at least in part, as a critique of American consumerist capitalism. Pieces like "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?" by Richard Hamilton (who went on to design the Beatles' White Album cover) are collages of found images, almost all from American sources, recontextualised and juxtaposed in interesting ways, so a bodybuilder poses in a room that's taken from an advert in Ladies' Home Journal, while on the wall, instead of a painting, hangs a blown-up cover of a Jack Kirby romance comic. Pop Art changed slightly when it got taken up in America, and there it became something rather different, something closer to Duchamp, taking those found images and displaying them as art with no juxtaposition. Where Richard Hamilton created collage art which *showed* a comic cover by Jack Kirby as a painting in the background, Roy Lichtenstein would take a panel of comic art by Kirby, or Russ Heath or Irv Novick or a dozen other comic artists, and redraw it at the size of a normal painting. So Warhol took Cage's idea that the object is already art, and brought that into painting, starting by doing paintings of Campbell's soup cans, in which he tried as far as possible to make the cans look exactly like actual soup cans. The paintings were controversial, inciting fury in some and laughter in others and causing almost everyone to question whether they were art. Warhol would embrace an aesthetic in which things considered unimportant or trash or pop culture detritus were the greatest art of all. For example pretty much every profile of him written in the mid sixties talks about him obsessively playing "Sally Go Round the Roses", a girl-group single by the one-hit wonders the Jaynettes: [Excerpt: The Jaynettes, "Sally Go Round the Roses"] After his paintings of Campbell's soup cans, and some rather controversial but less commercially successful paintings of photographs of horrors and catastrophes taken from newspapers, Warhol abandoned painting in the conventional sense altogether, instead creating brightly coloured screen prints -- a form of stencilling -- based on photographs of celebrities like Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and, most famously, Marilyn Monroe. That way he could produce images which could be mass-produced, without his active involvement, and which supposedly had none of his personality in them, though of course his personality pervades the work anyway. He put on exhibitions of wooden boxes, silk-screen printed to look exactly like shipping cartons of Brillo pads. Images we see everywhere -- in newspapers, in supermarkets -- were art. And Warhol even briefly formed a band. The Druds were a garage band formed to play at a show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, the opening night of an exhibition that featured a silkscreen by Warhol of 210 identical bottles of Coca-Cola, as well as paintings by Rauschenberg and others. That opening night featured a happening by Claes Oldenburg, and a performance by Cage -- Cage gave a live lecture while three recordings of his own voice also played. The Druds were also meant to perform, but they fell apart after only a few rehearsals. Some recordings apparently exist, but they don't seem to circulate, but they'd be fascinating to hear as almost the entire band were non-musician artists like Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the sculptor Walter de Maria. Warhol said of the group “It didn't go too well, but if we had just stayed on it it would have been great.” On the other hand, the one actual musician in the group said “It was kind of ridiculous, so I quit after the second rehearsal". That musician was La Monte Young: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] That's an excerpt from what is generally considered Young's masterwork, "The Well-Tuned Piano". It's six and a half hours long. If Warhol is a difficult figure to write about, Young is almost impossible. He's a musician with a career stretching sixty years, who is arguably the most influential musician from the classical tradition in that time period. He's generally considered the father of minimalism, and he's also been called by Brian Eno "the daddy of us all" -- without Young you simply *do not* get art rock at all. Without Young there is no Velvet Underground, no David Bowie, no Eno, no New York punk scene, no Yoko Ono. Anywhere that the fine arts or conceptual art have intersected with popular music in the last fifty or more years has been influenced in one way or another by Young's work. BUT... he only rarely publishes his scores. He very, very rarely allows recordings of his work to be released -- there are four recordings on his bandcamp, plus a handful of recordings of his older, published, pieces, and very little else. He doesn't allow his music to be performed live without his supervision. There *are* bootleg recordings of his music, but even those are not easily obtainable -- Young is vigorous in enforcing his copyrights and issues takedown notices against anywhere that hosts them. So other than that handful of legitimately available recordings -- plus a recording by Young's Theater of Eternal Music, the legality of which is still disputed, and an off-air recording of a 1971 radio programme I've managed to track down, the only way to experience Young's music unless you're willing to travel to one of his rare live performances or installations is second-hand, by reading about it. Except that the one book that deals solely with Young and his music is not only a dense and difficult book to read, it's also one that Young vehemently disagreed with and considered extremely inaccurate, to the point he refused to allow permissions to quote his work in the book. Young did apparently prepare a list of corrections for the book, but he wouldn't tell the author what they were without payment. So please assume that anything I say about Young is wrong, but also accept that the short section of this episode about Young has required more work to *try* to get it right than pretty much anything else this year. Young's musical career actually started out in a relatively straightforward manner. He didn't grow up in the most loving of homes -- he's talked about his father beating him as a child because he had been told that young La Monte was clever -- but his father did buy him a saxophone and teach him the rudiments of the instrument, and as a child he was most influenced by the music of the big band saxophone player Jimmy Dorsey: [Excerpt: Jimmy Dorsey, “It's the Dreamer in Me”] The family, who were Mormon farmers, relocated several times in Young's childhood, from Idaho first to California and then to Utah, but everywhere they went La Monte seemed to find musical inspiration, whether from an uncle who had been part of the Kansas City jazz scene, a classmate who was a musical prodigy who had played with Perez Prado in his early teens, or a teacher who took the class to see a performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra: [Excerpt: Bartok, "Concerto for Orchestra"] After leaving high school, Young went to Los Angeles City College to study music under Leonard Stein, who had been Schoenberg's assistant when Schoenberg had taught at UCLA, and there he became part of the thriving jazz scene based around Central Avenue, studying and performing with musicians like Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Eric Dolphy -- Young once beat Dolphy in an audition for a place in the City College dance band, and the two would apparently substitute for each other on their regular gigs when one couldn't make it. During this time, Young's musical tastes became much more adventurous. He was a particular fan of the work of John Coltrane, and also got inspired by City of Glass, an album by Stan Kenton that attempted to combine jazz and modern classical music: [Excerpt: Stan Kenton's Innovations Orchestra, "City of Glass: The Structures"] His other major musical discovery in the mid-fifties was one we've talked about on several previous occasions -- the album Music of India, Morning and Evening Ragas by Ali Akhbar Khan: [Excerpt: Ali Akhbar Khan, "Rag Sindhi Bhairavi"] Young's music at this point was becoming increasingly modal, and equally influenced by the blues and Indian music. But he was also becoming interested in serialism. Serialism is an extension and generalisation of twelve-tone music, inspired by mathematical set theory. In serialism, you choose a set of musical elements -- in twelve-tone music that's the twelve notes in the twelve-tone scale, but it can also be a set of tonal relations, a chord, or any other set of elements. You then define all the possible ways you can permute those elements, a defined set of operations you can perform on them -- so you could play a scale forwards, play it backwards, play all the notes in the scale simultaneously, and so on. You then go through all the possible permutations, exactly once, and that's your piece of music. Young was particularly influenced by the works of Anton Webern, one of the earliest serialists: [Excerpt: Anton Webern, "Cantata number 1 for Soprano, Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra"] That piece we just heard, Webern's "Cantata number 1", was the subject of some of the earliest theoretical discussion of serialism, and in particular led to some discussion of the next step on from serialism. If serialism was all about going through every single permutation of a set, what if you *didn't* permute every element? There was a lot of discussion in the late fifties in music-theoretical circles about the idea of invariance. Normally in music, the interesting thing is what gets changed. To use a very simple example, you might change a melody from a major key to a minor one to make it sound sadder. What theorists at this point were starting to discuss is what happens if you leave something the same, but change the surrounding context, so the thing you *don't* vary sounds different because of the changed context. And going further, what if you don't change the context at all, and merely *imply* a changed context? These ideas were some of those which inspired Young's first major work, his Trio For Strings from 1958, a complex, palindromic, serial piece which is now credited as the first work of minimalism, because the notes in it change so infrequently: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Trio for Strings"] Though I should point out that Young never considers his works truly finished, and constantly rewrites them, and what we just heard is an excerpt from the only recording of the trio ever officially released, which is of the 2015 version. So I can't state for certain how close what we just heard is to the piece he wrote in 1958, except that it sounds very like the written descriptions of it I've read. After writing the Trio For Strings, Young moved to Germany to study with the modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. While studying with Stockhausen, he became interested in the work of John Cage, and started up a correspondence with Cage. On his return to New York he studied with Cage and started writing pieces inspired by Cage, of which the most musical is probably Composition 1960 #7: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "Composition 1960 #7"] The score for that piece is a stave on which is drawn a treble clef, the notes B and F#, and the words "To be held for a long Time". Other of his compositions from 1960 -- which are among the few of his compositions which have been published -- include composition 1960 #10 ("To Bob Morris"), the score for which is just the instruction "Draw a straight line and follow it.", and Piano Piece for David  Tudor #1, the score for which reads "Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. If the former, the piece is over after the piano has been fed. If the latter, it is over after the piano eats or decides not to". Most of these compositions were performed as part of a loose New York art collective called Fluxus, all of whom were influenced by Cage and the Dadaists. This collective, led by George Maciunas, sometimes involved Cage himself, but also involved people like Henry Flynt, the inventor of conceptual art, who later became a campaigner against art itself, and who also much to Young's bemusement abandoned abstract music in the mid-sixties to form a garage band with Walter de Maria (who had played drums with the Druds): [Excerpt: Henry Flynt and the Insurrections, "I Don't Wanna"] Much of Young's work was performed at Fluxus concerts given in a New York loft belonging to another member of the collective, Yoko Ono, who co-curated the concerts with Young. One of Ono's mid-sixties pieces, her "Four Pieces for Orchestra" is dedicated to Young, and consists of such instructions as "Count all the stars of that night by heart. The piece ends when all the orchestra members finish counting the stars, or when it dawns. This can be done with windows instead of stars." But while these conceptual ideas remained a huge part of Young's thinking, he soon became interested in two other ideas. The first was the idea of just intonation -- tuning instruments and voices to perfect harmonics, rather than using the subtly-off tuning that is used in Western music. I'm sure I've explained that before in a previous episode, but to put it simply when you're tuning an instrument with fixed pitches like a piano, you have a choice -- you can either tune it so that the notes in one key are perfectly in tune with each other, but then when you change key things go very out of tune, or you can choose to make *everything* a tiny bit, almost unnoticeably, out of tune, but equally so. For the last several hundred years, musicians as a community have chosen the latter course, which was among other things promoted by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of compositions which shows how the different keys work together: [Excerpt: Bach (Glenn Gould), "The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Fugue in F-sharp minor, BWV 883"] Young, by contrast, has his own esoteric tuning system, which he uses in his own work The Well-Tuned Piano: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Well-Tuned Piano"] The other idea that Young took on was from Indian music, the idea of the drone. One of the four recordings of Young's music that is available from his Bandcamp, a 1982 recording titled The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath, consists of one hour, thirteen minutes, and fifty-eight seconds of this: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath"] Yes, I have listened to the whole piece. No, nothing else happens. The minimalist composer Terry Riley describes the recording as "a singularly rare contribution that far outshines any other attempts to capture this instrument in recorded media". In 1962, Young started writing pieces based on what he called the "dream chord", a chord consisting of a root, fourth, sharpened fourth, and fifth: [dream chord] That chord had already appeared in his Trio for Strings, but now it would become the focus of much of his work, in pieces like his 1962 piece The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, heard here in a 1982 revision: [Excerpt: La Monte Young, "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer"] That was part of a series of works titled The Four Dreams of China, and Young began to plan an installation work titled Dream House, which would eventually be created, and which currently exists in Tribeca, New York, where it's been in continuous "performance" for thirty years -- and which consists of thirty-two different pure sine wave tones all played continuously, plus purple lighting by Young's wife Marian Zazeela. But as an initial step towards creating this, Young formed a collective called Theatre of Eternal Music, which some of the members -- though never Young himself -- always claim also went by the alternative name The Dream Syndicate. According to John Cale, a member of the group, that name came about because the group tuned their instruments to the 60hz hum of the fridge in Young's apartment, which Cale called "the key of Western civilisation". According to Cale, that meant the fundamental of the chords they played was 10hz, the frequency of alpha waves when dreaming -- hence the name. The group initially consisted of Young, Zazeela, the photographer Billy Name, and percussionist Angus MacLise, but by this recording in 1964 the lineup was Young, Zazeela, MacLise, Tony Conrad and John Cale: [Excerpt: "Cale, Conrad, Maclise, Young, Zazeela - The Dream Syndicate 2 IV 64-4"] That recording, like any others that have leaked by the 1960s version of the Theatre of Eternal Music or Dream Syndicate, is of disputed legality, because Young and Zazeela claim to this day that what the group performed were La Monte Young's compositions, while the other two surviving members, Cale and Conrad, claim that their performances were improvisational collaborations and should be equally credited to all the members, and so there have been lawsuits and countersuits any time anyone has released the recordings. John Cale, the youngest member of the group, was also the only one who wasn't American. He'd been born in Wales in 1942, and had had the kind of childhood that, in retrospect, seems guaranteed to lead to eccentricity. He was the product of a mixed-language marriage -- his father, William, was an English speaker while his mother, Margaret, spoke Welsh, but the couple had moved in on their marriage with Margaret's mother, who insisted that only Welsh could be spoken in her house. William didn't speak Welsh, and while he eventually picked up the basics from spending all his life surrounded by Welsh-speakers, he refused on principle to capitulate to his mother-in-law, and so remained silent in the house. John, meanwhile, grew up a monolingual Welsh speaker, and didn't start to learn English until he went to school when he was seven, and so couldn't speak to his father until then even though they lived together. Young John was extremely unwell for most of his childhood, both physically -- he had bronchial problems for which he had to take a cough mixture that was largely opium to help him sleep at night -- and mentally. He was hospitalised when he was sixteen with what was at first thought to be meningitis, but turned out to be a psychosomatic condition, the result of what he has described as a nervous breakdown. That breakdown is probably connected to the fact that during his teenage years he was sexually assaulted by two adults in positions of authority -- a vicar and a music teacher -- and felt unable to talk to anyone about this. He was, though, a child prodigy and was playing viola with the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from the age of thirteen, and listening to music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Stravinsky. He was so talented a multi-instrumentalist that at school he was the only person other than one of the music teachers and the headmaster who was allowed to use the piano -- which led to a prank on his very last day at school. The headmaster would, on the last day, hit a low G on the piano to cue the assembly to stand up, and Cale had placed a comb on the string, muting it and stopping the note from sounding -- in much the same way that his near-namesake John Cage was "preparing" pianos for his own compositions in the USA. Cale went on to Goldsmith's College to study music and composition, under Humphrey Searle, one of Britain's greatest proponents of serialism who had himself studied under Webern. Cale's main instrument was the viola, but he insisted on also playing pieces written for the violin, because they required more technical skill. For his final exam he chose to play Hindemith's notoriously difficult Viola Sonata: [Excerpt: Hindemith Viola Sonata] While at Goldsmith's, Cale became friendly with Cornelius Cardew, a composer and cellist who had studied with Stockhausen and at the time was a great admirer of and advocate for the works of Cage and Young (though by the mid-seventies Cardew rejected their work as counter-revolutionary bourgeois imperialism). Through Cardew, Cale started to correspond with Cage, and with George Maciunas and other members of Fluxus. In July 1963, just after he'd finished his studies at Goldsmith's, Cale presented a festival there consisting of an afternoon and an evening show. These shows included the first British performances of several works including Cardew's Autumn '60 for Orchestra -- a piece in which the musicians were given blank staves on which to write whatever part they wanted to play, but a separate set of instructions in *how* to play the parts they'd written. Another piece Cale presented in its British premiere at that show was Cage's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra": [Excerpt: John Cage, "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra"] In the evening show, they performed Two Pieces For String Quartet by George Brecht (in which the musicians polish their instruments with dusters, making scraping sounds as they clean them),  and two new pieces by Cale, one of which involved a plant being put on the stage, and then the performer, Robin Page, screaming from the balcony at the plant that it would die, then running down, through the audience, and onto the stage, screaming abuse and threats at the plant. The final piece in the show was a performance by Cale (the first one in Britain) of La Monte Young's "X For Henry Flynt". For this piece, Cale put his hands together and then smashed both his arms onto the keyboard as hard as he could, over and over. After five minutes some of the audience stormed the stage and tried to drag the piano away from him. Cale followed the piano on his knees, continuing to bang the keys, and eventually the audience gave up in defeat and Cale the performer won. After this Cale moved to the USA, to further study composition, this time with Iannis Xenakis, the modernist composer who had also taught Mickey Baker orchestration after Baker left Mickey and Sylvia, and who composed such works as "Orient Occident": [Excerpt: Iannis Xenakis, "Orient Occident"] Cale had been recommended to Xenakis as a student by Aaron Copland, who thought the young man was probably a genius. But Cale's musical ambitions were rather too great for Tanglewood, Massachusetts -- he discovered that the institute had eighty-eight pianos, the same number as there are keys on a piano keyboard, and thought it would be great if for a piece he could take all eighty-eight pianos, put them all on different boats, sail the boats out onto a lake, and have eighty-eight different musicians each play one note on each piano, while the boats sank with the pianos on board. For some reason, Cale wasn't allowed to perform this composition, and instead had to make do with one where he pulled an axe out of a single piano and slammed it down on a table. Hardly the same, I'm sure you'll agree. From Tanglewood, Cale moved on to New York, where he soon became part of the artistic circles surrounding John Cage and La Monte Young. It was at this time that he joined Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, and also took part in a performance with Cage that would get Cale his first television exposure: [Excerpt: John Cale playing Erik Satie's "Vexations" on "I've Got a Secret"] That's Cale playing through "Vexations", a piece by Erik Satie that wasn't published until after Satie's death, and that remained in obscurity until Cage popularised -- if that's the word -- the piece. The piece, which Cage had found while studying Satie's notes, seems to be written as an exercise and has the inscription (in French) "In order to play the motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." Cage interpreted that, possibly correctly, as an instruction that the piece should be played eight hundred and forty times straight through, and so he put together a performance of the piece, the first one ever, by a group he called the Pocket Theatre Piano Relay Team, which included Cage himself, Cale, Joshua Rifkin, and several other notable musical figures, who took it in turns playing the piece. For that performance, which ended up lasting eighteen hours, there was an entry fee of five dollars, and there was a time-clock in the lobby. Audience members punched in and punched out, and got a refund of five cents for every twenty minutes they'd spent listening to the music. Supposedly, at the end, one audience member yelled "Encore!" A week later, Cale appeared on "I've Got a Secret", a popular game-show in which celebrities tried to guess people's secrets (and which is where that performance of Cage's "Water Walk" we heard earlier comes from): [Excerpt: John Cale on I've Got a Secret] For a while, Cale lived with a friend of La Monte Young's, Terry Jennings, before moving in to a flat with Tony Conrad, one of the other members of the Theatre of Eternal Music. Angus MacLise lived in another flat in the same building. As there was not much money to be made in avant-garde music, Cale also worked in a bookshop -- a job Cage had found him -- and had a sideline in dealing drugs. But rents were so cheap at this time that Cale and Conrad only had to work part-time, and could spend much of their time working on the music they were making with Young. Both were string players -- Conrad violin, Cale viola -- and they soon modified their instruments. Conrad merely attached pickups to his so it could be amplified, but Cale went much further. He filed down the viola's bridge so he could play three strings at once, and he replaced the normal viola strings with thicker, heavier, guitar and mandolin strings. This created a sound so loud that it sounded like a distorted electric guitar -- though in late 1963 and early 1964 there were very few people who even knew what a distorted guitar sounded like. Cale and Conrad were also starting to become interested in rock and roll music, to which neither of them had previously paid much attention, because John Cage's music had taught them to listen for music in sounds they previously dismissed. In particular, Cale became fascinated with the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, hearing in them the same just intonation that Young advocated for: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "All I Have to Do is Dream"] And it was with this newfound interest in rock and roll that Cale and Conrad suddenly found themselves members of a manufactured pop band. The two men had been invited to a party on the Lower East Side, and there they'd been introduced to Terry Phillips of Pickwick Records. Phillips had seen their long hair and asked if they were musicians, so they'd answered "yes". He asked if they were in a band, and they said yes. He asked if that band had a drummer, and again they said yes. By this point they realised that he had assumed they were rock guitarists, rather than experimental avant-garde string players, but they decided to play along and see where this was going. Phillips told them that if they brought along their drummer to Pickwick's studios the next day, he had a job for them. The two of them went along with Walter de Maria, who did play the drums a little in between his conceptual art work, and there they were played a record: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] It was explained to them that Pickwick made knock-off records -- soundalikes of big hits, and their own records in the style of those hits, all played by a bunch of session musicians and put out under different band names. This one, by "the Primitives", they thought had a shot at being an actual hit, even though it was a dance-craze song about a dance where one partner lays on the floor and the other stamps on their head. But if it was going to be a hit, they needed an actual band to go out and perform it, backing the singer. How would Cale, Conrad, and de Maria like to be three quarters of the Primitives? It sounded fun, but of course they weren't actually guitarists. But as it turned out, that wasn't going to be a problem. They were told that the guitars on the track had all been tuned to one note -- not even to an open chord, like we talked about Steve Cropper doing last episode, but all the strings to one note. Cale and Conrad were astonished -- that was exactly the kind of thing they'd been doing in their drone experiments with La Monte Young. Who was this person who was independently inventing the most advanced ideas in experimental music but applying them to pop songs? And that was how they met Lou Reed: [Excerpt: The Primitives, "The Ostrich"] Where Cale and Conrad were avant-gardeists who had only just started paying attention to rock and roll music, rock and roll was in Lou Reed's blood, but there were a few striking similarities between him and Cale, even though at a glance their backgrounds could not have seemed more different. Reed had been brought up in a comfortably middle-class home in Long Island, but despised the suburban conformity that surrounded him from a very early age, and by his teens was starting to rebel against it very strongly. According to one classmate “Lou was always more advanced than the rest of us. The drinking age was eighteen back then, so we all started drinking at around sixteen. We were drinking quarts of beer, but Lou was smoking joints. He didn't do that in front of many people, but I knew he was doing it. While we were looking at girls in Playboy, Lou was reading Story of O. He was reading the Marquis de Sade, stuff that I wouldn't even have thought about or known how to find.” But one way in which Reed was a typical teenager of the period was his love for rock and roll, especially doo-wop. He'd got himself a guitar, but only had one lesson -- according to the story he would tell on numerous occasions, he turned up with a copy of "Blue Suede Shoes" and told the teacher he only wanted to know how to play the chords for that, and he'd work out the rest himself. Reed and two schoolfriends, Alan Walters and Phil Harris, put together a doo-wop trio they called The Shades, because they wore sunglasses, and a neighbour introduced them to Bob Shad, who had been an A&R man for Mercury Records and was starting his own new label. He renamed them the Jades and took them into the studio with some of the best New York session players, and at fourteen years old Lou Reed was writing songs and singing them backed by Mickey Baker and King Curtis: [Excerpt: The Jades, "Leave Her For Me"] Sadly the Jades' single was a flop -- the closest it came to success was being played on Murray the K's radio show, but on a day when Murray the K was off ill and someone else was filling in for him, much to Reed's disappointment. Phil Harris, the lead singer of the group, got to record some solo sessions after that, but the Jades split up and it would be several years before Reed made any more records. Partly this was because of Reed's mental health, and here's where things get disputed and rather messy. What we know is that in his late teens, just after he'd gone off to New

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Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress reliefocean sounds,water meditation,relaxing sounds,water therapy,waterfall sounds,nature therapy,#soundscapes,peaceful retreat,mindfulness meditation,water relaxation therapy,stream soundscape,ambient relaxation,relaxation music,calming background noise,white noise,natural sounds,water white noise,sleep sounds,relaxing background noise,stress relief therapy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress reliefocean sounds,water meditation,relaxing sounds,water therapy,waterfall sounds,nature therapy,#soundscapes,peaceful retreat,mindfulness meditation,water relaxation therapy,stream soundscape,ambient relaxation,relaxation music,calming background noise,white noise,natural sounds,water white noise,sleep sounds,relaxing background noise,stress relief therapy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress reliefocean sounds,water meditation,relaxing sounds,water therapy,waterfall sounds,nature therapy,#soundscapes,peaceful retreat,mindfulness meditation,water relaxation therapy,stream soundscape,ambient relaxation,relaxation music,calming background noise,white noise,natural sounds,water white noise,sleep sounds,relaxing background noise,stress relief therapy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress reliefocean sounds,water meditation,relaxing sounds,water therapy,waterfall sounds,nature therapy,#soundscapes,peaceful retreat,mindfulness meditation,water relaxation therapy,stream soundscape,ambient relaxation,relaxation music,calming background noise,white noise,natural sounds,water white noise,sleep sounds,relaxing background noise,stress relief therapy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress relief Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the "Water Sounds " podcast, where we explore the beauty and tranquility of all types of water sounds. From the gentle trickle of a stream to the crashing waves of the ocean, we'll take you on a journey of relaxation and rejuvenation. In each episode, we'll feature a different type of water sound and take you on a virtual audio journey to some of the world's most breathtaking water bodies. Along the way, we'll also share interesting facts about each water sound and its impact on the environment. Whether you're looking to unwind after a long day or simply want to immerse yourself in the peaceful sounds of nature, the "Water Sounds " podcast has got you covered. So sit back, relax, and let the calming sounds of water transport you to a state of blissful relaxation. Don't forget to rate and review our show to let us know how we're doing and to help other listeners find our podcast. Thank you for tuning in! nature sounds,water relaxation,meditation sounds,ambient sounds,sound therapy,ocean waves,stream sounds,peaceful sounds,calming sounds,stress relief Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prepare to get wet, because this week, Justin has the second installment in our loose series of quizzes themed around the four Classical Elements, with a six-question quiz about water! We also dive into discussions of classical music, movies, and one crazy sport.3:04: Q1 (Movies & TV): Four years after winning an Oscar for Best Director for Dances with Wolves, what actor starred in Waterworld, which is mostly known for being a ridiculously expensive, not very good, sci-fi action movie?8:34: Q2 (Times & Places): What is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, the oldest lake in the world, and the deepest lake in the world?16:00: Q3 (Music): What composer wrote Water Music, in response to a request from King George I for a concert on the River Thames?26:50: Q4 (Sports & Games): At time of recording, Cal Berkeley's men's team has won 16 championships, and is the defending national champion, in what full contact sport?33:46: Q5 (Arts & Literature): Like most seascapes, Christ Asleep during the Tempest, or Christ on the Sea of Galilee, is dominated by water.  What artist, better known for Liberty Leading the People, painted it?39:02: Q6 (Everything Else): One of its more curious symptoms is a fear of water.  Name this viral disease, sometimes called hydrophobia, which is transmitted primarily by animal bites.Theme music: "Thinking it Over" by Lee Rosevere, licensed under CC BY 2.0E-Mail: quizandhers@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quizandhers/Twitter: https://twitter.com/quizandhersInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/quizandhers/We're Watching Here Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/were-watching-here/id1450972000Cormac on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CormacsThoughts

Synopsis On today's date in 1948, Leonard Bernstein, age 29, conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of a new orchestral work by Harold Shapero, age 27. This was Shapero's “Symphony for Classical Orchestra,” a work modeled on Beethoven but sounding very much like one of the Neo-Classical scores of Igor Stravinsky. This was exactly what Shapero intended, but some found the music perplexing. Aaron Copland, for one, wrote: “Harold Shapero, it is safe to say, is at the same time the most gifted and baffling composer of his generation.” That comment by Copland, one should remember, came at a time when Shapero's generation included the likes of Barber, Bernstein, Menotti and Rorem. But Copland continued, “Stylistically, Shapero seems to feel a compulsion to fashion his music after some great model. He seems to be suffering from a hero-worship complex – or perhaps it is a freakish attack of false modesty.” “Copland was so original,” Shapero responded, “that he just couldn't understand anyone who wasn't.” Even so, Shapero's superbly crafted orchestral imitations suffered many decades of neglect. In the 1980s, however, conductor and composer Andre Previn fell in love with Shapero's Symphony, performing and recording it with the LA Philharmonic, and declared its Adagietto movement the most beautiful slow movement of any American symphony. Music Played in Today's Program Harold Shapero (b. 1920) Symphony for Classical Orchestra Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor New World 373 On This Day Births 1697 - German composer and flutist Johann Joachim Quantz, in Oberscheden, Hannover; 1861 - French-born American composer Charles Martin Loeffler, in Alsace; 1862 - German-born American composer and conductor, Walter Damrosch, in Breslau; Deaths 1963 - French composer Francis Poulenc, age 64, in Paris; Premieres 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 81 ("Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen?") performed on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany as part of Bach's first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24); 1735 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 14 ("Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit") performed in Leipzig on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany; 1892 - Rachmaninoff: “Trio élégiaque” No. 1 in G minor (Gregorian date: Feb. 11); 1893 - Brahms: Fantasies for piano Nos. 1-3, from Op. 117 and Intermezzo No. 2, from Op. 117, in Vienna; 1917 - Zemlinsky: opera "A Floretine Tragedy," in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater; 1920 - Frederick Converse: Symphony in c, by the Boston Symphony, Pierre Monteux conducting; 1942 - Copland: Orchestral Suite from "Billy the Kid" ballet, by the Boston Symphony; 1948 - Harold Shapero: "Symphony for Classical Orchestra," by the Boston Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein; 1958 - Walton: "Partita" for orchestra, in Cleveland; 1959 - Hindemith: "Pittsburgh Symphony," by the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by the composer; 1970 - William Schuman: "In Praise of Shahn," in New York; 1985 - Libby Larsen: Symphony ("Water Music"), by the Minnesota Orchestra, Sir Neville Marriner conducting. Links and Resources On Harold Shapero

• Andrew Pinches • Yantra de Vilder • Peter Manning Robinson • Masami Tsuchiya • Suso Sáiz • Tats Lau • Mœbius & Plank • Enno Velthuys • Walter Christian Rothe • Free Radicals • Paradigm Shift • Yoshio Ojima

‘El mar en la poesía', nuevo especial de Patricia del Río sobre los reinos de Neptuno, el dios de los mares, que a través del tiempo bardos, trovadores y poetas le han dedicado versos inmortales. Autores y autoras como Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Gabriela Mistral, Blanca Varela, José Watanabe, Antonio Cisneros, por citar a nuestros más cercanos porque la lista es larga, les han cantado a sus playas, han recreado etapas de su infancia y se han dejado arrullar por el vaivén y murmullo de las olas del mar en sus poemas. En la entrevista de la semana, la historiadora Ana Luisa Burga comenta detalles de su poemario ‘Desde otro puerto', un recorrido sentimental por el norte chico y su admiración por la poesía de Blanca Varela. Como material de apoyo hemos reproducido del Youtube las voces de poetas latinoamericanos y su relación con el mar: ‘Borges por él mismo - El mar' (@PabloStafforini); ‘Puerto Supe - Blanca Varela' (Elizabeth Aquino @Nopista); ‘El Mar - Pablo Neruda' (@Nerudavivecl); ‘Se Canta al Mar - Nicanor Parra' (Fratello Faundez Toro @fratsss); ‘Meciendo – Gabriela Mistral' (@tomascamposazofeifa4048); ‘Piedra alada – José Watanabe' (@verboilustrado); y ‘(5) Antonio Cisneros en la Cátedra Latinoamericana “Julio Cortázar”' (@catedralatinoamericanajuli2604). Por su parte, el crítico literario, librero y gerente de Escena libre, Julio Zavala, recomienda los libros ‘Jardín mecánico', de Luis Alonso Cruz Álvarez (poesía); y ‘Aroma de nido', de Ivonne Bernuy Coloma (poesía). Las canciones que recrean este especial son: ‘Acuario', de Camille Saint Saens; ‘Barcarolle', de Anna Netrebko; ‘Tonight is so right for love', de Elvis Presley; ‘La tempestad en el mar', de Antonio Vivaldi; ‘Water Music', de George Haendel; y ‘Surfin USA...' de los Beach Boys. ||| Conducción y producción: Patricia del Río ||| Edición de audio: Andrés Rodríguez ||| Episodio 02 – Cuarta temporada 2023.

‘El mar en la poesía', nuevo especial de Patricia del Río sobre los reinos de Neptuno, el dios de los mares, que a través del tiempo bardos, trovadores y poetas le han dedicado versos inmortales. Autores y autoras como Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Gabriela Mistral, Blanca Varela, José Watanabe, Antonio Cisneros, por citar a nuestros más cercanos porque la lista es larga, les han cantado a sus playas, han recreado etapas de su infancia y se han dejado arrullar por el vaivén y murmullo de las olas del mar en sus poemas. En la entrevista de la semana, la historiadora Ana Luisa Burga comenta detalles de su poemario ‘Desde otro puerto', un recorrido sentimental por el norte chico y su admiración por la poesía de Blanca Varela. Como material de apoyo hemos reproducido del Youtube las voces de poetas latinoamericanos y su relación con el mar: ‘Borges por él mismo - El mar' (@PabloStafforini); ‘Puerto Supe - Blanca Varela' (Elizabeth Aquino @Nopista); ‘El Mar - Pablo Neruda' (@Nerudavivecl); ‘Se Canta al Mar - Nicanor Parra' (Fratello Faundez Toro @fratsss); ‘Meciendo – Gabriela Mistral' (@tomascamposazofeifa4048); ‘Piedra alada – José Watanabe' (@verboilustrado); y ‘(5) Antonio Cisneros en la Cátedra Latinoamericana “Julio Cortázar”' (@catedralatinoamericanajuli2604). Por su parte, el crítico literario, librero y gerente de Escena libre, Julio Zavala, recomienda los libros ‘Jardín mecánico', de Luis Alonso Cruz Álvarez (poesía); y ‘Aroma de nido', de Ivonne Bernuy Coloma (poesía). Las canciones que recrean este especial son: ‘Acuario', de Camille Saint Saens; ‘Barcarolle', de Anna Netrebko; ‘Tonight is so right for love', de Elvis Presley; ‘La tempestad en el mar', de Antonio Vivaldi; ‘Water Music', de George Haendel; y ‘Surfin USA...' de los Beach Boys. ||| Conducción y producción: Patricia del Río ||| Edición de audio: Andrés Rodríguez ||| Episodio 02 – Cuarta temporada 2023.

Black Dave aka Dave Curry is a music artist, producer, rapper, photographer, and innovator in the realms of web3 music and NFTs.He's a contributor at leading music DAOs such as Water & Music, and shares ideas about crypto and music at blackdave.mirror.xyz. He helped to found a collaborative music project Amethyst from his hometown in Charleston, South Carolina.His latest release Black Dave Token is an audacious project which aims to support his musical journey raising 250 ETH with 1 million NFTs.In this episode, we talk platforms for minting music such as ZORA, Catalog and Sound. Dynamics of scarcity in music NFTs ~ 1/1s as fine art and editions as building blocks for communities. And his belief that we should value artists by their potential, not their present moment.SPONSORSZerion combines every corner of web3 in a simple and intuitive app for self-custodial humans. Discover the hottest NFT collections, track your DeFi rewards, and vote in DAOs across 10+ chains. Get started at zerion.ioLens Protocol is the open-source tech stack for building decentralized social media applications. A permissionless and transparent social graph that is owned by the user. Lens is the last social media handle you'll ever need to create. Visit lens.xyz

Synopsis On today's date in 1952, at the aptly named Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York, pianist David Tudor premiered two new works by the American composer John Cage. The first, titled "Water Music," was scored for a "prepared piano" – a piano into whose metal strings various items had been inserted to alter its sound – plus a duck call and transistor radio. For the second work, Tudor simply closed the lid of the piano, set a stopwatch for the length of the work's four sections – 4 minutes and 33 seconds to be exact – and then sat quietly on the piano bench. The composition consisted of whatever sounds occurred in that amount of time at that particular moment in time, including any breathing, coughing or snickering from the audience. Some likened the piece to the all-white canvases of the avant-garde painter Robert Rauschenberg, on which accidental aspects of dust or bumps in the canvas created an arbitrary texture. Others thought it an outrageous affront at worst, or a bad joke at best. Whatever else one might think of it, as pianist David Tudor put it, "Cage's 4:33 is one of the most intense listening experiences one can have." Cage once said: "I'm interested in making sounds that I don't understand," and insisted that random, unplanned sounds were as welcome to his ears as those he organized himself, as in this Cage piece for prepared piano titled "Mysterious Adventure." Music Played in Today's Program John Cage (1912-1992) –Nos. 5 and 12, fr Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (Robert Miller, p.) New World 80203

Arthur Sullivan - Henry VIII: Water Music RTE Concert Orchestra Andrew Penny, conductor More info about today's track: Naxos 8.555181 Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. Subscribe You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts, or by using the Daily Download podcast RSS feed. Purchase this recording Amazon

Synopsis On today's date in 1717, King George and his entourage took a barge trip on the river Thames, traveling from Whitehall to Chelsea, accompanied by about 50 musicians, also on barges. A contemporary newspaper account reported that they performed “the finest Symphonies, composed express for this occasion by Mr. Handel, which his Majesty liked so well that he caused it to be played three times in going and returning.” Another report refers to “trumpets, horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, recorders, violins and basses” being employed. In our time, Handel's “Water Music” – as the three suites have come to be known – is one of the best-known and best-loved works of the entire Baroque Age. In 1985, three hundred years after the birth of Handel, American composer Libby Larsen composed a Symphony she titled “Water Music,” written as a tribute to Handel and as an expression of her own enthusiasm for sailing. Libby Larsen is one of today's busiest American composers, and in the year 2000 the American Academy of Arts and Letters presented Larsen with its Award in Music, honoring her lifetime achievements as a composer. When asked how she finds time to balance her busy life as a composer, Larsen answers: “I can't not do it – having a life and a life in music is as natural and necessary to me as breathing.” Music Played in Today's Program George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) – Water Music (Royal Philharmonic: Sir Yehudi Menuhin, cond.) MCA 6186 Libby Larsen (b. 1950) – Symphony (Water Music) (Minnesota Orchestra; Sir Neville Marriner, cond.) Nonesuch 79147

Today we'll be listening to and learning about a famous piece of music by George Frideric Handel, part of his iconic "Water Music". Grab some rhythm sticks and the free printable if you'd like to extend the activity for a little more interaction. To grab the free printable that accompanies this episode go to www.clapforclassics.com/episode23. It's a set of images of the string family and the brass family so you have a visual of the instruments while you listen. To watch a video of this activity (the one that comes straight out of our All Access Membership), go to https://www.clapforclassics.com/blog/watermusic. There you'll also find a blog post with more information on the piece and even more ways to extend and enjoy this wonderful music. Enjoying the podcast? Consider joining us inside our All Access Membership to make learning music fun, engaging and rewarding for you and your young child. Music Credit: “Water Music” Suite No. 2 in D Major by George Frideric Handel 2. “Alla Hornpipe” Performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Radio-Télé-Luxembourg, conducted by Louis de Froment Special thanks to Classical.com for licensing this music for our use on the podcast and in our membership.

Ahead of Father's Day, Carson Daly sits down with golfer Justin Thomas and his dad Mike Thomas – they are sharing their story and life lessons learned on the golf course. Plus, Gloria Estefan and Andy Garcia are in Studio 1A to chat about playing the bride's parents in the newly reimagined “Father of the Bride.” And, Carson Daly talks with Pharrell Williams about his Something In The Water music festival happening this Juneteenth weekend in Washington, D.C. and being inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.