Last post, I wrote about Wendy Carlos, who in 1967 released the record "Switched-On Bach," and her contribution to electronic music. She also helped give old Johann Sebastian Bach's career a shot in the arm as well. When I did a search on the name "Bach" on Amazon's website, I ended up with 0ver 25,000 recordings. I once read that Bach, Beethoven and Mozart are the hottest selling classical composers these days, which indicates great staying power as Ludwig has been dead over 181 years.
By using a very modern instrument, the synthesizer, to record very old music, Carlos managed to bring a bit of feeling into what had started out as a kind of cold genre: remember that great early '60 tinny hit, "Telstar," played on an electric organ? It caught the attention of the boomer generation, me included.
On Carlos' website, she attributes the choice of the tracks on the album to her producer. The genius of the choices lay in the length of each one. They were about the length of the average pop song of the era and that made them easy to digest for the younger listeners. In addition, the pieces for the most part were upbeat and "boppy," which helped with their success. Today's piece, for example, is a kind of fanfare, like the famous trumpets in Handel' Watermusic.
Bach must really have liked this little piece. He used it again to open his Partita III for Unaccompanied Violin in E Major. There is also a version for organ, which Virgil Fox played when I saw him in concert in the early 70s.
If you aren't a musicologist, as is my case, then you face the constant challenge of trying to put in words what's going on in a piece. One way is to describe the emotions it evokes in you. The downside is the danger of becoming kind trite or maudlin. Another way to approach it is to describe the characteristics of the sounds--fast, slow, loud, soft--which makes it sound dull. You can try combining the two to come up with phrases like ebullient, joyous, festive, happy, morose, or ominous to describe the feeling of the piece, but you soon find yourself running out of adjectives and having to recycle.
Stravinsky had similar complaints, and he was probably the biggest musical genius since Beethoven. In an interview entitled "Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man," in his book Themes and Conclusions he says the following about the Adagio from Beethoven's Ninth:
I have been so deply moved by it lately, a confession that seem s to make me guilty of the Affective Fallacy. But in fact I have always tried to distinguish between the musical object and the emotion it induces, partly on the grounds that the object is active, the emotion reactive, hence a translation....My point was simply that your feelings and my feelings are much less interesting than Beethoven's art.
Still, I feel compelled to say something about how festive and soul-lifting I find Bach's Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29. It makes you sit up and take notice, dust off those cobwebs of self-pity. You listen to it and feel young and joyous and happy. Oops, I just recycled. But if Bach can recycle his melodies, I will allow myself to do the same with my adjectives.
By using a very modern instrument, the synthesizer, to record very old music, Carlos managed to bring a bit of feeling into what had started out as a kind of cold genre: remember that great early '60 tinny hit, "Telstar," played on an electric organ? It caught the attention of the boomer generation, me included.
On Carlos' website, she attributes the choice of the tracks on the album to her producer. The genius of the choices lay in the length of each one. They were about the length of the average pop song of the era and that made them easy to digest for the younger listeners. In addition, the pieces for the most part were upbeat and "boppy," which helped with their success. Today's piece, for example, is a kind of fanfare, like the famous trumpets in Handel' Watermusic.
Bach must really have liked this little piece. He used it again to open his Partita III for Unaccompanied Violin in E Major. There is also a version for organ, which Virgil Fox played when I saw him in concert in the early 70s.
If you aren't a musicologist, as is my case, then you face the constant challenge of trying to put in words what's going on in a piece. One way is to describe the emotions it evokes in you. The downside is the danger of becoming kind trite or maudlin. Another way to approach it is to describe the characteristics of the sounds--fast, slow, loud, soft--which makes it sound dull. You can try combining the two to come up with phrases like ebullient, joyous, festive, happy, morose, or ominous to describe the feeling of the piece, but you soon find yourself running out of adjectives and having to recycle.
Stravinsky had similar complaints, and he was probably the biggest musical genius since Beethoven. In an interview entitled "Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man," in his book Themes and Conclusions he says the following about the Adagio from Beethoven's Ninth:
I have been so deply moved by it lately, a confession that seem s to make me guilty of the Affective Fallacy. But in fact I have always tried to distinguish between the musical object and the emotion it induces, partly on the grounds that the object is active, the emotion reactive, hence a translation....My point was simply that your feelings and my feelings are much less interesting than Beethoven's art.
Still, I feel compelled to say something about how festive and soul-lifting I find Bach's Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29. It makes you sit up and take notice, dust off those cobwebs of self-pity. You listen to it and feel young and joyous and happy. Oops, I just recycled. But if Bach can recycle his melodies, I will allow myself to do the same with my adjectives.
- Bach Bio
- Carlos Bio
- Youtube (on Pipe Organ)
- Recording
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