Day 165: Electronic music class; a horn recital; dreams
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 165
— Electronic music class; a horn recital; dreams
14-January-1972
(Freitage–Fri.)
TRANSCRIPT
Good day. Played new electronic sounds for Kaufmann.
Good possibilities. Next—music. Possibility of going
to Innsbruck for a music seminar.
Have info for future scholarships. I hope, in a
couple of years, that I might be able to come back.
Herr Gabler’s horn recital. A tape. Basically very
good. Nerves took a hold and more mistakes than
usual. I played in two ensembles. What was good was
that the comparison between Vienna style horns and
horn playing, and the American style horns and
playing, can be heard on the tape. Excellent job by
Gaudette on Hindemith.
REFLECTIONS
Electronic
music. It’s my
turn to play my electronic sounds in electronic music
class for Professor Kaufmann. It sounds like the
response was positive. Next, I need to turn those
sounds in a music composition. That’s the hard part.
In class, we talk about the possibility of taking a
trip to Innsbruck. That would be nice.
The photo above is of the 1971 Electronic Music class
under the direction of Professor Dieter Kaufmann. We
are listening to student music in progress. Notice
the analog 1/4" x 15" tape recorders and analog
mixing console. This was
musique concrète—creating
music from analog real-world sounds, using the tape
recorder as the primary composing tool. From
left-to-right we have: Professor Dieter Kaufmann,
Roget Bedard, myself (John Maryn), Koshi, Judi Olson
and Balzac seated at the console. Camille, another
student, is not in the picture. Perhaps she took the
picture. We learned a lot and had a lot of fun in
that class (though you couldn't tell by the picture).
I have such a
serious look on my
face. (I broke my rule of not using first names. I
think that's ok here.) I enjoyed this class
immensely.
Scholarships.
I want to
explore the opportunities to come back to Vienna on
scholarship. That was a dream of mine at the time.
Remember, a theme of this blog is about starting your
journey on the path to your dreams. Looking back,
this dream never happened. Why? Like many of us, I
returned home, found a teaching job, started a
career, tried to make some money, bought a new car,
and many other things—that’s life. Life takes hold.
It happens to all of us. Here is my question to you…
Dreams
and reality. How might
each of our lives have changed if we had followed
through on some of those dreams? How might my life
turned out differently if I had returned to Vienna a
few years later? Would I be a composer today or
teaching composition in a university? Would I have
earned my doctorate in Vienna? Might I be living in
Europe or traveling the globe?
As Steve Jobs recently said, it’s easier to “connect
the dots” (what happens in your life) later in life,
than at the time you are making those decisions.
Horn
recital. My horn
teacher, Professor Gabler, also had a class horn
recital today. I played in two ensembles and probably
made a couple of mistakes. There is a difference in
sound between the traditional Vienna horns and
American horns. The Vienna horns can get very brassy.
One of my classmates played the Hindemith Horn
Concerto and did nicely. A year or two later, I
remember traveling to Quebec, Canada, in the middle
of the frozen winter and over the frozen St. Lawrence
River, to visit him and his friends. Friendships go
beyond national boundaries.
John
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