Day 207: Sound as music
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
207 — Sound as music
25-February-1972
(Freitag–Fri.)
TRANSCRIPT
Spent the whole day in
Electronic Music. Even though it appears that I only
keep on repeating myself, it’s because that’s all
I’ve been doing. It’s almost an obsession to do it,
finish it, fairly soon, and do an excellent job. By
the time I’m through, it’ll be just about a complete
project with method, thoughts, ideas, score, and
composition finished. Even after it’s all done,
nobody’ll probably even like it…after it’s all over,
I might not even like it.
Anyway, work is readily progressing and the quality
is good (at least technically). I was confident
though, that I’ll succeed in my hopes of providing
some type of “thoughtful” and “sensing” experience
for those who hear it—a feeling perhaps.
Spoke with the author [Herr Manfred Teiner] and also
with Prof. Kaufmann, unfortunately, all of the
composition won’t be able to be included in the book,
but at least some will. Kaufmann will have to be
helping me a lot with it—and we had a long talk.
Next, I must draw up and write down my plans—a
score—and make it fairly exact. Well, enough about
that.
On my way home, met Mike [organist friend], and he
told me to beware of the “millions” of police
guarding the ______ Embassy. There was supposed to be
some sort of student demonstration. The fun thing was
that the police can’t really be taken
seriously—they’re not mean, they’re friendly. So it
was quite a humorous scene. All these police standing
around, in front of a Phillips building (or Embassy)
with no one else around. What was even funnier was
their “combat” dress. Dress parade uniforms.
Good night.
REFLECTIONS
Electronic
music. As you can
tell a lot of work is going into this project. I’m
feeling confident for a change.
Education
book. As
previously mentioned, the examples of the
manipulation of sound is for use in an elementary
education music text—for schools. The publisher is
Universal Edition. Of course, only a small example of
the recording and the score will be in the book. The
purpose is to show students what sounds can come out
of a single sound. I liked this idea then and like it
now. The opening picture is the title page of the
Universal Edition in 1975.
Future
musique. In the
future, when I retire, I would love to revisit this
concept. Take the same sound of breaking
glass. Then
manipulate it using the software, recording programs,
audio hardware, computers, and digital gadgetry of
today’s world, and see what the result would be. Then
compare it to the original—if I can ever find the
tape. That would be a blast. One day, I’ll do it.
The composition, the score. Prof. Kaufmann will be helping me with the project and book. I am completing an exact score. I have this “paper” draft score and when completed will post a bit of it on the blog. The score sample below shows some of my sketches.
Student demonstration. My first
European student demonstration. Europe is famous for
these demonstrations. No, I wasn’t in it and didn’t
know what it was about. I passed it by. I didn’t see
a lot of students. By the way, the Viennese police
are very friendly and the whole thing was probably
very civil and well organized.
My
friend Mike. I mention
my friend Mike (the organist) only a few times in
this journal, but he was an organizing force in our
group of friends and guided me to many of the operas
and concerts that I saw in Vienna. Mike taught us the
Vienna Opera’s standing room, walk-run-up-the-stairs,
ritual. I will always be thankful to him. Guess what?
A while ago, I believe that I tracked down Mike on
the Internet. He is a successful organist and choral
director, including the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and may
still be in Vienna all these years. I will try and
track him down and possibly do a post on him.
John
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