Day 190: The Sound of Breaking Glass
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day
190 — The Sound of Breaking Glass
08-February-1972
(Dienstag–Tue.)
TRANSCRIPT
Began my “private
electronic music work” on the book possibility. Began
with “1 sound” (glass breaking) – proceeded from
there. Spent 10-1/2 hours in the lab. Got something
done. No practicing, however.
Send a letter (in German; good practice) to
Elisabeth.
REFLECTIONS
The
sound of breaking glass. In
electronic music, I now decide to begin on the “book”
project, where I am supposed to take a single sound—I
chose to break a glass—and show how it can be
manipulated with musique
concrète techniques.
I remember, Prof. Kaufmann and the class helping with
the recording of the sound, the mic had to be brought
out from a locked closet. Then, I spent over 10 hours
working with the sound. Opening photo is that of
Prof. Kaufmann and our electronic music class.
I was
fascinated by sound and what you could do with it!
Day
1. I won’t
talk about it now, but this day, and this sound, was
the beginning of an experimental journey in creating
music with “raw sound,” a journey that I will never
forget. My work did end up as a completed
composition, with a portion of the music and score
used in a Universal Edition education book—the reason
that the man approached our class in the first place.
Lost
tape, lost composition. My
concrète piece, if I remember correctly, was over 20
minutes long at it’s first electronic performance. A
bit long. It was a programmatic piece with many
natural sounds. Perhaps a bit corny and certainly not
a masterpiece. I then revised it to perhaps 10
minutes. It was a good example of the manipulations
of musique concrète. I remember Prof. Kaufmann had
programmed the piece on other concerts in the few
years after my stay in Vienna. I believe that I have
lost this tape and haven’t heard it in many years. I
will have to search, perhaps.
Amazing
Internet. A few days
ago, I decided to search for the music on the
Internet, and amazingly, a short 1-2 minute audio
excerpt of the piece was in an educational or
professor’s archive on experimental music. It was an
example of how a single sound could be manipulated.
Isn’t that AMAZING—that this lost bit of my personal
music history is on the Internet? This
was music from over 36 years ago.
In the future, I will post the excerpt.
Influences.
In my
future work after Vienna, as a student, I use some
musique concrète techniques in some electronic works
at both Indiana University and Ohio State University.
As a young music teacher (band teacher), I won a
small grant to start an electronic music program
where middle school students (grades 7–9), explore
and create electronic music, musique concrète and
filmmaking. They did a wonderful job.
See, I
was influenced! Thanks
again, Prof. Kaufmann.
John
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