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  • A nice story about "2001"

    So, guys, Kubricks "2001" is discussed here many times but yesterday I was told another nice story about it which I thought is worth sharing. It´s also a story about life and career plans which in this case is very remarkable.

    It´s the story about the teacher of my teacher, my grandteacher so to say. His name is Dick Raaijmakers (the name of my teacher is Gilius van Bergeijk) and as a young man he happened to work in the electronic studios of Philips Laboratories. It was in the 50's and everybody was convinced the future of music lies in electronic music and electronic music will bring traditional classical music life to death. (Which happened in a way.) But there were only these weird avant-garde composers out there doing very strange and inconsumable electronic and tape music and so they thought they´re clever and founded "electronic popular" music. Dick Raaijmakers and a colleague, which name I forgot, were hired to produce popular music electronically. So they were doing marches, songs, operette and all that amazing stuff by means of oscillators and tape. Very weird idea, of course. Philips spent quite an amount of money to spread the resulting products all around the world so you could buy them in every record shop under the label "electronic popular". However, for Dick it was only a money job which he actually did under pseudonym. And also because of not really surprising lack of success Philips Laboratories quit the project around 63. Dick happily devoted his life then to his personal artistic work while working as a teacher at the conservatory Den Haag.

    When Stanley Kubrick was working on "2001" he imagined a totally electronic score. It was the time when people still believed that a futuristic science-fiction should also have some futuristic music. And so he sent his assistant to go to the record shop and buy every record with electronic music he could find. So, guess what, ... right, there was the "electronic popular" record in his hands. He concluded that this was the music he needs and thus he asked the production to get Dick Raaijmakers.
    So one morning in Den Haag in the late 60s there arrived this letter inviting Dick to London. Included flight tickets and all the stuff. How did he react? He basically ignored it. He thought it must have been a mistake or something. Then there came a second letter. Still he didn´t care. And then finally the dutch representatives of the production company rang the bell at his door.
    He never heard of Kubrick and so after they explained him the situation he asked them how come that Kubricks wants him to make the music? And so they explained him about the "electronic popular" records. Aah, now well, how did he react?
    He refused. "I don´t do this anymore."

    That´s it. That´s the story. He refused to make a lot of money and/or become famous and decided to keep on working on his personal stuff. He is now an old man and one of the most important dutch composers. He did extraordinary conceptual stuff combining different media in a quite poetic way and as a teacher he influenced a whole generation of composers (to the good).

    Good night, good people,
    - Mathis

  • Great story! Thanks for sharing.

    /Dietz

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • That is very interesting, all the stuff about that particular pop approach of Phillips at the time and what happened with "2001." You probably have to place yourself back in that time, and not this one - for all people knew then "2001" was just another giant bug sci-fi movie. The fact that it later changed cinema history could not have been foreseen. I wonder if this composer knew of its success later and regretted telling Stanley Kubrick to go take a flying leap?

  • It's also interesting (to me) to note that Kubrick found 2001 worked best with classical music, and that the great popular breakthrough for the synthesizer (and thus, electronic music) was Carlos doing an album of Bach. The future must be processed through the lens of the present (and past).

  • So much irony in this world.

    Evan Evans

  • If it would have meant that Dick was supposed to do an electronic version of the "blue danube" I don´t think he regretted it.
    But who knows? In a short moment of depression men can think quite a lot.

    As far as I know Ligeti didn´t go along with the use of his music in 2001. They used it nevertheless and accepted a copyright fine. (Strange business, these film people...)
    Of course it helped him tremendously to get known even outside the contemporary music world. I wonder here, too, what he now thinks about that.

  • It was always my understanding that the Ligeti dispute involved the "lab rat" scene at the end of the film and Kubrick's distorion of his music through ring-modulators and weird reverbs. He had a point, though the end result is marvelously effective and I'm glad it reamians in the film.

  • Hey Mathis,

    These are my favourite electronic music composers from Holland.
    Amazing stuff. I have a few friends who studied with Gilius and had great things to say about him. "Over de Dood En de Tijd" is a masterpiece IMO. And "Five Canons"!
    Take advantage of your time in Den Haag!

    best,
    John

  • Hi John,

    "Over de Dood en de Tijd" moved me to tears. It´s amazing. Curiously Gilius is not featuring it, he says it´s an old piece. But it is one of my favorite pieces of music.
    This is one of the pieces which made me study with him.

    Who are your friends? Maybe I know them?

    Bests,
    - Mathis

  • Heheh, you gotta love those Dutch! [H]

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    @mathis said:


    "Over de Dood en de Tijd" moved me to tears. [...]
    - Mathis


    Is this still available on CD (or even vinyl)?

    /Dietz

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • http://www.xs4all.nl/~xorluc">http://www.xs4all.nl/~xorluc

    It´s on Gilius van Bergeijk, Volume II.
    Volume I is also highly recommended, especially the "Four pieces for barrel organ".

    "Over de Dood en de Tijd" is a piece about Schuberts song "The death and the maiden" which I feel very attached to. How I personally interpret Gilius' work is that he tries to get near or close to this song. For me it´s about the impossibilty of taking hold of this unearthly beauty. It´s a very frustrating piece. It´s like shaking hands and the others hand is slowly melting away. It´s partly also very funny.
    The third part in this half an hour piece is about the famous choral played on an organ but it triggers very beautiful crackling electronic sounds. So it´s of course the Schubert harmonies which really move you but he puts this electronic layer between you and the Schubert which simply intensifies your desire to be part of this unearthly beauty.
    It´s a bit like the iceberg paintings by Gerhard Richter. They make you longing for being there but at same time you know you wouldn´t survive.

    But there are quite some people who hate this piece because they say Gilius is just destroying Schubert. However, I don´t agree.

  • Mathis, I like what you say about Over de Dood en de Tijd. There's that sense of dizzy exaltation in the middle section where you say to yourself "He's not going to do that is he? Well, surely he can't keep doing that, can he? Oh my god! he's really doing it!"
    And, folks, Schubert is doing just fine!
    Gilius does a similar thing with Mahler and Kathleeen Ferrier in (sorry I can't remember the Dutch title) Song of Truth and Semblance. It amazes me that it seems a majority of musicians don't know how to listen to this kind of music. They feel somehow that there's a violation of the masters and find it offensive. For me it's about listening in a new way to something familiar - one of the greatest experiences you can have!

    My friends: Martin Arnold was in Den Haag and Amsterdam in the early 80s studying with Gilius and Louis Andriessen. Allison Cameron was there I think in 1989-91 and still visits Holland for performances occasionally. Peter Hannan was there in 82-83 but perhaps he wasn't Gilius's student - I know he studied with Louis and with Walter van Hauwe.

    best,
    John

  • I am very unfamiliar with serious electronic "art" music but want to learn more. Could Marthis or John A or anyone who knows about the medium give a list of the important works? The only ones I know of are Varese and a few very old things like Ondes Martenot compositions.

    p.s. Mathis, for some reason I find it hard to imagine you being moved to tears. I can't say why exactly... though perhaps it has something to do with your infinitely multiplying layers of irony and deconstruction.

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    @William said:

    p.s. Mathis, for some reason I find it hard to imagine you being moved to tears. I can't say why exactly... though perhaps it has something to do with your infinitely multiplying layers of irony and deconstruction.


    Hm. Ok, you got me [:O]ops: . I wasn´t moved to tears literally... but it was really a very moving and stunning experience and I needed a strong word for that.

    I´ll think up some works. The ones you mentioned are indeed for the museum.

  • John, although I´m working on and off with Gilius for more than seven years it´s apparently not long enough to know your friends. But both Allison Cameron and Martin Arnold sound somehow familiar to me. Maybe I stumbled over the names on some concert here.
    The Mahler piece is more to Gilius current likes. He features that quite often. Although I like that, too, I´m much more attached to the Schubert piece.
    Yes, this conceptual approach making music *about* music is still quite difficult for lots to understand. Once I understood the thinking a whole new bright world of music opened its door for me.

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    @fredproggh said:

    It's also interesting (to me) to note that Kubrick found 2001 worked best with classical music, and that the great popular breakthrough for the synthesizer (and thus, electronic music) was Carlos doing an album of Bach. The future must be processed through the lens of the present (and past).


    Man, thank you for pointing me to these treasures. Most bizarre! [[:|]]

  • Yes - I also thought this statement by fredproggh is extremely insightful, even brilliant. It is so true that electronic things didn't take off until they were fully "demonstrated" with J.S. Bach. In other words, they weren't just bleeps and bloops. This is all of great interest to me personally - these fertile clashes and contradictions between past, present and future.

    To go back to our favorite topic, I always felt that audiences at the time were simply blown away by the combination of outer space with the "Blue Danube." It was as if a new connection had been created in their minds between the most comfortable, familiar past, and the most unknown and vast vision of the future ever conceived.

  • Another thing - music "about" music. I am also fascinated by this. It is similar to what a few filmmakers - like Guy Maddin - have done, as well as many writers such as Robbe-Grillet or painters such as Delvaux and de Chirico. To create works that reference the past in order to do something utterly new. It is a "viewpoint" that was impossible in the past being referenced.

  • William, I'm not sure that this was impossible in previous eras - I'm thinking of the Bach-Busoni or Bach-Godowski or Bach-Tausig piano arrangements(?) or the Paganini-Liszt things etc.
    I think the guts of the aesthetic is different now, in that we can be more "removed" and "analytical" whereas the older pieces are more in the nature of hommages or fantasies. I've done quite a lot of referential pieces and find it fascinating - that new perspective.
    Another favourite is Dieter Schnebel's Schubert piece (aargh I can't think of it's name now - I'll look it up and get back to you)
    I'll also work on a list of electronic "must-haves" (IMO)

    best,
    John