@Another User said:

And like Mathis, i am continually surprised and impressed by your literacy, and vast knowledge base.

I'm only a composing multi, circa quadruple, trick pony !!!!

[:D]

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Not really related to this but I've sometimes wondered who was the 1st important composer and important piece to make use of harmonics, natural or artificial.

@Guy said:

Not really related to this but I've sometimes wondered who was the 1st important composer and important piece to make use of harmonics, natural or artificial.

1738
Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville (1711-1772), french composer and violinist
"Lessons harmoniques“
op. 4, 6 sonates, 1738.
First composer who composed sonates including flageolets, and mention them also in the preface as "Les sons harmoniques"


1756
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), german composer, violinist, conducter
"Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule"
1756, String method.

This string method is one of the important books for people interested in historically informed performance. Flageolet quote from Mozart's "Gründliche Violinschule“ Faksimile-Nachdruck der 3. Auflage, Augsburg 1789, Leipzig 1968, S. 107 und folgende:

"Jeder, der die Singkunst ein bißchen versteht, weis, daß man sich eines gleichen Tones befleissigen muß. Denn wem würde es gefallen, wenn ein Singer in der Tiefe oder Höhe bald aus dem Hals, bald aus der Nase, bald aus den Zähnen u.s.w. singen, oder gar dazwischen falsetiren wollte?... Wenn nun auch das beständige Einmischen des sogenannten Flascholets noch dazu kömmt, so entstehet eine recht lächerliche, und, wegen der Ungleichheit des Tones, eine wider die Natur selbst streitende Musik“


1759
Johann Heinrich Zang (1733-1811), cantor, student of J. S. Bach.
"Halleluja! Der Sieg ist da"
Ostertriumph for ten voices etc., 1759
1. Satz called "Flageolet” - 1th violins playing the Jesus theme.
First orchestral composition with string section flageolet.


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Beethoven died in 1827, I'm sure we would of found harmonics in his 10th or 11th symphony.... since I presume he never made use of them...Although I'm not 100% sure of that.

Ooh, sorry, to late, I just fired the chimney with LvB's handwriting of the 10th and the 11th, it was so cold this morning.

- This guy Paul is an old pal of mine from Appenzell. Violinist and composer Paul Giger uses flageolet on his recodings "Chartres" almost exclusively:

http://www.paul-giger.ch/old/gs_ch2crossing.mp3
http://www.paul-giger.ch/old/gs_ch1Labyrith.mp3

The Cathedral of Chartres (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres), widely considered to be the finest gothic cathedral in France. You can't duplicate that with altiverb.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/musicircus/ecm/e_new/n002.htm

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@JimineySnicket said:

Hello

I'm wondering if there are people out there who are programming 'new music' or 'contemporary music' (call it what you will) with the VSL. Everything I here seems to be very pastiche and film music orientated. Dont get me wrong I love it just as much as the next person but what I would love to hear is the VSL really being stretched...... musically speaking.

It doesn't have to be original music (although it would be great if it was) but maybe something by Birtwistle, Ligeti, Kurtag or Feldman. I was very pleased to see the piece by Takemitsu on the demo section. That's a good start but please lets have more of it.......

Cheers
Jim

My performance of "A Screaming Comes Across the Sky" by David Heuser (2005) was recently posted to the demo zone. It's certainly new music, not a pastiche, and not film music (though you may describe it as "filmic" I suppose).

Working on Atmosphères now ...

- Paul

This looks like a fun party, which I didn't want to miss entirely... even if I had to arrive late!

I certainly feel for Angelo in his general concern. It would be oh so nice to have more "extended" techniques in the library. But of course, it will be a late priority for VSL I'm sure, as there can't be a huge demand for it. However, if they're going to continue to be the absolute best of the best, then they actually can't avoid it forever. And I've noticed that there's been a dealthly silence from the VSL staff *every* time I've posted something requesting these techniques... so... I think they've got something planned. Maybe a Level 3 extended? Anyway, that's for another time.

I just wanted to pipe in a little about the idea that contemporary work somehow requires these extended techniques (and I realize that they're not necessarily "extended" in this day and age). Similar to Angelo, I've been a little frustrated by the idea of composing for what my library offers, rather than composing for what I hear. However, whenever I think this way I just have to remind myself that I never used to worry about it. I would auralize something, and write it down to be performed that way. If my samples couldn't manage it, then I just imagined the playback as though they could. It's not ideal, and it means there's always that gap between what you're hearing in your head and what you're hearing in your ears during composing, but it's certainly not the end of the world. Having said that, I do sometimes get cold chills when I realize that my recent works don't include techniques which were quite common in my past work. That scares me. Because I know it's absolutely because my sample can't give me those sounds.... It's not as though I couldn't auralize them, and incorporate them, but it just slips my mind when I'm not hearing them. So... please VSL... Level 3 Solo Strings!!! [;)]

But, on a completely different note. It is also a *major* challenge to try to extend your musical language, even in the absence of such techniques -- to deal, as Angelo says, with rhythm, harmony, and melody, but still find something compelling and culturally relevant to say. That's a BIG challenge. So, I certainly wouldn't say that without these techniques we're condemned to writing anachronistic music. We just need to push our conception of 'note in time' a little further. I'm actually kind of excited by that challenge... but still... I really want my L3 Strings! [;)]

cheers, All.

J.

Very nicely put, jbm.

I certainly hope you're right in your notion of "silence = hope". One nice thing about working with these samples is that some things that I auralize benefit from a little experimentation even after the score is completed. No matter how ideal my initial concept might be, I have a great deal of fun re-distributing articulations. I'm often surprised at how much I enjoy hearing the same notes played differently. I'm certainly doing this with the sounds we have, but as always: the more the merrier.

Hmm-- what *is* next on VSL's agenda, I wonder (besides special brass and woodwinds)?

@JWL said:

Hmm-- what *is* next on VSL's agenda, I wonder (besides special brass and woodwinds)?

I for one hope it involves huge advances in performance software so that we won't have to continually rely on VSL's good graces to deliver "just that one missing articulation" in the future. Perhaps a hybrid sample-player/intelligent sound-sculpting modeller à la Synful Orchestra? Or maybe a software instrument interface that also has built-in representation about generic performance facts beyond legato and repetition (such as automatic phrase boundary detection, along with configurable "spacing" between phrases). The sky's the limit!

- Paul

It's important to remember that VSL is constantly executing plans and ideas that were formed a certain amount of time prior to any release (such as the ground-breaking interface.) When these things come out we all jump on it and come up with a new wish list of additional features or even radical design requests such as an entirely different approach alle synful. I (and I'm sure VSL) understand this predilection by all us creative types with voracious appetite for comprehensive expressive means. I think we need to be somewhat more realistic in our demands or at least the timetable for more features.

I know we want miracles from VSL but maybe we can let them have a breather now and then (in between miracles at least: which many would say they have performed already.)

@dpcon said:

It's important to rember that VSL is constantly executing plans and ideas that were formed a certain amount of time prior to any release (such as the ground-breaking interface.) When these thngs come out we all jump on it and come up with a new wish list of additional features or even radical design requests such as an entirely different approach alle synful. I (and I'm sure VSL) understand this prediliction by all us creative types with voracious appetite for comprehensive expressive means. I think we need to be somewhat more realistic in our demands or at least the timetable for more features.

I know we want miracles from VSL but maybe we can let them have a breather now and then (in between miracles at least: which many would say they have performed already.)

Be realistic about our demands? Yes.

Curbing that voracious appetite? LOL! [:D]

I have a naive question to ask.

Do the composers who feel they can't use the current number of samples/articulations available to fully express themselves think they have exhausted them?

Not that I want fewer samples, but I honestly wonder that. Since the whole point of this thread by Jiminey cricket or whoever is that you can't do modern music without these articulations. I must assume that these people who agree with that feel that they have exhausted all the possibilities of 12 tones, expressed by standard articulations. When in fact, there are somewhere near an infiinity of possibilities that have never been used even once.

though again, I am not arguing for fewer or less varied samples. I just think that people today have almost everything, and it still isn't enough. Whereas a thousand years ago people had almost nothing, and if they got one little thing, they could build an entire lifetime of work upon it.

Dear William,

Hear hear. I believe (and hope) that a creative mind can be creative regardless of the restrictions. It is an old argument in music psychology that the restrictions that we place on ourselves allow us to be more free in our creativity.

Again, I'm not saying that it is great to have less articulations - more that if we do not have those articulations, it is a better use of our time to mention it, ensure that we have been heard, then use the subsequent time to make the most out of what we already have. There are very few pieces that break truly new ground, and I think it is a mistake to believe that all new ground is based on timbre as opposed to pitch, form or rhythm.

What would we be composing now if Beethoven had turned around and said "Mein Gott, I zink I have written everyzing zat can be written in Zonata form. I cannot really compoze anything truly innovative until zomebody comes up with a new form".

So, let the restriction free your minds, and concentrate on writing great music, rather than wishing for technology not yet available. Ask, by all means, but don't waste your valuable thought by worrying too much about it. Just be innovative with what you have until you get better toys.

Kind Regards,

Nick.

@William said:

Do the composers who feel they can't use the current number of samples/articulations available to fully express themselves think they have exhausted them?

I have no answer for your question. I live in a rather radical music world. What some people call extended techniques, is established standard for me. But there has to be more to a piece of music then just torturing a violin in a never before heard way. This quote is something like an answer to your question:

"Toru Takemitsu talked about a master shakuhachi player who had an approach to practice he had not known. Each morning he would raise his bamboo flute to his lips and whatever note came out first, this was the one he would play for the next two hours."

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@William said:

Do the composers who feel they can't use the current number of samples/articulations available to fully express themselves think they have exhausted them?

I have no answer for your question. I live in a rather radical music world. What some people call extended techniques, is established standard for me. But there has to be more to a piece of music then just torturing a violin in a never before heard way. This quote is something like an answer to your question:

"Toru Takemitsu talked about a master shakuhachi player who had an approach to practice he had not known. Each morning he would raise his bamboo flute to his lips and whatever note came out first, this was the one he would play for the next two hours."

.

Thank god we now have the MIDI "all notes off" command. [[:|]]

In a seroius vein, I would like to add we really cannot underestimate the immense importance of the rise of sound AS SOUND in the 20th century -- rising ultimately to the same (structural) level as counterpoint, melody, rhythm and harmony as a musical element that can be structured and formalized.

In Beethoven's day the particular sound choice for an event in a composition was not nearly so imbued with musical significance as such choices now can be. Think about the 5th symphony in the recap when the 2nd theme is about to emerge. Who plays? Bassoons (and not horns, as in the exposition). Why? Because the horns couldn't play that? Now most conductors double the part with horns because they realize that for us modern, post-twentieth-century listeners, it sounds somehow "significant" that bassoons are weakly playing the horn melody there. It sounds also kind of wrong. Did it sound wrong to Beethoven who might have been just biting his tounge while wishing for "extended techniques" for horn?

And before Beethoven, there was Bach writing pieces where no instrument was indicated at all. Talk about a lack of concern for the particular sound! We just don't live in that kind of world anymore. Sound in and of itself has now attained strucutral/formal musical significance after a centuries long historical process.

Will that remain the case, or will instruments like VSL hasten a return to composition focused on counterpoint, rhythm, harmony and melody. (Probably not ... after all the piano is still around, and it hasn't forced a change in compositional approach away from the predominance of sound as a primary element.)

We have such a pluralistic musical culture now that there is room for the composer who would ignore sound in itself (focusing on counterpoint, perhaps), as well as the composer for whom sound is the primary element (Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge and Varèse's Poème Electronique come to mind as examples ... but I'm old-school!)

The interesting thing is that the output of the VSL can be processed and processed ad infinitum to make god-knows what new sounds. Well, the potential to do so is there, even if it isn't being done. That possibility is so far beyond what was available to Stockhausen in the 1950s it's not even funny. So to hear the talk of the VSL being limited to just the sounds recorded on the silent stage (ignoring the elephant ... er, computer ... in the room), just seems a bit strange to me.

- Paul

@paulhenrysmith said:

In Beethoven's day the particular sound choice for an event in a composition was not nearly so imbued with musical significance as such choices now can be. Think about the 5th symphony in the recap when the 2nd theme is about to emerge. Who plays? Bassoons (and not horns, as in the exposition). Why? Because the horns couldn't play that? Now most conductors double the part with horns because they realize that for us modern, post-twentieth-century listeners, it sounds somehow "significant" that bassoons are weakly playing the horn melody there. It sounds also kind of wrong. Did it sound wrong to Beethoven who might have been just biting his tounge while wishing for "extended techniques" for horn?

And before Beethoven, there was Bach writing pieces where no instrument was indicated at all. Talk about a lack of concern for the particular sound! We just don't live in that kind of world anymore. Sound in and of itself has now attained strucutral/formal musical significance after a centuries long historical process.

Will that remain the case, or will instruments like VSL hasten a return to composition focused on counterpoint, rhythm, harmony and melody. (Probably not ... after all the piano is still around, and it hasn't forced a change in compositional approach away from the predominance of sound as a primary element.)

We have such a pluralistic musical culture now that there is room for the composer who would ignore sound in itself (focusing on counterpoint, perhaps), as well as the composer for whom sound is the primary element (Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge and Varèse's Poème Electronique come to mind as examples ... but I'm old-school!)

The interesting thing is that the output of the VSL can be processed and processed ad infinitum to make god-knows what new sounds. Well, the potential to do so is there, even if it isn't being done. That possibility is so far beyond what was available to Stockhausen in the 1950s it's not even funny. So to hear the talk of the VSL being limited to just the sounds recorded on the silent stage (ignoring the elephant ... er, computer ... in the room), just seems a bit strange to me.

- Paul

Fascinating point, Paul.

The emphasis on the music itself is always paramount. I am struck with the reality that so much of what is expected from orchestral music-- considering the purposes for which a library such as VSL has been created-- is heavily influenced by *later* composers than Beethoven (my favorite composer of all time, bar none) where orchestral color later took on a whole new meaning.

The horn has changed consderably since the time of Beethoven, and it *could have been* a matter of pragmatism for Beethoven not use the horn as later orchestrators and composers might tend to so liberarlly. That's not to say that what Beethoven did with the bassoon in the 5th Symphony as a matter of artistic choice wasn't a stroke of genius-- it was absolutely brilliant.

But I love your point: there remains a great deal of creativity with the articulations we have-- and those who are able to create something original these days within the *confines* of standard articulations are clearly dealing with the purer aspects of music creativity. That's "pure" in the Brahmsian sense of "absolutism".

But 19th and 20th century composers have led us into realms (and expectations?) of even more diverse orchestral colors and textures. The bass flute, bass trumpet, the hecklephone-- and the very name 'Wagner Tuba' or 'Bartok Pizz'-- address these needs as they echo some users' desire for extended instruments, techniques, and effects.

(If I recall-- one orchestra library even has a patch that uses the name Penderecki. Such patch-composer associations could become quite a trend with large orchestral VIs!)

I think what we've stumbled into on this thread is in part a discussion of the differences between the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th/21st Century musical philosophies. We're all using VSL, and the more we explore what is possible with these sounds, it becomes increasingly clear just where these musical aesthetics part ways as these aesthetics are revisited here and now in 2007.

As I consider and review the distance that existed between the philosophies of Liszt and Wagner and compare these to those that are being discussed here throughout the VSL forum, I find myself increasingly fascinated by the similarities in these discussions despite the chasm of time of more than a century which separates them.

It confirms *something* which I cannot yet verbalize adequately-- but it is deeply fascinating nonetheless.

Or perhaps the chasm and sometimes violent quarrels between the school of Wagner-Lizst-Bruckner on the one hand, and Brahms-Mendelssohn-Schumann on the other. Interesting how despite their differences, they all worshipped Beethoven.

@William said:

Interesting how despite their differences, they all worshipped Beethoven.

And so they should.

Regards,

The slavic limey.

Just a little perspective on the bassoon replacing the horn in the recap of the 5th. I discussed this with Fritz Zweig (or he rather with me) after one of our conducting lessons of the Beethoven masterpiece. He emphatically told me ...he did not have za tones! referring to the technical limitations of the horn of that day. With a great scowl he said the bassoon sounded absolutely pitiful! So countless conductors have hesitated not at all to put the horn where it belongs there. Since Zweig was Bruno Walter's colleague in Berlin, also studied conducting with Furtwangler, piano with Leschititzky, composition with Schoenberg and conducted Strauss opera premieres (as well as Puccini etc.) he would seem to be a reliable source on the matter.

Regarding Beethoven, Zweig said he was not only the greatest composer (greatest personality) but the greatest artist that ever lived, thus exalting him over the likes of Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrant or what have you. I couldn't agree more.

that's interesting Dave. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of conductors thought the same thing. Though I always just assumed the bassoons were supposed to be a contrast to the horns on that motif.

Of course we need to hear from Ludwig, to verify it. Is there anyone here who is into channeling? Not midi, but the other kind?