"Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already."
- Gustav Mahler, (to Bruno Walter who had stopped to admire mountain scenery in rural Austria.)
The child's view of heaven, as described in the German folk-poem Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn) was the inspiration for much of Mahler's work, culminating in his Fourth Symphony. Mahler originally set this poem to music as an orchestral song and later toyed with the idea of adding it as the seventh movement to his Third Symphony (making it over 2 hours long!). It finally came to rest, unaltered, as the 4th movement of the Fourth Symphony, and despite it being right at the end of the work, forms the framework of the entire symphony. And it is the theme of the poem that makes this symphony different to all the other Mahler symphonies. Mahler's life was plagued by ill health, the death of a loved daughter and financial and professional woes. Dark disturbing thoughts pervade most of his symphonies, but not the Fourth. This is Mahler's sunniest, most accessible symphony. And his shortest, too. Mahler's task was to complement the naive, childlike tone of the poem, but also to convey the ethereal lightness of heaven. The orchestration is light (for Mahler) and the instrumentation unique, with bells and flutes and pianissimo strings. The soprano solo adds the final heavenly quality. If you wish to be transported to another world, choose a quiet evening when you cannot be disturbed, sit in a comfortable chair with the lights off, and listen to Mahler’s Fourth.
Topic:
WHY EXPERIMENTAL?
So maybe I need to get literal.
Scientists work by building on the work of their predecessors. They devise theories, and come up with ways of demonstrating the implications of those theories in observable situations. They then control the parameters of the system they study, as many as they can, manipulate others, and compare the results against expectations derived from their theories. In my view, experimental musicians do the same with their music. Or at least they should.
This is certainly not the same as "open the box, plug the sucker in, and record what the presets do." If knob-twiddling is experimentation at all, it is of a trivial, undisciplined and ultimately fruitless variety. Even manufacturers' product demos give the listener more than that. We've all had the misfortune of hearing what happens when this kind of noodling makes it into a recording.
So this is what I have to say about context, and where I might fit in the admittedly arbitrary genre of Experimental Music. "If you want to call yourself experimental, then experiment, don't just futz around." And as a teacher speaking to potential music students, I say, it's important to learn to play, whatever that means: sequencing, keyboard technique, nose-flute breath control, harmolodic theory, markov processes, sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni-sa, convincing imitations of sheep bleats, or listening to the treniers fifty times. That doesn't mean that anyone else should have to put up with the audible byproducts of your learning process though. There is some benefit in having something to say before you say it. This isn't about age: there are some excellent musicians who are well under 20. It is about readiness. Some of us are never ready. And some of us have
always been ready.
Clearly, this Concert Grand Piano...is in a class by itself.
The
CC 213 G Transparent, designed by Nicholas Schimmel, is a 6' 10" concert-tour instrument housed in an acrylic plastic cabinet. The rich, excellent quality of its sound is brought to life by over 200 strings, vibrating with highly efficient energy that resonates with the diaphragmatic, tri-dimensionally formed and curved soundboard at its heart to reinforce specific harmonics for enhanced tonal projection, clarity, sustain, and color.
