"Art is emotion" - the Master speaks!

"I'm never satisfied with the ordinary.
I try to play with the audience like an organ."

Alfred HITCHCOCK

The ruler of the world / O dono do mundo

 

                               Maestro Daniel Barenboim (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson) 

There is no more obvious expression of power than the performance of a conductor.
A conductor ranks himself first among the servants of music.
The conductor stands: ancient memories of what it meant when man first stood upright still play an important part in any representations of power.
Then, he is the only person who stands. 

In front of him sits the orchestra and behind him the audience.
He stands on a dais and can be seen both from in front and from behind.
In front his movements act on the orchestra and behind on the audience.
In giving his actual directions he uses only his hands, or his hands and a baton.
Quite small movements are all he needs to wake this or that instrument to life or to silence it at will.
He has the power of life and death over the voices of the instruments; one long silent will speak again at his command. 

Their diversity stands for the diversity of mankind; an orchestra is like an assemblage of different types of men.
The willingness of its members to obey him makes it possible for the conductor to transform them into a unit, which he then embodies.

(...)

Then the conductor appears and everyone becomes still.
He mounts the rostrum, clears his throat and raises his baton; silence falls.
While he is conducting no-one may move and as soon as he finishes they must applaud.
All their desire for movement, stimulated and heightened by the music, must be banked up until the end of the work and must then break loose.
The conductor bows to the clapping hands; for them he returns to the rostrum again and again, as often as they want him to.
To them, and to them alone, he surrenders; it is for them that he really lives.
The applause he receives is the ancient salute to the victor, and the magnitude of his victory is measured by its volume. 

Victory and defeat become the framework within which his spiritual economy is ordered.

During a concert, and for the people gathered together in the hall, the conductor is a leader.

The voices of the instruments are opinions and convictions on which he keeps a close watch.
He is omniscient, for, while the players have only their own parts in front of them, he has the whole score in his head, or on his desk. 

At any given moment he knows precisely what each player should be doing.

He knows not only what each should be doing, but also what he is doing.

Thus for the orchestra the conductor literally embodies the work they are playing, the simultaneity of the sounds as well as their sequence; and since, during the performance, nothing is supposed to exist except this work, for so long is the conductor the ruler of the world.

in "Crowds and Power", by Elias Canetti
Translation: Carol Stewart/The Continuum Publishing Corporation
. . .

Não existe expressão mais concreta da potência do que a actividade do maestro.
O maestro considera-se o primeiro criado ao serviço da música.
O maestro está de pé.
A erecção da pessoa é uma lembrança arcaica que ainda desempenha um papel importante em muitas representações de potência.
O maestro está de pé sozinho.
A sua orquestra está sentada à sua volta, atrás dele está sentada a plateia com os seus ouvintes, apenas ele, de pé, ocupa uma posição marcante.
Encontra-se acima do resto, visível de frente e de trás.
À frente, os seus gestos agem sobre a orquestra, atrás, sobre a plateia.
As suas indicações, propriamente ditas, dá-as com a mão ou com a batuta.
Eis que, mediante um pequeno gesto, de súbito ele desperta e anima tal ou tal voz, e faz calar todas as que quer silenciar.
Tem pois um poder de vida ou de morte sobre as vozes.
Uma voz de há muito morta pode ressuscitar sob as suas ordens.
A diversidade dos instrumentos representa a diversidade dos homens.
A orquestra é como uma assembleia de todos os tipos humanos mais importantes.
A solicitude que mostram em obedecer permite ao maestro tranformá-los facilmente numa unidade, que passa então a representar então para eles, ante todos os olhares.

(...)

Mas eis o maestro.
O silêncio instaura-se.
Ele coloca-se em posição; arranha a garganta para aclarar a voz; levanta a batuta: toda a gente se cala e fica especada.
Enquanto ele dirige, ninguém se deve mexer.

Mal termine, as pessoas são obrigadas a aplaudir.
A necessidade de movimento, despertada e acrescida pela música, deve acumular-se até ao fim, mas explodir nesse momento.
É para as mãos que aplaudem que ele se inclina.
Para elas volta quantas vezes o quiserem.
É a elas que se entrega, mas só a elas, é para elas que vive.
O que assim colhe, é a antiga aclamação do vencedor.
A grandeza da sua victória traduz-se pela intensidade dos aplausos.

Durante a execução, o maestro serve de guia à multidão na sala.

As vozes dos instrumentos são as opiniões e convicções às quais ele dá extrema atenção.
É omnisciente, pois enquanto os músicos apenas têm diante a sua parte, ele tem toda a partitura em mente ou na estante.
Sabe exactamente o que é permitido a cada um a cada instante.

Pelo comando da sua mão, indica o que se faz e impede o que não se deve fazer.

Com efeito, para a orquestra, o maestro representa a obra inteira, na sua simultaneidade e sucessão, e como durante a execução, o mundo deve resumir-se inteiramente à obra, é ele que, durante esse tempo exactamente, é dono do mundo.

 in "Crowds and Power", de Elias Canetti
Tradução: Regina Guimarães/TNSJ

The Art of Noise - Part 2: Music

The Art of Noise deconstructed by a Danish experimental radio station:

Part 2 - Music. (the most basic elements: pitch/volume/timbre)
"Music is an extremely powerful form of sound."

Directors Jonas Bang and Søren Rye got a creative free pass when The Lake Radio asked them to make a series of films that distilled their ethic in audio-visual form.
The Danish duo came up with the idea for this surreal yet educational series of films to chime with the inspiring, educational, surprising sounds that constantly bob up on the radio station itself.

Expressing the inexpressible

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

 Aldous Huxley - in "Music at Night and Other Essays"

Music by Bernardo Sassetti, "Da Noite ao Silêncio" (From Night to Silence).
Ascent, Bernardo Sassetti Trio2, with bass, drums, vibes and cello, Clean Feed 2005

About rhythm

Rhythm (from greek ῥυθμός – rhythmos, ("any measured flow or movement, symmetry") is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events.

(wikipedia)

Understanding Music

Understand Music from finally. on Vimeo.

Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon

Dark Side of the Moon - a concept album, where songs reaches soundscapes, and sound design have a major role by using state-of-the-art production, an army of well-timed stereophonic sound effects, and touches of saxophone and soulful female backup vocals, condensing sonic explorations to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections.

Roger Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, and with the sonic backdrop of Floyd's slow, atmospheric soundscapes and carefully placed sound effects, they achieve an emotional resonance. What gives the album true power is the subtly textured music, which evolves from ponderous, neo-psychedelic art rock to jazz fusion and blues-rock before turning back to psychedelia. It's dense with detail, but leisurely paced, creating its own dark, haunting world. Pink Floyd may have better albums than Dark Side of the Moon, but no other record defines them quite as well as this one.

It finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. More astonishingly, it made them one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. Dark Side of the Moon spent an incomprehensible 741 weeks on the Billboard album chart. Additionally, the primarily instrumental textures of the songs helped make Dark Side of the Moon easily translatable on an international level, and the record became (and still is) one of the most popular rock albums worldwide.

(Adapted from http://www.allmusic.com)

Making music with Soundscapes

Music is always existing on space

By the sweet power of music

LORENZO

(...)
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

in "The Merchant of Venice", Act 5, by William Shakespeare


. . .

LORENZO

(...)
"Imagina um bando de animais selvagens,
Uma raça de potros novos por domar
Aos pulos e aos puxões, aos rinchos e aos relinchos –
Natureza do fogo que lhes vai no sangue –
Se por acaso um som de trombeta os toca,
Ou se um ar musical lhes sopra aos ouvidos,
Verás que simultâneos se quedam em série,
E os seus olhos selvagens se amansam num fito
Pela rédea da música. Por isso o bardo
Disse que Orfeu trouxe árvores, pedras e águas;
Já que nada há tão firme, duro e furioso,
Que a seu tempo a música não lhe altere a essência.
O homem que não traz em si nenhuma música,
Nem o move a concórdia de notas dulcífluas,
É dado a estratagemas, traições, e pilhagens;
Os impulsos do seu espírito são obscuros
E os seus sentimentos negros como o Érebo.
Não se confie em tal homem. Ouvir a música!"

in "O mercador de Veneza", Acto V, de William Shakespeare
(trad. Daniel Jonas)

It's SPRINGTIME!!

'You Must Believe In Spring' - a jazz piano lesson