1.- I'm not making an assessment on a realization of a score based on a few scans off the internet: I actually have the original score. Why do thought I was basing my opinion on some scans?hatta wrote:Yeah this is where making an assessment on a realization of a score based on a few scans off the internet is highly misleading. Sapporo is 16 pages, each different, each filled with a differing amount of notation.yonhosago wrote: LG is right about the traditional versions of some of the pieces, precisely the two he mentions, Sapporo & Four systems. Looking at the score of Sapporo, very sparse and open, is very curious to hear a music almost without silence or stasis; like if the only have read the notations and not the spaces in between them.
2.- The instructions Ichiyanagi gives says, among other things: "if there's a fermata written together with the notation, it means to make a extremely long sound, and when a fermata is written in between the notations, it means to make a long silence" -this two things I do not hear in the recording, but that not make the Ensemble Negativa version of Sapporo a bad piece of music: it is in fact a very good piece of music. I was only making a comment on some thoughts that crossed my mind when I was listening the music and comparing it to the score.
3.- Precisely. If Ichiyanagi gave no instructions on how to handle the space and the dispersal of the material, I can read a page like number 10, which has 30+ notations, playing the notations very sparcely, giving a lot of silence in between, and I wouldn't be doing any harm to the score or the composer's intentions. So it is strange, or peculiar that this version has so little use of silence.hatta wrote: These are played simultaneously in up to 16 parts. There are rules for suddenly changing what part of the score you are playing, or for exchanging your score with another players. So if you add up 16 layered performances, pages of varying density and the fact that any given player may not be playing from just one single page throughout the recording, you really have no way to make that assessment. It should also be noted that Ichiyangi gave no instructions on how to handle the dispersal of the material on the page. Personally I do treat it as a space in which I don't play, but it is up to the interpreter.
4.- There are other instructions a recording can hardly capture, like: "exchanging the score should be done as smoothly as possible" "The letter S means to listen to the sound produced by another performer" "The letter M means to watch the soundmaking movement of another performer" "The performer should be seated as far apart as possible in a wide spread area on the stage". These instructions, coupled with the other direct instructions about silence, or another instruction I don't hear in this version ("all sustaining sounds should be produced softly unless they become loud by unavoidable reasons"), makes, for me at least, that the resulting music should be very sparce, soft, and with silence and space between the sounds, despite it was played by 16 musicians.
Agreed about the Ensemble Negativa version: it is indeed a great and convincingly piece of chamber music. One of the things I like about it, and other pieces in the set, is the way they combine electric instruments with acoustic ones, in a way very similar to the Gentle Fire EMI Electrola LP. I don't know that other version with Tudor & Cage -wish I had it.hatta wrote: There are very few versions of Sapporo out there and I think this one is pretty good, that is to say it sounds like a chamber group playing it pretty convincingly. Of course I'd take the version that accompanies the video of the dance this was made for with Tudor and Cage playing live electronics over this any day. Not much space in that one either.
I love historical interest items, they help me find how good, better, bad or worse categories are build, shared, are born or die away.hatta wrote: As for the rest of this set I found it of only historical interest. Since I've been spending all year practicing Sapporo for a recording this was actually the most interesting piece, for me and like I said I think it is a reasonable realization. Really disliked the Brown realizations, the Wolff aren't bad, Credo is pretty great, the Feldman all exist in better versions. The interviews are interesting, but they were recorded from tape and there are sections of them being fast forwarded as they are recorded, which is just bizarre.
For me it's interesting that the Cage & Wolff interview was conducted by Hans G. Helms, a film maker and poet that worked with Bruno Maderna (other Earle Brown collaborator), and I suppose by the time this interview was recorded, he was working in his film about Cage, Birdcage - 73'20.958" for a Composer.
quietly with rain pattering, and pretended that my windows were open and it was summer again.
