Re: [microsound] The Aesthetics of Noise

[jamie <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dagmar,

If we take the Cage discovery, when he experienced the sound in an anachoic
chamber, to be true then noise has always been a part of "music". It's more
about what we choose to actively hear (listen) which defies noise.
There are a lot of examples of imitating noise in old music. There are
examples of Music imitating environmental sound in many composed pieces of
(usually) the distant past.
This makes me wonder to what extent music written in the days of royal
patronage was heard or actively listened to. How "ambient" was it in real
terms.
I'm sceptical about the existence of a 17th/18th century composer called
Rebel, but I so want it to be true.
Do you know where Henry Cowell's cluster based piano music fits in with
Russolo? And ideas are so common, is being first on the scene of any
significance to us any more?

Jamie

on 6/3/03 7:07 pm, dbuchwald at dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Thanks for that, informative article.  He mentions however, Russolo as
> the first musician to consciously use "noise" in his music.  That's
> probabaly true in the strict sense of the term "noise".  But I was
> delighted to find a few years gao -- by chance -- a 17th century
> composer, Jean-F=E9ry Rebel (1666-1747) who composed a piece called "Les
> elemens" (The elements).  For the first movement - "Le Cahos" - he wanted
> to "depict" chaos in music.  Of course, he could only do it with
> classical instruments.  But he comes very close to, well, not directly
> noise, but a cluster of sounds so to speak.  I found that very remarkable
> for the time, although it was not done as music for music's sake but in
> order to "represent" something; chaos, as he imagined it.
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> If someone in the list could point out other early "experimentalists" I
> would be very interested.
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> Yours,
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> Dagmar
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