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Re: [microsound] Is choral music ambient?



hi

On 3/11/08, Matt Tierney <matthewdtierney@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  It's a nice idea for a book, a 'century' of ambient music... But did ambient
>  music really start with Mahler or Satie?

i think satie- he made 'furniture' music. i don't know about mahler
[other than his symphonies, sessions with freud, ...]. not all satie
is ambient, btw. although you may hear it that way.

from http://www.wfmu.org/~kennyg/popular/articles/satie.html
"In the midst of an art opening at a Paris gallery in 1902, Ambient
music was born. Erik Satie and his cronies, after begging everyone in
the gallery to ignore them, broke out into what they called Furniture
Music--that is, background music--music as wallpaper, music to be
purposely not listened to. The patrons of the gallery, thrilled to see
musicians performing in their midst, ceased talking and politely
watched, despite Satie's frantic efforts to get them to pay no
attention."

>  What about 15th Century Rennaisance choral music like Palestrina, Tallis and
>  many other similar composers from this period?

this music was not written to be wallpaper, it is liturgical music.
made to accompany the mass [and inspire it's auditors to greater and
greater devotion].

quite a different thing.

those renaissance guys were not writing 'background' music, they were
writing 'foreground' music.

in our world, where music is as instantaneous as putting in a cd, you
can make *anything* ambient, just turn down the volume enough [or turn
off your attention enough (quite easy for most)].

and, something about capitalism, industrialization, and
commodification plays into this notion of ambient music; utilitarian
music ... [also, music technology]. don't misunderstand, it can be
quite artful [eno/aphex twin], but also it can be quite numbing and
maybe even a bit evil [muzak].

-- 
\js  [ http://or8.net/~johns/ ]

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