Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Graham Urquhart <>]

A few other artists/pieces spring to mind off the top of the head: Jacob Kirkegaard uses natural phenomena such as in Eldfjall which uses geothermal recordings of vibrations in the ground in Iceland and Francisco Lopez in pieces such as La Selva and Belle Confusion 969 uses field recordings from the tropical rain forests.

Bill Fontana and Annea Lockwood may also be worth checking out and what about Messiaen?

Best wishes

Graham

simon reynell wrote:

 Hello Simon

I know and like all the examples you cite, but there are lots of others.  In fact nature-based music of one kind or another is now a pretty crowded field.  There are dozens of people producing pieces from field recordings (with various degrees of editing / manipulation) that use natural sounds as their source (some of the best-known examples can be found on the Touch label, people such as Chris Watson, BJ Nilsen and Toshiya Tsunoda). 

And then there are several very interesting musicians using natural phenomena in various other interesting ways:  in my opinion it's particularly worth checking out Jeph Jerman (http://www.jerman.littleenjoyer.com/) and Patrick Farmer (who released a beautiful disc called Apis Mellifera from gently transformed recordings of honey bees).  The latter runs a web label called 'compost and height' which has free downloads of several free eco- / natural-based musical constructions:  compostandheight.blogspot.com

The sound artist / improvising musician Lee Patterson is also very interesting in this respect, and - like Michael Prime, who you mention - uses a lot of natural phenomena in his work, eg the amplification of sounds given off by burning hazelnuts, and hydrophonic recordings of pondlife etc.  His solo disc 'Seven Vignettes' is well worth checking out.

And several works by the US-based composer Michael Pisaro are also relevant, I think, in particular recent works such as July Mountain, Fields Have Ears and A Wave and Waves, all of which in varying ways use natural phenomena as the basis of their composition.

And going further back both Christian Wolff and Cornelius Cardew used stones as sound source in works from the 1960's and 70's.

I can pass on contact details for most of the above-mentioned if you are interested.

best wishes

Simon Reynell

70 High Storrs Road, Sheffield, S11 7LE, UK

www.anothertimbre.com

 

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From: Simon Roy Christensen
To:
Sent: Thu, 3 June, 2010 0:14:14
Subject: [silence] music and/including nature in its manner of operation

hello hello

I hope this is not too off topic, but I'm about to write a music-historical paper/essay on music including nature, or maybe rather the acting of nature. Here I'm thinking of examples like some of Max Eastley's sound sculptures, Paul Panhuysen and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot use of birds,  John Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis" or the sounds of fungi and plants made audible by Michael Prime, for instance. Some of it probably helped along its way due to Cage's renowned remark of having an art 'imitating nature in its manner of operation'. But maybe there are even pre-Cage examples also?

I was thinking that this might be a good place to ask if any of you can recommend artists, works, literature or something else that spring to mind, which might have some kind of relevance to this - it would be very nice to hear!

thank you, 

simon