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  4. 'New Music' and the VSL

  • 'New Music' and the VSL

    J
    J
    Hello

    I'm wondering if there are people out there who are programming 'new music' or 'contemporary music' (call it what you will) with the VSL. Everything I here seems to be very pastiche and film music orientated. Dont get me wrong I love it just as much as the next person but what I would love to hear is the VSL really being stretched...... musically speaking.

    It doesn't have to be original music (although it would be great if it was) but maybe something by Birtwistle, Ligeti, Kurtag or Feldman. I was very pleased to see the piece by Takemitsu on the demo section. That's a good start but please lets have more of it.......

    Cheers
    Jim
  • DietzD
    VSL Team
    DietzD
    Maybe this is something for you: I still like Kuno Schmid's "Human Pulse" a lot, especially taking into account that this piece was realized three years ago, with considerably less options than the Vienna Instruments offer nowadays:

    -> http://vsl.co.at/en-us/67/3848/4692.vsl#
    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • W
    W
    Try some Soenke Schnepel - it will melt your ears off. In a nice way of course.
  • J
    J
    Hi all and thank you.

    Dietz, I like the piece and it is closer to what I am getting to. I'll check out for more of the guys stuff.

    Tanuj, YES! I love it. A great piece and as you say very Ligeti. I love the transformation into electronics at the end. Did you compose this piece first and then program it or was it all one 'organic' process. This is much more like it........ Do you have anymore?

    William I shall look into Schnepel.

    Please dont get me wrong I love 'film' music and there is some terrific stuff on this site but I would definitley like to see/hear more music and dialogie concerning New music and the VSL. It's an area that hasn't had much attention but the possibilities are massive. And lets face it new music is difficult to get performed so the idea of having it perfectly replicated with a computer is a very attractive one......
  • A
    A
    We have many composers here who program and compose music for which the VSL library is ideal for. This is music, who performance practise wise doesn't stretch into the 20th century, in other words, music who deals, or uses performance practise of up to the classic area. One of the first thing I realized with any sample library was, if you want to realize newer music, my own, or as an example of existing music Krzysztof Penderecki, the performance techniques are not there for your disposal. That's why I said once, VSL has a very bright future in producing samples. What maybe speaks against that, it is maybe not profitable to produce all those samples for a few dozen contemporary composers. Some of you may say: "I invent new music and I can realize my ideas with VSL to the full extent," in my opinion this can only be true if your inventions are melodic, harmonic or rhythmic, but certainly not if it would include the musical language and performance practice of the 20th century or later.

    .
  • DietzD
    VSL Team
    DietzD
    More links:

    "C the speed of light" -> http://vsl.co.at/en-us/65/276/189.vsl


    ********

    ... another _extremely_ intriguing piece is "Drift" by German artist Ulf Langheinrich, performed during last year's "Wien Modern"-festival here in Vienna. This was an audio-visual experience aloof from the conventional understanding of orchestral music. The bad news is that I can't find any on-line examples of it at the moment, sorry to say so.
    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • H
    H
    Well my own music is supposed to be new classical. It's not really film score as it dones't have a film to go to. Tracks like "By the light of the Moon", and "Temple of the Moon" are melody compositions.

    So, I can say that I try to do contemporary orchestra that doesn't revolve around film. But some of my pieces do.

    Check out the demos on my site to hear.
  • W
    W
    Wha are you talking about Angelo? You say nothing modern can be done with VSL? that is not true at all.

    I was just the other day thinking about how Ligetti would have loved it, as samples almost seem BETTER for his kind of music - pure timbre and shifting sustains - than for old-fashioned music. So I disagree with the implied idea that because it doesn't have some different pizzicati, or every different bowing technique ever invented, it cannot be used for modern music. Though if you are only encouraging the recording of new samples, that is always good. [[;)]]
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    @William said:

    Wha are you talking about Angelo? You say nothing modern can be done with VSL? that is not true at all.

    I was just the other day thinking about how Ligetti would have loved it, as samples almost seem BETTER for his kind of music - pure timbre and shifting sustains - than for old-fashioned music. So I disagree with the implied idea that because it doesn't have some different pizzicati, or every different bowing technique ever invented, it cannot be used for modern music. Though if you are only encouraging the recording of new samples, that is always good. [[;)]]


    If it would be only the pizzicato, hee, okay i give it another try...

    William, yes it is encouraging a recording of new samples thing. What I like to say is, that the pallet of performance technique in use since more then hundred years is not available with samples. I knew that, I read all articulation paper before I brought the package.

    Yes, it has a lot to do with the strings, also for me the strings are sometimes a little more important then the other sections, well, not really, but also there I miss more then there is. I give you and example, I often, well almost exclusively, indicate mutes for trumpets for reasons that the music is rather intimate and hardly gets very loud, there are at least seven different trumpet mutes in use. No, it’s not the left hand pizzicato I’m hoping for. Let’s list what string performance techniques exist: tremolo, muted/sordino, long and short detaché, trills, two pizzicati, flautando, col legno and one sort of legato, this in several dynamics. Here the short list of on-string and off-string techniques I miss every other segment to be composed: collé, piqué, jeté, gettato, saltando, sul tasto, ponticello, col legno, sulla tastiere, spicatto, flying spicatto, sul ponticello tremolo, group spicatto, ricochet, battutta, martelé, detaché lancé, accented detaché, detaché porté, group staccato, stopbow, bindungen, sautillé, louré, off-string marcato, ponticello, pizzicato with the left hand, etc., some of those with repetition of course, i.e. sautillé. I don’t quite understand that not most of you are missing those string techniques. They would make the realization of a composition with samples possible on almost any level. I don’t like to fake a specific sound with something who sounds not even similar. For a test when I got the library and to get into it, I wanted to realize the “Hungarian Dance No. 5” by Brahms composed in 1874, but no, not even this old ham-roll can be done.

    Better?

    .
  • M
    M
    What Angelo says.
  • W
    W
    Most of those techniques are quite familiar to an orchestrator, orchestral player or conductor, so that list does not provide any new information for me.

    If you listen to some of the greatest music ever composed, you would be amazed at how few articulations were often used. But they were used to immense effect.

    I am very interested in new uses of old techniques, and simplifying technical approaches to maximize what is accomplished with a minimum of means. One hears a lot of music today with every technique in the book that is remarkably unimaginative and boring. So that is my basis for saying what I said. I do not consider it essential to have all of those less used bowings/articulations for creative work, and wish to adapt what I am doing to what is available, rather than refuse to work because I have not been supplied with absolutely every tool conceivable.

    Ligetti did a huge amount of totally unheard-of sounds, with rather simple articulations. Like just straight sustains in Lontano for example... though he did use weird or unusual sounds occasionally. Anyway I don't really disagree, but don't like the tone of this thread, which seems to assume that no serious work can be done without these articulations. An infinity of things can be done with the basic instruments of the FIRST EDITION. Especially considering de-tuning to any scale - for example a 19 tone scale. Simple to do. That is not something you are interested in, fine, but don't assume limitations for other people.

    I agree it is always nice to have more and more samples. But if you are dependent on that, you are not using the possibilites that already exist.
  • A
    A
    There is nothing avantgarde with the techniques i listed, most of that is as old as Claudio Monteverdi. We should be aware that many demos of older works presented do not contain the proper performance technique, but are a reduction to what the library already offers. When working with a library, I would like to compose what I want to be realized, and not be limited to what the library offers, therefor it would be good to have those samples. I think what we discuss here has a lot to do why we do not hear much non-pastiche contemporary orchestra music made with samples, but ideas are reduced to the technique in use.

    .
  • W
    W
    What did I just say Angelo? - these techniques are familar. I did not say they were "avant garde." So you restated what I said as a counterpoint. Interesting debating technique you have.

    "Pastiche" - also an interesting little derogatory term, subtle, but a good way to put down something in a vague way, since everything can be called a pastiche if you want to. Like certain pastiches of MODERNISM. Current concert music for example is full of them.

    Excuse me, but this is basically quibbling now, and I'll let you go on with your debate. I have to go work on my next pastiche. [6]
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    @William said:

    "Pastiche" - also an interesting little derogatory term, subtle, but a good way to put down something in a vague way, since everything can be called a pastiche if you want to.


    Then i would use the term Parody, but i meant Quodlibet, but not ex falso quodlibet

    .
  • M
    M
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    @William said:

    "Pastiche" - also an interesting little derogatory term, subtle, but a good way to put down something in a vague way, since everything can be called a pastiche if you want to. Like certain pastiches of MODERNISM. Current concert music for example is full of them.


    So true. Might the wisest statement in this thread after all.
  • A
    A
    Pasticcios were made by composers like Händel, Obrecht and Gluck. A famous quodlibet was "pastiché" by Bach in his Goldberg Variations.

    Good that Fondue, Orange Vaucluse, Provençal Occitan, Arrondissement Avignon, Raclette, Patisserie, Gateaux, Poudre à Pate and all the other string terminology doesn't mean anything belittling in english

    .
  • J
    J
    Oh Dear! I seem to have started something here........ New Music, always a good topic for a heated conversation and to be honest that's what I wanted to bring it up.

    I think the problem, if there is one, is not with the VSL. There is no doubt the VSL library is the best on the planet, the problem has more to do with the recreation of new music with any kind of sample library and the limitations this has.

    Actually what I was more interested in when I began this thread is to find out of people were writing original music that perhaps reflected late 20th/early 21st Century compositional processes and orchestration styles. Thankfully a few have come forward with some great examples. Although I have to say it is only a few...... What I have heard is great and I would just like to hear people 'experimenting' with the samples rather then just replicating.

    Why reproduce a Brahms violin sonata when you can walk into a shop and buy a million different recordings? Life is just too short....... [:)]
  • D
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    @JimineySnicket said:


    Why reproduce a Brahms violin sonata when you can walk into a shop and buy a million different recordings? Life is just too short....... [:)]

    However, if one could write something as good, then I would quite like to hear a "new" Brahms sonata. I don't care whos name is on the cover of the music or when it was written. I just care whether or not it is any good. [:D]

    DG
  • A
    A
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    Thread: Demo "The Darkness Project" - Music for piano an

    Sönke Schnepel
    "The Darkness Project"
    Music for Piano and Orchestra (2004-2006)

    http://web.mac.com/soenke.schnepel/iWeb/The-Darkness-Project/previews.html

    .

    @DG said:

    However, if one could write something as good, then I would quite like to hear a "new" Brahms sonata. I don't care whos name is on the cover of the music or when it was written. I just care whether or not it is any good.


    I'm afraid you have to write that new Brahms sonata yourself.

    Ă  propos Brahms, he composed the Scherzo for the pastiche Sonate "F-A-E Sonate a-Moll" dedicated to Joseph Joachim. Schumann composed the langsamen Satz and the Finale, Dietrich the Kopfsatz, and Brahms the Scherzo. The Sonata was published under Joachim's life motto "Frei aber einsam" (english something like "Free but lonley").

    .
  • D
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    @Angelo Clematide said:

    .

    à propos Brahms, he composed one Satz for the pastiche Sonate "F-A-E Sonate a-Moll" dedicated to Joseph Joachim. Brahms composed the Scherzo and Albert Dietrich and Schumann the other three Sätze. The Sonata was published in 1935 under Joachim's life motto "Frei aber einsam" (Free but lonley).

    .

    Not one of his best pieces. It has promise, but there are a fair number of rookie errors in this composition. However, it is still worth playing IMO, but not as much as the "proper" violin sonatas.

    DG