Outer Rim Territories

Ultimately, therefore, it is perhaps best to just accept that live music and recorded music are two different phenomena. I appropriated the title of this months “As We See It” from Evan Eisenbergs book-length essay, The Recording Angel: Explorations in Phonography first edition, McGraw-Hill, 1986; second edition, Yale University Press, 2005, which is essential reading for anyone who, like me, is fascinated by the art of audio recording. Eisenbergs thesis is that any attempt to capture the sound of an original event is doomed to failure, and that stripping a concert from its cultural context by recording only the audio bestows a sterility on the result from which it cannot escape. The recording engineer may be able to pin the butterfly to the disc, but it sure doesnt fly any more. For a recording to make the grade as a work of art, therefore, more is needed than merely darkly echoing the original event.

In Eisenbergs words, “In the great majority of cases, there is no original musical event that a record records or reproduces. Instead, each playing of a given record is an instance of something timeless. The original musical event never occurred; it exists, if it exists anywhere, outside history.”

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YouTube – lang lang playing flight of the bumblebee…on an iPad.

Whoo hoo. Exciting stuff.

YouTube – Porcupine Tree: Anesthetize trailer HD.

Robert Gupta: Music is medicine, music is sanity | Video on TED.com.

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YouTube – “Insurgentes” – film clip.

Wow.

YouTube - OK Go – This Too Shall Pass – RGM version.

YouTube - World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale.

HT: Lehmann

YouTube - O Savior, Rend the Heavens Wide – LSB 355.

From the excellent opening plenary of Siemon-Netto at this year’s Good Shepherd Insitute:

I was born in Leipzig, virtually in the shadow of the Thomaskirche. When I was four, my parents began taking me to the motet or cantata services in the Thomaskirche every Friday or Saturday. This might sound alien to present-day parents, Lutherans included, who do not introduce their kids to music saying that they were “too busy” for that and preferred to spend some “quality time” with their children, like munching hamburgers together.

I spent most of World War II in Leipzig. This is why a blend of two kinds of acoustical impressions has been resonating in my head ever since my childhood – the sound of bombs and sound of Bach.

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Singing for Joy
When I attended a Stammtisch for accordian players I was surprised at how lustily they sang the old German folk songs. It was quite delightful. Americans don’t gather to sing – except in Church. That is a shame, because there is a great deal of joy in singing together. One of the musicians there (who is heavily into all types of folk music) lamented to me that music has become something one consumes rather than something one produces. Read more…

One of my best memories from vicarage is being invited over to the Mosner’s for singing in German and gemütlichkeit. There is a definite thrill to the singing together. You realize the beauty of this gift when you share in it outside of church. All the more precious when we sing in the Divine Service. I miss a good chorus that sings for the heck of it.

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