contemporaries in contempt

Arvo Part, being a huge contributor to my classical and minimalistic influences, found ways to emphasize emotions through musicianship like none other before him or after him. I felt the desire to cover this beautiful piano composition of his. 

I do not own this music composition. All rights and representations go to Arvo Part. That being said, this tune will always be free for download but I do encourage you to track down his original and purchase it to show support for one of the last real classical composers.

Arvo Part - Variations For The Healing Of Arinushka (Youthfulness Ambient Cover)

From the album "No. 3" (2012)

BERG-String Quartet, Op. 3
Composed in 1909-1910.

Alban Berg (1885-1935) met Arnold Schoenberg in October 1904, in response to a newspaper want ad. Schoenberg, who had made news in 1902 with the premiere of his first large-scale work, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) had decided to take students to help make ends meet. Within days he signed up the two young men who would help him write one of the central chapters in twentieth-century music. Both Berg and Anton Webern were at their teacher's side as he composed the first music that was called atonal (Schoenberg thought the term nonsensical and preferred the all-inclusive "pantonal").

Berg's first compositions written under Schoenberg show the powerful influence of his teacher, as well as the potent impact of the Romantic era. (Berg's relationship with Schoenberg was complicated; Berg's father had died when he was fifteen, and Schoenberg quickly became a surrogate father as well as a mentor and model.) As early as the Four Songs, begun in 1909 and published the following year as op. 2, Berg also seemed ready to abandon tonality. His very next work, the masterful String Quartet, op. 3, was his valediction; Berg was now a colleague, not a disciple.

This String Quartet stands at the crossroads of past and future. The vocabulary is still recognizably that of Wagner and Mahler, but Berg has stretched it beyond the limits of even those two pioneers. Although the last traces of tonality remain, Berg's music is rarely tied to the triad and he seems to be searching for a new harmonic language. The quartet's opening theme employs all twelve notes of the scale, though not in the systematic way of Schoenberg's serial system, still years in the future. The Quartet is colored throughout by passionate expression and explosive dramatic power. The spirit of the work, characterized by such deep emotional intensity, still belongs to the nineteenth century. This ambiguity and tension—between its romantic roots and its modernist ambitions—give it a complexity and richness rare in music written in a more settled style. The last measure is emblematic: a D minor triad is quick followed by a dissonant chord, so that there is both the suggestion of finality, as well as a sense of an unanswered question.

The Quartet has two movements, comparable to a traditional sonata allegro and rondo. Despite the difference in their moods, the two are so closely related that they function like halves of a single paragraph—the second movement even begins with the last pitches of the first, so that the break between them is, in effect, no more than a pause for breath in Berg's musical argument.

Over the years, Berg and Schoenberg had a difficult and sometimes stormy relationship, but neither man ever lost his respect for the other's accomplishments. Shortly after Berg's untimely death, Schoenberg recalled how his student's String Quartet had surprised him in the most unbelievable way by the fullness and unconstraint of its musical language, the strength and sureness of its presentation, its careful working and significant originality. That was the time when I moved to Berlin (1911) and he was left to his own devices. He has shown that he was equal to the task.

Program Notes by Phillip Huscher
(http://www.encoreccm.org/pieces/425)

Alban Berg: String Quartet op. 3, I. Langsam

Kronos Quartet/Clint Mansell - Lux Aeterna, from Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Balanescu Quartet is an avant-garde string quartet founded in 1987 by Alexander Balanescu that achieved fame through the release of several complex re-interpretations of songs by Kraftwerk and collaborations with Michael Nyman, David Byrne and Goldfrapp amongs others. 

A new compilation, “This Is The Balanescu Quartet”, is available on www.mutebank.com and all good physical and digital retailers.

https://www.facebook.com/BalanescuQuartet

Balanescu Quartet - The Model

ARVO PART - Tabula Rasa - 2nd Mov

Variation based on the tone row from Berg's Violin Concerto

Variation On A Theme By Alban Berg Session

ARTIST NIÑA TERRORISTA
SONG ARMENIA *EINSTUERZENDE NEUBAUTEN 

WWW.TACUARA.NET



Niña Terrorista - Armenia (E.NEUBAUTEN)

Taken from the album This Is The Balanescu Quartet

Balanescu Quartet - Aria

Balanescu Quartet - East

Balanescu Quartet - The Young Conscript And The Moon

Balanescu Quartet - Love Scene

Balanescu Quartet - Autobahn

02 John Berger  - The Red Whose Father Is The Knife
John Berger, speaking voice (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
John Christie, speaking voice (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
James Woodrow, electric guitar (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
Roger Heaton, bass clarinet (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
Bill Hawkes, viola (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
Gavin Bryars, double bass (I Send You This Cadmium Red)
Melanie Pappenheim, voice (The Island Chapel)
Sophie Harris, cello (The Island Chapel)
Gavin Bryars, electric keyboard (The Island Chapel)


I Send You This Cadmium Red by Gavin Bryars (2010) - 02 John Berger

The Kronos Quartet - Requiem for a Dream

Descobri Alben Berg e, imediatamente, por ele fiquei fascinada. Trata-se de uma obra bastante exigente para o intérprete, porém, eu tive o privilégio de a trabalhar com Madalena Soveral,professora rigorosa, mas que, simultâneamente, me permitia uma grande liberdade, no que havia de mais intrínseco, na minha personalidade musical.

Alban Berg - Sonata

BUY 2xLP+7'': http://mannequinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mnq-015-the-metronomes-the-ballad-of-the-metronomes

Mannequin is more than enthusiastic to announce the re-release of both the LPs (“Multiple Choice”) from 1980 and “Regular Guys” from 1985) plus the 2 singles seven inches “Saturday Night / Sunday Morning” and “A Circuit Like Me” from this legendary minimal synth band from Australia.  
 
The group was an integral part of the early electronic music scene in Australia and their releases have become a collector’s item in Europe, as they are mostly impossibile to find. 

The Metronomes first appeared in Melbourne in 1979, initial members were rock journo-synth player Al Webb, the bass player Andrew Picouleau (Secret Police, Sacred Cowboys) and the synth-pioneer Ash Wednesday, nowdays a live tour member of Einsturzende Neubauten.

The Metronomes - A Circuit Like Me

The Trunk Archives are an ongoing ever growing collection of obscure Beat Antique tracks. These pieces have been collected over the years and never found a spot on our previous releases. The Trunk Achieves is a place for new experimental Beats Antique tracks to find a home. Hope you enjoy... 

contemporaries in contempt

Harlow's flying monkey