The stan­dard sys­tem of musi­cal nota­tion has, through­out its evo­lu­tion, served many dif­fer­ent eras of human­i­ty, and increas­ing­ly many dif­fer­ent cul­tures, quite well indeed. Still, though, when its pure­ly visu­al ele­ments can’t get the com­po­si­tion­al inten­tion ful­ly across, one must resort to incor­po­rat­ing ver­bal instruc­tions, and some­times those instruc­tions can seem… uncon­ven­tion­al. Clas­sic FM’s list of “bizarre, per­plex­ing and dis­tress­ing per­for­mance direc­tions” includes com­mands to play at “tem­po di PBS doc­u­men­tary,” to “con­tin­ue in tem­po, ignor­ing con­duc­tor,” and — these favorites of Erik Satie — to play as if “imbi­bet” (drunk­en) and “cor­pu­len­tus” (cor­pu­lent).

Not long ago, jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia, a man who’s seen a more than a few scores in his time, tweet­ed out a set of images of what he called “blunt musi­cal direc­tions.” These instruct their per­form­ers to “play with­out bitch­ing about the key” — G‑flat major not, I gath­er, being the most enjoy­able of them all — to make a “soft moan through instru­ment if pos­si­ble,” to “STAND; TURN AROUND; BEND OVER AND PLAY OBOE BETWEEN LEGS,” to “play with­out tak­ing a pic­ture and upload­ing to Face­book,” and — per­haps most impor­tant of all — to “lay that shit down!”

To those who can’t read a score, the abil­i­ty to turn a bunch of lines, dots, and oth­er even less intu­itive­ly deci­pher­able sym­bols into full-bod­ied music on the fly looks like a super­pow­er. But those who can read a score know that the real musi­cian­ship all hap­pens between what some com­pos­er wrote on the page and what the audi­ence hears, bal­anc­ing loy­al­ty to the com­poser’s inten­tion with the degree of per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion that makes the piece come alive. All the dis­ci­pline cul­ti­vat­ed through musi­cal train­ing no doubt ensures that most of them can resist the temp­ta­tion of Face­book while actu­al­ly play­ing, but when a com­poser’s direc­tions get real­ly ambigu­ous, cranky, or sim­ply strange — well, that’s where their pro­fes­sion­al judg­ment comes in. And so live music remains inter­est­ing, even this deep into the age of the record­ed stuff.

via @Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

“Hum­ming­bird,” A New Form of Music Nota­tion That’s Eas­i­er to Learn and Faster to Read

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

We’ve seen sales of George Orwell’s dystopi­an night­mare sce­nario 1984 peak in recent months. Mil­lions of read­ers seek to under­stand the brave new world we live in through Orwell’s vision. Par­al­lels abound. We might rea­son­ably ascribe to the rul­ing par­ty in the U.S. and its media appa­ra­tus the slo­gan “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” But our expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty nev­er fails to val­i­date that old saw about truth and fic­tion. As Case West­ern Reserve pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry John Broich writes, “2017 is stranger than Orwell imag­ined.”

The state doesn’t need a Min­istry of Truth to cen­sure the infor­ma­tion that reach­es us. We are sim­ply over­whelmed with “alter­na­tive author­i­ties and real­i­ties” who dele­git­imize the facts and accel­er­ate “the decline in stan­dards of evi­dence and rea­son­ing in the US elec­torate.” A sad state of affairs. But in every decade since the pub­li­ca­tion of Orwell’s nov­el, crit­ics, jour­nal­ists, and pun­dits have seen evi­dence of his dire fore­cast. In the tit­u­lar year itself, Man­hat­tan Col­lege pro­fes­sor Edmond van den Boss­che summed up the gen­er­al tenor in The New York Times: “In our 1984… the warn­ings of George Orwell are more than ever rel­e­vant.”

Van den Boss­che wrote of NATO and the UN. But he might have writ­ten about MTV and CNN— both in their infancy—who birthed 24-hour cable news and real­i­ty TV.  What Orwell under­stood about state pow­er, lat­er thinkers like Guy DeBord, Roland Barthes, and Jean Bau­drillard built careers writ­ing about: the impor­tance not only of sur­veil­lance, but also of spec­ta­cle that blurs the lines of truth and fic­tion as it over­whelms our sens­es. It’s large­ly this key theme, I’d argue, that has ren­dered 1984 so attrac­tive to some of the most spec­tac­u­lar of musi­cians, includ­ing David Bowie—whose attempts to make an Orwell con­cept album formed part of his Dia­mond Dogs—and Rick Wake­man, the vir­tu­oso prog-rock key­boardist of Yes fame.

After releas­ing as a solo artist such rock-lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions as 1974’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth and the fol­low­ing year’s The Myths and Leg­ends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Wake­man turned Orwell’s clas­sic into a rock opera. The 1981 pro­duc­tion is an extrav­a­gan­za of musi­cal excess, with lyrics and vocals by Tim Rice, riv­et­ing per­for­mances by Cha­ka Khan (above) and Wakeman’s for­mer Yes band­mate Jon Ander­son, and eclec­tic orches­tral instru­men­ta­tion woven in with Wakeman’s bat­tery of key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers. The record has become a fan favorite and All­mu­sic describes it as one of Wakeman’s “most well-round­ed albums.”

The per­fec­tion­is­tic Wake­man him­self looks back on his 1984 with embar­rass­ment. “In ret­ro­spect, a mis­take,” he has said. “The wrong album at the wrong time, with all the wrong peo­ple around at the time…. I formed the wrong band, (the worst I have ever had), the deal for the stage show fell through and all in all I lis­ten back to the music with my head in my hands.” Luck­i­ly, we are not bound to respect an artist’s assess­ment of his work. Wakeman’s music and Rice’s lyrics take the lead­en, gray world of Win­ston Smith and Julia and turn it into a car­ni­val, mov­ing from soar­ing bal­lads to rock­ers with the sneer­ing vaude­vil­lian satire of The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. (See espe­cial­ly “The Pro­les,” above, the penul­ti­mate num­ber before the final title track.)

Orwell’s nov­el is not what one would call an enter­tain­ing book; it is gloomy—though not with­out its own kind of dark humor—and its mono­chro­mat­ic tone was per­fect­ly cap­tured by Michael Radford’s 1984 film adap­ta­tion. But it heav­i­ly sug­gest­ed the world to come, one con­stant­ly illu­mi­nat­ed and obscured by mass media, with screens in every home and pock­et, for­ev­er broad­cast­ing some col­or­ful dis­trac­tion. In the videos above, you’ll see excerpts from the movie mixed with daz­zling live per­for­mance footage of Wake­man and band play­ing their 1984 live, synced to the stu­dio record­ings, cour­tesy of Youtu­ber ROLT (Ronal­do Lopes Teix­eira.) Watch his full project at the top of the post. The mash-up suit­ably shows how these very dif­fer­ent interpretations—the more straight­for­ward­ly dour and the prog-rock operatic—somehow both do jus­tice to Orwell’s pre­scient nov­el. Just above, you can hear Wake­man’s full album on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load for free here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness