Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”: An Animated Music Lesson

in Animation, K-12, Life, Music, TED Talks | February 10th, 2017

Remem­ber lis­ten­ing to Peter and the Wolf as a child, how the nar­ra­tor would explain that cer­tain instru­ments cor­re­spond to par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ters:  the duck — an oboe, the wolf — three horns, and so on?

In the above TED-Ed les­son (mem­o­rably ani­mat­ed by Com­pote Col­lec­tive), music his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Schwarm ful­fills much the same role for The Four Sea­sons by Anto­nio Vival­di. (Stream it here.)

Why are we so drawn to this Baroque con­cer­to? Is it because we asso­ciate it with brunch?

The hun­dreds of movies and com­mer­cials that have fea­tured it?

(Direc­tor Robert Ben­ton chose Vival­di rather than an orig­i­nal com­pos­er for the score of Kramer vs. Kramer, argu­ing that “Con­cer­to in C Major for Man­dolin & Strings” cap­tured the trou­bled Man­hat­tan couple’s refined lifestyle far bet­ter than the John Williams-esque bom­bast the ear asso­ciates with some many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic hits of the peri­od. The 1979 film’s suc­cess sent “The Four Sea­sons” to the top of the charts.)

These pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions no doubt account for some of our fond­ness, but Pro­fes­sor Schwarm posits that the sto­ries con­tained in the melodies are what real­ly reel us in.

Basi­cal­ly, we’re in the thrall of a musi­cal weath­er report, rev­el­ing in the way Vival­di man­ages to bring to life both the birdies’ sun­ny spring song and the sud­den thun­der­storm that dis­rupts it.

Sum­mer rolls out the mete­o­ro­log­i­cal big guns with a hail­storm.

Autumn’s cool­er night­time tem­per­a­tures keep the wine-flushed peas­ants from turn­ing their har­vest cel­e­bra­tions into a full-on bac­cha­nal.

Win­ter? Well per­haps you’re tucked up con­tent­ed­ly in front of the fire­place right now, grat­i­fied to be hear­ing your own com­fort echoed in the largo sec­tion.

Inspired by the land­scape paint­ings of artist, Mar­co Ric­ci, Vival­di penned four poems that dri­ve the move­ments of his most famous work. Their trans­la­tions, below, are nowhere near as elo­quent to the mod­ern listener’s ear, but you’ll find that read­ing them along with your favorite record­ing of the Four Sea­sons will cor­rob­o­rate Pro­fes­sor Schwarm’s the­sis.

Spring – Con­cer­to in E Major

Alle­gro

Spring­time is upon us.

The birds cel­e­brate her return with fes­tive song,

and mur­mur­ing streams are soft­ly caressed by the breezes.

Thun­der­storms, those her­alds of Spring, roar, cast­ing their dark man­tle over heav­en,

Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charm­ing songs once more.

Largo

On the flower-strewn mead­ow, with leafy branch­es rustling over­head, the goat-herd sleeps, his faith­ful dog beside him.

Alle­gro

Led by the fes­tive sound of rus­tic bag­pipes, nymphs and shep­herds light­ly dance beneath the bril­liant canopy of spring.

Sum­mer – Con­cer­to in g‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Beneath the blaz­ing sun’s relent­less heat

men and flocks are swel­ter­ing,

pines are scorched.

We hear the cuck­oo’s voice; then sweet songs of the tur­tle dove and finch are heard.

Soft breezes stir the air….but threat­en­ing north wind sweeps them sud­den­ly aside. The shep­herd trem­bles, fear­ful of vio­lent storm and what may lie ahead.

Ada­gio e piano — Presto e forte

His limbs are now awak­ened from their repose by fear of light­ning’s flash and thun­der’s roar, as gnats and flies buzz furi­ous­ly around.

Presto

Alas, his worst fears were jus­ti­fied, as the heav­ens roar and great hail­stones beat down upon the proud­ly stand­ing corn.

Autumn – Con­cer­to in F Major

Alle­gro

The peas­ant cel­e­brates with song and dance the har­vest safe­ly gath­ered in.

The cup of Bac­chus flows freely, and many find their relief in deep slum­ber.

Ada­gio molto

The singing and the danc­ing die away

as cool­ing breezes fan the pleas­ant air,

invit­ing all to sleep

with­out a care.

Alle­gro

The hunters emerge at dawn,

ready for the chase,

with horns and dogs and cries.

Their quar­ry flees while they give chase.

Ter­ri­fied and wound­ed, the prey strug­gles on,

but, har­ried, dies

Win­ter – Con­cer­to in F‑minor

Alle­gro non molto

Shiv­er­ing, frozen mid the frosty snow in bit­ing, sting­ing winds;

run­ning to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chat­ter­ing in the bit­ter chill.

Largo

To rest con­tent­ed­ly beside the hearth, while those out­side are drenched by pour­ing rain.

Alle­gro

We tread the icy path slow­ly and cau­tious­ly, for fear of trip­ping and falling.

Then turn abrupt­ly, slip, crash on the ground and, ris­ing, has­ten on across the ice lest it cracks up.

We feel the chill north winds coarse through the home despite the locked and bolt­ed doors…

this is win­ter, which nonethe­less brings its own delights.

 


You can down­load the Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty Cham­ber Play­ers’ record­ing of Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons” for free here.

See how well you retained your TED-ED les­son with a mul­ti­ple choice quiz, then read more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Love Rep­e­ti­tion in Music: Explained in a New TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in less than three weeks. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Sonic Introduction to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Minutes of 20th Century Art Music, Including Modernism, Futurism, Dadaism & Beyond

in Art, Music | February 9th, 2017

Avant-garde com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry have left a vex­ing lega­cy, begin­ning per­haps with one of the cen­tu­ry’s first min­i­mal­ists, Erik Satie (1866 –1925), whose career illus­trates a cen­tral para­dox of exper­i­men­tal music: it can seem to most of us total­ly inac­ces­si­ble, alien, and frus­trat­ing, yet it is also a per­va­sive influ­ence on the sound of our every­day life.

For exam­ple, we are like­ly to nev­er encounter, much less could most of us endure, the full mea­sure of Satie’s 1893 Vex­a­tions, a short piece “melan­cholic yet dead­pan, eccle­si­as­ti­cal yet demon­ic, strange­ly lack­ing direc­tion,” and meant, writes Nick Shave at The Guardian, to be “repeat­ed 840 times.” Long thought an iron­ic joke, in 1963 John Cage took up the chal­lenge and with a “relay team of pianists, includ­ing John Cale,” staged a marathon per­for­mance at the end of which only one per­son remained in the audi­ence.

Then we have the Satie of Gymnopédie No.1, a mov­ing com­po­si­tion we’ve heard count­less times in films, tele­vi­sion shows, din­ner par­ties, restau­rants, etc. This piece and oth­ers like it, argues WFMU’s Ken­neth Gold­smith, mark the birth of Ambi­ent music, or what Satie puck­ish­ly called Fur­ni­ture Music. “Today,” Gold­smith writes, “Fur­ni­ture Music is unavoid­able,” and every­one from Bri­an Eno to Aphex Twin to “the entire Muzak phe­nom­e­non… owes a debt to The Vel­vet Gen­tle­man.”

Both the acces­si­ble and dif­fi­cult strains of the eccen­tric French com­pos­er have been equal­ly influ­en­tial, and “just about every rad­i­cal musi­cal move­ment” of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry “can trace its roots back to Satie.” As we move through the century—encountering the work of Dada artists, Futur­ists, sym­phon­ic mod­ernists, and musique con­crète and ear­ly elec­tron­ic pioneers—we find an enor­mous breadth of exper­i­men­ta­tion, both strange­ly intim­i­dat­ing and often strange­ly famil­iar, giv­en how per­va­sive its influ­ence on film and “fur­ni­ture” music as well as on con­tem­po­rary com­posers.

If you’re new to the dis­so­nant and play­ful inno­va­tions of artists like Satie, F.T. Marinet­ti, Kurt Schwit­ters, Arnold Schoen­berg, Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, Györ­gy Ligeti and oth­er provo­ca­teurs and rad­i­cals of the ear­ly decades of the last cen­tu­ry, you could hard­ly do worse by way of intro­duc­tion than the dou­ble com­pi­la­tion album above from LTM Record­ings. Titled A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde and con­sist­ing of 26 tracks in total, the com­pi­la­tion includes an excerpt of Igor Stravinsky’s scandalous—for the time—1913 The Rite of Spring, and John Cage’s per­plex­ing 1952 work of silence, 4’33” and begins with a mer­ci­ful­ly brief 3‑minute ren­di­tion of Satie’s Vex­a­tions. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. If you have any prob­lems play­ing the embed­ded playlist, please click on this link.)

We also have music from names we typ­i­cal­ly asso­ciate with visu­al art (Mar­cel Duchamp, Fran­cis Picabia) and film (Jean Cocteau). And you will sure­ly rec­og­nize the final piece, Ligeti’s “Atmos­pheres,” from Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The col­lec­tion, writes The Tre­buchet in their review, “sub­tly hints at the fact that film sound­tracks are the clos­est thing we have to grand com­po­si­tions these days, and in fact the seeds for change were plant­ed long ago dur­ing the era when Con­ti­nen­tal artists and musi­cians took an inter­est in the emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of auto­mo­biles, planes, and film.”

Then, of course, there were emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies of sound. A Young Person’s Guide (pur­chase a copy online here) ends with Ligeti in 1961, and only hints at the elec­tron­ic avant-garde to come with a 1953 com­po­si­tion from Stock­hausen. This is a shame, since the elec­tron­ic rev­o­lu­tion in music opened doors for so many female exper­i­men­tal­ists like Pauline Oliv­eros, Daphne Oram, and Eliane Radigue. As it stands, the col­lec­tion gives us an all-male line­up of artists—and one sure to pro­voke excla­ma­tions of “What about [insert name here]!”

It’s an under­stand­able reac­tion to an ambi­tious but lim­it­ed sur­vey. For the ama­teur or “young per­son” just dis­cov­er­ing this musi­cal his­to­ry, how­ev­er, A Young Person’s Guide to the Avant-Garde offers a rich, com­pelling, and fre­quent­ly con­found­ing selec­tion that can serve as a stur­dy spring­board for fur­ther study and explo­ration. Those so inspired to hear more can find it in the mas­sive archive of The Avant-Garde Project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

The Women of the Avant-Garde: An Intro­duc­tion Fea­tur­ing Audio by Gertrude Stein, Kathy Ack­er, Pat­ti Smith & More

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Improvises and Plays, Completely Unrehearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

in Music | February 7th, 2017

Most musi­cians have lit­tle chance of achiev­ing last­ing wealth and fame. It’s a pro­fes­sion in which only a tiny per­cent­age of peo­ple ever “make it”—at least accord­ing to the impos­si­bly high stan­dards of celebri­ty we tend to apply. So why do peo­ple stick with it, year after year, through health scares, finan­cial crises, and all the oth­er grown-up hard­ships that kill many a child­hood dream?

We often mor­bid­ly focus on rock and roll casu­al­ties. Look, how­ev­er, at the stars who do sur­vive the busi­ness decade after decade. Though music may not stave off aging, it clear­ly has the pow­er to pre­serve youth­ful enthu­si­asm long into what some still call retire­ment years. The exam­ples are too numer­ous to list; we could hard­ly do bet­ter than to look at the late career of Bruce Spring­steen.

Like many of his gen­er­a­tion, Spring­steen was turned on to rock and roll by see­ing Elvis, then lat­er the Bea­t­les, on The Ed Sul­li­van Show. And like bud­ding musi­cians still today, he received his first gui­tar at 16 as a gift from his moth­er. (He lat­er wrote a song about it.) Over 50 years lat­er, he’s still got the wide-eyed won­der of his six­teen-year-old self. Or at least he’s will­ing to take teenage risks, pulling out one song every night dur­ing a recent tour with the E Street Band “that we haven’t played since we were, I don’t know, six­teen, or maybe nev­er.”

It takes a youth­ful degree of fearlessness—or recklessness—to stand on stage in front of thou­sands of fans and play a total­ly unre­hearsed tune, espe­cial­ly one as wordy and fine­ly-tuned as Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell.” We know Bruce and the band have chops, so watch­ing them run through a few dif­fer­ent keys before they dig in does­n’t pro­duce too much anx­i­ety. Nonethe­less, their abil­i­ty to throw them­selves into the total unknown, just for fun, makes the per­for­mance seem like the kind of stunt most of us only attempt before we’re taught to set­tle into much more pre­dictable grown-up rou­tines.

How well do they pull off the Berry clas­sic on the spot and unre­hearsed? See for your­self, and then com­pare it to the eter­nal­ly youth­ful man him­self, who at 90 years of age will soon release his first new album in 38 years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Nar­rates Audio­book Ver­sion of His New Mem­oir (and How to Down­load It for Free)

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

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

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How to Respond to the Challenges of Our Time?: Jazz Legends Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter Give 10 Pieces of Advice to Young Artists, and Everyone Else

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs, Jazz, Music | February 7th, 2017

Some moments in his­to­ry strike us as dra­mat­ic rup­tures. Cer­tain­ties are super­seded, thrown into chaos by a seis­mic event, and we find our­selves adrift and anx­ious. What are artists to do? Gripped by the same fears as every­one else, the same sense of urgency, writ­ers, musi­cians, film­mak­ers, painters, etc. may find them­selves unable to “breathe with uncon­di­tion­al breath / the uncon­di­tioned air,” as Wen­dell Berry once described the cre­ative process.

We might remem­ber the rad­i­cal break with tra­di­tion when the shock­ing car­nage of World War I sent poets and painters into fright­en­ing places they had pre­vi­ous­ly left unex­plored. Vir­ginia Woolf summed up the sit­u­a­tion in her essay The Lean­ing Tow­er: “sud­den­ly like a chasm in a smooth road, the [Great] war came.” Shat­tered as they were, her gen­er­a­tion over­came their paral­y­sis. Mod­ernists of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were able to speak to their bro­ken age in ways that con­tin­ue to speak to ours.

But we should tem­per our belief that bad times make good art by not­ing that the most vision­ary cre­ative minds are not sim­ply reac­tive, respond­ing to tragedy like reporters on a crime scene. As Wayne Short­er and Her­bie Han­cock— two of the 20th century’s most con­sis­tent­ly inno­v­a­tive musicians—suggest, artists at all times need a set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples. (See the two play “Mem­o­ry of Enchant­ment” above in 2002.) There is always a lot of per­son­al work to do. And in “tur­bu­lent and unpre­dictable times,” the two jazz greats advise, “the answer to peace is sim­ple; it begins with you.”

A plat­i­tude, per­haps, but one they illus­trat­ed near­ly a year ago in an open let­ter at Nest HQ with some pro­found, if chal­leng­ing, pre­scrip­tions for our present cul­tur­al ill­ness­es. Short­er and Hancock’s coun­sel is not a reac­tion to the rup­ture of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, but a response to the events that pre­ced­ed it, “the hor­ror at the Bat­a­clan… the upheaval in Syr­ia and the sense­less blood­shed in San Bernardi­no.” Not pas­sive­ly wait­ing to find out where the past few years’ vio­lence and unrest would lead, the two have made eth­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, and spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions, pre­sent­ing their phi­los­o­phy and ethics through jazz, Bud­dhism, sci­ence, art, and lit­er­a­ture.

Below, you can read their ten pieces of advice “to the next gen­er­a­tion of artists,” or at least excerpts there­of. They begin with a reas­sur­ing pref­ace: “As an artist, cre­ator and dream­er of this world, we ask you not to be dis­cour­aged by what you see but to use your own lives, and by exten­sion your art, as vehi­cles for the con­struc­tion of peace…. You mat­ter, your actions mat­ter, your art mat­ters.” That said, they also want to assure read­ers that “these thoughts tran­scend pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries and apply to all peo­ple, regard­less of pro­fes­sion.”

First, awak­en to your human­i­ty

You can­not hide behind a pro­fes­sion or instru­ment; you have to be human. Focus your ener­gy on becom­ing the best human you can be. Focus on devel­op­ing empa­thy and com­pas­sion. Through the process you’ll tap into a wealth of inspi­ra­tion root­ed in the com­plex­i­ty and curios­i­ty of what it means to sim­ply exist on this plan­et.

Embrace and con­quer the road less trav­eled

Don’t allow your­self to be hijacked by com­mon rhetoric, or false beliefs and illu­sions about how life should be lived. It’s up to you to be the pio­neers.

Wel­come to the Unknown

Every rela­tion­ship, obsta­cle, inter­ac­tion, etc. is a rehearsal for the next adven­ture in life. Every­thing is con­nect­ed. Every­thing builds. Noth­ing is ever wast­ed. This type of think­ing requires courage. Be coura­geous and do not lose your sense of exhil­a­ra­tion and rev­er­ence for this won­der­ful world around you.

Under­stand the True Nature of Obsta­cles

We have this idea of fail­ure, but it’s not real; it’s an illu­sion. There is no such thing as fail­ure. What you per­ceive as fail­ure is real­ly a new oppor­tu­ni­ty, a new hand of cards, or a new can­vas to cre­ate upon.

Don’t Be Afraid to Inter­act with Those Who Are Dif­fer­ent from You

The world needs more one-on-one inter­ac­tion among peo­ple of diverse ori­gins with a greater empha­sis on art, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Our dif­fer­ences are what we have in com­mon…. We need to be con­nect­ing with one anoth­er, learn­ing about one anoth­er, and expe­ri­enc­ing life with one anoth­er. We can nev­er have peace if we can­not under­stand the pain in each other’s hearts.

Strive to Cre­ate Agen­da-Free Dia­logue

Art in any form is a medi­um for dia­logue, which is a pow­er­ful tool… we’re talk­ing about reflect­ing and chal­leng­ing the fears, which pre­vent us from dis­cov­er­ing our unlim­it­ed access to the courage inher­ent in us all.

Be Wary of Ego

Cre­ativ­i­ty can­not flow when only the ego is served.

Work Towards a Busi­ness with­out Bor­ders

The med­ical field has an orga­ni­za­tion called Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. This lofty effort can serve as a mod­el for tran­scend­ing the lim­i­ta­tions and strate­gies of old busi­ness for­mu­las which are designed to per­pet­u­ate old sys­tems in the guise of new ones.

Appre­ci­ate the Gen­er­a­tion that Walked Before You

Your elders can help you. They are a source of wealth in the form of wis­dom…. Don’t waste time repeat­ing their mis­takes.

Last­ly, We Hope that You Live in a State of Con­stant Won­der

As we accu­mu­late years, parts of our imag­i­na­tion tend to dull. Whether from sad­ness, pro­longed strug­gle, or social con­di­tion­ing, some­where along the way peo­ple for­get how to tap into the inher­ent mag­ic that exists with­in our minds. Don’t let that part of your imag­i­na­tion fade away.

Whether you’re a jazz fan, musi­cian, artist, writer, accoun­tant, cashier, truck­er, teacher, or what­ev­er, I can’t think of a wis­er set of guide­lines with which to con­front the suf­fo­cat­ing epi­dem­ic of cyn­i­cism, delu­sion­al think­ing, ram­pant big­otry, hatred, and self-absorp­tion of our time. Read Short­er and Hancock’s full open let­ter at Nest HQ.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

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

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Discover the 1126 Books in John Cage’s Personal Library: Foucault, Joyce, Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf, Buckminster Fuller & More

in Books, Literature, Music, Philosophy | February 6th, 2017

Image by or Rob Bogaerts/Fotocollectie Ane­fo

To prop­er­ly hon­or your cul­tur­al role mod­els, don’t try to do what they did, or even to think what they thought, but to think how they thought. This goes at least dou­ble for John Cage, the exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er whose inno­v­a­tive works can be, and often are, re-staged (go on, have four min­utes and 33 sec­onds of silence to your­self), but it takes a dif­fer­ent kind of effort alto­geth­er to cul­ti­vate the kind of mind that would come up with them in the first place. As a means of acti­vat­ing your own inner Cage­ness, you could do much worse than read through his per­son­al library, a list of whose books you’ll find at johncage.org.

The vol­umes num­ber 1126 in total, and if you load the library’s main page, it will present you with a list of ten ran­dom­ly select­ed books. (You can get a list of all of them by select­ing the “See Entire Library” option on the left side­bar.)

Hit­ting refresh a few times will give you a sense of the breadth of Cage’s read­ing: Emma Gold­man on anar­chism, Chi­nese poet­ry gath­ered by Ken­neth Rexroth, M. Con­rad Hyers’ Zen and the Com­ic Spir­it (two of Cage’s dri­ving forces if ever I’ve heard them), How to Play Backgam­mon, essays on Ulysses (an inter­est shared with Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe), and even essays on John Cage. Here we’ve assem­bled a list of ten books from Cage’s library of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the Open Cul­ture read­er:

To those who know any­thing of Cage’s life and inter­ests, his shelves on healthy eating—on which Din­ing Nat­u­ral­ly in Japan: A Restau­rant Guide to Whole­some Food also appears, as, nat­u­ral­ly giv­en the era and Cage’s acquired north­ern-Cal­i­for­ni­an­ness, The Tas­sa­jara Bread Book—and espe­cial­ly the eat­ing of mush­rooms, come as no sur­prise, nor might his incli­na­tion toward phi­los­o­phy. But we should note what looks like a par­tic­u­lar fas­ci­na­tion with the work of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, evi­denced by 22 of the books in his library: his best-known works like the Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus, but also his let­ters, lec­tures, and note­books, as well as biogra­phies, com­men­taries, and Wittgen­stein and Bud­dhism, which Cage must have con­sid­ered an excit­ing find indeed.

In one of his most quotable quotes, Cage describes col­lege as “two hun­dred peo­ple read­ing the same book. An obvi­ous mis­take. Two hun­dred peo­ple can read two hun­dred books.” And indeed, 1126 peo­ple can read 1126 books—or many more peo­ple can each read a dif­fer­ent sub­set of those books. While you could method­i­cal­ly read your way through Cage’s entire library, and would sure­ly learn a great deal in the process, would­n’t mak­ing use of the unthink­ing guid­ance of the ten-ran­dom-books func­tion, sur­ren­der­ing the direc­tion of this infor­mal edu­ca­tion to the kind of chance that places Paul Bowles next to the com­mon fun­gi of North Amer­i­can and Charles Ives next to Ital­ian futur­ism, be a much more Cagean way of going about it?

(h/t @lrlarson)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage’s Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

John Cage Unbound: A New Dig­i­tal Archive Pre­sent­ed by The New York Pub­lic Library

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

A Look Inside Han­nah Arendt’s Per­son­al Library: Down­load Mar­gin­a­lia from 90 Books (Hei­deg­ger, Kant, Marx & More)

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Darwin’s Per­son­al Library Goes Dig­i­tal: 330 Books Online

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.

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Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Marley, Public Enemy, Billy Bragg & More

in Music, Politics | February 6th, 2017

When I was grow­ing up, protest music meant Pub­lic Ene­my, Rage Against the Machine, and—for some few Amer­i­cans and very many Brits—Billy Bragg: an artist “at home with both social­ist pol­i­tics and heart­break,” writes All­mu­sic, “styled on the solo attack of ear­ly Dylan and the pas­sion of the Clash.” Known for his pro-labor, anti-Thatch­er, anti-war, pro “Sex­u­al­i­ty” stances, Bragg has been a stal­wart cam­paign­er for peace and jus­tice since the 1980s.

A vet­er­an activist who made appear­ances at Occu­py Wall Street and the recent Women’s March in Lon­don, Bragg late­ly lament­ed the state of protest music. “Look at what’s hap­pen­ing in the world,” he told The Guardian in 2011, “When I was first ply­ing my trade, peo­ple were will­ing to talk about these issues. Now they’d rather write about get­ting blast­ed than chang­ing the world.”

Much has changed since 2011, I don’t need to tell you. And the protest song has returned, from Anohni’s beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing 2016 album Hope­less (see “Drone Bomb Me” above) to Pussy Riot’s fright­en­ing­ly pre­scient “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again,” released just before the elec­tion. We’ve heard it said that “protest songs are point­less,” but they’ve car­ried many a move­ment through many a seem­ing­ly hope­less moment. Bragg him­self, still ply­ing his trade, rewrote the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s clas­sic “The Times They Are A‑Changing” as “The Times They Are A‑Changing Back” (at the top), just thir­ty min­utes after the inau­gur­al speech, and “with apolo­gies” to Dylan.

Bragg clear­ly has deep roots in the genre, but are Anohni and Pussy Riot’s melod­ic provo­ca­tions protest music? What about the empow­er­ing anthems of Bey­on­cé or the poet­ic rumi­na­tions of Solange? Just what makes a protest song? Every gen­er­a­tion will have their own cri­te­ria, and their own pan­theon of polit­i­cal artists. Whether you look back to the wry folk songs of Woody Guthrie, to the Gold­en Age of Dylan, Odet­ta, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger; to the Bea­t­les or Neil Young; or to punk rock, hip-hop, reg­gae, or the funk soul of Mar­vin Gaye, you will find a few favorites on the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. It fea­tures 58 tracks and runs about 4 hours and 15 min­utes. If you want a direct link to the playlist, click here. If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, please down­load it here.

To pro­duce the playlist, we culled through best-of lists from Radio X, Rolling Stone, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, and the blog Music to Die For, who in 2007 cre­at­ed some strict def­i­n­i­tions of a protest song:

– A piece of music that is a great song in its own right. Good words and fine sen­ti­ments are not enough. The music must move us.

– A song that has a pur­pose. A song that doesn’t con­fine itself to com­ment­ing on or bemoan­ing the ills of the world, but seeks in some small way to change things. It may do this by call­ing direct­ly for some­thing to hap­pen – “free Nel­son Man­dela”, by inform­ing us, by appeal­ing to our hearts and our emo­tions, or by chal­leng­ing com­mon­ly held ideas.

– It fol­lows from this that a true protest song should address a spe­cif­ic issue or issues that are cur­rent. Songs about wars and rev­o­lu­tions in days long gone are not includ­ed here.

– Final­ly the song should pro­voke the lis­ten­er : shock us, unset­tle us, amaze us, inspire us, make us angry, make us sad or make us opti­mistic. If it doesn’t do any of these things, it hard­ly deserves to be called a protest song. So be warned : there’s a lot of anger and a lot of emo­tion in these songs.

I’ll admit, I take issue with some of these criteria—I’d argue, for exam­ple, that Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” is a time­less protest song that doesn’t ref­er­ence any spe­cif­ic event or offer a solu­tion (except “judg­ment day”). But you are free to dis­agree. Some of the songs on our playlist came from read­er sug­ges­tions. We’d love to hear some oth­ers. What would you add to the list? And how do you define a “protest song”? Feel free to add your thoughts and sug­ges­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Bob Dylan Plays First Live Per­for­mance of “Hur­ri­cane,” His Song Defend­ing Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

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

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Kraftwerk Plays a Live 40-Minute Version of their Signature Song “Autobahn:” A Soundtrack for a Long Road Trip (1974)

in Music | February 3rd, 2017

“The joys of motor­ing are more or less fic­tion­al,” wrote Zel­da Fitzger­ald to Lud­low Fowler, a friend of her hus­band F. Scott, in 1920. But what an inspir­ing breadth of fic­tion they’ve inspired on the page and screen, most­ly set along the seem­ing­ly end­less road-miles of Amer­i­ca. But look over to Ger­many, a land of dri­vers renowned for their love of and respect for the auto­mo­bile, and you find a whole oth­er sort of, as it were, dri­ving-dri­ven cre­ativ­i­ty. Most famous­ly, 34 years after Fitzger­ald wrote to Fowler, a young Düs­sel­dorf band by the name of Kraftwerk looked to the joys of motor­ing and laid down their sig­na­ture song: “Auto­bahn.”

Tak­ing up 22 full min­utes of the epony­mous 1974 album (though less than three and a half as a sin­gle), “Auto­bahn,” which rock crit­ic Robert Christ­gau described as ema­nat­ing from “a machine deter­mined to rule all music with a steel hand and some mylar,” uses the kind of elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion tech­niques Kraftwerk would go on to pop­u­lar­ize to evoke the feel­ing of move­ment on the tit­u­lar Ger­man high­way sys­tem.

“We used to dri­ve a lot,” per­cus­sion­ist Wolf­gang Flür once recalled. “We used to lis­ten to the sound of dri­ving, the wind, pass­ing cars and lor­ries, the rain, every moment the sounds around you are chang­ing, and the idea was to rebuild those sounds on the synth.”

But as vet­er­an road-trip­pers know, you aren’t real­ly dri­ving unless the dri­ving hyp­no­tizes you: not only should you spend pro­longed stretch­es of time on the road, you should ide­al­ly do it to a rhyth­mi­cal­ly and tem­po­ral­ly suit­able son­ic back­drop. And so we offer you this live 40-minute ver­sion of “Auto­bahn” which, in the words of Elec­tron­ic Beats, “demon­strates what a musi­cal force the group was back in the day,” tak­en from “a show in the Ger­man city of Lev­erkusen that fus­es the group’s lat­ter-era tech­no-futur­ism with its ear­li­er free-jazz psy­che­del­ic freak­i­ness.” To keep the road-robot mood rolling, why not fire up the ani­mat­ed “Auto­bahn” music video from 1979 we fea­tured last year? But please, don’t watch while you dri­ve — espe­cial­ly if there’s no speed lim­it.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

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.

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Stream Marc Maron’s Excellent, Long Interview with The Band’s Robbie Robertson

in Music | February 2nd, 2017

Image of Robert­son (left) and Bob Dylan (right) by Jim Sum­maria, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: Marc Maron released this week a long, prob­ing and quite excel­lent inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son. The con­ver­sa­tion gives you:

the full low­down on the his­to­ry of The Band, from its ori­gins as a back­ing group to its final bow with The Last Waltz. Rob­bie talks about being with Bob Dylan when he went elec­tric and deal­ing with the blow­back of that, and he explains how he came to have such a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with Mar­tin Scors­ese on many of the direc­tor’s films.

You can stream the inter­view below. It’s worth lis­ten­ing to Maron’s impas­sioned mono­logue. But if you want to skip straight to the inter­view itself, then jump to the 15 minute mark.

Robert­son recent­ly pub­lished a new mem­oir called Tes­ti­mo­ny, and I should point out that you can down­load it as a free audio­book if you take part in Audible.com’s 30 day free tri­al pro­gram. Get details on Audi­ble’s free tri­al here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s Base­ment Tapes

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