Triumph of the cyborg composer
Posted in computer stuff, music, technology on Feb 27th, 2010
From Miller-McCune.com: Triumph of the Cyborg Composer: David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music. Why are people so angry about that?
Category Archive for 'music'
Birds on the wires
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, music on Sep 18th, 2009
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
The music that fixes a day gone wrong
Posted in music on Jun 28th, 2009
Years ago I on CBC Radio I heard Mudanin Kata, an album by David Darling and the Wulu Bunun people of Taiwan. The moment that show ended, I raced to the web to order the album. Every time I hear the first two songs on the album, I think that I must find a way [...]
Today I am obsessing about oboes, and wishing I had one. How hard can it be to play the oboe, after all? I’m good at woodwind instruments.
Listen to the oboe in this video and you’ll hear why I’m tempted. And anyway, an oboe would be more convenient than a cello (my other musical temptation).
Flutes offer clues to Stone-Age music
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Jun 25th, 2009
From the New York Times: Flutes Offer Clues to Stone-Age Music.
At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in [...]
Medieval music brought back to life
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Dec 21st, 2008
From Media-Newswire.com: Medieval music brought back to life.
Music from a medieval manuscript that has not been heard since the 15th century has been brought back to life, thanks to researchers at The University of Nottingham.
The project, involving collaboration with academics in Germany, has resulted in the production of a modern colour facsimile of one of [...]
What you don’t know about me is this:
At those times when Mirabilis.ca is quiet for a few days or a week, it may be that I have just become obsessed by some fascinating new topic, as I am wont to do. (LibraryThing, GPS, whatever.) I don’t just acquire new interests; I eat them up. The [...]
Ice instruments
Posted in Norway, music, unusual musical instruments on Nov 11th, 2008
From The ice instrument recording project:
Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset has for years used a variety of organic sound elements in creating music and instruments. (…) Utilizing ice as a source of sound has long been a dream of his, and in year 2000 a serious opportinty came along to explore this possibility. He was [...]
Sounds like a Strad? Must be the mushrooms
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Nov 6th, 2008
From AFP: Sounds like a Strad? Must be the mushrooms
A Swiss researcher said Thursday he had hit on an unlikely way of recreating the unique sound of a Stradivarius violin — by treating the wood of a replica instrument with mushrooms.
Francis Schwarze of the Zurich-based Federal Materials, Science and Technology Institute (EMPA), made a replica [...]
Mathematician solves Beatles chord mystery
Posted in music on Oct 29th, 2008
From Scientific Blogging: Beatles Unknown "Hard Day’s Night" Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform.
It’s the most famous chord in rock ‘n’ roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker. It evokes a Pavlovian response from music fans as they sing along to the refrain that follows:
"It’s been a [...]
Sea shanty recordings unearthed
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Oct 28th, 2008
From the Beeb: Sea shanty recordings unearthed.
Relatives of a sea captain from Sunderland have heard their long dead ancestor singing sea shanties recorded in the 1920s.
The songs, which were in a collection recorded on wax cylinders by American academic James Madison Carpenter, were restored for a BBC documentary.
Mark Page, born in 1836, ran away to [...]
Danilov Monastery’s bells — going home at last
Posted in history & archaeology, music, religion on Jun 14th, 2008
From csmonitor.com: Russian monastery anticipates the familiar toll of ancient bells.
As the chiming of bells rang through Harvard University’s campus among a field of caps and gowns last week, it was the final time they would be heard — the end of an era for the university, but also a new beginning.
For the past [...]
Music ‘can enhance wine taste’
Posted in music on May 14th, 2008
From the BBC: Music ‘can enhance wine taste’.
Playing a certain type of music can enhance the way wine tastes, research by psychologists suggests.
The Heriot Watt University study found people rated the change in taste by up to 60% depending on the melody heard.
The researchers said cabernet sauvignon was most affected by "powerful and heavy" music, [...]
Vivaldi work revived 278 years on
Posted in music on May 4th, 2008
From the Beeb: Vivaldi work revived 278 years on.
A long-lost opera by the Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi has been performed for the first time in 278 years, in the city of Prague.
Argippo was written for the Czech capital and premiered there in 1730.
But the opera – a tale of "passion, love and trickery" in an [...]
Experts ‘rebuild’ composer’s face
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Apr 13th, 2008
From the BBC: Experts ‘rebuild’ composer’s face
The face of Johann Sebastian Bach has been recreated by experts at Dundee University more than 250 years after the German composer’s death.
It is believed that only one portrait he sat for still exists.
However, forensic artists at the university built up a picture of his appearance using a bronze [...]
No Quasimodo, he brings music to Notre-Dame bells
Posted in history & archaeology, music, religion on Feb 8th, 2008
From the New York Times: No Quasimodo, He Brings Music to Notre-Dame Bells.
Stéphane Urbain stood leaning against a heavy wood frame high in the north tower of Notre-Dame, wrapped in a navy blue woolen cape against the wind, as he waited for the bells to sound.
Then three of the four immense bells tolled, shaking the [...]
Lost 16th-Century Mass discovered by Berkeley music scholar
Posted in history & archaeology, music on Dec 2nd, 2007
From Lost 16th-Century Mass Discovered by Berkeley Music Scholar.
More than 400 years after Italian composer Alessandro Striggio wrote his extravagant 40-part Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, it has been rediscovered by a Berkeley music scholar who identified the work and rescued it from obscurity.
Although most of Striggio’s piece is in 40 different voice parts, [...]
Solemnes
Posted in history & archaeology, music, religion on Apr 10th, 2007
Oh, look! The New York Times has an article about Solemnes:
One of the tasks of Roger Server as mayor of this quaint village in western France is to console misguided tourists who want to hear the monks in its 11th-century monastery singing in Gregorian chant. "People come and ask, ‘Can you visit the concerts?’ "
Tourists [...]
Now this is lovely. Here are the Monks and Choirs of Kiev Pechersk Lavra, with:
…26 hymns from the ancient church, sung by the monks of the historic Kiev-Pechersk cave monastery. Included are rare sacred music pieces by both Rachmaninov and the Italian composer J.Sarti, who was so enraptured by Orthodox singing that he left Italy [...]