do you think there is a relationship between space and music? what kind? different kinds?

The industrial sound has haunted techno music for a decade now. And industrial has split into two directions: popular dance music with a hard edge, like the so-called Rotterdam school, and an artier, even more minimalist school which makes roaring white noise untainted by music. Japan, that science-fiction writer's dream of a technological fantasy world, is a centre for these experimental noise bands, bands which often attach shocking sexual performances to their painful concerts. The idea here, as it was with the Dadaists of 1915, is mayhem and scandal.

you may wish to listen to this again, wehn we discuss dada in a couple of weeks

MUSIC - Arnold Schoenberg: "Three Piano Pieces, Op.11". Glenn Gould, piano. CBS Masterworks Portrait, MPK 45558.

Arnold Schoenberg's "Three Piano Pieces", composed in 1909. To this day, they're difficult to listen to, because they are not written in any musical key, or tonality. They're made from a series of notes, musically unrelated. The series has no central note, or tonic, to give it finality, and so has little of what is usually called a melody. Because there's no tonality, it's called atonal, which to most people means tuneless.

one of the video excerpts we're looking at today -- make me think -- referes to schoenberg -- Theodro Adorno, an important german thoerist/philosopher, also discuss Schoenberg -- in many ways as an example of what poeple 'should' listent to.

listen carefully to the schoenberg piece in the radio clip -- what do you think the appeal of schoenberg is to the 'avant-garde' artists -- a guess is fine!

-- Rites of Spring -- what was controversial? what do you think was at stake?

art and war:

Why was 1913 so important? Why were the arts of 1913 so obsessed with science, with speed, with industry? Perhaps there's an answer in Article #9 of the futurist manifesto:

We want to glorify war -- the only cleanser of the world.

and.

The sense of art as morality; the sense of culture as morality, with some kind of meaningful purpose -- that is exploded by the first world war, as if it were hit by a shell.

The Dadaists, who later moved their spiritual centre to Paris and became the foundation of the suurealist movement, loved nonsense. They also loved collages, random samplings: a technique any lover of contemporary techno music can connect with.

our class october 25th on collagist pratices of knowledge

In 1915, Duchamp proclaimed, "the art of Europe is finished -- dead -- and America is the country of the future... Look at the skyscrapers!

the idea of music as background rather than as illustration or narrative or actual centrepiece is entirely a consequence of the rise of film as the century's dominant art form.

- what do you think?

I'm going to argue that an interest in ambient music is linked to the rising wall of ambient noise that began to surround us as the industrial revolution reached a crescendo and the technological age began.

-- we'll talk at greatlength about how to read critically and effectively, but always be on the lookout for thesis sentences like this

And it wasn't just musicians who noticed. The industrial environment affected poets as well.

1920 was the year that French poet Guillaume Apollinaire published his long poem "Zone", an ode to modernity. "In the end," it begins, "you are weary of the ancient world." Apollinaire abandoned punctuation as Schoenberg had abandoned the diatonic scale. And forget about nature. Apollinaire was in love with technology:

This morning I saw a pretty street whose name I forget
New and clean it was the sun's trumpet
Managers workers and lovely stenographers
Pass by four times a day
Monday morning to Saturday evening
In the morning three times the siren moans
A furious bell barks around noon
Graffiti signs and billboards
Posters notices shriek like parrots
I love the grace of this industrial street