Searching for a Messiaen piece and a Subotnick piece.

best answer ever

( sigh )

milton, can you e-mail me? salvadorsaca@gmail.net

I'd love to hear the Messiaen myself. I'm not sure it was ever commercially released, I remember reading that Messiaen was dissatisfied with the result, and that the piece was very short. This was 1952, heighth of serialism, I imagine he was attempting to use the primitive equipment, aiming for total organization, and was shocked at the number of man hours required to realize a single tone row, let alone polyphony.

Also interesting is that he went to Schaeffer's GRM studios to create it, the anti-serialists. One wonders what would have happened if he'd had a better time at WDR with those efficient germans. Pierre Henry is credited alternately as engineer or co-composer depending on the source, those must have been some interesting conversations.

the Messiaen piece has just been released as part of the GRM Archives 5 CD set

http://www.discogs.com/release/375844
review here at good ol' Ingvar's site: http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco19/grm/grm1.html

it's available at forced exposure. just bought one.

and I was wrong above, it's not a short piece; it's fifteen minutes long. can hardly wait to hear it.

Give us your review, Milton.

And also, could you rip that and somehow ysi, Milton? I don't have enough money right now for the whole set and I can't find the mp3 anywhere.

Well, I queued it up on slsk already. Is the whole box worth it?

julio posted that track to noise ysi last week actually.

it's great to hear it, though it's one of the least compelling pieces on the box. which, overall, is amazing -- one incredible track after another. Most from people I've never heard of, people who never got full length albums out but poured everything they had into one 8-10 minute mini-symphony. I don't love every piece but the level of quality is astounding. It's not all chin-strokey either, most of it is just the weird stuff, the noise stuff, the good stuff.

I've read two online reviews, one of which was edited down for the Wire, and that's it. It sure would be nice if an amazing box like this could do well -- people looking for the roots of the strange stuff would love this if they only knew about it, but few critics are seeking this stuff out.

here are the two reviews

beloved loony Ingvar:
http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco19/grm/grm1.html
Dan Warburton:
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2005/03mar_text.html#4

Thanks! Yeah, Messiaen himself wasn't so satisfied with the end result of that particular piece. Glad to know you like it. I'll eventually get this, of course.