#Kazimierz Serocki

[loveforrecorders]

Kazimierz Serocki : Arrangements (1975/76)

Subtitled "for 1-4 recorders" - any combination of soprano, alto, tenor and bass recorders - this amazing piece (like Makoto Shinohara's "Fragmente" which I previously uploaded) is another 'mobile' form work. There are 17 sections, each on one page, which may be "arranged" in any order. Four pages contain a solo - one for each player - and the rest contain every combination of duos and trios, plus three pages for the full quartet. Serocki asks that if a quartet version is performed, the solos be omitted, so this performance is every page except numbers 1 to 4.

Perhaps more than any other, this piece really demonstrates the full range of extended techniques, and exotic sounds available on the recorder. Besides glissandos, multiphonics and various overblown noises, Serocki writes several sections which use just the head joints of the dismantled recorders, the pitch controlled by the player opening and closing the end of the joint with his/her hand, like a brass 'wah-wah' mute. This is the source of the strange, haunting drones on page 10 (1:33) and the wild aviary of birdsong-type sounds on page 11 (4:13).

In order to notate all these new sounds, Serocki invented a huge number of idiosyncratic symbols - the score comes with a handbook explaining them all (!) - which I think makes it look completely unique, like a great piece of graphic design.

Interestingly, the composer noticed the similarity between the sound of singing/playing the recorder simultaneously and some electronic music (the sound is very like electronic ring modulation), and the piece is full of timbres which seem inspired by the tape music of the 60s and 70s although, of course, the piece is entirely acoustic.

The players in this virtuoso performance (released in 2012) are Gunther Holler, Michael Schneider, Christian Seher and Czeslaw Palkowski. It's a live recording, hence the occasional cough from the audience and the enormous sneeze at 5:21.

[fundacjawspak]

🎬Piątkowe Studium Filmowe

Czy twoja ulubiona scena nadal byłaby ulubioną, gdyby pozbawić ją muzyki?

W ostatnich wpisach wspominałam już o kilku elementach, które składają się na dzieło filmowe: dźwięk, charakteryzacja, dzieło literackie jako źródło fabuły, efekty specjalne. Dziś jest czas na muzykę. Czasami jest jedynie tłem, a czasem nawet jednym z głównych elementów narracji. Niezaprzeczalnie ważna, bo obecna w każdym z gatunków i rodzajów filmowych, towarzyszyła kinie od samych początków. Kiedy jest źle napisana, czy źle dopasowana potrafi nawet przyćmić albo obrzydzić warstwę wizualną filmu i całe o nim wrażenie. Na szczęście bywa, że w połączeniu z innymi elementami filmu współdziała tak perfekcyjnie, że tworzy absolutnie ikoniczne sceny (i filmy). A zdarza się też tak, że film zostaje zapomniany, a muzyka latami cieszy się sławą... Przedstawiam moje propozycje i czekam na wasze!

Celina Cieślak

"Titanic", muzyka: James Horner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB7-fpByIIw

"Once Upon A Time In The West", muzyka: Ennio Morricone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp0d330bbxs

"Psycho", muzyka: Bernard Herrmann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY

"Potop", muzyka: Kazimierz Serocki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejAECMKuoaU

"Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain", muzyka: Yann Tiersen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2vTkFFuQYY

"Trędowata", muzyka: Wojciech Kilar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=737uVSj3gJQ

Fundacja WSPAK,  24 listopada 2017

[composerss-blog]

Kazimierz Serocki

[killedincars]

Kazimierz Serocki - 'Musica Concertante: Segments for Chamber Orchestra; Episodes; Symphonic Frescos'[Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Krenz] Vinyl LP, Wergo (1970)

My only contact with Kazimierz Serocki had been through a tiny song called: “Eyes of Air”, made after a poem by Julian Przybos, and in the voice of diva Halina Lukomska. The song can be found in a split-release whose original pressing from 1968 I was lucky enough to get, and is thereby included along with works by Lutoslawsk and Augustyn Bloch. Beautiful as it is the song does not convey, even remotely, the scope, range and reach of Serocki’s aesthetics, into which I crashed head-on in awe and curiosity; the four pieces showcase atonal music, lively and sparkling insightful as can be. Serocki’s works, composed from 1958 to mid-sixties ascribes to radical atonalism and delves into blends of serialism freely conceived, invented by himself. If I played these pieces asking you to guess who had written them I am sure three names would pop up, maybe not in the following order apart from the first: Iannis Xenakis, and then Giacinto Scelsi and Hans Werner Henze. These pieces sound stochastic a-la-Xenakis, but stochastic with a twist. In fact Serocki did not feel oppressed by that which Ianni identified as too deterministic patterns in serial rationalities that prevailed at the time when he proposed his stochastic music (term stems from the Greek: random). To get a vantage point on Serockis’ aural choices one should bear in mind one great political-aesthetical conundrum. First what the conundrum is not about: it is not at all to be or not to be serialist or, in other words, to ascribe or not to ascribe to serialism in avant-garde classical. Serialisms will be as many as composers will design them. To adopt this or that serial episteme, including inventing a brand new one, will always be a practice of freedom. That was, bluntly put, why Xenakis, by making resistance to some modalities of serialism as too deterministic, ended up inventing a new serialism. Absolutely successful in his invention, and once more opening up new directions in modern music -- it was a routine in Xenakis career, by the way --, stochastic music brought in ‘probability distributions’ and indeterminacy (nothing to do with Cage’s) into serialism to great effect and wonderful consequences. But it was and has been another blend of serialism. Then again, if being serialist or not is not the big conundrum in modern avant-garde music, which is the conundrum? It is to be or not be atonal. In atonal realm, any system, whatever one decides to call this system, which steps out of totally arbitrary, unrepeatable randomness, will be a serial or serialist episteme. Furthermore, one does not need to emulate or copy Anton Webern -- or any other foundational role model -- in order to make serialist music, as many still insist in claiming or indirectly assuming. Hence, at the end of the day, Serocki’s hard-core serialism (some of it incorporating splinters of the good ‘old-ever-green’ twelve-tone template) reaches the intensity of the boiling points and the dizzying heights of Xenakis’ stochastic music, without ever being infused with the latter’s stochasticism. Nevertheless, what Serocki shared with Xenakis and which made feasible the unleashing of his innovative drives away from tonal hegemony was the radical option of making atonal music in novel ways; novel ways meant serialist ways. Thus, if there are oppressive inflections to be identified and opposed to, they are tonal epistemes, not serialism(s). If some fancy record label such as Kairós, Col Legno, Neos, Da Capo, and Mode released new renditions of the pieces hereby included (with a track-list as it reads in this release, just for fun, as if it was a remake), it would become an instant cult as any release by Haas, Nørgård, Ruders, Ablinger, or Lachenmann. If you are into avant-garde classics and find this LP (hard to believe it was released in 1970) in mint or good or any condition, consider purchasing it on the spot. I will digitalise my copy before holes appear in it…

docperkins