Nowhere is safe from Messiaen


Violainvilnius commented on my recent post on Stockhausen's teachers "OMG, we'll have a Messiaen year next year? Where can I emigrate to?". Well, according to today's Observer nowhere is safe.

"Radiohead's exuberantly talented Jonny Greenwood is using his time as composer-in-residence with the BBC Concert Orchestra to allow his influences - Ligeti, Messiaen, Dutilleux and Penderecki - to guide his quirky, uneven pen. They certainly seem to be at work behind his latest offering, the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed new film, There Will Be Blood, due for release in the UK next February.

Those arid plains are captured impressively in the opening track 'Open Spaces', which employs what is fast becoming Greenwood's 'signature', the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument. Its oscillating frequencies have just the right haunting, vocal quality to evoke an empty, forbidding landscape."

Sample a unique sound world with Naxos' excellent Music of the Ondes Martenot. And read the extraordinary story of another electronic instrument here.
No, it's not an Ondes Martenot. Photo is of Jonny Greenwood playing an Analogue Systems rs6000 synthesizer. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Henry Holland said…
Violainvilnius commented on my recent post on Stockhausen's teachers "OMG, we'll have a Messiaen year next year? Where can I emigrate to?"

Hahaha. I feel your pain, that was me during the Shostakovich centenary last year.

Nice to see big ol' hulking modular synthesizers making a comeback. Ah, the late 60's, early 70's......
11:44 pm
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