{"id":5037,"date":"2019-04-22T09:40:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T13:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2021-04-15T21:47:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T01:47:26","slug":"raggin-the-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2019\/04\/raggin-the-classics.html","title":{"rendered":"Raggin\u2019 the Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet…”<\/p>William Shakespeare: King John<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electronica artist Max Cooper<\/a> and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called \u201cGlassforms.\u201d It\u2019s a commission from the Philharmonie de Paris<\/a> and we will play it as part of their Philip Glass weekend in May. Shows follow in London<\/a>, Barcelona<\/a>, and Bordeaux. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We overlay electronic sounds \u2014 onto piano music by Glass. There have been Glass remixes before, \u201cGlassforms\u201d is something else. Live onstage, I play an acoustic grand piano (with MIDI<\/a> output), and the computer, the synths, the electronic effects respond to what I do, differently at each performance. The MIDI information coming from the piano allows precise rhythmic syncing, making possible many layers of correspondence between real-time details in piano playing and electronic sound. Max\u2019s algorithms generate material that may precisely coincide with the rhythms I play, or, alternately, add greater complexity to the overall rhythm fabric of the music. The colors and the mixture of the colors of the electronic sounds are highly controlled yet vary considerably. As I am playing \u201cGlassforms,\u201d I am frequently surprised. It\u2019s like playing chamber music with a colleague who plays different pitches and rhythms in their part every night!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Geoffrey Hulme: Glass Blowing, Harry Hassent<\/em> and No. 8 Pot<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cGlassforms,\u201d everything emanates from the touching of the piano keys. If I don\u2019t play, no electronic sounds are heard. I can provoke the synths to make sounds by silently depressing piano keys. I sometimes do this in the short interludes that I improvise between pieces. In the interludes, I also make sounds by playing on the keys in the conventional way. We are giving the classics of the Philip Glass piano repertoire a 21st-century context, or frame<\/a>, or new clothes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a long history of arranging and rearranging music for keyboard. The very earliest keyboard music adapts pre-existing vocal music. Virtuoso pianists have made transcriptions of famous pieces with new fashionable harmonies or fancy embellishment, Leopold Godowsky\u2019s chromaticizations around Schubert\u2019s \u201cUnfinished\u201d Symphony, Godowsky\u2019s arrangement<\/a> or Sorabji\u2019s adaptation<\/a> of Chopin\u2019s so-called \u201cMinute\u201d Waltz — or Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin’s mannerist \u201cMinute-Waltz\u201d comedy<\/a>! Arrangements can be modernizations. There are Robert Schumann\u2019s piano accompaniments for Paganini\u2019s solo violin caprices, or Charles Gounod\u2019s melody added to the first prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, there was a taste for ragtime versions of familiar classical piano pieces. Some were published \u2014 or these treatments might be spontaneous. James P. Johnson<\/a> and others were known for \u201craggin\u2019 the classics,\u201d syncopated rhythms and jumping accompaniments applied to well-known piano favorites. This was a bridging between musical practices, also a societal interconnection. Perhaps \u201cGlassforms\u201d does something similar…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music of Philip Glass is not exactly \u201cclassical\u201d music. I do play it on an acoustic grand piano. For many, the big grand piano is a symbol of \u201chigh\u201d European culture. Max Cooper\u2019s electronic sound world is associated with dance clubs or dance music festivals. The largest number of people listening to music in the world today are hearing electronically processed sounds. The effects of electricity may be subtle. Often though, our electronic processes lead to transformations of musical sound and design. In popular music there\u2019s a strong attraction to obvious manipulation of the human voice (the vocoder<\/a>), and to looping and beats made possible by the computer. \u201cGlassforms\u201d brings acoustic piano music into that electronically enabled 21st-century practice of music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early as the 1970s, Karlheinz Stockhausen suggested that the satisfying presentation of piano music in a concert hall would require elaborate amplification, so that a large audience could hear the small details of piano inflection that can be clear in sound recordings. Soon after the beginning of the 21st century, Nico Muhly and I played \u201cHaydnseek<\/a>.\u201d Electronic sounds, melodies, extended harmony, distortion were all added to piano sonatas by Franz Joseph Haydn played in real time by me (and slightly amplified). Some points in the performance were like putting graffiti on Haydn\u2019s music, Nico said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet…” William Shakespeare: King John Electronica artist Max Cooper and I launch a new project this spring, a collaboration called \u201cGlassforms.\u201d It\u2019s a commission from the Philharmonie de Paris and we will play it as part of their Philip Glass weekend in May. Shows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1453,1448,1452,1451,1441,6,1445,1446,1459,1460,1461,1462,1340,1463,1187,1450,1447,33,200,32,422,1456,1464,1443,402,403,404,1444,1442,1458,1449,562,990],"class_list":{"0":"post-5037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-arrangement","9":"tag-barbican","10":"tag-barcelona","11":"tag-cooper","12":"tag-electronica","13":"tag-glass","14":"tag-glassforms","15":"tag-glasstronica","16":"tag-godowsky","17":"tag-hamelin","18":"tag-haydnseek","19":"tag-ica","20":"tag-infine","21":"tag-marc-andre","22":"tag-max","23":"tag-max-cooper","24":"tag-midi","25":"tag-muhly","26":"tag-nico","27":"tag-nico-muhly","28":"tag-paris","29":"tag-passages","30":"tag-phiharmonie","31":"tag-philharmonie-de-paris","32":"tag-philip","33":"tag-philip-glass","34":"tag-piano","35":"tag-remix","36":"tag-sonar","37":"tag-sorabji","38":"tag-sound-unbound","39":"tag-transcription","40":"tag-virtuoso","41":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5037"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5575,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions\/5575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}