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Greeting & three musics for Sunday Surprise: Rouse, Ligeti, Teeth

Sunday, September 29th, 2019

[ by Charles Cameron — with a definition that places poetry and the drama as a subset of music ]
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L’shana tovah!

**

Christopher Rouse just died. I knew nothing of him, but already I love his Gorgon:

May he rest in peace.

Ligeti, Mysteries Macabre with the astounding Patricia Kopatchinskaja:

Furiously at play!

Kopatchinskaja it is, I guess, who writes:

Temperature and ocean levels go up. Whole world regions dry out. Hundreds of millions will have to leave, migrate, millions will fight wars, no end being in sight. Can we go on listening as usual to Buxtehude, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Bruckner?

and at last Teeth — with the Ligeti from the late ’70s as context, the stunning Roomful Of Teeth plays Caroline Shaw‘s Pulitzer-winning Partita:

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Music, it would seem, is the chosen placement of sounds, random or chosen, from the field of all sounds, in some form or container within which they may bounce and reverberate.

Note that under this definition, the barnyard’s sounds may sound (Ligeti, children’s rhymes), as may silence..

the words of operas and masses..

Note too, that under this definition, plays and poetry are a subset of music, also.

**

L’shana tovah!

Terrorism, a ‘Pataphysical “definition”

Thursday, June 25th, 2015

[ by Charles Cameron — Escher, Mallarmé, Jarry, Macdonald, and Alex Schmid ]
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SPEC DQ terrorism the 'pataphysical proof

Sources:

  • Stuart Macdonald, entry in “Defining terrorism: an impossible puzzle” contest
  • Stéphane Mallarmé, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard
  • The DoubleQuote format is mine own
  • Further refs:

  • Alex Schmid, The Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism
  • Alfred Jarry, Exploits and Opinions of Dr Faustroll Pataphysician

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