Not really sure how to say exactly what I’m looking for.
Let me lay down some soft criteria to get started, but if you think you have a great suggestion that doesn’t quite fit my description feel free to ignore any of the criteria I’ve laid down.
Basically looking for experiments in using sound recording to make art with no heed to popular accessibility. A great comparison point would maybe be Buñuel and Dalí excited about the possibilities opened up by the medium of film and putting their vision into Un Chien Andalou. Something like that but using the sound recording medium instead of film.
Actual discernable music would not completely disqualify a recording if you happen to have a suggestion that is sufficiently bizarre. Spoken and/or sung words are also acceptable so long as the resulting recording is out-there and not fitting in with simple popular entertainment.
I do, however, want to stick to pre-1950 recording.
Bonus points for the furthest back suggestions (got something pre-1900?).
Again, I know I’m not giving you much to go on. Truth is, I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for. I think it will be an “I’ll know it when I hear it” situation.
Maybe too mainstream musically but - how about Sister Rosetta Tharpe - gospel singer of the 30s and 40s who incorporated electric guitar before it was popular? Here’s her whaling on the electric guitar from a recording from 1938. Here’s video of her (although it’s from the 60s I’m guessing)
Thanks, Morbo, I had heard Sister Rosetta Tharpe before but I needed a reminder. I’m glad you got me to listen to her again.
dropzone, great stuff! Pierre Schaeffer is very much the kind of thing I’m looking for. And I love the George Antheil piece- it doesn’t fit with what I need right now but I really really love it and I am so glad you introduced me to it.
The oldest “avant garde” recording I know of was Antonio Russolo’s recording of his brother Luigi’s composition Corale from 1921. (The weird wind-like noises are home-made instruments he called “intonarumori”.) The problem with finding early recording s of avant-garde music was the limitations of the 78rpm record; lasting only five minutes a side and with awful sound (lots of surface noise, poor frequency response) few composers bothered recording the more out there works.
Thanks, InstallLSC, that’s pretty good too.
I probably shouldn’t have used the term avant-garde. I realize the term has very specific meaning in art history. I just meant experimental, nontraditional, unconventional.
The limitations of the technology shouldn’t be an issue since I’m specifically looking for artists who saw the technology as a new medium itself. Rather than just a means to preserve, duplicate, and sell copies of a performance that would otherwise be presented live in front of an audience.
Most of their work was post-1950, but Louis and Bebe Barron started doing their weird electronic music in the late 1940s. As the Wikipedia article on them observes: “The Barrons’ music was noticed by the avant-garde scene.” (in nthe early 1950s).
As a big SF movie fan, of course I’m familiar with them from their innovative first-ever electronic film score for Forbidden Planet (they were originally only supposed to provide the alien “Krel music”, but when director Wilcox heard their stuff he decided to use it for the entire picture. They weren’t in the Holywood guilds, so they didn’t get a “score by” credit – it was credited as “Electronic tonalities by…”) My copy of the film score also includes earlier work by the Barrons. You can hear the genesis of some of the themes from FP, and much other weirdness besides.
Raymond Scott did a lot of experiments in electronic and avant garde music in the 30s and 40s. He’s best known for his jazz work (his “Powerhouse” is familiar to just about everyone, even if they don’t know the name).
You might want to look into early music concrète. The term itself is known by 1949 and most of the stuff I know is slightly after the 1950 cutoff date, but that article has a number of “proto-concrete” examples that should interest you.
[Olivier Messiaen’s “Fête des Belles Eaux”](Fête des Belles Eaux) (1937). Not musique concrete, but scored for six early electronic instruments called the ondes martenot.
ETA: Oh, thought of another one, and this one is pretty early:
Luigi Russolo - “Veglio de Una Città” (1918). Look around for other examples of Russolo’s work. He was part of the Futurist music movement, and one of the first, if not first “noise artist.”