Watch Priceless 17-Century Stradivarius and Amati Violins Get Taken for a Test Drive by Professional Violinists

in History, Museums, Music | January 18th, 2017

Mate­ri­als like car­bon fiber and Lucite have been mak­ing their way into clas­si­cal stringed instru­ment design for many years, and we’ve recent­ly seen the 3‑D print­ed elec­tric vio­lin come into being. It’s an impres­sive-sound­ing instru­ment, one must admit. But trained clas­si­cal vio­lin­ists, luthiers, music his­to­ri­ans, and col­lec­tors all agree: the vio­lin has nev­er real­ly been improved upon since around the turn of the 18th cen­tu­ry, when two its finest makers—the Amati and Stradi­vari families—were at their peak. A few stud­ies have tried to poke holes in the argu­ment that such vio­lins are supe­ri­or in sound to mod­ern makes. There are many rea­sons to view these claims with skep­ti­cism.

By the time the most expert Ital­ian luthiers began mak­ing vio­lins, the instru­ment had already more or less assumed its final shape, after the long evo­lu­tion of its f‑holes into the per­fect son­ic con­duit. How­ev­er, Amati and Stradi­vari not only refined the violin’s curves, edges, and neck design, they also intro­duced new chem­i­cal process­es meant to pro­tect the wood from worms and insects.

One bio­chem­istry pro­fes­sor dis­cov­ered that these chem­i­cals “had the unin­tend­ed result of pro­duc­ing the unique sounds that have been almost impos­si­ble to dupli­cate in the past 400 years.”

Know­ing they had hit upon a win­ning for­mu­la, the top mak­ers passed their tech­niques down for sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions, mak­ing hun­dreds of vio­lins and oth­er instru­ments. A great many of these instru­ments sur­vive, though a mar­ket for fakes thrives along­side them. The instru­ments you see in the videos here are the real thing, four of the world’s old­est and most price­less vio­lins, all of them resid­ing at The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. These date from the late 1600s to ear­ly 1700s, and were all made in Cre­mona, the North­ern Ital­ian home of the great mas­ters. At the top of the post, you can see Sean Avram Car­pen­ter play Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor on a 1669 vio­lin made by Nicolò Amati.

The next three videos are of vio­lins made by Anto­nio Stradi­vari, per­haps once an appren­tice of Amati. Each instru­ment has its own nick­name: “The Gould” dates from 1693 and is, writes the Met, “the only [Stradi­vari] in exis­tence that has been restored to its orig­i­nal Baroque form.” We can see Car­pen­ter play Bach’s Sonata in C major on this instru­ment fur­ther up. Both “The Gould” and the Amati vio­lin were made before mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the angle of the neck cre­at­ed “a loud­er, more bril­liant tone.” Above you can hear “The Francesca,” from 1694. Car­pen­ter plays from “Liebesleid” by Fritz Kreisler with the pianist Gabriela Mar­tinez. See if you can tell the dif­fer­ence in tone between this instru­ment and the first two, less mod­ern designs.

The last vio­lin fea­tured here, “The Anto­nius,” made by Stradi­vari in 1717, gets a demon­stra­tion in front of a live audi­ence by Eric Gross­man, who plays the cha­conne from Bach’s Par­ti­ta No. 2 in D minor. This instru­ment comes from what is called Stradivari’s “Gold­en Peri­od,” the years between 1700 and 1720. Some of the most high­ly val­ued of Stradi­varii in pri­vate hands date from around this time. And some of these instru­ments have his­to­ries that may jus­ti­fy their stag­ger­ing price tags. The Moli­tor Stradi­var­ius, for exam­ple, was sup­pos­ed­ly owned by Napoleon. But no mat­ter the pre­vi­ous own­er or num­ber of mil­lions paid, every vio­lin cre­at­ed by one of these mak­ers car­ries with it tremen­dous pres­tige. Is it deserved? Hear­ing them might make you a believ­er. Joseph Nagy­vary, the Texas A&M pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus who is dis­cov­er­ing their secrets, tells us, “the great vio­lin mas­ters were mak­ing vio­lins with more human­like voic­es than any oth­ers of the time.” Or any since, most experts would agree.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does a $45 Mil­lion Vio­la Sound Like? Vio­list David Aaron Car­pen­ter Gives You a Pre­view

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Print­ed Vio­lin

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Scores That Electronic Music Pioneer Wendy Carlos Composed for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and The Shining

in Film, Music | January 17th, 2017

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we fea­tured Every Frame a Paint­ing’s video essay on how bland and uno­rig­i­nal so much film music has become. As the essay makes clear—and as the Coen broth­ers and Carter Bur­well revealed in a recent round­table—part of the prob­lem is the ubiq­ui­ty of “temp music”—the music direc­tors and edi­tors use as tem­po­rary scores in rough cuts. Some kind of iner­tia has trapped Hol­ly­wood com­posers into copy­ing clas­si­cal works, and each oth­er, in ways that often verge on pla­gia­rism.

In con­trast to this ten­den­cy, some direc­tors sim­ply find that their temp music is so com­pelling that they are com­pelled to keep it. In per­haps the best exam­ple of this, Stan­ley Kubrick tossed out Alex North’s score for the final cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey and kept the music of Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss, of Ligeti, Khacha­turi­an, and oth­ers. North famous­ly didn’t find out until the film’s pre­miere. Com­par­ing North’s mild score with, for exam­ple, Thus Spake Zarathus­tra, we can hard­ly fault the director’s choice, but he could have com­mu­ni­cat­ed it bet­ter.

This episode might have deterred anoth­er Kubrick com­pos­er, Wendy Car­los, who end­ed up pro­vid­ing music for two of his best-known lat­er films. Fans of both Kubrick and Car­los will be grate­ful that it didn’t, though the expe­ri­ence became a frus­trat­ing one for Car­los, who often found her music nudged out as well. Nonethe­less, her con­tri­bu­tions to A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing are indis­pens­able in cre­at­ing the dread and hor­ror that car­ry through these cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces. As you can hear in the open­ing title music for both films, at the top and below, Car­los’ synth scores set up the near-unbear­able ten­sions in Kubrick­’s worlds.

In fact, Car­los came to promi­nence by doing what many a film com­pos­er does, inter­pret­ing the work of clas­si­cal com­posers. But her rework­ings of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart are unique, made on ear­ly Moog syn­the­siz­ers, which she had a hand in design­ing while a stu­dent at Colum­bia University’s Elec­tron­ic Music Cen­ter in the six­ties. Her album Switched on Bach, released the same year as 2001, won the com­pos­er three Gram­my Awards, put Baroque music on the pop charts, gar­nered the high­est praise from no less a key­board author­i­ty than Glenn Gould, and “made elec­tron­ic music main­stream.”

The album also put Car­los on Kubrick’s radar and he hired her and pro­duc­er Rachel Elkind to com­pose the score for 1972’s A Clock­work Orange. Much of the music Car­los wrote or inter­pret­ed for the film wound up being cut, but what remained—the haunt­ing arrange­ment of Hen­ry Pur­cell in the film’s open­ing title, for example—has become insep­a­ra­ble from the clas­si­cal and futur­is­tic ele­ments com­min­gled in Kubrick’s adap­ta­tion of Antho­ny Burgess. Car­los’ com­plete orig­i­nal score has since been released as a CD, which you can pur­chase. The first track, “Timesteps,” as the album’s lin­er notes inform us, was both the only orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion that made it into the film and the first record­ing Car­los sent to Kubrick.

As Car­los her­self writes on her web­site, she found the abridge­ment of her music “frus­trat­ing… as these were among the best things we’d done for the project.” Eight years lat­er, dur­ing her work on The Shin­ing, she would almost suf­fer the same fate as Alex North when she and Elkind wrote a com­plete score for the film and Kubrick—writes site The Over­look Hotel—“end­ed up using only two of their com­plete tracks, ‘The Shin­ing’ (Main Title), and ‘Rocky Moun­tains.’” As with 2001, the per­fec­tion­is­tic direc­tor instead decid­ed on sev­er­al clas­si­cal compositions—from Ligeti, Pen­derec­ki, Bar­tok and oth­ers.

And who can fault his choice? As The Cin­emol­o­gists observe, his use of music has end­ed up inform­ing hor­ror film scores ever since, as Bernard Hermann’s Psy­cho score had twen­ty years ear­li­er. But Car­los was soured on the rela­tion­ship and vowed nev­er again to work with Kubrick on anoth­er project. Yet again, we can be grate­ful for the col­lab­o­ra­tion. Her music for the title sequence (with Elkind’s dis­tort­ed voice)—so weird­ly, dis­so­nant­ly ominous—provides the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to one of the most com­plex open­ing sequences in film his­to­ry.

In this case also, we can hear what Car­los intend­ed, with the release of two vol­umes of Car­los’ “lost scores” that include her Shin­ing com­po­si­tions along with those from A Clock­work Orange and Tron. You can pur­chase those com­pi­la­tions here and here and read lin­er notes here and here. Car­los has worked hard to safe­guard her pri­va­cy, and you’ll find lit­tle of her music online. Yet her strange­ly com­pelling sound­tracks are well worth track­ing down in any form you can find them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Watch “The Cor­ri­dor,” a Trib­ute to the Music Video Stan­ley Kubrick Planned to Make Near the End of His Life

Watch a Shot-by-Shot Remake of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, a 48-Minute Music Video Accom­pa­ny­ing the New Album by Aesop Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Grateful Dead Pays Tribute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Concert: Hear “Raven Space”

in Music | January 17th, 2017

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured numer­ous read­ings of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous nar­ra­tive poem, “The Raven” (1845). Nar­ra­tions by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, Christo­pher Lee, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee and John Astin (think The Addams Fam­i­ly)–they’ve all got­ten some air­time here on Open Cul­ture. Now you can add The Grate­ful Dead to the list. Kind of.

In April 19, 1982, the Dead played their final show of an East Coast tour in Bal­ti­more, the town where Poe lived and even­tu­al­ly died (under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances, I might add). About 15 songs into their set, the band wheeled two giants tanks of nitrous oxide onstage and launched into their long improvs “Drums” and “Space.” In what’s since been dubbed “Raven Space” (lis­ten above), an eerie sound­scape unfolds. Then bassist Phil Lesh, says grim­ly “Quoth the Raven ‘Nev­er­more,’ ” let­ting you know what idea they’re riff­ing on. No com­plete nar­ra­tion of “The Raven” fol­lows. The homage to Poe is more con­cep­tu­al than lit­er­al, just as you might expect from the Dead.

You can lis­ten to the Dead­’s com­plete Bal­ti­more show here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price & Christo­pher Lee

Neil Gaiman Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”: One Mas­ter of Dra­mat­ic Sto­ry­telling Reads Anoth­er

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

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Alan Turing Gets Channeled in a New Opera: Hear Audio from The Life And Death(S) Of Alan Turing

in Computer Science, Music, Opera, Science | January 16th, 2017

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Steve Park­er

It can seem like a cru­el irony that some of the most cel­e­brat­ed peo­ple of our day did­n’t receive the same acclaim dur­ing their some­times trou­bled lives. Van Gogh may have been on the cusp of fame when he died despair­ing and broke, but few could have imag­ined then that he would be the uni­ver­sal­ly beloved and admired artist he became in the fol­low­ing decades. (A recent Doc­tor Who episode poignant­ly imag­ined Van Gogh trav­el­ing to our time to wit­ness his lega­cy.) In a more recent exam­ple in the sci­ences, the book—now film—Hid­den Fig­ures cel­e­brates three pre­vi­ous­ly unsung African-Amer­i­can women: math­e­mati­cians, or “human com­put­ers,” whose cal­cu­la­tions were instru­men­tal to NASA’s suc­cess but whose accom­plish­ments were obscured by prej­u­dice.

The same could not quite be said for Alan Tur­ing, anoth­er genius recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed in a mul­ti­ple-award-win­ning Hol­ly­wood film, award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, and spate of arti­cles, essays, and books. Tur­ing was vicious­ly per­se­cut­ed for his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by the state, and he has often been unfair­ly char­ac­ter­ized in many por­tray­als since.

In 1952, he was con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” for a rela­tion­ship with anoth­er man and giv­en the choice between prison and chem­i­cal cas­tra­tion. The bril­liant Eng­lish math­e­mati­cian, code­break­er, and father of mod­ern com­put­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence chose the lat­ter, and the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects were so demor­al­iz­ing that he took his own life two years later—perhaps grim­ly inspir­ing the Apple logo as he enact­ed his favorite scene from Snow White (a mat­ter in some dis­pute, it should be not­ed).

Tur­ing “left behind a last­ing lega­cy,” note the mak­ers of the docu-dra­ma Code­break­ers, “and lin­ger­ing ques­tions about what else he might have accom­plished if soci­ety had embraced his unique genius instead of reject­ing it.” It’s not fair to say that soci­ety reject­ed his genius—perhaps even more trag­i­cal­ly, it reject­ed his full human­i­ty. Turing’s genius, though cut short at 41, received its due, inspir­ing, since 1966, the high­est award in com­put­er sci­ence. His famed “Tur­ing test” became the stan­dard by which near­ly all attempts at arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence have been mea­sured. In addi­tion to those films, books, and essays, Tur­ing has been much laud­ed in musi­cal pro­duc­tions, name­ly the Pet Shop Boys “orches­tral pop biog­ra­phy” A Man From the Future and a 30-minute ora­to­rio by Adam Gop­nik and com­pos­er Nico Muh­ly called Sen­tences.

And now, a new two-act opera, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Tur­ing, was pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic for the first time, in its entire­ty, on Jan­u­ary 12th at New York’s Amer­i­can Lyric The­ater (ALT). Com­mis­sioned in 2012, and writ­ten by com­pos­er Jus­tine Chen with a libret­to by David Sim­pati­co, the opera is “a his­toric-fan­ta­sia on Turing’s life” that does not obscure the man as it acknowl­edges his genius. Many crit­ics felt that 2014’s The Imi­ta­tion Game “obfus­cat­ed his sex­u­al­i­ty and desex­u­al­ized him in an attempt to make the sto­ry more main­stream,” remarks Shawn Milnes at The Dai­ly Beast. “He was not a sex­u­al crea­ture in this movie,” agrees Sim­pati­co. “He was in the clos­et.” That impres­sion of Tur­ing’s per­son­al life has almost become com­mon­place. And yet the truth “could­n’t be more oppo­site,” Sim­pati­co argues.

He was com­plete­ly out. He was out upon meet­ing peo­ple. He would say, ‘How are you doing? I’m a homo­sex­u­al. Will you have a prob­lem with that? No.’ He was out to every­body. The movie makes it feel like he had some­thing to hide.

Ful­ly acknowl­edg­ing all of the dimen­sions of Turing’s life allows the opera–The Life and Death(s) of Alan Tur­ing– to draw deeply mov­ing arias from his biog­ra­phy like “Cave of Won­ders,” above, in which Tur­ing express­es “his grief over the loss of his first love,” Christo­pher Mor­com, a fel­low grade school stu­dent who died young in 1930. Tur­ing was “open­ly dev­as­tat­ed” by the event, writes L.V. Ander­son at Slate, “and he sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with Morcom’s fam­i­ly, going on vaca­tions with them and main­tain­ing a cor­re­spon­dence with Morcom’s moth­er for years. In The Imi­ta­tion Game, by con­trast, he “denies hav­ing known Christo­pher very well” in a flash­back scene.

The music of the opera’s Pro­logue, above, owes a debt to com­posers like Steve Reich and John Adams, with its puls­ing piano and cacoph­o­ny of voic­es, sim­u­lat­ing, per­haps, the rush of thought in Turing’s bril­liant mind. At the ALT site, you can hear a fur­ther excerpt from the opera, “The Social Con­tract,” which dra­ma­tizes the pres­sure Turing’s moth­er put on him to mar­ry, and his sub­se­quent con­sid­er­a­tion of a mar­riage of con­ve­nience to his col­league in cryp­to­analy­sis, Joan Clarke. In the opera, writes Milnes, Sim­pati­co had the idea of “fus­ing sex and intel­lect on stage” in order to bal­ance Turing’s por­tray­al and “see who the per­son was,” as he puts it. As Sim­pati­co says, the trag­i­cal­ly per­se­cut­ed genius “had no divi­sion between his sex­u­al, sen­su­al, phys­i­cal car­nal self and his intel­lec­tu­al, cere­bral, inte­ri­or self.” Only peo­ple who couldn’t take them both togeth­er seemed to have found it nec­es­sary to sep­a­rate the two, and thus do ter­ri­ble dam­age to the man as a whole.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books on Young Alan Turing’s Read­ing List: From Lewis Car­roll to Mod­ern Chro­mat­ics

Hear the First Record­ing of Com­put­er Music: Researchers Restore Three Melodies Pro­grammed on Alan Turing’s Com­put­er (1951)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Translated Beatles Songs into Latin for His Students: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

in Education, Language Lessons, Music | January 13th, 2017

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

I’ve inter­act­ed with many enter­tain­ing lan­guage-learn­ing resources in var­i­ous classes—from minis­eries in Span­ish to com­ic books in French—all geared toward mak­ing the unfa­mil­iar lan­guage rel­e­vant to dai­ly life. Learn­ing coun­ter­in­tu­itive pro­nun­ci­a­tions, pars­ing a new sys­tem of gram­mar, or mem­o­riz­ing the gen­ders of word after word can be labo­ri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing in the class­room. Doing so in every­day pop cul­tur­al set­tings, not as much.

When it comes to the teach­ing of dead lan­guages, the resources can seem less approach­able. I cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the lit­er­ary and rhetor­i­cal genius of Vir­gil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and Julius Cae­sar. But dur­ing my high school years, I did not always find their work easy to read in Eng­lish, much less in for­mal clas­si­cal Latin. The ela­tion I felt after suc­cess­ful­ly trans­lat­ing a pas­sage was some­times damp­ened as I puz­zled over his­tor­i­cal notes and gloss­es that often left me with more ques­tions than answers.

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

That’s not at all to say that stu­dents of Latin shouldn’t be exposed to cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­text or read the finest exem­plars of the writ­ten lan­guage. Only that a break from the heavy stuff now and then goes a long way. Might I sub­mit to Latin instruc­tors one inge­nious tool from Eddie O’Hara, for­mer British Labour Par­ty MP and clas­sics teacher? O’Hara passed away in May of last year, and just this past week, his son Ter­ry O’Hara tweet­ed these trans­la­tions of Bea­t­les songs (includ­ing two Christ­mas tunes) his father made in the 60s for his stu­dents. At the time, these were the height of pop cul­ture rel­e­vance, and, while a far cry from the com­plex­i­ties of the Aeneid, a fun way for Latin learn­ers to relate to a lan­guage that can seem cold and impos­ing.

I will admit, my Latin has fall­en into such a state that I can’t imme­di­ate­ly vouch for the accu­ra­cy or ele­gance of these trans­la­tions (“cue fierce argu­ments among Latin gram­mar­i­ans,” replies one Twit­ter user), but there’s no rea­son to doubt Mr. O’Hara knew his stuff. ““He was a born edu­ca­tor,” his son remem­bers, “He was a teacher and clas­si­cist by back­ground and he had a strong inter­est in edu­ca­tion­al mat­ters and Greek cul­tur­al her­itage.” Edu­cat­ed him­self at Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford, O’Hara taught at Perse School, Cam­bridge, Birken­head School, and in the ear­ly 70s, C.F. Mott Col­lege in the Bea­t­les’ own Liv­er­pool.

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

In addi­tion to his role as a states­man, the Liv­er­pool Echo remem­bers O’Hara’s many decades as “a pop­u­lar teacher who brought class­es to life trans­lat­ing Bea­t­les lyrics into Latin.” We do not have any indi­ca­tion of whether he actu­al­ly tried to sing the lyrics, though his stu­dents sure­ly must have attempt­ed it. What must the cho­rus of “All My Lov­ing” sound like as “Ita totum amorem dabo, Tibi totum, numquam cess­a­ba”? Or “She Loves You” as “Amat te, mehercle”? Singing them to myself, I can see that O’Hara was sen­si­tive to the meter of the orig­i­nal Eng­lish in his Latin ren­der­ings. But I’d real­ly love to see some­one set these to music and make a video. Any of our read­ers up to the chal­lenge?

Final­ly, since ear­ly six­ties Bea­t­les lyrics aren’t as like­ly to engage stu­dents in 2017, what pop cul­tur­al mate­r­i­al would you trans­late today—classics teach­ers out there—to reach the bemused, bewil­dered, and the bored? If you’re already hard at work using hip resources in the class­room, please do share them with us in the com­ments!

Note: To view the images in a larg­er for­mat, please click on the links to these indi­vid­u­als images: Image 1 - Image 2 — Image 3. When the image opens, click on it again to zoom in.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

What Ancient Latin Sound­ed Like, And How We Know It

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became the Stan­dard For Type­set­ters Every­where

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” Covered in Unexpected Styles: Gregorian Choir, Cello Ensemble, Finnish Bluegrass, Jazz Vocal & More

in Music | January 11th, 2017

They may have arrived on the scene in the 80s as one of the four horse­men of thrash metal—kin to such cud­dly acts as Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer—but believe or not, Metal­li­ca had some seri­ous crossover appeal from the start. Grant­ed, that appeal was lim­it­ed to a small sub­set of punks and skaters who came to appre­ci­ate met­al thanks to Metallica’s cov­ers of hor­ror-punks The Mis­fits on their 1987 Garage Days Revis­it­ed EP. Nonethe­less, it showed that the band always had a sense of humor and an appre­ci­a­tion for other—albeit very closely-related—genres.

Since then, Metal­li­ca has grown up, some­times awk­ward­ly. We watched them do it with the help of a ther­a­pist in the 2003 doc­u­men­tary Some Kind of Mon­ster. We lis­tened to their grown-up angst on that bum­mer of an album, St. Anger.  That year, they also took on a fourth mem­ber, bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo, whose extra-genre affini­ties are broad and deep—from his love for Motown, funk, and the ath­let­ic fusion of Jaco Pas­to­rius to his dab­bling in fla­men­co. The band may have returned to their thrash roots with 2008’s Death Mag­net­ic and this year’s Hard­wired… to Self-Destruct, but they’ll like­ly take a few more weird excur­sions (like their puz­zling 2011 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lou Reed) in com­ing years.

And yes, they gained a rep­u­ta­tion as being stingy with their cat­a­log dur­ing that whole Nap­ster dust-up. But as you can hear James Het­field and Kirk Ham­mett dis­cuss in a recent Nerdist pod­cast (stream it at the bot­tom of this post), their “cre­ative rest­less­ness” has made them very appre­cia­tive of what oth­er artists have done with their music, stretch­ing it into alien gen­res and unex­pect­ed instru­men­ta­tion and arrange­ments.

In his self-dep­re­cat­ing way, Het­field con­fess­es, “there’s a lot of bet­ter ver­sions of ‘Noth­ing Else Mat­ters’ than ours.” Ham­mett agrees, and here you’ll find most of those they mention—from Scott D. Davis on solo piano at the top of the post, to a choir at San­ti­a­go de Com­postela with their Gre­go­ri­an Chant ver­sion below it, and, just above, Finnish cel­lo ensem­ble Apoc­a­lyp­ti­ca.

It may not be many people’s favorite Metal­li­ca song, but I think the vast range of wor­thy inter­pre­ta­tions speaks to the strengths of its com­po­si­tion. “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” has even trans­lat­ed to blue­grass, thanks to Finnish pick­ers Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls, who spe­cial­ize in such tongue-in-cheek coun­try met­al cov­ers. And Het­field and Ham­mett both men­tion with awe Macy Gray’s smoky lounge-jazz cov­er, below. “That’s an hon­or,” says Het­field, “that is a huge com­pli­ment, when some­one takes your song and legit­i­mate­ly does it their style.… It’s real­ly cool to think that the song is that good it can work in any dif­fer­ent genre.”

Indeed. Have a lis­ten to SHEL’s haunt­ing cov­er of anoth­er Metal­li­ca dirge, “Enter Sand­man” or Stary Olsa’s riff on the most­ly dirge-like “One.” And it doesn’t only work with the slow tunes either. Just check out this killer ban­jo ver­sion of “Mas­ter of Pup­pets.”

Hear Metal­li­ca talk cov­er ver­sions (around 50:00), the joys and woes of still tour­ing after all these years, and more at the Nerdist pod­cast just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metal­li­ca Play­ing “Enter Sand­man” on Class­room Toy Instru­ments

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspiring Artists: “Go a Little Out of Your Depth,” “Never Fulfill Other People’s Expectations”

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2017

Jan­u­ary 10th, 2017–David Bowie died one year ago today. Revis­it­ing my own mem­o­ries of him, it so often seemed impos­si­ble that he could grow old, much less pass away, even as we all watched him age over the decades. He did it much bet­ter than most, that’s for sure, and grew into the role of elder states­man with incred­i­ble poise and grace, though he also didn’t let that role be his last one.

What else should we have expect­ed from the artist who wrote “Changes”—the defin­i­tive cre­ative state­ment on fac­ing time and mortality—at the age of 24, before he’d even achieved the inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom that Zig­gy Star­dust brought him? Bowie was always an old soul. “It’s not age itself,” he told the BBC in 2002. “Age doesn’t both­er me. So many of my heroes were old­er guys.… I embrace that aspect of it.” And so, in his lat­er years, he became an old­er guy hero to mil­lions.

In 1997, after his drum and bass-inspired Earth­ling, Bowie gave an inter­view in which he offered the time­less wis­dom to younger artists in the clip above:

Nev­er play to the gallery.… Nev­er work for oth­er peo­ple in what you do. Always remem­ber that the rea­son that you ini­tial­ly start­ed work­ing was that there was some­thing inside your­self that you felt that if you could man­i­fest in some way, you would under­stand more about your­self and how you co-exist with the rest of soci­ety.… I think it’s ter­ri­bly dan­ger­ous for an artist to ful­fill oth­er people’s expec­ta­tions.

It’s advice we’ve like­ly heard some ver­sion of before—perhaps even from one of Bowie’s own old­er-guy heroes, William S. Bur­roughs (here by way of Pat­ti Smith). But I’ve nev­er heard it stat­ed so suc­cinct­ly and with so much con­vic­tion and feel­ing. We nat­u­ral­ly asso­ciate David Bowie with art­ful inau­then­tic­i­ty, with a suc­ces­sion of masks. He encour­aged that impres­sion at every turn, even telling a grad­u­at­ing Berklee Col­lege of Music class in 1999, “it seemed that authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

But in hind­sight, and espe­cial­ly in the rapt, posthu­mous atten­tion paid to Bowie’s final work, Black­star, it can seem that his embrace of pos­es was often itself a pose. Bowie has always been can­did, in var­i­ous moments of self-reflec­tion, about his mis­steps and excess­es. But not to have tak­en the risks he did, not to have placed him­self in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions, would have meant impov­er­ish­ing his work. “The oth­er thing I would say,” he goes on, “is that if you feel safe in the area you’re work­ing in, you’re not work­ing in the right area. Always go a lit­tle fur­ther into the water than you feel you are capa­ble of being in. Go a lit­tle bit out of your depth. When you don’t feel that your feet are quite touch­ing the bot­tom, you’re just about in the right place to do some­thing excit­ing.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Oldest Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

in History, Music | January 10th, 2017

Clas­si­cal music enthu­si­asts seem to agree that the renew­al of inter­est in peri­od instru­ments made for a notice­able change in the sound of most, if not all, orches­tral per­for­mances. But does­n’t the repli­ca­tion and use of vio­ls, oph­i­clei­des, and fortepi­anos from the times of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart raise a curios­i­ty about what peo­ple used to make music gen­er­a­tions before them, and gen­er­a­tions before that? How ear­ly can we get into ear­ly music and still find tools to use in the 21st cen­tu­ry? Since the end of the 20th, we’ve had the same answer: about nine mil­len­nia.

“Chi­nese arche­ol­o­gists have unearthed what is believed to be the old­est known playable musi­cal instru­ment,” wrote Hen­ry Foun­tain in a 1999 New York Times arti­cle on the dis­cov­ery of “a sev­en-holed flute fash­ioned 9,000 years ago from the hol­low wing bone of a large bird.”

Those holes “pro­duced a rough scale cov­er­ing a mod­ern octave, begin­ning close to the sec­ond A above mid­dle C,” and the fact of this “care­ful­ly select­ed tone scale indi­cates that the Neolith­ic musi­cians may have been able to play more than sin­gle notes, but actu­al music.”

You can hear the haunt­ing sounds of this old­est playable musi­cal instru­ment known to man in the clip above. When would those pre­his­toric humans have heard it them­selves? Foun­tain quotes eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Fred­er­ick Lau as say­ing that these flutes “almost cer­tain­ly were used in rit­u­als,” per­haps “at tem­ple fairs, buri­als and oth­er rit­u­al­is­tic events,” and pos­si­bly even for “for per­son­al enter­tain­ment.” 9,000 years ago, one sure­ly took one’s enter­tain­ment where one could find it.

If this lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence has giv­en you a taste for the real oldies — not just the AM-radio but the his­to­ry-of-mankind sense — you can also hear in our archive the 43,000-year-old “Nean­derthal flute” (found only in frag­ments, but recon­struct­ed) as well as such ancient songs as 100 BC’s “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” a com­po­si­tion by Euripi­des from a cen­tu­ry before that, and a 3,400-year-old Sumer­ian hymn known as the old­est song in the world, all of which rais­es an impor­tant ques­tion: what will the peo­ple of the year 11000 think when they unearth our DJ rigs, those arti­facts of so many of our own rit­u­al­is­tic events, and give them a spin?

You can get more infor­ma­tion on this ancient flute here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the “Seik­i­los Epi­taph,” the Old­est Com­plete Song in the World: An Inspir­ing Tune from 100 BC

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Writ­ten Song (200 BC), Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed by Euripi­des, the Ancient Greek Play­wright

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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