Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons reigns as one of the world’s most rec­og­niz­able ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry pieces, thanks to its fre­quent appear­ances in films and tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials.

Upon its debut in 1725, The Four Sea­sons stunned lis­ten­ers by telling a sto­ry with­out the help of a human voice. Vival­di drew on four exist­ing son­nets (pos­si­bly of his own prove­nance), using strings to paint a nar­ra­tive filled with spring thun­der­storms, summer’s swel­ter, autum­nal hunts and har­vests, and the icy winds of win­ter.

The com­pos­er stud­ded his score with pre­cise­ly placed lines from the son­nets, to con­vey his expec­ta­tions that the musi­cians would use their instru­ments to son­i­cal­ly embody the expe­ri­ences being described.

For two hun­dred years, musi­cians cleaved close­ly to Vivaldi’s orig­i­nal orches­tra­tion.

The last hun­dred years, how­ev­er, have seen a wide range of instru­ments and inter­pre­ta­tions. Drums, synths, an elec­tric gui­tar, a Chi­nese pipa, an Indi­an saran­gi, a pair of Inu­it throat singers, a Japan­ese a cap­pel­la women’s cho­rus, a Theremin and a musi­cal saw are among those to have tak­en a stab at The Four Sea­sons’ drows­ing goatherd, bark­ing dog, and twit­ter­ing birdies.

Remem­ber­ing that Vival­di him­self was a great inno­va­tor, we sug­gest that there’s noth­ing wrong with tak­ing a break from all that to revis­it the orig­i­nal fla­vor.

The San Fran­cis­co-based ear­ly music ensem­ble, Voic­es of Music does so beau­ti­ful­ly, above, with a video playlist of live per­for­mances giv­en between 2015 and 2018, with the four con­cer­tos edit­ed to be pre­sent­ed in their tra­di­tion­al order.

Voic­es of Music co-direc­tors David Tayler and Han­neke van Proos­dij were adamant that these high qual­i­ty audio record­ings would leave lis­ten­ers feel­ing as if they are in the same room with the musi­cians and their baroque instru­ments. As Tayler told Ear­ly Music Amer­i­ca:

We did tests where we sat in the audi­ence lis­ten­ing to the mix. We stopped when we got to the point that it sound­ed like sit­ting in the audi­ence. We didn’t want some­thing that looked like a con­cert, with a CD play­ing in the back­ground.

Mul­ti­ple sta­tionery cam­eras ensured that the most­ly stand­ing per­form­ers’ spon­ta­neous phys­i­cal respons­es to the music and each oth­er would not pass unre­marked. As tempt­ing as it is to savor these joy­ful sounds with ears alone, we rec­om­mend tak­ing it in with your eyes, too. The plea­sure these vir­tu­osos take in Vival­di and each oth­er is a delight.

You also won’t want to miss the Eng­lish trans­la­tions of the son­net, bro­ken into sub­ti­tles and timed to appear at the exact place where they appear in Vivaldi’s 300 year-old score.

Spring:

Alle­gro — 0:00

Largo — 3:32

Alle­gro — 6:13

Sum­mer:

Alle­gro non molto — 10:09

Ada­gio — 15:31

Presto — 17:46

Autumn:

Alle­gro — 20:42

Ada­gio molto — 26:14

Alle­gro — 28:25

Win­ter:

Alle­gro non molto — 31:56

Largo — 35:29

Alle­gro — 37:25

While the audi­ence reac­tions were edit­ed from the pre­sen­ta­tion above, we’d be remiss if we didn’t direct you to a playlist where­in these vir­tu­oso play­ers are seen gra­cious­ly accept­ing the applause of the crowds who were lucky enough to catch these per­for­mances in per­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yes’ Rick Wake­man Explores Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, and Why It Was the First Con­cept Album

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons”: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, the­ater­mak­er, and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her lat­est book, Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo, will be pub­lished in ear­ly 2022.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

George Har­ri­son, the qui­et Bea­t­le, was the first to break out on his own in 1970 with his glo­ri­ous triple album All Things Must Pass. “Gar­bo talks! — Har­ri­son is free!” wrote Melody Mak­er’s Richard Williams in a review, a ref­er­ence to the reclu­sive silent film star who, like the Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist, kept her mys­tique and star pow­er even after fans first heard her voice. Har­rison’s rev­e­la­tion could­n’t have been as dra­mat­ic as all that.

Sure­ly, no fan of “Tax­man,” “With­in You With­out You,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Some­thing” — and espe­cial­ly The White Album’s stun­ning “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Sleeps” — doubt­ed that George had it in him all along. But the oth­er Bea­t­les would only humor him dur­ing The White Album ses­sions. That is, until he brought Eric Clap­ton into the stu­dio. “That then made every­one act bet­ter,” Har­ri­son remem­bers in Anthol­o­gy. “Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seri­ous­ly.”

The ques­tion in the You Can’t Unhear This video above is whether Paul played bass on the final stu­dio record­ing and, if not, who did?  It’s an inte­gral part of the song’s feel — the grit­ty, restrained growl, slow­ly grow­ing in inten­si­ty until it sounds like it might give Har­rison’s gui­tar some­thing else to weep about. The mys­tery of the aggres­sive-yet-mut­ed part “has per­plexed schol­ars and Bea­t­les fans for decades.” If you’ve remained unper­plexed, you might find your­self ques­tion­ing assump­tions about this most beloved of Bea­t­les’ tunes.

Ses­sions for the song began in late July of 1968, then picked up again in August, but Har­ri­son decid­ed to scrap every­thing and start over in Sep­tem­ber once Ringo returned from a “self-imposed exile” in the Mediter­ranean. The band seemed refreshed: “the qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances on the new Sep­tem­ber ver­sion seemed to reflect that renewed spir­it.” Ses­sions for the track wrapped on Sep­tem­ber 24. “For many years it was believed that this was the record­ing ses­sion in which Eric Clap­ton over­dubbed his lead gui­tar solo,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible. Not so — Clap­ton sat in on all of the live takes record­ed with the band. Ah, but who played bass? See the mys­tery take shape above and post your the­o­ries below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

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

The word “sem­i­nal” does a lot of work in expres­sions like “sem­i­nal band/album/track, etc.” Yes, it’s an adjec­tive denot­ing “major­ly influ­en­tial,” even “essen­tial.” It’s also an adjec­tive relat­ing direct­ly to the male repro­duc­tive sys­tem. The con­cep­tu­al use of the term does not nec­es­sar­i­ly exclude women, who can per­fect­ly well be said to “seed” artis­tic move­ments. But it does sug­gest that cre­ativ­i­ty is an inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line act. To take a broad­er view, we could say that art is non-bina­ry; it includes all of the gen­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples involved in the act of cre­ation, includ­ing ges­ta­tion, birthing, and nur­tur­ing new art forms.

In this vein, we might call Ger­man elec­tron­ic pio­neers Kraftwerk a “sem­i­nal matrix” of musi­cal activ­i­ty, an econ­o­my of cre­ative work led by two fathers — Flo­ri­an Schnei­der and Ralf Hüt­ter  — who mid­wived a techno/electro rev­o­lu­tion, and — indi­rect­ly — through ear­ly spin-off projects like NEU!, an exper­i­men­tal post-punk/New Wave rev­o­lu­tion.

The best known of the “Krautrock” bands to emerge in the 1970s, ear­ly ver­sions of Kraftwerk includ­ed in its ranks Ger­man pro­duc­er Con­ny Plank (unof­fi­cial­ly) as well as drum­mer Klaus Dinger, and gui­tarist Michael Rother, both of whom went on to play in the afore­men­tioned NEU! and “sem­i­nal” avant-garde bands like Har­mo­nia and La Düs­sel­dorf.

In its ear­ly, anar­chic phase, “Kraftwerk’s music nei­ther ref­er­enced nor evoked the robot­ic,” writes Simon Reynolds at NPR. “They start­ed, in the final years of the 1960s, as post-psy­che­del­ic pro­gres­sives — long hair and all. (Watch their first record­ed gig in 1970 here.) In 1968, Hüt­ter and Schnei­der met at the Acad­e­my of Arts in Rem­scheid, near Düs­sel­dorf, where they stud­ied piano and flute, respec­tive­ly. Shar­ing an inter­est in impro­vi­sa­tion and avant-garde elec­tron­ics, as well as a fond­ness for The Vel­vet Under­ground, the Doors and the mul­ti­me­dia provo­ca­tions of Fluxus, they joined with three oth­er musi­cians and record­ed the album Tone Float under the name Organ­i­sa­tion.”

This ear­ly avant-garde phase con­tin­ued for a time, but once Dinger and Rother left and were replaced by Wolf­gang Flür and Karl Bar­tos, Kraftwerk began its unlike­ly climb up the charts, and into the hands of remix­ers and DJs every­where, with 1975’s Auto­bahn. “That is the point at which they went from a krautrock curio to a world-his­tor­i­cal force,” Reynolds writes, “when the sin­gle edit of the 24-minute title track became an inter­na­tion­al hit in 1975.” The song retains some instru­men­tal ele­ments from the band’s pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions — “twin­kling gui­tar and waft­ing flute fea­ture along­side synth puls­es and drum machine.”

But the meld­ing of man and machine was well under­way. “Cru­cial­ly, it was music stripped of indi­vid­u­al­ized inflec­tion and per­son­al­i­ty” — not only were Kraftwerk beyond 70s gen­der stereo­types, they were chart­ing the course for the post-human before the term had any cur­ren­cy. “We go beyond the indi­vid­ual feel,” Schnei­der told Sounds mag­a­zine. “We are more like vehi­cles, a part of our men­sch machine, our man-machine. Some­times we play the music, some­times the music plays us, some­times… it plays.” Kraftwerk may have played Ger­man stereo­types for humor in music videos and live per­for­mances, but their detach­ment was no act — their approach from the late 1970’s onward was entire­ly the oppo­site of rock and rol­l’s self (indulgent)-expression.

Why, then, does Kraftwerk belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Just induct­ed this year, their pres­ence is tru­ly indis­putable. It’s not much of an exag­ger­a­tion to say, as the Hall of Fame does, that they “are the foun­da­tion upon which all syn­the­siz­er-based rock and elec­tron­ic dance music is built.… Kraftwerk’s influ­ence can be heard in the work of David Bowie and Bri­an Eno, the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, the elec­tron­ic-rock inte­gra­tion of U2, the ‘robot rock’ of Daft Punk, the pro­duc­tion tech­niques of Kanye West, and in count­less EDM and dub­step artists.”

This is just to name a tiny sam­pling of the musi­cians influ­enced by the per­fec­tion­is­tic Ger­man four­some. The case can and has been made that for the sheer breadth of their influ­ence, Kraftwerk is more impor­tant than even the Bea­t­les to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, for rather than mas­ter­ing and trans­form­ing the music of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s first half, they invent­ed the rock and roll of the future. See many more clas­sic Kraftwerk videos at this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Watch Kraftwerk Per­form a Real-Time Duet with a Ger­man Astro­naut Liv­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

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

Hav­ing evolved over cen­turies — indeed, mil­len­nia — the for­mal ele­gance and son­ic beau­ty of stringed instru­ments con­tin­ue to inspire their play­ers toward ever-greater heights of vir­tu­os­i­ty. But of course, the attain­ment of vir­tu­os­i­ty itself does­n’t come easy, and what­ev­er alti­tude you reach, you’ll still be dogged by some of the same prob­lems you were as a novice. What vio­lin­ist, for instance, could ever ful­ly put out of their mind the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a string’s break­ing as they play, whether at home or in Carnegie Hall? Not celebri­ty play­er Ray Chen, sure­ly, giv­en that it’s hap­pened to him at least twice in the past five years.

Being a Youtu­ber as well, Chen has turned these onstage mis­for­tunes to his advan­tage. Just last week he put up “Vio­lin­ist string BREAKS dur­ing Tchaikovsky,” a video that cap­tures his lat­est such expe­ri­ence while play­ing with the Seat­tle Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Far from grind­ing to a halt, the per­for­mance con­tin­ues with only a minor hitch.

After mak­ing a valiant attempt to sol­dier on short an E string, Chen switch­es to what appears to be the back­up plan. With­out the option of singing the blues while chang­ing the string him­self, as B.B. King did at Farm Aid, he swaps his instru­ment with that of the con­cert­mas­ter, who pass­es it down the line. Unfazed, Chen con­tin­ues play­ing right where he left off.

Chen fol­lowed a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure after a string break in 2017, while play­ing in Brus­sels with the Tai­wan Phil­har­mon­ic. Then, as now, he uploaded the footage to his Youtube chan­nel, where it has  racked up more than 1.6 mil­lion views. The brief clip also cap­tures his final toss onto the floor of the spare pack of strings he’d had the good sense to place in his pock­et before­hand. The acco­lades post­ed in the com­ments below bring to mind the sto­ry of 19th-cen­tu­ry vio­lin­ist Carl Her­man Unthan. Born with­out arms, Unthan became a vir­tu­oso by play­ing instead with his feet — which he also used to change a string that broke on him in con­cert. This proved aston­ish­ing enough that he’s said lat­er to have delib­er­ate­ly weak­ened strings in order to repeat the spec­ta­cle for oth­er audi­ences. Just imag­ine if he’d had Youtube.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

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

A Gigan­tic Vio­lin Floats Down Venice’s Grand Canal with a String Quar­tet on Top

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

We’ve fea­tured 11-year-old Nan­di Bushell here before. Per­haps you’ll recall her epic drum bat­tle with Dave Grohl. Today she’s back, pay­ing trib­ute to Char­lie Watts and per­form­ing the indi­vid­ual tracks on the Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter.” First comes the gui­tar; then the bass, per­cus­sion and vocals; and next the drums–all the while she’s hav­ing fun. And you will too. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Watch an Epic Drum Bat­tle, Pit­ting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Mer­ry Clay­ton Tells the Sto­ry of Her Amaz­ing Back­ing Vocal on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter”

“Mali’s gifts to the world of music are lav­ish and leg­endary,” Nenad Georgievs­ki writes at All About Jazz, though the world knew lit­tle about Malian music until Amer­i­can musi­cians began part­ner­ing with play­ers from West Africa. In the 1980s, Ste­vie Won­der began tour­ing with Amadou and Mari­am, help­ing to pop­u­lar­ize their form of Malian blues. In 1994, Ry Cood­er record­ed and released Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu with Malian gui­tarist Ali Far­ka Touré, whose “desert blues… was uncon­cerned with bound­aries,” freely mix­ing lan­guages and instru­men­ta­tion with play­ing that drew com­par­isons to John Lee Hook­er.

While audi­ences around the world encoun­tered West African music as “world music” on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, fans on the con­ti­nent knew it as home­grown tra­di­tion­al sounds and con­tem­po­rary African rock and pop. In 2001 they got the chance to gath­er for the first annu­al “Fes­ti­val in the Desert” (Fes­ti­val au désert) in Tin Essako, a rur­al vil­lage miles from the high­way, as the Band­splain­ing video above tells it. This brief explain­er of the Festival’s impact and its trag­ic end in 2012 begins with ref­er­ences to Bono. But his role in the sto­ry is rather small.

More cen­tral are the Tuareg, or Kel Tamashek, nomadic peo­ple of Berber ori­gin spread across sev­er­al West African coun­tries whose musi­cians have refined the sound of desert rock and turned it into rebel music. The sound was born in strug­gle, notes World of Music, in refugee camps and bat­tle­grounds. The band Tinari­wen — who formed in 1979 and have become “glob­al musi­cal nomads” since the first Fes­ti­val —  met in “mil­i­tary camps set up in Libya by Colonel Ghaddafi to train young Tamashek men how to fight. Dur­ing the [Tuareg] rebel­lion Tinari­wen became the pied pipers of the rebel move­ment, and their songs gal­va­nized the young dis­pos­sessed Tamashek youth.” Then they turned to seek­ing peace at the Fes­ti­val in 2001.

Put togeth­er by Tuareg orga­niz­er Man­ny Ansar, the Fes­ti­val was “based on a cen­turies-old tra­di­tion,” notes Pea­cePrints, “a meet­ing where the Tuareg tribes of the region meet once a year to play and share music.” By con­trast, the mod­ern Fes­ti­val includ­ed eth­nic and trib­al groups from all over the coun­try, and the world, and “focused on bridg­ing the gap between tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty and also between local cus­tom and inter­na­tion­al come­to­geth­er.” It was the only fes­ti­val of its kind in Africa and attract­ed thou­sands of African atten­dees and a few hun­dred vis­i­tors each year.

Trag­i­cal­ly, the fes­ti­val came to an end in 2012 when Tuareg rebels took con­trol of North­ern Mali, renam­ing it Aza­wad, and were over­run by Islam­ic sep­a­ratist groups. The coun­try was placed under Shari­ah Law, and Ansar was exiled to Burk­i­na Faso for a time. Out­side of his own coun­try, he con­tin­ued to pro­mote peace by co-found­ing a trav­el­ing fes­ti­val called Car­a­van cul­turelle pour la paix.

The artists rep­re­sent­ed at Fes­ti­val in the Desert tell sto­ries of the fusion of tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty, of bru­tal con­flict and the hope for peace through the shar­ing and fus­ing of cul­tures. Mali may be one of the poor­est coun­tries in the world when it comes to mate­r­i­al resources, but it is one of the most musi­cal­ly rich. “Mali has many peo­ple, liv­ing in their dis­tricts,” say one musi­cian in the trail­er above for the doc­u­men­tary film The Last Song Before the War, “but every­one comes togeth­er in this fes­ti­val.”

Or, at least, they did until 2012. The film­mak­ers unwit­ting­ly cap­tured the very last Fes­ti­val in the Desert before it was shut down by mil­i­tants who “ruined the mate­r­i­al, plun­dered the stage, burned instru­ments,” says Ansar. “I had to go on.… It was no longer a ques­tion of fes­tiv­i­ty, but about the sur­vival of a cul­ture.” See his state­ment at the time in the “Fes­ti­val in the Desert — In Exile” video fur­ther up. For a total­ly dif­fer­ent view of the Fes­ti­val, read for­mer MTV exec Tom Fre­ston’s account of trav­el­ing there with Jim­my Buf­fett, Chris Black­well (founder of Island Records), and a hand­ful of oth­er indus­try big­wigs scout­ing the next West African sen­sa­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

Zam­rock: An Intro­duc­tion to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psy­che­del­ic Rock Scene

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

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