Well-Tuned, Actually
August 14, 2023 1:00 PM Subscribe
La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (previously) is an series of extended improvisations with a piano tuned to 7-Limit Just Intonation. While LMY is very protective of his work, and recordings are almost completely absent on streaming sites and YouTube, there is a 5 hour recording available on archive.org.
Additional resources:
A Pitchfork review of the last commercially available recording, released in 1987. If you don't want to blow hundreds on finding a copy the MELA foundation has quietly re-released it on DVD.
Just intonation sound samples compared to 12TET.
A nice short explaining the weirdness of piano tuning.
Additional resources:
A Pitchfork review of the last commercially available recording, released in 1987. If you don't want to blow hundreds on finding a copy the MELA foundation has quietly re-released it on DVD.
Just intonation sound samples compared to 12TET.
A nice short explaining the weirdness of piano tuning.
A link I forgot to add: I went to see La Monte Young playing in his New York loft, and you should do the same by Tom Whitwell.
posted by q*ben at 2:24 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 2:24 PM on August 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
If you don't want to blow hundreds on finding a copy the MELA foundation has quietly re-released it on DVD.
And, in a rather stunning turn of events, on bandcamp.
posted by multics at 3:34 PM on August 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
And, in a rather stunning turn of events, on bandcamp.
posted by multics at 3:34 PM on August 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is amazing! Thank you!
That said, what the heck is it with mid-to-late-century musical pioneers (ahem, Wendy Carlos and now apparently Le Monte Young -- news to me) doing their bests to ensure that no one gets to hear their music? I'm half expecting Lou Reed's estate to yank everything he made off the market
posted by treepour at 4:30 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
That said, what the heck is it with mid-to-late-century musical pioneers (ahem, Wendy Carlos and now apparently Le Monte Young -- news to me) doing their bests to ensure that no one gets to hear their music? I'm half expecting Lou Reed's estate to yank everything he made off the market
posted by treepour at 4:30 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Instant Bandcamp purchase! Thank you multics! I don’t blame artists for keeping ownership over their portfolios. LMY’s art is centered around live human experiences so I think his irascibility predates streaming. For Wendy, she’s had a long and difficult history with her own popularity and media exposure so she can do whatever the hell she wants.
… in edit… $49, should have known, ha! Adding it to my Christmas list.
posted by q*ben at 4:39 PM on August 14, 2023
… in edit… $49, should have known, ha! Adding it to my Christmas list.
posted by q*ben at 4:39 PM on August 14, 2023
I don’t blame artists for keeping ownership over their portfolios. LMY’s art is centered around live human experiences so I think his irascibility predates streaming.
So if I wasn't alive in the right place and time (which I wasn't) I'd never get a chance to hear it or experience it. That's fine I guess, but why not limit conversation about it, make it truly secret? If you're going to go all out on limiting reproductions why not take it to the logical conclusion of making sure no one who wasn't there even knows about it?
For Wendy, she’s had a long and difficult history with her own popularity and media exposure so she can do whatever the hell she wants.
Of course she can and absolutely has the right to, but I and others can complain about it too. Once your work is out there and it genuinely touches people, said people are going to have feelings about it being made unavailable. I would argue that the creator no longer "spiritually" owns the work once it has been made public but that gets into the tedious Death of the Author business and I don't have the energy for that. But it sure does make me mad and those are my feelings, dangit!
posted by treepour at 5:09 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
So if I wasn't alive in the right place and time (which I wasn't) I'd never get a chance to hear it or experience it. That's fine I guess, but why not limit conversation about it, make it truly secret? If you're going to go all out on limiting reproductions why not take it to the logical conclusion of making sure no one who wasn't there even knows about it?
For Wendy, she’s had a long and difficult history with her own popularity and media exposure so she can do whatever the hell she wants.
Of course she can and absolutely has the right to, but I and others can complain about it too. Once your work is out there and it genuinely touches people, said people are going to have feelings about it being made unavailable. I would argue that the creator no longer "spiritually" owns the work once it has been made public but that gets into the tedious Death of the Author business and I don't have the energy for that. But it sure does make me mad and those are my feelings, dangit!
posted by treepour at 5:09 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
LaMonte Young is completely within rights to control his own performances however he sees fit, but it's ironic to defend him of this when he's also sitting on many, many hours of recordings by John Cale, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Rhys Chatham, and many others, and has refused to release them to their creators. Young has offered to return the recordings but only on the condition that they yield all composition credit to him.
None of them have agreed to this. As a consequence there's a big chunk of significant midcentury American music that's effectively lost. LaMonte Young might be the only person to be able to hear them or read their scores after their only public performances, and he refuses to share.
Lovely music, but not so much the man asserting himself at the center of it. It will be interesting to see how his archive is handled at his death -- it will either be a bounty of music that will upend what current generations understand about early minimalism and experimental art, or it will be like James Joyce's literary estate in which for decades there are only bare dribbles of irrelevant work occasionally leaking out lacking any context or proper accounts.
posted by at by at 5:58 PM on August 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
None of them have agreed to this. As a consequence there's a big chunk of significant midcentury American music that's effectively lost. LaMonte Young might be the only person to be able to hear them or read their scores after their only public performances, and he refuses to share.
Lovely music, but not so much the man asserting himself at the center of it. It will be interesting to see how his archive is handled at his death -- it will either be a bounty of music that will upend what current generations understand about early minimalism and experimental art, or it will be like James Joyce's literary estate in which for decades there are only bare dribbles of irrelevant work occasionally leaking out lacking any context or proper accounts.
posted by at by at 5:58 PM on August 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
That’s fair. I wasn’t trying to claim that I was happy with the situation, was just pointing out that it’s not exactly new. Young is the same way worth current media that he’s always been with recordings. But it’s false equivalency to say that what he owes other artists is the same as what he owes the public. And comparing his behavior to Wendy Carlos is an even greater distortion of the truth.
posted by q*ben at 6:17 PM on August 14, 2023
posted by q*ben at 6:17 PM on August 14, 2023
I'm half expecting Lou Reed's estate to yank everything he made off the market
Laurie Anderson is Lou's musical executor and is already bringing unheard material to light, not to mention the preservation of 600+ hours of material at the New York Public Library. There was also, semi-recently, a box set of all his RCA and Arista albums. Anyway, Lou's not the subject of this post, but I think Ms. Anderson has more and better plans for his work in the long run.
As far as La Monte goes, we have a few interviews with him in the KCRW archive. We've put one of them up already, specifically about The Well Tuned Piano. I also have a contemporaneous recording of him on KPFK which I should probably make available on the Internet Archive.
posted by mykescipark at 6:20 PM on August 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Laurie Anderson is Lou's musical executor and is already bringing unheard material to light, not to mention the preservation of 600+ hours of material at the New York Public Library. There was also, semi-recently, a box set of all his RCA and Arista albums. Anyway, Lou's not the subject of this post, but I think Ms. Anderson has more and better plans for his work in the long run.
As far as La Monte goes, we have a few interviews with him in the KCRW archive. We've put one of them up already, specifically about The Well Tuned Piano. I also have a contemporaneous recording of him on KPFK which I should probably make available on the Internet Archive.
posted by mykescipark at 6:20 PM on August 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Laurie Anderson is Lou's musical executor and is already bringing unheard material to light, not to mention the preservation of 600+ hours of material at the New York Public Library.
We are all so very, very lucky to be in simultaneous orbits around the sun with Laurie Anderson. I know that's not the subject of this post and apologize for the derail. I was just grumpy at stuff being made unavailable and mentioning Lou Reed was a bit hyperbolic. Thank you for this information
posted by treepour at 8:19 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
We are all so very, very lucky to be in simultaneous orbits around the sun with Laurie Anderson. I know that's not the subject of this post and apologize for the derail. I was just grumpy at stuff being made unavailable and mentioning Lou Reed was a bit hyperbolic. Thank you for this information
posted by treepour at 8:19 PM on August 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I put the La Monte KPFK thing on YT instead)
posted by mykescipark at 11:43 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mykescipark at 11:43 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
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