On a Ruined Farm near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory

As I stand at the lichened gate
With warring worlds on either hand—
To left the black and budless trees,
The empty sties, the barns that stand

Like tumbling skeletons—and to right
The factory-towers, white and clear
Like distant, glittering cities seen
From a ship's rail—as I stand here,

I feel, and with a sharper pang,
My mortal sickness; how I give
My heart to weak and stuffless ghosts,
And with the living cannot live.

The acid smoke has soured the fields,
And browned the few and windworn flowers;
But there, where steel and concrete soar
In dizzy, geometric towers—

There, where the tapering cranes sweep round,
And great wheels turn, and trains roar by
Like strong, low-headed brutes of steel—
There is my world, my home; yet why

So alien still? For I can neither
Dwell in that world, nor turn again
To scythe and spade, but only loiter
Among the trees the smoke has slain.

Yet when the trees were young, men still
Could choose their path—the wingèd soul,
Not cursed with double doubts, could fly,
Arrow-like to a foreseen goal;

And they who planned those soaring towers,
They too have set their spirit free;
To them their glittering world can bring
Faith, and accepted destiny;

But none to me as I stand here
Between two countries, both-ways torn,
And moveless still, like Buridan's donkey
Between the water and the corn.

George Orwell


À Nous La Liberté, René Clair,1931

Barrel Organ

A barrel organ (or roller organ) is a mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The basic principle is the same as a traditional pipe organ, but rather than being played by an organist, the barrel organ is activated either by a person turning a crank, or by clockwork driven by weights or springs. The pieces of music are encoded onto wooden barrels (or cylinders), which are analogous to the keyboard of the traditional pipe organ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_organ





Naef Gloggomobil. It's a totally programmable barrel organ, a giant, wooden version of that little metal cylinder that drives a music box. You--or your child 2 years or older, or more likely, the two of you together--compose your songs by placing pegs in the rotating wheel, which triggers the little mallets to strike the xylophone. You can play the xylophone by itself, too.

Talking Heads - Blind

Talking Heads TV on MUZU.
press next to find Blind

Talking Head, Euphonia

In December 1845, Joseph Faber exhibited his "Wonderful Talking Machine" at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia. This machine, as recently described by writer David Lindsay, consisted of a bizarre-looking talking head that spoke in a "weird, ghostly monotone" as Faber manipulated it with foot pedals and a keyboard.
"... a speech synthesizer variously known as the Euphonia and the Amazing Talking Machine. By pumping air with the bellows ... and manipulating a series of plates, chambers, and other apparatus (including an artificial tongue ... ), the operator could make it speak any European language. A German immigrant named Joseph Faber spent seventeen years perfecting the Euphonia, only to find when he was finished that few people cared." Lindsay

automata, automaton

Princely Toys, from the collection of Jack Donovan. The film was shot in 1976.









"But icy fancy gave way to a cool reductionism. In the living room, instead of a curious mechanical orchestra we have a few plain boxes that can play any damned thing we please. The idiosyncracies of the musician's lips and limbs ... have been reduced to waveforms and numbers. Much the same happened in the visual realm, where 'mechanical pictures', gorgeous moving tableaux, were replaced by all-purpose 'moving picture'." The Recording Angel, page 187

Live Performance

... reaching for the fullness of every pleasure that life could give us – now, not later, not living for some future reward but getting it all right now...
...
'When there is that rare combination of all the essentials of person and character and beauty and voice and image that you accept entirely as being true and real – those moments, whether is opera or in theatre, are treasured. And if one is fortunate enough to have experienced them, to have been there when it happened, I guess that's what life is made up of. Of moments.'
...
'And there were always a deep knowledge that nothing, nothing can come up to a live performance.'
...
I asked if he could imagine any kind of digital or video or multimedia experience that might improve on live music.
'Nothing places real life.'
...
Real life meaning live music?
'meaning going! seeing! hearing! feeling!'



Recording Angel, pages 180, 181, 182, 183

Background music as a chain

The danger of background music, which recording has made so pervasive, is that it will be used (by us or the others) to alter our mood in a cosmetic way, powdering over our deeper needs. It is true that active playing or singing can also be used this way, so that all that is accomplished is repression, in the psychological sense – and possibly in the political sense, if some philosopher-king or commissar is forcing you to play his song. But active playing can also heal, as when one plays Mozart sonata and lets its grace fill one's body and soul. Unconnected to the body, records miss a key connection to the soul.
Catharsis, on the other hand, seems to depend on active listening, and here records come into their own. In some ways there are even better than concerts: they address us more intimately and they allow us more choices, so more self-expression. The problem is that our self-expression comes prepackaged; and we lose the desire t0 express ourselves the hard way, with our arms and lungs. And despite Aristotle, despite Nina, my experience as a bad amateur is that that is the best catharsis. It will be a tragedy if, because of records, our standards become so inflexible that we cannot be happy amateurs. Then we will be amateurs of music in the old sense – we will still love her – but as one loves a movie star, not a wife. We won't make love to her. And our souls will have shrunk.
Recording Angel, page 171