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Wednesday, September 20th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 8:00a | Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only Five Years Old 
A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and knee-breeches, capering around the great houses of 18th century Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him, and compose symphonies extemporaneously with ease…. Few scenes better capture the mythos of the child prodigy than those reported from the childhood of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If Milos Forman’s Amadeus is any reliable guide to his character, if not his history, Mozart may never have lost his boyish charm and exuberance, but his musical ability seemed to mature exponentially as he composed hundreds of sonatas, quartets, concertos, and operas, ending with the Requiem, an astonishing piece of work by any measure, despite remaining unfinished in the year of his death, 1791, at the age of 35. While those feverish scenes of Requiem’s composition in Forman’s film may be tenuously attached to the truth, the stories of Mozart the preschool and boyhood genius are well attested. Not only did he play with unbelievable skill for “emperors and empresses in the courts of Europe,” but “by the time he was six he had composed dozens of remarkable pieces for the keyboard as well as for other instruments,” notes Willard Palmer in an introduction to Mozart’s most popular works. “His first efforts at composition began when he was only four years old.” He composed several short pieces the following year, and you can hear them all performed above. At the Morgan Library’s site you can also see a scanned manuscript image of four of those compositions, written in Mozart’s father’s hand. Leopold Mozart—the driving stage-parental force, as we know, behind Wolfgang’s childhood career as a touring marvel—notated these first attempts, crediting them to “Wolfgangerl,” in what is known as the Nannerl Notebook, from the nickname of Mozart’s older sister, Maria Anna. Leopold, Kapellmeister of the Salzburg court orchestra, recognized not only Wolfgang’s musical talents, but also those of Nannerl, and he devoted his time to overseeing both his children’s training. For sadly obvious reasons, the elder Mozart did not continue to perform, and the notebook named for her does not contain any of her compositions, only Leopold's exercises for the children and her brother's first original work. In addition to Mozart’s earliest pieces, it may also contain music composed by him at 7 or 8 years old—more extensive works that might, says Mozarteum researcher Ulrich Leisinger, bridge the short, simple first pieces and his first major compositions. Nonetheless, we have dozens of Mozart’s compositions throughout his childhood and teenage years. Several of those earlier pieces come from the so-called London Notebook, a sketchbook kept during Mozart’s time in England between 1764-65. Here, writes Elena Abend, we find him “extending his musical themes compared to his earlier compositions.” And yet the music “almost always has a playfulness about it.” It’s a quality that never left Mozart’s work, excluding the awesome Requiem, of course, but then this final masterwork was completed by other composers, none of them with Mozart’s lightness of spirit, which we can trace all the way back to that first piece, “a courtly little composition.” Writes Abend, “gracefulness is essential in performing the piece.” Related Content: Read an 18th-Century Eyewitness Account of 8-Year-Old Mozart’s Extraordinary Musical Skills Newly Discovered Piece by Mozart Performed on His Own Fortepiano Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only Five Years Old is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 2:00p | How a Recording Studio Mishap Created the Famous Drum Sound That Defined 80s Music & Beyond
It’s not a subtle effect, by any means, which is precisely what makes it so effective. Gated reverb, the sound of an airbag deploying or weather balloon suddenly blowing out, an airy thud that pervades eighties pop, and the work of every musician thereafter who has referenced eighties pop, including CHVRCHES, Tegan and Sara, M83, Beyoncé, and Lorde, to name but a very few. Before them came the pummeling gated drums of Kate Bush, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Depeche Mode, New Order, Cocteau Twins, David Bowie, and Grace Jones, who turned Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” into a strict machine with the gated reverb of her 1980 cover. Roxy Music caught up quickly with songs like the lovely “More Than This” on 1982’s Avalon, but Jones was an early adopter of the effect, which—like many a legendary piece of studio wizardry—came about entirely by accident, during a 1979 recording session for Peter Gabriel’s eerie solo track “Intruder.” On the drums—Vox’s Estelle Caswell tells us in the explainer video at the top—was Gabriel’s former Genesis bandmate Phil Collins, and in the control room, recording engineer Hugh Padgham, who had inadvertently left a talkback mic on in the studio. [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<div [...] http://cdn8.openculture.com/>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <div class="oc-video-wrapper">
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<p>It’s not a subtle effect, by any means, which is precisely what makes it so effective. Gated reverb, the sound of an airbag deploying or weather balloon suddenly blowing out, an airy thud that pervades eighties pop, and the work of every musician thereafter who has referenced eighties pop, including CHVRCHES, Tegan and Sara, M83, Beyoncé, and Lorde, to name but a very few.</p>
<p>Before them came the pummeling gated drums of Kate Bush, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Depeche Mode, New Order, Cocteau Twins, David Bowie, and Grace Jones, who turned Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” into a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeawPUpTHJA">strict machine</a> with the gated reverb of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdJiIP3KQfo">her 1980 cover</a>.</p>
<p>Roxy Music caught up quickly with songs like the lovely “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnde5c7OG8">More Than This</a>” on 1982’s <em>Avalon</em>, but Jones was an early adopter of the effect, which—like many a legendary piece of studio wizardry—came about entirely by accident, during a 1979 recording session for Peter Gabriel’s eerie solo track “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzUh_H7yV0">Intruder</a>.”</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 13pt;">On the drums—</span><em style="font-size: 13pt;">Vox</em><span style="font-size: 13pt;">’s Estelle Caswell tells us in the explainer video at the top—was Gabriel’s former Genesis bandmate Phil Collins, and in the control room, recording engineer Hugh Padgham, who had inadvertently left a talkback mic on in the studio.</span></p>
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<p>The mic happened to be running through a heavy compressor, which squashed the sound, and a noise gate that clamped down on the reverberating drums, cutting off the natural decay and creating a short, sharp echo that cut right through any mix. After hearing the sound, Gabriel arranged “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAzUh_H7yV0">Intruder</a>” around it, and the following year, Collins and Padgham created the most iconic use of gated reverb in pop music history on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkADj0TPrJA">In the Air Tonight</a>.” “Thanks to a happy accident,” says Caswell, “the sound of the 80s was born.” Also the sound of the oughties and beyond, as you’ll hear in <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/estellecaswell/playlist/5zh0IzdP530nxTKRmarv5q">the 38-s0ng playlist above</a>, featuring many of the pioneers of gated reverb and the many earnest revivalists who made it hip, and ubiquitous, again.</p>
<p><strong>Related Content: </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/iall_hail_the_beati_how_the_1980_roland_tr-808_drum_machine_changed_pop_music.html">All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/03/the_amen_break_the_most_famous_6-second_drum_loop_how_it_spawned_a_sampling_revolution.html">The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6-Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sampling Revolution</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/two-guitar-effects-that-revolutionized-rock-the-invention-of-the-wah-wah-fuzz-pedals.html">Two Guitar Effects That Revolutionized Rock: The Invention of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Pedals</a></p>
<p><a href="http://about.me/jonesjoshua"><em>Josh Jones</em></a><em> is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at <a href="https://twitter.com/jdmagness">@jdmagness</a></em></p>
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| 5:46p | AC/DC’s “Back in Black” Played on the Gayageum, a Korean Instrument Dating Back to the 6th Century
Every now and again, we check in on what's happening in the musical world of Luna Lee--a musician who performs Western music on the Gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument that dates back to the 6th century. Over the years, we've shown you her adaptations of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile;’ David Bowie's “The Man Who Sold The World;” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah;” blues classics by John Lee Hooker, B.B. King & Muddy Waters; and Pink Floyd's “Comfortably Numb,” “Another Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky.” To keep the tradition going, we bring you today Luna's take on AC/DC's 1980 classic, "Back in Black." Enjoy these four minutes of metalized Gayageum. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. If you'd like to support Open Culture and our mission, please consider making a donation to our site. It's hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us provide the best free cultural and educational materials. Related Content: Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Classic, “Take Five” Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments Ultra Orthodox Rabbis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem AC/DC’s “Back in Black” Played on the Gayageum, a Korean Instrument Dating Back to the 6th Century is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 7:00p | Ridley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from Blade Runner
f The opening Voight-Kampff test that turns explosive, the flight over the high-rise rooftops and past the tower-side video geisha of 2019 Los Angeles, Roy Batty's dying monologue on the rainy rooftop, Deckard picking up Gaff's origami unicorn: like any other movie meriting classic status, Blade Runner less possesses memorable scenes than comprises nothing but memorable scenes. Fans have, of course, argued for their favorites, and if you have one yourself you can now compare your judgment against that of the film's director Ridley Scott, who talks about which Blade Runner scene he holds in highest esteem in the new video from Wired above. Scott picks the scene when Deckard, Harrison Ford's hunter of the artificial human beings known as replicants, visits the offices of the colossal Tyrell Corporation that invented them and interviews an immaculately put-together young lady, almost a vision out of film noir, named Rachael. But that's no lady — that's a replicant, at least according to the Voight-Kampff gear he breaks out and sets up for the procedure. "To Rick Deckard, it's just a job," says Scott. "He appears to be oblivious to the beauty and is unimpressed by what he sees. At the end of it, he says, 'How can it now know what it is?' He calls her 'it.' So obviously she's a race apart."
But how to signal that to the audience, showing without telling? Scott speaks of modeling Rachael after Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-born star from the golden age of Hollywood "who had a severity which was spectacular." Still working at a time in cinema when "digital doesn't have a word," he wanted a way to differentiate replicants from humans by putting an unusual "light in their eyes" (he references the leopard in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey). Special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull (who'd also worked on 2011) came up with a camera-mounted half-mirror that would, just often enough, tilt to make a "golden light" reflect off the retinas of Rachael and the other replicants. Scott's verdict: "Genius." Many of us would say the same about most other aspects of Blade Runner as well. But as with any artistically rich film, nobody, not even the director, has the final say about it. Scott may have an unambiguous attitude about the best part of Blade Runner, but then, he also has an unambiguous answer to the story's central question of whether not just Rachael but Deckard himself is a replicant. Will Denis Villeneuve's soon upcoming sequel Blade Runner 2049 honor, ignore, or work around that answer? More to the point, will it, in the fullness of time, contribute as much to our collective memory as did the original? Only one test, of the kind that happens in the movie theater, will reveal that to us. Related Content: The Art of Making Blade Runner: See the Original Sketchbook, Storyboards, On-Set Polaroids & More How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Illuminates the Central Problem of Modernity Blade Runner 2049’s New Making-Of Featurette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Awaited Sequel Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, 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. Ridley Scott Walks You Through His Favorite Scene from <i>Blade Runner</i> is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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