Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Beginning research

I finished the book by Barry England, Figures in a Landscape, maybe a year ago and it tore me apart.

It, and it’s ideas, came back to me recently for no particular reason, but the story immediately felt like a primal source of expression for something current in me. As inspiration, you look for the internal emotions–those that are the wordless–that you hope to express to others so that They Can See the Importance of those subjective ideations. More to the point: I look for those aspects of what’s in me to be important out of me… but I think it’s uncontroversial that this concept is universal w/r/t artists in general.

That’s a sloppy way of pointing out that: you say what you want to, and have to, say, and hope others enjoy it.

my copy, acquired Jun 2021
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Documenting the available recordings of Ussachevsky and Luening’s 1952 concert

Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening performed a concert of new electronic music on 28 Oct 1952 at the Museum of Modern Art. From Paul Griffiths’ Modern Music and After:

The Russian-born Vladimir Ussachevsky (b. 1911), who taught at Columbia University, gave a demonstration of the new medium’s potential in 1952, and he was soon joined in his endeavours by Otto Luening (b. 1900), who had studied with Busoni. They presented the first concert of electronic music in America, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on 28 October 1952: representative of the pieces then heard are Ussachevsky’s Sonic Contours and Luening’s Fantasy in Space, based on the sounds of piano and flute respectively. Out of their efforts grew the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which was formally founded in 1960.

Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After
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