Ghost of a flea: You can kill people with sound

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December 10, 2007

You can kill people with sound

I found this 1997 Björk special, Modern Minimalists (Part I, Part II), as I was searching YouTube for pieces by Arvo Pärt. His interview is interesting and, while he was in Berlin, I am once again wondering why I do not live in Barcelona. My first thought, however, was that after dating a succession of women like Björk it is perhaps time for me to find someone a bit more normal, this followed by a thought wondering where the normal people hang out. But by the time she got round to the Pärt interview I had decided I am doing just fine as it is.

The last few hundred years in European music people moved very slowly but very surely towards complexities and cleverness and in the end my opinion was generally creating music like food for thought for the brain. Then in the middle of the century from completely opposite angles from folk music or pop music or whatever you decide to call it and on the other angle serious music or classical music decided both to shake off all that armour of the brain and start very simple with minimal things.

More Arvo Pärt music and an interview in 24 Preludes for a Fugue (5, 6, 7 of 29), a MySpace fan page and BBC3 Discovering Music workshop with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Related: A Karlheinz Stockausen excursus on the subject of sounds. The Drink Soaked Trots will not mourn his passing.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at December 10, 2007 06:17 AM