Wendy Carlos... Progressive?

I did a quick search on this forum and found that this woman hasn't been mentioned... I wonder what you all think about the question of whether or not Wendy Carlos could be considered progressive?

For those of you who don't know who she is, she's most famous for composing the soundtrack for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  However, throughout the seventies she released four "baroque-gone-space-age LPs."  SWITCHED-ON BACH, THE WELL-TEMPERED SYNTHESIZER, SWITCHED-ON BACH II and SWITCHED-ON BRANDENBURGS.

The idea of classical compositions as prog is not unique to this archive... ELP, after all, did a whole album structured around it (PICTURES FROM AN EXHIBITION).  Neither is the idea of prog artists doing soundtrack music, a la Goblin (mostly for Italian horror films in the 70s).

So what do you guys think?  Here are links to two amazon.com sites, one for a boxset of her 70s work, and another one for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack... Based on the original compositions of the latter, I think she merits consideration or, at the very least, a serious discussion on the merits of this music, regarldess or not it is not deemed "prog."

BOXSET - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00002DDS5/qid =1112635226/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-0778454-6589407?v=glance&a mp;s=classical

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000DGXX/ref =pd_bxgy_text_1_cp/103-0778454-6589407?v=glance&s=classi cal&st=*

Easy Livin wrote: I guess a good case could possibly be made though for considering some of his work to be prog, it's a tricky one though.

It's just I'm kind of tired of the SAME bands being argued over and over without anything happening...  I thought I'd introduce someone who I thought sounded fairly proggish and that nobody had spoken about on the forum before.

I'd be interested in hearing some more opinions... there are brief clips on those links that I posted.

Easy Livin wrote: I don't mean to be picky, but for me, those early albums you mention will always be by Walter Carlos, I still can't get used to the notion of him now being a "she". I guess a good case could possibly be made though for considering some of his work to be prog, it's a tricky one though.

EL

Are you old enough to have seen a documentary on the MOOG synth, on BBC 2 around 1970, introduced by Leonard Berstein? Walter Carlos was interviewed - I still have the memory of a somewhat strange looking man with a St Trinians head mistress voice: I was not surprised to read he got the chop. If I remember correctly Carlos did a physics degree at one of the US's ivy league universities, and then a master's which mixed his physics background with his love of serious music.

Bernstein made it very clear that there had been a long history of transcription (and here, he coined the term 'transmoogification') of serious music pieces, i.e. from one instrument to another or orchestral piece to a single instrument, or as in Pictures At An Exhibition, Ravel's orchestration transcription from a Mussourski's piano piece.

The closest Carlos gets to prog is Timesteps on A Clockwork Orange album (not the OST version) - which I personally finds out-wakemans Rick Wakeman - but the vast majority of Carlos's early work is transciptions of baroque or roccoco serious pieces, or his/her own compositions -  Tron (OST), Moonscapes. Sonic Seasoning - which I'm glad to see has been remastered, but I'm less sure about the bonus tracks on the CD - I hear this as the first soundscape album - and the third track Fall still sends certains shivers done my spine. And I'm told By Request has recently been remastered on CD - with a wonderful piss take on Elgar's Enigma Variations.

However, Carlos wasn't the only one dabbling at playing the classics on the Moog at that time. For example (and I don't mean Tomita who comes a little later),on the back of the Switched On Bach success, RCA issued an album The Moog  Strikes Bach by Hans Wurman in 1970, with Chopin, Mozart, Prokofieff, Rachmaninoff as well as Bach on the menu. In the same year, a rather good album avoiding the obvious classic rep cliches, was The Velvet Gentleman: The Music Of Erik Satie by the Camarata Contemporary Chamber Group - self explanatory to some extent: Moog with chamber group.

And finally, to reiterate - on one of the Carlos remasters, our Wend talks about preparing to record Pictures At An Exhibition, only to discover through her contact at Moog, that Emerson had got in just before her. However, one gets to think as the ELP version was recorded live March 1971 in Newcastle, was that Emerson finding means of getting their version out first, having heard that Carlos was going to record it in a studio??????????


Edited by Dick Heath

Guillermo wrote:   I also have listened to all Tomita`s albums which were released by RCA in the U.S.(1974-1988). In his last albums for the label (from 1982 to 1988), he started to use the Synclavier. His albums, IMO, are more "fantasy-created" albums, using the different sounds of Synthesizers in his own arrangements of Classical Music pieces. Some of them are "conceptual albums" (like his 1979 album "Bermuda Triangle"). Carlos`sounds in the albums that I have listened from her are more "simple" in comparison to Tomita`s. Maybe Tomita, who began recording synth albums in the 70s, had more advanced equipment than Carlos in the late 60s. But both musicians are very original and their experiments with synths helped a lot to use them in other music styles, like Prog Rock, New Age, Pop and even Disco music! Tomita also has an album called "Pictures at an Exhibition" which was released in the U.S. in 1975. Obviously, his version is very different to ELP`s version of the same piece of classical music.Tomita also used the mellotron a lot in his albums.

 

Thanks for those comments on the psychological pressures suffered by those who go through it - for the vast majority of us such things are very unusual, and hence the the apparent unsympathetic responses (which I'm sure aren't meant to imply anything derogatory).

 

I agree with Tomita being the more adventurous, although he did ran foul of the Gustav Holtz estates because of that and was not allowed to release Tomita's Planets in the UK until the copyright lapsed (here 50 years after the death of the composer). Btw  press releases for the CD issue of Carlos's By Request, spent some time waffling on about that album being banned in the UK because of that Elgar interpretation. Complete rubbish: anybody want to borrow my British pressed and released CBS 12" LP bought soon after the original release date? Carlos'  major compositions, which I think started with Moonscapes, I'm sure are intended to be included as part of the serious  late 20th Century canon. However, for truly avante gard, serious electronic music the likes of Milton Subotnik (e.g. Silver Apples Of the Moon), and of course  Stockhausen, should  be considered.

Crimson Prince wrote: I don't know of Wendy Carlo's music. I am frightened by Wendy Carlos in the same way that many are afraid of leprechauns or garden gnomes. The whole sex-change thing doesn't sit well with me and I really don't feel comfortable associating myself with it in any way.

So if Robert Fripp were to have a sex change, you would sell off all of your albums in order to avoid an association?

An artist's music should always be seperated from their private life.  It's the songs you're listening to, not the musicians life.

Crimson Prince wrote: Yes, I probably would get rid of my KC and Fripp records. I don't want anyone to have a reason to think I am a pervert.

Well I'll just have to respectfully disagree... Good music is good music, in my opinion, and I would never let opinions of a musician's private life deprive me of listening to something of quality.

I think that a part of her music can be ranged under the electro prog music label...in the past I were in favor to add W. Carlos to the archives, but now...many albums just sound too similar to Vangelis music, and for me Vangelis as Jean Michel Jarre can only make commercial, TV, advertisment, supermarket music.

Edited by philippe

DallasBryan wrote: I would consider Wendy Carlos and Tomita as the beginnings of Electronica.

DB can I suggest "keyboard synth based electronica" for more precision, since electronica recordings do date back to the probably the 40's when tape recorders first became commercially available. Stockhausen  dates to the 50's, Terry Riley early/mid 60's (half a decade before his Rainbow In Curved Air), Milton Subotnik middle 60's, Whitenoise (part of which was  originally involved too in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop)  middle/late 60's - all of whom managed without keyboard electronics. BTW if you do get that Touch album, there's clues to what keyboardists had to do overcome some of the  limitations of Farfarsias, Hammonds etc.  while  Moogs, Mellotron weren't available.

Incidentally, Dick, as you mention documentaries revolving around moogs - there is a new one out on Dr. Robert Moog, a filmed documentary dating from last year (but currently on show at selected cinemas - i.e arty ones!). I haven't seen it yet - but apparently as well as interviewing all the usual suspects (emerson, wakeman et al.) it also interviews younger musicians to such as the Sterolab people amongst others. I think it is still showing as of today.

Another good group to mention in this context is Tonto's Expanding Head Band and their ace LP from 1972 ZERO TIME. Also, a very obscure telling of the Wizard of OZ with electronic manipulations for moog: The Wozzard of IZ: An Electronic Odyssey, composed & realised by Mort GArson. Issued on A&M Records in early 70s. Its totally mad, but my battered copy needs replacing. Was there a CD relesase of this, does anyone know?

Dick Heath wrote: Guillermo wrote:   I also have listened to all Tomita`s albums which were released by RCA in the U.S.(1974-1988). In his last albums for the label (from 1982 to 1988), he started to use the Synclavier. His albums, IMO, are more "fantasy-created" albums, using the different sounds of Synthesizers in his own arrangements of Classical Music pieces. Some of them are "conceptual albums" (like his 1979 album "Bermuda Triangle"). Carlos`sounds in the albums that I have listened from her are more "simple" in comparison to Tomita`s. Maybe Tomita, who began recording synth albums in the 70s, had more advanced equipment than Carlos in the late 60s. But both musicians are very original and their experiments with synths helped a lot to use them in other music styles, like Prog Rock, New Age, Pop and even Disco music! Tomita also has an album called "Pictures at an Exhibition" which was released in the U.S. in 1975. Obviously, his version is very different to ELP`s version of the same piece of classical music.Tomita also used the mellotron a lot in his albums.   Thanks for those comments on the psychological pressures suffered by those who go through it - for the vast majority of us such things are very unusual, and hence the the apparent unsympathetic responses (which I'm sure aren't meant to imply anything derogatory).   I agree with Tomita being the more adventurous, although he did ran foul of the Gustav Holtz estates because of that and was not allowed to release Tomita's Planets in the UK until the copyright lapsed (here 50 years after the death of the composer). Btw  press releases for the CD issue of Carlos's By Request, spent some time waffling on about that album being banned in the UK because of that Elgar interpretation. Complete rubbish: anybody want to borrow my British pressed and released CBS 12" LP bought soon after the original release date? Carlos'  major compositions, which I think started with Moonscapes, I'm sure are intended to be included as part of the serious  late 20th Century canon. However, for truly avante gard, serious electronic music the likes of Milton Subotnik (e.g. Silver Apples Of the Moon), and of course  Stockhausen, should  be considered.

If you are interested in a website dedicated to Tomita: http://listen.to/tomita  . I think that it is a website from the U.K.  It has information about his equipment and all his albums released in Europe, U.K., U.S. and the albums which he only released  in Japan. My favourite album from Tomita is "Bolero" (released in the U.S. with this title), which has music composed by Ravel.

I remember that the British group Spooky Tooth (with the exception of Gary Wright who was born in the U.S.) recorded an album with Pierre Henry called "Ceremony" in 1970. It has "electronic sounds" apart from the music of the band. I only have listened once to that album and it has  some "strange sounds" maybe created using moogs. George Harrison also recorded in 1968  an album called "Electronic Sounds" with moogs. I never have listened to this album, but I have seen it in record shops on CD.

 

Edited by Guillermo