New podcast: VARIATIONS #7. The composer, by Jon Leidecker

 

 

 

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Led by Jon Leidecker, VARIATIONS reconstructs the history of sound appropriationism by looking at examples from 20th century composition, popular art and commercial media, and the convergence of all these trends today.

 

 

If sampling had seemed an inherently revolutionary practice in the eighties that called into question the definition and the authority of the composer, the proliferation of artists in the decade that followed reasserted that authority. Mainstream audiences finally recognized appropriation as a legitimate form of creativity once artists became comfortable practicing it as a form of self-expression.

 

In the nineties, sampling technology reached a level of sophistication and control that allowed musicians to truly assert themselves over their materials. While some collagists innovated by conifdently stepping into the traditional role of the romantic composer, presenting the resulting music as an expression of self, others continued to explore the intrinsic meanings suggested by the craft itself. In this episode we trace through examples of the popular music that brought the term 'remix' into the popular lexicon, hear the CD player joining the turntable as a live performance instrument, and connect digital sampling to the history of musical borrowing: written notation’s classical equivalent to the editing techniques that modern composers use to transform existing music into new compositions.

 

In episode #7 we trace through examples of the popular music that brought the term 'remix' into the popular lexicon, hear the CD player joining the turntable as a live performance instrument, and connect digital sampling to the history of musical borrowing: written notation’s classical equivalent to the editing techniques that modern composers use to transform existing music into new compositions.

 

You can find the previous episodes here:

 

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