Hamelin's Prelude to an Imaginary Symphony(Homage to Sorabji)

[stevie]

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

written the year after sorabji died.......the score is a bit...SCARY!

[BoliverAllmon]

did he record it?

[brewtality]

I always thought it was a joke piece (?) I mean "comme un marteau pneumatique", this is clearly tongue-in-cheek right?

[Etude]

Jcarey recorded it a while back, it sounds nothing like Sorabji. 


hm, John, can you put the recording back up?

[ahinton]

Jcarey recorded it a while back, it sounds nothing like Sorabji.

No, indeed it doesn't, although there are certain deliberately ersatz-Sorabjian gestural moments that are sufficiently obvious in their origins for it to be reasonable clear where M-AH was coming from in this work. I would not go do far as to suggest that it was a joke in itself, the only possible "joke", if any, being confined to the title rather than identifiable in the music itself.

Best,

Alistair

[thierry13]

I always thought it was a joke piece (?) I mean "comme un marteau pneumatique", this is clearly tongue-in-cheek right?

It is french, so BASICALLY it is not a joke. What it means in french is a joke. It means : "like a tire-hammer. Yes the kind of tire a car has,filled with air...

[stevie]

there are some pretty hilarious markings in it though, i especially like 'quasi confuso', like you could play it any other way 

[pita bread]

John Stump, heh.

[brewtality]

It is french, so BASICALLY it is not a joke. What it means in french is a joke. It means : "like a tire-hammer. Yes the kind of tire a car has,filled with air...

what? I speak french, it means like a pneumatic drill. This is why I thought it was a joke.

[thierry13]

what? I speak french, it means like a pneumatic drill. This is why I thought it was a joke.

A drill is a perceuse. A marteau is a hammer.

[brewtality]

A drill is a perceuse. A marteau is a hammer.

yeah I know, but the phrase "marteau pneumatique" means pneumatic drill. Look it up if you don't believe me. Ok, let's try to stay on topic. 

[ahinton]

there are some pretty hilarious markings in it though, i especially like 'quasi confuso', like you could play it any other way 

Yes, there are - but then that piece is not the only example where M-AH inserts performance and other directions in a piece which may not itself be intended as a joke. Indeed, the "confuse is lifted from the "sempre più confuso" in, I think, Ferneyhough's piano work Lemma-Icon-Epigram - hardly a joke piece itself. Perhaps, in the case of this Prélude, le marteau pneumatique est sans maître...

Best,

Alistair