Longplayer | |
---|---|
by Jem Finer | |
Genre | Experimental music |
Form | Atonal |
Performed | 1 January 2000 |
Duration | 1,000 years |
Longplayer has been playing for
24 years, 7 months and 18 days.
Longplayer is a very long piece of music by British composer and musician Jem Finer which is composed to play for 1000 years without looping. It started to play at midnight on 1 January 2000, and if all goes as planned, it will continue without repetition until 31 December 2999.
Longplayer is not tied to any one form of technology and can be performed equally by computer or humans playing singing bowls and following a graphic score. There have also been several live performances and future performances continue to be planned. It began as an original commission by arts organisation Artangel and is currently maintained by the Longplayer Trust, [1] and is located in Trinity Buoy Wharf on the north bank of the River Thames.
Longplayer is based on an existing piece of music, 20 minutes and 20 seconds in length, which is processed by computer using a simple algorithm. This gives a large number of variations, which, when played consecutively, gives a total expected runtime of 1000 years. It is played on a single instrument consisting of 234 Tibetan standing bells and gongs of different sizes, [2] which are able to create a range of sounds by either striking or rolling pieces of wood around the rims. This source music was recorded in December 1999. The piece is described as reflecting on the concepts of time and impermanence from a cosmological and philosophical perspective, and questions traditional ideas about composition sound, time and duration. [2]
The piece was the conclusion of several years' study into musical systems by Finer and is written as a self-generating computer programme. According to Finer, the idea first came to him on the back of a tour bus whilst he was a musician in the folk band The Pogues. [3] He began working on the programming in 1995, for which he learned several computer programming languages before finally settling on SuperCollider, a language which uses algorithms to organise notation, data or MIDI to compose music, sometimes known as algorithmic composition. [4] The programme is regularly transferred from one motherboard to another in order that the software remains continuously viable. [5] As of 2015 this was operated by a wall of Apple computers in the Bow Creek Lighthouse. [6] The music is produced by simple mechanical processes, and Tibetan bowls were decided on partly because of their relative robustness and ability to stay in tune without frequent retuning and partly because they have a long musical tradition stretching back over a thousand years and would not sound fixed to a particular musical fashion in history and become dated. [4]
Longplayer could be heard in the relaxation zone of the Millennium Dome in London during its year of opening in 2000. The piece is also played in the 19th century lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf and other public listening posts in the United Kingdom. It can currently[ when? ] be heard in several locations including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Horniman Museum and Kings Place. Other listening stations can be found in the United States, Australia and Egypt, where it can still be heard today. [7] [ when? ] It can also be heard via a stream on Icecast.
In 2009 a 1000-minute part of the piece was performed with a 26-piece orchestra on a purpose-built stage at the Roundhouse, a former railway turntable building converted to a performing arts venue in Chalk Farm, London. Performers included David Toop and Ansuman Biswas, and the piece was played on what Finer described as a "giant synthesiser built of bronze-age technology." [8] Musicians played in shifts in groups of 6, beginning at 08:20 BST with the performance lasting 16 hours and 40 minutes. [9]
The piece is also available as an app for mobile devices, designed by Joe Hales and Daniel Jones, [5] which runs independently of the piece being broadcast but is exactly in synchronised performance with it. [6]
Four excerpts of Longplayer were released on vinyl LP which accompany a book of the same name written by Finer, along with essays by Kodwo Eshun, Janna Levin, and Margaret and Christine Wertheim. [10] [11]
Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, electrical engineering, and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century.
The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in King's Cross, London, in 1982, as Pogue Mahone—an anglicisation of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse". Fusing punk influences with instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, Irish bouzouki, cittern, mandolin and accordion, the Pogues were initially poorly received in traditional Irish music circles—the noted musician Tommy Makem called them "the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music"—but were subsequently credited with reinvigorating the genre. The band later incorporated influences from other musical traditions, including jazz, flamenco, and Middle Eastern music.
Max Vernon Mathews was an American pioneer of computer music.
Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.
Background music is a mode of musical performance in which the music is not intended to be a primary focus of potential listeners, but its content, character, and volume level are deliberately chosen to affect behavioral and emotional responses in humans such as concentration, relaxation, distraction, and excitement. Listeners are uniquely subject to background music with no control over its volume and content. The range of responses created are of great variety, and even opposite, depending on numerous factors such as, setting, culture, audience, and even time of day.
Jeremy Max Finer is an English musician, artist and composer. He was one of the founding members of the Pogues.
If I Should Fall from Grace with God is the third studio album by Celtic folk-punk band the Pogues, released on 18 January 1988. Released in the wake of their biggest hit single, "Fairytale of New York", If I Should Fall from Grace with God also became the band's best-selling album, peaking at number three on the UK Albums Chart and reaching the top ten in several other countries.
Trinity Buoy Wharf is the site of a lighthouse, by the confluence of the River Thames and Bow Creek on the Leamouth Peninsula, Poplar. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The lighthouse no longer functions, but is the home of various art projects such as Longplayer. It is sometimes known as Bow Creek Lighthouse.
Different Trains is a three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written by Steve Reich in 1988.
"Fairytale of New York" is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their London-based band the Pogues, featuring English singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals. The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with the Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl playing the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God.
A standing bell or resting bell is an inverted bell, supported from below with the rim uppermost. Such bells are normally bowl-shaped, and exist in a wide range of sizes, from a few centimetres to a metre in diameter. They are often played by striking, but some—known as singing bowls—may also be played by rotating a suede covered mallet around the outside rim to produce a sustained musical note.
ORGAN2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is a musical piece by John Cage and the subject of the second-longest-lasting (after Longplayer) musical performance yet undertaken. Cage wrote it in 1987 for organ, as an adaptation of his 1985 composition ASLSP for piano. A performance of the piano version usually lasts 20 to 70 minutes.
In music, transcription is the practice of notating a piece or a sound which was previously unnotated and/or unpopular as a written music, for example, a jazz improvisation or a video game soundtrack. When a musician is tasked with creating sheet music from a recording and they write down the notes that make up the piece in music notation, it is said that they created a musical transcription of that recording. Transcription may also mean rewriting a piece of music, either solo or ensemble, for another instrument or other instruments than which it was originally intended. The Beethoven Symphonies transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt are an example. Transcription in this sense is sometimes called arrangement, although strictly speaking transcriptions are faithful adaptations, whereas arrangements change significant aspects of the original piece.
James Fearnley is an English musician. He played accordion in the Pogues.
The largest creative work is the largest or longest item in different fields of creative works. Some pieces were created with the specific intention of holding the record while others have been recognised for their size after completion.
Pogue Mahone is the seventh and final studio album by The Pogues, released in February 1996. The title is a variant of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse", from which the band's name is derived. It was the band's second studio album recorded after the departure of Shane MacGowan, and features Spider Stacy in the role of lead singer.
John Eacott is a British jazz trumpeter and composer.
Artangel is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web. Notable past works include the Turner Prize-winning House by Rachel Whiteread (1993), Break Down by Michael Landy (2001) and Seizure by Roger Hiorns (2008–2010), also nominated for the Turner Prize in 2009.
AS Long As Possible (ASLAP) (2015–2017) is a 1,000-year long animated GIF made by Finnish artist Juha van Ingen. It premiered at Kiasma National Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki on 28 March 2017. The animation is created in collaboration with developer and sound artist Janne Särkelä.
Joshua Banks Mailman is an American music theorist, as well an analyst, composer, improvisor, philosopher, critic, and technologist of music.