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Richard Blackford with the Bio Music

Richard Blackford was born in London in 1954. And he studied composition with John Lambert and conducted at the Royal College of Music, then with Hans Werner Henze in Rome. During studying in Italia, he was hailed by the Italian press as "the brightest new star in the constellation of the European avant-garde." On returning to London in 1977, he established the music theatre department at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. While at the same time continuing his work on the opera 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' During the 1980s, Blackford became increasingly involved in theatre and television. He composed incidental music for plays and a number of scores for television dramas and documentaries. And, He is the recipient of several awards, including the Houston Film Festival (First Prize), the Royal Television Society Award, the Mendelssohn Scholarship, and the Tagore Gold Medal. In his works, he has composed in virtually every genre; ballet, opera, orchestral, chamber music, electro-acoustic, and his three major choral works.

I want to share this music, "The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes." The music was composed by Richard Blackford and wild soundscape recordist Bernie Kraus in 2014. 

The music genre is biomusic, which is a form of experimental music that deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. To understand the biomusic, we can be divided the genre into two basic categories. First, the music is created solely by the animal or, in some cases, plant. Second, the music is based upon animal noises but arranged by a human composer. And the music "the Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes" used animal noises with music from a symphony orchestra. 

The music is the first symphony based on ecological themes and the first to perform live with whole natural soundscapes informing the orchestral form and themes, just as biophonies and geophonies inspired music (rhythm, melody, organization of sound, timbre, and dynamic) at the dawn of cultural time.

The music consists of the five-movement symphony: Gibbons, Humpback Whales, Pacific Tree Frogs, Mountain Gorillas, Beavers, and the Musical Wren. And the piece was premiered on 12 July 2014 at the Cheltenham Festival with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Martyn Brabbins.

The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony: I. Introduction and Tuning



The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony: V. Song of the Musician Wren


Haksung Lee


Comments

  1. Hi Haksung! Thank you for sharing this piece with us! I particularly enjoyed the way in which the orchestra interacted with the recorded sounds in the fifth movement. I'm wondering if you or anyone else have considered this piece in relation with other pieces which imitate or use live bird sounds from previous eras. Composers like Rameau were using their instruments to imitate bird sounds all the way back in the 17th century. Similarly, Messiaen was well-known for transcribing and recreating birdcalls in his compositions. The most obvious comparison in this case would be Respighi's _Pines of Rome_ which also makes use of recorded bird sounds. Could we perhaps see this piece as a continuation of this tradition, but taken to its extreme?

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  2. Haksung, thanks for sharing this! This is super cool. This piece has a particular 'cinematic' feel for me. There is something about the inclusion of the wild soundscapes that feels like it needs a visual component. Very cool. The musical content however sounds like a conceptual extension of Ferde Groufé's Grand Canyon Suite. It sounds like a very specific arrangement of the tropes we associate with music emulating nature. I'm thinking specifically the feeling of the 'plodding along' that I get from the beginning of the Fifth movement. This reminds me of Groufé's ideas of westward expansion and leaves me wondering who's ideas of nature this belongs to and more glaringly who's it doesn't.

    - Stephen

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  3. WOW! Thank you for sharing this with us! I looooved that symphony! It sounds so naturally together - it's incredible how sounds of the nature blending well together with music! Speaking of composers who imitated the nature....I looked up to see more about the symphony and I found that the it was paired with Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals on a 2014 release by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales! It's a good match!

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  4. Thanks for sharing this piece Haksung! I've been seeing this trend in recent music as well - it is an intensifying and specifying of the nature tropes and ideas we've seen for centuries. The main addition I see in the last 10-20 years is that now we add recorded sounds from nature into the mix rather than just imitating nature. I also see that the imitations of nature are getting more specific - sounds of insect legs rubbing together, sounds of a lizard's throat, etc.

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  5. Hi, Haksung! This music is really interesting. I have heard biomusic before, but I did not realize there was a name for it! The way Blackford mixes the sounds of nature with orchestral instruments is interesting. I think it serves as a reminder that anything can be music, even things we hear every day, like birds chirping. It is always interesting to see how composers incorporate outside sounds into their music. Thanks! -- Noah Ward

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  6. This is really fascinating music. I'd love to check out a score and see if the composer has any percussionists or other instrumentalists using bird callers. Interestingly enough I heard something similar to the opening of Petrouchka in the first link you shared!

    JO

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  7. Hi Haksung! Your blog was really fascinating. I enjoyed learning about this composer because I love nature sounds and just nature in general and to hear what type of animals he uses mixed in with orchestra was beautiful! Thank you for sharing!

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  8. This concept of "bio music" reminds me a lot of John Cage's 4'33" but much more advanced and expanded upon. Such a fascinating concept and it intrigued me enough to look it up after class! Great blog, really enjoyed it. -Zack T

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