What The Ear Hears

Pierre Schaeffer - Solfège de l'objet sonore (1967) {3CD Set, Ina-GRM ina c 2010/11/12 rel 2005}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 481 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 311 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 523 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1967, 2005 Ina-GRM | ina c 2010/11/12
Classical / Electroacoustic / Electronic / Musique Concrète

It is a well-established fact that our approach to music is generally twofold: this is the physicists' as well as the musicians' doing. One the one hand, music is considered to be based on acoustics, or even mathematics, which ought to give it the status of a science; on the other hand , it is acknowledged that it proceeds from psychological and sociological phenomena which, over the ages, have developed into an art, itself depending on various crafts. There is no longer any contradiction between the two approaches so long as one is prepared to accept them jointly, with enough insight to respect the methods proper to each end of the "chain."

Anyone who enjoys Mozart opera should hear this disc. Yet quite a few people who'd probably love it to death if they listened are going to pass it by. Why? Well, look at the selections - it's not exactly a 'greatest hits' selection in the truly popular sense. Lucio Silla, Il re pastore, Mitridate, Zaïde - hardly front rank Mozart operas in the public consciousness; with Die Entführung we're getting closer - and suddenly you spot track 2, Pamina's gorgeous lament to lost love from The Magic Flute: 'Ach, ich fühl's' - anyone who hears Sandrine Piau singing this famous number will want to experience the rest of the recording no matter what.

The Book of Genesis tells us that in the beginning was the Word and that the Word was sound. But what if it was music? What if God, in contemplating the creation of Creation, sang being into being? If so, it might have sounded something like the Sacred Songs of Valentin Silvestrov. In this seventh ECM album devoted to the Ukrainian composer’s music, we thusly encounter a sense of space unique to the Russian liturgy: the more the voices unify in movement, the more they lift from one another like temporary tattoos, leaving behind mirror images that wash away with baptism into infinite oneness with the Holy Spirit. Sin as sun. Firmament as fundament.