Pierre Henry – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 368

Piazzetta San Marco by Moonlight (no date) by Friedrich Paul Nerly.

• RIP Heathcote Williams (Guardian obit, NYT obit): poet, playwright, actor, artist, anarchist, stage magician, and no doubt many other things besides. Being a product of the counter-culture, and one of Britain’s foremost anti-establishment writers (his polemics against the Royal Family were unceasing), Williams was a regular in the early publications produced by my colleagues at Savoy Books; in fact there’s a piece by him in The Savoy Book itself. Consequently, Williams always felt like a distant relative even though we never met. Of his many film appearances, which ranged from low-budget independent productions to Hollywood junk, he was ideally cast as Prospero in Derek Jarman’s film of The Tempest, and he audaciously steals a scene from Tilda Swinton in Sally Potter’s wonderful Orlando. Elsewhere: Jeremy Harding on Williams’ run-ins with the gatekeepers, and Why D’Ya Do It?, a song by Marianne Faithfull with lyrics by Williams.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 226 by Chihei Hatakeyama, and SydArthur Festival 2: Summer of Love Edition by Head Heritage.

• Geeta Dayal on composer and musique concrète pioneer Pierre Henry whose death was also announced this week.

• Jonathan Meades reviews Vinyl.Album.Cover.Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue by Aubrey Powell.

• “Brutal! Vulgar! Dirty!” Polly Stenham on Mae West and the gay comedy that shocked 1920s America.

• Hannah Devlin on religious leaders getting high on psilocybin for science.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…In Transit (1969) by Brigid Brophy.

• At Bibliothèque Gay: Matelots (1935) by Gregorio Prieto.

• SD Sykes on reconsidering Venice, crumbling city.

• Letters and Liquor

• This Ain’t The Summer Of Love (1976) by Blue Öyster Cult | Orlando (1996) by Trans Am | Transit (2004) by Fennesz

Two sides of Liska

Et Cetera (1966).

A little more on the music of Czech soundtrack composer Zdenek Liska (1922–1983). Liska seems to stand in relation to Czech cinema as Ennio Morricone does to that of the cinema of Italy, being similarly prolific, highly regarded, and idiosyncratic to a degree that makes his work immediately recognisable. Both men could also draw on their experience outside the film world to fuel their scores: Morricone for many years was a performer with Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, a group of Italian free improvisers, while Liska’s work with electro-acoustic composition and early electronic music explains the frequent eruptions in his lush orchestrations of tape effects, exaggerated echoes and other forms of artificial processing. This kind of cross-pollination doesn’t seem so surprising today but it’s striking and surprising in soundtracks from the 1960s.

Good examples of the opposite poles of Liska can be found in two of Jan Svankmajer’s early shorts. Et Cetera (1966) is one of the director’s most formal exercises, a series of crude drawings (or cut-outs) coming to life to perform a repetitive routine before being interrupted by the words “ET CETERA”. The film plays with the audience by beginning with a title card that states “The End”, and the piece as a whole could easily be screened as an endless loop. Liska’s score is a combination of fairly minimal orchestration with a variety of electro-acoustic effects which are closer to Pierre Henry or Ilhan Mimaroglu than other Eastern European composers.

Shade of Magritte: The Flat (1968).

At the opposite end of the scale there’s the score for The Flat (1968), a typical piece of Svankmajer Surrealism with an unfortunate individual locked in a room where everything, from walls to furniture, contradicts his expectations. René Magritte casts a long shadow over this one, with director Juraj Herz making a brief appearance as a bowler-hatted man carrying a chicken. Liska’s score has a driving and reverberent choral rhythm that always makes me think of Krzysztof Komeda’s similar music for Roman Polanski’s Dance of the Vampires (1967). For such a short film it’s a remarkable piece of orchestration. The Brothers Quay are great Liska enthusiasts, and used some of the score from The Flat (and two other Liska pieces) for their 1984 film The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, an animated portrait of the director.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Liska’s Golem
• The Cremator by Juraj Herz

Psyché Rock

Messe Pour Le Temps Present (1967).

Electro-acoustic composer Pierre Henry probably wouldn’t thank you for calling Psyché Rock his finest moment but it’s a favourite of mine. It’s also his most well-known composition although most people know it as a putative inspiration for Christopher Tyng’s theme to Futurama. The YouTube version here is the original mix. Many other uploads are later remixes which disgracefully downplay the wonderful out-of-time synth shrieks.

Too Fortiche / Psyché Rock / Teen Tonic / Jericho Jerk (1967). Credited to “Les Yper-Sound”.

Psyché Rock was the second track on Messe Pour Le Temps Present, an album of music composed in part with Michel Colombier. (It was also released on an EP with three other Henry/Colombier tracks, and later as a single in its own right.) The Messe section of the album was the score for a Maurice Béjart dance piece, a small example of which can be seen here. There’s also this silly dance sequence from French TV featuring stripping meter maids.

Moog Indigo (1970).

Another French composer, Jean-Jacques Perrey, looked from inner to outer space in 1970 with E.V.A., a track on his Moog Indigo album. This sounds very similar to Psyché Rock, albeit less wild and much more groovy, and may also be an inspiration for the Futurama theme. This train of associations has given E.V.A. a life beyond its album release.

As to Futurama, there’s a mass of clips and themes of differing lengths out there. I’ll mention Fatboy Slim’s remixes only to say that I’ve never been very enamoured of Quentin’s compositions so the less said about him (and them), the better. Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent Et Musiques Concrètes De Pierre Henry Pour Maurice Béjart was available on CD as recently as 2009 in a package which shows some of the equipment used to produce its sounds.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch