The Beatles were “inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen…”  as SCOTT THILL has asserted. Francis Schaeffer noted that ideas of  “Non-resolution” and “Fragmentation” came down German and French streams with the influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets and then the influence of Debussy and later Schoenberg’s non-resolution which is in total contrast with Bach’s resolution. Finally you have Stockhausen’s electronic music and concern with the element of change and his influence can be seen on the Beatles in several songs but the first one was TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS.

Karlheinz Stockhausen pictured below on the cover of  Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:

_________

Tomorrow never knows – making of

___________

The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows (Lyrics)

The use of these ¼-inch audio tape loops resulted primarily from McCartney’s admiration for Stockhausen‘s Gesang der Jünglinge.

Dissecting “Tomorrow Never Knows” by The Beatles

One of the most ambitious and influential of all Beatles recordings is “Tomorrow Never Knows” from the 1966 Album Revolver. Primarily written by John Lennon, there are numerous examples of creative recording and mixing techniques from the production of this song.

To help reinforce this Indian-influenced song, which relies almost entirely on a steady C-chord, George Harrison added a droning Tambura, which is often confused with a sitar.

Ringo’s repetitive but unique drum performance which was arguably similar to “Ticket to Ride” from 1965, was close miked and heavily compressed, and provided an excellent backdrop for the organized chaos of tape loops and vocal experimentation.

Lennon wanted the vocal for this LSD-influenced song to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, and although The Beatles at this point could do essentially whatever they wanted at the famed Abbey Road Studios, this was not possible.

Ultimately, Engineer Geoff Emerick creatively ran Lennon’s vocal through a Leslie Speakerand re-recorded it. Lennon showed a general disdain for doubling his own vocal, so Ken Townsend developed automatic double tracking or ADT, a process in which the signal from the sync head of one tape machine was delayed through a second tape machine. The tape speed and therefore the pitch was modulated slightly, allowing the engineers to simulate a doubled vocal or other performance. Waves now has a plugin version of this effect.

McCartney, who had been influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen and other Musique concrete composers, brought in a selection of quarter-inch tape loops he had recorded at home. The infamous “seagull sound” is actually a sped up recording of someone (perhaps McCartney) laughing. The other Beatles provided home recorded tape loops which were ultimately played through various tape machines in Abbey Road, each supervised by technicians, with the band and Producer George Martin manning the faders as the loops were recorded on top of the existing arrangement. This was quite a departure in terms of production technique not only for the Beatles, but for any popular music group at the time.

Although later the hyper-critical Lennon expressed disappointment that the song lacked due to not having the chanting monks he originally envisioned, that didn’t stop this recording from being revolutionary and the perfect centerpiece for what is perhaps the bands’ most experimental album.

It has been covered by dozens of artists, and its influence can be heard in artists ranging from hip-hop to electronic.

In 2012, the popular AMC series Mad Men, in an unprecedented event, was able to obtain the recording and publishing rights for the song, allowing it to be used in an episode of the show for the hefty fee of $250,000.

Sgt. Pepper’s footnote: Karlheinz Stockhausen passes [Posted by Dave Haber on Tuesday, 12/18/07 7:34 am] [Full Blog] [Tweet] [Facebook]It was announced last week that Karlheinz Stockhausen , one of the most important and controversial postwar composers, passed away on Friday, December 7 at his home in western Germany. He was 79.So taken were the Beatles by Stockhausen’s music that he was included among the Beatle’s other heroes and idols on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. See this page on our sister-site, The Internet Beatles Album, for more about the Sgt. Pepper’s cover.

» Click here to read all the blog posts

Tomorrow Never Knows

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For The Beatles album, see Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles album). For the Peter Baldrachi album, see Tomorrow Never Knows (Peter Baldrachi album). For the Mr. Children song, see Tomorrow Never Knows (Mr. Children song).

“Tomorrow Never Knows”
Song by the Beatles from the albumRevolver
Released	5 August 1966
Recorded	6, 7 and 22 April 1966 EMI Studios, London
Genre	Psychedelic rock,[1] raga rock,[2]hard rock,[3] experimental rock[4]
Length	2:58
Label	Parlophone
Writer	Lennon–McCartney
Producer	George Martin
Revolver track listing
[show]14 tracks
Music sample “Tomorrow Never Knows” MENU 0:00

“Tomorrow Never Knows” is the final track of the Beatles‘ 1966 studio album Revolver but the first to be recorded. Credited as a Lennon–McCartney song, it was written primarily by John Lennon.^[1]

The song has a vocal put through a Leslie speaker cabinet (which was normally used as a loudspeaker for a Hammond organ). Tape loops prepared by the Beatles were mixed in and out of the Indian-inspired modal backing underpinned by Ringo Starr‘s constant but non-standard drum pattern.

It is considered one of the greatest songs of its time, with Pitchfork Media placing it at number 19 on its list of “The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s”.^[5]

Inspiration[edit]

See also: Counterculture of the 1960s

John Lennon wrote the song in January 1966, with lyrics adapted from the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, which was in turn adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.^[6] Although Peter Brown believed that Lennon’s source for the lyrics was the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself, which, he said, Lennon had read whilst consuming LSD,^[7] George Harrison later stated that the idea for the lyrics came from Leary, Alpert, and Metzner’s book;^[8] Paul McCartney confirmed this, stating that when he and Lennon visited the newly openedIndica bookshop, Lennon had been looking for a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and found a copy of The Psychedelic Experience that contained the lines: “Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream”.^[9]

Lennon bought the book, went home, took LSD, and followed the instructions exactly as stated in the book.^[10][11] The book held that the “ego death” experienced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs is essentially similar to the dying process and requires similar guidance.^[12][13] This is a state of being known by eastern mystics and masters as samādhi (a state of being totally aware of the present moment; a one-pointedness of mind.).

Title[edit]

The title never actually appears in the song’s lyrics. In an interview Lennon revealed that, like “A Hard Day’s Night“, it was taken from one of Ringo Starr‘s malapropisms.^[14] The piece was originally titled “Mark I”.^[9]“The Void” is cited as another working title but according to Mark Lewisohn (and Bob Spitz) this is untrue, although the books The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles and The Beatles A to Z both cite “The Void” as the original title.^[7]

When the Beatles returned to London after their first visit to America in early 1964 they were interviewed by David Coleman of BBC Television. The interview included the following exchange:

• Interviewer: “Now, Ringo, I hear you were manhandled at the Embassy Ball. Is this right?”
• Ringo: “Not really. Someone just cut a bit of my hair, you see.”
• Interviewer: “Let’s have a look. You seem to have got plenty left.”
• Ringo: (turns head) “Can you see the difference? It’s longer, this side.”
• Interviewer: “What happened exactly?”
• Ringo: “I don’t know. I was just talking, having an interview (exaggerated voice). Just like I am NOW!”
• (John and Paul begin lifting locks of his hair, pretending to cut it)
• Ringo: “I was talking away and I looked ’round, and there was about 400 people just smiling. So, you know — what can you say?”
• John: “What can you say?”
• Ringo: “Tomorrow never knows.”
• (John laughs)^[15]

Musical structure[edit]

McCartney remembered that even though the song’s harmony was mainly restricted to the chord of C, Martin accepted it as it was and said it was “rather interesting”. The song’s harmonic structure is derived fromIndian music and is based upon a high volume C drone played by Harrison on a tamboura.^[16] The “chord” over the drone is generally C major, but some changes to B flat major result from vocal modulations, as well as orchestral and guitar tape loops.^[17][18] The song has been called the first pop song that attempted to dispense with chord changes altogether.^[16] Here, the Beatles’ harmonic ingenuity is nonetheless displayed in the upper harmonies- “Turn off your mind”, for example, is suitably a run of unvarying E melody notes, before “relax” involves an E-G melody note shift and “float downstream” an E-C-G descent.^[19] “It is not dying” involves a run of three G melody notes that rise on “dying” to a B♭, creating a ♭VII/I (B♭/C) ‘slash’ polychord.^[19] This is a prominent device in Beatles songs such as “All My Loving“, “Help!“, “A Hard Day’s Night“, “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)“, “Hey Jude“, “Dear Prudence“, “Revolution” and “Get Back“.^[20]

________________

George Harrison, US PresidentGerald Ford, and Ravi Shankar in the Oval Office in December 1974

Recording[edit]

A cross-section showing the inner workings of a Leslie speaker cabinet

Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein’s house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia.^[21][22]

The 19-year-old Geoff Emerick was promoted to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album. This started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.^[9] Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. The effect was achieved by using a Leslie speaker. When the concept was explained to Lennon, he inquired if the same effect could be achieved by hanging him upside down and spinning him around a microphone while he sang into it.^[9][23] Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.^[24][25]

A 7-inch reel of ¹⁄₄-inch-wide (6.4 mm) audio recording tape, which was the type used by McCartney to create tape loops

As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio’s technical manager, developed an alternative form of double-tracking called artificial double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the sync head of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine.^[26] The two tape machines used were not driven by mains electricity, but from a separate generator which put out a particular frequency, the same for both, thereby keeping them locked together.^[26] By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.^[27] Lennon’s vocal is double-tracked on the first three verses of the song: the effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.^[28][29]

The track included the highly compressed drums that the Beatles currently favoured, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tamburadrone.^[23] The use of these ¼-inch audio tape loops resulted primarily from McCartney’s admiration for Stockhausen‘s Gesang der Jünglinge.^[30] By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used inmusique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops.^[18] After experimentation on their own, the various Beatles supplied a total of “30 or so” tape loops to Martin, who selected 16 for use on the song.^[31] Each loop was about six seconds long.^[31]

The tape loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building^[32] and controlled by EMI technicians in Studio Two at Abbey Road on 7 April.^[33][23] Each machine was monitored by one technician, who had to hold a pencil within each loop to maintain tension.^[31] The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters.^[34][35] Eight of the tapes were used at one time, changed halfway through the song.^[34] The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration.^[36][37] According to Martin, the finished mix of the tape loops could not be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.^[38]

Five tape loops are audible in the finished version of the song. Isolating the loops reveals that they contained:

• A “laughing” voice, played at double-speed (the “seagull” sound)
• An orchestral chord of B flat major (from a Sibelius symphony) (0:19)
• A fast electric guitar phrase in C major, reversed and played at double-speed (0:22)
• Another guitar phrase with heavy tape echo, with a B flat chord provided either by guitar, organ or possibly a Mellotron Mk II (0:38)
• A sitar-like descending scalar phrase played on an electric guitar, reversed and played at double-speed (0:56)

The Beatles further experimented with tape loops in “Carnival of Light“, an as-yet-unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, and in “Revolution 9“, released on The Beatles.^[39]

The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version while the mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape-loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo, exactly halfway through the song, but is edited out of the mono mix.

Lennon was later quoted as saying that “I should have tried to get my original idea, the monks singing. I realise now that’s what I wanted.”^[40] Take one of the recording was released on the Anthology 2 album.^[40]

Interpretation[edit]

Harrison questioned whether Lennon fully understood the meaning of the song’s lyrics:

You can hear (and I am sure most Beatles fans have) “Tomorrow Never Knows” a lot and not know really what it is about. Basically it is saying what meditation is all about. The goal of meditation is to go beyond (that is, transcend) waking, sleeping and dreaming. So the song starts out by saying, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.”

Then it says, “Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void—it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within—it is being.” From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought. Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn’t always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind, and go to the part which Maharishi described as: “Where was your last thought before you thought it?”

The whole point is that we are the song. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world (including all the fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions) is just clutter. The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So the song is really about transcending and about the quality of the transcendent.

I am not too sure if John actually fully understood what he was saying. He knew he was onto something when he saw those words and turned them into a song. But to have experienced what the lyrics in that song are actually about? I don’t know if he fully understood it.^[41]

Personnel[edit]

• John Lennon – double-tracked vocal, Hammond organ and tape loops
• Paul McCartney – bass, backwards guitar solo and tape loops
• George Harrison – sitar, tamboura, and tape loops
• Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine and tape loops
• George Martin – piano, producer
• Geoff Emerick – engineer

Personnel per Ian MacDonald^[42]

The Love album remix[edit]

The Love project, which combined “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Within You Without You”

In 2006, Martin and his son, Giles Martin, remixed 80 minutes of Beatles music for the Las Vegas stage performance Love, a joint venture between Cirque du Soleil and The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd.^[43] On the Love album, the rhythm to “Tomorrow Never Knows” was mixed with the vocals and melody from “Within You Without You“, creating a different version of the two songs. The soundtrack album from the show was released in 2006.^[44][45] The Love remix is one of the main songs in The Beatles: Rock Band music video game.^[46]

In popular culture[edit]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2013)

In music[edit]

DJ Spooky said of the track in 2011:

“Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of those songs that’s in the DNA of so much going on these days that it’s hard to know where to start. Its tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think that Brian Eno‘s idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.^[47]

Other references[edit]

The song is referenced in the lyrics to the 1995 Oasis song “Morning Glory“: “Tomorrow never knows what it doesn’t know too soon”.

The Chemical Brothers refer to “Tomorrow Never Knows” as their “manifesto”; their 1996 track “Setting Sun” is a direct tribute to it.

Chilean psychedelic band The Holydrug Couple references the drum beat on “Counting Sailboats” off their 2013 album Noctuary.

In television[edit]

The song was featured during the final scene of the 2012 Mad Men episode “Lady Lazarus.” Don Draper‘s wife Megan gives him a copy of Revolver, calling his attention to a specific track and suggesting, “Start with this one”.^[53] Draper, an advertising executive, is struggling to understand youth culture, but after contemplating the song for a few puzzled moments, he shuts it off.^[54] The song also played over the closing credits.^[55]The rights to the song cost the producers about $250,000,^[54] “about five times as much as the typical cost of licensing a song for TV.”^[53]

Categories:

• 1966 songs
• The Beatles songs
• Counterculture of the 1960s
• Psychedelic rock songs
• Song recordings produced by George Martin
• Songs written by Lennon–McCartney
• Songs about drugs
• Experimental rock songs
• Songs published by Northern Songs

____________

Tomorrow Never Knows

While the title, like A Hard Day’s Night, was a Ringoism particularly liked by Lennon, the lyrics were largely taken from The Psychedelic Experience, a 1964 book written by Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert which contained an adaptation of the ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Lennon discovered The Psychedelic Experience at the Indica bookshop, co-owned by Barry Miles. In late March 1966 Lennon and McCartney visited the bookshop.

John wanted a book by what sounded like ‘Nitz Ga’. It took Miles a few minutes to realise that he was looking for the German philosopher Nietzsche, long enough for John to become convinced that he was being ridiculed. He launched into an attack on intellectuals and university students and was only mollified when Paul told him that he had not understood what John was asking for either, and that Miles was not a university graduate but had been to art college, just like him. Immediately friendly again, John talked about Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, laughing about his school magazine the Daily Howl: ‘Tell Ginsberg I did it first!’ Miles found him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and John began to scan the shelves. His eyes soon alighted upon a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, Dr Timothy Leary’s psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. John was delighted and settled down on the settee with the book. Right away, on page 14 in Leary’s introduction, he read, ‘Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.’ He had found the first line of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, one of the Beatles’ most innovative songs.

• SCOTT THILL ENTERTAINMENT
• DATE OF PUBLICATION: 06.09.11.06.09.11
• TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.7:00 AM

PAUL MCCARTNEY BRINGS ‘TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS’ BACK TO THE FUTURE

Beatles Cartoon – Tomorrow Never Knows

PAUL MCCARTNEY IS working on a new project utilizing vintage gear he once used to make tape loops for The Beatles’ landmark track “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

“I’ve dusted off the same two old machines that I used for ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’” McCartney said during a wide-ranging phone interview to be published soon by Wired.com. “We’re having trouble finding spare parts. But my man Eddie Klein, who works in my studio and is an oldAbbey Road guy, is a real boffin and has got the machines working again.”

Inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen, McCartney’s recombined found sounds for “Tomorrow Never Knows” created an aural sensation utterly new to pop music when the song appeared on The Beatles’ epochal 1966 album Revolver.

Combined with The Beatles’ other technical and stylistic experiments — including John Lennon‘s transcendental lyricism, engineer Geoff Emerick‘s studio innovations,George Harrison‘s Eastern drone and Ringo Starr‘s proto-hop percussion — “Tomorrow Never Knows” helped plot the coordinates of future music.

The song has since become known as a masterpiece of electronic music and one of the most influential dance tracks of all time.

‘”Tomorrow Never Knows’ is one of those songs that’s in the DNA of so much going on these days that it’s hard to know where to start,” said DJ Spooky, electronic music virtuoso and author of Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. “Its tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think that Brian Eno’s idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.”

McCartney’s early technological and musical experimentation is often overshadowed by Beatles classics like “Hey Jude.” But spend any time researching his resume, and it quickly becomes clear that the pioneering composer’s wide-ranging interests helped lay the foundation for music that many would rarely associate with him.

“Electronic music is something I’ve always been into,” said McCartney, whose recently remastered and reissued solo releases McCartney and McCartney II, arriving June 14, paved trails for everything from home recording to hip-hop.

“What’s often said of me is that I’m the guy who wrote ‘Yesterday‘ or I’m the guy who was the bass player for the Beatles,” he added. “That stuff floats to the top of the water, you know? But I’m also a guy who was really interested intape loops, electronics and avant-garde music. That just doesn’t get out there on a wide level, but it’s true. I’ve really been fascinated by this stuff.”

The mind reels, pardon the pun, at what McCartney might come up with after tinkering around with the same tape machines that skewed “Tomorrow Never Knows” strange. His 2008 electronic-music effort Electric Arguments, composed with The Killing Joke’s Youth under the aliasThe Fireman, was an alternately incendiary and captivating exercise. But according to the always-busy McCartney — who playsHP’s 2011 Discover conference Thursday as thanks for Hewlett-Packard digitizing the one-time Beatles’ exhaustive library of 1 million items — his current tape-loop recombinations are still in the formative stage.

“The new project is going to take a couple years,” said McCartney. “It’s very long-range. I’ve no idea when it is actually going to happen, but I’m really into it.”

Once it does happen, renewed interest in The Beatles technocultural influence, which I’ve been compiling on Wired.com and elsewhere in the continuing series Geek The Beatles, will likely follow. The Beatles reached their 50th birthday last year, and rarely has a band from the past so securely locked a foothold in the future.

The experimental nature of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a major reason why.

“‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is the ultimate future moment for The Beatles,” Autolux guitarist Greg Edwards told Wired.com last year, before the band’s drummer, Carla Azar, revised the song with The Kills’ Allison Mosshart for Zack Snyder’s techno-fantasy film flop Sucker Punch. “That song basically transcends time. It still lands years ahead of us, no matter when we hear it.”

The song exerts widespread influence decades after its recording, said DJ Spooky, who cataloged a star-studded list of artists who have used the song in their own music or generally been shaped by its sound.

“Flaming Lips? Check,” he said. “Beastie Boys’Check Your Head? Check. Anything from Radiohead? Check. Sonic Youth? A Tribe Called Quest? Check. The song has one of those kind of cinematic breakdowns that artists like Danger Mouse and David Lynch could check out again and again. The only thing that the record didn’t affect was Jamaican dub, but the Jamaican scene was smoking something different than John Lennon’s LSD trips, so that’s another story.”

Regardless of the drug in question, McCartney’s tape-loop experimentalism was a mind-blowing musical exercise for the artist himself, as well as for Beatles fans.

“When I made my first tape loops, man was it a buzz!” McCartney said. “Bringing tape loops into the studio as I did, finding out that John has got a really funky tune called ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ that needed a solo…. Well, what was better than the crazy stuff I was doing?”

________________

Karlheinz Stockhausen with John Cage below:

Featured artist today is Stuart Gerber

Maker’s Dozen: Percussionist Stuart Gerber sparks new music scene with performances, teaching

Heaven’s Door Lugo

ArtsATL: I know there are actually two specially built doors for “Himmels-Tür,” the one in Europe that you played in the world premiere, but also one that you had built for the North American premiere in June 2007 at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. That was also the door you were supposed to play in the White Light Festival, at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, back in October 2012, but the concert got canceled due to Hurricane Sandy.

Gerber: I was actually in New York. I took an earlier flight and made it up there. The people who were transporting the door moved it up early because I didn’t want [the festival] to cancel the concert just because I couldn’t get there. We were there, stranded, and couldn’t do the show. The piece hasn’t been done yet in New York, which is a shame.

ArtsATL: Backing up a bit, when did you move in Atlanta?

Gerber: September of 2001, during the week after September 11. I was in Australia when September 11 happened. I’d won the job as percussion professor at Georgia State [and] found out about it in August, but I was already scheduled to be in Australia through the second week of September. We got waylaid about two extra days because of 9/11. I flew home, went to Cincinnati and got my stuff, then drove down to Atlanta about the third week of September. Pretty quickly, I realized what a great scene it was musically.

ArtsATL: You”re the sole remaining original founding codirector of contemporary music ensemble Bent Frequency. I remember being at the group’s first concert.

Gerber: When I came to town, I thought, well, what I do is contemporary music, and I wanted an avenue in which to do that. I met Alexander Micklethwaite who was, back then, assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and we talked about how there should really be a really vibrant new music ensemble in Atlanta. That was part of the initial discussions when I started having coffee with Alexander in the fall of 2002.

At the same time, there were discussions with colleagues of mine, Nick Demos and Robert Ambrose, about starting a new music group. Rather than competing we just decided to pool our resources. So the first concert was the following May 2003 with a pretty diverse program.

ArtsATL: Aside from what Robert Spano was beginning to do at the ASO, how did you view the state of the new music scene at that time?

Gerber: Bent Frequency was by itself for a couple of years. But since then, Sonic Generator, Chamber Cartel, Terminus Ensemble — all these groups are also doing contemporary chamber music as their primary focus. So there’s quite a lot of it now in the city.

ArtsATL: You’ve directly influenced some of the newer groups through your example and through teaching. It was one of your former students, Caleb Herron, who started Chamber Cartel. Another, Olivia Kieffer, created the Clibber Jones Ensemble — more of a kind of rock-influenced minimalist fusion group.

Gerber: That’s pretty great, though, and it definitely adds to the scene. The other thing that is amazing to me, too, is the kind of “underground” scene — I don’t like that term — [Atlanta has] as well: improv, rock-based, free improv. Not just pop music but more a real deeper kind of rock music that embraces art music, and contemporary music. I’m thinking Faun and a Pan Flute and some of these other groups.

ArtsATL: Klimchak, with whom you have done some local performances, has noted that you’re really great at improv, but the public still doesn’t know you for improvisation the way they know you for taking a written score and doing really incisive performances of it. What’s your relationship to improvisation as a part of your own professional aesthetics?

Gerber: I was trained to be [a] “classical percussionist” — which means you get a score, you learn the notes, you interpret it, you bring your personality to it, but the music is pretty much a set thing. I still do that quite a bit.

I’d actually done some improvisation prior to moving to Atlanta, but after getting here and seeing how a lot of wonderful players in town do the sort of thing primarily, I was drawn to it, so started exploring that more deeply. I fell in love with it because I feel like it’s a real one-on-one connection with the other players and the audience and what I want to express at that moment. It really helps me as an artist. It’s a different dimension of my art.

Maker’s Dozen is an annual series that spotlights a dozen creatives whom we think you ought to know or know more about. The profiles will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays through April 16.

– See more at: http://www.artsatl.com/2015/03/makers-dozen-percussionist-stuart-gerber/#sthash.hjltlWua.dpu

What is the meaning of HEAVEN’S DOOR?

Klang (Stockhausen)

Fourth Hour: Himmels-Tür[edit]

Himmels-Tür (Heaven’s Door), for a percussionist and a little girl, 2005 (ca. 28 mins.). Work number 84. The specified colour is bright blue [Hellblau] (Stockhausen 2007f, cover;Stockhausen 2008b, cover).

Himmels-Tür was commissioned by the Italian concert organisation Angelica, and composed in 2005. It was premiered on 13 June 2006 in the Teatro Rossini in Lugo, Italy, by the American percussionist Stuart Gerber and Arianna Garotti as the little girl. Gerber gave the German premiere a few weeks later at the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten (Stockhausen 2006b, 21 & 41; Toop 2012, 425).

The only overtly theatrical piece from Klang, the idea for Himmels-Tür came to Stockhausen in a dream, in which he found himself at the gates of heaven, which are locked against him. (Several of Stockhausen’s earlier theatrical compositions—such as Trans, Musik im Bauch, and the Helicopter String Quartet—also had their origins in dreams.) Because of the indefinite pitches of the instruments (a large double-panelled door and an assortment of cymbals and gongs), Himmels-Tür is the only work in the Klang cycle that does not use the 24-note series extrapolated from the all-interval “Gruppen” row (Kohl 2008, 17; Toop 2008b, 199–200).

“A percussionist beats with wooden beaters on a heaven’s door made of wood. It is divided from bottom to top into six fields. Sometimes he (she) stomps on the floor with his (her) nailed shoes.” There are fourteen main sections defined by moods, such as “cautious”, “entreating”, “agitated”, and “angry”, until finally, the door opens. “After a moment of silence, the percussionist cautiously steps through the doorway and disappears. A terrifying noise of tam-tams, hi-hats, and cymbals bursts out”, not to mention sirens. “A little girl comes out of the audience onto the stage, and disappears through the doorway. The metallic sounds become increasingly rare and gradually cease. Finally, the siren stops” (Stockhausen 2006b, 41).

It is probably no coincidence that many years earlier, in Kontakte, Stockhausen had associated metallic sounds with the “heavenly”, in contrast to the “earthly” sounds of skin percussion (entirely absent in Himmels-Tür), with wooden sounds functioning as a transition between them, like the door to heaven here. Although the graphic notation is unconventional, the improvisatory appearance of both the performance and the score is deceptive. Every stroke, every gesture is precisely specified in its rhythm, dynamics, and timbre (Kohl 2008, 17).

Although originally planned to occupy twenty-four pages (a number found generally throughout the cycle, reflecting the number of hours in a day), the final score consists of just twenty-two. The first sixteen are performed on the door, the remaining six behind the door, out of sight of the audience. In the first, larger section of the work the number of strokes, types of strokes, and door panels on which the percussionist performs are controlled by global serial factors, but the details are not serially determined. By contrast, the closing section, with the metal percussion instruments played backstage, is serially organised using number squares, including a version of the source square for the second set of Klavierstücke from 1954–55 (Toop 2012, 431–32, 463–65).

Türin[edit]

In just two days in October 2006, Stockhausen realised a 13-minute electronic work to accompany Himmels-Tür on its first CD recording. The title Türin combines the names of the two sound sources used, the door (German: Tür) from the percussion piece, and a chromatic set of rin—Japanese bowl-gongs that Stockhausen had previously used in several compositions, such as Telemusik, Inori, Lucifer’s Dance from Samstag aus Licht, and the orchestra version of Hoch-Zeiten from Sonntag aus Licht, as well as in Himmelfahrt (Hour 1) and the twenty-second piece of Natural Durations (Hour 3) from Klang. The recorded sounds of strokes on the door are electronically processed to focus their pitch and extend their resonance, and a rin stroke of the corresponding pitch is added to each attack (Kohl 2008, 17).

The composition, written in September 2006 and realised on 7 and 8 October, consists of a single, stately presentation of the 24-tone Klang row in its original transposition, in rhythms derived from the pitches. Within each of these long tones, Stockhausen’s voice intones a different “noble word” (such as “hope”, “fidelity”, “balance”, “generosity”, etc.). The utter simplicity of this piece puts it at the opposite extreme from the hyper-complex Cosmic Pulses, work on which was already in progress at the time Türin was created (Kohl 2008, 17; Kohl 2012b, 478–79).

There are two versions of Türin, one with the words spoken in German, the other in English. According to the composer, these “noble words” are meant to keep the Himmels-Tür open (booklet accompanying Stockhausen Complete Edition CD 86, pp. 12 & 24). This composition was not assigned a work-number by Stockhausen, but is now included in the official catalogue of his works as “Nr. 84 extra”.

STOCKHAUSEN WAS A VERY RELIGIOUS MAN AND HE THOUGHT LONG AND HARD ABOUT THIS QUESTION BELOW:

“Why Should I Let You into My Heaven?”

Let’s suppose for a moment that you died today and stood before the Lord God and He asked you, “Why should I let you into My heaven?” What would you say? What do you think you would say?

Let’s suppose for a moment that you died today and stood before the Lord God and He asked you, “Why should I let you into My heaven?” What would you say? What do you think you would say?

That is one of the most important questions you can ask a person regarding their salvation. James Kennedy got the idea from Donald Grey Barnhouse who asked the same questions in a slightly different wording. “What right do you have to come into God’s heaven? What would be your answer?”

I like those questions because they force us to clarify our thoughts about salvation.

One thing is sure, one day you will die. You will be suddenly thrust into the face of God and He will ask the question, “Why should I let you come into My heaven?” “What right do you have to enter into the holy of holies?”

Your reply could be, “I am a religious person. I am trying to live a Christian life the best I can. I give to the poor, and try to help people in need. I an not a notorious sinner. I read religious books, my Bible, and I try to love people. I am serving God the best I can.” But no one will be justified before God on the basis of his good religious works. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). The apostle Paul said wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The only way a religious person will ever be saved is by faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross paying the penalty for our sins. Jesus Christ offers His own perfect righteousness in the place of our self-righteousness, which can never save us. When we stand before the judgment throne of God no one will be able to offer any good works as the basis for their right relationship with God. Our sins and our guilt will stop our mouths because God demands perfect righteousness, and that we do not have on our own.

“Why should God let you into His heaven?” “Whatright do you have to enter into My heaven?” You may say, “I am a good Jewish person. I have been circumcised. I have fulfilled the requirements of the covenant.” Or you may say, “I have been baptized by immersion into the Christian faith.” Or “I have fulfilled the requirements of confirmation. I take the sacraments, and I give to the poor.” But God’s Word, the Bible, still says, “There is no one righteous, not even one. . . There is no one who does good, not even one.” No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by his good works because the purpose of the Law is to make us conscious of our sins. “For no one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin”(Rom. 3:20 NET).

The purpose of the Law is to bring us under conviction of our unrighteousness and point us to the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that alone can save us.

My only claim to heaven is the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for me. He took the punishment for my sins. He is my right to heaven, because He has become my righteousness.

The only answer that will satisfy God is one that focuses on the finished atoning work of Jesus Christ. If we are saved it is not on the basis of anything we do, but entirely on what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross in His death and resurrection. He suffered for our sins. He died for us. “The wages of sin is death.” He died my death. He bore my punishment for my sins in His death. There is no other way to come to God. Only the individual who comes to God trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ will enter into God’s presence in heaven.

Let’s suppose you died today and stood before God. What would be your answer to the question, “Why should I let you into My heaven?” “By whatright should God let you into His heaven?”

I pray that you will declare, “My only right to heaven is the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for me. He took my punishment for my sins. He is my righteousness. He is my only hope to enter into God’s holy presence. There is no other name given among men whereby I must be saved. Jesus alone can save me.”

Selah!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006

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Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”  (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? ) 

How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles

Francis Schaeffer

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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 35 Robert M. Pirsig (Feature on artist Kerry James Marshall)

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