Modern Silence

SCHAEFFER, PIERRE & PIERRE HENRY - Symphone Pour Un Homme Seul - Concerto Des Ambiguites

"Electronic/avant-garde music pioneer and founder of the French musique concrete movement, Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. He was also one of the first to record music on magnetic tape. Drawing inspiration from the Italian Futurists, he emphasized the double meaning of the word play", meaning to play an instrument, but also to have fun and enjoy oneself. Pierre Henry, a classically trained musician, was one of Schaeffers disciples and together they co-wrote the revolutionary "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul", recorded in 1950. Despite its title, it is not a symphony in the classical sense, but a kind of suite divided into 12 movements. It is a musical collage featuring vocal fragments, that are at times recorded backwards, accelerated or repeated, and other sounds like whistles, footsteps, doors slamming, metallic sounds, and a prepared piano. However, what is important about this piece is not merely its intrinsic musical value, but its influence on so many future generations of musicians in so many genres. "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul", over half a century later, remains a pioneering experiment in the search for new aural horizons. The Concerto side reveals Henrys personal approach to dissonance, with a strong impact of illogical sequences in the piano "duel": the two instruments seem to collide in a furious rejection of the traditional idea of music, generating a clash of noises that reproduce the sonic pollution of the modern times.
"Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul" (1949-1950 - First concert performance on March 18, 1950, at the Auditorium of the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. First performance as a ballet by Maurice Béjart on July 26, 1955, at the Théâtre de l'Etoile in Paris. "Concerto des ambiguïtés for piano and piano" (1950) - First performance on August 7, 1950, over the French National Radio. Coreographic version by Maurice Béjart under the title "Voyage au cur dun enfant (Trip Into The Heart Of A Child)", first performed on September 6, 1955, with Patrick Benda, at the Théâtre de l'Etoile in Paris." - Modern Silence.
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After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
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