JOHNSON, TOM - The Chord Catalogue
1999 release. "Tom Johnson composed The Chord Catalogue in 1986 and has performed it numerous times around the world since then. This is the first recording. The score consists of a set of verbal instructions and is included in the CD booklet.-¢‚Ǩ¬ù - XI. "Extreme and, one would think, extremely simple. A lesser man would have arranged those 8178 chords in some symphonically meaningful, or else quasi-random order. But Johnson proceeded methodically up the chromatic scale from two notes at a time, three, four, and so on to 13. By the time we reach ten note chords, the information overload was such that the differences were hardly perceptible, a situation reminiscent of serial music. Far from being heavy handed minimalism, The Chord Catalogue was a pointed lesson in music history and the relativity of perception" --Kyle Gann, The Village Voice. "I have often tried to explain that my music is a reaction against the romantic and expressionistic musical past, and that I am seeking something more objective, something that doesnt express my emotions, something that doesnt try to manipulate the emotions of the listener either, something outside myself. I like to think of The Chord Catalogue as a sort of natural phenomenon -- something which has always been present in the ordinary musical scale, and which I simply observed, rather than invented. It is not so much a composition as simply a list." - Tom Johnson.