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László Dubrovay – “A² “/ Oscillations Nos. 1-3
László Dubrovay is a Hungarian composer, born in Budapest on 23 March 1943.
Laszlo Dubrovay attended the Bela Bartok Conservatory and the Academy of Music, graduating in 1966. His professors of composition were Istvan Szelenyi, Ferenc Szabo and Imre Vincze. On a scholarship of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD),he continued his studies in West Germany between 1972 and 1974; he tookcourses in composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and in electronic music with Hans-Ulrich Rumpert.
I found this particular album on the Nurse With Wound List – its so beautiful and some of the most satunning electronic music you will here. Check this out:
In 1975, Dubrovay was commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, to realise the electronic composition Sogaj (Sigh) in the electronic studios of WDR. Since 1976, he has taught music theory at the Budapest Academy of Music. 1985, he spent a year in West Berlin within the framework of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm.
Laszlo Dubrovay has realised electronic and computer music in the electronic studios of WDR, the West Berlin University of Technology, in Freiburg, Stockholm, Bourges and Budapest.
There is always something delightfully weird about electronic music – even to those very familiar with its tones, buzzes and tickles. This weirdness might arrive in broad brush strokes or in tiny splashes. Each and every piece still seems to morph through that 60’s “outer space” feel, into the deeper listening experience and complexities of a pure engagement with sound. The listeners relationship with the electronic instrument is different from the older and more traditional instruments. We whisper in hushed tones about the talents of traditional musicians, the years of experience easily identified in every draw of the bow, every pluck of the string. But the relationship with the electronic music composer is yet to be properly defined. We are left to make our own journey through this music – pay our own respects at the end.
You can STILL grab this brilliant brilliant album on the 2008 release here.
I think that, as a performer is often once removed from the performance of electronic music and due to the very nature of electronic music, it’s distance from the organic (in terms of the instrument as much as the player) gives it that “60’s outer space” and non-human feel, and this distance is as much a part of it’s appeal and, to some, repellent. This will ensure it’s outsider status and prevent our relationship to it and the way we talk and experience it from ever being reverential in a similar way to traditional or classical music. I would imagine that most people would consider composers of electronic music to be technicians or scientists despirate to reveal their creative side, not the arty creatives of the classical world and I think this percieved distinction will always be there….
I went to see Nurse With Wounds yesterday night.
As for accousmatic and electronic composition, I think it is a very modernist idea in the first place: whereas serialism for example was re-organizing notions of beautiful he was not fundamentally questioning the practice of music, merely it’s composition. All electronic music is generative and its addressing the end product as much as the process. At least it was until the rise of electronic-based dance music.
I do agree with the way electronic musicians are perceived as scientific – that’s a good description. However I’m more optimistic than you about a music revolution. After John Cage – who FINALLY did for music what the modernists did for literature and what the cubists did for art – we will start to see a breakthrough in our old colonialist patterns of needing to “own” music rather than let the music in to inform us. I was first introduced to great electronica through the Nurse With Wound list. Admittedly that’s not “main stream” but neither is it academic theory – its love of music and I developed a passion for it from there. I have hope for this feeble listening public. I think we still have a chance. 🙂
This is a great observation. I see it as modernist, as you can tell from my earlier comment. I guess dance music is the distilled version of electronic music and the process of making sound. I hadn’t thought much about that before – but its a fine observation.
How was Nurse With Wound? I’m QUITE envious!
First time I see him live, and expectably given the array of styles he has covered in his carreer he was not playing what I wanted him to play! Very drony rather than collage for most the set, their best tracks were certainly the ones where they straying from pure ambient. All in all not that experimental. They were doing the first part of Sunn O)) which in terms of drone is more to my taste.
I”ve never seen him at all – mores the pity!
So I am envious even of your slightly disappointed experience. 🙂