Sunday, September 28, 2008

Andrew Rudin - Tragoedia,LP,USA,1968

"Rudin’s reputation was established in the 1960’s through his association with Robert Moog and a pioneering series of synthesized compositions, most notably his Nonesuch album, Tragoedia. Throughout the 1970’s many of his compositions were theatrical in nature, involving collaborations with ballet and modern dance, film, television, and incidental music for the stage. His one-act opera, The Innocent was produced in Philadelphia in 1972 by Tito Capobianco. A number of these works blended electronically synthesized sound with traditional instruments and voices. Particularly of note among these works is the inclusion of his music in the soundtrack of the film Fellini: Satyricon. Among the dance groups and choreographers with whom he has worked are Dance Theatre Workshop, Jeff Duncan, Murray Louis, The Pennsylvania Ballet, London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Louis Falco, and four collaborations with Alwin Nikolais. The 1980’s saw the completion of his full-evening opera Three Sisters, on a libretto by William Ashbrook from the play by Chekhov, as well as many works for traditional instruments, both orchestral and chamber music. After his graduation from The University of Pennsylvania, where he studied primarily with George Rochberg, he joined the faculty of The Philadelphia Musical Academy, remaining there for the next thirty-seven years, as it eventually became part of the present University of the Arts. During this time he taught music history, theory, and composition, directed the new music ensemble, and headed the electronic music studio. He taught in the graduate division of the Juilliard School from 1981-1984. Since his retirement in 200l he has worked as a broadcaster for WWFM, The Classical Network from Mercer County Community College, and served on the board of directors for Philadelphia’s Orchestra 2001. He continues to compose extensively. His professional affiliation is BMI. He lives in Allentown, NJ with his partner, Tom Queenan."
From http://composerudin.com/
Great and much obscure moog based electroacoustic LP by one of the masters of the genre. Strange electronic compositions with a sometimes scary atmosphere!

get it here

7 comments:

Dokimos said...

Amazing stuff! even the song titles correspond with the hole concept!

litlgrey said...

Without question, one of the finest Nonesuch electronic music commission records of the period.

andrew_bunny said...

I have this one on vinyl, still! It was the second LP of electronic music commissioned for LP by Nonesuch (the first being Mort Subotnik's Silver Apples... It's a nice contrast, being composed on the Moog instead of a Buchla.

litlgrey said...

It's also the case that Subotnick's work, while breathtaking, is essentially devoid of humor.

The same can not be said of Charles Dodge, Kenneth Gaburo, and even Andrew Rudin's Nonesuch commissioned works. And I had them all... at one time anyway.

Unknown said...

For some reason, the rar file seems to be corrupt. Can't extract anything although the rar file is said to have 6 files and has the expected size. Has anybody tried to download it lately?

BTW, I just want to say: this site is a sanctuary to the Nirvana! You introduced me to a whole new world of possibilities with albums so good that you just wanna cry :-)

Waiting for some help!

Unknown said...

I finally solved my problem.... I normally use QuickZip to extract zip and rar files and it works. For some reason, there are some rar files on mutantsounds that I can't extract with QuickZip (although I should in principle). I downloaded the trial version of WinRar, and bingo! things work.

Question: which free .rar extractor software would you recommend ?(WinRar is free for 40 d only).

Thanks again, and I'll leave feedback on the Rudin and the Avalanche since I can now extract both of these files!

Anonymous said...

I believe Rudin told me that he composed this work before Subotnick's LP but that some politics went down and Subotnick's got released first stealing all the thunder as "first", some years later I had some encounters with Subotnick as well. I would say Rudin overall was a better composer but Subotnick much better at the politics of a career.

I spent time touching both the Moog and Buchla modular synths used to make both those records. Neither hold up today really as more than demonstrative of the sound-making capacity of the instruments. Aesthetic has evolved quite a bit. But in the late 60' this stuff was pretty ground-breaking.