va - ANS Synthesizer (russian early electronics 1964 - 71)

va - ANS Synthesizer (russian early electronics 1964 - 71)mp3-129mb

Electroshock Presents: Electroacoustic Music Volume IV: Archive Tapes Synthesizer ANS 1964 – 1971.
Electronic works by Oleg Buloshkin - Sofia Gubaidulina - Edward Artemiev - Edison Denisov - Alfred Schnittke - Alexander Nemtin - Schandor Kallosh - Stanislav Kreitchi.
Electroshock Records ELCD 011. Duration: 72:07.

Historical issues of electronic and electroacoustic music are always welcome. They tend to feel very fresh and original, since they were achieved at the beginning of an evolution, at the very start of a tradition, when the composers tried out new ideas of sound and the treatment of sound through machinery that was developed simultaneously.
Russia has had a mystical feel attached to its name and reputation all through the Soviet era, when the country was cut off from the world in many respects, and when many cultural phenomena by sheer necessity were referred to the sub-cultures. This applied to literature, poetry and other disciplines as well. The good thing that these circumstances achieved was that culture – the written word, the spoken word, paintings and so on – took on an immense meaning, a severe meaning, a weightiness never arrived at in a democratic country, where anyone can say anything without anyone listening. In Russia and the Soviet Union the word was gold; something to treasure. Exchange the word “word” in last sentence with the word “art”, and you’ll have a pretty good hunch of how culture survived in Russia during the Communist reign.
The rightfully paranoid atmosphere in Russia during those decades even rubbed off on visitors. I and two friends of mine went to Russia and the Soviet Union in 1973, during the Brezhnev era, staying in Moscow for a while before taking a train down to Armenia. We went to the Synagogue of Moscow to see if we could find some dissidents, and we did. Those were mostly kids, trying to find ways of receiving Rolling Stones records through contacts in the West, and we got their addresses in Moscow. However, so great was the feeling of being watched and monitored that we – shamefully admitted - didn’t dare keep the papers with the dissident addresses, but flushed them down in the toilet at the huge hotel where we were staying… This may sound reckless in retrospect, but the feeling that society back then in Russia transmitted was such…

At the beginning of electronic music the basic principles of musical or other formal education, academic or otherwise acquired, were the same, but there was no easily purchased machinery. In fact, there was no machinery at all, made with the purpose of making electronic music, the way we look at it today. There were some primitive electronic instruments, like the trautonium, for instance, which was constructed by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin, but they were very limited and of no use to a composer with the intent of shaping a new sound world, even though some composers incorporated the sounds of some of those early instruments in their compositions, or even composed directly for the instrument itself, as did Paul Hindemith in 1930, when he composed “7 Trios for 3 Trautoniums” and “Langsames Stück und Rondo für Trautonium”. The trios were performed in Berlin at an “electric concert” in the summer of 1930, with Paul Hindemith at one of the instruments. The trautonium was made up of tone-generating oscillators that were manipulated by way of a metal wire strapped across a board with a metal rail. You pressed the metal wire down on the rail in different places, thereby generating different pitches from the oscillators. There were other experiments being conducted elsewhere at about the same time, or as early as in the 1920s. In Russia a Mr. Leon Theremin built an electric instrument named after himself, as did Mr. Martenot in Paris, when he constructed the Ondes Martenot, which was quite widely used for a while. This was a time of experimentation, and over in Russia after the 1917 revolution there even were concerts on factory whistles.

I do not really know how electronic music fared in Russia during the heaviest Communist reign. In the beginning of the Communist era, in the 1920s, there was, as said, much experimenting taking place in Russia. There was no end to the ingenuity, until Stalin in his private paranoia started killing people off.
No matter how electronic music fared – it might have been accepted? – the iron curtain had banged shut, and not much was known outside Russia of what was going on inside the country. Remember for example the fate of the genial pianist Svjatoslav Richter, who became known in the West very late, and only toured a few times outside Russia during the iron years.

However, Electroshock Records of Moscow has released a CD with pioneering electronic music from the period 1964 – 1971, which is a period when the somewhat lighter hand of Nikita Krushchev was replaced by the much sturdier and more repressive totalitarian reign of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. This CD is a great revelation to the world outside of Russia, giving insights to the experimentation of sound during that important period, when so much was happening in the U.S.A. (San Francisco Tape Music Center) and Europe (The Stockhausen adventure in full swing and Rune Lindblad conducting his experiments in Gothenburg).
The CD that Electroshock has released in a limited edition – hopefully to be reprinted, though this is denied so far from Artemiy Artemiev of the company – is called “ANS; Archive Tapes 1964 – 1971”. The ANS was (is) a machine for synthesizing sounds. I have not as yet understood how it is constructed and how it works, but it is used by the composers on this CD. The machine, which was constructed by the Russian scientist Evgeniy Murzin from 1937 to 1957, was built in one copy only, which is kept at the Lomonosov University in Moscow.

When you study the list of composers on this CD who utilized the ANS synthesizer you’re bound to grasp for air. Did you hear electronic music before by, for example, Sofia Gubaidulina, Edison Denisov and Alfred Schnittke? This CD is a great treasure!

01 Oleg Buloshkin Sacrament (3:34)
02 Sofia Gubaidulina Vivente-Non Vivente. Alive And Dead (10:44)
03 Edward Artemiev Mosaic (4:00)
04 Edward Artemiev 12 Looks At The World Of Sound (12:52)
05 Edison Denisov Birds\' Singing (5:05)
06 Alfred Schnittke Steam (5:50)
07 Alexander Nemtin Tears (4:41)
08 Alexander Nemtin I. S. Bach: Choral Prelude C-dur (2:30)
09 Schandor Kallosh Northern Tale (5:38)
10 Stanislav Kreitchi Voices Of The West (2:00)
11 Edward Artemiev Music From The Motion Picture \"Cosmos\" (12:15)
12 Stanislav Kreitchi Intermezzo (2:00)

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