Berio's Sincronie, More Free Stuff!!!.

Yes indeed. I found an old copy of the score to Berio's string quartet 'Sincronie' (1964-67) a while ago at my library and it looked like an interesting piece, however, I couldn't get hold of a recording of it (you can get a study score here, via UE.)

The only one available is on a Disques Montaigne CD* performed by the Arditti Quartet from 2002 but that is out of print (at the time of writing you can buy a second hand copy for over £50 on Amazon.)

I gave up looking after a while, then, like a crepuscular ray, I saw the light. A set of torrents called the Vinyl Flac Project or VFP. Inspired by the boss Avant Garde Project the VFP collects old vinyl recordings which have never been released digitally and preserves them for the good of man/womankind.

There doesn't seem to be much uploaded so far (from a few searches I made anyway) but amongst what I could find there was a recording of Sincronie made by the Lenox String Quartet.

Unfortunately I can't find a date for the recording though judging by the graphic design of the record sleeve and the audio quality I would guess late 60s to early 70s (I stand to be corrected.)

It took a few days to download the torrent but I got it eventually, to save you the trouble of doing the same I have uploaded a 320kbs Mp3 of the piece to deposit files, download it here (its about 32meg.)

Here is what Berio had to say about the piece in the program at the 'world premiere' in 1964..(from the OCR version of the liner notes of the album that comes with the torrent, I've uploaded the .doc file here.)

"Most commonly used instrumental ensembles reflect the typical equilibrium of classic polyphony. There is no doubt that the four voices of a string quartet are one of the most homogeneous and perfect examples of this equilibrium. With "Sincronie," however, I was interested in using the string quartet not especially as a polyphonic ensemble, i.e. as a dialogue among four voices of the same family but rather as a single, homophonic instru­ment. The four participants elaborate the same sequence of harmonic blocs almost continuously, simultaneously 'saying' the same thing in different ways."

The original torrent is here.

Here is a TinyURL for this post for your feeds/blogs etc, http://tinyurl.com/l7aqby (please don't just rob the links.)

Regards copyright etc, I have no idea if anyone still owns the rights to the recording but am fairly certain that if someone does they won't be expecting to get rich off the back of it or ever release it again so it seems fair to share this rare gem (if you do own the copyright and want me to remove the link let me know in the comments section.)

*Re Disques Montaigne, that link is to their parent company Naïve, they were purchased by them in 1998 and don't have their own web address for some strange reason, you have to navigate the overly-fancy Naïve one to find the relevant stock.

EDIT: 14/10/2010

Thanks to Tassimo for adding some useful info in the comments section about the various recordings of this work. I've added the text below.......................

There have been four recordings of Berio’s Sincronie, two of which were released on LP, two on CD:

Luciano Berio: Sincronie (1963-64; 1966)
The Lenox String Quartet
Peter Marsh & Delmar Pettys, violins; Paul Hersh, viola; Donald McCall, ’cello
Desto CD 7129 [This is the LP catalogue number] According to the liner notes, “Berio added a section to the work after the original ending in 1967 which completes the present work as recorded here,” so the recording probably dates from 1967 or thereabouts. Other sources date the revision/expansion to 1966. (The Lenox Quartet had premièred the first version in Grinnell, Iowa, on 25 November, 1964.)

Luciano Berio: Sincronie (1963-64; 1966)
String Quartet of the Società Cameristica Italiana
Enzo Porta & Umberto Oliveti, violins; Emilio Poggioni, viola; Italo Gomez, ’cello
Recorded October 1968, Südwestfunk, Baden-Baden
Wergo 60053 (P) 1970 [?]

Luciano Berio: Sincronie (1963-64; 1966)
Kairos Quartett
Wolfgang Bender & Chatschatur Kanajan, violins; Simone Heilgendorff, viola; Claudius von Wrochem, cello
edition zeitklang ez-90007 (or DeutschlandRadio 4032824000092)
Recorded Berlin, 28 December 2000, (P) 2001

Luciano Berio: Sincronie (1963-64; 1966)
Arditti String Quartet
Irvine Arditti & Graeme Jennings, violins; Dov Scheindlin, viola; Rohan de Saram, cello
Disque Montaigne: Naive MO 782155
Recorded 2002; (P) 2002

Free Stuff!!, Again: Contemporary Music on YouTube and from the JACK Quartet

The JACK Quartet (photo by Justin Bernhaut.)

I haven't done a 'free stuff' post for a while, sorry about that, not been on the internets much recently (composing, listening, reading scores, international espionage, you know the deal.)

Here is one to be going along with anyway. I spotted on Tim Rutherford Johnson's blog The Rambler that he has updated his YouTube list of contemporary classical music, worth a look (he also has a list of classical mp3 blogs too.)

Also, I should mention the JACK Quartet again, not only have they recently recorded and released Xenakis's complete string quartets on Mode Records (CD/DVDs) but as I mentioned a while ago, they have a fair bit of music free to stream on their site (Lachenmann, Xenakis, Cassidy, Eötvös and more.)

EDIT: The JACK Quartet used to have full pieces to download/stream on their site but now there are only samples unfortunately, still, better than nothing eh.

If you are feeling in the mood to purchase the JACK Quartet's new releases you can get them at the Complement.Inversion.Etc shop/store.

UK shoppers go here for the CD, and here for the DVD, shoppers in the US go here for the for DVD and at the moment I can't find the CD listed in the US (?) (you can download the CD as an mp3 too BTW, nice, here for UK, here for US)

Free Stuff!!!: A Sheet Music Utility and a Firefox Mp3 Plugin.

A couple of useful free things I have found recently on teh internets are Blanksheetmusic.net, a site which unsurprisingly offers various types of blank manuscript paper (you can customise the page to your liking, like Sibelius or Finale but faster and browser based.). Good if you want to print some blank sheets to write on with that antiquated technology, the hand.

The other is the Foxytunes/Yahoo Firefox plugin. It works really well for those sites that have mp3 links but don't feature a browser player (you know the ones, where you click on the mp3 link and it loads a whole new page, not ideal.).

An example (and this isn't a criticism btw) is the Clarinet of The 21st Century site which has lots of mp3 examples (click the images on the page) of the listed techniques/fingerings, now you can play them all from the same page with ease, you'll see a little play arrow underneath each example. Nice :-)

Free Stuff!: Quarter Tones For Saxophone Book, More or Less

The Saxophone Family

Here is a free PDF download of a 1975 masters thesis on quarter tones for saxophone by John William Paulson. It's in two parts (80 pages in total) and features general discussion on the topic, fingering charts for various sizes of saxophone and some exercises and etudes.

Also there are some mp3 examples, six different takes of the first etude, for some reason (UPDATE: it's a 1975 recording of three saxophone students playing the first etude, then they play it again a week later after some practice, 'improvement in performance is ... easily perceived')

Hosted by The University Of Rochester.

As it's Oscars season, I would like to the thank Mr Paulson and the various institutions which support his work and its distribution.