The Ether Game Brain Trust parrots its way through a show exploring repetition in music. The Ether Game Brain Trust parrots its way through a show exploring repetition in music.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Boléro In 1928, famed Russian ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein commissioned Maurice Ravel, a composer well-known for his orchestral prowess, to orchestrate Isaac Albéniz’s piano work Iberia for the ballet stage. Unfortunately for Rubinstein, the work had already been orchestrated by another composer, and copyright meant Ravel could not legally orchestrate it again. However, this commission inspired Ravel. He became transfixed by the dances of the Iberian peninsula, and set to work on his own composition based on these dances. While on holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a small coastal town on the border between France and Spain, Ravel composed Boléro’s now famous repeated melody. He initially titled the work FANDANGO, a different Spanish dance with a similar repetitive rhythm but faster tempo. However, given the work’s more moderate tempo, he later changed the title to Boléro.

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) L'Italiana in Algeri: Nella testa ho un campanello Rossini was  notorious for writing his operas at a breakneck speed, often just before the opera’s premiere. His famous opera The Barber of Seville was apparently put together in three weeks. The music for this opera, The Italian Girl in Algiers came together even more quickly. The twenty-one year old Rossini apparently wrote The Italian Girl in Algiers in only eighteen days, completing it just before its premiere. It was also the premiere of a technique that would feature in many of Rossini’s later operas that would later be called the Rossini Crescendo. We just listened to one at the end of Act 1, though they would become a regular feature at the end of a Rossini overture, to lead the anticipation of the audience into the first scene. Several compositional techniques come together to create the Rossini Crescendo, but chief among them is the repetition and acceleration of small music motifs to create a dizzying sense of tension, like a rubber band about to snap. When this scene premiered at the Teatro San Benedetto in 1814, nobody had seen or heard anything like it, and Rossini became the talk of Venice.

Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D, G. 448 'Fandango' Boccherini was born in Italy, but spent most of his professional career working for various patrons in Spain, including the Infante Don Luis, the younger brother of King Charles III . There he was no doubt influenced by Spanish music. This movement in particular is Boccherini’s take on the Spanish fandango, a lively triple meter dance often accompanied by castanets, guitars and a repeating harmonic progression . It was originally written for string quintet in 1788, while he was working in Spain. But in 1798, he arranged it for guitar—that quintessential Spanish instrument. We know that Boccherini originally wrote twelve quintets for strings and guitar, but only eight survive. 

Erik Satie (1866-1925) Furniture Music: Wall-lining in a chief officer's office  It might be hard to believe that something as inoffensive and middle of the road as “muzak” (that is ambient music or background music) could have its roots in surrealism. But in 1920 when Erik Satie premiered his Musique D’Ameublement or Furniture Music at the Galerie Barbazanges this was exactly the case. With his usual convention-busting wit, innovation and sense of the absurd, Satie envisioned a kind of music that was meant to be ignored, that could accompany house interiors and be a soundtrack for daily life. Satie wrote and officially published 5 short pieces of furniture music, which could be repeated indefinitely. However, sections in other works were given the same designation. Many years after Satie’s death, the American composer John Cage revived furniture music, where it became a major influence for the development of minimalism.

Steve Reich (b.1936) Piano Phase for Two Pianos Piano Phase comes from Steve Reich’s early compositions experimenting with tape and repetition as a musical technique. His original experiments involved two rolls of tape, or a combination of live performers and tape playing a pattern of notes. After the pattern is established, the tapes start to drift out of sync, or “out of phase” as he called it. Later Reich found that the same phasing technique was possible without tape and shifted to writing music for completely live performances. Such is the case with Piano Phase, which requires two pianists. The audience can hear the phasing process happening in real time, and the patterns that occur when the two parts fall out of sync. The gradual change to more rhythmically complex patterns over sustained repetition creates a hypnotic and mesmerizing effect, the listeners becoming more aware of the present moment in which the music is being performed. For Reich, it was a different way to not just write, but also experience music.

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) Symphony No. 8 in c: II. Scherzo Bruckner is known as much for his grand Wagner-inspired symphonic works as his intense, complicated compositional process and never-ending series of revisions. Critics have noted his extensive and sometimes excessive use of repetition on the micro-phrase level, and have speculated that this is a manifestation of his well-documented neurotic behavior. Extreme mood swings and obsessive counting rituals would worsen as he overworked himself, and this culminated in a mental breakdown in 1866 which sent Bruckner to a sanatorium in Linz for several months. His 8th symphony became a great source of anxiety, as it was initially rejected by one of his most ardent supporters, the conductor Hermann Levi, who couldn/t understand its overwhelming tragic character. After more revisions, the score was published in 1892 with a dedication to Emperor Franz Josef I, who had agreed to pay for its publication.

Marin Marais (1656-1728) La Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris During the reign of  Louis XIV, performer and composer Marin Marais was considered to be the greatest of all French viol players.  His teacher, the acclaimed Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, claimed that after six months of tuition, he had nothing left to show the young prodigy.  By the age of twenty-three, Marais was appointed by the King to the post of ‘Ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi,’ a position that required him to serve at court for only six months out of the year, leaving the rest of his time free to compose. Unlike Italian musical tastes, which favored instrumental forms like the sonata and canzona, the French prefered programmatic music and character pieces. Many of Marais’ compositions followed this preference. The Sonnerie for example, is built on a three-note, repetative motif which recalls the tolling bells of the Abbey of St. Genevieve, a famous monastery in Paris.  

Koji Kondo (b. 1961) The Great Fairy Fountain Japanese music director Koji Kondo has the distinction of being the first composer hired by a major video game company to compose video game music full-time. He was hired in 1984 by Nintendo as a sound designer for the Super Mario franchinse and went on to compose the complete scores for the Legend of Zelda video game series. Zelda would become Koji’s most popular soundtrack, with its many  tuneful and repetitive themes. He helped develop the idea that music could exist in video games as a manipulatable element, another clue towards victory, especially in the environmentally based puzzles that make up much of the Legend of Zelda games. Although Koji was not classically trained, his scores for the Zelda games were heavily influenced by classical music. When the video game series had its 25th anniversary in 2011, he supervised the orchestration of his most popular Zelda themes, and the release of an album featuring a full symphony performing highlights from the franchise. We just listened to one of those tracks: The Great Fairy Fountain. 

Rick James (1948-2004) Deja Vu (I've Been Here Before) Teena Marie, born Mary Christine Brockert in 1956 was singing in a band in the mid-70’s when she auditioned for a film being produced by Motown Records. Though the project was ultimately dropped, recording exec Barry Gordy was impressed with Teena’s voice and offered to sign her on as a solo act. Her debut album Wild and Peaceful was mostly directed by Rick James, who had offered to produce her, and who also wrote the bulk of the music on the album, including this selection. Teena Marie recorded three more albums on Motown until she became involved in a heated legal battle over her contract. The lawsuit became a landmark case for recording artists, as it resulted in “The Brockert Initiative,” which made it illegal for a record company to keep an artist under contract without releasing new material for the artist.