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Samuel Andreyev Profile
Samuel Andreyev

@SamuelAndreyev

3,292
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46
Following
2,285
Media
9,076
Statuses

Quindicesima alta

Strasbourg, France
Joined August 2011
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
“First of all, I am a real Minimalist, because I don’t do very much. I know some minimalists who call themselves minimalist, but they do loads of minimalism. That is cheating. I really don't do very much.”—Robert Wyatt
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Brian Ferneyhough, La terre est un homme, first page.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
An incredible document: 16-year-old Frank Zappa's letter to Edgard Varèse
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
I ask this of performers: play classical repertoire as though it were a world premiere; and play world premieres as though they were established classics.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
‘People ask what the avant-garde is and whether it’s finished. It isn’t. There will always be one. The avant-garde is flexibility of mind and it follows like day the night from not falling prey to government and education. Without avant-garde nothing would get invented.’ John
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
Arnold Schoenberg, pointing to the eraser on his student’s pencil: ‘This end is more important than the other!’ @ascschoenberg
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
26 days
In case you’re wondering how the arts are faring in Trudeau’s glorious Canada, here is some of what I’ve heard from colleagues. A composer friend attended a programming meeting in Vancouver during which the possibility of one of his works being played was raised. ‘Sorry,’ they
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
27 days
If you take Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, or Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, and disregard the political subtext of these works, the musical substance is more than strong enough to function without it. The same cannot be said of more contemporary attempts to bring
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
‘Have you ever looked into the eyes of a survivor from the composition department of Princeton or Yale? He is on his way to tenure, but he’s a drop-out in art.’ Morton Feldman
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
Today I’m recording a new podcast episode with the John Cage expert Martin Iddon. We’ll be focusing on Cage’s seminal ‘Concert for Piano and Orchestra’, a work that last long fascinated, and perplexed me, perhaps in equal measure.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
The opening of 'Good Night' from Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path.. very beautiful
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Morton Feldman begins his piece Piano and Orchestra (1975) with divisi violas holding an F-flat and an E natural 🤔
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
I will be interviewing Brian Ferneyhough on Wednesday.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 months
On May 16th, we gained a new family member, a son. Mother and baby are in fine repair. Sister is delighted. Join us in welcoming him to this excellent planet.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 months
That time Havergal Brian’s ‘Gothic Symphony’ was written into the plot of an American crime drama series
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
The BBC has hired me to produce a Sunday Feature for Radio 3 — what I hope will be the first of many. I’ll be traveling to London soon to work on it. I can’t say much more for now, but will post details as appropriate.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 months
He’s not merely poking fun at it in a spirit of play—we all do that sometimes. He’s holding it up for mockery, as well as the people who enjoy it (and that category includes me).
@LJBcomposer
Dr Laura Bowler (Wells)
6 months
Sad when fellow composers feel the need to publicly poke fun at other composer’s work.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
The more I think about this the more I think it's worth doing. One video for each of the Beethoven quartets. The complete cycle. Who would watch?
@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
I'd love to do an analysis video for each of the Beethoven quartets
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
10 months
This week, I’ll be interviewing Barbara Monk Feldman, Christian Wolff and Jim O’Rourke. Stay very tuned.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 months
‘Consuming content’ is one of the most viscerally revolting formulations I’ve heard, strange it has such a wide currency these days. It’s almost as bad as ‘content creator’.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
Bach inadvertently invents boogie-woogie
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 months
This key Pollini recording, doubtless overshadowed by the more popular Chopin and Beethoven albums, electrified and dynamited my emerging musical mind when I was a beginning composer. The sheer controlled energy of it was, and remains, stupefying:
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
I’ve observed that creative people — the lucky ones, anyway — not infrequently have the following career trajectory: nothing… nothing… nothing… nothing… nothing… nothing… EVERYTHING
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
Igor Stravinsky composing his austere late work, Threni, in the basement of a night club in Venice (presaging Opus Contra Naturam?..)
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
I'd love to do an analysis video for each of the Beethoven quartets
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
10 months
‘Maybe I should study composition’
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
11 months
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
Just Confirmed: Michael Finnissy will be a guest on my podcast on April 27th.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
To student composers: whenever you observe a widely-adopted tendency in contemporary composition, run as far and as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Then you maybe will be OK.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
A reminder that this crazily inventive masterpiece was composed by a 23-year-old war-child orphan
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
Robin Holloway on Shostakovich
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
Looking for a graphic designer. Feel free to get in touch if interested.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 months
The problem with today’s irritatingly permissive climate of self-valorisation and affirmation is that it has robbed us of a meaningful role for the artistic avant-garde. Today, any such gestures can only appear hollow and superfluous, easily commodified in point of fact, where
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
I find Twitter vastly preferable to Facebook. Anyone else share this poinr of view?
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
I asked Chat GPT to compose a viral tweet for my Twitter account. Help make it so!
@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
"🎵 Embrace the avant-garde soundscape of contemporary music, where harmonies collide and melodies defy expectations. Dive into the realm of sonic exploration, where innovation thrives and boundaries are shattered. Join me on this musical journey of limitless possibilities!
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
I had this T-shirt made with the tone row for Anton Webern’s Op. 32, left incompete at the time he was killed in 1945
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
My @YouTube channel has just passed 50,000 subscribers, a most incredible milestone after 5 years of hard work. My thanks to everyone who helped make this happen. Now let’s get to 100,000 🤪
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 months
I’m canceling my Spotify subscription and I suggest others do the same. Enough is enough.
@tedgioia
Ted Gioia
3 months
Did you know the CEO of Spotify is wealthier than any musician in history—and has 4X the net worth of Paul McCartney? Now you do. There’s more money in disrupting music than creating it.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
The radical German composer Hans-Joachim Hespos left this world on July 18, at the age of 84. Here are 2 scans from ‘fahl-brüchig’, a surpassingly strange trio for piccolo heckelphone, basset horn and cello. This piece was important to my æsthetic development in the early 2000s.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
My YouTube channel has just passed 30,000 subscribers.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
Recently, I interviewed the entire surviving Trout Mask Replica Magic Band of Captain Beefheart — at the same time. A 5-way conversation between Zoot Horn Rollo, Rockette Morton, Antennae Jimmy Semens, Drumbo and myself. Details forthcoming.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
My extensive new interview with Michael Finnissy is edited and will be released this Friday at 3pm UK time / 10am EST!
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Just received from my publisher. I'm excited about this score, which took 2 years to complete, and which, against all odds, is set to be premiered next month in Kyiv.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
Here is my life's work (so far), at least in terms of music manuscripts: approximately 4,000 sheets of paper (in tiny script). That may not sound like much but it has certainly kept me busy.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
I think this is one of the best things I've done and I'm particularly happy to see it in print. These new piano pieces took nearly 2 years to complete. But who will play them—and when—circumstances being what they are..?
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Writing for orchestra is sort of like trying to empty a swimming pool with a thimble.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 years
It’s weird that this hasn’t gotten more attention: Boulez’ very famous but seldom-heard piece Polyphonie X has finally been played again, 70 years after the premiere, in a rather better performance than the archival one from 1951
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
How hard are you looking? Do you expect artistic culture in the internet age to look the same as it did in 1969?
@EricRWeinstein
Eric Weinstein
3 years
We are in the middle of an unusual “Art Crisis”. I have no idea what our artists are doing. We should be having the greatest art explosion in music, dance, sculpture, poetry, painting etc that we have seen since the late 1960s. I see very few artists capable of distilling *now*.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
I made this for a composition student, who is starting to set poetic texts for the first time. Here it is, in case it's of use to anyone else.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
After two and a half years of work, I finished the final version of my violin concerto today: 'Trois pierres à ne pas jeter' #thisrainydayinjune
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
Rhythm is the most important dimension in music. Melody, a distant second. Melody is an abstracted extension of speech, and comes much later in our development, whereas rhythm stems from the most fundamental physiological reality. Everyone understands it. Those who don’t have it,
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
12 days
I’ve concluded that pencil on paper is the optimal workflow. Amazing how it simplifies everything.
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@M_Harding_
Michael
13 days
Going from Finale to Sibelius actually is a fate worse than death
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 months
I somehow got 133,000 people to watch a detailed musical analysis of one of Bach’s more arcane creations. This is truly a powerful medium..
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 months
As of today, I am a French citizen. So grateful. 🇫🇷
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
My uncle founded the Nihilist Spasm Band and it is a source of great familial pride
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
My new piece is a 25-minute hommage to Vermeer, which I think is an appropriate reference, given how the past 12 months have caused us all to reevaluate our relationship to interior spaces.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
7 years
Here is a description of musical postmodernism I found on wikipedia. Don't be fooled: almost all of these characteristics apply to Bach.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
26 days
@CrossEyedPiano No. Mediocrity is the *starting* point. The end point if this continues is *far* worse.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
8 months
I have an announcement to make
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
Only adolescents think that art is about self-expression. What you are expressing when you create something is the potential of the medium you are working within.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
'Extended techniques' are the 12-tone rows of the 21st century
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 months
I sometimes get perfectionist students whose fear of writing something subpar cripples their productivity. My advice is always the same: ‘for next week, write the worst piece you can possibly imagine. Make it comically bad’. Works every time!
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
This is the cover art for the new album. I took the photograph myself. It shows a view of Friedenstraße (peace street), a small street in Kehl very close to the French-German border.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 months
Is this true? If so, a monumental loss; his DG recordings were major musical awakenings for me.
@house_apartment
Apartment House
6 months
RIP Maurizio Pollini, what a wonderful musician.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 years
My daughter was born on Wednesday, May 9th. Mother and baby are doing wonderfully. I may be slow to answer messages over the next while, but I will do my best. Thanks for your patience.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
"If we make it look like cool neon graffitti it will totally mitigate the fact that this music is a tough sell."
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
8 months
My first program for BBC Radio 3 will air on Sunday, February 4th: an in-depth look at the relationship between Morton Feldman and the Abstract Expressionist painters. Link below.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
What is the deal with octave-transposing clefs? Bass flute uses it, double basses do not. Glockenspiel and celesta often use it, piccolo does not. Contrabass clarinet uses it, contrabassoon does not. Heckelphone and bass oboe use it, tuba does not.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
Tuesday
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
F I N I S H E D ! ! a new 25-minute work expressly written for @ensembleproton . Premiere performance 27 April at Dampfzentrale Bern.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
7 months
I am pleased to state that I will teach composition at the Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau as of this summer.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Interviewer: ‘Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?’ William Faulkner: ‘Read it four times.’
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
2 months
I’m honoured in the extreme to be a part of this extraordinary venture. A trailer for my course on the History of Western Music is now up on the @petersonacademy website. Thank you @jordanbpeterson , this is far beyond what I could have imagined.
@petersonacademy
Peterson Academy
2 months
Limited pre-enrollment is now available at . Onward and upward, ladies and gentlemen. 18 beautiful courses, 3 new courses monthly, AI-testing and the integrated social media platform. Let’s take education back.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
Coming today
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
So far it's taken me 9 weeks to compose a single 3-minute cantata movement for soprano and ensemble — more than the amount of time it took Mahler to draft his entire 8th Symphony. Oh, well.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
Now that I am 40, I am shedding my ‘emerging composer carapace’ and settling into my new rôle of asserting significant power and influence, whilst accumulating cultural capital and dominating the international scene for decades to come. It will be an adjustment, but so goes life.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 years
The composer Ben Johnston has passed away at the age of 93. He is particularly remembered for his microtonal string quartets, said to be among the most spectacularly difficult in the entire repertoire.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 years
Beefheart fans, here is some very, very exciting news: Jeff Cotton (Antennae Jimmy Semens), guitarist on Trout Mask Replica, just granted me his first ever interview. We spoke for nearly 3 hours. I'll be sharing it soon.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
In case you missed my interview with genius songwriter, lyricist, composer, arranger, producer and author @thevandykeparks , click the link in my bio.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
Carl Ruggles, interviewed in 1967
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
'A composer who knows exactly what he wants, wants only what he knows--and one way or another, that is too little.' Helmut Lachenmann
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
work in progress
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
1 year
The last great period for meaningful new developments in musical composition was arguably the 1970s and it had largely tapered off by the mid-1980s. I see very little in today’s scene that is not an outgrowth of that period (or earlier). Which is emphatically not a judgement on
@SalemLola
Decline Manager
4 years
In lieu of the visually pleasing Metastasis’s score, here is Nuits (1968) by Xenakis, communist who fled Greece’s dictatorship. I genuinely don't believe that contemporary music has much* change since then. (*before you get angry, there's room for nuance)
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
5 months
Rafael Toral just released ‘Spectral Evolution’, an exquisite ambient album everyone is talking about — find out why in my interview with him!
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
7 months
Together with some close associates, I am involved in the founding of an ensemble. Plans are already fairly advanced. It will be absolutely unlike any existing ensemble, in every respect. Stay tuned.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
How it's done
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
10 months
Ill-intentioned narcissists. Philistines. A catastrophic failure of education has led us to this.
@JustStop_Oil
Just Stop Oil
10 months
💥 SUFFRAGETTE PAINTING SMASHED 💀 Our government have revealed plans for MORE oil licences, knowing it will kill millions. In response, two supporters of Just Stop Oil smashed the Rokeby Venus — slashed by Mary Richardson in 1914. ⏱ Deeds, not words:
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
3 years
So I’m reserving a hotel near Russell Square in London. A few minutes later an email comes back: ‘thank you for your reservation. By the way, we’ve been enjoying listening to your piece Vérifications. Which of your interviews should we start with?’ Only in London…
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
6 years
To paraphrase Schoenberg, the eraser is more important than the pencil.
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@SamuelAndreyev
Samuel Andreyev
4 years
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