{"id":42799,"date":"2025-01-06T17:10:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=42799"},"modified":"2025-01-06T17:10:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:10:02","slug":"wendy-carlos-veil-of-orpheus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=42799","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Carlos: Veil of Orpheus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Part I of an ongoing series on the musician Wendy Carlos]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a recent staff meeting, we realized that we all shared a fascination with the work of Wendy Carlos<\/strong>, and were enthusiastic to look into her life, her work, and her influences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veil of Orpheus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As faithful readers of WLBOTT <\/strong>will recall, we’ve talked about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice several times (here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Interestingly, a major early influence of Wendy Carlos was an experimental soundscape based on this myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eurydice, from the film Black Orpheus<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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From Wendy Carlos’ Official Website<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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An Interview with Wendy Carlos<\/strong>
by Alan Baker, American Public Media, Jan. 2003<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALAN BAKER:<\/strong> And that is something you’ve been interested in, and so you drew the distinction between the early electronic music that didn’t have melody and those other items that lend themselves to drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WENDY CARLOS:<\/strong> Right. Well, in this case, the piece in question was called “Veil of Orpheus” by Pierre Henry. I didn’t check recently, but I think he’s still around. He did the piece when he was fairly young. He and Pierre Schaefer were part of the French electronic acoustic lab. This was a dramatic reading of sections from the actual Orpheus legend, done in actual Greek.<\/p>\nWendyCarlos.com<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Musique Concr\u00e8te<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Pierre Henry<\/strong> and the concept of musique concr\u00e8te<\/strong> are excellent starting points for understanding Wendy Carlos’s influences. Musique concr\u00e8te, with its focus on manipulating recorded sound, surely laid a foundation for Carlos’s innovative approach to the Moog synthesizer and her pioneering compositions.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Veil of Orpheus<\/strong> is an example of what is called musique concr\u00e8te, a primarily French genre of postwar electronic music in which composers manipulated existing recorded (concrete) sounds.
[…]
Years later, she told an interviewer that [Pierre] Henry was the greatest influence on her electronic music compositions. She was moved by the drama of Henry\u2019s telling of the Greek tragic myth of Orpheus, and she was stunned by the kinds of sounds she heard in that piece.<\/p>\nWendy Carlos: A Biography (Cultural Biographies)<\/strong>
by Amanda Sewell
Page 11<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n