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You're listening to music right now and give us an I started to say that the program that we had originally now is for this week will not be played with. That just isn't a very good way to start a show. It won't be played actually but there's no use telling you that the first thing because you might get all discouraged and tune into some other program. I hope you don't however. The program we've scheduled is still music by Danielle and some of the most unique program it is and do you. Know what we're going to do on this show is to play some tapes which are either the only copies or the only performances of some of my music. And despite the best efforts of the national educational radio network which brings you this program each week if you'll remember we just have to admit that the normal broadcast standards of quality tapes is certainly not going to be met not this week for sure. Instead most of the music you'll hear has so much electrostatic noise and it didn't clicks and pops and such but you might think your own receiver was on the blink. Except it isn't. It's just my tapes but bear with me won't you for these are all collector's items in a way. At least I've collected them and since they are
very rare been each I appreciate the opportunity of displaying my archives to you as it were. Some of it is for orchestra. There are a couple of chamber music works that I'll throw in just to give the program an added cultural surge. I just hope you'll all assume the proper attitude otherwise I'll know immediately that you're not in the in group. As far as the new school of electronic addicts are concerned or the new rage is a low five and tirade and the older the record the better it is. It's a funny thing isn't it. The electronic industry has spent billions of dollars getting frequencies up so high that only their bred dogs can really appreciate them and suddenly now the trend has gone back toward us humans. But enough talk right now as they say on the radio. Let's move ahead into the music itself. The first rare and only copy of item we're going to hear is a small bit of orchestral humor which I titled intermission in 10 minutes. It has a programme that is there is a story of sorts for sense in a mission 10 minutes was written to describe that
section of an orchestral concert where there isn't any music at all. Our score began says of the final notes of a classical symphony were just being played. There is then a rustle representing the audience gathering its collective belongings to move into the third part of our piece called the parade to the lobby. After this is accomplished we hear a short dance which I titled the dance of the self-appointed critics which we all are guilty participants. Then there is a parade back to the auditorium the tuning of the instruments the fanfare that brings His Eminence the conductor back on stage and finally the piece ends as if a new contemporary were were just beginning. Here it is intermission 10 minutes and remember I did mention that this tape is low fidelity so low in fact you may even have to bend over a little to listen to it. Man. I
am. Man. Ya. Money. And. The.
Right Thing or do. To it. The music you have just heard was called Innovation 10 minutes the first number on a program on which I have
schedules of rare collectors items and tapes which are not very good quality perhaps but will compensate for that by knowing that this is the only performance tape ever made. This is as you know music by down give us and as we continue our excursion into the land of low fidelity and electrostatic his'n rumble we're going to hear a performance of a trio which I wrote for the whole NBC string trio and taped at a broadcast in about 1945. The performers involved were Joseph and pianist named and it's good cellist and Daniel Geale a virus. And despite the clicks and pops on the tape I think you'll have to agree that they play it well indeed. It's titled silhouettes. Way.
Way the music was silhouettes work for violin and cello and piano played in this instance by Joseph Kahn pianist and Ambon Diski cellist and Daniel Gill a violinist. The tape we use was made from an acetate recording of an NBC broadcast of 945. And although the quality was somewhat ready the performance which was recorded over 20 years ago still remarkably good. And in that same year of one thousand forty five Dr. Frank Black played a suite of nine with the NBC symphony orchestra. There's only a bit of a performance that is playable at all now sense acetates this integrates so badly with the passing of time. But I would like for you to hear it. It's a brave movement originally it was in my sweet portrait of a frontier
town and then dropped from the music altogether. So chances are you'll never hear this one again. It's called bronze bust and it represents an attempt to portray in music that brief few moments when the writer is trying so desperately to stay aboard the bucking bronco. So let it go cowboy. And I am I. Will all your
listening to music by Don give us and not only their very own music of Don Giller says we bring you program of recordings and tapes that were made of some of my scores. Many of them over 20 years ago and we all decided at the very beginning of this broadcast that we wouldn't mind the pops and clicks on the low fidelity because we're digging into the archives of recorded sound as it were you hear a little history along with a history of the worn out grooves. We're listening to a collection of old recordings and tapes which by the very distractedness of their surface noises and electrostatic pop things should have had you scurrying for the tranquilizer bottle by now thinking that your own hi fi FM set was full of gremlins but no you're all right. It's only the tapes that are aging fast. The music we're going to hear next is again of ancient bin age. And just in case you're a musicologist jotting down all these tidbits about my musical past you may write and I quote. When Don give us rolled his prairie suite he included one section which he called the
lonely cowboy. Later he decided that he had already written so much of Western music that people were beginning to think he sat in the saddle most of the time and so he discarded the whole idea. Not only the music called The Lonely cowboy but also the entire prairie suite. Anyway I still have a tape of the lonely cowboy from the prairie suite discarding her mouth. So why don't we listen to it for no other reason than to wave farewell as he rides off into the sunset and electronic oblivion. Eh eh. Eh eh.
Eh eh below em. Please please. Please. Please few few. Oh. Oh. Oh. The
end. We have been listening and with some difficulty because of the age of our static filled
tapes to a work consigned to artistic gifts. And I call the lovely cowboy a youthful work which having now grown older and has been placed among the discard pile we pulled it out of the archives on this occasion mainly because it was handy and I thought maybe you'd like to know that I really can discard them when I want to. Which in this case I did indeed. We'll conclude this session of archival exploration by playing your work which as far as I'm able to remember has never been heard anywhere at all except by the musicians who did this recording. It was originally supposed to be able but from my suite called Atlanta. But again I decided not to use it. I remember having called it Cathedral Square and one of these days I'm going to score it for a band for it's rather solemn and pleasant music and I think it would lend itself well to the sound of the band. Here it is now and the tape we made about nine hundred forty nine Cathedral Square. Will this performance of Cathedral Square we have come to the end of this rather special session of music of
Don give us where we've been playing tapes of music recorded twenty years or so ago. I hope you've not minded all the extraneous noises that such old discs and tapes do produce. For it was in a way a sort of digging back into my own music history as we heard music nowhere else available to be heard except in this way. Next week however I promise to come back into the present hi fi sound spectrum but fresh clean and clicking materials and our program will include a performance of a movement from Portrait of a fronter town which was played by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the late and Pele. And we'll also hear movement from my third suite for woodwind quintet played for us by the interlocking Arts Academy faculty woodwind quintet. And a brief movement in time on a frolic and be found minor and also we're going to have another misadventure in a pop art style next week called music to be interrupted by voices announcing airline schedules. I hope you can join his. Music I don't get us it brought you each week. Sometimes even reluctantly by the national
educational radio network and this is done go saying thank you for listening and good bye until next time. On. 0. 0. 0 this program was distributed by national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
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Series
The Music of Don Gillis II
Episode
The Mighty Mac
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-qn5zb900
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-qn5zb900).
Description
Episode Description
This program features performances of the following Gillis compositions: The Mighty Mac; Minuet-Cetera; Razzle Dazzle; Uncle Walt's Waltz; The Pleasant Years; and January February March.
Series Description
This series features the works of Don Gillis; hosted by the composer himself. Most of the performances are conducted by the composer.
Broadcast Date
1966-01-31
Topics
Music
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:35
Credits
Composer: Gillis, Don, 1912-1978
Host: Gillis, Don, 1912-1978
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 65-36-21 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:19
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Citations
Chicago: “The Music of Don Gillis II; The Mighty Mac,” 1966-01-31, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qn5zb900.
MLA: “The Music of Don Gillis II; The Mighty Mac.” 1966-01-31. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qn5zb900>.
APA: The Music of Don Gillis II; The Mighty Mac. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qn5zb900