{"id":270,"date":"2016-01-14T12:53:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T17:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2016-01-15T09:40:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T14:40:47","slug":"lang-the-anvil-chorus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/lang-the-anvil-chorus\/","title":{"rendered":"Lang &#8211; The Anvil Chorus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>The Anvil Chorus<\/p>\n<p>David Lang<\/p>\n<p>When percussionist Steve Schick asked me to write him a solo piece I wanted to do something that showed percussion\u2019s connection to real life activities. I didn\u2019t want to work with the pretty instruments, like vibraphone or chimes, that were invented so that percussionists could play politely with other musicians. I wanted to write a piece that reminded the listener of the glorious history of percussion \u2014 that since the beginning of time people have always banged on things as a result of their professions.<\/p>\n<p>Then I remembered that I had once read a book on the history of blacksmithing, and I had become particularly interested in how medieval blacksmiths used song to help them in their work. Although small jobs could be accomplished by individual smiths, larger jobs created an interesting problem \u2014 how could several smiths hammer on a single piece of metal without getting in each other\u2019s way? Smiths solved this problem by singing songs together which would control the beat patterns of the hammers. There was a different song for each number of participating blacksmiths \u2014 obviously, a song that allowed for three hammer strokes would be confusing and even dangerous if used to coordinate four smiths.<\/p>\n<p>My solo percussion piece The Anvil Chorus also uses a \u201cmelody\u201d to control various beat patterns. The \u201cmelody\u201d is played on resonant junk metals of the percussionist\u2019s choosing, and, by adding certain rules, it triggers an odd accompaniment of non-resonant junk metals, played both by hand and by foot.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 David Lang<\/p>\n<p>Duration 7&#8242;<\/p>\n<p>Annotated by Mike Daley<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Anvil Chorus David Lang When percussionist Steve Schick asked me to write him a solo piece I wanted to do something that showed percussion\u2019s connection to real life activities. I didn\u2019t want to work with the pretty instruments, like vibraphone or chimes, that were invented so that percussionists could play politely with other musicians. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}