No album today, just a mix I put together of legal tracks available offsite. This compilation is called A Laughably Brief History of Music, and focuses on significantly innovative works and composers of music from the earliest era of notational music to today. Just listen to how music gets more complex, especially in tracks 1-6.
1. Hildegard Von Bingen - Quia felix pueritia (hymn, 11??)
Because nearly all medieval music is lost, and the history is so incomplete, it’s impossible to say what musical works were significant so long ago. Hildegard von Bingen’s short hymn “Quia felix pueritia” is simply one of the earliest pieces of music available for download online. Thanks to Rondellus for making their recording available. 128kbps MP3 from this page.
2. Léonin/Pérotin - Viderunt Omnes (organum, 11??/12??)
Léonin (or Leoninus) was among the earliest polyphonic composers known, predating the more famous and advanced Pérotin, who updated much of Léonin’s music by adding additional voice parts. This is one such example, an organum originally by Léonin and added to by Pérotin. 160kbps MP3 from this page.
3. Luca Marenzio - Estote fortes (madrigal, 15??)
Marenzio was the master of late-form, pre-Baroque madrigals, and helped to bridge the gap between modal Renaissance music and tonal Baroque music. 128kbps MP3 from this page.
4. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Presto (from Sonata in F minor, W 62/6, 17??)
C.P.E. Bach, forever in the shadow of his popular father J.S. Bach, is one of the most important composers of all time and most people have never heard of him. He was among the founders of the Classical style, and Mozart once said of him, “He is the father, we are the children.” He understood Baroque music well, but innovated with it and enhanced its variety of form greatly with techniques now remembered through the later work of Mozart and early Beethoven. 174kbps MP3 from this page.
5. Carl Maria von Weber - Overture (from Oberon, King of the Fairies, 1826)
Carl Maria von Weber is a critical figure in the development of romanticism, and “his numerous overtures, with their adventurous use of tone color, influenced the development of the symphonic poem.” Here is one such overture from his famous opera Oberon. 128kbps MP3 from this page.
6. Henry Cowell - High Color (for solo piano, early 20th century)
Henry Cowell was, aside Charles Ives and John Cage, one of the seminal experimenters of 20th century music, exploring atonality, polytonality, polyrhythms, and non-European styles. He used instruments in unintended ways or crafted new ones, and matured tone cluster technique after Ives. To hear even more crucial works than “High Color”, including “Tides of Manaunaun” and “Aeolian Harp”, visit Art of the States for streaming RealPlayer audio. 128kbps Mp3 from this page (but use the title link above to bypass registration).
7. John Cage - 4′33″ (experimental, 1952)
John Cage was among the greatest experimenters in the century of musical experimentation. His most controversial and often derided work is 4′33″. Its premiere “was given by David Tudor… The audience saw him sit at the piano, and lift the lid of the piano. Some time later, without having played any notes, he closed the lid. A while after that, again having played nothing, he lifted the lid. And after a period of time, he closed the lid once more and rose from the piano. The piece had passed without a note being played, in fact without Tudor or anyone else on stage having made any deliberate sound, although he timed the lengths on a stopwatch while turning the pages of the score. Only then could the audience recognize what Cage insisted upon, that ‘There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound’… Anybody listening intently would have heard [sounds]: while nobody produces sound deliberately, there will nonetheless be sounds in the concert hall… It is these sounds, unpredictable and unintentional, that are to be regarded as constituting the music in this piece. The piece remains controversial to this day, and is seen as challenging the very definition of music.” It may be useful to see the piece performed. 128kbps MP3 from this page.
8. Faust - Why Don’t You Eat Carrots? (from Faust, 1971)
The musical significance of underground rock group Faust, perhaps best evident in this first track from their debut album, is explained by Piero Scaruffi: “Searching for a middle point between post-nuclear psychedelia and psycho-ambient ‘musique concrete’, German group Faust coined one of the most powerful, dramatic and eccentric languages in modern music… Technically, the ensemble’s music pushed to the extreme an aesthetics of darkness, ugliness, fear, chaos, irrational that stemmed from expressionism, surrealism, theater of the absurd, Brecht/Weill’s cabaret, myth of the supermensch, Wagner-ain melodrama, musique concrete and abstract paiting, all fused in a formal system that was as much metaphysical as grotesque… However, behind the surface, Faust’s music hid a moving vision of the human condition, one of the most lyrical in the entire history of rock music. Their visions of hell represent the noblest testament that came out of progressive-rock.” 160kbps MP3 from this page.
This mix has a total running time of 40:00. Enjoy!
An occasional collaborator with John Fleagle, Shira Kammen has also partnered with more than a dozen bands and performance ensembles, mostly specializing in early folk and celtic music.
The late, legendary performer 
