Music
At Taliesin music is immediately noticeable as a pervasive influence in the daily life of the indwellers. A companion of the trees, flowers and buildings, it is part of the architecture as much as the sparkle of the plate glass windows, the light pattern Taliesin makes at night, or the broad stone chimneys and piers in the sunlight. It may issue from balconies overhead, well up from the courts below, swirl about the garden from no recognizable source in particular. It is now the gay gorgeous stirring of hollyhocks in the breeze, sometimes the rhythmic up and down and around sweep of the outlying Wisconsin hills, or again, as expressed in the countenance of the iron buddha sitting immutable on the stone flagging, the hearkening notes of eons of ancient wisdom which yet foretell of limitless future grandeur. Tonal color as poignant as the visual color in the heavenly blue of yonder Ming tea jar, the hues in a Japanese print, all are part of the design of Taliesin.
All this is made possible by means of a speaker system connected to the Capehart phonograph in the leader's residence wing at Taliesin, and through a similar system at Hillside, the Fellowship buildings, controlled from the record player in the projection booth of the Playhouse. Speakers are so arranged as to permit walls and ceilings to act as sound boards for them which gives the effect of sound emanating from the building itself. The music becomes integral with the building. The sense of a single point source of sound is eliminated.
Mr. Wright's large and fairly representative record library of the best music from early development of our modern music in 16th century Italy and England to the present, and embryo libraries of the apprentices, constitute an affinity of moods and natures to Taliesin's architecture of sound. From this excellent start, a collection is being formed at Hillside in a record and film library over the little Playhouse.
But there is also active participation by the Fellowship in music making - organized and spontaneous. We have some splendid grand pianos, a harpsichord, a harp, a dozen representatives of the violin family of various sizes, and a large miscellany of other instruments including a choir of the interesting recorders, a 17th century English woodwind which in a full choir ranging from treble to bass, can produce very charming effects. There is hardly an hour in the day when some of these instruments are not going.
A choral body, which comprises two groups, the male choir and a mixed chorus, includes practically every member of the Fellowship, and has regularly conducted rehearsals throughout the year. It is under the leadership of Anton Bek, who also directs other musical activities of the Fellowship and is a member of the Taliesin String Quartet, which is composed of musicians from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Chicago orchestras, has for the past three summers played for our recreation and carried on a weekly radio program, as well.
The amateur string quartet, composed of Taliesin apprentices (facetiously referred to as the "farmer-labor quartet") is occasionally augmented by extra violins, celli, piano, harp, or other instruments, to make a varied program of ensemble.
Starting from humble beginnings of very limited proficiency in this very difficult medium, the quartet has advanced by competent leadership and right good-will to make music - as well as a sensitiveness to the quality of good music, to a condition where it is now able to create sound enjoyable to the hearer as well as to the maker of music.
We are amateurs always, intending to remain so, but not dilettantes we hope. We are free from the deadly competition of academic professionalism.
R. C. M.
All this is made possible by means of a speaker system connected to the Capehart phonograph in the leader's residence wing at Taliesin, and through a similar system at Hillside, the Fellowship buildings, controlled from the record player in the projection booth of the Playhouse. Speakers are so arranged as to permit walls and ceilings to act as sound boards for them which gives the effect of sound emanating from the building itself. The music becomes integral with the building. The sense of a single point source of sound is eliminated.
Mr. Wright's large and fairly representative record library of the best music from early development of our modern music in 16th century Italy and England to the present, and embryo libraries of the apprentices, constitute an affinity of moods and natures to Taliesin's architecture of sound. From this excellent start, a collection is being formed at Hillside in a record and film library over the little Playhouse.
But there is also active participation by the Fellowship in music making - organized and spontaneous. We have some splendid grand pianos, a harpsichord, a harp, a dozen representatives of the violin family of various sizes, and a large miscellany of other instruments including a choir of the interesting recorders, a 17th century English woodwind which in a full choir ranging from treble to bass, can produce very charming effects. There is hardly an hour in the day when some of these instruments are not going.
A choral body, which comprises two groups, the male choir and a mixed chorus, includes practically every member of the Fellowship, and has regularly conducted rehearsals throughout the year. It is under the leadership of Anton Bek, who also directs other musical activities of the Fellowship and is a member of the Taliesin String Quartet, which is composed of musicians from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Chicago orchestras, has for the past three summers played for our recreation and carried on a weekly radio program, as well.
The amateur string quartet, composed of Taliesin apprentices (facetiously referred to as the "farmer-labor quartet") is occasionally augmented by extra violins, celli, piano, harp, or other instruments, to make a varied program of ensemble.
Starting from humble beginnings of very limited proficiency in this very difficult medium, the quartet has advanced by competent leadership and right good-will to make music - as well as a sensitiveness to the quality of good music, to a condition where it is now able to create sound enjoyable to the hearer as well as to the maker of music.
We are amateurs always, intending to remain so, but not dilettantes we hope. We are free from the deadly competition of academic professionalism.
R. C. M.