{"title":"John McGuire","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"vanishing-points-a-cappella-2","title":"Vanishing Points \/ A Cappella","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn his “Pulse Music” compositions of the mid-1970s, composer John McGuire forged a unique interpretation of European serialism. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gottfried Michael Koenig, McGuire moved to Cologne, Germany in 1970, where he become associated with the world-leading Studio for Electronic Music at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. Like Stockhausen, McGuire found his musical imagination both constrained and inspired by the technology that was available to him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA conversation with sculptor Hans Karl Burgeff led McGuire to think beyond the horizon and into limitless space. For \u003ci\u003eVanishing Points\u003c\/i\u003e (1985–1988), McGuire used an entirely digital set-up for the first time: a digital sequencer, eight Yamaha DX-7 synthesizers and a Studer 24-track digital tape recorder. The piece was conceived as a “sequel” to the Pulse Music series, but also a step forward from it. Whereas the Pulse Music pieces had employed steady streams of pulses, with Vanishing Points McGuire employed pulse layers that accelerate or decelerate against one another, vastly increasing the resulting rhythmic complexity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMcGuire's exploration of music technology continued in \u003ci\u003eA Cappella\u003c\/i\u003e (1990–1997), written for his wife, the soprano Beth Griffith, known for her recording of Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices” made in 1983. Using samples, he created a four-voice choir of voice samples and arranged them into interacting parts. The composition faced challenges due to the organic nature of the human voice compared to the precision of synthesized sounds. This process involved extensive editing and a negotiation between the \"material\" and the \"original conception\". This sort of negotiation applies as much to the composition of a single piece as it does to the work of two decades.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unseen Worlds","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50395028980043,"sku":"2082938","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50395028717899,"sku":"2082916","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/A_Cappella_56fcc3c9_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726453528"},{"product_id":"pulse-music","title":"Pulse Music","description":"\u003cp\u003ePresented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s \u003ci\u003ePulse Music\u003c\/i\u003e series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock serialism’s warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music’s multi-dimensionality while smoothing its wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles. If serialism is Montreal’s Habitat 67 modular housing complex, McGuire’s Pulse Music compositions are the primary-colored grids of Le Corbusier’s L’Habitation apartment complex — an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvery layer of pulses is made distinct through its timbre, register, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. Every so often the sky rotates and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally starts to draw connections and, as it sweeps between one layer and another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes qualitative experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unseen Worlds","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50505603023179,"sku":"2002498","price":47.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50505600794955,"sku":"1151428","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/dda7ae42-6cb4-4458-9fb5-dc1e1ecf4e1c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727815309"},{"product_id":"double-string-trios","title":"Double String Trios","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eDouble String Trios \u003c\/em\u003epresents three major works for two string Mini-LP Gatefold CD Wallet Tipped-in 16 page booklet Cotton CD Sleeve, composed by John McGuire between 2012 and 2021 and conducted by Axel Lindner. This release began with Walter Zimmermann asking Bernd Härpfer of Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln – GIMIKe.V. to arrange a concert premiere in celebration of McGuire’s 80th birthday. McGuire’s musical roots lie in the electronic studios of postwar Cologne, shaped through studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, and grounded in the traditions of European serialism. Working with synthesisers capable of generating up to 1,800 pulses per second, he developed beautifully harmonious, crystalline music shaped by the ear into a world of owing continuities between one point and the next. Transferred to stringed instruments, that world becomes infinitely more complex —suffused with the richness and impurities of human players and their acoustic technologies. Conceived as two facing string trios in antiphonal dialogue, the music linksstudio spatial thinking with older split-ensemble traditions, unfolding through Fibonacci proportions, rotating tempi, shifting meters, and continual harmonic transposition.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unseen Worlds","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":56264497561931,"sku":"R7759-6727","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/f3f718d6-969e-faed-2c1d-4e3b1c686d41.png?v=1767967056"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/john-mcguire.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}