For Your listening

In 1625, all of the sopranos in the Sistine Chapel choir were castrati who had been castrated as young boys to achieve a unique singing voice. Castrated before puberty, they would retain their boy soprano voice but sing with the strength and breath capacity of a man. Part of their necessity was the fact that at that time, women could not sing in church choirs, but the men were said to be extremely popular and have the "voice of angels". "During the 17th and 18th centuries in Italy, some 4,000 - 5,000 boys were castrated annually for the purpose of singing alto in the church choirs." By 1640, castrati were used in choirs throughout Italy. The practice was officially banned by Pius X in 1903.
The only audio recordings of a castrati is of Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922). Critics say Moreschi was past his singing prime wen he made this recording. Because the style of music has changed so much, keep this in mind: "Many of the seemingly imperfect vocal attacks, for example, are in fact, launched from as much as a tenth below the note - in Moreschi's case, this seems to have been a long-standing means of drawing on the particular acoustics of the Sistine Chapel itself."
Here Morschi sings Ave Maria.
Here he sings Domine Salvum Fac.
Source. Source.
Georgia Brown is a Brazilian singer who holds the Guinness World Record for singing the highest recorded note. Her vocal range spans 8 octaves. A word of warning on the audio link. It is, how to put it, all very very high notes. Here. is her song. For a smaller dose of high notes, here is a video where she only sings high at the end.


In 1877, Thomas Edison recorded the first sounds for play back. He recited Mary Had A Little Lamb. Here is the recording which is very clear. Up until recently, Edison was thought to have made the first recording, but an 1860 recording of "Au Clair de la Lune" by French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville has been found. Scott recorded by "etch[ing] representations of sound waves into paper covered in soot from a burning oil lamp." The distinction is that Scott's recordings were not designed to be played back. Here is the recording. Source.


Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) was famous for being a terrible singer. Despite this, or because of this, she managed immense popularity and was able to draw 5,000 people to a 3,000 ticket Carnegie Concert performance. It is agreed that Jenkins was sincere in her belief in her singing, dismissing laugher as "professional jealousy." Her balls and recitals each had a theme. Between every song, Jenkins would change costumes. Both Enrico Caruso and Cole Porter were admirers. Cole Porter never missed her concerts. "He apparently screamed with laughter all the way through . . . but at the end he was the first one to stand up and scream and shout 'bravo'." While making this recording here, she allegedly only snag the song one time. She told the sound engineer it was perfect so no second try was necessary.
Source. Source. Source.

For more audio, you can visit here, and also here for such recordings as: Einstein explaining E=mc^2, Ted Bundy confessing, King Edward VIII abdicating and Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war.

By the way, I am currently on vaccation. I scheduled this to post automatically. (creepy music) Hope it works correctly.

A very selfish post

All right! All right! I admit it! This is a very very selfish post. This blog has never been about me, but . . . I have finally succumbed to the evil empire of Youtube and have made my first (and most likely last) Youtube video. If you ===>CLICK HERE <===then you can finally be assured that this blog is not written by a seven foot tall bald vampire who has a minor stutter and an major nose hair problem. I would also really appreciate it. Be sure to comment here and there. Thank you.

To keep this post from becoming entirely narcissistic, here is a somewhat short list of things not related to me.

• In the UK, the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) is typically taken around age 16. One GCSE is taken per subject. In response to the English question, "Describe the room you’re sitting in," one student wrote, "f- off." Chief Examiner Peter Buckroyd decided to stick to the scoring guidelines and awarded the student 2 marks out of a possible 27. He commented: "It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling. . . . If it had had an exclamation mark it would have got a little bit more because it would have been showing a little bit of skill.” Source.
  
• Japan now has three singing roads. Built by the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute and designed by Shizuo Shinoda, grooves are cut into the road at specific intervals which produce melodies when vehicles drive over them. "It works like the head of a record player on a vinyl album." Here is an English video explaining the roads, and here is a Japanese video with clips of the roads. The recommended speed is 28 mph (aprx. 45kph). One Japanese blogger advised, "Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car sick." Source.
• Here are two visual illusions to puzzle over: In the first illusion, both A and B are the same size. In the second illusion, are the two outer prongs rectangles or cylinders?
  

Odds and Ends

• From the makers of the Beer Belly, comes the Winerack (pictured above). An excerpt from their site: "Turn an A cup in to double Ds AND sport your favorite beverage for yourself and your friends! Better than a Boob Job and Cheaper Too! Not to mention the savings on over priced drinks." And as you drink, simply fill the bra back up with air. Classy!
• AJ's Cafe in Ferndale, Michigan set a Guinness world record by hosting 50 straight hours of the song Danny Boy. On March 16th, after 24 hours of Danny Boy, cafe owner AJ O'Neil said he wasn't sick of the song. "We had six church choirs in a row," he said, "And when the children sing, it just makes you cry." Source. Source.

Guilt over blog-neglect is a great motivator

• Meet Louis, the 6-foot Octopus. He was given his Mr. Potato Head toy for Christmas, and loves it so much that he "turns aggressive when aquarium staff try to remove it from his tank." Source.
• The Spanish town of Pulpi made a really big salad in September 2007. Dimensions: 20 cooks, over 3 hours prep time, 59 by 15.7 ft container, 14,740 pounds of vegetables. The salad was served free-of-charge in Pulpi's restaurants. Source
• Jody Powell and Kenneth Donnell won tickets to a Hannah Montana concert by keeping one hand on a 12-foot, 400 pound statute of Hannah for 6 days. They received catered meals and were allowed one 12 minute break every 3 hours. There were 20 contestants who participated. Winner-Powell says: "It's like a dream come true." Source

Anything you can do, I can do better.

• Toyota has succeeded in designing robots with the dexterity to play the violin and the trumpet. Here is a video of the violin-robot, and here is a video of the trumpet robot which shifts from foot to foot while playing. The robots are 5 feet tall and white. USA today politely commented: "Compared to a virtuoso, its rendition was a trifle stilted and, well, robotic."
• Taking things a step further, David Levy of the University of Maastricht predicts that by 2050, humans will be able to have sex with, and marry robots. He predicts that Massachusetts will be the first state to legalize human-robot marriages and compares the it to interracial and same-sex marriages. He also sees marriage to robots being attractive to "shy," "ugly" or "unpleasant" people. Levy predicts that these robots could cut down on pedophilia and human prostitution. Levy says: ""Once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon. . .Love and sex with robots are inevitable. . .The question is not if this will happen, but when." Levy's next paper is on the ethical treatment of robots with regards to sex and love. Source

shhhhhhhh!

To be fair, for this post I could just include white space and nothing else. However...

Composer John Cage's piece 4'33" is basically 4 minutes, 33 seconds of complete silence. But supporters of Cage would argue that the experience is different for each listener and the piece includes the sounds of the environment it is played in. Composed in 1952, it can be played by any combination of instruments. Cage explained his piece by saying: "[W]hatever we we are[,] what we mostly hear is noise."

When Mike Batt composed A One Minute Silence, Cage's estate sued him. While Batt payed an undisclosed 6-figure amount to the John Cage trust, he retorted: "Mine is a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."

Here you can see 4'33" performed with a full orchestra. While there is a conductor, he only lifts his baton to give the downbeat at the start of each of the three movements, and occasionally turns pages. Here you can see it preformed by a solo piano who closes the piano lid and sits quietly with a stopwatch. If you are interested in Cage but don't have a large tolerance for silence, you might be interested to see an early work of his called Water Works. Here is is part of Cage's piano sonatinas. Be forewarned, they sound very different than what one is used to.

Source. Source.

don't play with your food

Apparently, there is a First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. They play about 20-30 concerts a year and have 11 musicians, 1 video person and 1 sound technician. And yes, all of their instruments are made out of actual vegetables: "carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos." After the end of each performance, the vegetables are made into a soup and served to the audience.

Here is a video of a performance. Here is an audio clip. And here are pictures of their instruments.

tierd arms

Picture by Sheila Rock

In Vienna, after playing the Moor of Venice in the opera Othello, Placcido Domingo received 80 minutes of solid clapping and took 101 curtain calls.

Recommended: To hear him sing, listen to http://www.musicremedy.com/p/Placido_Domingo/videos/TAmo_Piu-5483.html

To read more about him, check out http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/40730923.