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Moondog
theory
Moondog had some strange ideas,
some of them discussed in an interview held in
the mid-nineties. Some of
these are so bizarre as to be leg pulls. But there is no doubt
that he was a highly serious, albeit unclassifiable, musician. He
usually composed his music in his head rarely using an
instrument. He also had many of his bizarre instruments -
including his drums - made for him by a cabinet maker.
Moondog's work frequently features
Canons....
Over the years he worked on a grand piece
called Overtone Tree.
"That's one of my symphonies that
I've been working on for twenty years. I finally got it finished
now. I've been doing a lot of other work but this is a major
work. I don't expect that it'll be ever played. It'll probably be
buried with me. It's written for four conductors- one main
conductor and three assitants because at one time, there may be
as many as sixty or seventy parts going and one conductor can't
hanlde that. It's all counterpointal. So each conductor would
have his own score and be in charge of a certain section of the
orchestra. It's based on the first nine overtones and I tried
that as a theme in '73 on the northwest corner of 55th Street and
Sixth Avenue- that's where I got the idea to use overtones as a
theme. After I worked on it, I went to Europe. I was in Hamburg
in '75 and I was working on the overtones and I finally realized
that I had something interesting here. It was a code."
It was this discovery of a code
that produces one of his most eccentric theories. He believed
that there was a mega-mind created the universe
and wants us to know it exists. If this sounds a bit like L Ron
Hubbard then read the interview which gets worse. Any way he went
on to say that the universe expands and contracts in such a way
as to prove..
"...... that contraction must come
before expansion. It also proves that a cause can become an
effect and an effect can become a cause. It proves the
two-directionality of time. It proves that the past is the future
and the future is the past. All this flys in the face of what
Hubble did, saying that there was a big bang and an expansion of
the universe. His is a theory but mine is a fact. A fact
incontrovertable, as I call it. They talked about these theories
of mine on National Public Radio."
Moondog even produced a diagram
of expansion and contraction to "clarify" matters. Not content with
this he also evolved an alternative calendar to correct the traditional christian one.
It conveniently ends at the year 10000 so we have a nice
alternative round number.
Moondog's
favorite music
- Tchaikovsky
'Fourth Symphony'
- Beethoven
'Fifth Symphony'
- Wagner
- Brahms
- Philip Glass
- Steve Reich
- John Adams
- Bach
"Wagner made such an impression. Every Saturday
afternoon, I used to listen to the operas on the radio from Iowa
back in the '30's. I'm very friendly with Glass and Reich- at
least we have tonality in common. I love Bach but he never
analyzed his pieces- I'm sure he realized that there were a lot
of mistakes in there. I'm sure he would have corrected him if he
had the time but he had kids and wives to take care of."
Moondog's music is unclassifiable. Often it is
placed in the jazz section in record shops but many of his pieces have a classical
feel. Moondog, himself, did not mind where they were placed in music shops provided
they were placed somewhere. Why not amuse yourself by trying to place him in
this fluxus table of avant garde musicians.
this page was written
in France on the 25th of July 1965
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