Composer of ‘The Bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even’ has died
mainThe American composer and music critic Charles Shere has died of prostate cancer, aged 85.
A student of Luciano Berio, Shere was music director of radio KPFA in Berkeley in the 1960s and music critic of the Oakland (Cal.) Tribune 1971-8, while teaching music history and composition at Mills College, Oakland.
He wrote an opera – The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even, after the Marcel Duchamp, a Symphony in three movements and concertos for piano and for violin, enough to earn him an entry in New Grove.
(c) Duchamp estate, photo: Youtube
If he was a modern composer, this calls for a new fashion, because that’s apparently done with, and should be honored. Below is a rambling schizophrenic run-on attempt at creating a new fashion, although it rather insults humming birds and other such (upon hearing of the death of this dear dear wonderful man)….
Well THAT explains it, I was wondering why I was increasing the rotation of “Close to You” (while playing it on a record player) to become the Marchioness from Little Nell of Charles Dickens, you only have to turn off the electricity because there’s no need to keep it on (the electricity), and it works better (still sends enough power or signal to the amplifier) and then you can turn it on again, when you’re finished making the turn table go around faster or slower, where upon it usually slows down or speeds up to increase or decrease the rate of wave pattern correspondence otherwise known as pitch architecture, and coming out in the wrong Dickens movie is where I end up. “The bride stripped bare by her bachelors.”
Might work better than legal psychiatric drugs, illegal street drugs, illegal psychiatric drugs or legal street drugs. And you can do it to anything that turntable will take without breaking down.
I take it he didn’t overlap with Milhaud’s tenure on the faculty at Mills College.
Most likely not. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Milhaud and Mills: From 1947 to 1971, Milhaud taught alternate years at Mills and the Paris Conservatoire, until poor health, which caused him to use a wheelchair during his later years (beginning in the 1930s), compelled him to retire.
“The bride stripped bare by her bachelors, even” is not only the title of a sculpture by Marcel Duchamp, as is well known, but is also the title of a “musical” composition by the same Duchamp, who provided instructions for potential performers to write down a score. In this kind of composition technique, Duchamp preceded John Cage by some 50 years.