Paul Lansky - Mild und Leise

Fans of alternative music might have their ears perked up at about :44 into Mild und Leise. Although composed in 1973 at one of the only computers on the Princeton campus, this small portion of music composed by Paul Lansky would later gain far more recognition when sampled by Radiohead on the song "Idioteque," released in 2000 on the album Kid A. It's easy to see why Jonny Greenwood would be particularly inspired to sample these few chords; up until the point at which they appear, the piece is mostly composed of harmonies that seem to fractured and scattered but the "Idioteque" chords begin to breathe a relieving, and surprising, amount of consonance into Mild und Leise.

This juxtaposition seems to be emblematic of the form of the entire piece. Lansky seemed to have captured one of the most fundamental techniques of musical engagement; the idea of tension and release. According to his website, which is full of all sorts of musical goodies, the piece was based on the famous "Tristan chord" from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. I don't really hear it, granted my knowledge of the Tristan chord is limited, but the most obvious and immediate comparion is in the title. With the quick use of a free, and most likely unreliable, online translator, I discovered that the title roughly translates to "mild and soft." Quite the radical departure from what one often thinks of Wagner and the Tristan chord, Mild und Leise does in fact leave an overall impression of mildness and softness but not in the muzak or elevator type of sound that one would expect from "mild" electronic music. Lansky seems to treat the term "mild" as more of a conditional attachment to the idea of softness, which creates quite a specific sonic portrait of extreme delicacy and ethereal emotion.

Soft beauty rarely ever seems to present itself unbridled though, and Mild und Leise is no exception. Just as the nominal discrepancy between the Tristan chord and "mild and soft" seems to establish the dialectic, the music itself seems to fulfill the listener's expectations. The harmonic motion seems to be constantly walking a thin line and stumbling over to either end. Although the piece leaves a clean, non-abrasive aftertaste, it never seems to revel completely in the consonance that it often suggests. In addition, its moments of dissonance don't have the pitch centric teleology of tonal music. Lansky seems to have strung together chords not as a composer knitting different harmonic yarns but as more of a child stacking differently shaped blocks, some jagged and some smooth. Ultimately his blocks build a tower that leaves a gentle impression, not because of shape but of color. The sound shaping and the unbelievably detailed timbral nuances are what give mildness and softness the ultimate edge in the aesthetic duel. Although I really know anything about the Princeton-Columbia computer that Lansky used to make Mild und Leise, it's probably safe to assume that it was massive, slow and difficult to use. Lansky's ability to draw emotion and intellect out of such an unwieldly device shows how unbelivably gifted and dedicated he was to his art.

Paul Lansky - Mild und Leise