Penguin Café Orchestra: Text in Composition

            In today’s societies, people all over the world want to stand out from all the rest, and create individuality. Only the rarest of the few ever achieve such a feat. To do something like this, one must go to great lengths to create something outside of the realm of the norm. One of these “greats” is the Penguin Café Orchestra. Their style, tone, sounds, and classification is unlike any other. They have truly created something that is outside of normal, and beautifully artistic in every way. How is anyone able to create such a vision? By stretching their definition of text and composition.

            The piece I am analyzing is called Perpetuum Mobile by the Penguin Café Orchestra. They take the definition of Perpetuum Mobile (or translated in English to Perpetual Motion) and then attempt to create a song around this definition. They incorporate a unique sound and rhythm to recreate the definition of perpetual motion. Every instrument “looped” into one another so that the song never truly has a stopping point (except in the beginning where there is a small introduction in the song, but really has no other stopping point until the end).

The argument I am creating is that within the musical composition that the Penguin Café Orchestra has created is the musical text. In other words, the text of the song is that of the unification of the violins, cellos, bongos, and the piano (or all of the instruments) to reflect the title of the song. The title of the song is, loosely, the composition. More specifically, the composition is the musical piece that encompasses the text of the song.

·      Perpetual Motion- a brief overview

o   In order to understand the song, one must understand the principle on which the song was founded.

o   Perpetual Motion is the following:

§  “A perpetual motion machine (PMM) is a device based on mechanical, chemical, electrical or other physical processes which, when started, will remain in operation forever and provide additional work as well. Only the natural wear of the components will eventually stop its operation” (Hans-Peters’, hp-gramatke.net).

o   A perpetual motion machine, theoretically, cannot exist.

§  Violates the first and second law of thermodynamics.

·      The Penguin Café Orchestra takes this idea of perpetual motion and transforms it to a musical composition, though establishing its text.

o   That is, the text is written for and written by someone.

§  Definition of text:

·      A style, tone, sound, voice, word, visual, etc. that pertains to a certain artistic or non-artistic medium.

o   The Penguin Café Orchestra incorporates their instruments and unique sound to establish their text.

§  Composition:

·      The embodiment of the text.

o   This can be a musical piece, an artistic statue; even this paper can be a composition.

o   Perpetuum Mobile is the text’s composition.

·      Purposes of the text- Rhetor, Audience, and Context

o   Rhetor

§  Even though the music was created by a number of musicians, the only consistent artist was Penguin Café Orchestra’s founder Simon Jeffes.

·      Technically, Jeffes created his music for everyone

o   Jeffes wanted to create a sound that was played in a café. He wanted to play the music that lifted your spirits and communicate with you in a soft and gentle way, warming your heart (Jeffes, penguincafe.com).

o   Audience

§  The audience that the music was originally created for is still the same today. The audience Jeffes was trying to reach was and still is everyone.

·      His music is unclassifiable, though the most popular term associated with him and his café is New Age.

·      “New Age music is peaceful music of various styles, which is intended to create inspiration, relaxation, and positive feelings” (Wikipedia.com).

o   While this classification is close, further analysis conveys that Penguin Café Orchestra is outside of the realm of anything, and is pleasurable to every ear.

·      Jeffes classifies his own music as “imaginary folklore” and “modern semi-acoustic chamber music” (Sandall, 1 penguincafe.com)

o   Context

§  Jeffes’ music could, potentially, be absolutely anywhere. They do have fans worldwide, as they toured in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

§  Technically speaking, however, the music was originally in Simon Jeffes.

·      After getting severe food poisoning (with an ensuing vision) and then sunbathing on the shores of France, a poem popped into his head and he knew what the Penguin Café Orchestra was.

o   “I [Jeffes] am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves” (Sandall, 1, penguincafe.com).

Text can literally be anything, given the right context that it is put it. A skyscraper to a musical composition by Aaron Copeland himself can all be considered a type of text. Perpetuum Mobile by the Penguin Café Orchestra is a text in its most artistic form. Not only do they make the musical composition, they transform the piece to a theoretically unrealistic concept! Perpetual motion is only an idea and can never truly be accomplished, according to the laws of physics. However, by bending the rules of text and composition and understanding the two, perpetual motion is a very real, and heard, concept.

Annotated Bibliography

HP-Perpetuum Mobile. Hans-Peters. 4 July 2003. Hans-Peter's Mathematick
Technick             Algorithmick
Linguistick Omnium
Gatherum. 11 November 2008.            

This website is very useful in helping to understand exactly what perpetual motion is. Gives multiple and very detailed examples and definitions. Lots of other information about physics relating to perpetual motion.

The Penguin Café Orchestra. Robert Sandall.  Penguin Café Orchestra Origins.             15 November 2008.

The Penguin Café Orchestra official website. Gives a fully detailed story and tribute to the now deceased founder Simon Jeffes written by Robert Sandall. Also includes: Biography on other members in the band, a discography, and origins of the band (overlaps Jeffes’ biography)

New Age Music. 3 December 2008. Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. 2 December             2008.

Gives an in-depth definition of the musical genre “New Age”.  Goes into further detail about the origins of New Age and the qualifications of what it means to be a “New Age” band.

Case Study: Introduction and Definition. Colorado State University. Writing Guides:             Case Studies. 11 November 2008.            

Gives a great definition and example of a case study. I used this site to help myself better understand what exactly a caser study is.  

As a side note, I would love to submit my peer review of my partners, but I never got his and he never got mine. I know, lame excuse, but this is true. Whether I ever really asked him for it or whether we both had ours ready in time is a different story. ONe which I won't go into details, because I'm sure the picture is clear. Don't Judge :)