DVD Program Notes
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DVD Program Notes Part One: Max Mathews, Curator music, and he plays the piano. By close friends with Gerald Bennett, custom, he works nights. I, by con- who directed the IRCAM department Curator’s Note trast, am a day person. For the last charged with coordinating all other decade, we have played violin–piano IRCAM departments. Gerald eventu- Computer Suite from Little Boy sonatas together once a week starting ally returned to Switzerland where (1968) by Jean-Claude Risset was the at 8 a.m., which is the only hour he continued to teach at the Zurich first piece that made me feel that all we are both awake. This makes it Conservatory, started the Swiss Com- the work I put into music programs possible to face the computer during puter Group, and had more time to and particularly into MUSIC V was the rest of the day. Bill’s programs fed compose. Rainstick (1993) is a very worth it. The timbres, both the FM scores into the “Samson Box,” exciting piece. When I first heard it, I completely new ones and the more which for a decade gave the Center imagined Gerald high in the Alps with traditional, have a richness and for Computer Research in Music and his microphone and tape recorder in beauty that I had never before heard Acoustics (CCRMA) a monopoly on the middle of a wild mountain storm. in computer music. Most of the fast synthesis. Water Music I (1985) is Later he explained that it was all done timbres depended on the results a luscious FM-reverberated extension in his home studio with the magic of of the seminal research on timbre of a violin note played with juicy and his computer program. In addition to which Jean-Claude did at Bell Labs thrilling dissonances. loving the piece, I love to filter it with during the two periods in the 1960s For me, Phosphones (1970) by my phaser filters as a test bed for the when he worked there as part of Emmanuel Ghent is by far the most effects of the filtering. So far, Gerald his graduate studies in physics. His interesting composition realized on has forgiven me for this sacrilege. timbre research results are now GROOVE, the hybrid digital-analog Since the 1980s, the Radio-Baton available in a very practical form as a real-time music system developed by and Conductor Program have pre- sound catalogue (The Historical CD F. R. Moore and myself in the 1960s. empted my attention as a way of of Digital Sound Synthesis, Wergo GROOVE allowed the composer to making expressive real-time perfor- 2033-2). Songes (1979) is the most perform live music in a studio envi- mances on a computer instrument. interesting and powerful piece ever ronment and thus to add performance I believe the control of time is the created completely with the MUSIC expression. Phosphones supplied the most important expressive factor. V program. It is also the last pure music for a dance performed by the In the Conductor program, the per- MUSIC V piece composed by Jean- Mimi Garrard Dance Company. The former can control time in many Claude Risset. It, too, depended piece required complex and rapid ways: by beating time with a baton as heavily on his timbre research. stroboscopic changes in lighting. in traditional conducting, by writing Frequency modulation (FM) syn- Emmanuel programmed GROOVE a sequence of tempos into the score, thesis, invented by John Chowning, to make a light control tape which and by what I call the “throttle” plus the advent of special-purpose was perfectly synchronized with the mode—where the position of a baton computer chips, reduced the cost of a music. He seemed able to survive stick varies the tempo as one con- rich computer music system fifty-fold without sleep. He typically worked trols the speed of an automobile with and increased the number of musi- all day at his medical practice in the accelerator pedal. Jon Appleton cians using computer technology New York City and all night on the uses all these modes in Pacific Rim- many thousand–fold. Turenas (1972) GROOVE computer at Bell Labs in bombo (1992) in very imaginative is an early demonstration of the power New Jersey. I feared this regime was a and creative ways. He also makes of FM synthesis. It also demonstrates factor in the break-up of his first mar- a performer’s gesture start a widely other of John’s computer synthesis in- riage so as a wedding present for his varying number of notes from minus novations, including moving apparent second marriage, I gave the computer one note (i.e., ending a single note) positions of sound sources using only to Barry Vercoe at the Massachusetts to starting a complete page of notes. four loudspeakers, reverberation, and Institute of Technology (MIT). This makes performing Rimbombo doppler frequency shifts. Phone´ (1981) From 1974 to 1982 I worked part- very exciting and expressive. It is the showed the power of FM to synthesize time for the Institut de Recherche et piece I most enjoy playing. human sung speech sounds. Coordination Acoustique/Musique Linda Roberts and I studied a triad William Schottstaedt can do (IRCAM) in Paris as a scientific ad- with frequencies based on the integer anything—he is a super program- visor and as the Scientific Director. ratio 3:5:7. We found this chord had mer, he answers all music theory One of the great benefits of my em- similarities to the traditional major questions, he composes beautiful ployment was meeting and becoming triad based on the integers 4:5:6. In 106 Computer Music Journal Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/comj.2008.32.4.106 by guest on 01 October 2021 particular, a naive listener could hear that the action is in a man’s troubled contaminated with noise: For this if the chord was played out-of-tune. mind. recording, the noise was cleaned up John Pierce extended the chord to The Suite comprises only sounds through digital processing by Sonic 3:5:7:9 and made a scale based on synthesized with Max Mathews’s Solutions. (Jean-Claude Risset) this chord. The tempered version MUSIC V program at Bell Labs. It of the new scale has 13 pitches attempts to roughly sum up the spanning an octave plus a fifth. Keys, movement of the play in three parts. 2. Songes—Jean-Claude Risset modulations, and both dissonant and The first section, “Flight and Count- consonant intervals are possible in down,” follows the pilot’s dream, Songes (1979), for magnetic tape, was the new scale. The new scale has no which takes him through a musically realized at IRCAM with a variant of octave. Composers with a traditional stylized airplane flight, with episodes the MUSIC V software. The original ear-training background tend to of synthetic jazz- or Japanese-like program, designed by Max Mathews, hear Pierce scale intervals as out-of- tunes. The flight is terminated by a was augmented by John Gardner and tune traditional intervals. I found it countdown preceding the release of Jean-Louis Richer so as to enable it to difficult to persuade most composers the bomb. The following section is process digitized sounds as well as to to try the new scale. But Richard the “Fall.” The pilot thinks that Little synthesize sounds. The original ver- Boulanger was willing and eager. I Boy, the bomb to which he identifies sion of Songes is for four-track tape; enjoy Solemn Song for Evening (1989) himself, is falling; in fact, this is a psy- it uses some of the sound material very much. To me, it is new, powerful, chological collapse that never reaches of Mirages, a piece for 16 instru- exciting, and interesting. Although any bottom, which the music suggests ments and tape commissioned by most traditional instruments cannot with continuous sounds that seem the Donaueschingen Festival (1978). produce notes in the new scale, a to glide down indefinitely. The last The elaboration of this sound ma- computer can. Maureen Chowning part is called “Contra-Apotheosis,” terial took advantage of David Wes- (soprano) learned to sing the new like the anti-climactic end of the sel’s programs for mapping timbral scale. play. Here various time fragments are spaces. recalled or evoked in a deliberately The title suggests the dreamlike disintegrated way, as the obsessions character of adventures taking place 1. Computer Suite from Little of the central character and his entire on different stages—adventures of Boy—Jean-Claude Risset world mentally rotate. Thus the jazz sound figures coming from an unreal, band gets mixed up and ends as a gun- imaginary world. The identity of The Computer Suite from Little like beat; the Japanese instruments sonic beings which occasionally Boy was realized in 1968 at Bell turn into sirens; a pandemonium of escape material constraints gets Labs. It is one of the first substantial sounds builds up above a rotating dissolved in the continuity of musical works entirely synthesized glissando, to be quieted down and textures, the flux of motions and by computer, using Max Mathews’s dissolved into memories. evolutions. Yet how can we be MUSIC V program. The Computer The recipes for many types of sure to distinguish illusion and Suite is part of the incidental music sounds used in this piece can be reality, insofar as our experiences composed for the play Little Boy by found in “An Introductory Catalogue all come through our perception, our Pierre Halet (Paris: Editions du Seuil, of Computer Synthesized Sounds” consciousness? Couldn’t our dreams 1968).