Keeril Makan An Interview with School of Music University of Illinois 1114 West Nevada Street Edmund Campion Urbana, Illinois 61801 USA [email protected]

Edmund J. Campion was born in Dallas, Texas, in Time (ACWOT) for two pianos, was unlike any 1957. (See Figure 1.) He received a doctorate in music I had ever written. Since then, the computer composition at Columbia University and attended has been my playground and teacher, a testing site the Paris Conservatory where he worked with com- for ideas. The questions I ask, the pieces I write, poser Ge´rard Grisey. In 1993, Campion was se- the locations I choose for musical presentation lected for the one-year course in computer music at have all been rethought. It’s easy to get lost in the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acous- technical issues, but my focus remains music crea- tique/Musique (IRCAM). He was eventually com- tion. Rhythm, timbre, and spatial studies are cen- missioned by IRCAM for his work Natural tral. Still, I’ve always felt a need to contextualize Selection and the evening-length dance piece Play- my artistic output in relation to the larger social back with choreographer Franc¸ois Raffinot. In picture. None of us wants to live in a computer 1995, Hillary Clinton presented him with the music ghetto. Rome Prize in Music Composition at the White Makan: How did working with two such different House. figures as Davidovsky and Grisey challenge you as Mr. Campion is currently Associate Professor of a young composer? Music at the University of California at Berkeley, Campion: Davidovsky was New York; Grisey was where he serves as the Co-Director of The Center Paris. The clash of those two musical cultures was for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). as much a challenge as anything. But what good He has been recipient of the Nadia Boulanger fortune to experience such well-formed and con- Award, the Paul Fromm Award at Tanglewood, a trasting points of view! Both were highly critical of Charles Ives Award of the American Academy of my work; that made the difference. Grisey and I be- Arts and Letters, and a Fulbright scholarship for came lasting friends, and it was a meaningful coin- study in France. Upcoming projects include a cidence that I came to teach at the University of Fromm Foundation commission for the San Fran- California at Berkeley where he had been a profes- cisco Contemporary Music Players, a work in 2005 sor long before. Now that he’s gone, I miss him. for the percussion sextet Les Percussion de Stras- bourg, and a new interactive computer environ- Makan: What sort of musical parameters were you ment with violinist David Abel and pianist Julie exploring with your early attempts at computer- Steinberg. This interview was conducted from 15 assisted composition? December 2003 to 25 May 2004 by electronic mail. Campion: I was shuffling pitch class sets, rhythmic Makan: When did you first begin working with models, and timbre assignments inside a graphical music technology, and what was the attraction? sequence editor. I based everything on immediate perceptual feedback, which dovetailed with my in- Campion: As a graduate student at Columbia in the terest in improvisation. I wanted to compose com- mid to late 1980s, I cut tape with Mario Davidov- plex structures while at the same time avoiding the sky and saw the advent of the personal computer. typical university-based music that surrounded me. The results of using a MIDI-based studio and sim- So the project was defined: to marry the strengths ple computer-assisted techniques blew my mind! of formal composition with the flexibility and When I moved to Paris in 1989, Ge´rard Grisey en- adaptability of free improvisation. The instrumen- couraged me to apply these methods to acoustic tal suite A Treasured Collection of Eddies (AT- composition. The outcome, A Complete Wealth of COE) was the piece. Makan: You studied and worked for several years at Computer Music Journal, 28:4, pp. 16–24, Winter 2004 IRCAM. How did this experience change you as a ᭧ 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. composer?

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 1. Edmund Campion. Photo courtesy Kathleen Karn.

the sound design area I used AudioSculpt and resid- ual re-synthesis with Addan. Spatialization was paramount. The score was produced from transcrip- tions of processed MIDI data. I used rhythmic tem- plates like cookie cutters, superimposing them on time-pointed polyphonic sequences to extract lines. This resulted in most of the pitches in a sequence being discarded, but the harmonic unfolding would remain. Each section of the piece could be realized, tested, tweaked, re-made, and re-tested. Listening and verifying the results in simulation was part of the process. I was losing touch with traditional compositional techniques and training. IRCAM and Danielle Jaeggi of Les Films d’Ici (www .lesfilmsdici.fr) produced a documentary film called Losing Touch that goes into some detail (Jaeggi 1999). Makan: Between 1994 and 1995, you completed three works for solo instrument and tape (Losing Touch, Astronomia, and Mathematica). How do these works approach the musical problem of com- bining an instrument and recorded electronics? Campion: The electronic (akin to the artificial) and the acoustic worlds don’t naturally cohere. At the end of Losing Touch, the tape degenerates into a mechanical sequence that the musician cannot and does not care to follow. The fiction of cooperation is shattered as the human performer and the tape part lose touch with each other. All three pieces shackle the performer to a click-track to ensure synchronization and aid the illusion of integration. Campion: My technological naı¨vete´ ended with the I found that keeping the density of events high, IRCAM course in computer music in 1994. That self-similar, and constantly moving helped form a year I wrote Losing Touch for vibraphone and unified perceptual scene. Re-synthesis of spectral multi-channel tape (Editions Billaudot, Paris). Los- models based on the solo instrument was useful for ing paved the road for several future IRCAM com- sonic coherence. missions. The IRCAM people that influenced me the most included Jean-Baptiste Barrie`re, Mikhail Makan: How do you think of spatialization in these Malt, and Xavier Chabot. works? In what way did your exploration of the electronic sounds influence the forms of these Makan: Describe how the techniques you learned works? at IRCAM were used to create Losing Touch. Campion: The compositional process was similar Campion: Everything was an expansion of what I for all three. I started by constructing sample-based had done before, crossing the fruits of improvisa- orchestras made from recordings and hybrids of the tion and formalized composition—only at IRCAM, solo instrument. Then I invented a process for ma- I composed with Patchwork (now Open Music). In nipulating and writing MIDI files in Patchwork.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 This process led me to the creation of rhythmic, Campion: IRCAM’s Tom Mays and Richard Dudas harmonic, and formal models. In Losing Touch, the cleared the numerous technical hurdles that made model was of spatialized canons set on a fixed Nat-Sel possible. They had a big influence on the rhythmic grid. In Mathematica, evolving probabil- outcome but never interfered with the core ideas. ity tables controlled the rhythm, the harmonic un- Music—computer music, too—is always collabora- folding, and the spatialization. In Astronomia, tive. It goes both ways. I had to become a compe- aleatoric distributions governed the composition. tent Max programmer to realize the goals. The architecture of Losing Touch enabled an eight- Specifically, reducing latency and getting things to voice canon to be collapsed into a single melodic consistently happen in the right order was a chal- line or expanded into a full polyphonic surround- lenge. Robert Rowe talks about Nat-Sel and some sound canon. The computer and the process dra- of the Mays abstractions in Machine Musicianship matically influenced the outcome. Among many (Rowe 2001). All the Nat-Sel external objects made unexpected surprises, I found that time-scaling the by Mr. Dudas (quickthresh, nfilter, multisplit, etc.) canons turned them into short bursts of spatialized can be downloaded freely from www.cycling74 dust. In the end, I always went back as my own .com/share/dudas. I copiously documented the IR- ideal listener, filtering the material for the last CAM version for the Opcode Max 3.5 release. The time. documentation is downloadable at my Web site, www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/ϳcampion. (See Figure Makan: Natural Selection is the first piece in 2.) which you use real-time technologies. Could you describe the piece and how it was created at IR- Makan: You cite a number of different versions of Nat-Sel CAM? How were you approaching interactivity be- in your list of works. How has this piece tween the performer and the electronics? changed over time? Are you planning new versions in the future? Campion: Natural Selection is a computer-based Campion: The original IRCAM Nat-Sel featured musical instrument—a personalized performance full surround sound, a second Disklavier, several environment designed to adapt to changing tech- computers, samplers, and the Espace de Projection nologies as well as different performance situa- theater at IRCAM. Today, I perform the piece using tions. I play Nat-Sel with a normal piano that sends the Moog Piano Bar (originally developed by Don MIDI to a Max patch. With properly defined group- Buchla), a laptop, and a sampled piano. There are ing rules, Max can accurately analyze and distin- Nat-Sel etudes, which are completely notated com- guish combinatorial set structures in real time— positions, and I have a dream of one day doing a something humans cannot do. The performer Nat-Sel concerto. I am also interested in a group interacts with the patch simply by playing the pi- version of Nat-Sel in which several composers ano and responding to the resulting music—no spe- build their own world based on the Nat-Sel tool cial pedals, presets, or oversight. Quick response set. and the ability to turn on a dime make a reactive Makan: Your next major commission from IRCAM feedback loop. As an improvisation, the interaction was the dance collaboration Playback. How did the can become very broad and freewheeling. When it collaborative relationships develop for this project, is a fixed composition, the interactivity happens on between yourself and the choreographer, as well as the micro level of touch and phrasing. between yourself and your musical assistant? Makan: Could you describe some of the software Campion: Playback was an evening-length work that had to be developed in Nat-Sel in order to real- involving dance, live video, and music. I never had ize the improvisational flexibility and interactivity so many resources at my disposal to create a new for which you were searching? In what ways did work. The IRCAM assistant was Manuel Poletti, a collaborating with your assistants at IRCAM brilliant MAX/MSP programmer. It was a dream change the outcome of the piece? come true that little by little turned into a huge

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 2. Screenshot of pitch matrix from Natural Selection.

disappointment. Collaboration is an art, and this Makan: Would you describe the types of interactive one did not go as planned. The dance, video, and environments you created in pieces like Corail and musical elements were constructed independently Melt Me So With Thy Delicious Numbers? How do and designed to join at a certain point. I was inter- you create a score for these open-performance envi- ested in the ability of sound to form a sonic um- ronments? brella—a virtual architecture for the dance and the Campion: Corail and Melt Me capitalize on the ex- visuals. When the time came, the dancer was inter- pertise of the Center for New Music and Audio ested only in the dance, and the video was very Technologies (CNMAT), which prides itself on de- late. Upon reflection, I think it was one of my most veloping tools for real-time, computer/performer successful failures. It can be costly, but composers interaction. Matthew Wright handled the more in- as artists have to take chances. Fortunately, many tense software development. The technical heart is of the inventions from Playback found their way the development of a suite of Max/MSP patches for into other projects. Corail is an offspring of Play- analyzing incoming signals. Currently, this in- back. cludes Miller Puckett’s fiddleϳ object, other

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 envelope-following tools, and special heuristic we teamed up again for Metronome, a public instal- analysis tools developed by Matthew Wright. lation at Union Square in New York City. Max/ Analysis of the live instrument signal, combined MSP selected different sonic outcomes for the day with pattern-matching strategies, generates the based on astronomical data and other factors. electronic environment. The patch is interested in Makan: One of your most important collaborators what pitch is being played, what the durations of throughout your career has been your brother, the events are, where the silences are, whether a phrase poet John Campion. Together, you’ve created two is legato or staccato, etc. large-scale works for voice and electronics, L’Autre Signal analysis in real time is tricky; a margin of and ME. Could you give some idea of how the col- error must be accepted and built into the space. laborative process works for the two of you? You don’t really know what’s coming, but by com- bining the gestures into a coordinated data struc- Campion: We sought analogues for how meaning is ture, you can improve the predictability of events made in music and in poetry and located the work and enhance the performer’s control of the effects. in those crosshairs. We wanted the poetic content David Wessel at CNMAT has called this kind of to function equally with the music. In ME, The interaction ‘‘loose score-following.’’ Each electronic computer served as an indispensable mediator with effect is an element in an idealized musical land- Carl Faia at the Centre International de Recherche scape. When performers respect the environment Musicale (CIRM) doing the tough programming. and their relationship to it, the thing can take off. The software-based instrument design and the The score for Corail is a set of etudes. These short techniques used to compose the piece were in- pieces are for simulation training only, and once spired by the poetic themes. The composer partici- the performers know how to fly, they are free to go pated in shaping the poetry and the poet the music, where they will. again mirroring the subject. All things serious and Corail and Melt Me offer a flexible sound world absurd were allowed to contend and merge into the dependent on the skill of the soloist. That’s excit- same pot, and the result is a kind of tragic vaude- ing, but I don’t intend it to be a fun, interactive ville. toy. Look, the technological revolution is happen- ing; we need to raise the bar on what is musically Makan: What is the subject of L’Autre? Can you possible. That involves expanding the definition of give some examples from L’Autre and ME of how what composers are and do and how they do it. (See you used computer technology to set different parts Figure 3.) of the text? Makan: You’ve collaborated on a number of site- Campion: L’Autre [The Other] tells the story of the specific installation art projects that involve tech- usurpation and domination of the unconscious by nology in some way. Would you describe some of consciousness, the feminine by the masculine. The these and how they relate to your works written source of all sound in L’Autre is the voice of the for the concert hall? mezzo-soprano. Her voice is amplified and spatiali- zed, and the other instruments are treated as meta- Campion: In 1995, I collaborated with the artists phorical extensions of her. To make her voice Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel on an installation appear larger, we pre-recorded all the vocal lines in an abandoned 19th-century aquarium in Rome. and then extracted partials using AudioSculpt. This We created a kind of sonic park with live perfor- allowed a thick heterophonic aura to follow the mance. The piece lasted several hours, with people singer along her path. entering and exiting the building freely. It was part In contrast, ME performs alone, a patriarchal par- of an effort to explore new performance paradigms ody of L’Autre. Where L’Autre uses the carefully and rituals. There is no reason to be limited by the placed partials of the voice, ME projects the voice’s traditional concert hall; it is obvious that certain ghostly doubles with straight and brutal transposi- actions are not appropriate to that container. Later, tion. Direct transposition of the voice provides a

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 Figure 3. Screenshot of Corail patch.

metaphor for the poetic content. As the voice is ground. He is his own ventriloquist’s dummy, transposed, the ‘‘Mickey-Mouse’’ effects increase, prompted and guided by invisible voices. revealing to the listener that the persona ME is in We have planned a third piece to complete the self-contradiction to his own projections. ME is cycle. It subsumes the previous two within a larger ugly by design, and he remains deaf to his own ut- biological organic space. terances for the entire work. With an in-ear moni- Makan: Would you describe some of your most re- tor and wireless system, the singer moves freely in cent work with technology and where you see the concert hall, secretly receiving and mimicking yourself heading in the future? pre-recorded samples of his own voice. This allows the soloist to match the exact contours of the pre- Campion: All my work and research are interre- defined models that are being treated in the back- lated. I recently used the in-ear techniques in ME

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 to develop a performance practice for purely acous- Campion: Everyone is rushing into the future while tic music. In A Different Kind of Measure (AD- the riches of the recent past are just lying around KOM), written for the Drumming Ensemble in waiting for talented composers to pick them up and Portugal, each percussionist has a unique in-ear realize their potential. Composers, like computer beat track. A Max/MSP-based calculus engine was scientists, are specialists. I’m lucky to be associated designed by Matthew Wright at CNMAT. The with CNMAT, where reforming the alliance be- patch takes a starting tempo and phase, a target tween the composer and the scientist is a big tempo with phase, and a transform time between theme. Collaboration is the key, and the goal is the old and the new. The music had to be assem- symbiosis. The results have to be more compelling bled with a computer and could not be represented than what either composer or scientist can do on in a composite score. It is technologically depen- their own. Can serious musical endeavors really be dent music, but the technology is submerged. integrated into the technological world? I feel ashamed when practically every public space that I Makan: Over the years, how has your acoustic mu- enter is filled with some kind of canned, digital sic changed as a result of your work with electron- music. Technology has unwittingly suppressed live ics? music practice, one of its big downsides. Campion: Emerging technologies have been the Nevertheless, I think we are learning to better generative source for most of my musical explora- handle the fruits of our discoveries. The IRCAM/ tions. There is nothing new here. For Chopin, it Boulez model of the grand concert with massive was the modern piano, and for Schaeffer, it was the electro-acoustic forces has been replaced by porta- tape recorder. Finally, there is no distinction be- bility, performability, and performer-sensitive tween acoustic sound, natural sound, or electronic work. The performers need reliable systems to re- sound. Everything is integrated with the full spec- hearse, just as they do with the music of Brahms. trum of all possible sounds. Bach’s Art of the Fugue They need to feel renewed by the difficult new in- and the noise of Niagara Falls both have a place in struments they are required to learn. All this helps my compositional thinking. The site of the concert define a new class of musical activity. That’s the hall has become exciting again, and writing for positive side. acoustic instruments alone is just another part of the work. I hope I am coming full circle, back to the essential musical material, to music that is References made just for hearing.

Makan: How do you view the current state of com- Jaeggi, D. 1999. Losing Touch. Paris: Les Films d’Ici. puter music, both in terms of the technology avail- Rowe, R. 2001. Machine Musicianship. Cambridge, Mas- able and the music being created? sachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 288–297.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 Table 1. Catalogue of Works Involving Electronics Year Title Instrumentation Notes 2002–2003 Melt Me So With Thy Delicious viola and interactive computer Numbers system 2002–2003 Melt Me So With Thy Delicious cello and interactive computer Numbers II system 2001–2002 ME Baritone and interactive commissioned by the CIRM in computer system Nice, France ADKOM (A Different Kind of percussion quartet commissioned by the Measure) Drumming Ensemble in Porto, Portugal Persistent Vision interactive computer music for dance with Ali Momeni and Carol Murota 2000–2001 Sons et Lumie`res video, player piano, and eight- channel tape Corail (coral) tenor saxophone and live electronics Natural Selection V MIDI-piano with computer Name Calling II sampler keyboard and spoken text 1999–2000 Domus Aurea vibraphone and piano Edition Peters, New York Ellipsis II piano, chorus, and electronics museum installation Metronome electronic sound installation for public art installation Union Square, NYC 1998–1999 Playback ensemble and live electronics evening-length work with choreographer Francois Raffinot, commissioned by IRCAM and SACD 1997–1998 L’Autre (The Other) horn, 2 percussion, harp, commissioned by Radio France soprano/narrator, and tape Spell stereo tape for radio broadcast Natural Selection III MIDI-piano with computer commissioned by the Center for New American Music 1996–1997 Flood Stage at the Memory electronics art installation Theatre Natural Selection II MIDI-piano with computer Le Petit Mort interactive computer music with poet John Campion 1996 Natural Selection MIDI-piano with computer commissioned by IRCAM 1995 Quadrivium four pieces for instruments and electronics Mathematica flutes with quadraphonic tape Geometria solo clarinet Astronomia marimba with quadraphonic tape Musica flute, clarinet(s), marimba, and commissioned by The New piano York New Music Ensemble 1994 Losing Touch vibraphone and tape Editions Billaudot, Paris 1993 What Goes Up. . . eleven instruments with commissioned by the electronics Tanglewood Music Festival 1992 A Treasured Collection of flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass Eddies clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello 1991–1992 Rounds five alto saxophones and tape Editions Lemoine, Paris No Ping-Pong clarinet, oboe, and tape 1990 A Complete Wealth of Time two pianos

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0148926042728430 by guest on 29 September 2021 Table 2. Publications Year Source Notes 1998–1999 Resonance magazine interview with Edmund Campion IRCAM Les Anne´es90 CD recording, Losing Touch 2001 Robert Rowe, Machine Musicianship. Cambridge, concerning Edmund Campion’s interactive Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 288–297 computer music P.S.1 Museum sound art exhibition, ‘‘Volume: Bed CD Recording, Ellipsis of Sound’’ 2001 International Computer Music Conference 2001 Natural Selection Conference CD

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