The Assembling of "Stria" by John Chowning
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Laura Zattra Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti Visive e della The Assembling of Stria by Musica Universita di Padova John Chowning: A Piazza Capitaniato 7 Padova, Italy 35139 Philological Investigation [email protected] This article starts from the assumption that musi- ates a computation that is not an immediately intel- cology needs methods borrowed from philology for ligible symbol. Moreover, electroacoustic music studying computer music. The analysis of the cre- often implies the role of the musical assistant, ative and revision process that John Chowning car- or the performance assistant, or someone who trans- ried out in the realization of Stria (1977) is made lates compositional ideas into digital data: These possible by textual criticism and interpretation all are human agents who carry on a codification based on digital and audio sources, sketches, and through the processes of writing. The study of the oral communications. process of composition (the term ecriture would be This research moves from the hypothesis that more appropriate) and the text must be applied to Stria exists in several versions and follows the his- the tape, the CD, digital memory, the digital score, torical genesis of the assembling of the sections. and so on, because "these texts do not certainly Conclusions trace the various stages of the assem- show a visible context of writing, but do certainly bling process, from the very first synthesis of the maintain its essence and its reproduction technol- piece to two different and coexisting four-channel ogy" (De Benedictis 2004, p. 247). and stereophonic versions. As the last resort, among these different texts converging to the electroacoustic work, and within this actual culture where aurality-orality and ecrit- Theoretical Introduction ure are blurred, the composer's "mental" text is fundamental. It represents the musical intention, The electroacoustic music work is an " apparently and it is worth being analyzed if one considers it as unclassifiable object," fragmented between several a support for the writing of the musical thought. human and technological agents, different moments Obsolescence and preservation are crucial problems of creation, realization, and performance, and vari- in the study of electroacoustic music. Therefore, ous theoretical concepts (Barriere 1990). Any musi- mental texts (of composers, technicians, etc.) are cological study must start from the heterogeneous important to the preservation and analysis of musi- documentation of the compositional process, which cal works. includes compositional sketches and various types Analysis of the sources is therefore the primary of scores - if one considers the concept of "text" asmethod to study electroacoustic music: It is a ques- a physical object where the sign represents the tion of examining the texts as a process of writing, sound. conceived to reach the electroacoustic "arborescent Philology of music states, in fact, that "text" is reality"a (as defined by Barriere 1990). This is the re- "reference model" - the place where projects are frain of my investigation on Stria by John Chown- written in a tentatively stable form to preserve and ing, "a music which did not resemble any other transmit it (Caraci Vela 2005). Nevertheless, the music, touching for the beauty of its relaxation and text within electroacoustic music is not necessarily sound concatenation" (Risset 2005, p. 50). Together a visible trace. As Angela Ida De Benedictis writes with the presence of objective witnesses, the anal- about analog music, text is also the support - the ysis benefits from and is forced to take into account tape - that preserves the sound (De Benedictis the presence of the author, who can help elucidate 2004). In computer music, it is also the data-storage and sometimes complicate the analysis with his device and digital data with which a machine gener- memories. These types of sources of course need to be interpreted, verified, and compared with physical Computer Music Journal, 31:3, pp. 38-64, Fall 2007 sources, but are fundamental to allowing the anal- © 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ysis to proceed. Without the presence of John 38 Computer Music Journal This content downloaded from 128.84.192.55 on Thu, 23 Jan 2020 23:08:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Chowning, his comments, recollections, feedback, Stria is the result of the musical application of and supervision, this research could often have en- Mr. Chowning's research into frequency modulation countered a "dead end." This approach occasionally (FM). October 2007 marks the 30th anniversary of obliges the musicologist to "mix" philological and the completion of Stria, and it also marks the 40th historical analyses to reconstruct the compositional anniversary "since I stumbled on the FM synthesis process. Even if that could seem a confusion of algorithm!" (Chowning 2006). Mr. Chowning re- plans and a renunciation of adopting an objective cently reminisced about the precise circumstances consideration of the sources (particularly audio and historical dates during a seminar and concert he sources), on the other hand it is necessary. However, gave in Buenos Aires together with Jean-Claude Ris- this is why I do not go into details - it goes beyond set and Max Mathews. On that occasion, Mr. Risset my competence - concerning physical aspects of showed to the audience some notes dated 18 Decem- support material (acetate or other), condition (state ber 1967 that he made when Mr. Chowning visited of degradation of the tape, etc.), state of preserva- Bell Laboratories and described the FM data from tion, number of segments of the tape, and so on. I some personal undated notes. Mr. Risset's notes are consider only elements and aspects useful for my useful to establishing Mr. Chowning's sketches and purposes, which are the development of the assem- their discovery: the origin of the FM applied to bling process of the musical piece. sound synthesis dates Fall 1967. (As an historical detail, Mr. Chowning adds that he had visited Bell Labs also in Summer 1967, but he has no recollec- Stria: A Short Overview tion of mentioning FM to Jean-Claude Risset and Max Mathews, which he surely would have done In 2005, the GRM (the French Institut National de had the discovery already been made.) Mr. Risset l'Audiovisuel) published the volume John Chown- later used FM synthesis in part of his piece Muta- ing: Portraits polychromes (Castanet et al. 2005). tions, which was completed in 1969 and involved The book presents a collection of interviews with Mr. Chowning's work with the moving sound- the composer, as well as articles on his musical sources project. Mutations, then, is the first compo- works and the impact of his research. Moreover, it sition in which FM was used (Chowning 2006). contains some musicological analysis of two of the In 1974, after a sabbatical year during which he four pieces (Turenas and Stria) that Mr. Chowning wrote his famous article on FM synthesis (Chown- composed between 1971 (Sabelithe) and 1981 ing 1973), and after being informed by Stanford Uni- [Phone). versity that his position was not renewed (Means Bruno Bossis's essay in this volume draws on a 2005; Castanet et al. 2005), Chowning came to previous article by Matteo Meneghini and recon- Berlin with a DAAD fellowship for a research stay structs various aspects of the realization of the of one year (as composer in residence) at the Ger- piece in terms of macrostructure, frequency sys- man Arts Academy. Mr. Chowning obtained this tem, Golden Mean, and so forth (Meneghini 2003; position through the recommendation of Gyorgy Bossis 2005). Nevertheless, because the philologist Ligeti, who was aware of his situation at Stanford. pays attention to different sources, some aspects re- At the Technical University, he could use only a lated to the text of Stria emerged that make the piece PDP-10 computer with no sound converter, so he worth being further analyzed. After Meneghini's ar- decided to study deterministic processes (Roads ticle and Borghesan's attempt to re-synthesize the 1985). He worked deeply on the FM technique ap- piece following Borghesan (2005), I discovered some plied to composition, especially discovering that a additional aspects of the piece, and new details and carrier-to-modulator frequency ratio composed of discrepancies emerge in the versions. As a matter of powers of the Golden Section yielded low-order fact, analysis reveals at least three versions of Stria, side-band components that are also powers of the which shows this is a very interesting case from a Golden Section. philological point of view. Mr. Chowning thought about the composition Zattra 39 This content downloaded from 128.84.192.55 on Thu, 23 Jan 2020 23:08:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms with such intensity that when he finally decided to mously empowered - "not surprising, when one realize his musical project, he completed the work considers that a given hardware and software repre- in only four months at the Stanford Artificial Intel- sents tens of thousands of human-years of thought ligence Laboratories, where he had returned. This about thought and invention" (Chowning 2004). occurred during the summer of 1977, from July to Automatism and the extreme control of each mu- October, thanks to an IRCAM commission. In fact, sical parameter related to the Golden Mean could this was one of IRCAM's first composition commis- lead one to think of a serial approach to Chowning's sions, as the musical production in Paris had started music. He concedes that this system is interesting, the year before (Zattra 2003). It was also one of the but all the radicalism of that avant-garde approach very first computer-music pieces for solo tape com- did not completely satisfy him.