David Wessel (October 6, 1942 – October 13, 2014): Tributes And
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Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain © 2014 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 24, No. 3, 274–278 0275-3987/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000061 David Wessel (October 6, 1942 – October 13, 2014): Tributes and Remembrances Johanna Devaney Psyche Loui The Ohio State University Wesleyan University Ervin Hafter Carol Lynne Krumhansl University of California at Berkeley Cornell University Scholar, inventor, composer, percussionist, improviser, mentor, leader, and friend, David Wessel passed away suddenly in the fall of 2014, ending a creative life of immense influence centered at the music research institutions of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique and Center for New Music and Audio Technol- ogy. The following tributes acknowledge his impact on individual careers and the field of music psychology as a whole. Former postdoctoral fellow, Johanna Devaney, provides a factual biographical sketch and personal remem- brances. Psyche Loui describes the extraordinary opportunity of being his doctoral student, and Ervin Hafter sheds light from the perspective of a professorial colleague at UC Berkeley. Longtime friend and colleague, Carol Lynne Krumhansl reflects on shared interests and his paving the way along parallel early career paths at Stanford University and Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique. Together these tributes express the respect, gratitude, and loss of all those in the music psychology community whose lives he touched in many ways. Keywords: David Wessel, tribute, obituary, musical psychoacoustics, CNMAT, IRCAM, biography Biographical Compilation and Remembrances From Johanna Devaney, Former Postdoctoral Fellow David Wessel was an innovative researcher, composer, and improviser; his work had a major impact on the fields of both music psychology and computer music. He applied his training in psychoacoustics to pioneering work on the perception of musical timbre and worked extensively on questions of human–computer interaction for musical improvisation. He passed away on October 13, 2014, aged 72. David Wessel was born October 6, 1942, in Belleville, Illinois. While attending the University of Illinois, where he earned a B.S. degree in Mathematical Statistics in 1964, he heard Lejaren Hiller give a talk on computational analysis of music. He would later relate in a 2005 interview for Cycling ’74 that this event was pivotal to his developing research interests: “I was studying infor- mation theory at the same time in another class and well... suddenly it just connected up my interest in music and science and technology. That was sort of the first piece of connective tissue” (Taylor, 2005). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Johanna Devaney, School of Music, The Ohio State University; Psyche Loui, Department of Psychology, Program in Neuroscience & Behavior, Wesleyan University; Ervin Hafter, Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley; Carol Lynne Krumhansl, Department of Psy- chology, Cornell University. The provision of the photo by Kathleen Karn, Department of Music, University of California at Berkeley, the assistance of Richard Andrews (Associate Director CNMAT), and thoughtful feedback on the text from Adrian Freed (Research Director CNMAT) are gratefully acknowledged. David Wessel Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Johanna Devaney, School of Music, The Ohio State University, Hughes Hall, 1899 N. College Road, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: [email protected] 274 DAVID WESSEL TRIBUTE 275 After graduating from the University of Illinois, Wessel pursued creative output. His published papers from this time primarily graduate work at Stanford University, culminating in a Ph.D. in addressed issues related to musical improvisation with comput- Mathematical and Theoretical Psychology in 1972. At Stanford, he ers, with a particular focus on the development of gestural worked with famed learning theorist William K. Estes and joined controllers (Momeni & Wessel, 2003; Wessel, 1991) and the the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences. development of Open Sound Control, a robust communication Although his doctoral work focused on detection of signals in protocol for digital instruments (Wessel & Wright, 2002). He briefly presented visual arrays (Wessel, 1972a), his time at Stan- chaired the biennial meeting of the Society for Music Percep- ford also afforded him the opportunity to explore his musical tion and Cognition, held at Berkeley, in 1995. interests through interactions with John Chowning. Wessel first As an improviser, Wessel performed both nationally and met Chowning when enrolled in his percussion class, but subse- internationally with a range of collaborators, including Roscoe quent conversations with Chowning introduced him to computer Mitchell, Steve Coleman, Ushio Torikai, Thomas Buckner, music. In reference to his introduction to computer music, Wessel Vinko Globokar, Frances-Marie Uitti, Jin Hi Kim, Matthew would later observe that, “I heard about the idea of doing it before, Goodheart, Vijay Iyer, Shafqat Ali Khan, and Laetitia Sonami, but it became real. I decided at that point that I really wanted to and he engaged in a series of CNMAT “duos” with a host of orient my work in psychology and perception toward musical internationally known avant garde and jazz artists including problems” (Taylor, 2005). Michel Doneda, Georg Graewe, Earl Howard, Steve Lacy, Urs During the period of his doctoral work at Stanford, Wessel Leimgruber, George Lewis, Joelle Leandre, and Louis Sclavis. taught at San Francisco State University in 1968 and then Mich- Wessel also forged industry connections, such as with Meyer igan State University from 1969. While at Michigan State he began Sound, to commercialize some of the musical performance and working directly on music perception and cognition, focusing on spatial audio devices developed at CNMAT, and with Starkey the application of psychoacoustics to the perception of musical Laboratories, where he contributed to the development of a timbre (Wessel, 1972b, 1973). He also organized the inaugural patented interface for hearing aid fitting. He sat on numerous International Computer Music Conference at Michigan State in advisory boards, including IRCAM, the Centre for Interdisci- 1974. plinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), In 1973, Wessel read about Pierre Boulez’s ambitious plans for the Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Beam Foundation the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique and was invited to give numerous talks, including recent key- (IRCAM) in Paris and arranged a sabbatical to visit in 1976 and notes at the 12th International Conference on New Interfaces was subsequently involved in its creation in 1977. As program for Musical Expression in 2012 at Ann Arbor, MI, and the chair for the IRCAM/GALF Symposium on Musical Psychoacous- Re-New Digital Arts Festival in Copenhagen, in 2013. tics that summer, he created a forum for discussion of the rela- I first met David at a CIRMMT event while I was a doctoral tionship between psychoacoustics and musical creation. He offi- student at McGill University. What I remember most clearly cially joined IRCAM in 1979, as the head of the Pedagogy group. from our meeting was his enthusiasm for both the research and While at IRCAM he continued his research into timbre, including creative activity that was going on at CIRMMT as well as the collaboration with Jean-Claude Risset (Risset & Wessel, 1982/ dining opportunities that a trip to Montreal affords. After 1999; Wessel & Risset, 1979), and he placed a particular focus on spending time as a visiting scholar at CNMAT in 2010–2011, I the application of multidimensional scaling to produce low- officially joined David for my postdoctoral studies in July 2011. dimensional representations of timbre that could be used for syn- He had an amazing breadth of knowledge, not only of facts and thesis control (Ehresman & Wessel, 1978; Wessel, 1979; Wessel, techniques but also of other people’s research interests. David Bristow, & Settel, 1987). Wessel was also actively engaged in was selfless in both connecting his advisees with other collab- promoting the use of personal computers for real-time computer orators and in seeding fruitful research ideas. He was a contin- music. This latter interest led him away from the Pedagogy group ual source of encouragement, both in terms of research projects to start the Personal Computing Systems and Development group and professional development. The latter was particularly no- in 1986. Throughout his time at IRCAM, he continued to be table for me, finding him unfailingly supportive as I went on the actively involved with the field of computer music. He organized job market. The last time I saw David was through a chance the International Computer Music Conference for a second time in encounter at IRCAM this past summer. He was, as usual, This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. 1984 and taught the first course in computer music at the Paris rushing around, but he took the time to catch up with me on This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Conservatory. In recognition of his work