Recording of Jonty Harrison's Eq for live saxophone and tape. It is the third in a series of works that features saxophones. This piece like the others, is also concerned with 'cu' (here made manifest by the interaction of live saxophone and recorded sounds on tape), 'Q' (a filter is used to sweet the producing melodic material out of static harmony) and spatial articulation. 'EQ' is studio slang for 'equalization - a more sophisticated version of the treble and bass controls on a domestic hi-fi system and a fundamental device for sound modification in the studio. EQ was commissioned by John Harle with funds made available by the arts Council of Great Britain. It received it's first performance in the Purcell Room, London in November 1980. The tape was produced in the Electronic Music Studios of the University of New York and the City University, London.
Recording of Costin Cazaban's Naturalia for piano and tape. Circular games on the harmonic sounds of the totally linear solo piano part. The direction of the music shows the process of disintegration on the environment. The idea for the work was aroused by the myth of the Sister of Albert Camus.
Recording of Pierre Barbaud's Inspiravit Aeolus. During the months of July - August 1979, Barbaud did his holiday homework on the island of Panarea, which is part of the eight Aeolian Islands in southern Italy. The title refers to the character Aeolus from Homer's Odyssey who is the Keeper of the Winds. In the hours of siesta, he blows with great gentleness on the bougainvillea; this is the inspiration for all of the algorithms in the piece. After returning to Paris, Barbaud asked Frank Brown and Geneviève Klein to provide the sound sampling program in data that did not provoke violent attacks. A poor telephone transmission during a first experiment, was the cause of a crash that did not lack beauty. The following communications were normal, and everything from those transmissions were kept in the piece.
Recording of Kim Dyett's Refraction for tape. The piece is composed from words that are twisted and transformed moving from meaning to sound images.. The work was inspired from poems by E. E. Cummings.
Recording of Jaap Vink's Neap Tide. Neap Tide is the last part of the bigger work "Tide" and can be considered an independent composition. Tide is based on Vink's preference for recursive processes, which stemmed from the fact that the material is directly accessible to the composer who can therefore stimulate the expressivity of the sound. While sounding complex, recursive sound means sound and its derivative can be, if desired, recorded on top of each other in one action so that the sound structure becomes more or less closed. This depends on the external intervention of the composer. The derived sounds provide the coloring. This coloration can happen quickly or slowly. For "Tide," Vink chose the latter because the tide is also a relatively slow process which requires about 6.5 hours for completion. In order not to try the listener's patience too much, "Tide" is about 45 minutes long, "Neap Tide" being the 20 minute ending section of the work.
Recording of Bernard Gagnon's "Gwendolyne descendue !" for tape. Gwendolyne is an underground comic character from the 1940s. Read first glance, her adventures only seem to be excuses for exploring the possibilities of bondage, but the unity of style pervading even the smallest symbols and the obstinate repetition within the strict limits of a closed world gives them an esoteric aspect that inspired the piece. It tells the story of the forced disappearance of the heroine. The piece is dedicated the Gwendolyn's creator, John Willie.
Recording of Sten Hanson's 96. "According to Amnesty International, there are 96 countries in the world that have political prisoners. In most of these countries, there is clearly physical or mental torture that is punishable by law and unlawful killings." Sound material includes sounds of doors shutting, locks locking, bells, ringing, etc.
Recording of Pekka Sirén's "The genesis of Kazan" for voice and tape. The composition is based on the Finnish text of an old poem of the Mordovian people. It is a mythological folk tale from that culture. After encountering the tapestry collection of A. O. Heikel which portrayed the Cheremis and Mordove peoples, Sirén was inspired to think of a new musical notation and to set one of these tapestries to music. He chose the poem "The Founding of Kazan" from the "Heimokanne" collection published in 1930 and translated by Otto Manninen as the basis of the composition. Sirén's goal was to depict not only the cultural history but also to research the dramatic expression of the actor. who plays four characters: the narrator, Marja, the father, and the mother. The differentiation of these characters is in the form of sound material that is subject to many stages of modifications. The piece was realized and recorded at the Experimental Studio of Helsinki Radio.
Recording of Kevin Jones's Ice breaker. Jones had just traveled from Helsinki to Stockholm by boat across the frozen Baltic Sea, which had been made more difficult due to a strike of icebreaker crews. During the crossing, the magical and mysterious sight of distant plains of ice reflecting the ship's searchlights contrasted strongly with the occasional violent thrusts of the bows ramming into thickly packed ice. The "ice breaker" concept also extends into the interpretation of breaking ice in social relationships. The piece builds up into a succession of waves or thrusts, which eventually break through into a teasing catharsis. A doubtful release unravels in an extended coda. It was realized at the studios of EMS (Electronic Music Studios) in Stockholm, Sweden in March 1980 on a PDP15 computer employed to control a bank of oscillators.
Recording of Teresa Rampazzi's Atmen noch. After many months of researching the relationships between harmonic or better harmonic spectra, this piece was the result of that research. This research was done jointly with Rampazzi's student Maria Luisa Bon. The form of the work is sets of stamps and association between them and a Grecian-inspired Cantus Firmus. The groups are figurations of galaxies out of time.
Recording of Józef Rychlik's Just Behind the Horizon for tape. This music, composed "without filtering", uses a range of timbres made by different programming of the values of heights, time, intensity, and specific acoustic music reactions for some kinds of impulses. Each motif, even in the second polyphonic part, are made of several layers. Each layer is an "automatic game sequence," which allows for the process of semi-automatic composition. Along with this idea, the ability of this piece to go beyond the nature of this apparatus and to compose a work that is independent of the "natural aesthetics" given by the machine is a key foundation of the piece.
Recording of Boyko Stoyanov's C.A.S. Stoyanov was inspired by the interpretation of Chopin's Op. 30, no. 1 by the Japanese pianist Rikako Akatsu, performed at the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. In this work, the composer wanted to create a unique form, the basis of which provided by the electroacoustic music.
Recording of Henri Chopin's L'agrippe des droits. One male voice reads the poem which is then electronically processed. Written for Christian Clozier. Henri Chopin's "Audiopoems" was originally realsed on cassette by Edition Hundertmark as 89. Karton in 2001. Only 500 copies were released.
Recording of Paul Pignon's Mechanical cartoons. On the Synthi 100 it is possible for the composer to patch complex systems which can generate musically acceptable trajectories even without control gestures - these are called "organic machines" by Pignon, because they are like beings with an independent life manifested in sound. An important feature for the overall structure of the piece is that one of the organic machines, which has a central role within which the characters of the cartoon act out and are subject to the influence of a previously defined rhythmic pulse train. Although this rhythmic structure is nowhere obvious, it nevertheless biases the overall form.Of the four "voices", the first is the setting already mentioned, featuring richness and variety of sound objects while being rather static in space. The second and third are quasi-human-animal voices that are very mobile in space. The fourth, also mobile, Pignon imagines as a monstrous bird-like figure, although it too occasionally exhibits humanoid characteristics.
Recording of Andrew Newell's "The thin edge of the wedge." This is the first piece in a triptych of pieces. It is orchestrated for seven electronic instruments, which were realized on a Buchla 200 series synthesizer. The concept behind the music concerns itself with man's position in the world today, which the composers sees as a very dangerous one, with possible self-destruction close at his heels. This piece is as one voice "crying in the wilderness," not meant to soothe, but to alert his fellow man to the evil that seems so near. The piece divides into two large sections which are then subdivided four plus three into subsections. The last subsection is a direct contrast to the first both in context and in attitude. The pitches are based on a number series that derives from the fractional part of the ratio of partials 8 and 7, but this is not a serial piece because the above-mentioned series is used primarily as a series of central pitches around which a random distribution of pitches revolves.
Recording of Mauro Graziani's The silent god. It is a sound processing work, no synthesized sounds are involved. The beginning sound materials are sounds often used in religious rites and ceremonies, hence the title. Sound material includes: Japanese gongs, Tibetan and Chinese bells, Tibetan trumpets, gamelan, Indian and Middle-eastern harp, western organ, aeolian harp, voices. Processing includes filtering, time and/or pitch changing, delays, freezing, cutting, and mixing. The work was realized at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale" (University of Padova) in 1980, using the IBM 4381 mainframe and the MUSIC360 software for digital sound synthesis.
Recording of Reed Holmes's Chalumeau Rain. The piece demonstrates the composer's concept of music as sound flow (a texture existing in time and space). For this reason, many of the clarinet sounds assume a gestural/electronic character. Chalumeau is a lyric expression of the electronic medium. The composer unites the live and electronic by using live clarinet sounds in the tape which have been manipulated by tape loops, reverb, phase shifting, reverse playback, amplitude modification and filtering. All pitch material is derived from a five note collection. Pitch material is developed by mains of various contours. Ascending, thrusting pitch series are expositional or developmental. Arch shapes exhibit stability and a relaxed character. Descending pitch contours provide or signal closure. Assignment and occurrence of these structural functions in Chalumeau is not simple. The composition grows from an interaction and mutual influence of the pitch and gestural ideas; often one idea dominant and others are struggling to predominate. Momentum and directed motion are additionally achieved by rhythmic activity and textural manipulations.
Recording of Þorsteinn Hauksson's Études 1 et 2.The two etudes are the first works based on research carried out at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music in Paris for more than a year on the techniques of organization of harmonics in composition. The goal was to find a coherence of composition between micro structure (harmonic structure) and macro structure. The pieces are the first text of using computer programs as a result of the study.
Recording of Elżbieta Sikora's "Lettres à M" ("Letters to Mr."), for tape. The composition was a commission from the studios of the Polish Experimental Radio in June 1980. These "letters" were not written for Mr., as Mr. does not represent any person, and any association to any particular person is purely accidental. However, these letters have had to be materialized because of the composer's need to give form to an unexamined idea. Therefore, Mr., whoever you are, Sikora awaits your answer to these letters.
Recording of Ricardo Mandolini's Estallido Breve. The piece tries to develop in a progressive yet minimalistic way the repetition of a percussion sound, of which the tiniest variations are in the first few milliseconds of the attack. This attack always follows a long extinction, which is also affected by minute changes. The addition of a second kind of sound material, a perpetual crescendo/accelerando, contributes to the accentuation of the dramatic character of this ostinato. The ostinato ends in an explosive short resolution, which explains the title chosen for this piece. The piece was composed in 1980 at the Institute for Systematic Musicology in Ghent, Belgium. It is stereophonic. The piece also existed as a mixed version (Estallido Breve II) for electroacoustic tape and bass clarinet.
Recording of Robin Julian Heifetz's The harvest of sorrow and loneliness. This work is elegiac in character and is best summed up in the following poetic passage from Thoms Wolfe's "From Death to Morning": "There has been... loneliness enough... to crust (my) lips with its hard and acrid texte of desolation... (For I had) heard the... music... crying and singing a strange and bitter prophecy of love and death... (and I had seen) my brother... die in the dark in the dark mid-watches of the night, and I (had) know... the figure of... Death when he had come..." The piece was realized during a period of the composer's depression and proved to be a cathartic experience for him.
Recording of Mayako Kubo's Play bach for eight channel tape. Play Bach is mainly based on two elements: first, there is no fixed form and no fixed duration because the composition consists in a mobile-system; second, the sound material uses only the tones B (Si-flat), A (La), C (Do), and H (Si) in different octaves performed by three instruments and with the letters B, A, C, and H spoken with human voice. Because the eight tracks are combined using a mobile system, each performance presents different combinations and thus a different performance each time.
Recording of Ricardo Mandolini's "Juego de Marionetas" ("Puppet play"). The piece is a descriptive approach to the world of small percussion using recorded percussion sounds that have been electronically processed. The fundamental characteristic of the piece is the rigorous eceomy of means. It was composed in 1980 at the Studio of Musikhochschule in Cologne.
Recording of Robin Julian Heifetz's "The Vengeance," a ballet. It is programmatic in content. As a young boy, the composer accompanied his father – a writer – on research trips to the Indian pueblos of New Mexico where he spent two summers. These experiences made lasting impressions upon him. Years later, while conducing his own research in the cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology of the North American Indians, he discovered shocking documentation published in journals in the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology which provided evidence that the U.S. Army – as a matter of official government policy – had actively distributed Small-pox- and Cholera-infected blankets and clothing among the Indians in an effort to decimate them. This practice began in the mid-1700s and continued for about 100 years, ending in 1865 at the close of the American Civil War; actually, this practice ended in 1865 as a matter of official government policy only, for it has been conjectured by some authorities that the practice was continued covertly until 1900. The program of the work may be divided into two main sections: Part I, “Infection and Aftermath: is 10’48” in length; Part II the “Vengeance” itself, is 10’50” in duration and symbolizes the violent retribution the Indians might have inflicted against the “White Man” had they not been so utterly weakened and diminished in numbers. “Infection” is characterized by a high density of activity, as if to suggest the suffering and severe pain undergone. “Aftermath” is characterized by a low density of activity as well as frequencies in a low frequency range. No attempt has been made to imitate Indian music, although there are certain rhythmic structures and pitch contours in “The Vengeance” - at moments the result of complex juxtapositions – which may be constructed to derive from Native American music. …
Recording of Tamas Ungvary's "Les mouvements mousseux." This piece was commissioned by Polish Radio. Most of the sounds and sound textures were created in Stockholm in the computer studio of EMS. Singing voices were generated by MUSSE, a vocal synthesizer developed at the Center for Speech Communication Research and Musical Acoustics of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The three movements of the composition grow out of the material itself. Both additive synthesis and FM synthesis have been used to create the sounds which have also been treated by filters, modulators, reverberators. It was composed in the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio Warsaw in 1979.
Recording of Antonio Russek's "Piezas cortas" ("Short pieces") for tape. Russek calls this piece a "Políptico" or polyptych, which is an "arrangement of four or more panels (as of a painting) usually hinged and folding together" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polyptych). The piece was realized with mixed techniques that were created through Russek's musical studies. It was premiered at the Ciclo de Compositores Mexicanos (Mexican Composers' Cycle) in 1981.
Recording of Roberto Doati's Gioco di velocità. All sound material in the piece was syntheitically created by Doati. The macrostructure of the piece is made up by seven different curves which correspond to the graphic representation on a two-dimensional space with frequency as the ordinate and time as the abscissa, of the variations of as many circumference arcs. This macrostructure determines the formal parameters (repetition series, action time, duration, number of voices, movement in the time-frequency space) of seven kinds of polyphonic rhythmic structures; these are graphically generated on the score mentioned above not with the intention to reach a musical parallel of them, but because previous experiences have shown that the formal perception of both visual shapes and acoustic events are ‘controlled’ by the same laws. The composition was realized in the facilities of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale at the University of Padova.
Recording of Daniel Arfib's L'approche de la lumière ("The Approach of the Light"). The piece functions as much as a sound experiment on the resonance of the vibrations as of sound as a concert piece. For the entire listening experience, pay particular attention to the quality of the silence before and after the performance.
Recording of Frank Nuyts's From Ipem with Love for tape. The piece consists of three movements: the first movement acts as a game between articulated/static sound and silence; the second movement, a transition, uses silences that are evoked by sounding layers of sound; the third movement is an evocation of a carillon, in which silence and noise dominate more and more. It was realized in 1980 at the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music studio using Synthi 100.
Recording of Terry Setter's 950 for Bob. He describes this style of composition as "focusless music," which is structured in such a way that the listener always hears an undifferentiated sound continuum, making the smallest changes noticeable. The title refers to the length of the piece (950 seconds) and to Robert Ericksson, to whom the piece is dedicated.
Recording of Simon Waters's Passages. Initially, Passages expresses a diliberately restricted sound area, expanding gradually, and then deepening and broadening suddenly after about six minutes. Sounds from the opening section recur spasmodically within the broader context and are eventually heard when the piece contracts again at the end.
Recording of Serge Perron's Fusion. This piece was composed while Perron was studying electronic music with Alcides Lanza and Mariano Etkin at McGill University's electronic music studio. The tape part was entirely derived from ten piano sounds which were modified in various ways using "classical" electronic music studio techniques: loops, speed variation, equalization, playing backwards, and editing. The piano part calls for a new kind of virtuosity - that of staying tightly synchronized with the tape, which does not have any fixed tempo. At times, controlled improvisation is asked of the interpreter, in which he or she determines during the performance the order of occurrence of certain chordal elements.
Recording of Josip Magdić's "Music for clarinet, saz and electronics," performed by the Sarajevo Composers Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this piece, three sound sources are used at the same time, rustic motifs of folk music from Bosnia and Herzgava, played by the saz and with the clarinet and transformed in an electroacoustic synthesizer, which uses both a fixed electronic background and a momentary acoustic modulation. The piece was composed for the Sarajevo Masmantra Group, which in their group uses live traditional instruments with electroacoustic transformations.
Recording of Otto Laske's Terpsichore. The piece is in three movements. The first movement is followed by a set of variations of an equally percussive but more song-like nature. The initial two movements have in common extremely fast, often acoustically minute, streams of sound. In contrast, the third movement is overall slower in pace and more song-like. Throughout, the musical flow is punctuated by silences. It is a work of great contrasts of density, registers, and dynamics that owes its title to the Greek goddess of dance. Terpsichore was commissioned by Massachusetts Dance Ensemble, Worcester, MA, for a choreography by Peggy Brightman (Plexus), under a grant from the MA Council on the Arts and Humanities. It was produced in the Computer Science Department of Toronto University, with the aid of the SSSP synthesizer stationed there. The work was performed at the Joy of Movement Center, Cambridge, MA and is dedicated to the choreographer.
Recording of Andrew Bentley's Zoo-logical for tape. The piece functions as a sort of trilogy (if it is called a dialogue between three people) between a poem, sounds of animals that are electronic in origin. The work is related to the themes of the Helsinki Agreements which mainly are contained in the words "participant nations" and "United Nations." The poem that is spoken is Finnish in origin.
Recording of Joaquin Orellana Mejia's "Impossible a la x" ("Impossible to the X"). The piece raises the sonorous vision of a spiritual and violent situation, in which the primitive flows and their purity as a mimetic being and the "being children: are involved in clearly antithetical situations.
Recording of Þorsteinn Hauksson's "Sonata." Hauksson describs this piece as an exploration into the sound world of electronic music. The piece is named Sonata because it's liberal meaning to make sound. The piece was created in May 1980.
Recording of Trevor Wishart's Anticredos performed by Trevor Wishart. It is a live-performance piece for six amplified voices using extended vocal techniques, but no electronic modification of the voices. The piece, commissioned by the English group "Singcircle," takes the word "Credos" and slowly dissolves and changes its sound-constituents through processes of gradual transformation. This recording is a studio version of the piece "sung" entirely by the composer.
Recording of Ricardo Mandolini's "Fabulas, II Parte" ("Fables, second part"). The sound material is made up of both concrete and electronic sounds, often processed. There are two distinct sections to the piece, marked by differences in tempo, rhythmic character, and differences of size. This work is the continuation of the "Fabulas" piece, composed at the IPEM studio in 1979. It was composed and realized at the studio of the Technical University of Berlin in 1980 with technical collaboration by Folkmar Hein.
Recording of David Keane's Harmonion. The system employed was a hybrid system comprised of a large modular Buchla synthesizer and an Arp 2500 under the control of a PDP 11-03 micro-processor. The latter was used almost exclusively for precise control information for the amplitude of analog filters (octave, low-pass and band-pass) which processed information derived from 12 to 18 oscillators which were themselves under both manual and analog-program control. "Harmonion" (loosely "that which has been produced by a joining together of separate parts) employs two basic raw material, 1) the triad built of 18 oscillator voices each under manual waveform modification and (2) a thick montage of wide-range random or pseudo-random events with each voice under manual waveform and control. The composers ability to carefully control each of the up to 18 independent voices while the resultant sound mass is treated as a single unit by the computer controlled filters gives rise to the title. The bases of the structures of the piece are several "Themes" comprised of amplitude patterns and a 3-minute long, 10-voice, amplitude canon which appears twice; once with each of the basic raw materials. Harmonion was realized in the summer of 1980 at the Electronic Music Studio of the University of Pittsburgh. The project was supported by the National Endownment for the Arts in co-operation with the University of Pittsburgh.
Recording of Charles Dodge's "Any resemblance is purely coincidental" for tape. The piece aspires to represent the voice of Enrico Caruso in much the same way that Andy Warhol represented the figures of contemporary popular culture in his silk screen portraits: the voice is unmistakably that of Caruso, but with a difference. In "Any resemblance is purely coincidental," an operatic voice searches for an accompaniment: with the original orchestra, with copies of itself, with the piano, and with other computer sounds. The initial attempts are humorous; subsequently, other emotions are evoked until the loneliness of the "great performer" emerges. The voice is made with computer synthesis based on a 1907 recording of the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Ruggiero Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci sung by Enrico Caruso.
Recording of Gottfried Michael Koenig's Output for tape. This work emerged during the course of Koenig's systematic investigations into the PRIXM/VOSIM system at the Institute of Sonology in 1979. PRIXM is a computer program for making compositions, then either providing a printout in the form of tables or an audible output via the VOSIM sound system. This system is actually intended to inform the composer about pitch, loudness and rhythmic events - a kind of piano reduction. However, different kinds of sounds can be described, making the reduction sound better or even changing it altogether. Although Koenig was not trying to compose a piece of music, he was inspired by one particular event ( = output); he followed its traces by slightly adjusting the input data, eventually arriving at a sound structure which was both typical and aesthetically satisfying.
Recording of Mauro Grasiani's Winter Leaves. The piece is controlled both in its composition and in its synthesis by simple patterns. It progresses from the generation and accumulation of fundamental materials to their definitively structured organisation at the end. Winter Leaves was realized at the "Centro di Sonologia Computazionale" (University of Padova), January to March 1980.
Recording of Ton de Leeuw's Chronos. The piece is a journey through time, bringing together elements from the depths of the ages (some archaic, folkloric or quasi-folkloric formulas) and other material, that of our time: subjects and report that have always made people passionate.
Recording of Fausto Razzi's Progretto II, the revised 2006 version. It was originally composed in 1980 at the Center for Computational Sonology at the University of Padova (CSC) with the computer program "Music V." The work was commissioned by the Vience Biennale. Because of the technical and practical limitations of the early computer (eg. the PC was not yet available, the memories had very precise and restricted limits, the recording was still analog and finally the digital / analog converters they were not able to provide a satisfactory sound performance) Razzi considered a new version in "Csound" necessary. This version - which corrects some inaccuracies of the previous one and therefore presents some differences as well - was made in 2006 with the decisive contribution of Nicola Bernardini. In the elaboration of Project II, Razzi used the same criterion used since the end of the 60s - Piano Music - to realize the structures of his works entrusted to traditional instruments. This criterion - which provides for the variation of a module-base (synthetically defined as a canon of durations with several voices) - has among other things allowed, in the case of Project II, a considerable simplification in data storage operations. All the waveforms used in PROGETTO II are of a sinusoidal type: this is a precise choice, mainly dictated by the will to limit the research field to the investigation of the duration of the sound / silence, completely excluding the timbre.
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