CCRMA

1996 Winter Concert

CCRMA Computer Music

This quarter's concert of computer music from Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics features new music by present and past CCRMA composers as well as a rare opportunity to hear Stanford professor Jonathan Harvey's Ritual Melodies, a piece for quadraphonic tape. Details of the program are given below.

Tickets for this performance, $8 general admission, Stanford students free, are available at Tresidder Ticket Office, (415) 723-4317, or at the door. For information, call the Music Department at (415) 723-3811.

Program

Interval

Frammenti e Variazioni su Aura (1995), for stereo tape

 Variazioni e Frammenti su Aura (1995) (in memory of Bruno Maderna) is a composition for digital tape. It comprises variations and computer elaborations of Aura's fragments, a composition for large orchestra written by Bruno Maderna (1925-1973) in 1970. The samples are excerpts from an analogue recording of a live performance of Aura, conducted by the composer.

Marco Trevisani, born in Verona, Italy in 1963, studied music composition and piano with private teachers: In Verona and Milan with Luigi Bonafede, then electronic music and composition at the Musik Hochschule in Vienna with Dieter Kaufmann and Tamas Ungvary, as well as with John Chowning at Stanford. Mr. Trevisani's music has been performed in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, USA, and Germany. In addition, he holds a degree in architecture from the Politecnico of Milano (University of Milan). He has been a visiting composer at CCRMA since 1992. His interest is also focused on theatre and computer music.

Time is Over (1995), for Computer driven Disklavier and one performer

 The title Time is Over refers metaphorically to various levels of interpretation. Philosophically, it refers to life itself as an evolving process whose different phases terminate when time is over. Cognitively, it refers to the way human activity is constrained by time. The speed of thought processes, the reflex of the knee, the ability to recognize new situations, as well as our decision-making responses are all defined by time boundaries. For instance, the reaction boundary to acoustical stimuli lies around one tenth of a second (E Poepel, 1985). Psychologically, daily life is shaped by the "time is over" factor, and there are always "external" events demanding us to move on or else get sidetracked. As a metaphor, this piece symbolizes the mechanical and spiritual aspects of the relationship between the Disklavier and the performer. The Disklavier provides the piece's harmonic-rhythmic frame and time boundaries. In each section of the the piece the performer reacts to the Disklavier by improvising until the latter interrupts to remind the performer that time for "playing" is over.

Vicissitudes (1995), for stereo tape

 Vicissitudes was inspired by, and is based on, a documentary video project on the history of East Palo Alto. The work is created from several sound bytes used in the video and also includes a portion of the original music that I composed for the video. This piece attempts to capture the essence of the struggle created by the people's desire for community and need of economic security. Vicissitudes is permeated by a driving pulse that symbolizes the dynamic energy of this community despite the numerous problems it is faced with.

Vicissitudes was realized on the NeXT computer running Common Lisp Music to process the sounds which were then compiled on the Dyaxis II system using MultiMix 2.3.

Jonathan Norton was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1966. He is currently in his third year at CCRMA working towards a Ph.D. in computer-based music theory. Before coming to CCRMA, he received his Masters in composition at Northwestern University where he studied computer music theory and composition under the tutelage of Amnon Wolman, Gary Kendall, and Stephen Syverud.

Far Memory (1984), for stereo tape

 Far Memory, composed in 1984, was realized at the Eastman School of Music Computer and Electronic Music Center, on the ancient PDP-11 computer. The equally ancient Music11 music programming language, and Aleck Brinkman's Score11 score pre-processor were used to generate sound files. Various utilities were used for filtering techniques, and to create a variety of textures which were further processed and mixed. This work represents my very first efforts to use the computer to produce musical sound. At the time, the title Far Memory reflected my interest in exploring the collective unconscious, with memories perhaps stored in DNA, and the notion that composing could be viewed as a form of expressive archaeology. Today, the title also applies to the language and equipment on which the piece was created!

Marcia Bauman (b. 1949, Hackensack, NJ) received the B.A. degree in psychology from Ithaca College in 1971, the MA degree in music theory and composition from San Francisco State University in 1982, and the Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music in 1995. She has composed music for dance, radio drama and film, including the internationally distributed documentary Word Is Out, aired on PBS television stations nationwide. Her works have been featured on public radio (KPFA radio in Berkeley, CA, and WXXI Radio in Rochester, NY), and her electroacoustic music has received numerous performances, including presentations by the Syracuse New Music Society (in conjunction with Meet the Composer) and the National Association for Composers, USA. Since 1990, she has been a Research Associate at CCRMA. Her project, the International Digital ElectroAcoustic Music Archive (IDEAMA) involves the collection and preservation of historically significant electroacoustic music.

Collage (1995), for stereo tape

 As the word "Collage" suggests, and similar to the work in the visual arts which is made by putting together various patches of color, this short piece is based on approaching and overlapping many pieces of sounds. It is the first work that I have completed at Stanford, and is the result of my explorations in several different music programming languages (specifically CSound, Stella, the NeXT Music Kit, CLM) where the basic materials, the timbres (or "instruments") are realized using the most simple techniques of additive and FM synthesis. Formally speaking, the piece was not composed according to a pre-established project, but rather proceeding with little sections, fragment by fragment, leaving any possibility open, and with the constant intention to always keep the internal movement and energy alive. We could say a "changing over time" form, maybe, based on sound planes that emerge, approach and overlap one another in various different ways.

Fiammetta Pasi graduated in Musical Composition from the University of Milan, Italy, in 1993. She studied with Giuliano Zosi, Giacomo Manzoni and Umberto Rotondi. She also attended courses with Franco Donatoni in Milan and in Siena at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana. Her musical interest and creativity expanded thereafter into the area of electronic music, which she began to study with Riccardo Sinigaglia in Milan in 1992. She is currently a visitor scholar at CCRMA, and has been working here since December 1994.

New Music for Electronic Percussion (1996)

 I'm currently working on a solo program for electronic percussion and this performance features some of the music I've been working on; it is therefore a work-in-progress "sneak preview" of a 45-minute program I hope to have completed by the end of March.

When I first heard traditional music of the Kingdom of Buganda, long lost in what is now Uganda, I was intrigued by the rhythmic patterns that are possible in this musical style thanks to a "relative" way of perceiving the beat: any note played may be considered on the beat by some, and off the beat by other players. Attempting to transfer some of the ideas contained in this xylophone and harp music to drum set, I soon came up with a new way of playing based solely on patterns of motion which made it possible to perform polymetric sequences that run for an extremely long time before repeating. Using the powerful software of my electronic drums, I can now play even longer patterns: one, I have calculated, will run 75000 years before the first repetition (don't fret: I won't play the entire piece). But using electronics also allows me to ask other questions: how will the possibility of playing non-percussive sounds change technical aspects of percussion playing? How will these changes influence my musical thinking, or that of, say, traditional musicians in Africa who experiment with these instruments when I go there to collaborate with them? How can I utilize the technical possibilities of this instrument while at the same time perform in such a way that the audience can connect my movements in some way with what they hear? How can playing a MIDI controller enhance my control over form, meter, and timbre? It is really a path of discovery for me, and developing my solo program is one of my first steps on this path.

Lukas Ligeti's newest piece, a string quartet commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, will be premiered by the Kronos Quartet this coming Friday, February 16, here at Stanford. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1965, Lukas Ligeti studied at the Vienna Music Academy, where his teachers were Erich Urbanner (composition) and Fritz Ozmec (drums). His music has been performed by the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, "die reihe", Vienna Saxophone Quartet, and the Amadinda (Budapest), Synergy (Sydney), Tokyo Arts University, and CSU Sacramento Percussion Ensembles. As a drummer, he has performed with Henry Kaiser, Tom Constanten (formerly of the Grateful Dead), Roy Nathanson (of the Jazz Passengers), Gregg Bendian, Willie Winant, Steve Adams (of ROVA) and others. He has recorded CDs with Things of NowNow, Kombinat M, and the Siamese Stepbrothers. With Things of NowNow, he performed in Germany at events organized by the German edition of Scientific American, in conjunction with lectures by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Richard Voss, pioneers of fractal computer graphics. In 1994, on a commission of the Goethe Institute, he led a cultural exchange workshop in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, as a result of which the group Be-Ta-Foli was formed, featuring 13 African traditional musicians. He returned to Abidjan in 1995 to continue this collaboration.

Ritual Melodies (1990), for quadraphonic tape

 After an initial research period at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Musique/Acoustique, Paris) starting in 1985, Ritual Melodies was completed there in 1990. It is for tape alone and consists of sounds generated artificially by computer. There are no recorded sounds in the piece. Jan Vandenheede made simulations of Indian oboe, Vietnamese koto, shakuhachi, Tibetan temple bell, Western plainchant voice and Tibetan chant voice. They were so designed to be able (by means of the FORMES program) to change one into the other, one type of synthesis into another--a revolution in programming. Their innards, as it were, transform. They play sixteen melodies, transmuting as they go. The melodies are of the same sort as in From Silence (1988); they form an interlocking chain with simple ones combining to form composite ones (A, AB, B, BC, C...etc.). They all use only the harmonic series from partials 6 to 40--one series throughout the piece, except for the low Tibetan chants. At first the melodies are used in polyphony, often in close canon. Later (at 3 minutes 53 seconds) clouds of reverberated melody hang in the air and subsequently form a backdrop to melodic development. At 7 minutes 45 seconds the melodies start to move in parallel chords, though the parallelism is topologiccal, i.e. it stretches to the bigger intervals at the lower end of the harmonic series and contracts to tinier intervals at the upper end. As the melodies become more soloistic and clear towards the end (9 minutes 7 seconds and 10 minutes 7 seconds) so they are simultaneously further transformed by transposition to higher (smaller) or lower (larger) intervals and by glissandi. All the instruments/voices are ceremonial in character, and the constant use of the Tibetan temple bell to be everything from low gong to ethereal "ting" demarcates the structure of this imaginary rite. The work was commissioned by South East Arts (U.K.) and I would like to thank them, IRCAM and especially Jan Vandenheede, my collaborator throughout, for their invaluable help.

Jonathan Harvey's large musical output covers a broad range of instrumental, vocal and electronic resources. In addition to his compositional activities, he has conducted, broadcast frequently on music, and authored a book on Karlheinz Stockhausen. Jonathan Harvey graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge, later earning a Ph.D. from Glasgow University and a Mus.D. from Cambridge. In 1980 he became Professor of Music at Sussex University, England, and in 1995 joined the composition faculty as Professor of Music at Stanford.

segmentation fault beta1.0 (1996), for prepared piano and computer

 Rhythmic segmentation in a non-linear performance under the guise of merging piano and computer in a truly Marxist dialectic.

Michael Edwards was born in Cheshire, England in 1968. After completing a Bachelors and Masters degree in composition at Bristol University, he came to the United States to study computer music at Stanford. His music has been performed in Europe and North and South America but more importantly he will graduate this year with a D.M.A. in composition.