There are a number of reasons to create new realizations of favorite electroacoustic works. First and foremost are the reasons for performing any interesting piece of music. Performance creates the opportunity to share the work with new audiences, and encourages close study of the work by the performer. This engagement is especially important for indeterminate or otherwise flexible works which require the performer to make decisions traditionally considered compositional. Additionally, many electroacoustic works will eventually require rescue from technological obsolescence. New realizations, using new technologies, can extend the performing lifespan of a piece with complex technical requirements. Finally, the process of realization admits the possibility of an evolving, performing tradition for a particular work, with new solutions and interpretations enriching the music s sense of possibility.
Two recent realizations by the author are useful case studies in the creation of new performing versions of electroacoustic music. Although very different works, Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room and Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I present some similar challenges in realization. Both works have relatively open, flexible scores which encourage experimentation and variation. They also have well-established performing traditions, centered on the composer as authoritative interpreter, which have minimized the flexibility suggested by the the variations and alternatives possible in Lucier and Stockhausen s music.
Our experiences realizing and performing I am sitting in a room and Mikrophonie I suggests that the interpretive aspects of a realization are not established in a single moment, but are the product of a series of small decisions and practical solutions - as is the case with most musical performances. Every question must be met with an appropriate balance of textual fidelity, musical effectiveness, and pragmatism.
Continuing work on this project focusses on the creation and performance of additional realizations: recently completed works include Rozart Mix by John Cage, Poème Symphonique by György Ligeti, Study #21 (Canon X) for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow, and Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas by Alvin Lucier.
As more and more composers produce electronic records, musicians and scholars will have to come to grips with these new forms of documentation. In some ways the new forms will be preferable: electronic records can be very revealing about a composer's technical intentions. What a composer can scribble on paper in a cryptic shorthand has to be spelled out in detail to make software work; composers' code and other electronic records may prove more useful than paper sketches when working methods are complex. However, these sketches are only comprehensible if the reader is initiated into the programming language, and only fastidious and self-conscious composers are likely to preserve their mistakes, false starts, and reconsiderations, through multiple versions of their code.
This project considered the sketches and other creative intermediates from Fernando Lopez-Lezcano's iICEsCcRrEeAaMm for four-channel tape, and Christopher Jones' Matragn for clarinet and CD. The sketches for iICEsCcRrEeAaMm were entirely in electronic form, and consisted principally of software ``instruments" and ``score" written in the Common Lisp Music language. In particular, repeated revisions of the composer's ``grani" granular synthesis instrument and the ``dlocsig" spatialization instrument are suggestive of the ways in which compositional desires influenced the software development.
In Matragn, the creative work was more focused on pencil sketches, with the programming work coming last. Most of the precompositional work documented in the sketches is borne out in the finished piece. There are a number of revisions and rethinkings of the pitch scheme in the sketches; this seems to have been an area of concern to the composer, and an area for experimentation. The draft of the clarinet part included impressionistic hieroglyphs suggesting possibilities for the sounds on CD. However, comparisons of these graphic sketches with the finished CLM code provide evidence of revisions and rethinkings in the electronic part.
Computer music sketch materials enable us to learn about the composers' creative process, and may in some instances be useful in an analysis of the completed works. It is important to remember, however, that there are a wide variety of working methods, technologies, and records, and some of them are much less genial to examination after the fact. Finally, documentation plays an important role in the creation of musical canons: one of the reasons that Karlheinz Stockhausen's work Kontakte is discussed, performed, and taught is that the composer published his exhaustive studio diaries made while creating the tape part. Sketches, electronic or otherwise, play a role in the lifespan of the music itself.
This research project is an unusual example of a social study in the arts. It is based on a sociological survey conducted by the author. Forty-five composers from 13 countries in America, Asia, Australia and Europe, including both coasts of the U.S., were interviewed in the course of the project. The chosen respondents had been active in the field before and after introduction of MIDI regardless of their degree of involvement with the MIDI-based tools. The results of the study accurately reflect the attitudes and experiences of the sampled group of composers. The methods used for conducting the study make it very likely to encounter the same trends existing in the entire possible population.
The study was published as the author's doctoral dissertation at CCRMA, Stanford University. It is available in print from CCRMA. Readers interested in evolution of our field over the last two decades are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the full text of work as it presents a legacy of electroacoustic art music in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s: its methodologies, tools, and practices. Each conclusion of the study arrives supported by a wealth of quotes from the interviews as well as statistic data calculated upon the survey completion.
The interaction between art and technology comes to a particularly intense point in the studied case. A new generation of tools led to the extinction of previous media for electroacoustic composition and produced wide-ranging reactions from its users and numerous effects on methodology and artistic results. The survey's results expose complex matrix of reception to the new phenomenon and also presented a diverse panorama of existing compositional methodologies and practices.
The composers' reception of MIDI tools was always a compromise between demands of the individual style and advantages and limitations of the MIDI equipment. Advantages of the protocol (its real-time communication, compatibility between the tools, control capabilities and precision) contrasted its limitations (event-oriented paradigm, low data transfer rate, fixed scales of values and one-way communication limited in the number of channels). The features of the protocol were implemented into the design of the MIDI instruments and combined with other technologies, not directly related to MIDI. Often the same feature could be both limiting to one composer and beneficial to another. In some cases the limitations of MIDI equipment and satisfaction of working with non-MIDI environments has led to the total exclusion of MIDI from the compositional setup. Control over the development of continuous processes, a staple in pre-MIDI electroacoustic music, is particularly problematic with MIDI. The technological tradeoff made for the sake of enhanced user-friendliness and affordability in the larger commercial market limited synthesis capabilities and access and therefore disappointed some composers. However, one can see the emergence of new methods, new practices and new performance solutions that were not present in the pre-MIDI era.
The relative democratization of electroacoustic music is clearly one of the positive effects of MIDI revolution. The affordability of the new set of tools led to the appearance of home computer/electroacoustic music studios. MIDI also had a positive effect on concert practice. Also, MIDI marked the beginning of active commercialization of the field.
About a half of the surveyed composers had practiced some kind of live (non-tape) music before MIDI. MIDI gave a boost to this genre, providing reliable, portable, storable devices and connections and raising the number of composers involved into live interactive music. Meanwhile, tape pieces have continued to be the principal performance genre among the art composers just as software synthesis continued to be the major source of timbres after the introduction of MIDI. The evaluation of these preset synthesized sounds in MIDI instruments is unfavorable. In particular, the opinion on the quality of acoustic simulation in such sounds is utterly negative.
As the study has shown, the influence of MIDI is multifaceted. The conflict between the origins of MIDI and the pre-existing compositional practice has not been entirely solved. Instead, the results of this investigation show the incorporation of the new tools into the existing tradition, compromise in some elements of interaction, rejection of others and development of new practices.
The Center for Arts and Media Technology, Karlsruhe (ZKM) and Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) are pleased to announce the completion of the International Digital Electroacoustic Music Archive (IDEAMA) target collection. Co-founded by CCRMA and ZKM in December, 1990, the IDEAMA was created to collect, preserve and disseminate historically significant electroacoustic music.
An international advisory board of renowned composers was formed to help establish the international scope and reputation of the archive. To identify, locate and choose materials for the target collection, CCRMA and ZKM each formed a selection committee comprised of eminent composers, musicologists and other individuals who are well-versed and active in the field.
CCRMA and ZKM have been jointly responsible for collecting archive materials on a regional basis: ZKM has focused on European electroacoustic music, while CCRMA is responsible for music from the Americas, Asia and Australia. The original analog tapes for targeted works, composed between 1929 and 1970, have existed in a number of archives, radio stations, studios and private collections. Over 700 works have been collected and processed to form the IDEAMA target collection.
Sources for the European works include numerous major centers such as INA/GRM Paris; WDR Kðln; EMS Stockholm, Experimental Studio Warszaw and the former Studio di Fonologia , Milano. In addition, works from smaller studios and private collections, and from the estate of Hermann Heiss have been included.
Sources for works in the USA include the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the defunct San Francisco Tape Music Center (works now housed at Mills College, the University of California at San Diego, and by individual composers), the University of Illinois Experimental Music Center, Bell Telephone Laboratories (personal collection of Max Mathews), various individual composers, and commercial CDs. The Laboratoris de Investigacion y Produccion Musical (LIPM), the first major center for Latin American electroacoustic music, digitized approximately 30 works for the target collection. Japanese works have been provided by the National Center for Science Information Systems and by Dr. Emmanuelle Loubet. Most of the Japanese works were originally produced at the Tokyo studio of NHK radio.
This historic collection will be distributed to IDEAMA institutions on approximately 100 stereo audio CDs, with information about the music on the commercial FilemakerPro database. There are three types of IDEAMA institutions: founding institutions (ZKM and CCRMA), partner and affiliate institutions. The founding institutions have collaborated to establish policies and procedures for creating the archive and its ongoing function. The partner institutions have participated in the formation of the archive, in most cases by contributing materials. They will house the archive, as will new affiliate institutions.
The IDEAMA will be distributed to affiliate institutions after April, 1996. In order to become an IDEAMA affiliate institution, and for all other information, please contact Thomas Gerwin at:
ZKM/Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie Mediathek, Kaiserstrasse 127 D-76133 Karlsruhe, Germany Phone: +49-721/9340-221 Fax: +49-721/9340-29 e-mail: tg@zkm.de
Acknowledgements
At Stanford University, the IDEAMA has been supported by CCRMA, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. ZKM receives its support from the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city of Karlsruhe.
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