Soundscape Composition and the Subversion of Electroacoustic Norms
Soundscape Composition and the Subversion of Electroacoustic Norms
1[1. The research for this paper formed part of a PhD dissertation at the Graduate Programme in Music at York University in Toronto, Canada (1999): "Sounding Places: Situated Conversations through the Soundscape Compositions of Hildegard Westerkamp," by Andra McCartney.]
The field of electroacoustic presents a number of potential challenges to assumptions about what Western art music is: as John Cage noted as early as 1937, it opens up the entire field of sound as musical sources. Barry Truax states that "the serious use of environmental sound in music is potentially disruptive and even subversive to the established norms of the artistic field" (1995: 1). Electroacoustic music can shift attention from pitch relationships to timbral possibilities of sounds. As a result, much electroacoustic music confounds traditional forms of musical analysis (Tenney 1986: 4). Soundscape composition, with its focus on environmental sound, could be considered a type of electroacoustic music that is particularly resistant to traditional analysis and categorization.
I will limit my discussion here to the place of the serious use of environmental sound (which I will refer to as soundscape composition) within the field of electroacoustic music, since this will give me a manageable field to consider. Electroacoustic music is a specific genre of Western Art music which has developed only in the last hundred years or so, requiring extensive financial expenditure for equipment and therefore practised — at least until recently — mostly by people in industrialized nations, in large publicly or commercially funded studios. My discussion of the place of soundscape composition within the field of electroacoustic music will raise issues that also apply to the larger field of Western art music, while retaining a focus on the norms of electroacoustic music. The discussion will be in three parts: (1) what is meant by the phrase "the serious use of environmental sound," (2) what are the established norms of electroacoustic music, and (3) To what extent does soundscape composition in itself disrupt or subvert these norms?
1. The serious use of environmental sound
The concept of an environment of sound is the basis of the word "soundscape," a term credited to composer R. Murray Schafer. He defines it as:
The sonic environment. Technically, any portion of the sonic environment regarded as a field for study. The term may refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an environment. (1977: 275)
By sonic environment, Schafer is referring to "the ever-present array of noises, pleasant and unpleasant, loud and soft, heard or ignored, that we all live with" (1977: jacket notes). This acceptance of all sounds is similar to that of John Cage, who said that the use of electrical instruments "will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard" (1961: 4). Recording equipment makes any sound in the world available: it can be isolated from its context and treated as a sound object, or the interplay of sounds within a specific environmental context can be the focus of attention. Schafer's statement in his definition that abstract constructions such as musical compositions are soundscapes particularly when considered as an environment refers to the importance of context in soundscape composition.
Barry Truax clarifies what the importance of context means:
In the soundscape composition ... it is precisely the environmental context that is preserved, enhanced and exploited by the composer. The listener's past experience, associations, and patterns of soundscape perception are called upon by the composer and thereby integrated within the compositional strategy. Part of the composer's intent may also be to enhance the listener's awareness of environmental sound. (1984: 207)
Truax concentrates on the importance to the composer of the experiences, awareness and perceptions of listeners, and their relationships to the sound environment. These become an integral part of the compositional strategy. Hildegard Westerkamp also defines soundscape composition as a form that insists on contact between the composer, listener and sound environment: "The word soundscape always implies interaction between environment and individual, and between environment and community" (1988: 3). Thus the serious use of environmental sound, according to these composers, is to work with the environment of the sounds, their context and interrelationships with listeners and with the composer.
This focus on relationships between composer, listener, and sound environment grew naturally out of these composers' soundscape research. Truax, Westerkamp and Schafer first worked together in the context of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s. This project, founded and directed by Schafer, began with his concerns about noise pollution, and received funding to undertake major research projects of soundscapes in cities and villages of Canada and Europe 2[2. see Keiko Torigoe (1982) for a discussion of the research and underlying principles.]. This work resulted in several research and educational publications about soundscapes by members of the research team.
These composers continue to be involved in the research and education started through the World Soundscape Project (WSP). The Tuning of the World Conference in Banff in 1993 led to the founding of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, with its head office at Simon Fraser University. The aims of acoustic ecology are often implicated in soundscape composition. Westerkamp, for instance, says that she likes "to position the microphone very close to the tiny, quiet and complex sounds of nature, then amplify and highlight them...[so that] they can be understood as occupying an important place in the soundscape and warrant respect" (1996: 19). Although Torigoe (1982) focuses mainly on the research and education components of the WSP, mentioning soundscape compositions only in passing, several such compositions were made by project members, many of whom were composers. These compositions were assembled into ten one-hour radio programs for the CBC, entitled Soundscapes of Canada.
Truax discusses the range of compositional approaches in this series (1996: 54-58). The collectively authored Summer Solstice documents two minutes of each hour of a summer day and night, recorded beside a pond near Vancouver, giving a representation of condensed time. Soundmarks of Canada, by Peter Huse, features the juxtaposition of significant sounds associated with particular places in Canada, condensing space. Several pieces included electronic transformations of sounds using a range of classic analog studio techniques. Truax notes that sounds still remained recognizable and within context in these pieces, such as Bruce Davis — Bells of Perce and Barry Truax — Soundscape Study. Because of the WSP commitment to bring together research, education, and composition, these soundscape compositions are presented by the composers in the context of discussions on research and education within the radio programs, which also include a range of listening exercises and lectures by Murray Schafer.
Schafer, Truax, and Westerkamp all continue to compose with environmental sound in context. Schafer's environmental work, such as Music for Wilderness Lake (1981) tends to be site-specific and acoustic, rather than electroacoustic. This piece uses traditional instruments and voices within a wilderness setting. Truax works with granular synthesis, a computer process that stretches sounds to create slowly moving textures, revealing complexities within the sound that otherwise would not be heard. Since 1990, he has used environmental sound increasingly with this process, in works such as Pacific (1990), Dominion (1991), Basilica (1992), Song of Songs (1992), Sequence of Later Heaven (1993) and Powers of Two (1995). Westerkamp has done the most extensive work in electroacoustic soundscape composition of the three. In fact, all of her work is with environmental sound in context, usually recorded by her in specific locations. Many of her earlier pieces, such as Walk Through the City (1981), and StreetMusic (1982) were originally written for and broadcast on Vancouver Cooperative Radio. Her Harbour Symphony (1986), commissioned by the Canada Pavilion for Expo '86, was probably the largest environmental music event ever to be mounted in Vancouver. Some of her more recent works, such as Cool Drool (1983) and India Sound Journal (1993) also include live performance. Westerkamp (1994) notes that soundscape composition involves a balance of work in the studio with work on location. Techniques of field recording, such as learning how to listen to sound environments, close-miking, protecting equipment from difficult weather conditions, learning how to move through a space with the microphone, and soundmaking in response to environmental sounds, are as important as studio work with the sound.
The composers at the World Soundscape Project had an excellent climate for thinking about and working with environmental sound in context. Several other composers around the world were also working with soundscapes, although they may not have used that name. Many were inspired by the early work of John Cage to pay attention to all kinds of sound within specific environments. In 1954, Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna composed a piece specifically for radio broadcast, Ritratto di Città, a sound portrait of Milan, Italy, during the course of a day. In France, Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No. 1 (1970) condensed the sounds of daybreak on a beach. The liner notes for this piece describe a similar focus on the experience and memory of the listener as that espoused by the Vancouver composers:
Instead of forcibly eliminating every trace of the origins of the material which has been taken from reality, Ferrari uses its reference to reality in order to appeal to the hearer's experience and imagination...an undistorted portrayal, although in fast motion, of daybreak on the beach, it is electroacoustic natural photography, in which Cage's respect for reality is crossed with the dream of a sounding 'minimal art'. (1970: unpaginated)
In the United States, Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room (1970) used multiple recordings of voice on tape to allow the resonant frequencies of the room where the recording was made to cover the sounds of the speech. The first words of the text recited by the performer of this piece stress the importance of context: "I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now." 3[3. Several pieces by the Sonic Arts Union (Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, David Behrmann and Robert Ashley) interacted with the performance space, for instance Mumma's Hornpipe (1967) and Lucier's Vespers (1968). I chose Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room for discussion here because it brings attention to the place of performance through the text.] Americans Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood have both worked with particular sound environments. Pauline Oliveros published Sonic Meditations, a set of listening exercises of a similar type to the "ear-cleaning" exercises advocated by Murray Schafer. Recently, she has formed the Deep Listening Band, whose members David Gamper, Stuart Dempster, Joe Giardullo, Thomas Buckner and Oliveros herself play together in places with interesting acoustics, such as a the Fort Worden cistern, an abandoned water tank in
Washington State with a 45-second reverberation, (Deep Listening) or Tarpaper Cave, an abandoned
Catskill mountain cement quarry in New York State (Troglodyte's Delight, 1989). Annea Lockwood created A Sound Map of the Hudson River (1989), an aural journey which paid attention to the changing sonic textures of every part of the river from source to mouth.
The serious use of environmental sound, then, means to attend to the context and the integrity of sounds, to be aware of the relationships between sounds and their contexts, and to work with a listener's associations and memories of sound environments. An attention to context means that composers often choose to work with the sounds of particular places, listening intently to the sources, relationships, reverberations, and movements of sounds within those places, in order to understand them sonically, then to express that understanding.
2. The Established Norms of Electroacoustic Music
To discuss the established norms of the field of electroacoustic music, I will investigate several related areas. The first is textbook definitions of electroacoustic music and related terms. The second is the structure of electroacoustic textbooks, as summarized in chapter headings and their associated musical examples. I also consider more explicit value judgements about different types of electroacoustic music made in these textbooks. Finally, I discuss recent articles on electroacoustic aesthetics, especially as they refer to the use of environmental sounds.
Definitions
I begin with definitions for the very practical reason that I want to be clear about what is meant by electroacoustic music and related terms. One of the difficulties of defining electroacoustic music is that often the terms "electronic music" and "electroacoustic music" are used interchangeably, even in major library collections (Schrader 1982: 3). To complicate matters, the terms "musique concrète," "tape music," and "computer music" are other designations that are used in related and overlapping ways. Many texts do not define the terms at all, proceeding instead to a historical account which defines by description and inclusion or exclusion.
Deutsch defines electroacoustic music as "Music made in whole or in part by electrical instruments, amplified or electronically modified instruments, recording devices or computers" (1993: 5). This definition is similar in some ways to Otto Luening's definition of electronic music:
Electronic music is a generic term describing music that uses electronically generated sound or sound modified by electronic means, which may or may not be accompanied by live voices or musical instruments, and which may be delivered live or through speakers. (Luening 1975: 2)
Chadabe defines electronic music as "all music made with electronics, whether specifically with computer, synthesizer, or any other special equipment" (1997: x). All of these definitions include the use of electrical instruments or electronics as necessary. All are also general enough to include popular recorded music that uses amplified instruments and sounds modified by electronic means. The extent to which popular and other types of music are included in the definition only becomes clear later in each text. None of these definitions specifically includes recorded environmental sounds, yet none excludes them. Jon Appleton specifically includes concrète or recorded sounds in his definition: "When referring to electronic music I mean music composed by using electronic instruments and concrète sounds by living composers and by computers" (Appleton 1989: 69). 4[4. I suppose that this latter definition would exclude the work of composers such as John Cage, since he is no longer alive!] It is easy to see why the terms "electronic music" and "electroacoustic music" become confused. It is difficult to perceive from the preceding definitions why the two designations are used: they seem to refer to the same area, and it appears to be a very open field.
The most elaborate set of textbook definitions is given by Barry Schrader. He defines musique concrète as "any electroacoustic music that uses acoustic sounds as source material" (1982: 2). He later discusses some soundscape compositions in the section on musique concrète. Electronic music is "music in which the source, or original, sound material has been electronically produced. This is usually done with electronic oscillators" (1982: 2). Computer music is "a type of electronic music in which a computer is used to generate the sound material" (1982: 2). He also delineates tape music from live electronics and creates a graphic taxonomy of all types.
Note that all of these definitions refer to the materials involved in the work. Such definitions become problematic for work that involves a combination of oscillator, acoustic, and computer-generated sound materials. Schrader uses the general term electroacoustic to refer to music that involves any of the former definitions.
One definition that specifically excluded some sounds was in the introduction to a book on computer music by John Pierce. Defining the focus of the book, he states:
When scientists study animals in a natural environment, they are much concerned with the animal's ability to perceive and interpret the sounds in that environment.
Man does not live in the wild; he lives and functions in a man-made environment. He listens most attentively to highly organized, man-made sounds. These are chiefly the sounds of speech and music (1989: 2)
At the end of the introduction, Pierce returns to this concept: "While this is a book about musical sound, it is also a book about one aspect of man's civilization, about his environment of man-made sound, and about how he can understand and manipulate that environment." (1989: 4) By restricting his definition of "man-made" environments to speech and music and saying that man-made sound is the subject of the book, he excludes recorded environmental sounds from the field of computer music.
The textbook definitions (with the exception of Pierce) tend to be so general and encompassing that little could disrupt or subvert them. One characteristic to note, however, is the emphasis on materials — sound sources and equipment or means of production of sound. An examination of the contents of these textbooks will reveal more about the norms of electroacoustic music than do introductory definitions.
Textbook Contents
I have reviewed the contents of thirteen texts; ten of these texts specifically discuss tape music, while the other three (two on MIDI, and one on more general computer music) are included for comparison purposes:
Appleton, Jon H. and Ronald C. Perera, editors. The Development and Practice of Electronic Music.
Chadabe, Joel. Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music.
Deutsch, Herbert A. Electroacoustic Music: The First Century.
____. Synthesis: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Electronic Music.
Griffiths, Paul. A Guide to Electronic Music.
Horn, Delton T. The Beginner's Book of Electronic Music.
Jacobs, Gabriel, and Panicos Georghiades. Music and New Technology: The MIDI Connection.
Mackay, Andy. Electronic Music.
Manning, Peter. Electronic and Computer Music.
Mathews, Max, and John Pierce, editors. Current Directions in Computer Music Research.
Newquist, H.P. Music and Technology.
Pellman, Samuel. An Introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music.
Schrader, Barry. Introduction to Electroacoustic Music
(The chapter headings for these books, some including musical examples or composers — names, are listed in Appendix A).
First, note the titles of these books: of the ten that discuss the field as a whole, seven use the word "electronic," including the most recent book published in 1997, while only three use the more inclusive term "electroacoustic." The use of the term electronic to refer to the field has several implications. It continues the confusion between electronic and electroacoustic: a library search on the term electroacoustic might not reveal these books, yet their subject matter includes electroacoustic music. It erases the word acoustic from consideration, which could lead to the belief that electronic music is the norm of the field, and work with acoustic sources is an aberration, or subsidiary. Chadabe, for instance, chooses to use the word "electronic" as the generic term, while acknowledging that "in Germany it may cause confusion with elektronische Musik, which refers specifically to the philosophy of the Cologne studio in the early 1950s" (1997: x). I would argue that this confusion might exist outside of Germany as well. On the other hand, the word electroacoustic, by joining two terms, leads to a consideration of the relationship between electronics and acoustics, rather than a focus specifically on the electronic component. It also avoids confusion with the aesthetic aims of elektronische Musik.
In looking at the organization of sections and chapters, tape music and/or musique concrète almost always appears at or close to the beginning of each book or repertoire section, except in the cases of the books on MIDI and computer music, where it is only considered briefly as a secondary topic (Jacobs and Georghiades, Newquist, Mathews and Pierce). In several cases in the texts (Griffiths, Horn, Mackay, Manning, Pellman, and Schrader), musique concrète and electronic studio music are separated, with electronic studio following tape music in a separate category. However, electronic music produced by oscillators or synthesizers requires tape for the sound to be recorded, making recorded electronic music another kind of tape music, as noted by Schrader (1982) in the taxonomic diagram of his introductory chapter. Yet even though he notes this, Schrader too maintains a separation between musique concrète and electronic music in the organizational structure of the book, not discussing them both under the category of tape music.
One possible reason for the separation is that initially, the first two electroacoustic studios to open, the Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (RTF) in Paris,and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, were antagonistic to each other and described themselves as opposites. Pierre Schaeffer of RTF defined the music he was making, musique concrète, as having direct contact with sound:
Je me méfie des instruments nouveaux, ondes ou ondiolines, de ce que les Allemands appellent pompeusement l"electronische Musik" [sic]. Devant toute musique électrique j'ai la réaction de mon père violoniste, de ma mère chanteuse. Nous sommes des artisans. Mon Violon, ma voix, je les retrouve dans tout ce bazar en bois ... et dans mes trompes à vélos. Je cherche le contact direct avec la matière sonore, sans électrons interposés.
[I mistrust new instruments, waves or waveforms, what the Germans pompously call elektronische Musik. Before all electrical music I have the reaction of my violinist father, my vocalist mother. We are artisans. My violin, my voice, I meet them again in this bazaar of wood ... and in my truck horns, I seek direct contact with sonic materials, without electrons interposed. (1990: 26, my translation)
The WDR studio, on the other hand, wanted to sever connections with an outside sound world. They used the serial technique 5[5. A definition of serialism: "For [the European serialists of the early 1950s] serialism was a compositional technique wherein every aspect of a composition--not only notes, but also loudness, timbre, duration, type of attack, and every other imaginable parameter of a sound--could be based on and derived from the same row, or series, thereby producing a kind of total structure wherein every detail was organized" (Chadabe 1997: 37).] of composition employing simple sine tones produced by oscillators rather than recorded sounds to make elektronischemusik:
In electronic serial music... everything to the last element of the single note is subjected to serial permutation... Today, the physical magnification of a sound is known... as exact scientific data ... Talk of "humanized" electronic sound may be left to unimaginative instrument makers. (Eimert, 1955: 8)
This artificial distinction between the two studios disappeared within a few years. Although his first pieces used recognizable sound sources, Schaeffer began to manipulate the envelopes of sounds in the studio so that their sources became indistinguishable. Composers at the WDR studio began to use acoustic as well as electronic sources, and extended compositional technique beyond serialism. Their approach has opened up considerably since that time, to the extent that recently, two CDs of urban soundscape compositions, by Michael Rüsenberg and Hans Ulrich Werner, (Lisboa, 1994; Madrid, 1995) were produced by WDR. Yet this initial distinction between musique concrète and elektronische Musik seems to be maintained in the organization of many electroacoustic music textbooks, even though by the time of publication of these books the distinctions between the musical styles had diminished greatly. The use of the term musique concrète to refer to tape music as a whole can increase this confusion by associating all tape music with the aesthetic aims of Pierre Schaeffer, who coined the term. As noted earlier, the use of the term electronic music to refer to all electroacoustic music could also associate the entire field with the aesthetic aims of elektronische Musik.
Another area of confusion is that of live electronic music. It is usually listed close to the end of books or sections, yet it existed from very early on. Manning lists live electronic music as a genre only after 1960, yet live performance with electronics began long before this with the early electronic instruments, and Cage's Imaginary Landscape #1 in 1939, as Manning himself notes in his first chapter (1985: 16). The chapter on live electronics instead begins with Kagel's Transicion II (1959). Chadabe begins his discussion of live electronics in Chapter 4 of his book, entitled "Out of the Studios", with Cage's Cartridge Music (1960). He passes over the Imaginary Landscapes without comment.
What is behind these historical and generic confusions? The preface to Pellman may provide a clue:
Since its origins nearly a half-century ago, the field of electroacoustic music has passed through a remarkable series of changes. New instruments and techniques, based upon the most recent technological innovations, have appeared regularly. These often relegated older electroacoustic instruments to the status of relics. (1994: xi)
Deutsch also claims that technical innovation is important: "Music, the most abstract of mankind's arts, has always been close to its technological developments" (1993: 5). If the organization of these textbooks is based on an idea of evolutionary development through technological innovation, then the inconsistencies noted earlier make more sense. The use of tape becomes one "development", improved upon by the use of oscillators, then synthesizers, computers, and MIDI. Live electronic music is only discussed as a genre when "compositions wholly or largely based on live synthesis became a major sphere of activity during the 1960s" (Manning 1985: 187). Thus live electronic music becomes associated with the technological development of a particular instrument: the synthesizer. All other work with live electronics is considered an antecedent to this moment. Even though new compositions continue to be written for the ondes Martenot and the theremin, which were invented in the 1920s, they are "relegated to the status of relics" by the idea of technological development as evolution of innovation.
Development is also tied to an idea of exploration. Griffith’' chapter titles, with "out of the known" for concrète music, and "out of the unknown" for electronic music, moves from conceptions of the familiar to the unexplored. Manning’s use of the terms "developments" and "new horizons" in his section titles explicitly links development to an exploration of new territory, which is in this case the design of the voltage-controlled synthesizer. The idea of progress from introductory to more complex ideas is implicit in the general tendency to place concepts considered simpler by the author at the beginning of an educational textbook and ideas considered more complex near the end. Thus the placement of concrète "tape" music near the beginning and electronic "computer" music near the end can encourage the belief that concrète music is simple and readily understood, and electronic music more complex, less readily known. Deutsch (1985) also views tape music as an introductory stage, suggesting that musique concrète should be used as an educational introduction to working with tape, before students move into electronic synthesis.
Sometimes musique concrète is not discussed as fully as other genres. In Pellman (1994), works by Morton Subotnick, David Jaffe, Milton Babbitt, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Edgard Varèse are discussed in detail, while those by Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and the team of Vladimir Ussachevsky-Otto Luening are mentioned briefly. Of the five works discussed in detail, the first is a piece for analog synthesizer, and the next two are computer music. The Stockhausen and Varèse works are both tape pieces. Stockhausen’s Gesang der Junglinge, which uses both electronically-generated and recorded sounds, is discussed with reference to this integration of sources as well as his use of serialism at the Cologne studio. The Poème Electronique by Varèse is described mainly with reference to his use of spatialization in the Philips Pavilion as well as his approach to timbre. The questions following these tape pieces ask the student to pay attention to various tape manipulation techniques, and to compare them with other methods. Several tape works by Cage, Schaeffer and Ussachevsky-Luening are discussed only briefly, in a sentence or two, in the context of a discussion of the composers’ aesthetic approaches. Questions are included for the Ussachevsky-Luening examples, once again focusing on tape manipulation techniques. No questions are included for the Cage or Schaeffer examples. This may lead a student to believe that in these cases, there is nothing worth asking questions about, or that the pieces are not worthy of extended discussion. The focus on tape manipulation techniques in the other examples could give the impression that these techniques are the most important facets of the compositions.
The author who most explicitly places emphasis on innovation is Paul Griffiths. Discussing early work by Stockhausen, he says:
the Studien are fascinating and beautiful; at the very least they demonstrated that the future of electronic music was to lie more with the creation of the new than with the musique concrète technique of readjusting the old. (1979: 14)
At the beginning of the chapter on electronic music, out of the unknown, he states "Much of the most interesting tape music has come not from the use of natural sounds ... but rather from the synthesis of new material by electronic means" (1979: 42). In these two quotes, he indicates his belief that to work with unknown or new sources in electronic music is more interesting and worthwhile than to work with existing sources, as in musique concrète.
Schrader (1982) includes a wider variety of pieces that are discussed in detail than do other authors. In his table of contents, the association of works with classic studio methods is clear, as each work is related to a very specific tape manipulation technique or electronic instrument. Hence in the section on musique concrète, Come Out by Steve Reich illustrates tape loops; Williams Mix, by John Cage is an example of cutting and splicing, and so on. 6[6. Note that James Tenney's Stochastic Quartet is included as an example of early computer music at the Bell Labs. In this section, composers are associated with particular labs, whereas in the section on synthesizers, composers are associated with specific instruments.] Stockhausen's Gesang der Junglinge is discussed under timbral development in the section on electronic music. Even though both Williams Mix and Gesang der Junglinge use electronic and recorded natural sound sources, they are associated with different sections in the book, indicating perhaps that to Schrader the difference between electronic music and musique concrète is not related to sound source, as in his earlier definitions, but to something else which he does not discuss. 7[7. Note also under the section on the "development of the classical studio" that under University of Toronto, the composer discussed in detail is Pauline Oliveros. It is good to see a woman's name listed (the only one in this table of contents). But this is also the only reference to Canada, and Oliveros is American.] The dilemma raised by works that involve electronic and recorded sources is obvious in the following comment made by Maconie in his analysis of Gesang der Junglinge:
Soon after Gesang der Jünglinge had acquired a reputation it was put about that since the work incorporates a boy’s recorded voice it qualified as musique concrète ... one suspects that the label represents an attempt either to transfer some of the credit for Stockhausen’s achievement or alternatively to reduce the work in public eyes to the level of a Parisian caprice...it is positively misleading. The manner in which Stockhausen integrates vocal sound into the electronic fabric of the piece would never have been sanctioned by the school of Schaeffer ("mon violon, ma voix"), even if its members had been technically well enough informed to understand what he was doing. The qualities of intelligence and workmanship, that made Schaeffer so keen to claim the work in retrospect as musique concrète, elevate Gesang to an altogether higher plane ... the focus on the boy’s voice naturally draws attention to the "message" content of the text, which ... tends to obscure awareness of the purely formal relationships of the electronic sounds. It did not inhibit audiences, nevertheless, from instinctively recognizing the potency and authority of Stockhausen’s handling of the medium. (Maconie, 1976: 98-99).
The organization of many electroacoustic music textbooks appears to encourage a division of the field between tape music from recorded natural sources, often called musique concrète, and music from electronic sources. The fact that the field as a whole is often called electronic music, the placement of music from recorded sounds close to the beginning of many books, and the language of discovery all combine to create the impression that work with recorded sounds is a predecessor or subsidiary of electronic music, and is less advanced.
References to Soundscape Works in Electroacoustic Textbooks
Very few soundscape works or their composers are discussed in these textbooks in any detail. The World Soundscape Project is never mentioned. While Deutsch (1993; 1985), Mackay (1981) and Griffiths (1979) do make references to some Canadian work, it is either to early work by Hugh Le Caine or Norman McLaren, or to the University of Toronto studio. Manning mentions Murray Schafer briefly and inaccurately: he says his work is "notable for its emphasis on electronic music for school and colleges" (1993: 186). 8[8. I have discussed elsewhere how little attention Canadian electroacoustic composition as a whole has received in the electroacoustic literature (McCartney 1994: 15-17).] Manning discusses Barry Truax' development of the POD computer music system of granular synthesis (1993: 247-8). Chadabe (1997) also describes Truax' development of granular synthesis, mentioning that Truax uses recorded sounds without referring to soundscape composition or the WSP. Newquist, in Music and Technology (1989), does not mention Canadian work at all.
Two authors, Barry Schrader and Andy Mackay, include subsections in their texts which refer to approaches to sound environments. Mackay entitles this part of his book "Images of Nature." His discussion, focusing primarily on the work of John Cage which he describes as "the extreme of romanticism" (1981: 78), summarizes his work with chance operations through a description of Variations IV:
The score consists of a transparent sheet of dots to be dropped on to a map or plan of the performance area. Sound-generating activity is to take place on lines drawn as a result of these activities where they go outside the theatre space. Yet these sounds are as firmly fixed within the composition as the clouds in a Constable landscape are fixed within their frame, although their shape, if true to nature, was likewise created indeterminately. (1981: 78)
Mackay also refers briefly to the stochastic methods used by Iannis Xenakis to express "his sense of the unity of nature" (1981: 79), as well as the work of Morton Feldman. The emphasis throughout the subsection is on composers’ use of structural compositional processes to imitate natural processes.
Schrader discusses two works that I have previously described as soundscape compositions in the section of his book on musique concrète, in a subsection entitled "Musique concrète with minimal tape manipulation." Unlike in other subsections, the names of these works do not appear in the table of contents. Schrader describes Alvin Lucier's use of acoustic feedback in I Am Sitting In A Room (1970). (Lucier's piece is also described in Manning (1985: 199), and Chadabe (1997: 75-76).) The second piece discussed by Schrader is Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No. 1. Schrader notes his use of cutting and splicing to reduce the time of the original recording, and also says that "he has made the insect-like sounds that enter during the middle of the piece slowly increase in volume" (1982: 55), a manipulation that Ferrari does not record in his liner notes for the piece (he says that he only decreased the length of the recording). An increase in volume of certain insect sounds would naturally occur after daybreak. Is it possible that Schrader spoke of this as a manipulation in his desire to make sense of the piece? Still, his description is much more accurate than that of Manning, who states:
Presque Rien No. 1 is an excursion into the sphere of organized collage using a wide variety of natural environmental sources such as birds, footsteps, seaside sounds, and children's voices. As the work progresses, the source elements, which remain largely untreated in themselves, become submerged under a growing stream of noise components which grow in density, eventually masking the environmental elements completely (1985: 161).
In this description it sounds as though the composer juxtaposed a number of disparate environmental elements and constructed noise components in a manner which paid no attention whatever to context.
The most recent book, by Joel Chadabe (1997), refers to Berio and Maderna's Ritratto di Città (1954). Chadabe also discusses Oliveros’ work with the Expanded Instrument System (1997: 246), and in his summaries and speculations, refers to the music of Americans Barton and Priscilla McLean, who work with environmental sounds and images in interactive installations (1997: 330-331). In both of the latter cases, the focus of the discussion is on the use of interactive technologies by these composers.
Discussions of soundscape work in electroacoustic textbooks is sparse, and contains some misinterpretations because of a focus on instrumentation and sound manipulation techniques. Since 1986, two anthologies that focus specifically on aesthetics have appeared, as well as other related articles. The next section will consider these sources.
Articles on Aesthetics in Electroacoustic Music.
In the past few years, texts have appeared that discuss aesthetics in electroacoustic music, acknowledging that the field as a whole is at times overly concerned with technical questions. Heifetz, for instance, in his introduction to On The Wires of Our Nerves: The Art of Electroacoustic Music, (1989)says that the book is concerned with "aspirations toward, and an appreciation of, higher aesthetic ideals that have thus far not been demonstrated very often in a musical world rife with technology" (1989: 12). 9[9. The title of this book refers to electroacoustic music. However, all of the titles in the table of contents refer to the field as electronic music.] Emmerson notes that writing about electroacoustic music "has covered two areas: analysis of the musical techniques and analysis of the technical means. Little has been written ... on the musical aims, the ethic and aesthetic of the music" (1986: 1).
Many of these articles are written in a general way, referring to aesthetic questions that authors state are important to electroacoustic music as a whole, and only mentioning specific pieces in passing. Many of these concern the relationship between art and technology in electroacoustic music. For instance, Kasdan and Appleton (in Heifetz 1989: 17-27) discuss tradition and change in music, linking change to modernization and technological innovation. Boulez (in Emmerson 1986: 5-14) speaks of the need for a common language between technologists and composers. Luening (1989: 28-31) writes about challenges he considers unique to electronic music, such as theoretically endless sustained sounds, the huge variety of possible sound sources, and lack of visual stimulation for audiences. Heifetz (1989: 85-89) describes his love of direct interaction with sounds, saying that computer music is more sensual than composing on paper. Melby (1989: 90-96) expresses his concern that discussions in computer music should focus as much on musical as on technical questions. Keane describes a quest for musically interesting structures in computer music as a way to focus on musical rather than technical concerns. In these general articles about the field as a whole, there is a conceptual separation of art and technology, and a struggle to reconcile them.
Only a few of these articles engage with differences among specific approaches within the field that will be useful to my question. Some authors note that, in its focus on new instrumentation, electroacoustic music has minimized the musical advantages of the tape studio. For instance, Kenneth Gaburo says that the classic tape studio was not really classic in the terms of being first class or coherent as a system, but was a "glorious junkshop" which is often "expressed as a pejorative, in the light of the new instrumentation" (1989: 38). Some of the new instrumentation, however, is in his estimation more closed and set in its musical possibilities than the older equipment. Daria Semegen agrees, suggesting tape music composition as more creative and selective than the use of prepackaged synthesizer patching routines. She asks:
Do we, or should we, listen, respond to, and evaluate electronic music as music per se or should such music be perceived only from the vantage point of a mystique of appreciation of advancement, complexity, and novelty of techniques and gadgetry used to produce the sounds? (1986: 33)
Priscilla McLean engages specifically with ideas about context, noting that:
The opinion that sonorities derived or influenced by programmatic, environmental experiences, are "inferior" because of their suspected inability to form diverse and complex relationships, is held by not a few composers, critics, and (usually instrument-oriented) listeners. If the ability to form complex varied relationships is the pinnacle of musical achievement, are imago-abstract sounds valid as workable sources, or are they to be restricted to dramatic gestural, usually superficial effects, used sparingly, if at all? (1989: 149)
McLean describes imago-abstract sounds as not directly recognizable but containing inter-related connotative and musical meanings. Her argument that they are workable sources is diluted somewhat by her insistence that her own work, Dance of Dawn, is not programmatic in the least. Even though she suggests the development of an aesthetic based on the "imago-abstract sound" which has "matured in its capacity to work at both the abstract level as well as its intrinsic derived level" (1989: 153), it is the abstract level that she discusses most clearly.
Jan Morthenson's "Aesthetic Dilemmas in Electronic Music" deals with an issue important to the place of context in soundscape composition. Morthenson declares that the most apparent aesthetic dilemma to consider is "the absence in electronic music of what we might call natural references. Instrumental and vocal music are entirely based upon familiar references" (1989: 60-61). The conflation here of familiar and natural is problematic, and he quickly notes that many of these references, such as scales, triadic harmony and so on, are not natural references at all, but the result of habituation to constructs over centuries so that they are heard as natural. However, he later says that instrumental and vocal music are both "related to a physical reality: playing, capacities of instruments, expressive behavior, and an explicit interaction of people. This cannot be reproduced or transformed into classical electronic music" (1989: 61). He notes that this problem can be solved by using tiny amounts of well-known sounds or human interjections:
Just a tiny reminder of something outside the electronic music world ... gives a feeling of identity ... the more realistic musical object, be it a fragment of folk music, a street noise, or whatever, gets a new interpretation in the context of electronic music. It is certainly a reliable and simple technique, the dilemma being that it is not anymore a very inventive and creative formal idea. (1989: 63)
His dismissal of even a "tiny" amount of context as both outside the electronic music world and as a simple yet not very inventive idea minimizes the significance and importance of this compositional approach.
Denis Smalley, in his discussion of electroacoustic listening strategies, presents a more detailed exploration of mimetic references to gesture, utterance, behaviour, energy, substance, environment, vision, and space. These areas are not discussed equally however. Environment receives less than half a page, in which Smalley notes that the incorporation of environmental sounds has contributed to a "greater appreciation of the musical qualities of sounds outside the human orbit" (1996: 90). There is no discussion in this section of the concept of place. Instead, place forms part of the discussion of space. Here, while Smalley notes that musical space cannot be separated from its sounding content, he is more interested in discussions of spatial orientation and spatio-morphology than in relationships between place, memory and identity. His conclusions, while less dismissive than Morthenson, still imply that mimetic references to gesture and utterance are a restriction:
There remains a barrier between those listeners who can accept and enjoy full indicative relationships and those who are unable to break free from the immediate visual and physical nature of gesture and utterance as represented by instrumental and vocal tradition (1996: 106)
Trevor Wishart describes musical space as landscape, defining it as an imaginary or virtual construct:
We must therefore seek a redefinition of the term "landscape." If the term is to have any significance in electroacoustic music we must define it as the source from which we imagine the sounds to come. The loudspeaker has...allowed us to set up a virtual acoustic space into which we may project an image of any real existing acoustic space, and the existence of this virtual acoustic space presents us with new creative possibilities (1986: 43).
The musical space or landscape, then, is an imaginary place created by the composer. Wishart notes that the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris quickly rejected an approach dependent on the listener's recognition of the sound material, shifting to abstraction of the "sound-object" from its origins (1986: 43). Turning to a consideration of works that do involve the listener’s recognition, he describes Ferrari's Presque Rien No. 1 as "musically the most radical work in this genre" (1986: 43), without explaining what he means by radical. He then describes the defining characteristics of landscape as the nature of the perceived acoustic space, the disposition of sound objects within that space, and the recognition of individual sound objects, explaining throughout how virtual landscapes can be created in the studio which mimic these characteristics of real landscapes, while also including imaginary sounds and spaces. He ends with a discussion of his composition Red Bird, in which he sets up what he calls "metaphoric primitives" (1986: 55), and explores ambiguities and similarities between the sounds of words, birds, animal/body and machines. This article is an interesting discussion of how virtual landscapes can be created using the characteristics of real places. Although he begins with a discussion of real landscapes, Wishart seems to be more concerned with abstracting their qualities to form virtual symbolic, or imaginary, landscapes. In this abstraction, the context of the original landscape is less important than the metaphorical constructions of the new one.
Emmerson (1986: 17-40) provides a detailed discussion of fifteen electroacoustic works in his study of the relation of compositional language to materials in compositions that emphasize timbre. He categorizes these works along two axes: from aural discourse to mimetic discourse, and from abstract syntax to abstracted syntax. (I list these categories and the placement of works within them in Appendix B.) Emmerson defines aural discourse as " 'abstract musical' substance ... our perception remains relatively free of any directly evoked image" (1986: 19). He defines mimesis as "the imitation not only of nature but also of aspects of human culture not usually associated directly with musical material" (1986: 17), noting that this has previously been known as programme music, in distinction from absolute music, which could be associated with his term, aural discourse. The use of the word aural as an opposite of the word mimetic implies that mimetic discourse is not aural, that the imitation of nature is less aural, less musical than aural or abstract musical discourse. The imitation of nature is also discussed together with "unmusical" aspects of human culture such as religious symbolism.
His second axis is abstract and abstracted syntax. 10[10. The use of the word syntax here might create an expectation that the aural-mimetic axis is concerned with vocabulary. The use of the term discourse for the first axis is somewhat confusing, since discourse usually refers to a conversation or work as a whole, taking account of vocabulary, syntax, and meaning.] Emmerson defines abstract syntax as:
— the creation and manipulation of a priori shapes and structures by the composer. Serial composition is an important part of, but by no means alone in, this field. From the use of star maps to mystical number grids and formulas the use of principles not derived from the sound materials themselves all fall into this category (1986: 22).
Abstracted syntax derives from the sound materials used by the composer: "Schaeffer's Traité des objets musicaux is an attempt to establish rules for the combination of sounds, abstracted from an analysis of their perceived properties. This interdisciplinary approach is essentially empirical" (1986: 21). Here, abstract syntax is associated with a priori structures, and abstracted syntax with the sound materials themselves. However, Emmerson does not point out that syntax derived from the sound materials is more concerned with auditory perception (and therefore more aural) than abstract syntax based on numbers or charts. So neither of these poles is associated with musicality in his discussion, unlike in the first axis.
Turning to the case studies, Emmerson begins with those in which the aural discourse is dominant. He points out that there is no clear distinction in practise between sounds of electronic origin and those of concrete origin. For instance, Morton Subotnick’s Wild Bull, which uses electronic sources, evokes strong real-world images. He goes on to note that "the most obvious types of material least likely to invoke images of or references to the "real" world are those sounds of electronic origin not immediately modelled on sounds of the environment" (1986: 25), citing the Studien by Stockhausen as an example of works of electronic origin. He continues:
We may concede that instrumental sound-images and evocation, being primarily musical, may still be allowed within this category. It is the sounds of the environment not traditionally associated with music whose imagery we wish to discuss as mimetic discourse. (1986: 26)
Here it seems as if aural discourse and mimetic discourse actually refer not to a complete discourse but to a vocabulary of sound sources, with aural discourse associated with electronic or instrumental sounds, and mimetic discourse referring to sounds of environmental origin.
It is in his description of the extremes of the categories (aural-abstract and mimetic-abstracted) that I see the greatest problems with Emmerson’s system. In the first section, aural discourse-abstract syntax, John Cage’s Williams Mix and Fontana Mix are included along with Stockhausen’s Studien and Babbitt’s Ensembles for Synthesizer. However, Cage’s Williams Mix uses a wide range of environmental sounds among its sources, 11[11. Williams Mix used source material "of about 600 recordings prepared from six categories of sounds including instrumental sources, wind-produced sounds including singing, city sounds, country sounds, and quiet sounds amplified to levles comparable with the rest of the material" (Manning 1987: 87)] which Emmerson defines elsewhere as mimetic. Why does he categorize this as aural rather than mimetic discourse? He does not say. Also, Cage's use of chance procedures is part of his aim "to let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories" (1961:10), imitating the operations of nature. While not abstracted from perception of the properties of individual sounds, chance procedures could be said to be abstracted from the perception of natural processes, and therefore an abstracted syntax.
This conflation of the serial method with chance procedures seems even more strange when I realize that Emmerson does not include any discussion of stochastic 12[12. "Stochastic process: A process by which random distributions are subjected to 'shaping' or 'coloring' to provide a large scale determinate form with indeterminate small-scale structure. Once again, in mathematics, the idea of stochastic process is more complex, but Tenney, Xenakis, Hiller and others have used it frequently to describe many of their own compositional procedures." (Soundings 13, 296)] music in his article. This seems a large gap in an article describing music that emphasizes timbre. In James Tenney's description of Noise Study, the first piece that he made at the Bell Labs in which he used random selection procedures, he notes that the piece was based on his perception of traffic sounds in the Holland Tunnel (from New York to New Jersey, which he had to travel every day to get to the Bell Labs):
From this image ... of traffic noises — and especially those heard in the tunnel, where the over-all sonority is richer, denser, and the changes are mostly very gradual — I began to conceive a musical composition that not only used sound elements similar to these, but manifested similarly gradual changes in sonority. I thought also of the sound of the ocean surf ... I did not want the quasi-periodic nature of the sea-sounds ... Instead, I wanted the aperiodic, "asymmetrical" kind of rhythmic flow that was characteristic of the traffic sounds (Tenney 1961, as quoted in Polansky 1984: 155).
How would this piece fit into Emmerson's diagram? Is the discourse aural or mimetic? It uses electronically-produced sounds to imitate the environment of the Holland Tunnel. These are not pure sine tones, but noise bands. Tenney’s description of the traffic sounds emphasizes their musical qualities. Is the syntax abstract or abstracted from the materials? It seems to be neither, but to be abstracted from a perceptual experience of environmental sounds. In the same way, Xenakis spoke of abstracting his compositional ideas from both mathematics and the perception of natural processes:
The laws of the calculus of probabilities entered compositions through musical necessity. But other paths also led to the same stochastic crossroads — first of all natural events such as the collision of hail and rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field (Iannis Xenakis, as quoted in Chadabe 1997: 279).
The exclusion of stochastic music from consideration in Emmerson's article evades this thorny problem of how the perception of natural sounds and processes to determine mathematical processes would fit into the abstract-abstracted axis.
In his final section, on music in which mimetic discourse is dominant, Emmerson states that:
Stockhausen's Telemusik, Trevor Wishart's Red Bird and Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien no. 1...have much in common. All have aims apparently outside those traditionally accepted as "music": the Wishart and Ferrari, overtly in terms of political or social issues, the Stockhausen in terms of an attempt to integrate many disparate musics of the world (1986: 34)
Stockhausen's Telemusik uses pre-recorded folk music from around the world with Japanese instrumental material and electronic sounds. Emmerson does not explain how an attempt to integrate many disparate musics is outside the frame of traditional music. The case of Red Bird is more straightforward. In this work, the environmental sounds are transformed to create a narrative: the dream of a political prisoner. The vocabulary is mimetic, the syntax partly derived from the materials and partly from the narrative.
Emmerson does not explain how Ferrari's Presque Rien no. 1 is explicitly social or political, unless he means that to encourage the audience to listen to the sound environment is more social-political than musical: "This focussing and framing process using narrative natural sound sources, while respecting the autonomy of the original sounds, may be used therefore not to obscure but to heighten our awareness of the environment" (1986: 38, my emphasis). There is nothing in Ferrari’s liner notes that indicates a narrative in this specific piece. Although Ferrari has described his approach elsewhere as an anecdotal style (Emmerson 1986: 43), he does not suggest a particular narrative for this piece, except to note that the recording was made at daybreak.
Emmerson says at the end of his article that his discussion refers primarily to those works in which timbre plays an important part. He has not discussed works:
which retain an "instrumental" emphasis on pitch relationships. Almost all pitch-oriented electroacoustic music belongs in the first area we examined: the discourse is exclusively aural ('abstract musical'), the syntax almost always entirely abstract (often serial at root) not based on intrinsic sound-object relations (1986: 39).
If we accept this statement, and note the larger number of examples in Emmerson's discussion of the aural-abstract area than in the other categories, it would seem that the norms of electroacoustic music emphasize abstract musical vocabulary and abstract syntax, which would make soundscape music abnormal in this genre.
4. Is Soundscape Subversive?
Returning to the initial quote, Truax claims that soundscape music is disruptive and even subversive to the norms of electroacoustic music. My research indicates that soundscape music certainly has an uneasy position within the international field of electroacoustic music. Some composers have worked with environmental sounds in context throughout the history of electroacoustic music. However, these composers' works are less evident in the canon than those of other composers. Soundscape composition, as a type of tape music, is valued less than other types of electroacoustic music such as electronic or computer music. Because of an emphasis in the field on technological innovation and the manipulation of sound objects, the aims of soundscape composition have been misunderstood as simply minimizing manipulation. The definition of soundscape as mimetic or programme music is specifically contrasted with an aural or musical approach in writings on electroacoustic aesthetics. I have never even seen soundscape composition defined in a general electroacoustic textbook, which means that perhaps at the moment it is less subversive than inaudible as a voice in electroacoustic music. Soundscape pieces are rarely included in the international anthologies that I reviewed. (Appendix C: Annotated Discography)
This is certainly less true in a Canadian context. The Canadian collections included far more examples of soundscape work than did international collections. The importance of the World Soundscape Project to Canadian electroacoustic composition is discussed by Guérin in the liner notes to the Radio Canada electroacoustic collection:
Murray Schafer founded the Sonic Research Studio at Simon Fraser University.... Schafer soon acquired international renown, not only for this music but also for the World Soundscape Project, which gave rise to the concept of the acoustic landscape. With the collaboration of several musicians and researchers such as Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp and Jean Piché, Schafer studied the acoustic environment of our cities and cultures, and proposed a new approach to the problems of noise and the acoustic quality of urban life, calling on composers to take an active part in the process. (liner notes 1990: 4, my emphasis)
Elsewhere, Guérin also acknowledges the importance of the WSP and the concept of acoustic ecology to the development of electroacoustic music in Québec. 13[13. Guérin, François. "Aperçu du genre électroacoustique au Québec." Circuit: Électroacoustique-Québec: L'Essor 4 (1-2), 1993: 15.] The work of the World Soundscape Project has given Canadian composers soundscape models that are not as available to composers elsewhere.
Although soundscape composition may be acknowledged as a valid form within Canadian electroacoustic music, it is not acknowledged to the same extent outside Canada. The work of soundscape composers appears less often than other types or electroacoustic music in the international collections that I reviewed, and in the international libraries that I surveyed. In the last four years, several soundscape CDs have been produced internationally. This is certainly a sign of some positive acceptance of the field. However, these productions are very recent, and are separated from other types of electroacoustic music. If the norms of the field had actually been changed by the existence of soundscape music, there would be significant numbers of soundscape pieces included in the canon.
The international norms of electroacoustic music divide the field into categories. Soundscape composition is categorized as concrète rather than electronic, mimetic rather than aural, programme rather than absolute, using a syntax that is abstracted from materials rather than abstract. For soundscape composition to be truly subversive in an international context, it will be necessary to deconstruct the origins of binary distinctions that tend to marginalize it. I undertake such a deconstruction, using feminist epistemology as a critical lens, in my PhD dissertation, "Sounding Places: Situated Conversations Through the Soundscape Compositions of Hildegard Westerkamp," (York University Graduate Programme in Music, 1999), in Chapter Three, "Knowing One's Place." In that chapter, I consider the problems with using binaries such as objective-subjective, universal-particular, or theory-practice as a way of structuring thought. I also discuss thegendering of such binary pairs, and how this gendering arises in discussions of electroacoustic music. In this same dissertation, I also undertake analyses of several of Westerkamp's soundscape works, integrating James Tenney's gestalt approach to music analysis with discussion of a wide range of listener responses and my own interpretation, based on contemporary cultural criticism. Through this work, I attempt to situate the position of Westerkamp's work in particular, and soundscape composition in general, within electroacoustic music, and to consider to what extent and in what ways her work both subverts and enriches what counts as electroacoustic music.
(This article first appeared in the SEAMUS Journal Spring/Summer 2000 and is re-printed with permission.)
Appendix A: Textbook Contents
Chapter Headings and Musical Examples, where included in the contents
Appleton, Jon H. and Ronald C. Perera, editors. The Development and Practice of Electronic Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1975.
History, Acoustics, Tape Studio, Voltage-Controlled Synthesizer, Digital Computers, Live-Electronic Music.
Musical Examples in the Tape Studio [by Gustav Ciamaga: 68-137].
Schaeffer-Etude aux objets (1967-Paris)
Stockhausen-Kontakte (1959-60-Germany)
Berio-Thema: Omaggio a Joyce (1958-Milan)
Bülent Arel-Stereo Electronic Music #2 (1970-Columbia-Princeton).
Michael Koenig-Terminus X (1967-Utrecht).
Chadabe, Joel. Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
The Early Instruments, The Great Opening Up of Music to All Sounds, Expansion of the Tape Music Idea, Out of the Studios, Computer Music, Synthesizers, The MIDI World, Inputs and Controls, Making Sound, Automata, Interaction, Where Are We Going?
Deutsch, Herbert A. Electroacoustic Music: The First Century. Miami, FL: Belwin Mills, 1993.
1st part: Cahill, Theremin, Martenot, Bode, Les Paul, Luening and Ussachevsky, Columbia, Raymond Scott, Minimoog, Matthews, Dave Smith and MIDI.
2nd part: Sound, Acoustics, Tape Recording, Synthesis, MIDI, Computers.
____. Synthesis: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Electronic Music. 2nd. ed. Sherman Oaks, CA: Alfred, 1985.
Musical vocabulary, History, Tape Recording Techniques, Electronic Synthesis, 2 chapters on synthesizers.
Griffiths, Paul. A Guide to Electronic Music. London: Thames and Hudson, 1979.
Introduction, out of the known [concrète], the electronic voice, out of the unknown [electronic], the instrument and its double [instrumental], rock, electronic instruments, live electronic ensembles, the music of the world [contemporary].
Horn, Delton T. The Beginner's Book of Electronic Music. New York: Tab, 1982.
Sound and Acoustics, Sound sources for electronic music, creating new waveshapes, filters, amplifiers, modulation, special purpose devices, controllers, designing an electronic music studio, recording, patching, electronic composition, musique concrète, sonic environments, live performance, synthesizers, computers and music, the future of electronic music.
Jacobs, Gabriel, and Panicos Georghiades. Music and New Technology: The MIDI Connection. Wilmslow, England: Sigma, 1991.
The MIDI studio, computers for music, MIDI theory, interfaces and accessories, sequencers, instruments, output, creative sound, practical sound, adding acoustic sounds, aids to composition, music notation software, musical education, selling music, postface.
Mackay, Andy. Electronic Music. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1981.
Part 1: The Instruments. The history, commercial studio, classic studio acoustic and synthesis, amplifiers and loudspeakers, electronic guitar, synthesizer, live electronics, multimedia rock, computers.
Part 2: The music. Electronics and the orchestra, tape music, the electronic studio, Europe and America, Electronics in Performance--Cage, The Revolution in Notation, Images of Nature, Music and Movement, the business.
Part 3: The Musicians.
Manning, Peter. Electronic and Computer Music. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; 1st ed. Clarendon Press, 1985.
The Background, to 1945
Developments from 1945 to 1960
Paris and Musique Concrète; Cologne and Elektronische Musik; Milan And Elsewhere in Europe; America
New Horizons in Electronic Design
The Voltage-Controlled Synthesizer
The Electronic Repertory from 1960
Works for Tape
Live Electronic Music
Rock and Pop Electronic Music
The Digital Revolution
Computer Music
Conclusion.
Mathews, Max, and John Pierce, editors. Current Directions in Computer Music Research. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989.
Article titles [examples]:
Compositional Applications of Linear Predictive CodingSynthesis of Singing by Rule
Simulating performance on a bowed instrument
Automatic counterpoint
The conductor program and mechanical baton.
Zivatar: a performance system.
Composing with Computers--A Survey of Some Compositional Formalisms and Music Programming Languages
Newquist, H.P. Music and Technology. New York: Billboard, 1989.
Sound, The history of electronic music technology, computers, the ins and outs of MIDI, synthesizers, drums guitars and winds, sampling, music software, signal processing, live performance, home and studio recording, the future of music technology.
Pellman, Samuel. An Introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music. Belmon, CA: Wadsworth Publications, 1994.
From Sound to Electricity and Back [acoustics]
music from tape recorders: Pierre Schaeffer, Ussachevsky and Luening
digital recording
multi-track recording and mixing
MIDI
Advanced MIDI networks
Tone Colors
Analog Sound Synthesis: Morton Subotnick, The Wild Bull
Digital Sound Sampling and Synthesis: David Jaffe, Silicon Valley Breakdown
Composing Electroacoustic Music: Edgard Varèse, Poème électronique; Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gesang der Junglinge; Milton Babbitt, Ensembles for Synthesizer, John Cage.
The Audience for Electroacoustic Music
Technology and Music: from the past to the future.
Schrader, Barry. Introduction to Electroacoustic Music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982.
Introduction
Musique Concrète and Tape Manipulation Techniques
Pierre Schaeffer--Etudes
Tape Loop Techniques: Steve Reich--Come Out
Cutting and Splicing: John Cage--Williams Mix
Speed Change: Vladimir Ussachevsky--Sonic Contours, Hugh Le Caine--Dripsody, Kenneth Gaburo--Exit Music II
Direction Change: Vladimir Ussachevsky--A Piece for Tape Recorder
Tape Delay: Otto Luening--Low Speed, Tod Dockstader--Luna Park
Combined tape manipulation techniques: Toru Taketmitsu--Water Music, Luciano Berio--Thema, Vladimir Ussachevsky--Of Wood and Brass, Krystof Penderecki--Psalmus
Musique Concrète composed from instrumental sources
Musique Concrète from unusual sound sources
Musique Concrète with minimal tape manipulation.
Electronic Music
Electroacoustic Musical Instruments: Thaddeus Cahill.
Optical sound tracks: Oskar Fischinger, John and James Whitney, Norman McLaren
Classical studio electronic music: Louis and Bebe Barron, Herbert Eimert, Stockhausen: Study II, Gesang der Junglinge.
NHK studio: Toshiro Mayazumi and Minao Shibata
RAI studio: Bruno Maderna and Henri Pousseur
Philips studio: Henk Badings, Edgard Varèse, Dick Raaijamakers
Utrecht: Frits Weiland, Gottfried Michel Koenig
Polish Radio: Boguslaw Schaffer, Synfonia
University of Illinois
Columbia-Princeton: Mario Davidovsky, Bulent Arel
University of Toronto: Pauline Oliveros
Yale: Mel Powell, Second Electronic Setting
Synthesizers
RCA: Milton Babbitt, Ensembles for Synthesizer
Voltage-Controlled
Buchla
Morton Subotnick: Touch
Syn-ket: John Eaton, Soliloquy for Syn-ket
Moog: Andrew Rudin, Tragoedia; Douglas Leedy, Entropical Paradise.
Development of Voltage-Controlled Synthesizer
Digital Synthesizers: Jon Appleton, Georganna's Farewell
Computer Music
Definition, the computer music studio
Early computer music: Max Mathews and Bell Labs; James Tenney, Stochastic Quartet, Jean-Claude Risset, Mutations 1
Princeton: J.K. Randall, Barry Vercoe, Charles Dodge: Speech Songs
Live/Electronic Music
John Cage: Imaginary Landscape #1; Edgard Varèse, Déserts; Bruno Maderna, Musica su Due Dimensioni; Henk Badings, Capriccio; Mario Davidovsky, Synchronisms; Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kontakte; Jacog Druckman, Animus II; Robert Ashley, The Wolfman; Roberto Gerhard, Collages; Earle Brown, Times Five; Steve Reich, Violin Phase.
Real-Time Live Electronic Music
John Cage, Cartridge Music; Donald Erb, Reconnaissance; Joel Chadabe, Echoes; Gordon Mumma, Cybersonic Cantilevers.
Interviews with Composers
Berio, Oliveros, Subotnick, Risset, Mumma.
Appendix B
Simon Emmerson: Relation of Language to Materials
- Abstract Syntax, Aural Discourse
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Studie I, Studie II; Milton Babbitt: Ensembles for Synthesizer; John Cage: Williams Mix, Fontana Mix. - Combination of abstract and abstracted syntax; Aural Discourse
Stockhausen: Momente. Jonathan Harvey: Mortuous Plango, Vivos Voco. - Abstracted Syntax, Aural Discourse.
Dennis Smalley: Pentes. Bernard Parmegiani: De Natura Sonorum. - Abstract syntax, combination of aural and mimetic discourse.
Luigi Nono. La Fabbricata Illuminata. - Combination of abstract and abstracted syntax, aural and mimetic discourses.
Michael McNabb: Dreamsong. - Abstracted syntax, combination of aural and mimetic discourse.
Bernard Parmegiani: Dedans-Dehors. - Abstract syntax, mimetic discourse
Stockhausen: Telemusik. - Combination of abstract and abstracted syntax, mimetic discourse.
Trevor Wishart: Red Bird. - Abstracted syntax, mimetic discourse.
Luc Ferrari: Presque Rien No. 1.
Appendix C
Annotated Discography:
Anthology of Australian Music: Electroacoustic Music. Canberra, Australia: Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology, 1996.
Computer [Max, algorithmic], mixed voice and instrument, synthesized. 6 pieces. no environmental references.
Anthology of Australian Music: Electroacoustic Music. Canberra, Australia: Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology, 1994.
Pressing, Gerrard, Cary, Vennonan, Burt, Worrall. No environmental references. Voice with MIDI keyboard, MAX, mixed instrumental and electronic, synclavier, digital and analog sound processors, processed instrumental sounds.
Cologne-WDR Early Electronic Music. CD 9106. BV Haast, 1990.
Herbert Eimert and Robert Beyer, Klang im unbegrentzen; Eimert, Raum; Eimert Klangstudie I; Eimert and Beyer, Klangstudie II; Eimert, Glockenspiel; Goeyvaerts, Komposition #5 and #7; Gredinger, Formanten I and II; Koenig, Klangfiguren; Pousseur, Seismogramme I and II; Hambraeus, Doppelrohr II; Evangelisti, Incontri di fasce sonore; Ligeti, Glissandi and Articulation; Kiebe, Interferenzen; Brun, Anepigraphe. Serial technique, electronic sources.
Cultures Electroniques. Laureats, Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Bourges, 1988-1991. 4 sections. Electroacoustic Music, Performers and Tape, Program Music, Live Electroacoustic Music. Magisterium--no category stated for each piece.
1991 Magisterium.
Bernard Parmegiani, France. Exercisme 3 (1986). Barry Truax , Riverrun (1986).
2 selections from 1975-77 competitions.
Change the World, It Needs Changing. (1973) Wilhelm Zobl (Austria). Exploration of vocal texts using electronic, vocal, various concrete sources. Created in experimental studios of Radio Poland. "The answers must be concrete, for truth is concrete and art must be based upon truth." (Hanns Eisler). James Dashow (USA-Italy) Whispers Out of Time (1975-76). Electronic music, electronic sources. Explores use of AM, FM and RM spectra, and various degrees of depth and spatiality.
1989 Magisterium and Electroacoustic Prizes [2 disks].
Leo Kupper [Belgium]. Francisco Kropfl [Argentina].Orillas--vocal sounds, struggling to come through. Richard Karpen [USA]. electroacoustic music mixed. Il Nome [voice and tape]. uses sound of breaking glass, not in an environmental context. Gilles Gobeil [Canada] Voix Blanche--ondes martenot and tape. Julio D'Esrivan. [Venezuela] Salto Mortal electronic.
disk 2. Christian Calon. Minuit. Takayuki Rai [Japan]. Piano and live electronics. Alistair MacDonald and Nicholas Virgo {UK}. [pro] Arrivals [Andrew Lewis, UK]. Unrecognizable sources.
1990 Electroacoustic Prizes.
Mura-Iki [explosive breath]. Kjell Johnson, Norway. Flute and computer manipulations of flute sounds. Paul Dolden Below the Walls of Jericho. Instrumental sounds multi-tracked [400 tracks]. Robert Rowe [US] Flood Gate--violin, piano, interactive computer system. Frances White, Valdrada, USA. Computer treatment of vocal sounds. Carmelo Saitta, Italy-Argentina, La Maga O El Angel de la Noche. Instrumental sounds digitized and processed. Frances White, Still Life With Piano, piano and tape. Gabriel Valverde, Argentina. Cumulos--electronic sounds which move and form like galactic cumulus.
Coda to 1990 disks. 1973-75 winners.
Eugeniusz Rudnik, Poland. Mobile [1972, 73 winner]. Speech fragments from news broadcasts "the initial material acquired such an abstract form that it could be used as a substance for a musical composition" combined with cello and singing. Zoltan Pongracz--Hungary. Mariphonia (1972, 74 winner] Sung vowels, declamations, weeping, laughter, radically transformed. Based on the dimensions of the body of his wife, Maria. Jose Vicente Asuar--Chile. Guararia Repons [1968, winner 75]. Instrumental sounds processed and electronic sounds. "electronic sounds can lead, paradoxically, towards primitive forms, towards sound forces that are found in nature, in a virgin and primitive world...All these sounds can be simulated and mastered by the electronic technology with musical end in view." Eduardo Kusnir [Argentina-Venezuela]. La Panaderia [1970, 75 winner] electronic sounds processed using graphic-analogic converter similar to that used by Xenakis.
Electroacoustic Prizes 1988.
This year marked the first time that the competition was divided into three sections, and the Magisterium was introduced. Paul Dolden, In the Natural Doorway We Crouch. instrumental sounds, multi-tracked. Robert Normandeau Rumeurs (Place Ransbeck). Acousmatic. Horacio Vaggione, Argentina. Tar. Bass clarinet and tape. James Aikman, and Armando Tranquilino, USA. Tragoidia/Komoidia. Instrumental sounds, electronically treated. Vivian Adelberg Rudow, USA. With Love (1986) for cello and tape. Tape uses vocal sounds and electronically produced sounds.
Disk 2. Ake Parmerud, Sweden, Repulse. Electronic and instrumental sounds, processed. Poulard Gabriel, France, The Memory of the Stones. Analog and digital electronic sources. Ake Parmerud, Sweden, Yan. Tape and percussion. Tape part is electronic sources. Ricardo Mandolini, Argentina, Microrreflexiones.Source is soprano voice, sometimes radically processed. Lothar Voigtlander, DDR, Maybug Fly. Uses extracts of known songs, at times radically processed.
Discontact! II. 1995. Montreal: Canadian Electroacoustic Community CD.
Ned Bouhalassa, Move ; Ian Chuprun Duet; Francis Dhomont L'électro (inédit); Daniel Feist Diptych; Michel Frigon Itinéraire au Crépuscule; Gilles Gobeil Le vertige Inconnu; Monique Jean Embrace; Kathy Kennedy Music Box Ii; Frank Koustrup Woodsotck to Detroit; Daniel Leduc Réponse impressioniste; Robert Normandeau Spleen; Er Polen .TRANse.SEPTem. Laurie Radford enclave; Jean Routhier Christof Migone and Michel Coté Sous les décombres...; Frédéric Roverselli L'Eveil de la cité; Claude Schryer 3 Radiolude; Pascale Trudel Le Poisson Qui Cache l'Oiseau; John Winiarz Jack in a Music Box; Egils Bebris Hockey Night in Opera; Gustave Ciamaga Possible Spaces No. 1; Janet Cross Pleasant Tasks; Rob XCruikshank Starting from the House, Working Outwards; Bruno Degazio Jolly; Robert Del Buonon Harmonica; Markos Lekkas Chronographica Delta; Andra McCartney Arcade '94; Sarah Peebles Nocturnal Premonitions; Randall Smith Fletting Wheels of Changes; E.C. Woodley Abide With Me; Wes Wraggettt Chants of the Apocalypse; Mara Zibens Siquppalavuk/It Sounds Like Breaking; Bentley Jarvis What Are You Talking About? Chris Meloche Extensions V; Sergio Villarreal On the Other Shore; Gregory Jay Lowe Song of the Turtle; Diana McIntosh Processions; Gordon Fitzell Zipper Music; Garth Hobden Inukshut; Shawn Pinchbeck The Children Are the Future; Steven Heimbecker I Beat John Sobol at Pool Last Night; Daniel Scheidt Big Piano: Storm; Darren Dopeland Darkness Colours; Martin Gotfrit Guitar with Hut20; Fred Semeniuk Spraying; Barry Truax Bamboo, Silk and Stone; Barbara Golden Flaming Toast; Yasuhiro Ohtani Brain Wash; Christian Calon en vol; Thomas Gerwin Epilogon; Francisco López El mundo depués de la invasion de los zorápteros; Daniel Zimbaldo Ritual of the Rose.
4 environmental references in program notes [but not environmental sounds used], 10 soundscape.
Electroacoustic Music. Montréal: Radio Canada International, 1990.
A four CD set, this collection was made by Radio Canada to document major works of electroacoustic music in Canada. Hugh Le Caine, [environmental sounds]Dripsody; Maurice Blackburn, Blinkity Blank; Gustav Ciamaga, pour M; Francis Dhomont, [er]Thème de la fuite; Bengt Hambraeus, [er]Intrada: "Calls"; Alcides Lanza, ...There is a way to sing it...; Kevin Austin, [soundscape]Tears of Early Morning Rain and Cat Fade Away; Sergio Barroso, La Fiesta; John Celona, Cordes de nuit; Yves Daoust, [er]Adagio; Marcelle Deschênes, [er]Big Bang II; David Keane, Lumina; Diana McIntosh, [er]...and 8:30 in Newfoundland; David Jaeger, Fancye; Larry Lake, Israfel; James Montgomery, Saigon; Bruce Pennycook, The Desert Speaks: Praescio-III; Jean Piché, Taxis to Burning Sky; Ann Southam, [er]Fluke Sound; Barry Truax, Arras; Hildegard Westerkamp, [soundscape]Cricket Voice; Serge Arcuri, Murmure; Christian Calon, La disparition; Bruno Degazio, HeatNoise; Jean-François Denis/Eric Brown, [er]Fréquents passages; Paul Dolden, Below the Walls of Jericho; Gilles Gobeil, [soundscape??]Rivage; Robert Normandeau, Matrechka; Daniel Scheidt, Obeying the Laws of Physics; Claude Schryer, [soundscape]Chasse. 1 environmental sounds, 7 environmental references, 4 soundscape.
Electroacoustic Music. Stockholm, Sweden: Swedish Information Center, 1993.
Akos Rózmann - Klagovisor [inst]; Akemi Ishijima (Fem) - Urskogen [inst ER]; Jens Hedman and Erik Mikael Karlsson - Anchorings/Arrows - inst; Örjan Sandred - Det tredje perspektivet - computer; William Brunson - Inside Pandora's Box - voice and processing; Tamas Ungvary - Gipsy Children's Giant Dance with Ili Fourier - computer; Åke Parmerud - Krén - electronic; Rune Lindblad - Worship. Acousmatic; Jonas Broberg - Buccharelli's Lamento - synthesized; Johan Mowinckel --Stanna! acousmatic; Erik Mikael Karlsson La Disparition de l'Azur. Thomas Bjelekborn - Within Without. Voice and instrumental processed; Sten Hanson Suite Brasiliera Inst processed.
Electro Acoustic Music: Classics. Neuma 450-74 CD, 1990.
Includes Edgard Varèse: Poème Electronique (1957-8). This, his last completed work, uses similar sound sources to earlier pieces: bells and sirens, human voices, mechanical and percussive timbres. Milton Babbitt's Phonemena (1975) is scored for soprano and synthesized tape. Roger Reynolds' Transfigured Wind IV. Electronic. Milton Babbitt's Philomel, for soprano, recorded soprano and electronically synthesized sound. Iannis Xenakis' Mycenae-Alpha was composed in 1978 on the UPIC system at the Centre d'Etudes de Mathematique et Automatique Musicales in Paris. "Xenakis' music depends on giving aural life to shapes and patterns of movement, whether invisible, [sic] as in a cloud, or invisible, as in the movement of molecules in a gas. Converting these images to sound requires a facility with complex mathematics. In 1976, Xenakis began a way to side-step those complex calculations and developed a drawing board which is attached to a computer which converts images into sound".
Electroacoustic Music II. Acton, Mass: Neuma 450-75 CD, 1991.
Gerald Shapiro. Phoenix, sung by Electric Phoenix. Jonathan Berger, Island of Tears. Synthesized sounds, ref. to immigration to US. James Dashow-Disclosures of cello and computer. Instrumental. John Duesenberry, Agitato. MIDI. Peter Child, Ensemblance. instrumental. No reference to how collection came about.
Electroclips. 1990. Montreal: empreintes DIGITALes, Montreal. CD.
Electroacoustic works by 25 composers from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Michel Smith, style de bougalou, instrumental and voice; Craig Harris, Somewhwere Between, inst; Jean-Francois Denis, Point-Virgule, acousmatic; John Oswald, Bell Speeds, acousmatic; Yves Daoust, mi bémol, acousmatic with ER; Claude Schryer, Les Oiseaux de Bullion, soundscape; Martin Gotfrit, The Machine's Four Humours, electronic ER [or soundscape of the machine]; John Oliver, Marimba Dismembered, instrumental; Zack Settel, Skweeit-Chupp, fm synthesis, voice and percussion; Stéphane Roy, Résonances d'Arabesques, acousmatic; Daniel Scheidt, What If, computer; Bruno Degazio, Humoresque 901534, algorithmic; Richard Truhlar, Simulant, electronic; Gilles Gobeil, Associations Libres, inst; Robert Normandeau, Bédé, acousmatic vocal; Laurie Radford, Landlocked, soundscape; Christian Calon and Claude Schryer, Prochaine Station, soundscape; Hildegard Westerkamp, Breathing Room, soundscape; Amnon Wolman, Man-bridge, ER vocal; Francis Dhomont, Qui est la? acousmatic; Roxanne Turcotte, Minisérie, not quite acousmatic--narrative, uses some environmental sounds, ER reflection on movie sounds; Christian Calon, Temps Incertains, Dan Lander, I'm looking at my hand, not exactly soundscape either, more narrative ER; Javier Alvarez, Mambo a la Braque, instrumental; Charles Amirkhanian, Bajanoom, instrumental.
5 soundscape works, all Canadian. 4 environmental references [3 Canadian]
Electronic Music. Turnabout TV 34036S LP, 1966.
Ilhan Mimaroglu, Agony. electronic [Columbia-Princeton]; John Cage, Fontana Mix; Luciano Berio, Visage. vocal gestures and inflections - Cathy Berberian.
Electronic Music. Folkways. University of Toronto, 1967.
Dripsody. Hugh Le Caine. acousmatic; Dance R4/3 Myron Schaeffer electronic; Summer Idyll Arnold Walter, Harvey Olnick, Myron Schaeffer. electronic; Noesis Robert Aitken. electronic and some concrete sections; Fireworks Val Stephen electronic; The Orgasmic Opus Val Stephen. electronic; Collage J.D. Robb electronic; Pinball. Jean Ivey Inferno Victor Grauer electronic.
Lisboa! a soundscape portrait. WDR CD ZP 9401, 1994.
Prologue, Arrival, Trams/Soundmarks and Signals, Cemitèrio dos Prazeres, Fado/Voices, Mercado da Ribeira Nova, Hilding from noise, Bairro Alto and Bica Soundwalks, Insider River Tejo, Benfica plays the Alfama is listening, Marchas Populares, Epilogue. All by Michael Rusenberg and Hans Ulrich Werner.
Madrid A soundscape collective. WDR CD ZP 9501.
Pedro Elías Mamou Iguales para hoy; Michael Rusenberg El ritmo del ciego; Hans Ulrich Werner Metason; Francisco Lopez Un recorrido bajo el engranaje de la máquina de viento y arean; Mamou/Rusenberg/Werner/Lopez Cadavre exquis; José Luis Carles/Isabel Lopez Barrio Latidos, Escenas sonoras de Madrid.
Musique Concrète. Editions de la boîte à musique, 1960. LP.
Diamorphoses, Iannis Xenakis. clock sounds transformed acousmatically. Etude Aux Sons Tendus. Luc Ferrari acousmatic; Ambiance I Michel Philippot Acousmatic; Aspect Sentimental Henri Sauguet, acousmatic; Etude Aux Sons Pierre Schaeffer, acousmatic; Etude Aux Accidents Luc Ferrari instrumental--rhythmic agitations of a note of prepared piano; Etude Aux Allures. Pieere Schaeffer acousmatic.
Musique Experimentale II. Editions de la boîte à musique, 1960.?? actually after 1963 LP. GRM
Luc Ferrari Tautologos I Liner notes focus on syntax. Acousmatic but sounds electronic; Ivo Malec Reflets. acousmatic; Earle Brown Times Five. Instrumental; Francois Bayle. Vapeur. Instrumental; Francois-Bernard Mache. Terre de Feu. Philippe Carson-Turmac.
New Electronic Music from Leaders of the Avant-Garde.Columbia Records 7051, 1967.
Includes John Cage: Variations II (1961), performed by David Tudor. This is a composition indeterminate of its performance, for any number of players, any sound-producing means. David Tudor's realization is for amplified piano, using a contact microphone and phono cartridge, as well as various materials such as plastics and toothpicks to stroke, scrape and pluck the strings. Milton Babbitt's Ensembles for Synthesizer ""exemplifies the distinguishing characteristics of Babbitt's composition, notably his adherence to the twelve pitch classes of the tempered scale, and the minimal use of sound material outside this domain. The work demonstrates the kind of high-speed virtuosity of which the synthesizer is capable" (liner note, David Behrman). Henri Pousseur's Trois Visages de Liège (1961) uses electronic sounds with voice and one pizzicato chord. The words are derived from poetry including the street names of Liège, Belgium.
New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media.Arch Records 1750, 1977. Includes Johanna M. Beyer's Music of the Spheres (1938), scored for lion's roar, triangle, strings and electrical instruments, realized by the Electric Weasel Ensemble. Anne Lockwood's World Rhythms (1975) [soundscape] Pauline Oliveros' Bye Bye Butterfly (1965) is a live electronic piece. The compositional mix includes excerpts from Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Laurie Spiegel's Appalachian Grove (1974) is one of her first pieces of computer-generated tape music, composed after her study of Max Mathews' GROOVE programming system. Ruth Anderson's Points (1973-4) is built purely from the sine tone, which Anderson describes as "a single frequency focal point of high energy." Laurie Anderson's New York Social Life and Time to Go (for Diego), both from 1977, are early examples of Anderson's anecdotal critiques of American culture. 1 soundscape 1 environmental reference
Prix International Noroit-Léonce Petitot 1991 de composition musicale acousmatique. Arras: Noroit, 1992.
1st prize Robert Normandeau, Eclats de voix--acousmatic, some short recognizable sections. 2nd prize Ake Parmerud, Les Objets Obscurs. acousmatic--single sound sources. Todor Todoroff, Obsession--mention. Acousmatic--fragmented texts, processed water sounds. Serge Morand, Naives--acousmatic. Philippe Le Goff, Meta Incognita. "Anirniq is spirit."
Soundscape Brasilia Zen Studio Brasilia, 1994.
Juliane Berber and Christian M. Bassay Blum Ressonância; Celso Araujo, Marcelo Araujo and Joao Claudio Silveira D Ambulante; Claudio Vinicius and Bene Fonteles Dreamwalk; Fernando Corbal Exomapascape; Damian Keller Brasil[espaco]ia; Ernesto Donas Goldstein, Juan carlos Arango and Luis Francisco Latorraca BrassIlha; Luis Roberto Pinheiro Planos; Hans Peter Kuhn HP's Estacionamento.
The Vancouver Soundscape 1973 1996. Burnaby BC: Cambridge Street Records CSR-2CD 9701, 1997.
Ocean Sounds, Squamish Narrative, Entrance to the Harbour, Harbour Ambience, The Music of Horns and Whistles, Vancouver Soundmarks, Homo Ludens — Vancouverites at Play; The Music of Various City Quarters; New Year's Eve in Vancouver Harbour; On Acoustic Design. All by World Soundscape Project.
disk 2: Darren Copeland Recharting the Sense; Sabine Breitmaster The Hidden Tune; Hans Ulrich Werner Vanscape Motion; Barry Turax Pacific Fanfare; Claude Schryer Vancouver Soundscape Revisited.
World Soundscape Project collection: The Vancouver Soundscape, Soundscapes of Canada (10 one-hour CBC programs), Radio Program About Radio Programs, Howard Broomfield; Maritime Sound Diary, Barry Truax; Bells of Perce, Bruce Davis; Soundscape Study, Barry Truax; Play and Work, Bruce Davis.
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