The basic idea for Luminescence is revealed by the opening sound, an F above middle C, which is modified by a filter that moves from a point above the second harmonic to about the sixth harmonic and back with a speed that starts slowly (at zero), increases up to a moderate rate of speed, and then decreases to the original point. This creates a "shimmering" effect that suggested the title to me. Each tone in the composition undergoes similar spectral changes, produced by moving a filter from one point in the spectrum to another, and back, in a varying periodic motion. The resulting effects sound different depending on where in the overtone spectrum the change occurs. There is always an interaction between individual overtones, which can be heard as separate tones, and both other overtones and the fundamental frequencies of other pitches in the same musical context. The rates at which the spectral changes occur are always in the subsonic range, and they are several octaves (nine or ten) below the fundamental frequencies of the notes on which they occur. The frequency continuum is thus structured on multiple levels: subsonically, in the rates of change of filters; in the mid-range, …

Recording of Liliane Donskoy's La légende des merveilles du monde. I - Crystal: Bell rubbed with infinitesimal elements that are superimposed causing falls of the inexistent harmonics to the attentiveness of isolated elements. After a break. II - Rock: Sudden burst of macroscopic forms. Some rather short "frozen" sounds, interspersed, gradually lengthen, crumble, melt, merge, and little by little sink into a furious atmosphere, opaque magma. III - The Grotesque Figures of Fire: A random deaf rumble, fine loops, made of crunches and cracklings, on top of strange figures a little irritating like the contact of the flame. Breaths, slight atmospheric whistles, clouds bring: IV - Life in the water: Drops in falls, waters in disorder, worked in various ways, or succession of drops in organized "scales." Multiple shouting figures, often preceded "accompanied" (in the old sense of a kind of counter-subject) by an element imposing the image sound of a circle in a pocket (like the sound that introduces this scene and from which the first drop reflects) or still a shudder of city, brief or not. This entire episode, in several enchained sequences, ends in the swallowing of the sum of these multiple small energies, becoming a unique …

Recording of Dexter Morrill's Six dark questions performed by Neva Pilgrim, soprano. The piece is designed for soprano and a single electronic speaker. It is a voice drama in which the questions form an inquiry into the structure of the personality. At the outset of the piece, both singer and electronic device are defined in lifeless, mechanical terms; but as the questions are put forward one by one, more and more is revealed about the well hidden emotions in the individual. At first, the singer is unwilling to play the question and answer game, and even when she finally begins to respond, her answers are stock cliches. However, she quickly finds that when she gives a superficial or false response, the speaker falls silent. The quality and weight of this silence grows in meaning through the piece. When, on the other hand, she reveals herself, the speaker joins in accompaniment of increasing complexity and intensity after the first tentative beginnings. The questions are "dark" for two reasons. Firstly, they are suggestive and symbolic rather than open and direct. Secondly, they raise increasingly serious human problems. The first two animal questions, the singer's associations for cats and horses are relatively simple. …

Recording of Robert Normandeau's La renard et las rose. "Le renard et la rose" (The Fox and the Rose) is a concert suite composed from two sound sources: the music commissioned for an adaptation for radio of the book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (produced by Odile Magnan for Radio Canada in 1994) and whose principal themes are found in it, and the voices of the actors who collaborated in the recording of the radio adaptation. It is the third work in a cycle begun in 1991 (éclats de voix and Spleen [recorded on the album Tangram, empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 9419/20, and IMED 9920] were the first two) and is based exclusively on the use of the voice; more specifically on onomatopoeia, which is the only form in human language that corresponds directly to the designated objects, gestures or feelings as sounds, rather than as the abstract representations that are words. In each of the work's five parts a state or feeling experienced in adulthood is associated with a sonic framework: Babillage et rythme (Babbling and Rhythm), Nostalgie et timbre (Nostalgia and Tone), Colre et dynamique (Anger and Dynamics), Lassitude et espace (Weariness and Space), Sérénité et texture …

This is a personal recollection of a Paris which I never knew. It is an anecdotal remembrance of Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier with more then a nod to Raymond Roussel and filtered through the radio of Jean Cocteau’s taxi. This is the Fourier of the mathematical memoir, On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies, a somewhat controversial view at that time in which the author described the diffusion of heat by a partial differential equation which could be solved using an infinite series of trigonometric functions. The equations for Fourier analysis as it has since become known, also turned out to be very useful in the analysis and resynthesis of sound (which is very much like slow heat), and as such could be described as an infinite series of sine waves of different amplitudes, frequency and phase. Joseph Fourier was also the scientific advisor for Napoleon during the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. Beside his papers on mathematics, Fourier spent several years writing the Description of Egypt in 25 volumes and which Napoleon extensively rewrote, essentially changing history before it was allowed to be published. With its second edition however, Napoleon himself had become written out of the …

Recording of Serena Tamborini's Per cieli e piani. The original idea was suggested by the experimental wish of demonstrating that a multiform utilization of few elements could create a definite form. Starting from a series of harmonic transposed relation, which could be stressed or implied, used in every level of the work, I have created a complex tissue of relations that represents the final result. T.S. Eliot in the poem "The Four Quartets" explains, both in the title and in the context, the analogy between poetry and musical composition. Besides, Eliot wrote in 1943, in "The Music of Poetry”: ".... I think that a poet can learn a lot studying music… I am sure that the sense of rhythm and of the structure are the musical features that most strictly affect a poet… I think that it is possible for a poet to work in a system which is parallel to that of the musical composer..." From a strictly poetical point of view, the Four Quartets are built on a contrast between the vision of time, like a plain continuous development, and the concept of meta-historical being, peculiar to our civilization: Man is placed in a temporal flow, fed by …

Riverrun creates a sound environment in which stasis and flux, solidity and movement co-exist in a dynamic balance. The corresponding metaphor is that of a river, always moving yet seemingly permanent. From the smallest rivulet to the fullest force of its mass, a river is formed from a collection of countless droplets and sources. So too with the sound in this composition which bases itself on the smallest possible 'unit' of sound in order to create larger textures and masses. The title is the first word in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Riverrun is entirely realized with the method of sound production known as granular synthesis. With this method small units or 'grains' of sound are produced, usually with very high densities (100-2000 grains/sec), with each grain having a separately defined frequency and duration. When the grains all have similar parameters, the result is a pitched and amplitude modulated sound, but when random variation is allowed in a parameter, a broad-band noise component is introduced. All sounds in this piece were generated with real-time synthesis by the DMX-1000 Digital Signal Processor, up to a maximum density of 2375 grains/second. However, in many cases, lesser densities were also used since often the …

A recording of John Celona's Music in Circular Motions. "Music in circular motions" was produced using DISTRA, a real-time polyphonic 4-channel spatial movement computer performance program created by the composer for a New England Digital Synthesizer at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The control language for DISREA is called "Moxie, written by Doug Collinge, and is a set of XPL procedures which deal with events in real-time. In DISTRA, the composer uses a keyboard and CRT terminal through which programmable controls are utilized during composing and performing. Pitch (available in equal - and 31- tone temperament as well as just intonation) is input through the keyboard and orchestrated in real-time with varieties and variations of spatial movement, multi-segment envelopes, wave shaping FM, volume controls, filter effects, delays, and tempo changes. In addition, several automated routines are available procuring program switching of spatial distribution patterns, volume cycles, sequential execution of envelop arrays, modulation ration and index arrangements, Changes may be input on a micro-level (e.g., replacing c:m rations or selecting new envelopes during ongoing sound events) or on a macro-level where larger compositional contexts are manipulated. Thus, the composer operates synchronously on three interactive levels: performer (playing instruments-conductor (shaping and …

Recording of Daniel Steven Crafts Snake Oil Symphony. The Snake Oil Symphony (a metaphor for capitalist social relations), was composed in 1981. The first three "movements" of the Symphony establish the basic themes, along with an underlying rhythmic structure that crops up again and again throughout, as the tempo and pitch of phrases are used to create a sort of melody. Part One presents the surface reality of society as an endless movement of buying and selling, through the use of clips from a sales instruction talk, ads and so on. Woven through this is an ironic verbal-musical motif: "Now you can have this amazing new symphony, right in your own home," (which parodies cheap TV commercials), with piano notes underscoring the spoken pitches. The word "symphony" refers not only to a single work of art, but in the greater sense to "a mighty symphony of prosperity" (i.e. present social and cultural institutions). With the same phrase the composer is also letting the listener know that he knows his own work, too, is a commodity on the culture market. Part Two is built around a multiple pun on the words "alien" and "alienation." "Alienation" originally meant "sale." Marx used the …

Sud was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, on the initiative of the GRM (INA Musical Research Group), where the play was performed in 1984-1985. The piece mainly uses sounds recorded in the Calanques massif, south of Marseille, and also sounds synthesized by computer in Marseille. These sounds were processed by computer at the GRM, using programs developed by Benedict Mailliard and Yann Geslin. The piece was performed on 4 tracks - the 2 track reduction was done for CD recording. At first, and by the moment, the piece is presented as a "phonography" - but sounds are usually altered by digital transformations. Thus the dynamic wave profile, which opens the room, permeates the three movements. The piece is built from a small number of "germinal" sounds: recordings of sea, insects, birds, chimes of wood and metal, short "gestures" played at the piano or synthesized at the computer; I made this material proliferate by combining various transformations: modulate, filter, color, reverberate, spatialize, mix, hybridize. Cezanne wanted to "unite curves of women with shoulders of hills": similarly, the crossed synthesis makes it possible to work "in the very bone of the nature" (Michaux), to produce hybrids, chimeras - of birds and …

Recording of Rajmil Fischman's Alma latina. The composer has this to say on the background of the piece, and of this piece itself: Time is a strange background against which our lives develop. Linearity is usually out of the question and memory cunningly warps and re-invents our past experience to such an extent that the latter becomes alive, threading between past and future. It has been forty years since my personal thread started, more than twenty since I left the birthplace and a long time since my last visit. During all this span - especially after leaving and finding other homes - the conglomeration of conscious and subconscious moments bubbled out, combined with new experiences and created labyrinthine inner passages in which sounds, images, smells and other sensations from different periods mixed and evolved into new forms. Music which was previously dismissed and undervalued suddenly acquired a new significance. Strong images of pain and joy amidst the contrasting richness and poverty of a South American city became representative of a historico-political situation. Taste and scent of food, combined with the physical sensation of dance movement, turned into cornerstones of thought about the essence of human condition. All of these are …

The Snake Oil Symphony (a metaphor for capitalist social relations, was composed in 1981. The first three "movements" of the Symphony establish the basic themes, along with an underlying rhythmic structure that crops up again and again throughout, as the tempo and pitch of phrases are used to create a sort of melody. Part One presents the surface reality of society as an endless movement of buying and selling, through the use of clips from a sales instruction talk, ads and so on. Woven through this is an ironic verbal-musical motif: "Now you can have this amazing new symphony, right in your own home," (which parodies cheap TV commercials), with piano notes underscoring the spoken pitches. The word "symphony" refers not only to a single work of art, but in the greater sense to "a mighty symphony of prosperity" (i.e. present social and cultural institutions). With the same phrase the composer is also letting the listener know that he knows his own work, too, is a commodity on the culture market. Part Two is built around a multiple pun on the words "alien" and "alienation." "Alienation" originally meant "sale." Marx used the terms to describe the way people give up …

Recording of Jean-Claude Risset's Songes. Songes was produced at IRCAM with a variation of the MUSIC V program. The original program, designed by Max Mathews was extended by John Gardner and Jean-Louis Richer so that it can process digitized sounds as well as synthesize sounds. The piece uses some sound materials from Mirages, a piece for 16 instruments and tape commissioned by the Donnaueschingen Festival (1978). The title suggests the dreamlike nature of adventures set on another scene: adventures from an absent, imaginary world. The identity of sound beings that sometimes escape material constraints dissolves in the continuity of textures, in the flow of deformations, displacements, liquefactions. At the beginning of the piece, the computer was used to assemble, superimpose, tile five motifs - these motifs, each lasting 2 to 5 seconds, were recorded separately by 10 instrumentalists of the Ensemble InterContemporain. In addition to the superimpositions, the instrumental sounds have undergone modifications governing in particular spatial effects. The harmonic structures of these patterns, repeated in a quasi-obsessive way, are repeated in a high harmonic fabric, then in inharmonic synthetic sounds. The components of these sounds can, depending on their temporal profile, merge into simulacra bells or dissociate into fluid …

Recording of Boguslaw Schaeffer's Symphonie. "Towards the end of 1964, I began work on a large format electronic work. From the beginning, I called it Symphony, not to obey the spirit of contradiction, which is a way of creating a long time out of use, but being convinced that this name is likely to new applications, there especially where it is a matter of simultaneously resonating a sound matter of very disparate origin, thus proceeding by symphonic means. That was our idea of departure. Yet, already in the course of composition, I suffered the magic of the adopted denomination, so that at the end of a certain time I ended up asking myself to write a work of a structure, a format and a symphonic emotional message. Therefore, the essential problem was not to use the electronic language to express only traditional musical ideas, but rather to proceed by truly electronic means without ever going beyond the framework. Moreover, it was a question of rediscovering auditory laws, of developing new means of expression from an electronic mode of thinking and proceeding. Both in its original conception and in its accomplishment, of which a considerable share of merit belongs to Mr. …

Recording of Ipke Starke's Die Unsichtbare front. The composer notes the following: The spatial installation of this work was designed and realized for the highest space in the building of the Technical Collections of the city of Dresden. This place just below the dome of the tower with its exceptional view of the city and the nearby radio tower is part of the work. The composition itself consists of 16 minutes of music on magnetic tape, constantly looped, spatialized and broadcast through the 7 loudspeakers configured in the space. The piece is based on modulations of extremely high frequencies, up to the limits of the audible, whose dynamic degree barely reaches the threshold of perception. What is significant vis-à-vis the content of the play is their interruption by documentary material: news in different languages, interviews, recordings of demonstrations, reports and documents from the archives, and synthetically generated or processed sounds of associative character. This confrontation of situational elements with documentary elements generates contradictory tensions in space. The architectural form of this one is also substantial: first of all, the space is presented in a neutral way, not done on purpose for pleasure. The exposed location of the dome provides openness, …

WITH LOVE, 1986, a fantasy for live cello and decorated cello cases, in memory of Myrtle Hollins Adelberg, by Vivian Adelberg Rudow, won FIRST PRIZE in the 14th International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Bourges,1986, program division. It won with straight ten's. Rudow was the first woman to win a first prize in the Program division of the Bourges competition and the first American woman to win any first prize. This work was composed for live cello and stereo tape. For the first performance, January 1986, Paula Skolnick-Virizlay, cellist at the Baltimore Museum of Art, two separate tracks were transmitted to two separate speakers, one inside decorated cello case "Electronic Mom", the other inside decorated cello case"Electronic Woman". Amalie Rothschild, Baltimore artist, created the cello cases. The sounds coming from the different speakers represented the feelings of that specific woman. All the sounds from "Unmarried, spirited, flamboyant, "ELECTRONIC WOMAN" were electronically reproduced by the composer. The sounds from "ELECTRONIC MOM" were spoken thoughts from 23 people in interviews about their moms and moms sharing their thoughts about being mothers, original music composed for the work, plus fragments of earlier works by Ms. Rudow. The cellist sat between the two ladies and the …

Recording of Francis Dhomont's "Sous le regard d'un soleil noir" )"Under the Glare of a Black Sun") performed by the speakers Pierre Louet, Marthe Forget, and Arthur Bergeron. This is the original recording of the piece that was created in 1982. The text is primarily by Ronald D. Laing and the piece also features quotes by Plato, Franz Kafka, and K. Georg Buchner. The eight sections of the work were inspired by reading the work of the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ronald D Laing. The eight sections of the piece are as follows: 1. Pareil a un voyageur perdu (Like a Traveler Who's Been Lost); 2. Engloutissement (Engulfment); 3. Arrête! Arrête! Elle me tue (Stop it. Stop it. She's Killing Me); 4. Implosion; 5. Le moi divisé (The Divided Self); 6. Citadelle intérieure (Inner Citadel); 7. Pétrification (Petrification); 8. Le message quand vient le soir (The Message at the Coming of Night). The piece focuses on the experience of schizophrenia, something Dhomont calles a "particular form of human tragedy... the dissolution of the being and the exploding of personality, where a universe of implacable confinement is constructed." The "clinical commentaries" of the narrators, as the comments of a therapist/coryphaeus (though not …