Recording of Jonathan Berger's An Island of Tears.

Subterranean Network, commissioned by Hartt School of Music, is an electronic work which seeks to evoke a sense of the experience of the tunnel fighting in Cu Chi during the Vietnam War. These tunnels, from which the Viet Cong fought much of the war, were dark, narrow, poorly ventilated hell holes, filled with booby traps and inconceivable real and psychological terrors which plagued the American soldiers, known as tunnel rats, whose duty it was to explore them. These men, if not killed by booby traps, snakes, spiders or scorpions, were in constant threat of ambush in the tunnels.

Music for Viola, Cello, and Tape was written and premiered in Paris in 1985. This work brings together two extremely different aspects of my musical experience: improvisational music and music involving computers. These two musical domains, representing intuition and rationale - opposites yet complements - hold a great deal of interest for me. This trio explores the interactions among three soloists, one being a tape of computer-generated sounds; in which no part plays a secondary role. The two-channel tape, was composed at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, The Netherlands. A computer, using stochastic procedures, was involved on every level of the composing process, from sound-synthesis algorithms to higher-level compositional decision-making. All programs were written by the composer in an assembly or high-level language and used in a real-time context. The compositional algorithm is based on an elaboration of Brownian movement, also known as a random walk. A tendency controlling pitch and duration of sound events delineates overall formal characteristics of the tape. Duration and pitch are tied parameters during the first section. At a certain point in the development of the tendency the two parameters, pitch and duration, become independent of one another. In time, the duration/pitch tendency becomes clearly …

It is a piece for 4-track tape, composed between November 1985 and August 1986 at CEMAMu (Centre d'Etudes de Mathématiques et Automatique Musicale) in Paris, using the UPIC, a graphically oriented computer system designed by Iannis Xenakis. The mixing was done in October 1986 at the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio and Television in Warsaw with Ewa Guziolek as sound engineer. With the UPIC system, the composer is able to design all aspects of the music by means of an electro-magnetically sensitive drawing table. By means of a digital tape drive and D/A converters, data and sounds can be heard and stored, and higher level mixing of sounds and sections of the score can be done digitally. In "Voyage", there is a concentration on continual transformations of all parameters of the musical material; waveforms, dynamic forms, pitches, textures. For large sections of the piece there are five 'voices', which are similar but independant, and with rhythmic structures which are related to each other with the proportions 9:10:11:12:13. In the spatial projection, the four channels are divided into left and right, each side being in stereo (i.e front and back). Voices 9 and 11 are heard on one side, and …

Composed in the Laboratory of Investigation and Musical Production (LIPM) of the Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Was composed with a Synclavier II. The original mixture was composed in four channels. The sonorous material was elaborated from 34 basic timbres generated from sinusoidal sounds, harmonic, inharmonic spectrum or colored noise bands. The different structures happen one after another, without stopping.

A universe. Self-contained. Where timbre were the principal item. To force it into another state; apart; and let it, in accordance with its own laws, return to its rest; and then to begin to compose. Bend and vary, change and break. To alter some kind of perfection in order to attain something else. Two main items shared the conception of this piece: the possible richness in perception provoked by the duality: whole versus parts; and the possibility of mapping into musical events the behaviour of an abstract system of interrelated objects when following an stochastic process towards its equilibrium. My first step was to define, in terms of a macro-static situation, the final state of my system. This final structure defined the harmonic, dynamic and timbrical aspects of nine different "objects" (fundamental, formant areas, subharmonics,modulations and relative microcomportment of these characteristics within one instance). The relative durations in the equilibrium of these objects, as well as the whole duration of the piece, the structural points defining the macroform, and other characteristics of the whole (hierarchies, symmetries...) were evolved from this final state of the system. {I was careful to define very colourful and individualistic microbehaviours for these objects, whilst, on …

"Sound recycling" would be the perfect term for Gerald Trimmel's composition cycle called "Palimpsest". When Trimmel performed his first "Palimpsest" in 1985, he did not consider this work as a final result. The following compositions were characterized by various procedures of sound accumulations and structural rearrangements. A lot of acoustic ready mades and complex structured sound elements were inserted, which first covered up and by and by extinguished the older ones. So the shrinking and dissolving fragments and the "young" and powerful soundscapes appear as antagonists of something like "aesthetics of dissapearance." The composition principle is based on the Palimpsest-technique (from the greek "palimpsestos"), which was used until the Middle Ages: manuscript pages or books, that have been written on, were scraped off, and used again.

"Alternances" for violin, clarinet, piano, percussion, cello and tape was written in 1985, the electroacoustic effects being made in the studio of Romanian Radio-Television. The room consists of seven sections, including sections 2, 4 and 6 on tape. The 6th section on tape and "life" is the recurrence of the second section, of the same existing correspondence between sections 1 and 7, 3 and 4. The dominant idea of ​​the work is that of the imbsication of parallel music, with particular character and evolution. The music "life" is transformational, while that recorded in advance is non-transformational and has the appearance of a sound plasma; the first is discontinuous and the second - continuous. From the expressive point of view, the sounds "life" suggest belonging to the world of appearances; on the contrary, the sounds recorded on tape suggest a world of essences, permanence.

Recording of John Elmsly's, Triptych. In this work very simple technology is explored for musical results: the tape part was created using nothing more than one synthesizer, sequenced and overdubbed in real-time on a multi-track tape recorder. In all three pieces the aim was to write enjoyable but challenging music where the tape enlarges the performing space for the solo trumpet.

Recording of Simo Lazarov's Pulsations. Described as "Pulsations of the Space" by the composer.

Around us are time bombs, latent disasters, wars and calamities - but: "From the world does not perish". The song is composed from the song of Zahra Leander and archival documents.

Recording of Boyko Stoyanov's Pairs.

The result of a long stay in the city of Cuenca during the summer of 1985 and a reflection of various experiences. In the first place, the influence of the city and its impressive landscape is undeniable. In addition, I wanted to pay a cryptic tribute to the writer Villiers de L'Isle-Adam: his short story The secret of ancient music, which is part of his cruel tales, awakened in me the fascination for this unusual an instrument of the nineteenth century called "Chinese hat", fascination that led me to build myself a sophisticated version that I called "big Chinese hat" because of its considerable dimensions. This instrument is the origin of agglomerates of concrete sounds that collide, move, disintegrate and blend together with other sounds of electronic origin into a magical mix throughout the work.

"Tel" is a word used in the Middle East and Bulgaria to say "hill" where layers of ruins mark the ebb and passage of historical cycles. All the musical material in this piece comes (or in a sense is reconstructed) from a matrix sequence of sound artifacts lasting approximately one and a half seconds. To create this micro-sequence, the author extracted pieces of tape from the trash bin of the electronic studio. Some first "waste" contained sounds of a man's voice (only source of all heights), the following contained either unrecognizable original noises or silences. From these nuclear sounds emerges all the musical material of the piece through the classical electroacoustic transformation means. "Tel" is roughly divided into three intertwined parts, each representing a phase in a cyclical pattern of evolution. In the first part, agglomerations of heterogeneous primordial sound elements intertwine with fast shapes similar to trajectories. In the second part, the sound elements reappear as standard patterns in more heterogeneous relationships. Despite and because of their mutual resemblance and common origin, these pattern-types ("musical sub-cultures") compete with one another in importance. Their identity, defined through patterns of recurrence (repetition), begins to lose their capacity to grow because of …

Halley's Comet was close to the earth in 1985. It's period is 76.01 years. Computer controlled 6 analog synthesizers.

Maze is the first part of an evening long multi-media work commissioned by the Bohus County Council and Musik i Väst. It is planned for a Nordic Arts Festival in Göteburg in 1989, with choreography by Biörn Elisson and stage design by Kjell Åhslund. This is an electro-acoustic work including both authentic instrumental sounds and fragments of song and vocal sounds from Kerstin Ståhl. The idea is to link up this mucis with a species of "sculptured scenes" without any real dramatic content, and a slide show. In this first part of the composition, an alluring surface is strectched to the point of the unbearable in "a balancing act between the beautiful and something whose anodyne loveliness makes it nauseating and ugly". This effect, however, is achieved mainly by pictoral means; the music principally conveys a complex holistic experience. In a second apart, not included in this record, all outward finery is pared away in a bare, introspective vision of life, death, and love.

The basic idea of the piece consists of transformations of various sound structures made of periodic rhythms and delimited heights and others built with "free" rhythms and preferentially undetermined heights. From the middle of the room and then one of these variable-pitch and indeterminate sound structures takes on importance and on the end supports development. This criterion between fixed and indeterminate pulsation and height is also followed in the spatial organization. Several sound structures are fixed at certain points of space and others move around according to pre-established patterns. Mutacion II is produced with Synclavier II.

This composition from the composer's early period is comprised of the soloist's part on the harpsichord, women’s choir, chamber ensemble of a quite unusual cast and electronically processed concrete and synthesized sound entities. On its symbolical level and in its dramaturgical concept, the rule of the dark/the rule of the evil forces and the fear of cataclysm prevail. The composer found his initial creative impulse in Cage’s (John Milton Cage (September 5, 1912–August 12, 1992)) sentence Falling Leaves Makes Trees Visible that in apotheosic sense represents the prime motive of 20th century structuralism. The authors resistance to the mentioned sentence is proved in the essential difference in the message – his work conveys that entities without distinctive aesthetic attributes of beautiful or ugly do not communicate. The crucial modification of the thesis results in the message expressed in the title of the composition. According to its subjective definition it can predict the future past/ the future end / future death /future expiry/passing away (maybe even terminal). The composition is realised in the Radio Beograd electronic studio.

The piece is built on a temperate tonal system of 12 fragments that play the role of a kind of model / model of music. By applying the techniques of collage or subtle modification and confrontations between the 12 mentioned fragments, a polyphonic musical structure has been created. The electronic recording (the synth-100) was used like all other sounds respecting its own specificities.

For four channel computer synthesised tape. This is a stereo version. This work was composed at CCRMA (1985), Stanford University, using the Samson Box digital synthesizer and the programs to control it written by Bill Schottstead. The structure of "Canales" results from the combination of opposite aspects of rhythm, pitch and timbre such as rhythmic/arhythmic, consonant/dissonant and harmonic/inharmonic. Rhythms and pitches were selected with regard to recent theories in psychoacoustics (Fraisse, Plomp, Rasch and others). Timbres were synthesized using frequency-modulation techniques. All variations and combinations of parameters were carefully controlled through time in order to get a maximum of variety and richness. Programs were written to allow the computer to amplify my musical ideas and even my imagination. The title, which means "canals", refers to my work of "canalizing" the parameter stream.

Recording of Alvin S. Curran's Electric Rags.

One could also designate the genre of the play as a concert radio drama or a sound movie. But it has never been broadcast on the radio or in a cinema, but I have played it in several theaters with cardboard actors, which are the loudspeakers. Original idea, creation and composition Roland Cahen Text by Jacques Merienne Written and improvised speech by Stefan Kaempfer Electroacoustic creation performed at GRM studio 116 C The play is a contemporary adaptation of Jonah's book of the Bible. Here Jonas is a TV journalist / presenter who is asked to announce the end of the world. He prefers to go to a gala and flirt with the secretary who invited him. But the evening does not go quite as planned, they find themselves trapped in their own game in the middle of a ballet superficial characters agents of his destiny. He is finally being kicked out. In the early morning he finds his "little wife", this little voice of the heart, with which he dies in the empty streets. The angel catches up with him and follows an animated discussion. With Daniel Besse: Jonah Jean-Mourat: the Angel Françoise Santarnecchi: the little woman and the …

"Berceuse pour Emmanuel" is a command from my wife to make our son Emmanuel sleep.

The work was originally composed as part of a large musical project "Soundscape" (soundscape) for the exhibition "Music" at the Noorköping Art Museum in 1982. The exhibition occupied five galleries and included paintings from a number of artists who had been inspired by the music. Some of them started with general impressions of music, others described specific works from Mozart to Coltrane and Glass, and others have done their work by applying musical systems. Some artists like Arnold Schoenberg and the Swedish composer Lars-Gunnar Bodin are more known for their action in the musical field itself. The soundscape project, made in collaboration with Anders Blomqvist for music in each of the 5 galleries mentioned above, was decided at the outset that the music should reflect the specific character of each piece. In one of the galleries - with a very colorful atmosphere - were paintings by Lars-Gunnar Bodin. After some research, I decided for an air of his work "for Jon" that someone had inadvertently whistled near me. This air became the basis of variations by inversion, cusp, transposition, etc ... Since this gallery had a general minimalist character, I also opted for this style. Moreover, the motor and static …