Recording of Iván Székely's For Alrun I et II. The work entitled "For Alrun" was composed in 1975 in Bayreuth during a live electronics course. The singing part of the play of about 7 minutes, a form and a light local broadcast, contains the popular song tchango beginning with the words "Gyere ki te gyšngyvirag" / come, leave my beautiful, my lily of the valley / - this one will have to be changed to all the presentations in Hungarian. This task was undertaken at the world premiere by Alrun Zahoransky - hence the title of the work. The player applying the electronics, especially from the point of view of the instrumentation, produces sounds and manipulates the electronic sounds and the human voice. The piece does not require studio work, each tone or voice sounds in vivo (i.e. each presentation, each show is new). The focus is on the psychic process of the piece and not on the technical process; its different degrees of difficulty adapt to the possibilities of the presentation. The singer is Ágnes Zsigmondi. The translation of the song is: Come, leave my beautiful, my lily of the valley, Because the moon is mounted, alas. I will …

Recording of Joseph Dorfman's The Stones of Jerusalem. This piece is divided into three movements and each includes readings in Hebrew from Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Torah. The first movement, "Galeed," incorporates text from Genesis 31:44-46. The second movement, "Altar," reads from Exodus 20:25. The third and final movement, "Tables of Testimony," uses texts from Exodus 31:18 and Exodus 34:1.

Recording of John Elmsly's Diamant. This piece was composed in 1977, using a Flemish poem written and read by Chris Dries as text. Using a simple bank of tuned oscillators, a sequencer pattern to modulate an oscillator, and very simple tape manipulations to leave the words as intact as possible the work is intended as a meditative coloring of the poem.

Recording of Åke Parmerud's Närheter. The title of the piece is a plural form of the word "closeness," which is rather untranslatable. The piece is a text-sound-composition, and was commissioned by the Swedish Radio. A large part of the piece is inspired by various sleep and dream manifestations. The text was written by the Swedish author Ella Hillbäck. Throughout the piece, even without knowing the meaning of the words, I believe one can feel the different "scenes" taking place. The first part of the piece is sort of an "ultimate story of creation,” at the same time implying the first phase of sleeping in a state of half consciousness. The following part of the piece is "a vision of a declining culture,” looked upon from a series of different angles. The end of this piece is built on the Swedish word for dance, which keeps falling apart. This second part also reflects the state of deep sleep where each dream becomes a part of the "collective" dream consisting of different scenes and different levels of "reality.” These "scenes and levels" are in an extrapolated sense, taking place and existing simultaneously at the same place and the same time. The level …

Recording of Max E. Keller's Grundgesetze III. "Grundgesetze III" is the third part of a six-part work begun in 1975. Sections I and IV were realized as orchestral pieces. Lyrically, the work is based on the confrontation of ideology (for example, the constitution, that is, the "Basic Law" of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany]) and the reality of bourgeois society. In "Grundgesetze III" the federal government processes a text about the so-called social market economy, while two other speakers present some information and a realistic dialogue. If the social market economy promises people paradise on earth, then the setting adjoins the dull reality: the colorful life has given way to a mechanical, absolutely regular beat, which was realized electronically, which thus lacks any inner life. This hammering also reflects what characterizes pop music and gives it an intoxicating effect, but occurs here naked and without drapery, no longer narcotic, but irritating. Like the rhythmic parameter, the pitch parameter also adjusts, with 19 different pitches distributed over the listening area at absolute regular intervals forming the basic chordalization of the chords. In other words, it is a 19-note chord built on a regular basis from which one single note is …

Recording of Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen's "11 september." The text is from a document called "What is MIR?" which was sent out illegally in Chile in 1974 and from the appeal of MIR two years after the taking over by the junta, on September 11, 1975. A left-wing party, MIR stayed in Chile in order to contribute as efficiently as possible to the building of the opposition. Other sound material also includes sounds from a typewriter and a demonstration at Bastad, Sweden in September 1975 at a tennis match between Sweden and Chile with more than 4,000 participants. The text is taken in small excerpts from the document in Spanish, English, Swedish, Danish, French, Dutch, and Icelandic. The piece consists of three sections overlapping each other gradually, which shows the relationship between the spoken words and the immediate danger connected with that text. The first section "as a spontaneous statement," deals with the document at its direct background: the silence is broken, in spite of the danger connected with the writing, manifolding papers that criticize the politics and methods of the junta and discuss the strategy of the opposition. The second section deals with the document as a medium of discussion. At …

Recording of Reynold Weidenaar's Sweet Jesus and the Honkies. “Sweet Jesus and the Honkies” is ideally meant to be listened to several times in a non-reverberant environment. The piece makes use of recording techniques which enhance the sound, giving it a feeling of depth and spaciousness. By design, these techniques also reduce the intelligibility of the spoken word. Much of the spoken source material for this piece was only moderately intelligible to begin with. The words as they now stand become clear to most listeners only after several hearings. Unfortunately, the listener in a concert hall is not able to listen to the piece as many times as it takes to confirm that he really is hearing what he thinks he’s hearing. And if the hall is reverberant, the intelligibility is reduced, thus making the listener’s task more difficult. Therefore, at the risk of attenuating the dramatic impact of the piece, a transcript of selected portions of the words is herewith appended. But first, some technical notes. The piece was fashioned in the recording studio. No electronic sounds are present; no synthesizer was involved in any way. Sounds were processed by multiple delay, equalization, echo chamber, overload distortion, phasing, expansion, …

Recording of Hildegard Westerkamp's Whisper Study (for two electroacoustic sound tracks). Whisper Study is based on the sentence "When there is no sound, hearing is most alert" (a quote from the Indian mystic Kirpal Singh. Except for the distant horns, all sounds were derived from the composer's voice, whispering the above sentence and the word "silence." Whisper Study started out as an exercise in exploring basic tape techniques in the analog studio of the 70s and using the whispered voice as sound material. Eventually, it became a piece about silence, aural perception and acoustic imagination. Whisper Study explores the place or moment where sound ends and its image begins. The poem "When There is No Sound" by Norbert Ruebstaat was written in direct response to the original version of Whisper Study. The poem in this version is spoken by the composer inside a soundscape of icicles and footsteps in snow, which originally was created for her radio series Soundwalking on Vancouver Co-operative Radio in 1978/79. Eventually this section was mixed with the last part of the original version of Whisper Study.

Recording of Sandra L. Tjepkema's Aubade. This aubade, a serenade whispered into a lover’s ear, just before dawn: It is meant, of course, as a type of erotic poem; but it is not the text alone but the finished product which constitutes the poem. The words (in English) along with complementary phonetic signs and tremulous sighs, seek out the familiar images of love poetry. Phonetic variations on the vocabulary and the breathing of sleeping, dream-talking lovers, the more literal interpretation of such images as tides-on-the-beach, stirring of bedsheets, comforted nightmares, quick leave-fakings, whistling-in-the-dark: these are the elements of this serenade.

Recording of Reynold Weidenaar's Twilight Flight. Too solemn for day, too sweet for night, come not in darkness; but come in some twilight interim, when the gloom is soft, and the light is dim.

Recording of Francis Dhomont's À cordes perdues. This work was premiered on August 11, 1977 at the Saint Rémy de Provence Festival by bassist Henri Texier; it is, in fact, at the origin of a mixed music. Inspired by the album "AMIR" by Henri Texier (Eurodisc 913002), it borrows materials, groups, and objects, and proposes to send back an "electroacoustic reflection". During the concert, H. Texier improvised on the tape: reception and/or incentive for the instrumentalist; three-dimensional game between disc, tape and live audio; confrontation of a fixed form and a moving course. Apart from borrowings or quotations, all the sound materials come from the processing of some piano strings. The long final sequence, announced from the beginning, is obtained by coincidence of chains, themselves the result of a "gestural" work inside the piano. Another improvisation of Texier was proposed the next day. The version presented here is specially designed for tape alone.

Recording of Tommy Zwedberg's Face the Music. This piece is made for solo trumpet and tape. The trumpet plays towards the tape without electronic manipulation. The trumpet has also been used as material to make the tape-part which makes a closer connection between both parts. There is also a piano used as concrete material for the tape part. The character of the piece alternates with compactness in the beginning and a peaceful part in the middle. In the end, the piece returns to the character from the beginning of the piece, after having preceded a “tutti” in the tape part. The butch synthesizer and filter tape recorder allow for continuous possibility of transposing.

Recording of David Keane's Ambulator Nemorensis. "Ambulator Nemorensis" was put together as a preliminary study for an experimental film by Nicholas Kendall called Tala. While the actual music used in Tala was quite different from “Ambulator Nemorensis” both are attempts to create an imaginary landscape (or to use Murray Schaefer's term "soundscape"). This piece is an honest attempt to create something beautiful.

Recording of Reed Holmes's Wood on Wood on Water.

Recording of Miklós Maros's Manipulation II.

Recording of Yvan Szekely's Les paysages en dehors de la terre. “Les paysages en dehors de la terre” was written in 1978. The sound material of this work consists of three layers: a) the sounds of the violin and percussion b) the synthetic sounds c) the manipulated sounds / playbacks to countdown, changes in speed. The composition has a two-way, stereophonic structure. The movements contrast with each other.

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 Myron Schaeffer's Voices and Bells.

Recording of Nicole Lachartre's Mordre la terre vivante. This work gives an example of the possibilities of compositional logic offered to composers working at the Belgrade studio. In the first part, a large number of quasi-linear pathways intertwine to create a semi-fluid mass, almost even amorphous at times. It is followed by a section worked in dynamic profile sculpted with precision and contrasts of rhythmic formulas are introduced sometimes by a large variety of instruments including various percussion instruments over which hovers an almost classic “solo” voice. Then the strict rhythmic formulas are temporarily destroyed by an aggressive material introduced in printing whose heights and durations were stochastically determined.

Recording of Paul Pedersen's Fantasie. This 8 minute, 2-track tape piece was composed in 1967 at the Mc Gill University electronic Music Studio. The work was conceived as a multimedia presentation using 3 projectors with hand painted slides by the Montreal artist Gino Bielanski. The piece is in 15 sections, which are synchronized with the fifteen slides used in the centre projector. Pitch organization in the work is centered on a 9 pitch series between 77 and 2335 Hz with successive pitches 200 Mels apart. Two sections involve the use of the Shephard Scale. The basic sound sources used are limited to white noise, sine and square waves. Much of the synthesis of the work was done using the channel Spectrogram developed by Dr. Hugh Le Caine of the National Research Council of Canada.

Recording of Dubravko Detoni's D. A radio composition for prepared harpsichord and magnetic tape with modified sounds of the harpsichord. It adds a tape made with the most different sounds coming from the harpsichord. The work consists of cadences and refrains constantly changing. The harpsichord alone performs the cadence (the center of the score), while the choruses (at the margins) are performed by the harpsichord and the tape. Each cadenza has a different disposition: ecstatic, resigned, imperceptible, hysterical, ironic. They reform to the refrains which represent another shade of gray each time. The ideological center of the composition is the sound "D" (re) which represents the individual, the protagonist around which the musical event takes place. Around its sounds accumulate sound layers (like the center around the man), which are realized on tape, that represent or give the association of a kind of distant universe.

Recording of Claude Colon's Diastasis 3.

Recording of Reynold Weidenaar's The Tinsel Chicken Coop Wiener. This work explores the second-order maximized similarities between analogous tetrachords. Fluctuations involving only two interval-classes interact to control significant inclusions and exclusions. A vertical or diagonal cross-section of this work will yield prominent subsets of intersecting interval-vectors.

Recording of Benno Ammann's Mouvements. Realized at the Ipem Studio in November 1976. Two main structures, computer-controlled (and partly alienated and distorted), form the basic material of the piece, and are mixed, varied and transformed into new sound formations in an aleatoric process by means of high-low filters, tempophones and feedback subjected to variable time. Contrasting sound elements (more figurative characters), produced on the apparatuses DATAPULSE and WAVETEK of Ipem’s studio, accompany the main sections parties principally by variation and increasing movement in ever changing time.