Major Lazer, "Baby"

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Zdzisław Piernik, tuba

Strona A / Side A
1. Krzysztof Penderecki -Capriccio per tuba/ Scherzo a la Polacca 4'40"
2. Marian Borkowski -Vox per uno strumento ad ottone 5'40"
3. Andrzei Krzanowski-Sonata na tube solo /Sonata for Solo Tuba 14'05"

Strona B / Side B
1. Andrzej Dobrowolski -Muzyka na tube solo / Music for Solo Tuba 12'05"
2. Witold Szalonek-Piernikiana per tuba sola 12'05"

Zdzisław Piernik, born in Torun in 1942, is the first and so far the only Polish virtuoso tuba-player. The tuba is the biggest and at the same time the least mobile of the brass instruments. While the most conspicuous in the orchestra, it has been until recently, from the musical point of view, one of the most concealed instruments and only rarely made use of. It was only in the 19th century that Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner assigned a more significant role to the tuba (or strictly speaking to it Wagnerian variety), then in the second half of the 20th century it emancipated itself to become a solo instrument. In Poland this emancipation has been mainly due to Zdzisław Piemik who, after having completed his studies at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw under Juliusz Pietrachowicz and having won a prize at the National Festival of Young Musicians in Gdansk in 1970, embarked on a career of tubist-soloist. Before long he hat a string of successes both at home and abroad, among them at festivals and summer courses at Bayreuth, Witten, Darmstadt, Bourges, Stockholm, and Los Angeles. He has been giving concerts in the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, France, Holland, Japan, Mexico, FRG, and the United States. He also appeared many times at the festival of contemporary music the "Warsaw Autumn" at which he would. mostly perform pieces written especially for him. The list of composers who have dedicated their works to Zdzislaw Piernik amounts to a dozen: Benno Amman, Zbigniew Bargielski, Andrzej Bieian, Marian Borkowski, Andrzej Dobrowolski, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Wojciech Kilar, Krzysztof Knittel, Andrzej Krzanawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Boguslaw Schaeffer, ELibieta Sikora, Witold Szalonek. Five of such pieces have
been recorded on this disc.

Capriccio per tuba by Krzysztof Penderecki was written in 1980 and was performed for the first time the same year at the "Warsaw Autumn". Although it is subtitled "scherzo alla polacca" Zdzisław Piernik does not play it at the tempo of a polonaise. He probably does not do so because the composition played at a slower tempo would lose its jocular character suggested by the subtitle. The Capriccio has been written in the traditional idiom apart from a sole fragment in which Penderecki uses the highest and the lowest of the sounds that can be extracted from the tuba. This is a short, one-movement piece easy to listen to but by no means easy for the performing tuba-player.

Vox -per uno strumento ad attone (which means: "for a brass instrument") by Marian Borkowski, written in 1977, is a composition designed for any brass wind instrument. Its graphical score, written not on note paper but the graph one, makes it possible to play it at any register. Also the pitch of particular sounds has not been indicated by the composer, so that soloist is free to choose it. The varying texture of Marian Borkowski's piece, in which the composer makes use of all possible kinds of sound and articulation (staccato, legato, tremolando, asciUando, moUo vibrato, fruUato, etc.) enables the soloists to demonstrate their skill.

The Sonata for tuba solo by Andrzej Krzanowski was written in 1978. Contrary to its title, suggesting a four-movement form, this is a one-movement piece made up of two contrasting themes, the very quick and very slow one, both subjected to only slight transformations. Like Penderecki in the aforementioned composition, Andrzej Krzanawski too sticks in his Sonata for tuba solo to the traditional idiom.. Because of this and the very simple structure of the themes it a piece very easy to listen to and at the same time very attractive owing to two qualities it combines, the virtuoso one (first theme) and the expressive one (the lyrical second theme).

The Music for tuba solo by Andrzej Dobrowolski was written in 1973. The composition consists of three movements, of which the outer ones are played on the "classical" bass tuba and the middle movement on the prepared tuba. By contrast to Penderecki and Krzanawski, the idiom Andrzej Dobrowolski uses in his piece is completely modern. He tries to achieve by means of it all sorts of sound effects, such as snoring, growling, whistling, twittering, squealing, sometimes so high-pitched that one can hardly believe they have been extracted from a bass instrument of this sort.

The Piernikiana by Witold Szalonek, written in 1977, suggests its dedication in the very title. Szalonek specjalizes in the search for new sound possibilities of wind instruments, both wood and brass. J!:ach piece he writes for them inspires him with new ideas and these in turn require of the performer to study thoroughly all the c,omposer's explanations and signs. Moreover, having been given a high degree of freedOm in the interpretation of the piece the soloist becomes co-responsible for the ultimate artistic effect. Among the nu.merous problems to be solved, while playing this extremely complicated composition, there is also the composer's wish for the tubist, at one place, to sing on his instrument... Piernikiana is the most difficult piece among those recorded on this disc and can therefore give a very good idea of the extraordinary range of virtuosity Zdzislaw Piemik has at his command. -- Tadeusz Kaczynski

Harlem After MJ

The entrepreneurial spirit of 125th Street was intensified by the death of Michael Jackson. This 8' recording captures the sounds of all the different characters who came out to make a quick buck.

It begins with a street preacher (0-45') who was standing at the corner of 125th & Frederick Douglass Boulevard. The Apollo's side of the block was choked with vendors. The guy blaring "Off The Wall" (1:48-2:20) was selling CD-R's of MJ's music. You can also hear the hawking of t-shirts, hats and posters. In front of the Apollo, a group of people were shouting inside the theater for the management to turn up the music (3:23-3:40).

Things got more novel after crossing the street. There was a vendor selling Spider-Man and Hannah Montana "workbooks, pop-ups and baby books" (6:23-6:32). The street preacher returns briefly before the recording comes across several 3-card monte games (7:30-end).

Chris Thile - I'm Nowhere and Your Everything

An inspiring track from the 2004 Chris Thile album 'Deceiver'. Thile, known as a prodigy bluegrass innovator and mandolin player, is also the writer, engineer, and producer for this album. The album features 39 different instruments, all of which are played by Thile.


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Taken from Thile's website: Originally submitted 2004

DECEIVER is quite a departure from the blistering instrumental bluegrass-esque leanings he cut his teeth on as a mandolin wunderkind. DECEIVER also takes a bold, new route away from his subsequent solo work that featured his jazz/classical/progressive acoustic-style. In fact, DECEIVER is the first Thile solo project to feature vocals, and only includes two instrumentals ("palette cleansers"). This album, exploring a rock direction, is the logical next step in the maturation of an artist who clearly heeds no boundaries and knows no limitations.

Taking inspiration from sources as diverse as a Pulitzer prize-winning novel ("Empire Falls") and his first encounter with his now-wife ("Wrong Idea"), Thile's voice emerges as a distinct style within the contemporary musical landscape. Very serious about his solo work, DECEIVER is not to be confused as a fun side-project from his full-time band but, rather, an artist releasing the music bursting within him. Thile played EVERY instrument (drums, guitars, keyboards, strings, etc.) on the album and was intimately involved in the recording and production process, as well. Clearly a harbinger of things to come from this unique and phenomenally talented artist.

40 years is just the tip of the iceberg...

You may not be sympathetic to the 'homosexual agenda', but I defy anyone to remain unmoved after even the lightest reading about the Stonewall riots, which started 40 years ago today. By all accounts, the palpable sense in the air that night was that 'enough is enough'.

I think that same sentiment is welling up again, but this time, it's more widely shared. It's not just gay Americans who've had enough of Don't Ask Don't Tell, DOMA and Proposition 8. Enough already.

Zdzisław Piernik, "Piernik Plays"

Side A
Zdzisław Piernik:
DIALOGE FOR TUBA UND TONBAND
8' 45"

Bogusław Schäffer:
PROJEKT FUR TUBA UND TONBAND
14' 26"
Zdzisław Piernik gewidmet

Side B
Roman W. Zajaczek :
TEMA CANTABILE CON PIERNICAZIONI
per tuba universale e pianoforte
7' 34"
Zdzisław Piernik gewidmet
Zdzisław Piernik, Tuba
Maciej Paderewski, Klavier

Marian Borkowski:
VOX
per uno strumento ad ottone
4' 49"
Zdzisław Piernik gewidmet

Elzbieta Sikora :
IL VIAGGIO 1
per tuba solo con pianoforte
11' 14"
Zdzisław Piernik gewidmet
Zdzisław Piernik, Tuba
Maciej Paderewski, Klavier
Recording Producer: Gerhard Narholz
Publisher: Edition PRO NOVA, Sonoton
Coverphoto and design: Intersound


I became aquainted with Zdzisław Piernik in Torun. The master's performance on the tuba and the "prepared" tuba is, by European standards. a phenomenon. But can you compare performing on the tuba to performance by Pollini or Szeryng? It is not possible ... too bad! Could it be that music in its heterogeneous nature is undemocratic? (all are apparently equal, some more equal-some adjectives do not yield easily to degrees of comparison: equal, common, average, etc.; negative adjectives are best compared, oh God, and how pleasant to compare them, how pleasant). Then music is undemocratic. But maybe our reasoning is faulty. Zdzisław Piernik is beyond compare on the tuba. And perhaps this is important. He also performs an all-purpose instrument: into the "spirals" of the tuba he puts parts of different instruments; to realize in this wild and somewhat acrobatic means our (mine in particular) dream of a "multicoloristic" instrument. The bassoon and saxophone mouthpieces complete everything. The tone color of the tuba transforms and is rich in degrees previously unknown. Of course, this does not happen automatically, the master uses different overblowings, partially presses valves while he rages on this brass elephant with unprecedented lightness and fantasy. The best thing is that Zdzislaw performs on this super-tuba as if he were a connoisseur of contemporary structure (he isn't). He is gifted with great intuition which could arouse the envy of other instrumentalists. He has also contrived a beautiful gesture which I have never seen elsewhere: if the applause is very loud and long, he points to the tuba lying on the ground. He is a tuba phenomenon and an idealist! Fascinating on the tuba-that is to say victory of mind over matter. -- Bogusław Schäffer.

The tuba, an instrument not often met in solo performance, has secured itself a certain position on the concert stages of our coumry thanks to the performances of Zdzisław Piernik, a virtuoso whose mastery has become a sensation in our country and abroad.

The artist began on the trumpet, later in high school he studied performing on the viola and contrabass, composed a little, performed in jazz groups, and finally in 1968 embraced the tuba, beginning study with Juliusz Pietrachowicz in Warsaw's Higher School of Music. And here, perhaps, he found his calling...

As earty as 1970 Zdzisław Piernik won first prize in the general Polish competition of young musicians in Gdańsk, then he played concerts co-operated with Polish Radio and Polish Television, played in musical and dramatic theaters, and played concerts variously abroad in East Germany, West Germany, and Austria-everywhere receiving enthusiastic reviews. -- "Zycie Warszawy", Warsaw, March 4, 1977

Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse & David Lynch, "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)"

Listen to the whole album

Ivo Malec, "Triola"

Face A
TRIOLA
1. Turpituda 9'30" + long silence
2. Ombra 12'03" + long silence

Face B
TRIOLA
3. Nuda 12'30" + long silence
BIZARRA 7'30"

Dinosaur Jr., "Your Weather"

dj

Igor Stravinsky, "Canticum Sacrum" & "Symphony of Psalms"

Canticum Sacrum



Symphony of Psalms

Todd Snider, "Corpus Christi Bay"

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Arnold Schoenberg, "String Trio"

Whose version of Schoenberg's 'String Trio' is better?
	Los Angeles String Trio
	Trio à Cordes Francais

Deer Tick, "Smith Hill"

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Olan & Miller

-- LINER NOTES --

COMPOSITION FOR CLARINET AND TAPE (1976) 5:35
David Olan
The composer has approved this recording. The work won the 1980 International Clarinet Society Composition Competition.

PIECE FOR CLARINET AND TAPE (1967; rev. 1982) 5:30
Edward Miller
The composer has approved this premiere recording.

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DAVID OLAN (b. 1948) attended Columbia University and University of Wisconsin; since 1979 he has taught at the Baruch College of the City University of New York. Olan's works have been performed by such groups as Parnassus, the Group for Contemporary Music, Speculum Musicae, and the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble. His music may also be heard on CRI and New World Records. Olan comments:

"In my Composition for Clarinet and Tape, I wanted to incorporate the unique characteristics of each medium: drawing on the expressivity and fluidity of the clarinet as well as the extremes of speed, register, dynamics and percussiveness which can be achieved only with tape. I meant for this juxtaposition to be felt within a process of accommodation between the two worlds, with each medium having the opportunity to reinforce and support the other. The tape was realized at the Columbia-Princeton Music Center, and employs only electronic sources."

EDWARD MILLER (b. 1930) studied music at the University of Miami and the Hartt College of Music. He has taught composition at the Oberlin Conservatory since 1971. Miller has received many honors, and has had his works performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and several other major symphonies. Works are also recorded on CRI and Opus One. Miller states:

"Completed April 1, 1967, Piece for Clarinet and Tape was my first attempt at electronic music and the tape part contained many flaws. In this recording Dr. Kireillis uses a new version of the tape part that I finished in January, 1982. I used a Sigma IX computer, a facility of the Music Technology Program at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. The programming was MPL (Music Program Library), developed by Gary Nelson."

RIP, Michael

Charles Hamm, "Canto"

-- LINER NOTES --

CANTO Charles Hamm (1963) for soprano, speaker & chamber ensemble. Helen Hamm, soprano; Elizabeth Hiller, speaker, The Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Illinois; Jack McKenzie, conductor....6:23

The Studio for Experimental Music at the University of Illinois was established in 1958, and placed under the directorship of Lejaren Hiller, Professor of Music, to provide facilities for the creatin, research and teaching of electronic music techniques, to investigate the application of computers to musical composition, and to encourage original instrument design and construction. These related roles the studio has fulfilled admirably, and from its relatively modest beginnings it has developed into one of the best equipped in the world.

The works on this recording provide a representative selection of the more than forty works which have been composed in the studio since its inception.

CHARLES HAMM (b. 1925), composer and musicologist, studied at the University of Virginia and at Princeton University. His teachers in composition were Randall Thompson, Bohuslav Martinu, and Edward Clone. Prior to his appointment, in 1963, as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois, he taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and at Newcomb College, Tulane University. His compositions include six operas, an orchestral work--"Sinfonia 1954"--which was commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony, and numberous chamber, piano, and vocal works. Among his more recent works are "Mobile for Piano and Tape," "Portrait of John Cage" for piano and three tape recorders, and "Round" for unspecified instrumental or vocal ensemble.

CANTO

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
The reeds are heavy; bent;
and the bamboos speak as if weeping.

Autumn moon; hills rise about lakes
against sunset
Evening is like a curtain of cloud,
a blurr above ripples; and through it
sharp long spikes of the cinnamon,
a cold tune amid reeds.
Behind hill the monk's bell
borne on the wind.
Sail passed here in April; may return in October
Boat fades in silver; slowly;
Sun blaze alone on the river.

Where wine flag catches the sunset
Sparse chimneys smoke in the cross light

Comes then snow scur on the river
And a world is covered with jade
Small boat floats like a lanthorn,
The flowing water closts as with cold. And at San Yin
they are a people of leisure.

Wild geese swoop to the sand-bar,
Clouds gather about the hole of the window
Broad water; geese line out with the autumn
Rooks clatter over the fishermen's lanthorns,

A light moves on the north sky line;
where the young boys prod stones for shrimp.
In seventeen hundred came Tsing to these hill lakes.
A light moves on the South sky line.

State by creating riches shd. thereby get into debt?
This is infamy; this is Geryon.
This canal goes still to TenShi
Though the old king built it for pleasure

K E I M E N R A N K E I
K I U M A N M A N K E I
JITSU GETSU K O K W A
T A N FUKU T A N K A I

The Power of Sound

One thing I'll always regret is watching the video of Nicholas Berg being decapitated. It's a horrifying sight, and I couldn't get it out of my head for days afterwards. I still think that watching it rearranged some molecules in my head in a way that will never be the same.

Watching the video of Neda Agha-Soltan die has the same searing effect. As this Gawker contributor put it:

I first saw the video of Neda's death on Sunday afternoon at around 2PM. For the remainder of the day and up to this point, I've failed every effort, and there have been many, to get it out of my head. Even when I went to the gym late in the day, a place of solace where I'm usually able to blast music in my ears while exercising and just forget about everything going on in the outside world, I found myself unable to remove Neda from my mind.

My coping mechanism is analysis. I find solace in deconstructing my reaction to determine what gets me so rattled. I've found that as with Nicholas Berg, it's not the images, it's the sound.

Both videos are the types of gore that we've all seen countless times in horror films or war epics. There's nothing in the images themselves that is any more disturbing than what we see in an Eli Roth or a Steven Spielberg film. Our eyes are accustomed to glossing over such graphic violence, but there's no way to trick the ears. The anguish of Nicholas Berg and Neda's friends is far too real to the ear to dismiss it. The stylized sound of the cinema allows you to wrap up violent images and store them away as fantasy in your mind.

The horror of these clips is driven home by the unmistakable sound of human suffering that no actor or sound designer can ever replicate. We know it's real because we hear it, and that's what makes it so damn hard to shake.

Street Sweeper, "Paper Planes" (LIVE)

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Elizabeth & the Catapult, "Perfectly Perfect"

e&tc

Elvis Costello, "Red Cotton"

ec

Electronic Music from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

This recording of electronic music presents the works of four authors who come from four different countries with quite varied musical backgrounds. Two of them have considerable knowledge of electronics which stems from a formal engineering training in one case, and from a high degree of practical experience in the other. Diversity of styles is in evidence, as each composer's style is his own concern. The common experience for these composers has been the use of technical resources at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and the investigation of specialized methods for the evolution and transformation of recorded sound materials, conducted in my course at Columbia and further demonstrated in private sessions by technicians. This work is done in Studio 106, located in McMillin Theatre on the campus of Columbia University in the same room where the older Columbia University Tape Studio was housed. The present studio has been considerably expanded in recent years and has become a part of a complex of three studios and a small laboratory established under a Rockefeller Foundation Grant given to Columbia and Princeton Universities in 1959.

With the notable exception of the very unique possibilities offered by the RCA Sound Synthesizer located in Studio 318, the standard and specialized equipment of the Center is devoted to the production of sound materials by "Classical" methods, common to all electronic music studios. Thus, materials (of either purely electronic or non-electronic origin) recorded on tape, may be subjected to manipulation by tape speed variation, electronic filtering, several types of frequency modulation, artificial reverberation, etc. Tape cutting and splicing by hand still occupies a good deal of time in preparing the sound patterns and arranging them in longer sequences. Techniques are available to create certain types of rhythmic patterns and timbre variations by semi-automatic methods, but the materials thus produced are of limited usefulness. Much time in classroom discussion is devoted to the structural considerations which we believe to be quite challenging and of paramount importance in the electronic music medium, rich as it is in unusual timbres and opportunities for the realization of complex rhythms.

It is hard to imagine that there is much occasion any more for claiming that electronic music is "dehumanized" in its content. Electronic music simply undertakes to express, by different means, human situations, ideas, and emotions.

Vladimir Ussachevsky
Professor of Music
Columbia University

SIDE 1

Band 1. Study No. 1
My main objectives in this Study were: 1. to obtain instrument-like sounds, such as the bell-like sonorities of the opening (derived from saw-tooth waves), or those in the epilogue that resemble contrabass pizzicati (derived from sine waves), with a vast range of percussive and plucking sounds in between: and 2. to create tensions and relaxations, the former achieved through complex rhythms, increased densities of tone color, and other similar effects; the latter occurring when a high degree of intensity is diluted by the introduction of "richer" and "more familiar" sounds. The sources are all electronic.

Absolute control has been excercised over the development of component materials and their final mixing, by integrating six channels coming from four precisely synchronized tape recorders. The result is a finished composition originally designed for two-channel reproduction.

Andres Lewin-Richter

SIDE 2

Band 1. Vocalise

Vocalise was composed in the Spring of 1964. Conceived as a study, it is an attempt to create electronic music of an expressive, emotional nature. Two elements are juxtaposed: the human voice (that of Pnina Avni, my wife) and sounds from electronic sources.

These elements are stated at the beginning in a pure and simple form, but later undergo changes and variations through the use of the techniques of the electronic medium.

After the first presentation of the musical material, an elaborate process of development ensues, in which the two elements -- voice and electronic sounds -- are drawn closer and closer together until it sometimes becomes almost impossible to distinguish which is which.

The third section of the work serves as a kind of recapitulation, and the piece ends in the same characteristic lyrical mood as in the beginning.

Tzvi Avni

Band 2. Variations for Flute and Electronic Sound
Band 3. Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers

Since 1954, composers of electronic music have turned their attention to the problem of combining electronic sounds with traditional instruments. The discipline, as well as requiring new compositional skills, calls on a composer's more traditional training in matters of balance and notation, and heightens his sensitivity to the formal problems of composition in general. My pieces on this disk were designed to give the live performer maximum expressive freedom within each tape cue. The cues are not "technical improvisations in sound", but are realizations of a carefully notated score in which both live and taped portions have been composed. A competent musico-technician, once familiar with my notational techniques and compositional style, could produce, from the written score, an electronic performance differing only in interpretation from the sounds heard on this record.

Variations for Flute and Electronic Sound (1964) in contrast to Dialogues, is a very strictly organized set of six variations on an eleven-bar theme stated at the outset by the flute. The first variation is a restatement of the theme (in altered rhythm) to march-like electronic accompaniment. The second is a strict canon in three parts. The third, entirely electronic, burlesques the theme, making free use of octave transposition. The flute re-enters with the fourth variation, a passionate soliloquy with only one brief electronic punctuation. Variation five, a character variation, features rapid alternation between flute and electronic sound, and a distinctive trilling figuration. Variation six, drawn freely on materials from variations one and five, brings the piece to a brisk cadence.

Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers (1963) is rhapsodic in character, deriving most of its thematic-motivic construction from an ascending series of gradually diminishing intervals, forming an almost-serial basis for the piece. Two of the themes are developed and transformed at some length, i.e., the piano's theme in twelfths at the entrance of the electronic sound, and the rhythmic novelty of a rising and accelerating series of seven eighth-notes, heard in the middle and latter portions of the piece.

Walter Carlos

Sunset Rubdown, "Silver Moons"

sr

1974 ISCM Electronic Music Winners

[In listening to this installment from AGP, I was stunned to hear the opening chords of the Radiohead's "Idioteque" in Paul Lansky's mild und leise @ the 43" mark. It turns out, Jonny Greenwood listened to this LP during the Kid A recording sessions and a couple of samples made their way onto the album.]

-- LINER NOTES --

In the autumn of 1974, the League of Composers-International Society for Contemporary Music, U.S. Section, organized an International Electronic Music Competition, the first undertaken by the organization. Tapes of electronic music compositions were solicited from composers and electronic music studios all over the world. A distinguished panel agreed to select the winners.

The judges were:

Bulent Arel, composer and Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Mario Davidovsky, Pulitzer prizewinning composer, Co-Director of the Electronic Music Center of Columbia and Princeton Universities, and Professor of Music at City College of New York. Jean Eichelberger Ivey, composer and teacher of composition and electronic music at Peabody Conservatory of Music. J. K. Randall, composer and Professor of Music at Princeton University.

129 tapes representing composers from 15 countries were entered in the competition. Each judge listened to each tape individually, and then the judges met as a group to make their final selections. During the entire judging process, the tapes were placed in unlabeled boxes and identified only by numbers.

The winning compositions are presented in this album. It should be noted that no distinctions were made between the winning compositions, and that the order of works presented on the recording does not signify a ranking.

Program notes and biographical material have been provided by the composers.

As President of the League-ISCM and coordinator of the International Electronic Music Competition, I feel that these works, besides being excellent pieces of music, represent a wide spectrum of approaches, attitudes, styles, and technical procedures that will give the listener much enjoyment and, also, an understanding of the breadth and sophistication of current electronic music. -- Hubert S. Howe, Jr.

Maurice Wright:
Electronic Composition (1973)

Electronic Composition was completed in the spring of 1973. The piece is centered on the pitch Middle C. The timbre space is created by assigning component musical lines to various synthetic "instruments" that are comprised of simple combinations of oscillators and amplifiers and then recording these lines with careful control of reverberation and phase. Certain elements of the piece, namely the sounds that some listeners have compared to "a distant chorus," or "a mutant brass band," as well as the time-pointed clip-clop of electronically pitched horses' hooves in the brief Coda, are developed further in Cantata, a composition for tenor, percussion, and synthesized voices and instruments. -- Maurice Wright

Maurice Wright was born in Front Royal, Virginia. He was a Mary Duke Biddle Scholar at Duke University and Presidents' Fellow at Columbia University. He has studied composition with Jack Besson, Chou Wen-Chung. Paul Earls, lain Hamilton, Jacques Monod: and Charles Wuorinen; computer music and synthetic speech with Charles Dodge. He received a master's degree in 1974 from Columbia University, where he teaches Music Theory. He received the Henry Schuman Prize for Music from Duke University in 1972 and the Joseph Bearns Prize for Music from Columbia University in 1974.

Menachem Zur:
Chants, for magnetic tape (1974)

Chants, for magnetic tape was realized in the electronic studio of Columbia University in March 1974. The work is shaped by a series of phrases divided by small pauses, somewhat resembling a Gregorian chant. The pitches are organized around a nine-tone series: F Bb G, A D B, C# F# D#. The main melodic cell is the figure F ascending to Bb and descending to G. -- Menachem Zur

Menachem Zur was born in 1942 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He studied theory at the College for Teachers for Music in Tel Aviv and in the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1969 he came up to New York to complete his B.M. degree in Composition at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. Zur received his M.F.A. degree in Composition at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. His master's thesis in Composition was a piece for choir, magnetic tape, brass quartet, and percussion that won first prize in a contest in Jerusalem in 1973. He is currently completing his D.M.A. degree at Columbia University in New York City, and teaches music at Queens College, City University of New York.

Side 2
Richard Cann: Bonnylee (1972)

(This song was sung by an IBM 360 model 91)


Paul Lansky: mild und leise (1973/74)

mild und leise was written and synthesized during 1973-74 using the IBM 360/91 computer at Princeton University and the Music 360 synthesis program written by Barry Vercoe. I want to thank my former student Richard Cann, composer of Bonnylee, for his help in learning how to use this program, and the Princeton University Computer Center for its generous allocation of computer time. This work is dedicated to Godfrey Winham.

I would like to advise the listener to:
listen easily and slowly--this
work takes its time,
listen to changing timbres,
to chaning chords,
to changing timres within chords,
to changing chords within timbres,
listen to repetition,
to changes within repetition,
to increasinly more complex forms of the same under repetition,
listen to different ways of doing things,
to linear shapes,
to repeated chords,
--spreading out, and contracting, registrally, to simple rhythms,
--becoming complex rhythms,
listen to combinations of different ways of doing things,
listen to starts and stops as breathing points and places where new twists begin an old material,
listen to each part of the piece as an evolving growing, and more complicated form of earlier parts of the piece,
--as a way of doing things which has only gradually become possible.
listen carefully, and easily.

-- Paul Lansky

Black Eyed Peas, "Rock That Body"