Mario Davidovsky, "Synchronisms 1 & 2"

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MARIO DAVIDOVSKY
Three Synchronisms for instruments and electronic sounds
NO. 1 FOR FLUTE (1963) HARVEY SOLLBERGER (flute)
NO. 2 FOR FLUTE, CLARINET, VIOLIN, CELLO (1964) Sophie Sollberger (flute) Stanley Drucker (clarinet)
Paul Zukofsky (violin), Robert L. Martin ( cello), Efrain Guigui (conductor)

MARIO DAVIDOVSK (b. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1934) pursued his musical studies in Argentina, working in composition with Guillermo Graetzer, Teodoro Fuchs, Erwin Leuchter, 2nd Ernesto Epstein. In the United States he has studied with Otto Luening and Aaron Copland. Since coming to the United States in 1958, Mr. Davidovsky has won more than a dozen major awards, fellowships and commissions, among them two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, a Koussevitzky Foundation commission and a Fromm Foundation commission for the Synchronism No. 2 recorded here.

While Mr. Davidovsky's reputation has rested largely on the works composed in connection with his association with the electronic music center at Columbia and Princeton universities, his catalog of compositions includes a considerable variety of scores for non-electronic media - chief among them being twp string quartets, a clarinet quintet, Ylanos for orchestra, El Payaso ballet suite, and Serie Sinfdnica. A 1965 Fromm Foundation commission has resulted in Mr. Davidovsky's composition, Inflexions for 14 Players.

Concerning the Three Synchronisms recorded here, Mr. Davidovsky notes that "They belong to a series of short pieces wherein conventional instruments are used in conjunction with electronic sounds. The attempt here has been made to preserve the typical characteristics of the conventional instruments and of the electronic medium respectively - yet to achieve integration of both into a coherent musical texture."

"In the planning and realization of these pieces," Mr. Davidovsky notes further, "two main problems arise - namely proper synchronization (a) of rhythm and (b) of pitch. During the shorter episodes where both electronic and conventional instruments are playing, rather strict timing is adhered to. However, in the more extended episodes of this type, an element of chance is introduced to allow for the inevitable time discrepancies that develop between the live performer(s) and the constant-speed tape recorder.

"To achieve pitch coherence between the conventional instruments which use the 12-tone chromatic scale and the electronic medium which is non-tempered, use is made of tonal occurrences of very high density - manifesied for example by a very high speed succession of attacks, possible only in the electronic medium. Thus, in such instances - based on high speed and short duration of separate tones, it is impossible for the ear to perceive the pure pitch value of each separate event; though in reacting, it does trace so to speak a statistical curve of the density. Only in a very few instances have tempered electronic pitches been employed in the Synchronisms. Throughout all three pieces, the tape recorder has been used as an integral part of the instrumental fabric."

Mario Davidovsky, "Electronic Study No. 2"

MARIO DAVIDOVSKY
ELECTRONIC STUDY NO. 2 (1962)
Tape realized at the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center

The music on this record was produced at the original Columbia University Tape Music Studio and its successor, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, and at the University of Illinois Electronic Music Studio. It includes some of the earliest electronic music released on commercial records, and is reissued by CRI after its deletion on the Son Nova and Heliodor labels. The tapes used in this reissue are all freshly mixed from the original materials.

Three fundamental types of electronic music are represented: (1) tape music composed from materials created from 'natural' (concrete) sounds such as gongs, voices, and instruments; (2) tape music composed from sounds which were generated by electronic instruments such as audio oscillators and manipulated by diverse processing devices; (3) tape music composed from mixtures of concrete and electronic sound sources.

In all of the compositions, the composers employed the customary techniques of manipulating basic source-sounds recorded on magnetic tape. For example, complex sounds were constructed by splicing together short pieces of tape cut from recordings of various basic sounds. The ear perceives a total impression of complexity without being able to distinguish each of the simple components. This mosaic-like technique, which demands considerable patience on the part of the composer, was, in the early days of tape music sometimes regarded as sufficient to the completion of a tape composition.

In these works, however, the composers found it compositionally desirable to further process basic sound sources by way of semi-automatic devices. For example, tape recorders and associated equipment were used to develop continuous patterns of sound, usually characterized by certain rhythmic rigidity, but nevertheless useful. Between the extremes of handicraft and machine work, the composers used a variety of other specialized techniques, made possible by the flexibility of tape and the versatility of electronic equipment. For example, varying speed was used to produce different pitches and timbres; filtering was used to suppress some of the timbral characteristics of a given sound; reverberation to let the echo add color, liveliness, and a sense of spaciousness.

The composers represented here all composed a number of works for conventional instruments prior to turning to the electronic medium.

Pulitzer Prize-winner MARIO DAVIDOVSKY (b. Argentina, 1934) has lived in New York since 1960, the year of his first Guggenheim Fellowship. Since then he has become renowned for his important SYNCHRONISMS series for electronic,sound and traditional instruments (CRI SD 204 and 268), and for the elegance and refinement of his instrumental works (CRI SD 305). He has won the Naumburg, the Brandeis Creative Arts and the National Academy of Arts and Letters Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships and two Rockefeller Fellowships. He has received commissions from, among others, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Pan American Union, the New York Chamber Soloists, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, the Fromm Foundation and the Juilliard String Quartet. He is now (1976) Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Professor of Music at the City College of New York.

SIDE 1
Davidovsky: ELECTRONIC STUDY NO. 2 is a tightly organized work, basically a succession of percussive sounds. The pitch is indeterminate, but the quality of sound gives the impression that it originated from a variety of resonant membranes. The composer here avoids using any semi-automatic processes of generating or modifying the sounds, and works for the complete control of every detail of his composition. This work was originally distributed on four tracks of tape, each connected to a separate loudspeaker. Even in this two-track stereo version, the place of origin of any given sound combination has a definite structural significance.

Mario Davidovsky, "Electronic Studies 1 & 3"

Mario Davidovsky, Electronic Study No. 1
Mario Davidovsky, Electronic Study No. 3

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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS TO A PROGRAM OF WORKS PRODUCED AT THE COLUMBIA-PRINCETON ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTER, GIVEN AT THE MCMILLIN THEATRE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ON MAY 9 AND 10, 1961:
Your presence here, at a concert of electronic music, is a compliment to the composers, as well as to the two Universities that sponsor their work; and while I extend to you a welcome on behalf of the Universities i also wish to convey the composers' hope that you will be as gratified by hearing their works as they are by your willingness to listen.

No doubt your expectations are mixed. You are ready to be surprised, to have your curiosity satisfied, and possibly even to experience snatches of enjoyment as you would at an ordinary concert. If that is your state of mind I am fairly sure you will not be disappointed. But it may be that you are here in a mood of combined trepidation and resistance: this, after all, is the Age of Anxiety. . . .Or you may be bent on proving that electronic music is not music -- doing this by the most painful test of endurance, or else you may be feeling caught because you have been brought by a friend and friendship is dearer to you than prudence.

If for these or any other reasons you are ill at ease, allow me to suggest a very few considerations which should make you more serene, while leaving you your full freedom of opinion, your entire right to dislike and reject. I suggest, to begin with, that we are not here to like or approve but to understand. And the first step to understanding a new art is to try to imagine why the maker wants it the way it is. That is interesting in itself, even if we ultimately disown the product. To understand in this fashion does not mean to accept passively because someone says that the stuff is new and therefore good, that many believe in it, that it's going to succeed anyway, so it's best to resign oneself to the inevitable. This kind of reasoning has gone on about modern art for some thirty years and nothing has been more harmful to the arts. It is an inverted philistinism, which eliminates judgment and passion just as surely as did the older philistinism of blind opposition to whatever was new.

What then is the decent, reasonable attitude to adopt? Very simple: make the assumption, first, that the old style-whatever it is-has exhausted its possibilities and can only offer repetition or trivial variations of the familiar masterpieces. I do not suggest that you should be convinced that your favorite music is obsolete. I invite you to assume that it may be: for by trying to think that it is, as the new composer obviously has done, you will begin to discover what he is up to. By way of encouragement let me remind you that you make this very assumption automatically four or five times in every classical concert, in order to adjust your ear to the changes in style between Bach and Mozart, Mozart and Richard Strauss, and-if you can between Strauss and Alban Berg. If styles and genres did not suffer exhaustion, there would be only one style and form in each art from its beginnings to yesterday.

But, you may say, electronic music is something else again; it is out of bounds; the jump is too great. There is no semblance of scale, the sounds are new, most of them are in fact noises. Ah noise! Noise is the most constant complaint in the history of music. In the heyday of music it was not only Berlioz and Wagner who were damned as noisy. Mozart before them and Haydn, and even earlier Lully and Handel. I suspect that the reason Orpheus was torn to pieces by women is that he made horrendous noises on his lyre while they were washing their clothes at the river in what they thought was melodious silence. The argument of noise is always irrelevant. The true question is: does this noise, when familiar, fall into intelligible forms and impressive contents? To supply the answer takes time. One hearing, two, three, are not enough. Something must change in the sensibility itself, in the way that a foreign language suddenly breaks into meaning and melody after months or years of its being mere noise. As a veteran of the premiere of Stravinsky's Sucre du Printemps in Paris, I can testify to the ieality of the change. At the end of the piece, the conductor Pierre Monteux turned around amid the furious howls of the audience and said that since they had liked the piece so much he would play it again. The response was no better and the police had to quell the tumult. But now, fifty years after, the young accept those hammering rhythms and dissonant chords as if they were lullabies. They relish them while dallying in canoes, at the movies to accompany Disney's abstractions, and at the circus, where the music is used for the elephants to dance to.

Associations, in short, and assumptions and expectations rule our judgments. They govern our feelings, which we think are altogether spontaneous and truthful. But our sensibility is always more complex and more resourceful than we suppose, and that is why I have ventured to bring to your conscious notice what you knew all the time but might not allow for sufficiently in listening to electronic music for the first time.

The word "electronic" suggests a final objection with which it is well to have come to grips. Most people of artistic tastes share the widespread distrust and dislike of machinery and argue that anything pretending to be art cannot come out of a machine: art is the human product par excellence, and electronic music, born of intricate circuits and the oscillations of particles generated by Con Edison, is a contradiction in terms. Here again the answer is simple: the moment man ceased to make music with his voice alone the art became machineridden. Orpheus's lyre was a machine, a symphony orchestra is a regular factory for making artificial sounds, and a piano is the most appalling contrivance of levers and wires this side of the steam engine.

Similarly, the new electronic devices are but a means for producing new materials to play with. What matters is not how they are produced but how they are used. And as to that we are entitled to ask the old questions--do we find the substance rich, evocative, capable of subtlety and strength? Do we, after a while, recognize patterns to which we can respond with our sense of balance, our sense of suspense and fulfillment, our sense of emotional and intellectual congruity? Those are the problems, beyond the technical, which our composers have tried to solve. We shall now attend to their handiwork with pleasure and gratitude (I hope) and certainly with a generous fraction of the patience they have themselves invested in their efforts to please us. -- JACQUES BARZUN

The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was established in 1959 with the assistance of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The Center provides three studios for composition and research in the electronic production of music. One studio houses the RCA Electronic Sound Synthesizer and related recording equipment, the others contain specialized equipment for sound generation and modification. Earlier grants from the Foundation made through Barnard College, allotment of space and other assistance by Columbia University have enabled Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky of Columbia to conduct joint experiments in the medium, with technical assistance from Mr. Peter Mauzey. The Center is jointly administered by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky of Columbia University and Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions of Princeton University.

MARIO DAVIDOVSKY (Argentina) studied composition with Maestro Guillermo Graetzer in Argentina and Aaron Copland in the United States. He has written ballet, chamber, theatre and film music. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, he is presently a staff member there. The sounds for ELECTRONIC STUDY NO. 1 were initially derived from three electronic sources: sinusoidal and square wave generators, and white noise. Conversion of these sounds into compositional materials was achieved by use of filters, reverberation chamber and through different recording processes. Basically, the STUDY is built upon five sound mixtures working as a series which is inverted, transposed and interpolated, and the sound mixtures are changed in density and intensity from the original. The material is developed through four carefully timed sections.

Electronic Study No. 3 in Memoriam Edgar Varese was completed in 1965 at the Electronic Music Center of Princeton and Columbia Universities. Primarily, the piece is constructed on its most basic level, using articulative processes available only in the electronic media. The intense concentration and speed of ocurring events, together with the very sharp articulation characteristics of the piece, give it a very idiosyncratic texture.

Arthur Kreiger, "Variations on a Theme by Davidovsky"

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Arthur Kreiger
Variations on a Theme by Davidovsky
Tape realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

Arthur Kreiger (b. 1945) holds degrees in English Literature and in Music from the University of Connecticut. He earned his D.M.A. degree, with distinction, in composition from Columbia University in 1977. While still a student, Kreiger was the recipient of fellowships from the Berkshire Music Festival and the Composers' Conference. His electronic music has been recognized by the League of Composers-ISCM, American Composers Alliance Recording Award and the Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Bourges. Recent honors include the Prix de Rome and grants from CAPS and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Kreiger is presently on the faculty of Columbia University and is affiliated with the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. His Dance for Sarah and Variations may be heard on CRI SD 483.

Kreiger writes: "Electronic sound is a remarkably fluid medium. One is enticed by the unlimited possibilities in instrument designs, the infinite capacity for subtle shadings in timbre, and the potential richness of musical gesture found in the sound material. Variations on a Theme by Davidovsky. . explores an extensive palette of electronic tones and noises. Delicately shifting colors characterize this homage to one of the classic works in the electronic field. The composition recalls the opening ten measures of Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sounds (1970) as a thematic subject. The theme appears 45 seconds into the piece "reorchestrated" for tape alone. It is preceded by a short introduction and is followed by a series of widely differing variations. Classical analog tape techniques (cutting, splicing and mixing) together with complex synthesizer patches have served in producing and shaping the variety of musical settings. The version presented on this recording is a stereo reduction of the 4-track master. The composer acknowledges the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for its generous support."

This recording was funded by the Jerome Foundation and by the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.

Mario Davidovsky, "String Trio" (1982)