Pril Smiley & William Hellermann

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PRIL SMILEY (b. 1943)
ECLIPSE (1967) * 1st Finalist *
(Realized in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center)
Eclipse was originally composed for four separate tracks, the composer having worked with a specifically-structured antiphonal distribution of compositional material to be heard from four corners of a room or other appropriate space. This record necessarily represents a reduced two-track version of the piece, and hence (from the composer's point of view) the piece loses some part of its structural significance. Some sections of Eclipse are semi-improvisatory; by and large, the piece was worked out via many sketches and preliminary experiments on tape: all elements such as rhythm, timbre, loudness, and duration of each note were very precisely determined and controlled.

In many ways, the structure of Eclipse is related to the composer's use of timbre. There are basically two kinds of sounds in the piece: the low, sustained gong-like sounds (always either increasing or decreasing in loudness) and the short more percussive sounds, which can be thought of as metallic, glassy, or wooden in character. These different kinds of timbres are usually used in contrast to one another, sometimes being set end to end so that one kind of sound interrupts another, and sometimes being dovetailed so that one timbre appears to emerge out of or from beneath another. Eighty-five percent of the sounds are electronic in origin; the non-electronic sounds are mainly pre-recorded percussion sounds-but subsequently electronically modified so that they are not always recognizable. By Pril Smiley

WILLIAM HELLERMANN (b. 1939)
ARIEL (1967) * 4th Finalist *
(Realized in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center)
The name Ariel is related to Shakespeare's character in The Tempest: the music isn't. I chose this name for my piece only because it sounded appropriate to the music. Not because the music was especially poetic or playful, but because Ariel suggests to me a transformation of spirit, the ability to change shape at will.

In listening to Ariel, it might also be helpful to know that it was not designed to illustrate any technical process or aesthetic dogma; nor was it intended to create any visual images. It is a composed performance, not a composition. A performance, because all its events are the result of live operations in real time, not the result of careful measuring and splicing. Composed, because many separate performances were then transformed, made to have new significance, by being placed in relation to each other. The performing medium was an electronic music studio: the basic sound source was a gong. By William Hellermann