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Clarence Barlow: Relationships for Melody Instruments (1974; Version 6, 1986)

From the album New Computer Music

Born into the Anglophone minority of Calcutta in 1945, the composer Clarence Barlow studied math and physics while steeping himself in the musical traditions of northern India and medieval Europe.  In 1968, Barlow moved to Cologne, Germany, where he studied for a brief time with Bernd Alois Zimmermann before the latter’s suicide in 1970.  In 1984, he was appointed as a lecturer in computer music at the Cologne Music Academy.  He currently teaches at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

Although Barlow sees the computer simply as a compositional tool, and not the basis of a distinct musical style (“I hate the computer,” he declared in an interview), he was among the first in Germany to use computer languages to build algorithmic structures to guide his music.  His particular interest lies in mathematically specifying certain perceptual musical qualities (tonality, metricism, etc.) and using generalized compositional methods to modulate these qualities on command.

Relationships for Melody Instruments, Version 6 is a manifestation of Barlow’s desire to algorithmically steer broad musical parameters.  He writes,

This composition was intended for the creation of harmonic and metric fields of variable strength.  The melodic and rhythmic organization employs a limited quantity of pitches and pulses.  In more conventional terms, this implies a music that moves from “tonal” to “antitonal” to “polytonal” to “atonal.”  Rhythmically, it moves from “metric” to “antimetric” to “polymetric” to “ametric.”

The resulting music, played by computer-controlled digital synthesizer (probably a Yamaha DX7), bass clarinet, and drum kit, sounds like cybernetic free jazz, or perhaps an extra freaky version of Terry Riley’s 1964 minimalist masterpiece In C. The drums provide consistent rhythmic propulsion, around which the instruments weave strands of sound, gradually coalescing around points of tonal clarity and dispersing again into quasi-statistical disorder.  Barlow’s music demonstrates that “intellectual” music can be powerfully visceral and even (gasp!) fun.

January 20, 2011, 7:44am

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Paul Lansky: Notjustmoreidlechatter (1988)

From the album More Than Idle Chatter (1994)

By name at least, Lansky is fairly well-known thanks to Radiohead’s track “Idioteque,” which samples his 1973 piece Mild und leise (which in turn quotes the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner).

Notjustmoreidlechatter is based on computer manipulations of human speech— specifically, the voice of Lansky’s wife reading from Jane Eyre.  While many composers have used the voice as a purely phonetic resource in contemporary music, Lansky’s composition is unusual in coupling an experimental treatment of speech with more conventional musical patterns.  It has a powerful rhythmic pulse, and the harmonic progressions suggested by the babel of voices sounds like it was borrowed from Enya.  The tension between the weirdness of the sound material and the conventionality of its use makes for a delightfully strange and beautiful piece of music.

May 07, 2009, 11:49am