Conversations WIth Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic Music - Promotional Copy

Conversations With Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic Music

By Norma Beecroft

Promotional copy with interview excerpts

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COPYRIGHT Š 2015 Norma Beecroft COVER IMAGE John Reeves NOTES ON READING THIS BOOK Track numbers appear in the margin to assist any reader who has purchased an audio disc that accompanies the interview.

Interviews that were originally conducted in French are included and transcribed in French with an English translation. The French and English versions appear together.

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Table of Contents

1. Pierre Schaeffer FRANCE (FRENCH/ENGLISH)..........................................6 2. Iannis Xenakis GREECE/FRANCE ..............................................................48 3. Franรงois Bayle FRANCE (FRENCH/ENGLISH)...........................................72 4. Jean-Calude Risset & Gerald Bennett FRANCE/USA...................... 110 5. John Cage USA...................................................................................... 126 6. Vladimir Ussachevsky USA................................................................ 146 7. Otto Luening USA................................................................................ 166 8. Earle Brown USA.................................................................................. 192 9. Hubert S.Howe & Earle Brown USA................................................ 210 10. Emmanuel Ghent USA .................................................................... 236 11. Oskar Sala GERMANY......................................................................... 246 12. Karel Goeyvaerts BELGIUM.............................................................. 262 2

13. Karlheinz Stockhausen GERMANY.................................................. 282 14. Gottfried Michael Koenig GERMANY/HOLLAND............................. 300 15. Hugh Davies GREAT BRITAIN............................................................. 322 16. Desmond Briscoe GREAT BRITAIN................................................... 346 17. Peter Zinovieff GREAT BRITAIN......................................................... 368 18. Luciano Berio ITALY.......................................................................... 378 19. Gustav Ciamaga CANADA................................................................. 396 20. Bill Buxton CANADA........................................................................... 410 21. James Montgomery CANADA........................................................... 428 22. Barry Truax CANADA......................................................................... 438 23. Bengt Hambraeus SWEDEN/CANADA.............................................. 452

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Conversations with Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic Music

Preface

In June of 1970, an international conference was organized by UNESCO in Stockholm, Sweden, with the collaboration of the Fylkingen Society for Contemporary Music. The subject of the conference: the relationship between the arts and technology, and of all the arts, music seems to have been the most particularly involved. The questions raised: has anything of lasting value been achieved during the last 20 years in musical composition by the use of the new technology offered to composers?

Does such music have a future?

These questions of course were not answered by the delegates to the conference, many of whom were avid practitioners of the new resources for music, but the discussion was lively, and continued for years to follow.

As a composer and dedicated user of this new technology, and being heavily involved in the world of new music as a broadcaster at CBC, and cofounder and administrator of New Music Concerts in Toronto, it was 4 • Preface

inevitable that I would be questioning the present and future value of technology to music, this interesting interaction between the fields of science and the humanities.

Thus began my investigations in the late 1970s, exploring music’s relationship to technology through the voices of some of the world’s foremost creative musical minds. I traveled to the centres where the action took place: in Paris, France, when Pierre Schaeffer startled the world with his musique concrète, and Iannis Xenakis began his work with computers; to the United States, where John Cage was becoming a legend with his unique approach to what was ‘music’, and the early experiments with magnetic tape conducted by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening at Columbia University; and to Cologne, Germany, at the Westdeutsche Rundfunk where Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his first opus with sine tones; and the advent of electronic music studios in Canada at universities in Toronto, Kingston and Montreal, mentored by our most famous researcher, Hugh Le Caine, who contributed immensely to Canada’s incredible creativity.

I am indebted to my colleague William Van Ree who transferred my old cassette recordings to digital, from which we commenced our endless editing of both audio and text. And thanks must go to Ananda Suddath for her expert translation of the French interviews with Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle: and to the Canada Council for the Arts for supporting this project, understanding its significance in the development of new musical resources for composers: and to the Canadian Music Centre who is making this important documentation available, and especially Matthew Fava, Ontario Region Director of the CMC, for his dedication in assembling all the elements for this ebook, assisted by Jennifer Chan whose expertise in layout and design was invaluable.

The period immediately following the Second World War was a fascinating time, an explosion of creativity, and a completely new and unique area was added to the long history of music. We hope you will enjoy hearing from these many voices, and that my “Conversations with Post World War II Pioneers of Electronic Music” will be illuminating in its discussion of a significant era in the world’s history.

Norma Beecroft Preface • 5

PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER

né en 1910, Nancy, Lorraine, France – décédé en 1995, Aix-enProvence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France b. 1910, Nancy, Lorraine, France – d. 1995, Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France Parmi les artisans de l’avantgarde musicale ayant émergé en Europe suite à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Pierre Schaeffer est devenu l’un des personnages les plus controversés grâce à son développement d’une forme musicale unique qu’il a appelée musique concrète. C’était un genre de musique différent qui faisait usage de sons naturels que Schaeffer a d’abord fabriqués à l’aide de phonographes et de tables tournantes, avant de découvrir la bande magnétique.

Il débute sa carrière en tant qu’écrivain, publiant des articles portant sur la musique ainsi qu’un premier roman à la fin des années 30.

Ingénieur de formation, doté d’une sensibilité musicale lui ayant été inculquée par ses parents, il est idéalement qualifié pour oeuvrer dans le domaine des télécommunications, et entre à la Radiodiffusion Française 6 • PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER

In the world of new music innovators who emerged in Europe out of the Second World War, Pierre Schaeffer became one of the most controversial figures, developing a unique form of music which he termed musique concrète. This was a different genre of music using natural sounds, which Schaeffer created by working with phonographs and turntables at first before his introduction to magnetic tape. His career began as a writer, publishing articles on music and a first novel in the late 1930s. Having trained in engineering, and being drawn to music through his parents, he was an ideal candidate for the world of telecommunications, and joined the French Radio and Television Broadcasting in 1935 where he was able to demonstrate his multiple talents in music, literature and science.

en 1935, où il a l’occasion de faire valoir la panoplie de ses talents musicaux, littéraires et scientifiques.

Schaeffer est le fondateur du Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM), dont le précurseur est le Club d’essai, un organisme qu’il crée en 1942. Le Club d’Essai est le centre parisien d’activité musicale où Schaeffer et d’autres artistes développent leurs pièces expérimentales. Lui et Pierre Henry collaborent à la réalisation de plusieurs compositions dans les années 50, dont Bidule en ut et Symphonie pour un homme seul, des pièces qui révolutionnent la musique de l’époque.

Pierre Schaeffer était un homme doté d’une personnalité complexe, tel que le révèlent sa musique et ses écrits. Il était un fervent catholique, et ses écrits puisent fréquemment leur inspiration à même ses croyances religieuses, tout en s’appuyant sur ses théories et sa philosophie de la musique en général. Vers la fin de sa vie, il est atteint de la maladie d’Alzheimer, qui l’emporte à l’âge de 85 ans.

Schaeffer was the founder of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales (GRM), which evolved from the Club d’Essai, an organization which he created in 1942. Le Club d’Essai was the centre of musical activity in Paris where Schaeffer and other artists developed their experimental pieces.

Collaborating with composer Pierre Henry, they produced many different compositions in the 1950s, among them Bidule en Ut and Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul, pieces that were revolutionary at the time.

Pierre Schaeffer was a complex personality, as his music and writings reveal. He was an ardent Catholic, and his writings often draw on his religious beliefs as well as his theories and philosophy about music in general. He developed Alzheimer’s disease in later life which caused his death at age 85

PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER • 7

Track 1

NB: Je vais vous poser des questions en anglais, si vous me permettez et, si cela pose problème, peut-être qu’on fera usage des deux langues.

Si vous le voulez bien, j’aimerais revenir sur vos débuts en musique concrète, et je m’intéresse beaucoup à comment vous avez commencé ce travail et à pourquoi vous l’avez commencé.

NB: I’m going to ask you questions, if I may, in English, and if it’s a problem, well, maybe we’ll use both languages. If you don’t mind, I would like to go back to the beginnings of your work in musique concrète, and I am very interested to know how you got started and why you started.

PS: C’est facile, car j’ai raconté ces débuts quelques fois – à plusieurs reprises! J’étais alors entre la programmation et la technique radio, j’en étais à mes premiers pas dans le domaine en tant qu’ingénieur, ingénieur responsable des microphones acoustiques, des haut-parleurs et ainsi de suite.

Mon objectif était, si possible, de devenir programmateur, auteur de radiodiffusion.

PS: It’s easy, because I’ve repeated this beginning a few times – many, many times! I was between programming and technique of radio, these were my first steps in the field as an engineer, engineer in charge of acoustic microphones, loudspeakers and so on. My purpose was, if possible, to become a programmer, an author of broadcasting.

À la fin de la guerre, pendant l’occupation de Paris, j’ai écrit un grand manuscrit pour dramatique radio, The Poetic, et j’ai travaillé avec une très bonne compositrice, Claude Arrieu.

At the end of the war, during the occupation of Paris, I wrote a big manuscript for a radio drama, The Poetic, and I worked with a very good composer, Claude Arrieu.

J’ai essayé, au fil de six ou huit scénarios, d’élargir ma démarche, de concevoir une relation différente entre le son, le décor sonore et le langage grammatical ou poétique.

Suite à cette exploration, je me suis

I tried, in six or eight scripts, to broaden my approach, to conceive of a different relation between the sound, the sound décor, and grammatical or poetic speech. After this exploration, I was interested

8 • PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER

intéressé au domaine du bruit.

Cela a eu un impact très important sur l’univers de l’imagination, de drama.

in the field of noise. It had a very important impact on the general field of the imagination, of drama.

NB: Faites-vous allusion au bruit en tant qu’effet sonore, ce qu’on appellerait effet sonore?

NB: Do you mean noise in terms of sound effect, what we would call sound effect?

PS: Effet sonore, bien sûr – mais le bruit au sens de chaque... comment dit-on en anglais, le son de l’automobile, d’un cheval, etc.?

PS: Sound effect, of course – but noise in the sense of every... how do we say in English, the sound of the automobile, of a horse, etc.?

NB: Oui, les sons du quotidien. Les bruits de... les sons naturels.

NB: Yes, everyday sounds. Noises of... natural sounds.

PS: Vous savez, le mot noise en anglais nous présente la même erreur que bruit en français, car bruit, ou noise, ont deux sens, deux sens très, très opposés. Il y a le bruit de la théorie de l’information, le bruit du télégraphiste, le bruit de l’atomiste en sciences. On parle ici de désordre, d’entropie, du bruit de l’électron, du bruit qui perturbe un circuit de conversation, par exemple... mais ce mot est également d’usage pour dénommer le son de quelque chose, d’un animal, d’une voix, d’un événement naturel, ou d’un événement artificiel, ou... si vous jouez du violon ou du piano, c’est du bruit aussi.

PS: You know, the word noise in English is the same mistake as bruit in French, because bruit, or noise, have two senses, very, very opposite meanings. There is the noise as described in information theory, noise of the telegraph operator, noise studied in nuclear science. It means disorder, entropy, the noise of the electron, the noise perturbing a circuit of conversation, for instance... but another accepted usage of this word: noise means a sound of something, of some event, some animal, some voice, some natural event, or artificial event, or... if you play violin or piano, it’s noise too.

Mais c’est du très bon bruit qui a

But it’s very good noise, in good form PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER • 9

une belle forme et dont la structure est parfaite – c’est du bon violon ou du bon piano. Mais chaque bruit provient exactement de la même source naturelle. Or, je parle de deux choses. Si je vous explique mes débuts en musique... le début a eu lieu suite à mes premiers essais en tant qu’auteur de radiodiffusion, en tant qu’auteur poétique et dramatique. J’ai cherché à élargir le champ de possibilités offert par le décor sonore, ou peutêtre seulement que le bruit sans paroles... à trouver quelque chose à dire.

with a perfect structure – it is good violin or good piano. But it is exactly the same natural source for every noise. But I speak of two things. If I explain my beginnings in the field of music to you... the beginning was after my first attempt at being a broadcasting author, a poetic and dramatic author. I sought to extend the field of noise as decor, or perhaps only noise without words... to find something to say.

Ce que j’ai dit est tout à fait conforme à la définition du mot «musique»: l’organisation de sons sans paroles, c’est précisément de la musique.

Mais en musique, au début, mon premier essai a été horrible! Il m’a semblé horrible. Je n’aurais pas eu raison d’appeler ça de la musique, comme ce mot en est un qu’on doit respecter. J’ai combiné le mot musique et l’adjectif concrète, pour marquer la différence et pour expliquer ce qui se passait avec les sons naturels, avec la technique très primitive par laquelle on découpait un cercle de disques et on les reconstituait par le mixage, le collage, et ainsi de suite. Nous avons obtenu, avec Pierre Henry, quelques mois après mes premiers

What I said is exactly the definition of music – organization of sounds without words is exactly music.

But in music, in the beginning, my first step was horrible! I found it horrible. I had no reason to give it the respected name of music.

10 • PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER

I put with the word musique the adjective concrète, to make a difference and to explain what happened with natural sounds, with the very primitive technique of cutting a circle of discs and putting them together through mixing, collage and so on. We obtained, with Pierre Henry, a few months after my first beginnings, we obtained a collage in music, exactly as what happened in painting with

Track 2

débuts, nous avons obtenu un collage musical, tout comme ceux qui avaient été produits en peinture avec le collage! Non pas par l’atteinte intentionnelle d’un objectif personnel, mais par hasard.

collage! Not through deliberate achievement of a personal goal, but by chance.

Mais suite à cette première étape de collage, complétée à l’aide de tables tournantes, d’enregistrements etc., quelques années après, ma véritable découverte fut celle de la similarité entre le son musical et n’importe quel autre son. Parce que le son de la voix, du violon, du piano, font partie de ce que les gens désignent comme étant de la musique, qui est une composante importante du bruit.

But after this first step in collage, with turntables, recordings and so on, a few years after, my true discovery was the similar nature between musical sound and any sound. Because the sound of voice, of violin, of piano, is part of what people name music, a very important part of noise.

NB: Oui, c’est du bruit plus structuré, en fait.

NB: Yes, it’s more structured noise, actually.

PS: Oui.

PS: Yes.

NB: J’ai tendance à croire que l’usage du bruit en musique, c’est-àdire... Il y avait eu des précurseurs dans les années 20, n’est-ce pas?

NB: I’m thinking that the use of noise in music, I mean... There had been precedents for that in the ’20s, had there not?

PS: Non, j’ai du mal à dire en anglais une chose assez délicate. Il ne faut pas opposer le bruit au son musical: c’est la même chose! Le bruit naturel est en général une structure complexe, et le son réputé musical, classique, est la même structure,

PS : No, I have a hard time addressing such a delicate matter in English.

We mustn’t conceive of noise and musical sound as opposites: they’re the same thing! Natural noise is generally a complex structure, and so-called musical sound, in the PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER • 11

mais elle est simple! Il n’y a pas trop de choses à la fois, et on a privilégié, par exemple, une hauteur, une tonique. On a privilégié un registre de timbres, et on a fait de la musique, classiquement, depuis que l’homme a des instruments de musique, pour extraire des bruits naturels, les bruits les plus convenables, convenient. Musical sound is appropriate noise.

classic sense, is the same structure, but it’s simple! There aren’t too many things occurring at once, and emphasis, for example, is on one pitch, or tonic. A timbral register is prioritized, and music has been made, in the classic sense, ever since man has had musical instruments to extract natural noises from the most appropriate noises. Musical sound is appropriate noise.

NB: Oui, je comprends ce que vous dites, et je crois bien comprendre d’un point de vue scientifique également. Puis-je remonter encore plus loin dans le temps? Avez-vous été formé en tant que... c’est-à-dire que, bien évidemment, vous avez reçu une formation en sciences.

Alors ça a représenté une certaine évolution dans votre parcours d’en arriver là?

NB: Yes, I understand what you’re saying, and I also understand it from a scientific point of view as well, I do believe. But, may I go back in time before that? Were you trained as a... I mean, obviously, as an engineer, you had scientific training. So this was an evolution in your life, to arrive at that point?

PS: Non, parce que j’ai fait mes études à l’école polytechnique, mais mes parents étaient, sont musiciens.

Je cherche à trouver quelque chose entre les deux.

PS: No, because my studies were in a polytechnic school, but my parents were, are musicians. I have a desire to find something in between.

NB: Aha! Eh bien, vous avez très bien réussi, il faut le dire! [rires] Au début, vous étiez limité sur le plan de l’équipement, vous étiez contraint au disque. Même avant ça, aviezvous connaissance des techniques d’enregistrement à fil? Celles-ci

NB: Aha! Well, you did a very good job, I must say! [laughs] In the early days of course, you were restricted with equipment, you were restricted to the disc. Even prior to that, were you acquainted with wire recording techniques? Was that in use during

12 • PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER

étaient-elles d’usage au courant de votre carrière radiophonique?

your years in radio?

PS: Je ne sais pas si cela répond à votre question, mais il y a eu trois périodes après ’48. La première fut la période du tourne-disque, des enregistrements sur disques.

Je sais que le magnétophone était déjà répandu, mais à Paris, après l’occupation, après la guerre, nous n’avions que des tourne-disques.

Pour nous, c’était la première période, la période des sillons fermés... comment dit-on, en anglais?... un cercle fermé.

PS: I don’t know if this answers your question, but there were three periods after ’48. The first was the period of the turntable, records on discs. I know the tape recorder was already commonplace, but in Paris, after the occupation, after the war, we only had turntables. For us, it was the first period, the period of locked grooves... how do we say, in English?... a closed circle...

NB: Ah, une boucle!

NB: Oh, a loop!

PS: Oui, c’est un événement très mineur que de fermer un sillon sur lui-même, mais c’est devenu la base de notre premier style. Parce que c’était comme un cristal de son...

PS: Yes, it’s a very little event, to create a loop but it was the source of our first style. Because it was like a sound crystal...

PIERRE HENRI MARIE SCHAEFFER • 13

IANNIS XENAKIS

May 29, 1922 – February 4, 2001

Engineer, architect, inventor, author and composer, Iannis Xenakis was one of the most distinguished musical minds of the 20th Century. Imprisoned in Greece during the Second World War for his political views and activism, he escaped to France in 1947 where he was hired by the renowned architect Le Corbusier and where he pursued his avid interest in composition. He was finally recognized by his adopted country as Knight in the French Legion of Honour in 1982, and was the recipient of numerous scientific and musical awards from many countries solidifying his position as a unique voice in contemporary music.

His work with stochastic processes and architectural structures as well as in computer composition, and his writings on his compositional approaches caused scandals on some occasions, but more importantly, a steadily increasing respect for what were plainly new and exciting directions in music. A frequent visitor to Canada, it was a pleasure and honour to talk to this amazing, honest gentleman.

Track 1

NB: I am particularly interested in knowing what kind of teachers did you have in Greece, in music?

IX: I had a few, not many teachers, and especially one, his name is Aristotle Koundouroff. He was a Greek refugee from Russia in the thirties. He was from Georgia.

NB: When did you come to Greece from Rumania?

IX: The first time was when I was about ten years old, and I was in a boarding school because of my father. Mv mother had died when I was 14 • IANNIS XENAKIS

six.

NB: What attracted you to music?

IX: I don’t know, music itself, I suppose. I remember when I was about five my mother had brought me once a small flute, and she made some sounds with it, and I was fascinated by that. I didn’t go to any concerts in Rumania, but I was very sensitive, as I remember, to any kind of music, especially the light music. That was the kind that was available. And when I went to this school, I remember we had studies in the evening, and there was a piano teacher who used to play for himself, especially Bach I think, and the whole building was resounding so I couldn’t work anymore. I was about eleven or twelve.

I was very impressed by that, and I decided to take piano lessons. So I started, but in a disorderly way, more or less, with teachers here and there. It was only when I was 15 or 16 that I heard Beethoven’s Fifth which was broadcast on the radio, and I was pinned down, I couldn’t move. Interesting, eh? And then, I didn’t yet decide to make compositions, because I didn’t know that I had to do that. We had a school head master who was British, because it was run by both British and Greek people, and he took three or four of us who were interested in music, and we had some records, concerts in the evening, and I heard many things at that time. Then, when I finished high school, I went to Athens to study engineering. Then I decided I had also to study composition. Quite late. But again, I didn’t dare to go into a school of music, fortunately I think I didn’t do that, but I started with that man who was a refugee from Russia, and who was a pupil of Hippolitov Ivanov, therefore very traditional although a very serious musician, and with him I learned by heart all the voices of the Mozart REQUIEM for instance. Then, I had to stop because of the war, we didn’t have money, and I was engaged in the resistance against the Nazis, but I continued engineering at the Polytechnic School of Athens and passed very difficult examinations. I passed on just the day when the Italians invaded Greece, so the school was closed, and then it opened again and closed again because of the student unrest and the resistance in which I was involved. I was several times in prison, and so on.

IANNIS XENAKIS • 15

NB: Were your engineering studies regarded as a means to an end, a livelihood?

IX: Also, because at that time I couldn’t imagine that I could live by doing music, composition, and besides that, the environment was not such to push me to do composition. That was because I couldn’t make it without doing music, it was my personal deep necessity. But together with other things, I remember I was directed to the texts, Platonic Dialogues, and when we went to demonstrations in the streets, I always carried some pocket texts of Plato, and I was reading them in prison also, especially about the Republic.

Track 2 NB: Did you have a lot of exposure to ethnic music when you were

young?

IX: That’s right. To traditional Greek music, and also the Rumanian music, and also to the Eastern church music, and I used to sing as a schoolboy. We were taken to church every Sunday, and we were singing some chant. I was formed in this kind of anarchic but also very rich musical environment. This is why, I suppose, I could not follow any specific path in music later on, in composition anyway.

NB: Too diverse a background.

IX: Yes, I understood, and I felt all these musics but in a different way, without direction.

NB: Did you have, up until the point of the war, a happy childhood?

IX: No, I don’t think so, l was very miserable all those years, and I am still, I think. (Laughter) NB: But you seem to have quite a sense of humour.

IX: No. It’s a matter of constitution. I always had anxiety, like facing more or less every instant, death.

16 • IANNIS XENAKIS

NB: Even from childhood, you felt very strongly about that?

IX: Yes. NB: But it had nothing to do with politics?

IX: No, absolutely not, it was perhaps because I lost my mother very early. Could be, although I did not know her very well. We were three boys, and we were in the hands of governesses. But, at the same time, these depressing moments were succeeded by more optimistic ones.

This is why I think it is a matter of blood, it’s in myself. So I was very miserable all those years, high school, in the resistance, later on when I went to Paris.

NB: Did the ethnic music have a profound effect on you, do you feel some ties to it?

IX: No, all these musics, I didn’t feel at home with any of these things.

I was at the same time detached. I had a kind of critical attitude, but sometimes I loved some music very much. For instance, when I discovered Beethoven, that was a coup de foudre, and then when I discovered Brahms, that was another one. Much later I discovered the French school with Debussy and Ravel, which was again another sensation.

NB: When would that have been in your life?

IX: That was when I was around twenty something.

NB: Relatively late.

IX: Yes. NB: But then I suppose all those war years would have stopped everything.

IANNIS XENAKIS • 17

IX: Almost, except for the German music, which. was broadcast all the time. Wagner, even Brahms, Strauss especially. It was a kind of representation of the German geist.

NB: Are you disposed to speak of those war years, and how they affected you?

IX: I was involved in the resistance movement, first of all, because of the injustice and a kind of patriotic touch. So I joined nationalistic organizations first. But then, because of my unhappiness in that world, I had found a universe of my own, which was made out of especially ancient environment, architectural, because those things are around you in Greece, and of the way of life that they had and the thought, and also the aesthetic approach to life, the same thing. The love of beauty, the body, which was something that was so important at the time, which was destroyed by Christianity, as you know, until recent generations.

The body was something taboo. So I was living in such a world of my own, and in this world one was engaged in relations between men, and this is why I was reading Plato with much interest, the Republic, the Dialogues. The ideal of equality. For instance, I found something with which I was absolutely in agreement, that is the equality of women and men, and I think the first who did that in the history of thought was Plato, when he said that women should be equal to men, which for that time was completely outstanding. It was a kind of mental revolution, the position of the woman was very inferior until very recent years because woman was considered just a receptacle for the sperm of man, and there was nothing of her in descendents, the children.

Track 3

That was very well formulated by Aristotle, and this lasted until the 19th Century almost, even later perhaps in the West. So he was the first, and he arrived at that conclusion by a kind of rational approach, building up his republic, saying that many women are better than many men. He didn’t say that women by birth are equal, but many, so it was a kind of set theoretical approach to the problem. And therefore the Republic should use their qualities. They should also be soldiers, and so on. And that agreed with my sentiments and feeling about women, because I was not attracted to girls who were just girls. I wanted them 18 • IANNIS XENAKIS

to have other qualities at the same time. I don’t know why, maybe it was because I was very shy. So in this respect, I discovered the struggle that the Communists had started during the resistance, and the problem of changing the society, which was unjust. And in reading Marxists’ texts, I thought, “it’s funny, they look like Plato but distorted somehow”. But I could translate from one system to the other one. Plato, for instance, never spoke about the fight of classes, he didn’t name them like that, but he said that there were groups in society, especially having in mind the Athenian society of the time. Of course, he lived in a very distressed period when Athens was destroyed by the Spartans, all the ideals were completely down. It was very similar somehow, sentimentally and physically, but he had discovered that aspect of society, how the things are moving by interest, by ambition, and so on. So 1 had therefore a theoretical ground and I became a member of the Communist party, NB: Still?

IX: No. At the end of the war, 1 felt I could not go on, I was so unhappy, I had to make up my mind. Either I was going to continue in politics and continue the struggle, or else I had to do music, and I felt that by deep interrogation that the only way to survive and not commit suicide, because everything was kaput at that time, that is, the ideology was eaten completely by facts from the communist heirs, and things like that, but also from the outside. The British first, and then the Russian betrayal, and also the American coup to cover the situation in Greece. That was in ‘47. So that the only thing that I thought was still pure was perhaps music. But, after so many years, I had to start all over again. I decided that it was the only thing I could do, otherwise I would have disappeared completely. But in order to do music, I had to leave Greece. I was chased everywhere, I was hiding, and I was wounded very seriously, I almost died. I wanted to go to the States, to start again with all that I was doing before, that is, in physics, in mathematics, in music, in archeology and philosophy, I wanted to do all of that.

Track 4

NB: Why did you think of the States?

IX: I don’t know. I never questioned myself about that. I didn’t want to IANNIS XENAKIS • 19

go to Russia, for instance, which I could have perhaps done at that time.

Maybe intuitively I thought I could do those things there. I also had relatives there, my uncle was an American. I escaped from Greece in a kind of dramatic way, first through Italy with a false passport and so on.

After I graduated from the Polytechnic school, and I found other friends in Italy. As you know, Greeks are everywhere, and in Paris. In Paris, I somehow spoke French, I thought that it was an interesting environment, although it was very difficult life at that time. I was looking for work, to do something. I left with little money in my pocket. So I became a refugee in France, and found work at Le Corbusier’s office. I didn’t know at all what he represented. I didn’t care for architecture.

NB: You had no knowledge of the reputation of Le Corbusier?

IX: No, and I didn’t care.

NB: Work, to stay alive.

IX: Yes, in order to do the music. So in music, 1 tried to find somebody to teach me. I didn’t find anybody, I tried many people. And I remember I couldn’t have any piano in my hotel room, so I bought a guitar. (Laughter) NB: You were a way ahead of your time. Today it would have been very popular. Did you have at any time serious aspirations to be a performer?

IX: No, not really. It was music that I was interested in, not at all performing. I didn’t care for that. I was completely blind. Blindly, I didn’t know what was the best part for me but I knew the general, I felt the general.

NB: You didn’t rationalize it?

IX: No, I couldn’t. I rationalize very little in fact.

NB: That’s extraordinary. I don’t know whether I believe you or not. Well, you went through a pile of teachers, Honegger, Milhaud, for example.

20 • IANNIS XENAKIS

IX: Yes, Honegger was the first one, because you just had to pay the fees, and you were accepted as a student of Honegger. I followed his classes and I wrote some music which I presented to him. He asked me to play it on the piano, and I played it, and then he said, “but here, its a mistake, you have parallel fifths”. And I said, “why not, I like them”. “How can you like them, it’s a mistake”. “No, I don’t feel it like that”. “Here, you have parallel eighths”, and so on. So, the more he was addressing me, the more I was defending myself. At the end, he said, “this is not music, there is no quality of music at all. Maybe in the first two measures, maybe”. That was my experience with Honegger.

NB: Are you of the opinion that you learn very much from teachers?

IX: No. I didn’t learn anything. That is why I stopped going to teachers. I even went to Nadia Boulanger, of course. But fortunately she said I was too primitive, and she couldn’t waste her time with me, but that I was gifted.

NB: What did they try to teach you?

IX: I thought that 1 had to start again, to do all the studies that had been interrupted, harmony, counterpoint, and so on. And finally, someone told me, there is a man named Messiaen, and he is at the Paris Conservatory.

So I went and saw him and showed him what I was doing, and for the first time, I found somebody who said, you don’t need studies at all. You have to just compose and listen to music, and that’s all. Now, Messiaen is very proud that he said that to me at the time.

Track 5

IX: At that time, a music professor, a composer, who would say such a thing was absolutely unusual. I don’t know why it happened, but he said so. He looked at my scores and he said “you are really gifted, they are naive”, and when I was upset by that, he said, “No, you shouldn’t be. I hope that I am naive myself”. He meant by that that he was not dogmatic. So, he allowed me to go to his classes. That was a very good experience because of the way that he approached music in general, especially the things that he was doing, the way that he thought, I found myself in absolute agreement with what I was hoping unconsciously to IANNIS XENAKIS • 21

do, that is, anything. So the way was freed.

NB: That’s fascinating. When did you actually meet Messiaen?

IX: I think in `48. It’s very easy to find out, because he had just finished his piano pieces, “Modes de valeurs et d’intensités”, numbers 1, 2 and 3.

It had just happened, and he explained how he made them in his class.

NB: Those were analysis classes, were they not?

IX: Yes, analysis of works, not his pupils’ works, but sometimes I was bringing him scores, and he would comment on them outside of the class.

NB: Iannis, when did you first hear a performance of a piece that you had written, and what was your reaction to the actual sound coming off the paper?

IX: I wrote many pieces that were never performed. I wrote some piano pieces, then I wrote for strings, and that was performed in Belgium in `51, I think. I was not at the performance, but they sent me a tape.

It was fun. I was interested to have the things that I thought being realized. At the same time, I was displeased. I didn’t like it. I thought it was interesting, but it’s not enough, and these feelings I have all the time, today.

NB: What kind of a technique were you using at that time?

IX: For that piece, it was a kind of a duo for two violins, which was thematic and rhythmical at the same time. And then I made larger pieces, that were never performed, also one for orchestra and chorus. After a while I wrote “Metastasis”, but I had stopped going to Messiaen. I was too busy with engineering and architecture. I started being interested in architecture. That is ‘51, ‘52. With “Metastasis” I discovered the use of the graphic approach, and also of the overall composition. That was the first real radical move that I made, and I knew that I had something different from anyone else who was doing music at that time.

22 • IANNIS XENAKIS

NB: Well, let’s go back a bit. You were in contact with what Pierre Schaeffer was doing at that point?

IX: Yes. I was going to the concerts they were giving, and I was interested in the new means that they had, although I didn’t like very much the sounds that they produced. I thought they were too unorganized, and also, at that time in `53, I think there was a big festival of contemporary music organized by Nicola Nabokov, and most of the pieces were broadcast, and I heard and recorded them on my small tape recorder.

I heard the “Rite of Spring” by Monteux, which was a fantastic thing, and for the first time also I heard some recordings of Varèse’ music, which was absolutely unknown at that time. Only two people spoke to me about Varèse, Messiaen and Le Corbusier, who had a deep esteem for Varèse. He considered him to be the only composer of the 20th Century.

Track 6

NB: That’s interesting. Obviously Le Corbusier was aware of what was going on in music?

IX: Up to a point, yes. For two reasons. One was that his mother was a very good pianist, classical. Maybe she didn’t have a career, but she was playing all the time, and his brother was a composer. In the twenties, he founded L’Esprit Nouveau, which was a magazine, where three of them, Le Corbusier, his brother and his cousin, also an architect and engineer, were the main writers. And he was aware of what was happening in art, and at that time he had met Varèse of course.

IANNIS XENAKIS • 23

FRANÇOIS BAYLE

né en 1932, Toamasina, Madagascar | b. 1932, Toamasina, Madagascar Dans le monde de la musique électronique, et particulièrement dans les pays francophones, François Bayle figure parmi les compositeurs les plus distingués du milieu. Autodidacte à ses débuts, il poursuit ses études avec Olivier Messiaen à Paris et, de 1959 à ’62, il participe aux cours d’été à Darmstadt, où il travaille avec Karlheinz Stockhausen.

En 1960, il se joint à Pierre Schaeffer et au Groupe de recherches musicales, organisme résidant à la Maison de la radio française dont il assume la direction en 1966 et dont l’intégration à l’Institut national de l’audiovisuel s’effectue en 1975. Bayle assure la direction de l’Institut jusqu’en 1977.

Durant ces premières années, Bayle s’implique dans l’organisation de concerts et d’émissions radiophoniques et contribue à bon nombre de développements technologiques, ce qui mène à l’Acousmonium en 1974, et 24 • FRANÇOIS BAYLE

In the world of electronic music and especially in the French speaking countries, François Bayle is one of the most distinguished composers in the field. Initially self-taught, he continued his studies with Olivier Messiaen in Paris, and between 1959-62 he attended the summer courses at Darmstadt, working with Karlheinz Stockhausen.

In 1960, he joined Pierre Schaeffer and the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the French Radio, assuming the responsibility for the GRM in 1966 which was integrated in 1975 with the Institut National de L’Audiovisuel. Bayle was at the head of the Institut until 1977.

In those early years, Bayle was involved in organizing concerts and broadcasts, and contributed to many technological developments, culminating in the Acousmonium in 1974, and initiating a recording label INAGRM. In 1991, he founded his own electronic music studio, the Studio

Track 1

à la fondation de la maison de disques INA-GRM. En 1991, il fonde son propre studio de musique électronique, le Studio Magison, où il poursuit son travail de recherche, d’écriture et de composition. Il a été récipiendaire de plusieurs prix prestigieux, dont le Grand Prix des compositeurs SACEM, en 1978, le National Record Grand Prize, en 1981 et le Prix Arthur Honegger, en 2011, parmi d’autres.

Magison, where he continues his work in research, writing and composition. He has been awarded many prestigious prizes, including the SACEM Grand Prize for Composers, 1978; National Record Grand Prize, 1981; Prix Arthur Honegger, 2011 among others.

NB: Alors nous avons parlé des débuts du studio et vous avez dit que vous avez commencé ici vers ...’58?

NB: So we’ve spoken about the beginnings of the studio and you said that you started here around... ’58?

Peut-être vous pouvez décrire la situation ici, quand vous êtes arrivé, vous avez commencé à travailler?

Perhaps you can describe the situation here, when you arrived, you started working?

FB: La situation en 1960...

FB: The situation in 1960...

NB: Oui.

NB: Yes.

FB: Voilà... En ‘60, Schaeffer a fait quelque chose de très important, qui ressemble beaucoup à ce que Boulez fait en ce moment avec

FB: Yes... In ‘60, Schaeffer did something very important, which was much like what Boulez is currently doing with Passage du FRANÇOIS BAYLE • 25

Passage du XXe siècle. Schaeffer a offert au public parisien une série de manifestations qui s’appelait Festival de la recherche. Festival de la recherche, c’étaient pas seulement des manifestations musicales : il y avait cinq grands concerts importants dirigés par une personne, à l’époque, très, très importante et fascinante, c’était notamment Hermann Scherchen et des gens comme ça. Il y avait donc cinq grands concerts de musique contemporaine, de musique électronique et concrète, et puis il y avait aussi beaucoup de manifestations de jeune cinéma expérimental, cinéma d’avantgarde, cinéma, aussi, des débuts précurseurs du cinéma, cinéma de Méliès, cinéma des débuts de ...

XXe siècle. Schaeffer offered the Parisian public a series of events called Festival de la recherche.

Festival de la recherche wasn’t limited to musical events: it featured five important large-scale concerts conducted by a very, very important and fascinating person at the time, notably Hermann Scherchen and people like that. So there were five major concerts of contemporary music, electronic music, and musique concrète, and there were also many events featuring early experimental cinema, avant-garde cinema, cinema, also, from when cinema was in its infancy, Méliès cinema, cinema from the beginnings of...

NB: De tout...

NB: Of everything...

FB: ...oui, des débuts de la photographie, etc., et puis, il y avait aussi des tables rondes, des discussions et des débats sur... enfin, sur les problèmes que posent le modernisme, d’une certaine façon, la technologie, le modernisme, et d’une manière générale, finalement, tout ce qui utilise certaines particularités du monde actuel au niveau de la possibilité de capter les images visuelles, ou de capter les images

FB: ...yes, from the early years of photography, etc., and there were also round-table discussions, discussions and debates about... well, about the problems posed by modernism, in a certain way, technology, modernism, and in a general way, ultimately, everything that specifically utilizes the possibilities of the present-day world for the collection of visual images, or the collection of sound images, and finally to create either a new

26 • FRANÇOIS BAYLE

sonores, et finalement de créer soit un nouvel outil pour des artistes, soit une nouvelle situation pour la communication, parce qu’il y a plus de monde qui peut être sensibilisé à partir du moment où on utilise les images, ou le transport des images, le transport du son à distance, le transport des images par vidéo, etc.

tool for artists, or a new situation in the realm of communication, because more people can be made aware as soon as one starts using images, or the transmission of images, transmission of sound at a distance, tranmission of images via video, etc.

Il y a donc un aspect sociologique qui est lié, aussi, aux aspects de la technologie des arts nouveaux.

Alors cet aspect sociologique crée quelquefois une perturbation encore plus grande que l’art nouveau lui-même, parce que ça crée plutôt une situation révolutionnaire qui permet à des gens, qui étaient très loins des mouvements artistiques, de rentrer en contact avec des choses, ou d’effectuer personnellement des activités de création... et c’est tout aussi important.

Thus, there is also a sociological aspect that ties into different aspects of technology in modern art forms. So this sociological aspect sometimes creates an even greater disturbance than the new art form itself, because it creates a rather revolutionary situation allowing people, who were far removed from artistic movements, to come into contact with things, or to individually engage in creative activities... and that’s just as important.

Alors, en 1960, quand j’y suis arrivé, j’étais quelqu’un comme... public... n’est-ce pas? J’étais quelqu’un du public, j’étais un jeune musicien, j’avais été dans la classe de Messiaen.

Je connaissais le Groupe de musique concrète, parce que, entre 1948, moment où Schaeffer a inventé l’idée de la musique concrète, l’idée de faire de la musique avec des bruits ordinaires, et ‘58, il y avait seulement quelques personnes

So, in 1960, when I arrived there, I was someone like... public... no?

I was a member of the public, I was a young musician, I had attended Messiaen’s class. I knew the Groupe de musique concrète, because, between 1948, moment at which Schaeffer invented the idea of musique concrète, the idea of making music with ordinary noises, and ’58, there were only a few people who knew... who could FRANÇOIS BAYLE • 27

qui connaissaient... qui pouvaient rentrer dans le cercle très très, fermé, très difficile... c’étaient des gens qui avaient un très mauvais caractère, c’était très, très dur, il fallait rentrer là-dedans. Il y avait un côté scandaleux, aussi, qui était attaché à la musique concrète, et il y avait... c’était vraiment... il fallait être un homme très original!

enter into the very, very close-knit, very difficult circle... these were very disagreeable people, it was very, very hard, one had to find his way in. There was a scandalous quality, also, that was associated with musique concrète, and there was... it was truly... one had to be a very original man!

Alors donc, aux alentours des années ‘60, il y a eu un changement complet à cause de ce grand festival, qu’il y a eu beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup de monde. Schaeffer avait imaginé de faire ce Festival de la recherche comme une activité expérimentale, pour voir, et il y avait à peu près trois fois plus de personnes dehors, dans la rue que la salle, en général, pouvait accepter. C’était un très, très grand événement à Paris de constater, finalement, l’attente, l’intérêt du public là-dessus. Alors la radio française, à l’époque, était le seul organisme un peu avancé, parce que les organismes de culture, l’État culturel en France étaient très arrière-garde. La radio française, quand elle a vu le succès que cela avait eu, a proposé à Schaeffer de faire un service de la recherche, c’est-à-dire, a proposé à Schaeffer de quitter le petit studio de la rue de l’Université, où avaient commencé les recherches de musique concrète,

So then, around the ‘60s, there was a complete shift because of this large festival, where there were many, many, many people. Schaeffer had imagined making a sort of experiment out of this Festival de la recherche, to see, and there were about three times as many people outside, in the streets, than the number of people that the room, in general, could accommodate.

It was a very, very big deal in Paris to observe, in the end, the public’s anticipation, its interest in this event. So French radio, at the time, was the only organization to be somewhat advanced, because cultural organizations, within the French cultural State, were very much behind the times.

French radio, when it realized how successul that had been, approached Schaeffer to set up a research department, meaning, they proposed it to Schaeffer that he leave the small studio on rue

28 • FRANÇOIS BAYLE

qui était grand comme deux ou trois fois cette petite pièce, c’était tout petit! Et a proposé à Schaeffer de faire un grand service avec plusieurs centaines de personnes.

C’est tout à fait équivalent à la naissance actuelle de l’IRCAM. Je l’ai connue parfaitement, toute cette histoire, et nous avons dans notre documentation des centaines et des milliers de revues de presse.

Tous les journaux qui ont parlé de ça, ça occupe plusieurs rangées, ça fait sept ou huit mètres d’épaisseur, même que la revue de presse de la naissance de la musique concrète du Festival de la recherche était restée... quelque chose de fantastique.

Alors c’est à ce moment-là que je suis entré dans un moment, disons, de grand succès de la recherche musicale, au moment où la recherche musicale a contribué à imaginer un système plus large qui serait, d’une certaine façon, la recherche dans tous les moyens de communication.

C’est pas seulement la recherche pour le son, mais aussi la recherche pour le spectacle, et la recherche pour la communication en general.

Les dix premières années, de ‘48 à ‘58, ont été dix ans, surtout, pour

de l’Université, where musique concrète research had first begun, which was two or three times the size of this small room, it was tiny!

And suggested to Schaeffer that he create a large department staffed by several hundred people. This is directly analogous to the current emergence of IRCAM. I’ve known it inside out, this whole story, and we have as part of our documentation hundreds and thousands of press reviews. All the newspapers that covered it, it takes up several rows, it’s seven or eight meters wide, the press review about the birth of musique concrète at the Festival de la recherche had stayed... something fantastic.

So it’s at that moment that I came into a very successful moment, shall we say, for musical research, at a time where musical research was contributing to the imagination of a larger system that would be, in a certain way, research into all means of communication.

Not only research into sound, but research into performance, and research into communications in a general sense. The first ten years specifically, from ’48 to ’58, were ten years, mostly, for doing research, for creating pieces, in short, FRANÇOIS BAYLE • 29

faire de la recherche, pour faire la création de pièces, enfin, pour inventer le style, et l’espèce de musique spéciale qui s’est appelée musique concrète, et cette espèce de musique a été, disons, dominée par les oeuvres comme la Symphonie pour un homme seul de Schaeffer et d’Henry, ou bien Le Voyage, de Pierre Henry, ou bien, comment dirais-je, Orphée, ou bien, comment dirais-je encore, les Variations pour une porte et un soupir, de Pierre Henry lui-même, ou bien des pièces de Luc Ferrari, comme Tête et queue du dragon, Visages V, des pièces de ce genre, enfin, Tautologos... des oeuvres qui ont été très importantes dans les années ‘58-’60.

for inventing the style, and the special kind of music that became known as musique concrète, and this type of music was, shall we say, dominated by works such as Symphonie pour un homme seul by Schaeffer and Henry, or Le Voyage,

by Pierre Henry, or, how shall I say, Orphée, or, how shall I say once again, Variations pour une porte et un soupir, by Pierre Henry himelf, or pieces by Luc Ferrari, like Tête et queue du dragon, Visages V, these kinds of pieces, Tautologos... works that were very very important between ’58-’60.

La plupart de ces oeuvres, d’ailleurs, ont été mondialement connues grâce, en général, non pas aux concerts, mais grâce à la chorégraphie de Maurice Béjart, qui a été le premier homme à comprendre l’intérêt de la musique concrète vers les années ‘52, ‘53, c’est-à-dire bien avant Cunningham, bien avant d’autres artistes créateurs qui ont été autour du groupe de John Cage.

Most of these works, incidentally, became known around the world, not through concerts, generally speaking, but thanks to the choreography of Maurice Béjart, who was the first man to grasp the merits of musique concrète around ’52, ’53, that is, well before Cunningham, well before other creative artists who had been part of John Cage’s circle.

Il y a eu, avec Béjart, une possibilité de contact avec le très grand public, c’est-à-dire que la musique concrète, contrairement à la musique électronique, a fait son autorité, a

There was, with Béjart, a possibility for contact with a very large audience, meaning that musique concrète, as opposed to electronic music, established its authority,

30 • FRANÇOIS BAYLE

Track 2

basé, si vous voulez, ses premières années sur le contact avec les très grands auditoires.

based, if you will, its first years on contact with very large audiences.

La Symphonie pour un homme seul a été jouée plusieurs milliers de fois devant des auditoires de plusieurs milliers de personnes à chaque fois, c’est-à-dire, il y a des millions et des millions de gens qui connaissent cette oeuvre, ce qui n’est pas du tout le cas des autres grandes oeuvres du répertoire de la musique électronique, même les grands titres comme Kontakte ou Hymnen, ou des gens comme ça, qui sont connus par la population comme nous, c’est-à-dire la population de la musique contemporaine, c’est-àdire très, très peu dans chaque pays, trois cents dans chaque pays, trois cents ou quatre cents personnes dans chaque pays.

Symphonie pour un homme seul has been played several thousands of times for audiences numbering several thousand people each time, which means that there are millions and millions of people who know this work, which isn’t at all the case with other major works from the electronic music repertoire, even renowned works such as Kontakte or Hymnen, or people like that, who are known by our segment of the population, meaning the contemporary music community, which is to say very, very few in each country, three hundred in each country, three hundred or four hundred people in each country.

NB: That isn’t much.

NB: Ce n’est pas grand-chose.

FB: C’est pas grand-chose, non. [rires] Mais enfin... Il y a eu ensuite des phénomènes importants analogues avec Stockhausen au Japon, par exemple, au Japon, où il a joué pendant combien... six mois, je crois, tous les jours, dans le pavillon de l’Exposition universelle, toutes ses oeuvres, notamment Kontakte et toutes ces pièces-là dans... je ne sais pas, il y avait six, sept cents

FB: That isn’t much, no. [laughs] But in any case... important analogous phenomena subsequently occurred with Stockhausen in Japan, for example, in Japan, where he played for how long... six months, I believe, every day, in the pavilion at the World Exposition, all of his works, notably Kontakte and all those pieces in... I don’t know, there were six, seven hundred people every day for six months. That is, many, FRANÇOIS BAYLE • 31

personnes chaque jour pendant six mois. Ça fait beaucoup, beaucoup de monde aussi! [rires] Mais ça c’était en... Osaka, c’était, je ne sais plus, en ‘66, ‘67, je ne sais pas, quelque chose comme ça. C’était beaucoup plus tard. Mais donc, dans les années ‘48 à ‘58, la musique concrète s’est travaillée dans un autre endroit, c’était rue de l’Université à Paris, dans le centre de Paris, et dans un très petit espace avec très peu de machines. Il y avait seulement un petit studio et une petite cabine de montage. Il y a eu beaucoup de compositeurs, à ce moment-là, qui sont venus. Il y a eu presque tous les compositeurs de musique connue maintenant, non seulement les compositeurs classiques comme Henri Sauguet même, en France, ou des gens comme ça...

many people as well! [laughs] But that was in... Osaka, that was, I don’t remember, in ’66, ’67, I don’t know, something like that. It was much later. So, in the years from ’48 to ’58, musique concrète was developed in another location, it was on rue de l’Université in Paris, in the center of Paris, and in a very small space with very few machines. There was only one small studio and a small editing booth. There were many composers, at that time, who came by. Almost all music composers whose work is now known came by, not only classical composers like Henri Sauguet even, in Fance, or people like that...

Messiaen, who came by... but also, some of the greatest contemporary composers, Stockhausen, for instance, as a young student...

Messiaen, qui est venu... mais aussi, des compositeurs maintenant les plus grands, c’est-à-dire le jeune Stockhausen élève...

NB: Le jeune Boulez.

NB: Young Boulez.

FB: ...le jeune Boulez élève, le jeune Pierre Henry à ce moment-là donc, mais lui est resté... enfin, beaucoup, beaucoup de noms. Enfin, jusqu’à maintenant, on peut dire... nous avons fait, il y a pas très longtemps, le calcul des compositeurs qui

FB: ...young Boulez when he was a student, young Pierre Henry at the time, who stayed on... in short, many, many names. So far, we can say... not long ago, we tallied the number of composers who had come to the studio to work between ’58 and ’78,

32 • FRANÇOIS BAYLE

étaient venus au studio travailler entre ‘58 et ‘78, c’est-à-dire en vingtcinq ans... Ça fait quelque chose comme 150 compositeurs qui sont venus dans les studios travailler.

Alors en ‘60, à mon arrivée, le gros changement, c’est que le statut de la musique concrète et de la musique électroacoustique a cessé d’être un statut complètement marginal et complètement réservé à quelques compositeurs un petit peu fous ou très géniaux. [rires] ...Et, nous avons été une dizaine de jeunes gens acceptés comme stagiaires, et ça a été le début d’une vocation pédagogique qui était un petit peu le contrepoids de l’activité de recherche, c’est-à-dire que le Groupe de recherches musicales a passé à peu près, depuis que je le connais, depuis maintenant dixsept ans, la moitié de son activité est consacrée à la création, l’autre moitié à la pédagogie. Il y a toujours, dans notre équipe, moitié-moitié de temps et de moyens pour l’accueil des jeunes compositeurs, et même dans les années difficiles, jamais les jeunes compositeurs étaient moins que dix ou quinze par an, c’est-àdire beaucoup, finalement.

meaning over a twenty-five-year span... It adds up to something like 150 composers who’ve been to these studios to work.

So in ’60, when I arrived, the big shift was that the status held by musique concrète and electroacoustic music ceased to be a completely marginal status reserved for a few slightly crazy or very brilliant composers. [laughs]

...And, we were about ten young people to be accepted as interns, and this was the beginning of a pedagogical vocation that somewhat served to counterbalance research activities, meaning that the Groupe de Recherches Musicales has spent, roughly speaking, in the seventeen years I’ve been acquainted with it, half of its activities are dedicated to creative work, the other half to pedagogy. In our team, time and resources dedicated to the integration of young composers are always divided half-and-half, and even in more difficult years, never has the annual number of young composers fallen below ten or fifteen, which is, ultimately, a lot.

FRANÇOIS BAYLE • 33

BILL BUXTON

b. March 10, 1949, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada In 2005, William Arthur Stewart “Bill” Buxton was appointed Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, the culmination of a very distinguished career as one of the pioneers in the field of human-computer interaction. Bill received his bachelor’s degree in music from Queen’s University in 1973, and his master’s in Computer Science from the University of Toronto five years later.

In between his formal Canadian studies, he spent two years working and teaching at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht (Holland). This grounding in music and science first led him into the designing of digital musical instruments, and his subsequent life, gleaned from his many writings, teaching and research, has proven him to be ‘a relentless advocate for innovation, design and - especially – the appropriate consideration of human values, capacity and culture in the conception, implementation, and use of new products and technologies’. (see Bill Buxton website) Bill Buxton has been the recipient of four honorary degrees, is a regular columnist for Business Week.com, was chief scientist at Alias Wavefront and SGI Inc., and in 2008 received the SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for his many contributions to the human-computer interaction field.

Track 1

NB: Let’s go back to Queen’s University. Bill Buxton, well that was when you got involved with computers in the first place. Was that an adjunct of music?

BB: The contact with both computers and electronics and so on was 34 • BILL BUXTON

directly from music, from my association first with David Keane at Queens, and secondly with Istvan Anhalt. With David Keane we started working, developing an electronic music studio at Queen’s, there had not been one there previously. And this began about 1971. In ’72, ’73 I started going up to Ottawa, I went up two or three times to do a study for a film soundtrack using the computer music system developed there

by Ken Pulfer. I had been encouraged to do that from Istvan Anhalt.

When I left Queen’s I went to Utrecht, it slanted my viewpoint so that in what I consider in that respect a very lucky direction, I think. That experience was a very good influence, and saved me from wandering around in what I think are not the most fruitful directions. I was very lucky in the situation of helping to develop the studio at Queen’s because you got inside on three different levels. One, as a user of the studio, and secondly, as somebody who had to design and maintain the equipment, and thirdly, from the point of view of being someone who had to teach other people how to use the system. And there is no faster way to learn about the inefficiencies of design and so on, of a particular piece of apparatus or equipment, and to try and explain to somebody else how to use it. The question is the ideal system is one that takes no explanation, it’s self explanatory and one would hope that technological tools for music would evolve to the point where that were the case.

NB: Well the Queen’s studio was a computerized studio?

BB: No. The Queen’s studio was just an analog studio. I don’t distinguish in a sense, I just think they’re both just different levels of electronic technology to serve the same ends, and they are both for producing electronically generated sounds. Now, the way I look at it in this context is just an analog synthesizer primarily just gives you a different way of describing or looking at sounds than, say, are available using a computer music system. In many senses the repertoire of sounds that are available are quite equivalent. In fact, many of the computer music systems simply emulate analog studios using computer programs, and you work with them much in the same manner. I don’t think this is perhaps the most ideal way of approaching the problem. In working in the analog studio you become frustrated with the means of describing BILL BUXTON • 35

musical phenomena. Now, moving from that, having experience with the computer music system developed by Pulfer, you realized that this type of technology had potential in overcoming this problem if used correctly, and I think that Pulfer’s system went a long ways in making it much easier for a musician to communicate his ideas to technology and getting musical results out. Everything I’ve done since then has largely been to try and take the whole thing a step further so that more and more when using, say a computer or electronic device for making music that you can address yourself to the sound and so on and the structures in a manner which reflects how you hear or perceive the sounds, rather than just some arbitrary electronic device which generates them.

NB: The situation you are describing in Ottawa which was developed by Ken Pulfer, could you describe just exactly what that system was?

BB: The main thing is in music you have the question of how you describe the actual sounds, your palette of timbres. Now, with Pulfer’s system, you had a clear cut way of orchestrating your sounds and wave forms. You did not have to turn knobs or dials. You could graphically, using a TV type screen and a device enabling you to sketch freehand, in fact you could evolve the sound characteristics of a composition interactively and hear the results right away. In a traditional electronic music studio, and in many computer music systems, the situation is such that you have to spend a lot of time twiddling knobs, whether they be real knobs or computer programs that look like knobs, to get the results you want. And then, you have to repeat this for every sound.

If you have a sequence of very contrasting sounds, it is very difficult especially in an analog studio to get the rapid change because there are so many knobs to be twiddled. In a system like Pulfer’s, it was not the case. It was all stored. The computer is very good for doing that sort of operation. And secondly, if you are organizing a sequence of events in time, which is basically all music is, a sequence of sonic events along a time line, then the provision in Pulfer’s system to work, Pulfer’s system provided an editor to enable you to sort notes, it enabled you to edit your notes, when they started and ended, and sorted them out in time, and was very straight forward and clear. And again, you could contrast that with an electronic music studio where quite often things 36 • BILL BUXTON

on a time line are controlled by sequencers, which are controlled by setting up knobs and dials, which is very cumbersome. You cannot see at a glance what the structure of a piece of music is because all you see is set of knob settings, whereas again Pulfer’s system you could have a graphic display on a television screen of the actual notes just as you would looking at a musical score.

Track 2

NB: What was his system actually called?

BB: The language was called Music Comp, and it was basically just called the NRC Computer Music Project, it was done at the National Research Council of Canada.

NB: And where does Hugh Le Caine fit in?

BB: Hugh Le Caine didn’t fit particularly into the Computer Music Project at all. He was working just around the corner in the same building, more on analog devices. He developed techniques for working new types of sound synthesizers and so on. But he was more concerned with things for live performance. One of the things with which I had the most involvement with Le Caine was the Sackbutt, which was a keyboard instrument, which was much like a small synthesizer, which had some very interesting characteristics, and was very good for lack of problems. There were a couple of prototypes made, one of which we had at that studio at Queen’s which we had for the better part of a year, and I had done some pieces using that just for experience. Le Caine had a very good way of working. He would build a couple of prototypes of these devices and then they would come to various people, such as the studio at U. of T., and McGill and Queen’s, and we would get this feedback, we’d use them in the studio, then talk to Le Caine about what we felt about them, if there were any changes that we thought were necessary, and so on. That was a very good relationship.

He was the prototype of the type of engineer which was all too rare in the early days and is becoming more common now who was very good in his particular domain, but also had a very good method of communicating with the potential users of that apparatus which he was BILL BUXTON • 37

developing. His interaction with Anhalt, both at McGill and Queen’s, and Gustav Ciamaga here at the University of Toronto, developed a lot of devices which in one book, he has been described as one of the heroes of electronic music. I think he would be just as famous as Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, had he not worked for the Canadian government.

NB: Just recently I was talking to Otto Luening, and we think of Otto Luening as being one of the pioneers of electronic music, but he said “if there is any pioneer, it would be Hugh Le Caine”.

BB: Absolutely. Hugh was a very good musician himself as well.

Generally when he built a device, he also wrote a composition which described that device. One case in point is the variable speed tape recorder, and he did his piece Dripsody which he simply took one drop of water, and by changing the speed using this particular tape recorder made a complete composition.

NB: Can you describe any other of his so-called inventions that you came personally in contact with?

BB: Well, some of them would include this variable speed tape recorder, which is basically a tape recorder on which you could either play reel to reel tapes, or tape loops, and it had a keyboard on it, much like a piano keyboard, and you could simply play the keyboard and it would change the speed of the tape in accordance to which key you pressed.

Now anybody who has played with a tape recorder knows that if you change the speed of the tape going past the heads, you also change the pitch of the sound recorded on the tape. And that is exactly what this device was meant to exploit. And there was also filters on it so you could adjust the timbre at the same time as the pitch structure. And there was another little keyboard so you could engage and disengage several tapes. And so you could have, as you are playing, changing the speed using one keyboard, you could select which of several tapes were in fact engaged to the heads, so you could play chords, and so on.

Le Caine had spent lot of time trying to develop devices which primarily 38 • BILL BUXTON

were touch sensitive, so you could basically touch things and rub your hands on them in different pressure sensitive and position sensitive, so where you touched it and how hard you touched it, and how much of it you touched, all of these things would affect the sound that was produced. The Sonde which is one type of generator that he built was controlled this way. He built other devices that were also very unique and fascinating, especially now in retrospect, showed an amazing imagination. One of which is controlled by photo resistors, what we call electric eyes. The point about that was that you could now draw your music, and you could get transparent sheets of acetate type material, and you could sketch a pattern, and then you would pull this over top of the bank of light cells, and depending on which ones had been blanked out and which ones had not, oscillators would play your music. You go directly from your graphic score to sound.

Some of these devices of course are interesting only in the concept in what they showed were not fruitful ways to approach the problem of communication between the man and the machine, but they were experiments which had to be done in order to find out just how well that approach to the problem worked. And he certainly was the greatest pioneer, in my opinion, trying to get this potential of technology available to the creative artist.

NB: What’s happened to all of these inventions and devices? I understand that some of them are being dismantled.

BB: Well some are still in use in studios. If any are being dismantled, that would definitely be a crime against nature, so to speak. If Canada ever had an equivalent of a Smithsonian Institute, that’s exactly where they should be.

Track 3

NB: Just one more question about Hugh Le Caine and yourself. Did he directly assist you in your interest in your career?

BB: Well, put it this way. For every hour that I spent working on the computer system at NRC, I think I spent another hour in conversation with Le Caine. You have to realize that at that point of time, I was BILL BUXTON • 39

technologically very naïve. My background was in music, and I was rather lucky in my career that I had people like him at critical times to speak to and to give some kind of maturity to my direction that I would pursue following that. Le Caine did a great deal for me in giving me in a very succinct manner which he was very good at, an insight into what one could expect and what one could hope for. He was the first person who said, ‘really, all you have to do is say what you want and learn how to describe it, and I will build it for you’. Even though he’s not available now to do that for me, I’m still following that same action. I’m thinking more not what can I build, but what do I really want to build, and then, just pursuing that and finding out how to do it, and then going ahead and doing it if it’s important enough it gets done. It’s mostly just a frame of mind. Do you want it? What is it? And then find out how to get it.

And my experience has been in the domain of computer science and engineering that the scientific element is only too willing to cooperate, and work, as soon as you can overcome the communication problems, that when you say what you want, that what they understand you having said is what in fact you meant. Any success for example, here in Toronto that I have had, has not been my success but rather a group success of a lot of people who were very interested in achieving the same ends.

NB: Can you describe what you are developing at present and the reasons for your interest in the development.

BB: The main thing that we’re doing here in simplest terms would be trying to produce what is the logical extension of the system that started with Pulfer in Ottawa, and we are trying to develop a facility which is a congenial environment for composers to work in, and be able to exploit the potential of high technology in pursuing musical endeavour. What we have is a small computer with a special sound synthesizer which we have developed, which enables several voices of complex sound to be generated immediately so a composer can work interactively, and to develop the use of graphics as a part of notation, not only for scores but also for the actual sounds which appear in those scores. I’m interested simply from the point of view I’m a composer and this is a dream system of things I would like to express musically which I feel this is the best 40 • BILL BUXTON

medium through which to express them. I hope that several people will feel likewise.

The second point is that there are several problems about this music theory which such a system brings out, and this is in fact our prime mandate in terms of our funding and so on developing a system, and that is, that if you consider music theory, it tells you very little about the actual act of composition, and we would like to develop a notion of music theory which is a description of the actual process of composition, that gives some idea of the cognitive types of processes that a composer follows or uses in writing music. And this we think we can partially accomplish by developing an interactive system for composition where we provide basically the tools for composition, and the smoothness with which the composer interacts with these tools is some indication as to how adequate the tools are. Now to provide such tools means you have to say what is the action or the task that he wants to solve, and then what is the best tool, so that the provision of the tool is in fact implies you know what task is going to be undertaken with that tool. And so what we’re trying to do is analyze the process of music composition into a series of sub tasks, and then provide tools for the solving of those tasks.

The success or the interaction with composers will then be indicative of the correctness or incorrectness of our breakdown into the sub tasks, and so on.

Now, there is one thing that is very clear about this, completely outside of the domain of music, is the fact that music composition is a non trivial activity, as both of us know, and the thing is if we are successful, we will have shown that a computer naïve user, that is a composer, can come and make non trivial use of the technology for very complex problem solving. Now basically what we would like to be able to show or state, if we can do this for music, then there is no excuse or reason why it can’t be done for other fields as well, both in the arts and without. You don’t want the person who makes use of these tools to have to be necessarily an MSc in computer science. It should not be necessary, and I do not believe that it is necessary.

I must say that performance is something that we consider part of the BILL BUXTON • 41

compositional process. I somehow subscribe to the notion that Cage and many others have stated that a composition is not finished until it’s performed.

Track 4

We are using the devices that are available in technology right now to develop our system in such a compact physical unit that it is portable, you could take it on stage and realize your compositions in a concert type situation. There is somehow something intrinsically appealing of somebody coming on stage with a computer, and having it serve him for some sort of humanistic endeavour. It somehow is an example of something which is contrary to most people’s conception of what computers are for. Generally right now I think most people feel threatened, and/or controlled, manipulated by computers and such technology, and not even begun to think that alternatives do exist.

NB: You’re referring to ‘we’...

BB: Yes, it is not the royal ‘we’, but rather the collective ‘we’, which is officially known as the Structured Sound Synthesis Project which exists at the University of Toronto, and it involves an interdisciplinary team of researchers and artists, which include Gustav Ciamaga at the Faculty of Music, and professors Leslie Mezei and Ron Decker who are both involved in computer science, in particular computer graphics and animation, and finally Casey Smith, Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Besides them, there is a large group of graduate students and undergraduate students who have done a great deal in contributing to the project’s success.

We currently have funding from the Canada Council, not from the Arts, rather the Humanities and Social Sciences Division. It is not huge, but has certainly been adequate to show significant results, and as a result we are hoping that it will be continued. We also now have applications pending with the National Research Council because we believe we’ve established enough of the engineering implications of our work to warrant some capital investment in equipment to develop a device as a stand alone piece of apparatus which will have benefits all the way around for music and engineering. It will mean that we can have a 42 • BILL BUXTON

system for users, and a system for research and development, and a system for concerts, and so on.

NB: But this was basically your concept?

BB: I had been working at Utrecht for a couple of years both teaching and studying at the Institute for Sonology, and had been in correspondence with Les Mezei largely through some computer graphics that I had been doing, and he suggested that I come to Toronto to try and fill in some gaps in my background in computer science which would enable me to realize some of these ideas that I had been discussing with him, and at the same time, we could start putting together the team and get the funding arranged. So I spent a year and a half as a graduate student in computer science, and at the same time writing numerous grant applications which finally, one of which was successful. You know, to be frank, this has taken a great deal. I would say my music has suffered a great deal from this. It has been a full time occupation, and now, I can see the light at the end of the cave, so to speak.

BILL BUXTON • 43

BARRY TRUAX

b. 1947 Chatham, Ontario Following his education in mathematics and physics at Queen’s University, Barry Truax pursued his primary interest in music at the University of British Columbia. Between 1971-73, he studied at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, Holland, where he began to develop his PODX computer music system based on the principles of frequency modulation. His work in FM eventually progressed to realizing a computer composition called Riverrun (1986), the first composer to use granular synthesis in real time.

Returning to Canada in 1973 to teach in the Communications Department at Simon Fraser University in B.C., he became a research assistant with the World Soundscape Project initiated

by Murray Schafer. In 1975, he became Research Director of the World Soundscape Project, and has edited its Handbook for Acoustic Technology, and written a book dealing with all aspects of sound and technology titled Acoustic Communication.

Barry Truax is a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. He has been recognized by Simon Fraser U. as a recipient of the 1999 Awards for Teaching Excellence, among others. His background in music, technology and the acoustic environment places him in a quite unique position in the annals of Canadian contemporary music.

44 • BARRY TRUAX

Track 1

BT: First of all, music is being used in the environment in a way that doesn’t have any aesthetic implications either, in the sense that it is not for aesthetic beautification, it’s to control people, and entertain people, and to get them out of the store quickly and to buy their purchases in the right kind of way, and to keep them happy when they have to wait, and to mask the background noise. It has functional purposes, and we may find that aesthetically distasteful, but aesthetic criteria are not being used in the acoustic environment, and even music which is regarded as beautiful can lose all aesthetic meaning when it is used indiscriminately.

NB: Isn’t that astonishing how that functional use of music, or commercial use of music actually works on the human race.

BT: Yes, it’s surprising.

NB: It’s really quite phenomenal.

BT: That’s right, largely because it works on us at a very involuntary level, in other words, it works on us whether we have aesthetic judgments about it or not, and so you can feel offended by it but you’ll still be affected by it. I’m not sure that this is very often brought into the question of music and technology is that everyone has a relationship, in my opinion, to technology and is affected by it. Even if we just take the musical questions and leave out the rest of the social implications of technology, but everyone’s perception of music and relationship to music is very much influenced by technology already. You almost have to start from this point of view. The majority of music that people hear, first of all, is electroacoustically reproduced. That alone changes your whole relationship to music.

And secondly, besides its being everywhere, it is now also a commodity.

It’s bought, sold, engineered, and consumed, in a way that we have never experienced before, and these two central facts that must be obvious to anyone who simply experiences one day of their life and listens to how much music they consume or listen to, or are exposed to.

BARRY TRUAX • 45

It conditions first of all our perceptions, it conditions our environment, it conditions our attitude towards music and music making and music as entertainment, which is a multi million dollar industry, in fact a billion dollar industry if you take the whole pop market into account, and a composer nowadays can hardly ignore these very serious implications.

NB: It’s amazing how many composers do.

BT: Yes, but that’s also the way they are taught. One of the sorriest examples of that, to me, is that a significant number of high school teachers that are teaching music are having to retire early now because of hearing loss. The people that we are training to train our children to be more sensitive to sound are having exactly the opposite effect. They are becoming less sensitive to sound, in fact there is actually physical hearing danger.

NB: Those are the negative aspects of the technological age, and hopefully they will change in due course. What is your feeling?

BT: Well, I emphasize the negative aspects, not because I want to be a doomsayer, but because I feel that, first of all, it’s obvious I am very, very involved with technology, and sound and music. I’m pointing out these aspects of the music business and of the acoustic environment because I feel we have to understand those implications, and we have to take some responsibility for them. Then, once I’ve done that, I hope it’s just not to soothe my conscience although obviously that’s part of it, then I feel that somehow my relationship to the technology is already clarified, and that I know what it can do on the negative side, and for every negative implication, I feel there is also a positive implication, and once you start seeing negative ones, you also then start looking for the positive ones. I would rather emphasize all the positive ones, but unfortunately there seems to be such a lack of awareness of the implications of technology in society, from the point of view of sound and music, particularly for musicians and among musicians, that somehow I feel that I have to keep saying and pointing out some of these other aspects.

46 • BARRY TRUAX

NB: I find it difficult to understand how in days where our pop music culture is highly dependent on technology, that the young people would not be aware of it and that you would have to continue to point it out because it is the young people who are making these high decibel tunes, etc.

BT: I’m not saying they’re unaware of it. I think they’re unaware of the implications of it, but they’re certainly unaware of it in the same way we’re unaware of the air we breathe. They take music and technology for granted. I find they’re very receptive to it in the courses that I teach and they also recognize very quickly they are already very involved with music and technology.

Track 2

NB: Let’s go back a little bit, to Utrecht, and following your experience in Stockholm, which led you to your pursue your work in the field of computer music. I know that you have written some computer programs which were in operation there, presumably still are, and which are in operation at Simon Fraser. Can you explain in another way what these programs are intending?

BT: Let me describe a few characteristics of the programs in a non technical way, because in fact you don’t have to know very much about technology to use them. First of all, they use the technology that we have to create a rather unique learning situation, in fact a very powerful learning situation. The technical term is interactive, but that simply means there is a two way communication going. In other words, you may type something in but the typewriter types something back at you as well, or, you get the sound back which is another kind of information exchange or feedback. In other words, you have a situation where you learn by doing. Piaget describes that as to learn about an object is to act upon it, not to measure it – that is the traditional scientific approach – but to act on it, to get to know it by doing it, or working with it. I think there is fairly strong evidence that children learn a lot of things this way, and I think we see in educational terms how to change from merely rote learning, or memorization, or facts to how to do things, how to find information, how to solve problems, not dates, numbers, terms, and this sort of thing. Now, apply that to sound, and not only to BARRY TRUAX • 47

sound in the sense that electronic music does create the sound as well as the structure, but also to composition, and maybe yet what I think is still the strongest aspect of the computer music situation, it’s not always exploited, by the way, but it has tremendous power of being a very powerful learning situation where you are very precisely controlling the sound material or the structure, you’re getting the feedback of your ideas very quickly. In other words, it acts as a very intelligent assistant from which you learn.

NB: Was that your initial intention though?

BT: No, no. There are implications of this that you simply don’t realize when you start. You start because of some vague feeling that maybe it will be interesting, you have a curiosity about it. There’s any number of reasons why you get into it, but it has become in practice so powerful, it has changed my whole approach to music and to composition so strongly that, and that also being rather intellectually and academically inclined, I go back and say why, why does it do this, what is it about this process that I sort of stumbled onto or just evolved because it was obviously going in the right direction, it was producing good results, so I was following it and watching it develop, then I stand back and say, well why does it do it. This is one result, a good learning environment.

NB: You started to talk about the characteristics of your program, briefly.

BT: OK. I think that’s definitely the first one. Another one that is more specialized and is probably more important to composers is the notion of using the computer to control architecture or structure. With the computer you are able to construct or work with structure, with form, with large scale development, all of these things can be implemented on the machine. It’s a very powerful tool that I find more and more is for me very attractive. First of all, to some extent it’s the sound, or the novelty of it that is attractive, in other words rather at a surface level.

But after a while, you start thinking along these terms, you start thinking in a way that is more systematic, certainly I am thinking in a more systematic way, composing in a more systematic way and it’s because the computer allows me to, control certain things so therefore I can start 48 • BARRY TRUAX

composing in that way, and it’s a direction that is not achievable in any other way. Afterwards, you look back and say, why does this happen, and one conclusion that I’ve come to is that the computer allows you to represent knowledge in a way that is very different from what we’ve ever had before. It represents a certain knowledge of how to do things, and that knowledge is externalized, and no longer is it just in my head, but now it’s also in the machine. And as soon as you have a situation where part of the knowledge is in the user and part of the knowledge is in the machine, and those two are interacting, first of all, it’s a very exciting process. It’s like the difference between playing with an intelligent chess partner, and pulling an automat and getting a chocolate bar out, you don’t have very much respect for that machine. That’s why you kick it, you don’t kick a chess partner, because they have some intelligence there, and so you learn what’s a good strategy for learning how to play chess while playing against a good partner, because you learn by your mistakes. But you’re learning with problems that you’ve set up yourself, and so ultimately you’re learning about yourself. There is a very positive aspect of it, you also are encouraged to think and to create musical structures that could not have been created any other way, that are new ways of thinking. Really the only importance that the computer has is that it affected the process, the process of composing was now irrevocably changed.

Track 3

NB: Will that spin off into instrumental composition as well, eventually?

BT: Oh yes. For sure. For instance, Ligeti has been very vocal, very articulate about, first of all, in the ‘50s when he worked in the electronic music studio and then went back to instrumental composition, and he describes very clearly how his thinking was totally changed, and of course you can hear it in the music that came out after that. It is really only conceivable after the electronic music experience, and now that he is getting back involved with computers, I think it is for the same kind of way, that it’s going to start affecting the process, and I think he senses that very strongly.

NB: Barry, do other composers that use the computer, share your feeling about changing the process of composition?

BARRY TRUAX • 49

BT: I don’t know whether they share it or not, I find that I get a lot of support and a lot of agreement just on a personal level from composers.

They’re very interested listeners and sense that somehow this is true.

I don’t want to say that somehow I am privy to some great truth or discovery or something like that. What I think the situation is is slightly different. I think that most composers who have gotten involved with technology have simply, like most technologists who have gotten involved with music, which of course is the other side of it, they simply are so concerned about technical problems that they’ve never stood back and really looked at it in a slightly more objective way. You’re just so caught up in it, there are so many details, there is so much that involves you that it’s only later if you have the moment to reflect on what’s happened that then I think you’ll start asking these questions.

It’s all very much after the fact reflection.

NB: Isn’t that one of the pitfalls of working in the field of computer music?

BT: Yes, indeed. It’s an incredible pitfall that a lot of people simply never get out of. And the technologists often don’t make it any easier for them.

Often they are making it more difficult for them, unwittingly perhaps, but still there are many unfortunate barriers facing the composer, partly it’s the composers’ training, they’ve not really been trained to take advantage of the technology to understand it, they’re usually not trained in anything in terms of acoustics or psychoacoustics, which is really the only universal language that you can talk to technologists about or that computer programs can operate on them is, it really has to be an acoustic representation of music, and that has not been part of composers’ training. They’re not used to expressing their compositional ideas in terms of anything that a machine could use. And of course the same thing goes for technologists. They have no idea of what really is important musically, and yet they have been trained to think that their answers are the best answers. As soon as a computer programmer tells you this is the most efficient way to do it, and he has a god called efficiency, another god called elegance, another god called cost-effective demands, and no one is going to convince him that those may not be 50 • BARRY TRUAX

the ultimate reasons for doing what he wants to do, and the composer often doesn’t have enough self confidence to say, I don’t believe you, or I think it should be done another way.

NB: But that gap will become less in time obviously.

BT: Yes, I think the composers frankly are hopefully making bigger strides than the technologists are. I see a lot of signs that composers, particularly younger ones now are really prepared to go to work and learn a lot of things that they normally haven’t learned before. The technologists I don’t feel are really becoming that sensitive yet to the arts. There’s a few, lovely exceptions, and I’m very pleased to be working with some of those people, but somehow the scientific training is generally not going in that direction. Maybe one exception might be that there is a bit more consciousness among computer science teachers that there is a social responsibility in the use of their craft. What you see is that computer science people are very bright, but they get almost trapped by their own brilliance in a way, that the ego gets involved in it, that now they can do this, and they have this power to program these machines, and then once they graduate they get picked up by the best corporations that can pay the highest jobs, the highest wages, and very few of them ever stop to think about the implications. Again, the technology is controlled by forces that are not musical, I mean that’s obvious it’s economic forces.

Track 4

NB: Well, there’s another factor too, don’t you think, that the generation that runs the music business, and therefore is privy to the way in which to get subsidies to support their particular projects, are not particularly the people who are now in their late twenties or early thirties who are developing this field, that is another economic consideration which strikes me that it will take another couple of generations to change that attitude, when the young people suddenly get into their forties and fifties and start controlling the music business as it were.

BT: Well, I certainly wouldn’t be overly optimistic. Yes, I think there is a gradual change. It happens. Whether it can offset the tremendous change in the technology and its availability, because also remember now the technology is also affecting the whole market as well as the BARRY TRUAX • 51

professional market. There is so much money involved that a young person that is being trained in this field, often gets the illusion, just as the home computer buyer gets the illusion, that suddenly has the control over something, and I’m afraid that it is somewhat of an illusion because it is not really that much more control than a viewer of television has while switching channels. It’s going to be quite a while before there’s really any fundamental change.

One hope is that more people will become familiar with technology and not be bamboozled by it, and I hope that composers are going to be in that category. I spend more time trying to work with composers and get their ideas back and interact with composers because a lot of composers can use the kind of programs that I’ve developed. I feel it’s more important that they understand the situation and get access to the machines easily, and get the kind of information and have some kind of overview, just practical experience, and I would spend much more time in that direction, because then at least once you have a composer that basically knows what he or she wants and knows what the situation is, well then, perhaps that person can use the technology in hopefully a freer way more creatively.

I’ve been very lucky and in fact I’ve got from technology what I want, that’s one way of saying it, or you can say that I can’t consider composition apart from technology now. So perhaps that means that I feel maybe a greater responsibility for somehow reflecting on the situation, writing about it and talking about it.

NB: What I’m perceiving from you is the most significant contribution of technology to music right now is the fact that it changed the process of composition, and no matter what ever happens to it, that in itself is probably important even if there was no more technology, no further development.

BT: Well, even if music caught up with the capability of present day technology, which it’s certainly it’s far from doing, we certainly would be in a very, very different situation from the musical point of view.

We’re not using nearly the potential that technology has, because that 52 • BARRY TRUAX

potential is blocked by a lot of economic and administrative blocks, and the technological barrier just of the machine itself and the fact that it is really designed for business and not for arts, and then the problem that composers have when approaching it. So what do we conclude from that, in terms of the future? Is it going to be a constantly catching up procedure?

NB: What is your own process from here on in?

BT: I’m really just understanding the process of what has happened just in the last year.

I find it very hard to lay a course for the future, and that may sound rather odd in a way, but because these things do change so rapidly, I find it’s better not to, in fact, let’s put it this way, I don’t get disturbed if I don’t have a very, very direct course. I’d rather understand what is happening, and what has happened, and on that basis be able to cope with, hopefully understand whatever changes are going to be around the corner. Crystal ball gazing in this day and age, particularly on this subject we are talking about, is very dangerous. I certainly see certain trends not all of which will affect me, but the home market is the biggest trend right now.

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Thanks

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