ALEA III, Millennium Project 1950 - 1960, March 23, 1996

This is the concert program of the ALEA III, Millennium Project 1950 - 1960 performance on Saturday, March 23, 1996 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Works performed were Zyklus by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Serenata by Goffredo Petrassi, Psalms by Lukas Foss, 6 Etudes by Yannis Constantinides, Quintette Instrumental by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Oiseaux Exotiques by Olivier Messiaen. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Virtual orchestration: a film composer's creative practice

The advent of digital technologies has led to a major change in the process of film music composition; consequent developments in music technology have forced film composers to adapt to this change. Technological innovations such as digital audio workstations (DAWs) and virtual musical instruments have made possible the creation of virtual orchestras that are technologically capable of simulating the sound and behaviour of a traditional acoustic orchestra. This has had an effect on film music production and on the creative process of the professional film composer in a way that today, creating orchestral simulations or 'mock-ups' that imitate live orchestras (or smaller ensembles) has become a requirement in the film industry and thus an essential part of the film-scoring process. In the context of contemporary film music production, this thesis investigates how orchestral simulations are composed and created using computer music technology and virtual sample-based instruments. In asking 'how', the focus is on the film composer's activities and thought processes during this creative cycle, along with the nature of the interactive relationship between composer and music materials. This study aims to show the complexity of the film composer's creative practice and to advance understanding of how the use of computer music technology and orchestral sample libraries is influencing the compositional process and compositional outcome. To address these questions, a qualitative multiple case study methodology approach was chosen that included examination of the practice of seven professional film composers working in the field of feature film as the primary valid source of data. The exploration involved semi-structured interviews with composers, observations and analysis of their studio practice and inspection of their compositional tools. Taken as a whole, the evidence provided by this study is that the process of creating orchestral simulations is a process of film music composition during which professional film composers are creating orchestral sounds through the use of computers, digital sequencing, samplers and sample-based virtual acoustic instruments for the realisation of musical works. It is a process of using and manipulating recorded samples of real acoustic instruments to generate an expressive and convincing musical performance through sample-based orchestral simulation. A characteristic of this compositional practice is that it is a continuous process that proceeds in stages over time where all procedures can be applied repeatedly between stages. The process of creating orchestral simulations for the purpose of the film score is a multifaceted compositional activity involving a complex set of relationships among different compositional states of mind and compositional activities in which film composers experience music and interact with musical materials and media in various ways. This creative activity is a process involving a single person and a mixture of various compositional tools, the composer's skills and abilities brought into existence through a creative process that requires a thorough blend of art and craft to be demonstrated at all times

Who wrote Duke Ellington’s music? Authorship and collective creativity in ‘Mood Indigo’

The copyright system privileges composition over performance, particularly improvisation, and melody over harmony. Both of these evaluations are problematic in the field of popular music, which is often the result of collaborative processes involving improvisation, and where harmonic structures may be of greater importance than recognisable tunes. In this chapter, I will illuminate the creative process of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Often regarded as, variously, America’s or the Twentieth Century’s ‘greatest composer’, Ellington arguably comes closest to a traditional authorial figure in jazz. Nevertheless, the majority of his most famous creations are the result of often complex collaborative processes. Using ‘Mood Indigo’ as a case study, I will reconstruct the creative contributions of various individuals in detail, evaluating their originality and significance for the final result. As I will show, although he was by no means the sole creator of the song, Ellington did take most of the fundamental creative decisions and, as bandleader, lent the tune a ‘brand identity’

FrameWorks 3D: composition in the third dimension

Music composition on computer is a challenging task, involving a range of data types to be managed within a single software tool. A composition typically comprises a complex arrangement of material, with many internal relationships between data in different locations - repetition, inversion, retrograde, reversal and more sophisticated transformations. The creation of such complex artefacts is labour intensive, and current systems typically place a significant cognitive burden on the composer in terms of maintaining a work as a coherent whole. FrameWorks 3D is an attempt to improve support for composition tasks within a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) style environment via a novel three-dimensional (3D) user-interface. In addition to the standard paradigm of tracks, regions and tape recording analogy, FrameWorks displays hierarchical and transformational information in a single, fully navigable workspace. The implementation combines Java with Max/MSP to create a cross-platform, user-extensible package and will be used to assess the viability of such a tool and to develop the ideas furthe

The classification of musical transformation: a conceptual approach to the knowledge organization of musical arrangements

Introduction. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual analysis of the knowledge organization of musical arrangements found in notated Western art music. Analysis. Four areas of arrangements are analysed. Inter-medium arrangements are explored, which are arrangements that transform one musical medium into another. Arrangements which involve changes of difficulty or pitch are discussed, as well as transformations between notation and performance. Arrangements of forms and genres are analysed, including sub-genres such as literal transcriptions, fantasies, virtuosic arrangements and pot-pourris. The function of arrangements is also discussed. Results. This study introduces additional facets, foci and types of information. These include the development of musical themes as a classification principle, the concept of a performancearrangement, and the idea of functions specifically associated with transformation. A categorisation is proposed for the various types of form/genre arrangements, which shows blurred boundaries between types. The impact of time on arrangements is demonstrated, and that there is a non-binary division between the original and the arranged. Conclusion. Two models demonstrate the complexities of musical arrangement, and how information specific to arrangements needs to be considered within music knowledge organization. Furthermore, the results suggest novel ideas about classifying change and transformation more generally

Free associative composition: Practice led research into composition techniques that help enable free association.

The original compositions presented in this portfolio are the product of practice led research into developing and implementing composition techniques that enable free association. This com-mentary outlines the different approaches I have taken and the reasoning behind them

The Creative Studio Practice of Contemporary Dance Music Sampling Composers

This paper seeks to investigate some of the considerations that inform and help to determine the creative studio practice of contemporary sampling composers. Collaborative writing and production, specifically the co-opted collaboration implicit in using samples, will be assessed to consider those aspects of the production process which the participants consider to be authorial. These considerations include acts of listening, selecting and editing. In examining these matters this paper places emphasis on how sampling composers actively constrain their options in order to promote a creative relationship with their musical material. Techniques such as, firstly, traditional sample manipulation, secondly, the use of a sample as an initial building block for a composition from which the sample is then removed and, finally, live performance in the studio which is subsequently cut up and treated as a sample, will be discussed. Case studies, in the form of semi-structured interviews with sampling composers, will be drawn upon to assess approaches to and views about these forms of studio composition

Nineteenth-Century Transcriptions of Works by Fryderyk Chopin

This book is the first monographic study of nineteenth-century transcriptions of Chopin's music. The work is based on the quantitatively and qualitatively rich source material, which formed the basis for considerations from the perspective of social history, music analysis and aesthetics. Thanks to these multiple perspectives, as well as the time range and the source base, this study may contribute to the history of the reception of Chopin’s work in nineteenth-century culture; it may also prove significant in overcoming the attitude that aesthetically deprecates transcriptions and in adopting a different stance, regarding such adaptations as valuable texts of musical culture

Essay VIII: a key work in the piano output of Christopher Bochmann

Christopher Bochmann's pianistic language is based on a fairly conventional instrumental technique, inherited from the 19th century pianistic tradition, yet encompassing characteristic features developed by authors associated with the 2nd Viennese School and post-serialism, as well as significant experiences in the fields of free forms and aleatoric music. The permeability to a neoclassical sensibility, probably stimulated by contact with Nadia Boulanger in the formative years, has remained over time and manifests itself from time to time, both in the use of techniques, genres and forms of the past, but also, more comprehensively, in a constant search for balance and proportionality, across all of Bochmann’s works. From 1991, the year he composed Essay VIII, for solo piano, Bochmann inaugurated his maturity phase, based on what he calls a “unified technique”. The significant consistency of his instrumental language from then on results, to a large extent, from the synthesis of previously explored elements that Essay VIII operates, as I intend to demonstrate throughout this essay. Furthermore, we shall see how specific traits, not always particularly idiomatic, of Bochmann’s pianistic idiom enhance the aural understanding of the compositional principles that structure the work in analysis, and how a successful performance of the work depends largely on the understanding and highlighting, through specific performance practices, of the composer’s choices