computermusicblog.com » John Cage

Black Allegheny, Swarm Generated Music

evan — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:23:01 +0000

Black Allegheny is one of the first albums made up entirely of swarm generated music. The album was created using a swarm-controlled sampler called Becoming, which was programmed by the composer.

<a href="http://evanxmerz.bandcamp.com/album/black-allegheny">Imperceptible Time by Evan X. Merz</a>

Becoming is an algorithmic composition program written in java, that builds upon some of John Cage’s frequently employed compositional processes. Cage often used the idea of a “gamut” in his compositions. A gamut could be a collection of musical fragments, or a collection of sounds, or a collection of instruments. Often, he would arrange the gamut visually on a graph, then use that graph to piece together the final output of a piece. Early in his career, he often used a set of rules or equations to determine how the output would relate to the graph. Around 1949, during the composition of the piano concerto, he began using chance to decide how music would be assembled from the graph and gamut.

In Becoming, I directly borrow Cage’s gamut and graph concepts; however, the software assembles music using concepts from the AI subfield of swarm intelligence. I place a number of agents on the graph and, rather than dictating their motions from a top-down rule-based approach, the music grows in a bottom-up fashion based on local decisions made by each agent. Each agent has preferences that determine their movement around the graph. These values dictate how likely the agent is to move toward food, how likely the agent is to move toward the swarm, and how likely the performer is to avoid the predator.

Yes, this is my new album! Thanks for reading and listening!

On CDM, with a great comments thread

On Make Online

Swarm Sampler On MatrixSynth

On Noise for Airports (a great intellectual music blog!)

On Califaudio

February 23, 1924 – Happy Birthday Lejaren Hiller

evan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:07:52 +0000

On February 23rd, 1924, Lejaren Hiller was born in New York City. Hiller would become recognized as one of the pioneers of algorithmic composition. In 1957 he wrote the first major computer assisted composition. The Illiac Suite was composed using University of Illinois’ Illiac computer.

Actual work on this problem was started in September, 1955, at which time the present authors decided to collaborate to write the intial computer programs for producing music. The inital set of instructions was designed to cause the Illiac to generate simple cantus firmi; that is, simple diatonic melodies to be utilized subsequently to produce simple polyphony. Both authors had worked previously on Monte Carlo-type problems in connection with another research project and thus had had previous experience with coding problems of this type for a computer. In fact, a sizable portion of the basic programming techniques of the earlier music codes for the Illiac was adapted from this earlier research. The work as previously outlined progressed very smoothly, so that, by the following spring, we had accumulated enough material to begin the assembly of a musical record of the research results in the form of the Illiac Suite. By July, 1956, the first three movements of the suite had been completed with the exception of what is now the Coda of the third movement. A performance of this much of the suite was given publicly on August 9, 1956, at a concert at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinoid. This performance, which was privately recorded at the same time, was by a string quartet … and three instrumentalists … This concert attracted considerable attention because of its novelty, and representative reports of this event both prior to it and afterwards in the popular press can be cited to indicate the extent and nature of the reaction which occurred. [1]

Hiller also collaborated with John Cage on HPSCHD, a monumental multimedia concert that premiered on May 16, 1969 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne.

Austin: Now that you have finished HPSCHD, what are some of the special things you remember about your association with John Cage?

Hiller: We were both interested in investigating certain compositional techniques, and we found that the computer provided a meeting ground upon which these ideas could be thrashed out and modified as our compositional plan gradually evolved. It was a dia- logue. The piece represents somewhat of a departure for both of us. I think one of the reasons the project interested John is that the work sessions were a con- crete illustration of one thing he has said he’s always been so interested in: the process of composition it- self. We were involved with composition as process right from the beginning, because it was the act of composing upon which we were focusing attention. Both of us sought to discover and to exploit an area of overlap of compositional attitudes. [2]

Notes

[1] Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson, Experimental Music: Composition with an Electronic Computer, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, 1959), 5-6.
[2] Larry Austin, “An Interview with John Cage and Lejaren Hiller,” Computer Music Journal. Vol. 16, No. 4 (1992): 15-29.

Interview with Cunningham and Cage

evan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:40:53 +0000

In the spring of 1981, during a residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage sat down to discuss their work and artistic process. As frequent collaborators, Cage and Cunningham pioneered a new framework of performance. Their novel approach allowed for mediums to exist independently, or rather cohabitate, within a performance, thus abandoning the co-dependent model of dance and music. Cage and Cunningham go on to discuss the methodology and motivations behind chance operations, a term used to describe artistic decisions based on unpredictability. Wanting to free himself of his likes and dislikes, Cage describes how Zen Buddhism influenced his work, leading him to use tools of chance. These new methods, adopted by both Cunningham and Cage, overturned a whole foundation of thought around music, movement, and the process of creating art.

Merce Cunningham and Electroacoustic Music

evan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:32:31 +0000

Merce Cunningham passed away on Sunday, July 26th. Cunningham was known as a choreographer and dancer, but in this article, I want to review his work with composers of electroacoustic music. He collaborated extensively with John Cage, and also worked on a number of early movement-music interfaces. His ideas had a direct impact on the processes of certain electroacoustic composers, especially John Cage.

Cunningham’s work with Cage began relatively early in Cage’s career.

By the summer of 1948, Cage and Cunningham were well on their way to forming what was eventually called the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. They had been giving joint recitals since the spring of 1944, and much of Cage’s music of the later 1940s was triggered by the needs of Cunningham’s choreography. Their collaborations were already premised in the notion that music and dance should be created independently and only brought together at a late stage in rehearsals, this being made possible through micro-macrocosmic structuring. (Nicholls 2007, 42)

As their collaboration continued, Cage and Cunningham continued to explore the idea that music and movement need not have the direct relationship that was traditional. Cage and Cunningham showed that the only necessary relationship between music and dance is that they exist in the same space, at the same time. This idea fed into Cage’s thinking about an interconnected world, and led him to his anarchic compositions such as Reunion and Musicircus.

Cage’s use of simultaneity after 1962, on the other hand, does not require any common characteristic among the various parts. In Reunion, there is no given relationship among the various musics of Behrmann, Cross, Mumma, and Tudor (other than Cage’s inviting all of them).

Instead, Cage asserts here that it is the simultaneity of the various performances that constitutes their relationship. Rather than have independent parts performed simultaneously because they are related to one another, Cage here relates independent parts to one another by performing them simultaneously. This concept of simultaneity-as-relationship can perhaps be traced to the manner in which Cage was accustomed to working with Merce Cunningham. Beginning in the 1950s, the only relationship between Cage’s music and Cunningham’s choreography was that they took place at the same time and in the same space. As Cage put it in “Where Do We Go From Here?”: “Neither music nor dance would be first: both would go along in the same boat. Circumstances – a time, a place – would bring them together.” In these dance productions, the complete independence of elements extended to the lighting, sets, and costumes, as well. In Reunion, the same approach is taken to the four musicians who perform together. (Pritchett 1993, 154)

Cunningham helped many other young composers by commissioning new works for his dance company. Composers like Gordon Mumma and David Behrman had opportunities to create new interfaces and new performance situations for his dancers.

In Spring 1966 Tudor, Cage, and Cunningham invited Mumma to accompany them on a tour of Europe. They offered him a commission for a new piece (Mesa) and sought his expertise for their production of Variations V, a work in which the actions of Cunningham’s dancers activated sound through an elaborate system of electronic sensors. That summer Mumma left Ann Arbor to begin a collaboration with the Cunningham company that lasted eight years and led to numerous innovative works. (Miller 2003, 21)

Cybersonic and related technology has continued to play a major role in Mumma’s art. His MESA (1966) is a particularly interesting application of these ideas, in this case to a large concertinalike instrument called a bandoneon. Completed for his first tour with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, it was written for his fellow tour musician David Tudor, whose talents include bandoneon as well as piano. Mumma was able to rig both sides of the bandoneon with microphones and set the two outputs to modify each other as well as themselves. The results were distributed about the hall quadriphonically. An un- expected side effect of the phase-shift circuitry incorporated in this particular cybersonic console is the occasional impression of changes in “acoustical dimension.” The listener actually senses that the speakers are being moved or the shape of the room somehow altered. (James 1987, 375 – 376)

For David Behrman, the Cunningham commision was an exciting opportunity for a young composer to meet and work with some of his creative idols.

…in 1967, Cunningham commissioned David Behrman to compose music for Walkaround Time, a repertory dance piece based on Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass. Behrman used photocell mixers and recordings of himself walking around Niagara Falls on an icy day, or driving his Colkswagen Beetle, and of all the women in the Cunningham Company reading texts of Marcel Duchamp which described Large Glass. The premiere was in Buffalo in March 1968. As Behrman recalls, “Duchamp came up and took a bow onstage, and since I was the young composer who had been commissioned to do the piece, I was up there – it was a very exciting thing…” (Chadabe 1997, 101)

Cunningham was devoted to new electroacoustic music, and his devotion changed music. He supported innovators and iconoclasts, and he helped electroacoustic music reach new audiences. Cunningham was a terrific choreographer and dancer, without a doubt, but we shouldn’t forget that he was also an unmatched promoter of electroacoustic music.

Bibliography

Chadabe, Joel. Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.

James, Richard S. “ONCE: Microcosm of the 1960s Musical and Multimedia Avant-Garde.” American Music. Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter 1987): 359 – 390.

Miller, Leta E. “Once and Again: The Evolution of a Legendary Festival.” Liner Notes from Music from the ONCE Festival. Visibility Music, 2003.

Nicholls, David. John Cage. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Pianist Adam Tendler on Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes

evan — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:22:53 +0000

Interview with Adam Tendler on John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes

Today I had the opportunity to speak with pianist Adam Tendler about his involvement with John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes.

A part of the preparation table for Sonatas and Interludes

Tendler has performed the Sonatas and Interludes all over the country, including a recent concert in Chicago for The Chicago Composers Forum, which is where I saw him perform.

Adam Tendler on stage

In this interview, we talk about how he came to know the piece through a silent piano and some of the unique things that have occurred at performances.

Adam Tendler preparing a piano for Cage's Sonatas and Interludes

Interview with Adam Tendler on John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes