Martin Supper;Erhard Grosskopf;Kirsten Reese;Miriam Akkermann;Mads Kjeldgaard
{"title":"Sound and Video Anthology: Program Notes","authors":"Martin Supper;Erhard Grosskopf;Kirsten Reese;Miriam Akkermann;Mads Kjeldgaard","doi":"10.1162/comj_a_00586","DOIUrl":"10.1162/comj_a_00586","url":null,"abstract":"The overriding working topic for me was “Music and Space.” That may sound almost banal—music is always presented in a space. The given room can, however, have remarkably divergent effects on the artistic processes of composition. A brief overview of some of these effects is in order, even if some points may seem to be truisms. The diversity of architectural spaces has led to different reactions over the course of music history. The ensemble canzone developed during the Venetian School (circa 1530– 1620 CE) was intimately connected to the architectural and acoustic features of the Cathedral of San Marco. It is considered the trigger for the compositional inclusion of the multiple choir lofts of San Marco for polyphonic and multichoral works. In more recent times, a standard approach to designing concert halls has emerged among architects. Modern concert halls have acoustic properties that are primarily suitable for music of the 19th century. We see this, on the one hand, in the reverberation times of contemporary concert halls, but also in the arrangement of the podium and seating: The audience is seated as in a theater, facing (and listening) in one direction. In theater this arrangement is also referred to as a proscenium or a “picture frame” stage. Examination of electroacoustic music and sonic arts, and the associated media, leads to a (re-)consideration, including space and directional hearing as part and parcel of the compositional concept.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"44 4","pages":"96-101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41684882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Visual Programming Interface for Digital Luthiery: Implementing Circuits with Veneer","authors":"Vesa Norilo;Alejandro Olarte","doi":"10.1162/comj_a_00578","DOIUrl":"10.1162/comj_a_00578","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a method for programming musical signal-processing circuits visually, using expressive idioms and abstractions from functional programming. Special attention is paid to the creative workflow, framing the education in a constructionist context. Our aim is to empower musicians in signal processing: The claim was tested in a university workshop for relatively inexperienced programmers. The participants were able to study and implement signal-processing algorithms from literature and integrate them into their preexisting workflow, and appeared to gain self-confidence while doing so.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"44 4","pages":"8-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel7/6720219/9655618/09655635.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42585969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About This Issue","authors":"","doi":"10.1162/comj_e_00575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_e_00575","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"44 4","pages":"1-1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49936356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Isabelle Su;Zhao Qin;Tomás Saraceno;Ally Bisshop;Roland Mühlethaler;Evan Ziporyn;Markus J. Buehler
{"title":"Sonification of a 3-D Spider Web and Reconstitution for Musical Composition Using Granular Synthesis","authors":"Isabelle Su;Zhao Qin;Tomás Saraceno;Ally Bisshop;Roland Mühlethaler;Evan Ziporyn;Markus J. Buehler","doi":"10.1162/comj_a_00580","DOIUrl":"10.1162/comj_a_00580","url":null,"abstract":"Three-dimensional spider webs feature highly intricate fiber architectures, which can be represented via 3-D scanning and modeling. To allow novel interpretations of the key features of a 3-D Cyrtophora citricola spider web, we translate complex 3-D data from the original web model into music, using data sonification. We map the spider web data to audio parameters such as pitch, amplitude, and envelope. Paired with a visual representation, the resulting audio allows a unique and holistic immersion into the web that can describe features of the 3-D architecture (fiber distance, lengths, connectivity, and overall porosity of the structure) as a function of spatial location in the web. Using granular synthesis, we further develop a method to extract musical building blocks from the sonified web, transforming the original representation of the web data into new musical compositions. We build a new virtual, interactive musical instrument in which the physical 3-D web data are used to generate new variations in sound through exploration of different spatial locations and grain-processing parameters. The transformation of sound from grains to musical arrangements (variations of melody, rhythm, harmony, chords, etc.) is analogous to the natural bottom–up processing of proteins, resembling the design of sequence and higher-level hierarchical protein material organization from elementary chemical building blocks. The tools documented here open possibilities for creating virtual instruments based on spider webs for live performances and art installations, suggesting new possibilities for immersion into spider web data, and for exploring similarities between protein folding, on the one hand, and assembly and musical expression, on the other.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"44 4","pages":"43-59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44938369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carlos Chávez","authors":"Carlos Chávez","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0304","url":null,"abstract":"Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez (b. 1899–d. 1978) was one of Mexico’s leading composers, conductors, administrators, and musical educators during the 20th century. Born in Popotla, a suburb near Mexico City, on 13 June 1899, Chávez’s began his musical career with piano lessons, studying initially with Manuel M. Ponce. Then, at the age of sixteen, he became a music teacher during the changing social and political landscape of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). After successful publications of some of his short piano works, he soon received a commission from the Secretary of Public Education (SEP), José Vasconcleos, to compose a ballet. For this charge, Chávez chose an Aztec legend, labeling his work El fuego nuevo. Unfortunately, this work was never performed in Mexico, which led Chávez to seek other opportunities, first in Europe, then in New York City. Chávez’s collaborations with modernist composers and artists in New York City proved to be transformative for the composer, leading to a wave of compositions that reflected the modernist currents of the time. Upon returning to Mexico City, Chávez took on new roles, including the director of Orquesta Sinfónica Mexicana (later called the Orquesta Sinfónica de México), and then an appointment as the director of the Conservatorio Nacional, where he provided robust changes to the curriculum. In 1933, Chávez served as the chief of the Department of Fine Arts for the SEP and later collaborated with Paul Strand on his film project Redes (1935). His varying positions in Mexican institutions and his search for a Mexican musical identity initiated a wave of nationalism that can be heard in his works H.P. (1932) and Sinfonía India (1935) and his participation in the Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Later works reflected an approach to universalism and cosmopolitanism, such as the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1938). During the 1940s, Chávez became the director of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), which oversaw several national artistic projects in Mexico. After resigning from INBA, Chávez returned to composition and taught courses at the Conservatorio Nacional. Chávez’s musical career was eclectic and diverse, spanning several important areas of Mexican musical and artistic culture. He rose to become one of the most recognized musicians in Mexico during the 20th century.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75713844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Program Music","authors":"James A. Hepokoski","doi":"10.4324/9780203136348-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203136348-4","url":null,"abstract":"Studies of program music explore ways in which extra-musical material is expressed and interpreted through music. Conceptions of program music are broadly construed and vary throughout history in correlation with various aesthetic and philosophical perspectives—narrowly defined, programmatic compositions include an extra-musical program describing the musical expression, while a broader definition considers evocative titles, allusive musical material, and conventional musical significations as vehicles of extra-musical meaning. The question of aesthetic value arises in the debate surrounding the ability of music to communicate extra-musical ideas and the quality of music that claims to do so. This question is extensively explored through the polemics of the 19th-century “War of the Romantics,” pitting programmatic music against “absolute music.” Musical and theoretical writings of figures such as Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Hanslick provide rich source material informing many studies on program music. The distinction between program music and absolute music is blurred through various approaches to deriving meaning from both types of music. Theories of narrativity propose methods of interpreting formal structures, tonal progressions, and thematic devices interacting in ways reminiscent of literary narrative. Semiotic approaches explore meanings that arise from conventional significations of genre, style, and “topics,” evoking cultural understandings of social position, setting, and affect. Applying interpretive strategies such as these to programmatic music allows for hermeneutic readings mapping the extra-musical program onto the musical events to explore meaningful points of intersection or contradiction. Further studies draw connections to composer biography and sociohistorical context, positioning the music in philosophical perspectives and reception. Broader cultural and political situations inform readings of underlying implications such as nationalism or social commentary. Current studies of program music explore musical narratives in nuanced contexts that parse the historical and cultural atmospheres surrounding composers, their music, and reception to propose new readings and frames of interpretation.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"121 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88790686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music in the Digital World","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0299","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies have impacted and reshaped almost every aspect of 21st-century life, from communication and commerce, to work and leisure, to education and politics. This bibliography represents a collection of scholarship that seeks to detail how varied and ubiquitous digital technologies have reshaped music, and how music has in turn shaped the digital world. Since the first years of the 21st century, widespread access to digital technologies, including social media, smartphones, and Web 2.0 have fundamentally transformed musical aesthetics, creation, performance, consumption, and reception on a global scale. As of October 2020, there are around 4.66 billion active internet users around the globe, nearly all of whom interact with music in one way or another. This bibliography addresses how this “digital world” is implicated in 21st-century digital regimes, and in the global flows and local assemblages of music’s production, circulation, and consumption. Like the technologies themselves, scholarship on music in the digital world is a rapidly shifting field. Readers are encouraged to understand this bibliography as a fluid network of related topics, with substantial thematic overlap between sections. Except when a subject touches on topics unique to this bibliography, the authors have omitted topics covered extensively in other Oxford Bibliographies, including “Film Music,” “Video Game Music,” “Electronic and Computer Music Instruments,” and “Music Technology.”","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85894204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Concerto","authors":"A. Vivaldi, L'Estro Armonico","doi":"10.4414/saez.2015.04092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4414/saez.2015.04092","url":null,"abstract":"The term concerto has been applied to music works since the early 16th century, first appearing in treatises almost a century later. Reflecting the sense of two or more forces either contending with or working together with someone (both Latin), or “arrange, agree, get together” (Italian), early concertos combined voices and instruments with no other formal consequences. These characteristics remain with the genre throughout its history. Only with the emergence of the instrumental, non-texted concerto in the late 17th century did structure begin to become an issue. Two important formal trends regarding the concerto dominate the 18th century. The most pervasive overall form is that of three movements, fast-slow-fast. The form of the first movement has attracted the most attention in the literature. Concertos in the first half of the 18th century, emanating from Italy and spreading northward, start with some version of ritornello form, which is also used in arias. In the latter part of the century, first movements increasingly take on the characteristics of sonata form, found in symphonies and sonatas, resulting in first movement concerto form or concerto-sonata form. The actual nature of the merging of the two ideas in any given work remains a vibrant topic. In one sense, the influence of the two forms, ritornello and sonata, has declined since Beethoven, giving way to other compositional concerns, yet the forms can often lurk in the background of the genre. The breadth of works that fall under the descriptive term concerto can be exasperating. Concerto also embraces a number of subgenres. The earliest works are known as vocal concertos or sacred concertos (many of them were sacred pieces), but do not always bear the designation. They are performed in stile concertato, using diverse musical forces. The term remains applicable to certain textures. The concerto grosso, connected with the Baroque, is another subgenre. Yet another subgenre is the symphonie concertante, which emerged in 18th-century France. This subgenre passed in popularity, but the term concertante continues to be applied to the texture. Later developments made use of other textures, though the symphonic concerto, originating in the 19th century, might be seen as derivative of earlier approaches. These styles and textures are major factors in many other works not called concertos, such as variation sets, fantasies, and even symphonies, to name a few.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81794390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Steve Reich","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0301","url":null,"abstract":"Steve Reich (b. 1936) is an American composer who, alongside Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, is considered an originator of musical minimalism. His compositions consist primarily of instrumental pieces for various ensembles, ranging from solo instruments with prerecorded tape to pieces for full orchestra. The most frequent configurations make prominent use of melodic percussion instruments, attesting to his training as a percussionist. Reich engaged periodically with disparate musical traditions throughout his early career—technological experimentalism in the 1960s, African drumming and Hebrew cantillation in the 1970s—and has since forged a compositional idiom distinguished by its attention to pattern and pulsation. Born and raised primarily in New York City, Reich studied philosophy at Cornell University and music at Juilliard before moving across the country in 1961 to study at Mills College with Luciano Berio. Moving within the Bay Area’s experimental art scenes, Reich discovered the process of phasing when working with tape loops, leading to his first acknowledged pieces: It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). After relocating to downtown New York in 1965, Reich translated this phasing process into instrumental music, resulting in works such as Piano Phase and Violin Phase (both 1967), as well as his influential manifesto, “Music as a Gradual Process.” In the early 1970s, Reich’s palette expanded to encompass new timbres and processes of pattern and repetition. The large-scale Drumming (1970–1971) and Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976)—both conceived for his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians—are exemplars of his mature minimalist style and helped establish his reputation both within and outside of the classical music world. By the early 1980s, Reich’s music began a process of legitimation within academia and performance institutions: Tehillim (1981) and The Desert Music (1983), for instance, were composed for major orchestras. Both reveal a rekindled interest in voice, text, and speech which found new expression in Different Trains (1988), a string quartet which utilized speech fragments of Holocaust survivor testimonies as generative melodic and harmonic material. Reich continued to explore this technique in large-scale documentary music video theater works (The Cave [1990–93] and Three Tales [2000–03]), as well as chamber works such as City Life (1995) and WTC 9/11 (2010). By the end of the millennium, Reich was widely regarded as America’s foremost living composer; his Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Double Sextet (2007) seemed a belated affirmation of this perspective.","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87933449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ballet Music","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0300","url":null,"abstract":"Research on ballet music has seen steady growth in recent decades within the field of musicology and in interdisciplinary work of dance scholars and historians. This bibliography focuses on studies of the music for ballet, defined here as beginning with the origins of ballet in the courts of Catherine de Medici and Louis XIV and continuing to contemporary ballet. Ballet music scholarship has included discussions of style, historical context, collaborative processes, theoretical analyses of the music, the music-dance relationship (choreomusicology), placement in the career and style of a composer, interpretation, reception, and more. Scholars looking to embark on the study of ballet music will find many excellent models in the sources included, and should see that in this work, researchers have consulted diverse sources, both primary and secondary, from various fields of study. This requires a level of competence often beyond the fields of music or dance themselves, in the quest to account for the deeply ephemeral and multifaceted nature of music-dance happenings. Yet one of the biggest hurdles in ballet music studies is that of addressing dance on an equal footing with music (and vice versa in dance studies). This bibliography privileges works that have successfully engaged in such interdisciplinary work as well as studies that are grounded in a historical context. The following criteria guided the selection of works cited. Research was excluded that does not directly address music. This means that much essential historical-contextual study has not been included. Also excluded are treatises that do not deal directly with the music for ballet. Sources were omitted that concern dance music styles that are allied to ballet but diverge from ballet as strictly defined. For example, many fine studies of music for modern choreography are excluded, even if these works were called “ballets” (undeniably, there is much gray area here). Other exclusions are not because the research was deemed unimportant, but rather due to practicality: the work could not be properly vetted, was not widely available, overlapped too much with an included item, was either too dated or too new, or simply due to limitations of space. Indeed, ballet music scholarship is increasingly global, reflecting a global art. Admittedly, this bibliography skews to English, French, Italian, and German language sources. What follows is a selection of exemplary works that have established ballet music study historically and currently represent a thriving area of interdisciplinary scholarship. Note that the terms choreographer and composer are used throughout for clarity, even if the terms were not in use during the period in question; in addition, when a specific ballet is mentioned it will often be followed, where applicable, by a parenthetical citation consisting of “(choreographer/composer, premier year).”","PeriodicalId":50639,"journal":{"name":"Computer Music Journal","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85535950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}