When the computer enables freedom from the machine. (On an outline of the work Hérédo-Ribotes)

Transcription

1 When the comuter enables freedom from the machine (On an outline of the work Hérédo-ibotes) abstract abien Lévy 1 comoser In some cases when the musical rocess is sufficiently verbalised and formalized the comuter allows the comoser to concentrate on the music and to send time on the calculation. I will show a very simle examle of technique used in my orchestral work Hérédo-ibotes for viola solo and fifty-one orchestra musicians and illustrate the aesthetic ideas underlying this iece. I will also show different cases in which the comuter was a good musical assistant in the roduction of this esthetical meaning and in which it was on the contrary better by hand. As far as I m concerned it is extremely difficult for a comoser to limit a musical intention to formalised and verbalised rocedures because aesthetic effect is more valuable than technical skill. Aart from the fact that an intention cannot always be rendered exlicit a technique s effect is interesting only if one reaches beyond so to seak the kitchen utensils in order to engage with the chef s aesthetic and even with his olitical obsessions. With this in mind I will resent my ersonal use of the Oen Music software according to two considerations. The first consideration is eistemological and I will show that rather than restraining the comoser to making urely technical considerations the use of comuters in musical comosition enables him/her to free him-/herself from such limitations. The ond consideration is aesthetic and I will attemt to describe succinctly the artistic reflections that motivate my comuter-based rocedures resented here. 1) A generation of aradox The comosers who like me were born around 1968 are neither members of the generation who were in their twenties at the end of the Second World War (oulez Ligeti Stockhausen Xenakis ) nor of the generation for whom the events of 1968 were defining moments of their adolescence (erneyhough Grisey ). This accounts for one of the traits of my generation: that we are generally detached from the attitudes of refusal of the ast that marked the former generation or of systems that distinguished the latter. Many of us however have inherited from our musical grandarents the desire to construct new grammars and share with our arents the dream of develoing new concets that go beyond the sign and analytic thought 2. ut in this socalled ostmodern era some among us are wary of notions of stylistic rogress referring instead notions of sincerity and originality ust as we are wary of the idea of universal ercetion favouring instead the idea of cultural listening conventions to be interrogated and deconstructed. ersonally I refer aradox to forms and rocesses that are overly demonstrative. In fact on the level of technique alone I was exosed to comuters at an early age. However erhas because I became familiar with comuters at an early age I strongly demystify the contribution of technology to the creative act comosing everything by hand and more so mentally. 2) Transarametric techniques One of the recurring questions in my work deals with the closure of analytic thinking and ercetion 4. rom 1996 onwards I began to think hard about the notion of transarametric musical inflexion research into 1 Thanks to Christian inawin for the hel in the translation into English 2 Analytic thought is characterised in Western music in articular by a searation of musical arameters in rhythm itch and duration by a reduction of comlex continuous henomena to finite discontinuous alhabets by functional thought and consequently by thinking the sign combinatorially. When I was eleven I was laying on a elementar ZX80 Sinclair comuter; a few years later I erformed my first exeriments in comuter music with the Yamaha CXM musical comuter and in rogramming (ASIC and then ASCAL). I ursued advanced coursework in the sciences at the same time as my studies in music 4 ercetion and writing are closely linked and to work on the closure of one has imlications for the deconstruction of the other. We think according to how we erceive and reresent the world; likewise we erceive according to how we

2 the smallest musical tensions where the action would be detected by the senses but not intelligible or analysable and in articular not reducible to a transformation according to any of the traditional arameters of Western music duration itch and intensity. The challenge was to construct musically moments of resque rien and e ne sais quoi to use Jankelevich s exressions. I borrowed for my instrumental music an acoustic rincile which was associated with analogue samlers bringing together in the same relation the frequency of transosition and the ulsational seed of a sound. This technique was already used by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Kontakte 1960; see also his article Wie die Zeit vergeht 197) but with a different obective so that the serial differentiation of itches reflects that of rhythms. In my work this rincile allows on the contrary the concealment of the arametric origin of a henomenon: an infinitesimal variation in itch for examle the transosition of a quarter-tone of a musical element would be systematically accomanied by a change of the same order to the other arameters articularly to the seed of rhythmic reetition of this element (figure 1). The accumulation of these tiny inflexions alied to all arameters in similar ratios would create a tension without one s erceiving its analytic cause. egular reetition of the C# Slower regular reetition of the C Slower regular reet. of the Cb ig 1. Technique of transarametric musical inflexion: extract from Les deux amoules d un sablier eu à eu se comrennent (1996) for amlified solo har (illaudot ublisher). It should be made clear that in order to develo this technique and to assess its aesthetic consequences it was initially necessary to work on it manually determining what it ut at stake as well as its musical consequences due to the sluggishness of transcribing first onto grah aer and then to music manuscrit aer. It was only when this technique was roerly verbalised and formalised when its aesthetic stakes were mastered and when my research began to shift focus to other techniques making it necessary that no more time should be sent on calculations of transarametric ulsations that I decided to rogram the technique on Oen Music. ig 2. ormalisation of the technique of transarametric musical inflexion: atch rogrammed on Oen Music software (at left) and examle of a result (at right sketch from Hérédo-ibotes for solo viola and 1 orchestra musicians mes. 210) think for examle by focusing in the West on the fundamental or tone of a comlex sound by searating the arameters of listening by instinctively hearing tonal functions etc. The technique itself remains somewhat naive; but seen from a strictly algorithmic oint of view so too do the techniques of derivation of dodecahonic series the roduction of tra or the canon.

3 ) assage to the machine The formalization of such a technique on Oen Music raises numerous interesting issues. In the ieces that followed Les deux amoules d un sablier eu à eu se comrennent I focused more uon the styling of the cloud of oints obtained by the technique of transarametric inflexions. The task was to give form and colour to each of the tiles of the mosaic so that one s ercetion would be lost between totality and detail. This reflection on confusion is a rior ste in the deconstruction of analytic thought in music. So I needed a simle effective tool that allowed me to create the cloud of oints and their different inflexions and to hear them immediately like a comoser searching for and selecting chords at the iano. Oen Music with its musical interface its caacity to hear immediately in quarter-tones its double reresentation of music metric (in the form of voice) and roortional (in the form of chordseq) was the ideal tool. The other noteworthy roerty of Oen Music is its structure in atches of atches in abstraction of abstractions very close to a comoser s thoughts: once a technique is established the comoser reuses it often in slightly modified configurations or integrates these configurations into more extensive techniques. The caacity to transform a atch into a functional abstraction that is to transform certain data into variables in Oen Music and the ossibility to insert a atch into another encourages this comositional ractice. ig. combination and abstraction of atches in Oen Music : sketches for Hérédo-ibotes for solo viola and 1 orchestra musicians (mes. 169 à 219) 4) On the utility of manual labour Once the cloud of oints has been calculated by the comuter one must evidently render it musical in articular one must style it orchestrate it give it rhythm and should the occasion arise make local modifications. At this stage Kanthume an Oen Music s library that ermits the quantification of a chord sequence (such as the one illustrated in igure 2) in rhythmic notation and traditional metric would have roved effective. However I refer to erform this transcrition/quantification by hand desite the slowness of the work rinting the chord sequence onto grah aer and then coying it again slowly. In fact it is this manual oeration that ermits me to understand to control in short to listen to this rimary material with my inner ear in order to render it musical subsequently.

4 1 l. 1 l 2 Hb. 1 Hb Cl. 1 Cl. 2 bsn 1 Ctrn. Cor 1 Cor 2 cor cor 4 Tt. 1 Tt. 2 Trbn 1 Trbn 2 Tuba He Timb erc. I erc. II t w µ o (# w ) bw con vcl.. r # o ( ) ( - ) J ( )... ) - ( + + < J. r.+. r +. o µ.... ( ) ( )... b ( ). ( ) J... ~ ( ) J b. b con hb. ( ) ( ) ( ). J J. ( ).. # < ( ) # - w. # w bw µ.. r +. o µ.. r +. # w bw con vcl. # o. ( ) -. - J. con cl. b. f )... ( con tr. b b. f ( ) rendre basson r. b.. senza Sourd. ßf > ßf >. # b - > con alto b. b.. b.. con cl. ( ) J J b. #. r # +. r #. con he + o. (straight) J J sèche # b ww µ b J Alto solo 209 vn I 1-2 vn I -4 vn I. -6 vn I. 7-8 vn I vn II. 1-2 vn II. -4 vn II. -6 vn II. 7-8 Va 1 Va 2 Va Va 4 vcl 1-2 Vcl -4 Vlc. -6 Cb 1 ( ) ( ) J o ( ) ( ) J o ( ) (.) ( ) (.) ( ) t b J µ... o J o J o A la ointe. S.. #. J o b< J. b<. J... b. b. b. b. b. b. b. b. b. b. b. w Sul Tasto. b.. o o o. J o. J o. con hb. au talon b ƒ b. w w gliss. o J w w gliss. o J o # o o. #w w gliss. o b b J. b o b. µ # b b b b J. b b b. µ # b b b. b b. µ # b b b.. µ b ǣ b b ǣ b b b.. µ b f b b b ǣ b b b.. µ b f b b b ǣ b b b.. µ b ǣ f b b b ǣ b b f b 6 S.. # J J b S.. A la ointe w. b Sul Tasto w 6 b S.. A la ointe. ß. > w Chaque note accomagnée de sa morhologie rore ([si b ] [fa 1/4 de b notes réétées] [ré 1/4 de b flat] [sol 1/4 de # son à l''env.] etc..) doivent s'entendre comme autant de voix indéendantes et homogènes d'un contreoint de sonorités. G 7122 ig 4. Hérédo-ibotes for solo viola and 1 orchestra musicians realisation of cloud of ulsated oints (mes. 209 à 21 illaudot ublisher).

5 This technical resentation of a use of Oen Music will aear naïve to some. The alications of this software can be more comlex in my ersonal use (calculation by Oen Music of first tra calculation of iterated harmonic transositions reresentation by vectors of Tanner software areto 6 ). The issue here however is to outline the stages that roceed from the elaboration of a technique that arose from aesthetic reoccuations u to the oint of its formalisation and normal almost normative alication. The concern here is also to show that in a simle case even when the formalisation of the atch is easy and makes the work less arduous it is more imortant to make use of the slower ace of en and ink and manual calculation. Oen Music is a tool for symbolic calculation of the musical that is extraordinary due to its interface as well as for its unmatched freedom and by ermitting one to free oneself of certain constraints imosed by calculations in order to concentrate better on musical quality. To conclude let it be clear however that Oen Music remains a tool for calculation of classical musical categories (itch duration dynamic arameters midi) that arise from categories of western musical writing established by oethius Hucbald de Saint-Amand Guido d Arezzo and ranco of Cologne between the sixth and thirteenth centuries. With the aearance of recording technologies at the beginning of the twentieth century and of its deloyment as archi-writing to use Derrida's exression from the 0s on by comosers of musique concrète and of electro-acoustic music comlex sound has become an essential category of recent music. Today numerical means of increasing caability oen the way to a symbolic aroach to thinking about comlex sounds which still lack means of clear and ergonomic semiotic reresentation for comosition (Lévy 2002). One can hoe nevertheless that in the near future a tool for the comosition of comlex sound will aear that brings together the ossibilities of sound transformations software such as rotools Max or Logic Audio and the caacities for high-level symbolic calculation such as Oen Music. EEENCES Lévy abien (2002) «L'écriture musicale à l'ère du numérique» Culture recherche n Musique et son: les eneux de l'ère numérique Ministère de la Culture mission de la recherche July 2002 also downloadable on: htt:// Lévy abien (2004) comlexité grammatologique et comlexité aercetive en musique. Etude esthétique et scientifique du décalage entre la ensée de l écriture et la ercetion cognitive des rocessus musicaux sous l angle des théories de l information et de la comlexité.h.d in music and musicology of XX th Century Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales aris ebruary 2004 also downloadable on: htt:// Software AETO downloadable on: htt://membres.lycos.fr/fabienlevy/areto.html Stockhausen Karlheinz (197) «Wie die Zeit vergeht» in die eihe T.III Herbert Eimert éd. Vienne areto [atch d Analyse et de esynthèse des Echelles dans les musiques de Tradition Orale] (atch of Analysis and esynthesis of Scales in musics of Oral Tradition) is a software rogrammed on Oen Music that assists in the determination of scales of itches in the musical reertoires of oral traditions. Once the chart of virtual fundamentals from a sound file has been extracted by software such as Dihone Audioscult etc. and imorted into Oen Music in the form of a text file areto evaluates the average scale of the motif with statistical tools of averaging and temoral smoothing. Then in order to confirm that the average scale thus determined makes sense to the musicians it s ossible in areto to transform the initial sound file by microtransosition via SV according to recise hyotheses about the scales (hyotheses of different scales an hyothesis calculated to confirm by auditory consent lacebo scales ) in order to offer it to the musicians again. areto was used for the first time in July 2000 in Cameroon at the time of an ethnomusicological mission with the edzan ygmies. More information on htt://membres.lycos.fr/fabienlevy/areto.html )