Electronic Music
History Paper
An independent study of the history and selective works of Walter Carlos.
Ted Hamer
„ Since 1954, composers of Electronic music have turned their attention to the problem of combining electronic sound with traditional instruments. The discipline, as well as requiring new compositional skills, calls on a composers more traditional training in matters of balance and notation, and heightens his sensitivity to the formal problems of composition in general¾ - Walter Carlos
There are many associations between live instruments and tape, and they show themselves on structural levels : pitch, amplitude, rhythm and timbre. Electronic and instrumental sounds are blended so that their independence is replaced by their blending within a timbral spectrum that ranges from dull to bright. Instrumental characteristics are given to taped elements through envelope control and filtering ;while percussion and piano, due to their inherently rich harmonic content, assume the nature of electronic sounds when played in a non-traditional manner. For example, piano clusters in low registers lose pitch perceptively and assume a noise-like nature.
With the exception of Badings and Berio, composers prior to 1960 preferred to utilize orchestra or large instrumental ensembles in combination with tape. They did so because of a desire to establish sonorous connections between live and taped sounds, and using both mediums provided a greater amount of possible sonorities. Conventional
instruments can be orchestrated to resemble electronic and concrete sounds, and so too can the latter be modified to approximate orchestral timbres. This situation did not change significantly until the appearance of åKontakte¼ (1959-60) by Stockhausen.
After åKontakte¼ appeared, many electronic composers began to employ small instrumental ensembles, or even a soloist, with pre-recorded tape.
Among the first to do so were the Columbia - Princeton composers Otto Luening, Charles Wittenberg and Walter Carlos, some of whom adopted a neo-classical approach to electronic composition.
From the beginning, composer and synthesist Walter Carlos has not followed a conventional music course. Born in Pawtucket, R.I., he started piano lessons at the age of six and exhibited talents for graphic arts and the sciences, winning a Westinghouse Science Fair scholarship for a home built computer. After pursuing a combined major in music and physics at Brown University, he earned an M.A. In music composition at Columbia University, studying with pioneers Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky at the first electronic music center in the U.S.A. Upon graduation, Carlos worked as a recording engineer and befriended Robert Moog becoming one of his first clients.
In 1968, Carlos achieved platinum sales status by using the Moog synthesizer to record Switched-On Bach - a compilation of J. S. Bach keyboard pieces, which propelled the Moog synthesizer into the public consciousness and won three Grammy Awards.
I also understand that he pioneered the use of vocoders for synthesized singing, using that technique in his score for Stanley Kubrick¼s film, A Clockwork Orange, long before space war movies made synthetic voices common.
After recording several more albums in the classical vein, Carlos wrote horror music for Kubrick¼s film The Shining , and also the score for the
1982 Disney film Tron . The latter score used a continuous blend between symphonic orchestra and digital and analog synthesizers, an often found and imitated combination.
Establishing himself as a pioneer, Carlos worked on many projects over the years with numerous respected professionals in the field of music and the arts.
Over 1992-1995, in collaboration with synthesist and friend Larry Faust, Carlos developed a state-of-the-art digital process of soundtrack restoration and surround stereo conversion called : Digi-Surround Stereo Sound. Since its invention the techniques have been widely used on recent film and music projects as well as the remastering of older works.
Carlos has delivered conferences at New York University, the Audio Engineering Society¼s Digital Audio Conference, and many other music/audio conferences throughout the continent. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Carlos in both of the early works I will discuss makes use of thematic relations as often found in classical structure. å Dialogues for piano and two loudspeakers¼, and å Variations for flute and tape¼, although both relatively short pieces, are made up of quick timbral contrasts between tape and performer.
Carlos quotes - „My pieces on this disc were designed to give the live performer maximum-expressive freedom within each tape cue. The cues are not åtechnical improvisations in sound¼, but are realizations of a carefully notated score in which both live and taped portions have been composed. A competent musico-technician, once familiar with my notational techniques and compositional style, could produce, from the written score, an electronic performance differing only in interpretation from the sounds heard on this recording.¾
åDialogues¼ (1963) is a collage of motivic repetitions that appear in rhapsodic fashion, deriving most of its thematic-motivic construction from an ascending series of gradually diminishing intervals. Two of the themes are developed and transformed at some length, ie. The pianos¼ theme in twelfths at the entrance of the electronic sound, and the
rhythmic novelty of a rising and accelerating series of seven quaver/semi-quaver notes, heard in the middle and the later portions of the piece.
The motive used is shown below :
The tape introduces this motive at 2:13, followed by its re-statement by the piano. It¼s subsequent appearances occur on the tape at 2:56 and 3:14, with the rhythm slightly modified.
In contrast to åDialogues¼, åVariations¼ (1964) as its title implies is divided up into seven sections, a theme and a very strictly organized set of six variations. All the sections are based on an eleven bar theme stated at the beginning by the flute.
The first variation is a restatement of the theme (in altered rhythm) to a march-like electronic accompaniment. The second is a strict cannon in three parts. The third, entirely electronic makes very free use of octave transposition. The flute re-enters with the fourth variation, a passionate solo with only one brief electronic punctuation. Variation five, a
character variation, features rapid alteration between flute and
electronic sound, and a very distinctive trilling configuration. Variation six, uses materials from one and five and brings the piece to a brisk cadence.
Tapes for both compositions are purely electronic, and are treated as sources for thematic and accompanying materials.
Like works of Luening and Wittenberg, these pieces of Walter Carlos also reflect a neo-classical approach. The holding of conventional elements such as melody, harmony, and preconceived formal structure, enabled traditionally trained composers to more easily transfer their compositional techniques to the electronic medium.
Bibliography
åEvolution of Electronic music¼ David Ernst
åElectronic and computer music¼ Manning
åIntro to Electro-Acoustic music¼ Barry Schrader
Wendy Carlos home page Internet - www.WendyCarlos.com