Xenakis, Leonardo Electronic Music

LEONARDO REVIEWS

AUDIO COMPACT DISCS XENAKIS: ELECTRONIC MUSIC by Iannis Xenakis. Electronic Music Foundation, Albany, NY, 1999. . EMF CD 003. Reviewed by Robert Coburn, Conservatory Computer Studio for Music Composition, Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211, U.S.A. E-mail: The Electronic Music Foundation (EMF) was begun in 1994 by Joel Chadabe and others as a resource for the dissemination of electroacoustic, computer and other forms of new music. From its beginnings as an on-line source for hard-to-find recordings, it has grown to be one of the most important sources for a variety of information on new musical expression. Recently the EMF has moved beyond selling recordings to producing a series of compact discs on its own label. One of the first of these is a recording of the electronic works of one of the most significant and unique voices in twentieth century music, Iannis Xenakis. For many years the electronic music of Iannis Xenakis was available only on an out-of-print Nonesuch recording. This new compact disc reissues several of the works from this earlier recording and introduces some more recent pieces. With works dating from 1957 to 1992, it provides a notable retrospective of electronic music from Xenakis’s long compositional involvement with technology. In the well-written (although minutely printed) liner notes, Makis Solomis categorizes the pieces by technical approach into four periods, of which three are represented on this disc. The first includes those works pro-

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt Coordinating Editor: Kasey Rios Asberry

© 2000 ISAST

duced at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM): Diamorphoses, Concret PH, Orient-Occident and Bohor. These are by far the best known of Xenakis’s electronic works and present a wonderful view of his unique approach to musique concrete. The compositional techniques used in these works parallel Xenakis’s approach to acoustic works from the same time and give each of these pieces a flavor all its own. Orient-Occident, perhaps the most easily approached by a listener, was written for the film by Enrico Fulchignoni and is recognized as a masterpiece of early electronic music. Of the four GRM works, Concret PH has long been a favorite of mine. Xenakis mixed fragments of the sound of smoldering coals—the single sound source of the piece—to produce a highly evocative world of constantly varying and infinitesimally detailed clouds of sound. Of the later pieces, Hibiki-Hana-Ma (1970) and S.709 (1992) represent, respectively, the music Xenakis composed for his polytopes and compositions done most recently with the GENDYN system. The polytopes were constructions for which Xenakis realized a complete fusion of art forms. First composed as a work for 12 separate tracks, the current recording of Hibiki-HanaMa presents a stereo version of this highly spatial piece. (This might be a fine candidate for the five-channel surround of the new DVD medium.) The GENDYN program realizes Xenakis’s goal of creating a system for composition that simultaneously produces the micro- and macro-structure of the work from the composer’s specific input. In this program there is no differentiation between synthesis and compositional structure. As stated in the notes, “The program consists of an algorithm which explores stochastic timbre more thoroughly than ever before, resulting in a waveform which then evolves constantly through the introduction of ‘polygonal variations’ with the help of probability procedures.” Xenakis has done more than any other musician to unite the creative act of composition with the calculations of mathematical structures and processes.

The works represented on this CD comprise a remarkable example of the success of this synthesis of music and mathematics. Highly unique and listenable, Xenakis: Electronic Music will challenge and satisfy the listener who wishes for an experience beyond the norm.

THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE MUSIC by Komar & Melamid and Dave Soldier. New York, NY: Dia Center for the Arts, 1997. Reviewed by Clive Bell, 1 Clyde Circus, London N15 4LF, U.K. Reading the results of Komar & Melamid’s “Music Survey” made me realize I had made some bad career choices at an early age. The two instruments that I play, the flute and the accordion, are both among the “Most Disliked Instruments.” In fact, the accordion, at a whopping 13%, is right up there with the bagpipe at the top of the unpopularity poll. Maybe I should have asked around before taking these major decisions as a youngster. It is clear from these figures that I should have taken up guitar or piano (23% and 22% Most Liked), or even cello (in third place at 8%). But surely you have to trust your own intuition and principles. You cannot just base everything on what the general public thinks. Or can you? Soviet émigrés Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid have enlisted composer Dave Soldier for their latest market researchbased art project, a hilarious pairing on Reviews Panel: Fred Andersson, Rudolf Arnheim, Wilfred Arnold, Eva Belik Firebaugh, Andreas Broeckmann, Sean Cubitt, Shawn Decker, Tim Druckrey, Michele Emmer, Josh Firebaugh, George Gessert, Thom Gillespie, Tony Green, István Hargittai, Paul Hertz, Rahma Khazam, Richard Kade, Douglas Kahn, Nathalie Lafforgue, Patrick Lambelet, Michael Leggett, Michael Mosher, Axel Mulder, Kevin Murray, Frieder Nake, Jack Ox, Robert Pepperell, René van Peer, Clifford Pickover, Harry Rand, Sonya Rapoport, Kasey Rios Asberry, Edward Shanken, Rhonda Roland Shearer, Yvonne Spielmann, Barbara Lee Williams, Stephen Wilson, Arthur Woods. Advisors: Roy Ascott, Annick Bureaud, Marc Battier, Curtis E.A. Karnow, David Topper, Nic Collins. Corresponding Editors: Roy Behrens, Molly Hankwitz, Bulat M. Galeyev.

LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 65–74, 2000

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CD of “The Most Wanted Song ” (5 min.) and “The Most Unwanted Song ” (21 min 59 sec). The first is a midtempo rock love song of blistering blandness that “will be unavoidably and uncontrollably `liked’ by 72 ± 12% of listeners,” as Soldier explains in the sleeve notes. Vocalist Ada Dyer squirms her way through Nina Mankin’s “likeable” lyrics (“Lying in my silken sheets/ I think of ways that we might meet”) and is answered by a deep-voiced Ronnie Gent, sounding a little like Meat Loaf. After a couple of minutes, Vernon Reid of Living Color steps in firmly on electric guitar, as Gent muses, “Maybe she likes reading Wittgenstein/ Fancy dinners drinking good red wine.” This odd intrusion of the Austrian philosopher is presumably because 21% of the survey said they want intellectual stimulation when they listen to music. The song gets even funnier as it climaxes, with guitar and saxophone (Andy Snitzer) both contributing solos that subtly parody the clichés of the genre. Meanwhile the “Most Unwanted Song” lurches from loud to soft and from fast to slow tempos, while a soprano (the unwavering Dina Emerson) sings about cowboys, politics and advertising. There’s an infuriating children’s choir and, of course, plenty of accordion and bagpipes. Wittgenstein pops up here too, as a sturdy 21% named intellectual stimulation as their least important response when listening to music. Amidst their statistical breakdowns and three-dimensional pie charts, Komar & Melamid ask: What kind of culture is produced by a society that lives and governs itself by opinion polls? In a world where the music business seems to rely ever more heavily on marketing campaigns, a world in which Celine Dion sells a disturbing number of records, the tastes of the masses are certainly a crucial issue. In Soviet-era Russia, artists struggled to produce “people’s art” that would hopefully be encouraging for working people, but was also based on a confident prediction of what the people “really” wanted. Marxist Leninism provided a special analysis, a means of knowing what the people wanted better than they knew themselves. Nowadays I feel that people working in mass media such as television and tabloid newspapers have this same haughty confidence, this same superior insight into what the man in the street likes. And of course these beliefs are self-fulfilling, for the culture promoted by TV and tabloids is assumed by every-

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one to be overwhelmingly popular. This is the subject of Thomas Frank’s stirring essay “Alternative To What?”: The culture-products that so unavoidably define our daily lives, it is believed, are a given—a natural expression of the tastes of “the people.” This has long been a favorite sophistry of the industry’s paid publicity flacks as well: mass culture is fundamentally democratic. The workings of the market ensure that the people get what the people want; that sitcoms and Schwarzenegger and each of the various sneering pop stars are the embodiment of the general will [1].

TV both tells us what we like and exercises a stranglehold on it. TV is so convinced that it knows best about the real world that everyone who works within it or appears regularly on it carries a distinct air of unreality about them. But then the whole world of cultural taste is like a jungle, a war zone full of snipers. You may have a passion for early white gospel, but others will tell you it is passé, or trendy, or not “right on,” or a bit 1980s, or elitist, until you think how much simpler it would be if you liked the same music as everyone else. Thank goodness that Komar & Melamid have provided some hard figures about the public’s musical taste, even if their survey only involved 500 people and was bone-idly conducted by posting the questions on an Internet site. At least, as Dave Soldier says, “This survey confirms the hypothesis that today’s popular music indeed provides an accurate estimate of the wishes of the vox populi.” Reference 1. Thomas Frank, “Alternative To What?,” Baffler, 5, reprinted in Commodify Your Dissent (New York: Norton, 1997).

THE FENCE by Jon Rose. ReR Megacorp, Thornton Heath, Surrey, U.K., 1998. Reviewed by René van Peer, Bachlaan 786, 5011 Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail: . A major achievement of the U.S.A. in the twentieth century was the victory of the Civil Rights Movement, when racial segregation was banned from public life. Finally the basic tenet of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, had found its way into legislation and its implementation. A line that had been drawn to separate people had been erased. Such lines exist everywhere in this world.

Violinist Jon Rose ran into one of those lines when he was in Finland to participate in the 1995 Viitasaari New Music Festival—a barbed-wire fence marking the border between Russia and Finland, a remnant of the Iron Curtain. He recreated a model of it for the festival and played it as a long string instrument. This performance was the starting point for a larger project about fences all over the world, which resulted in a radio play commissioned by the Berlin broadcasting service SFB, and is now released on CD. Rose constructed the musical material of the piece mainly from recordings of the long string instrument he built in Finland; one passage is a recording he made of a border fence in the Australian outback that separates desert from emptiness. In some places, violin and voice have been added. The sounds coaxed from the long strings are simply magnificent. Bowed, beaten and stroked, the strings emit alluring tones full of shimmering, ringing harmonics. Especially wonderful are the extract recorded in Australia, where the strings are played by the wind, and a passage in which a voice sensuously curves around the pitch of the string, evoking wildly pulsating difference tones. These sounds provide the setting for 10 miniatures portraying fences in different places. The narrative, sometimes based on clips from radio programs reporting on one of these metal dividing lines, consists of studio-constructed cameos of the places and voice-over commentary by Rose in German. Starting in Finland, he moves to Belfast, the demilitarized zone between the Koreas, Cyprus and several other hotspots where fences are used to deny people access to a certain territory. He takes the listener on a tour of conflicts stemming from the various differences people may perceive between each other: ethnic (as in Cyprus and BosniaHerzegovina), religious (as in Northern Ireland), political (as in Korea), or particularly potent admixtures of motivational differences (as on the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria). Most of these conflicts have exacerbating secondary motives—especially strong when they are economic in nature. There is a bitter irony to this, and this is where Rose’s satire unfolds in full force. The Berlin Wall, which replaced barbed wire fencing in 1961, was breached by people from the eastern part of the city who did not want their movements to be constrained anymore

by their political leaders. After the Wall was pulled down, the huge serpentine scar of no-man’s-land running across the reunified city was developed as soon as possible. Not only should the city be prepared for its reinstatement as Germany’s capital, but—looking into the brave new future on yonder side of the millennium divide—it apparently wanted no reminder of recent history to remain. The most coveted part of this immense vacant lot, the Potsdamer Platz, was sold away to corporations who matched their bid with the dimensions of the high rises erected there. It is here that the irony kicks in: the new capitalist owners have erected fences around their property to protect their building investments. Again, the movements of the people are constrained, now by powers on the other end of the politico-economic spectrum. These fences are here to stay. Jon Rose likes to point out that since this recording was made, enmity has flared up in several places he portrayed on it. There is more to it than that, however—as dividing lines between people, fences manifest a mentality that is ingrained in our very being. Their erasure from the law has not removed them from individual hearts or minds, or indeed from society. The Fence is similar in its setup to other albums by Rose—it documents a radio play of his in which his music underpins a narrative that is replete with satire. What distinguishes it is the seriousness of the topic. Although Rose still directs your attention towards the absurdity of the human condition, he goes beyond merely poking fun at human folly. The juxtaposition of the serious and the absurd shines in the iridescence of the long strings. While Rose basks your ears in an alluring luster, he taunts your ease of mind like a gadfly. This piece is paired off with Bagni di Dolabella, which is rather more run-ofthe-mill Rose. The ingredients are similar—music (here real-time and sampled violin) with a satirical narrative built on top, consisting of a monologue and evocative sound effects. Based on “an original document found by the Rome City Sewage Department,” this radio play for Italian State Radio (RAI) transports you to Ancient Rome, where a masseuse guides you on a tour around the thermal baths, divulging the corruption of a top brass politician. Apparently nothing much has changed since those times. Although Rose’s playing is superb as always, The Fence reaches fur-

ther and deeper as a composition and a narrative. In pieces such as Bagni di Dolabella, Rose is merely an observer from the sidelines, amused by the futility of human endeavor. The Fence seems to stem from genuine personal involvement, which makes the bite of its satire hit home. It is as if Rose has discovered something within himself that he is not at ease with. He has looked straight into it, and now offers it to the listener, saying, “And how about you?”

ELECTRIC ENIGMA: THE VLF RECORDINGS OF STEPHEN P. MCGREEVY by Stephen P. McGreevy. London, UK: Irdial-Discs, 1998.

R&D (1996) R&D2 (1998) ANTIPHONY (1998) AL-JABR (1999) by Disinformation. London, UK: Ash International.

THE CONET PROJECT: RECORDINGS OF SHORTWAVE NUMBERS STATIONS London, UK: Irdial-Discs, 1998. Reviewed by René van Peer, Bachlaan 786, 5011 Tilburg, The Netherlands. E-mail: . When you wake up around sunrise during springtime, you may be greeted by the dawn chorus. In the still of morning, all manner of song-birds add their voices to a collective daily burst of energy. It is an intriguing notion that, around the same time (that is, when our planet turns from under the blanket of the night), electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere reaches a peak. Though inaudible, this activity can be picked up with antennas and then translated into sound. Like the collective singing of the birds, this is called a dawn chorus. It is part of a collection of electromagnetic waves and discharges from natural and man-made sources that constitutes the basic material of a number of recently released albums on the Irdial and Ash International labels. Electric Enigma is a double album on which California-based artist Stephen P. McGreevy has documented recordings he made of Natural Radio—electro-

magnetic emissions in the very-lowfrequency band caused by massive discharges and their after-effects in lightning storms and by the solar wind buffeting the earth’s magnetic field, visible as Aurora Borealis and Australis. It would normally take long wires to pick up these emissions, which would hamper the mobility of a listener or recordist. McGreevy developed a portable receiver with a whip antenna, allowing him to travel to places with optimal recording conditions—that is, anywhere in temperate to polar zones, but away from urban settlement and power cables. He further improved the unit by transforming it from a hand-held device to one that he could mount on his camper, so that he did not need to brave adverse weather conditions in order to make his recordings. The material on Electric Enigma was all recorded with the newer design. To the ears, a gritty soundscape of crackles and pops unfolds that one will immediately associate with lightning static on the radio. These crackly veils of ever-varying density may be shot through with short whistles, mostly falling but sometimes rising in tone, with high-pitched pops, croaks and a sustained, discreetly undulating band of hiss. A strange dichotomy exists between the dry, short crackles in the foreground and the more liquid whistles and hiss further back. It is like viewing pond-life through a grid. Even if you do not know what causes these sounds, they provide a captivating experience. Something is going on here, obviously. In fact, knowing what you are listening to only adds to the wonder: it is the awareness of the powers at work here, and the fact that we do not yet fully understand how they operate. These phenomena sound as if whatever generated them is charged with life, and some of them must have been instrumental in making life appear on this planet. In the two booklets included in the album, McGreevy maps out what is known about these emissions, gives details of the equipment used, provides a determination guide and writes extensive notes about the extracts. Unfortunately, it is in the text that this production shows its flaws—it would certainly have benefited from more thorough proofreading. One feature beyond McGreevy’s control was the presence of Omega, a global system of guiding beacons for aviation that became obsolete after these recordings were made; this

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system is audible as protracted beeps at the upper end of the hearing range that shift pitch every few seconds. Two albums that are in a similar vein, though broader in scope, are R&D and R&D2 by Disinformation, the name under which London-based Joe Banks releases his radio-reception recordings on CD and presents them to live audiences. Released 2 years after R&D, R&D2 begins its track count from the end of its predecessor’s, suggesting that Banks views these albums as parts of an ongoing project. The first CD starts off with a recording that could have come from McGreevy’s collection—electromagnetic disturbances and discharges in the atmosphere and guiding-beacon beeping. From there, however, Banks casts his net both wider and closer to home than McGreevy does. While the latter concentrates on natural phenomena in the atmosphere and tries to keep away from mains interference, Banks has turned towards it and explored its potential. Basically, his equipment consists of a radio with a converter that enables him to receive frequency bands in the very low and high ranges that are usually avoided because they are prone to a variety of disturbances. Some of the recordings on R&D are of data broadcasts from unknown sources. This data can be either pulsed or continuous, resulting in a thick, growly, throbbing hum with a periodically shifting pace and pitch. One track on which both types of data have been received in combination sounds like the throttled roar of an engine overlaid with bursts of breath. Further on, Banks focuses on electromagnetic transmissions generated by the oscillator in TV sets, which translates the incoming signal into lines on the screen, and combines it on one track with the 50Hz mains hum (and its harmonics). The latter is an especially complex, multilayered piece in which the polyphonic howls of the oscillator are set off against the constant, rich drone of the alternating current (AC), radiating from electric wiring. Banks has found that various electrically powered tools radiate the 50Hz frequency but differ in the harmonics added to that frequency—each has its particular sonic signature. R&D2 continues this theme in full force with a live presentation of AC wave radio reception processed through filters and a pitch shifter. The dense, pulsating throb gets topped by a recurrent grating that gradually expands and accelerates until it is abruptly cut short.

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It precipitates into the persistent, deep, but very clean hum emanating from a TIG welding appliance—in a sense, a low-register whistling. This is augmented by transmissions from a lathe, whilst high-pitched, glassy trails pierce through twice, like shooting stars— these were, in fact, trains passing overhead, as the recording occurred in a workshop located in an arch under a London railway viaduct. Downright disconcerting is a track called “Stargate,” a high-frequency emission from the sun on which one hears the Earth being battered by an unrelenting blaze of excessive heat and radiation. There is a considerable difference between listening to these recordings through headphones and through loudspeakers. While the former conjures up an (admittedly) delusional spatial sound image, the latter makes the room come alive with unexpected apparitions that condense on different places in the space, only to dissolve in the surge a bit later without a trace. Sometimes confrontational, sometimes elusive, these recordings share an uncommon, undeniably fascinating intensity. Most of the sounds are data streams that can be picked up by radio in everyday domestic surroundings. There is a regularity to them that suggests intentionality. In reality, however, if these signals carry information at all, they cannot be readily deciphered; though they appear in the guise of information, one can derive no unequivocal message from them. Consequently, one’s mind can be deceived into interpreting these signals and pulses as musical. This ambiguity lies in the phenomena themselves. Joe Banks does not attempt to bring out the musical content; indeed, he plays it down by making the pieces start and stop so abruptly. He ends R&D2 with a reprise of the throbbing AC hum, making it shudder, stutter and howl by shifting pitches through filters, and concluding by letting it drop away so that the radio only produces a recognizable transmission. The ambiguity is reflected in the artwork on the insert—a grim, mask-like face staring into a gritty expanse through heavy rods. In fact this is a video still of a reinforced concrete structure succumbing to atmospheric conditions; what is more, the structure belongs to a derelict parabolic sound mirror, formerly used by the military for the reception of arcane data. Apart from presenting these phe-

nomena live to audiences, Joe Banks has taken this work a step further by letting musicians use his recordings. The results were compiled on the double album Antiphony (glossed as “any musical or sound effect that echoes or answers another”) and Al-Jabr (“the bringing together of elements”). Although the approach on these three discs has been the same, each has its own distinct character. Roughly speaking, the two disks of Antiphony respectively present the rugged and the spacey aspects of Disinformation’s material. The musicians make an adventurous and often surprising use of its sonic potential, especially on the first disc. Particularly inspiring are the contributions by Kapotte Muziek—who mold various source sounds into a coherent new piece, as if cutting the umbilical cord that connected it to its origins—and People Like Us, who start from a dense stuttering and extend it until out of the widening creases a catchy pop tune materializes (Electric Light Orchestra?), which disintegrates when the folds close again. Pieces by Chris and Cosey and Mark Van Hoen on the other hand juxtapose the original recordings with disappointingly unimaginative musical material—a bass rhythm on the former and bass/keyboard/percussion on the latter. The second Antiphony disk has a rather more ambient atmosphere, moving at a calm pace with frequent appearances of drones, delay and reverb. This is in evidence most strongly in the first two tracks, which seem to hark back to the New-Agey, melancholy tunes concocted by Brian Eno and his associates in the early 1980s. Mark Poysden’s “Breathsweep,” the final track, proves that one can progress with thoughtfulness and yet refrain from effects suggesting large spaces and a dreamy state. Al-Jabr as a whole seems more condensed and intense than Antiphony, but does have playful moments, such as when Jim O’Rourke bounces bunches of pitched plips and bleeps between the left and right channel—a curious experience, to say the least, when listening over the headphones. In their respective contributions, Simon Fisher Turner and Mechos make mincemeat of Joe Banks’s recordings, a pungent salsa of chunks fresh out of the processor. The pièce de résistance, however, is London’s Overthrow, the long manic opening track by saxophonist Evan Parker. On top of the driving, pulsating and sometimes scratching AC hum, he has wound two

wildly writhing and lashing melodic lines that howl and dance with the intensity of the charged ground layer. The musical significance of this work derives from the ambiguity of the sounds’ origins. Too often, when hearing music constructed from or with samples, it is difficult to avoid trying to identify the source material, regardless of whether it was musical to begin with or concrete sounds. Banks’s recordings are not exactly concrete sounds but neither are they clearly musical. They derive from activity that the ear does not register without the aid of transforming equipment. These sounds are not laden with associations with past experiences, and they rarely trigger memories. If they do, it is after several listenings of the two R&D albums, and they still do not call any distinct object or event to mind. An accurate explanation of how they are produced falls far short of their impact and fascination—there is indeed something magical in these sounds. One can imagine that people find such sounds spooky and intimidating, but their connotations are not as sinister as those of the so-called Numbers Stations, documented on a quadruple CD by the CONET Project and originally released by Irdial Discs. Numbers Stations transmit coded messages on different frequencies in the shortwave bands. As with the electromagnetic emissions compiled by Joe Banks, they appear in the guise of information with no distinct, interpretable meaning. The difference with most of Banks’s material is that these stations operate by intention and their messages are intentionally obscure. They generally start a transmission with an alert signal, often a piece of music (for example, the famous restaurant-Gypsy-violinist showcase piece The Skylark, used by a station transmitting in Romanian). After a brief introduction and a call for attention, the bulk of the message follows as strings of numbers or letters read in groups. These can be in a variety of languages, such as English, German, Spanish, Czech and Romanian. Other stations transmit precisely tuned noise. Essays in the accompanying booklet argue convincingly that these messages are linked with espionage—purportedly they are instructions to agents abroad. It seems to be well-nigh impossible to decipher the code of each individual message. Apparently, and disconcertingly, this activity has not abated since the end of the Cold War. Another weird

twist lies in the types of voices used by some stations—those of a child, or of a woman ostensibly in a state of sexual arousal. One can only guess what interests are served through such activities, and what sort of people decide what exactly these interests are, and whose interests they are. There is a shroud of mystery around Numbers Stations, a disorientating feel that immediately calls to mind the subject matter and mood of Robert Ashley’s opera eL/Aficionado. It also evokes the dark and sinister overtones of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach: after hearing Numbers Stations, one cannot help wondering what the composer may have been telling to the world, and who exactly he addressed. Numbers Stations does have the characteristics of an elaborate hoax feeding off postmodern existential confusion and the latter-day predilection for conspiracy theories as well as an irrational turn-ofthe-millennium conviction that the human race is irrevocably, irredeemably and irrefutably doomed. On the other hand, much of the information can easily be checked by tuning the radio to the frequencies listed in documents that can be accessed via the Irdial-Discs web site. There is evidently quite some activity going on through the air. In their grandeur, the skies above may pervade the overworked human mind with a wholesome tranquillity. In reality, they are themselves not much less overwrought than the brain, through natural and artificial causes—a wonderful reflection of our state of mind. If being aware of reality is as crucial to our sanity as peace of mind, perhaps we are indeed doomed.

LANGUAGE, MESSAGE, DRUMMAGE: COMPOSITIONS FOR TAPE AND FOR INSTRUMENTS EMF CD 00614

WAYFARING SOUNDS: COMPOSITIONS FOR INSTRUMENTS AND TAPE EMF CD 00624

MUTATIS MUTANDIS: COMPOSITIONS FOR SOLO INSTRUMENTS AND ENSEMBLES EMF CD 00634

SAWDUST: COMPUTER MUSIC PROJECT EMF CD 00644 by Herbert Brün. Electronic Music Foundation, Albany, NY, 1998. Reviewed by Robert Coburn, Conservatory Computer Studio for Music Composition, Conservatory of Music, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211, U.S.A. E-mail: . Herbert Brün’s reputation as a composer, theorist and teacher has spread widely throughout the music world since he came to teach at the University of Illinois in 1962, but opportunities to hear his music have been limited. Now, for the first time, a major collection of Brün’s compositions has been released on the Electronic Music Foundation label, and the long wait has been well rewarded. Four CDs covering compositions from 1940 to 1997 offer listeners a remarkable portrait of this unique and talented creative artist. Works recorded here include compositions for solo instruments (piano, snare drum, viola, speaking voice, bassoon, flute) with or without tape, compositions for chamber ensembles (from duos to string quartets to large mixed ensembles) with or without tape, and compositions for electronic tape alone. Brün’s music is extremely hard to categorize. In fact, it appears that one of his musical goals is to avoid associations and predictability in the service of a composition’s larger meaning. This is represented best in his own words from the liner notes for “String Quartet #3” (1963) on the CD mutatis mutandis: If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components, will be misunderstood, instead, as one in which the components give meaning to their context. In order to retard this development, this visitation of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too commonly is mistaken for the understanding of music.

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In his notes for “Wayfaring Sounds” (1959) on the CD of the same name, he speaks of the growing power of sounds to shun predictability: Everywhere, in theater, in poetry, in language and music a powerful movement has started, scorning all categorization and mocking the conventional associative patterns. Everywhere sounds are on their way to take possession of articulation and communication, augmenting them and trying to liberate them from outdated routines of misunderstanding.

In some of his works he describes the role that algorithmic processes, rule-driven techniques and stochastic choices play in their composition. With this highly intellectual, creative approach to composition, the result is music that is unique, strikingly fresh and, at times, forcefully demanding. In his electronic/computer music, Brün shuns the temptation toward the seductive qualities of new sound as compositional determinants. He limits his aural palette to sounds clearly electronic and to texts that function between sound and meaning. In doing this, he avoids simple associations and imbues the composition with meaning beyond the immediate. The CD Sawdust presents a series of computer music compositions from 1976 to 1981. This project allowed him to work with the smallest parts of waveforms, linking them together and, through repetition and transformation, creating whole compositions. The seven works from this series present both a remarkable document of this research and a set of unique and challenging compositions. Rather than attempt a cursory description of many pieces, I will address myself to two works that I found particularly rewarding. From the CD Wayfaring Sounds, “Sentences Now Open Wide (SNOW)” (1984) and “on stilts among ducks” (1997) are wonderful examples of Brün’s ability to merge intellectual processes and creative expression in works that are at times powerful, challenging and humorous. “Sentences Now Open Wide (SNOW)” is scored for two flutes, French horn, two bassoons, cello, guitar, piano, three speaking voices and tape. It was composed for the twentyfifth anniversary of the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois. The text, four verses written by Brün, “responds with discontent to the commonplace of power: ‘Let us do our best for you, or else!’” The speakers re-

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cite it counterpointing words against words. The tape part was created with analog techniques from the 1960s. “It plays music constructed in analogy to social movements which will, if we fail them, fail us.” The instruments “wonder how they got there while calling with remembered and with invented gestures for answers to the questions: `What was? What is? What next?’” All commentary, like the composition itself, is true Brün, at once thought provoking, relevant, artistically creative, and touched with a slight dusting of wit. The music speaks clearly, while leaving the listener to ponder more questions than answers. “on stilts among ducks,” written for viola and tape, is equally rewarding and enigmatic. In this case the liner notes reveal little that is specific about the composition. Brün provides a short verse about the relationship between I, Viola and Duck. At once humorous and thoughtful, the verse depicts well the effect of this piece, a romp through sounds truly electronic by a viola freed of its inhibitions. This wonderful piece alone is worth the price of this disc. It is exciting to see the Electronic Music Foundation producing recordings such as these: compositions unlikely to be released “commercially” because of their demanding and unusual nature. It is to all our benefit that we have an opportunity to experience this music that dodges predictability in favor of provoking deeper connections. In the end Brün himself says it best, “Whether our music is to be wished for, only those can decide whose pleasure in fulfillment and response is provoked by wishes and questions.”

BOOK MÚSICA DE INVENÇÃO by Augusto de Campos. Editora Perspectiva, São Paulo, Brazil, 1998. 274 pp., illus. Paper, R$30.00. Reviewed by Carlos Palombini, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco CAC, Departamento de Música Av. Acadêmico Hélio Ramos, s.n. Cidade Universitária, Recife, Pernambuco 50740-530 Brazil. E-mail: . Música de invenção (hereafter Invention Music) is a collection of articles written by Augusto de Campos that originally

appeared between 1957 and 1997 in Suplemento literário de Minas Gerais, Enciclopédia Abril, the magazine SomTrês and the newspapers Folha de São Paulo, Jornal da tarde and Jornal do Brasil. The book is divided into an introduction, three chapters, one post-chapter, two appendixes, and an index of illustrations. Chapter I, “Word and Music,” contains articles on Occitan music, Ezra Pound’s Le testament, the musics of Pound/George Antheil and Stein/ Thompson. It also includes both Campos’s recreation of O.E. Hartleben’s translation of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire and Campos’s translation of Schoenberg’s preface to the piece. Chapter II, “Radicals of Music,” contains articles on Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, Walter Smetak, Anton von Webern and Edgard Varèse; it includes translations of excerpts from Satie’s writings. Chapter III, “Musichaos,” contains articles on and pastiches of John Cage and Campos’s interview with Brazilian composer J.J. de Moraes. “Postmusic,” the post-chapter, contains articles on Giacinto Scelsi, Conlon Nancarrow, Antheil, Luigi Nono, Galina Ustvolskaia, Henry Cowell and post-music. Appendix I, “Notes on Notes,” contains articles on timbre, melody, microtonalism and Stravinsky. Appendix II, “Polemics,” contains Campos’s 1957 defense of Pierre Boulez and his translation of Boulez’s “Homage à Webern.” On the back cover, Brazilian composer Livio Tragtenberg sets the tone: the book is for those who enjoy music “with love & rigour.” Campos has been “the first to tackle composers such as Webern, Varèse, Cage, Boulez and Nono, the first to champion true ‘underground sonic earthquakes’ such as Antheil, Cowell, Nancarrow, Scelsi and Ustvolskaia.” He is “the poet of post-everything,” now introducing readers to “the post-music of silences, sounds, and noises.” Invention Music is “the most important book on the subject” ever published in the “land of ‘deaf musicians,’” a.k.a. Brazil. As Campos explains in the introduction, the articles serve no systematic purpose. What links them is the fact that all deal with what he terms, after Pound, “inventor musicians.” Having fought for the Tropicalist composers of the 1960s (Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and Caetano Veloso) and seeing them enthroned in the media, Campos now turns against “the aural desensitization to contemporary music.” It is utterly

unacceptable that “the marvelous adventure of . . . high music” be thwarted by “aural laziness” and the “mercantile eagerness of the media.” We must all rise from “the sound cushions of palatable music” and listen to “the thoughtmusic of the great masters and inventors,” “the saints and martyrs of the new language.” Campos will tackle “questions to which contemporary inventionmusic has given admirable answers.” Between the lines, he will recount “a bit of the history of artistic guerilla.” According to Campos’s introduction to Pound’s ABC of Reading, there are six categories of writers: (1) inventors, those who may be held responsible for the discovery of a new process; (2) masters, those who explore some such processes; (3) diluters, the less successful followers of the former two; (4) good writers without qualities, who produce reasonable work in period style; (5) belles lettres types, who cultivate particular fields; and (6) faddists, fashionable but forgettable. The best critics, Pound says, are those who effectively contribute to improve the art they criticize; then come those who focus attention on the best writing. The worst are those who divert attention from the best to second rate works or to themselves. One recognizes a bad critic when he or she starts going on about the author and not about the work. The preliminary and simplest test is to check the words that do not work. As both Marjorie Perloff and John Hollander have noted, the concrete poets of the Brazilian Noigandres group (Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari) are not particularly remarkable for their aural explorations [1]. Invention Music is prodigal with assonances, consonances, alliterations, epithets, commonplaces, adjectives and metaphors, though not always in the best possible taste: the music of Provence is “a prowess”; “the era of Erik” is “the era of rag”; music is “the most abstract of artistic genres”; Ustvolskaia is “the musical Sphinx from Russia”; Steve Reich’s music is “the provocation of molecular tautology”; Cage is “the prophet and guerilla fighter of interdisciplinary art”; Cowell’s pieces “adumbrate the polyrhythmic pranks of Conlon Nancarrow’s unbridled pianolas”; Hanns Eisler is “that mediocre disciple of Schoenberg, whom the bad conscience has sought in vain to raise to the rank of first rate.” Outbursts of reactive rhetoric are legion. Apparently, de Campos’s artistic guerilla

warfare started when Willy Corrêa de Oliveira vetoed Universidade de São Paulo Press support of one of his publishing projects. How does Campos fare when Invention Music is set against Pound’s agenda as expounded by Campos himself? Neither a belles lettres type nor a faddist, he stands in between. Specializing in record reviews, Campos sets forth the ins and outs of his modernist creed while inexorably marching towards the concluding instance of record company vituperation. This kind of upper highbrow Hello! leaves no room whatsoever for whatever theoretical apparatus the subject may require. Those who share in Campos’s tastes will find that he fulfills the task of the second-rate critic. He talks about other authors, yet cannot help diverting attention to himself. As to the works, he has precious little of interest to say: “Long Life Webern!” “Long Life Varèse!”—mind the similarities between these titles! The reader is made witness to a competition to ascertain: (1) who discovered the latest composer first; (2) who wrote about his or her first work first; (3) who bought his or her first record first. Having made the wrong choices, Mario de Andrade (nationalism) and Willy Corrêa de Oliveira (bolshevism) have lost their ways and lose the game. Seconded by Arthur Nestrovski, Campos wins. Invention Music wears the appearance of a biblia pauperum of the concrete poet’s musical cult. On a page of Scelsi’s Quattro pezzi per orchestra, Campos superimposes Scelsi’s signature and symbol. On a photograph of Webern in the Alps, Campos superimposes a page of Piano variations op. 22. On a close-up of Schoenberg’s eye, Campos superimposes Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic scheme. On a close-up of young Varèse, Campos superimposes a page of Ionisation; on a close-up of elderly Varèse, Campos superimposes a page of Hyperprism. On a photograph of an interstellar phenomenon, Campos superimposes middle-aged Nono’s balding head (“Big Bang Nono!”). On the photograph of another such phenomenon, he superimposes elderly Nono’s balding head (“Quasar Nono!”). On a photograph of Cage and himself, Campos superimposes the score of 4'33. Campos himself is everywhere to be seen: with Olga Rudge in Castel Fontana in 1991; with members of his household chez Cage in 1978; cleaning lipstick from Cage’s face in 1985; molesting Cage with concrete po-

etry in 1985. Invention Music abides by the rules of neither etiquette nor scholarship. So why should Campos? And why should we? In his Pequena história da música (Short History of Music) (1942), Mário de Andrade states that “also in trios, quartets, and quintets, there has been a most interesting harvest, employing the most unusual and curious soloist ensembles (Kurt Weill, Falla, Ezra Pound, Anton Webern).” This leads Campos to conclude that Andrade was a musicological travesty. Yet one reads in Invention Music that “from him [Nestrovski] I have received two tapes with musical novelties: Wishart, Ferneyhough, Smalley, Philip Glass etc. Everything very interesting.” Now, the founding father of Brazilian ethnomusicology was a modernist in the early twenties, when being a modernist was de rigueur for a bright youth of progressive São Paulo’s intelligentsia. The modernist Campos is a latecomer; the postmodernist Campos is unconvincing. He fits strictly into the high-art-plus-best-of-pop-culture pattern that Georgina Born has identified at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique (IRCAM) [2]. So far as it presents an essentially visual poet in the role of avant-garde music beacon, Invention Music indeed is, as Tragtenberg wishes, “a unique document on the Brazilian musical and cultural life of the last decades.” Campos is to be held responsible for the fact that facile punning has come to be viewed as an honorable form of mental activity, and hence for the fact that pop singers have come to be viewed as intellectuals. In this manner, thinking has been debased. The ease with which the amateur Campos collects and distributes novelties from abroad is the same ease with which the retired intellectual Cardoso collects and distributes writs from the International Monetary Fund. The musicologist Campos will be rendered redundant by the World Wide Web. In the meantime, Brazilian poets are posteverything, Brazilian composers are the greatest of the Americas, Brazilian transvestites are the most sought after of Europe and Brazilian men are the most potent in the world. Abroad, they come from the land of coffee, carnival and football. At home, their houses are barbed-iron fenced and their teeth are missing. They have been raped by a feudal elite of modernist zeal. “Yes,

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nós temos Augusto de Campos! ” Anyone interested? References 1. Marjorie Perloff, “The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage’s `What You Say . . . ,” in Adalaide Morris, ed., Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997); John Hollander, Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form (1975). 2. Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1995).

CONCERT ARNALDO COHEN PLAYS CHOPIN Convention Centre of the Federal University of Pernambuco at Recife, Brazil, 16 April 1999. First part: Ballades I, II, III and IV; second part: Nocturne op. 6 n. 2 Fantaisie-impromptu Études op. 10 n. 3 op. 25 n. 1 and op. 25 n. 12 Scherzi I and II; encores: Minute Waltz and Étude pathétique (Scriabin). Reviewed by Carlos Palombini, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco CAC, Departamento de Música Av. Acadêmico Hélio Ramos, s.n. Cidade Universitária, Recife, Pernambuco 50740-530 Brazil. E-mail: . In early April 1999, lecturers, workers and students in the Music Department of the Federal University of Pernambuco at Recife were invited for a recital by the London-based Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen and requested to RSVP. The invitation was issued by Banco Sudameris, which is affiliated with Banque Sudameris of Paris and controlled by Grupo Banca Commerciale Italiana of Milan. Sudameris is opening its campus branch in the recently inaugurated facilities of the University Convention Centre, where the recital would take place. What would become (through a history of rebellions and treasons) the Pernambuco state originated from one of the first administrative successes of the young Portuguese colony. Rich in brazilwood, the region was fought over by the Dutch, the French, the Spanish and English pirates. The city of Recife grew under the view of Olinda—a UNESCOdeclared historic site—as a merchants’ pendant to the aristocratic old town,

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gradually taking over the economic lead and rising to the position of metropolis of the Brazilian northeast. On these shores, Brazil was discovered by Vincente Pinzon and not by Pedro Cabral, and the ferocious Caeté Indians devoured the aptly named Bishop Sardinha, anticipating urban anthropophagi. Nowadays, latter-day saints from North American missions stroll around, alluring with sanitized blondness mamelucos, cafusos, mulattos and mestizos. Pernambuco boasts the oldest aristocracy in the country. Mrs. Mayrink Veiga, formerly a top-10 best-dressed lady of Rio society and a beauty, now earns her livelihood here, telling the lower strata the dos and don’ts of upper class etiquette in the pages of the local equivalent to the London Sun (devoured as her fortune has been by extortive interest rates charged on former employees’ social security monies, which she used to borrow from the Brazilian state): “in those days, men used to wear tails . . . now they complain about wearing a jacket!” This was my coming-out evening and I wished neither to overdo nor understate it: light brown suede shoes, white socks (suburban in London but comme il faut in Recife), beige trousers, best white shirt (with mother-of-pearl buttons), bespoken terracotta linen jacket and a silver-coated chain hanging from my trousers pocket. For sleazy looks, a bit of that exquisite Schwarzkopf gel wax that I brought from Dublin and, to round it off, the woody undertones of Ever by Applewoods. “Carlos, how beautiful you are!” my neighbor uttered in wonder as I left. Those who earn over three hundred pounds sterling a month are not supposed to take buses in this country. However, I remain convinced that one should not always go native in the tropical regions. A seat on the left afforded the view of a beautiful pair of thighs on the right and with no further ado I took it. Lost in contemplation, I was awoken by the noises of hit and broken glass, female shrieks and myriad glass fragments landing onto my face. Ladies crawled, robbery and rape stamped on their faces. No more discomfited than General Giuseppe Federico von Palombini in the aftermath of the Napoleonic debacle, I gazed around, assessing the likelihood of another bullet and pondering the wisdom of surrendering one’s course to the ubiquity of fleshly gifts. A stone thrown at the bus by one of the countless children who roam the streets of Recife had crossed a

window pane on the right, just behind those thighs, at the corresponding point to where I was seated on the left, before it went out through a left window pane two seats behind me. I had been saved by the imponderable laws of relative movement. One queues for everything in this country. In São Paulo, at the Consolação branch of the Brazilian Airline, one queues to get information as to whether one should queue. In Recife, at the campus branch of the Brazilian Bank, one queues for one hour to pay a check. Those who earn over 100 pounds a month qualify as special clients, and special clients queue in special queues. Those who earn over 350 pounds a month qualify as doubly special clients but doubly special clients queue in simply special queues. One hour before the concert, the Convention Center offered a double choice of queues. I took the shortest. It was the slowest. Wearing all the appearances of clients of a distinctively selective European bank, a stocky gentleman, his plump wife and their marriageable daughter arrived in full swing. The gentleman shouted abuse at a pair of ladies who exchanged ideas with the ticket collector at too slow a pace. His wife attempted to grab my place. Having set the queue going with his yelling, the gentleman set about propelling it further with his belly. Thus, at the drop of a hat, I was rubbing shoulders and private parts with the upper echelons of financial society. Inside the concert hall, conversation ranged from basic Italian (“a scherzo?”) to real estate. At 9:00 sharp, a pair of attendants approached and removed two young ladies who had been sitting in the front row for half an hour. Reservation labels were stuck to their seats. The Vice Chancellor was ushered in and offered the seats. A video screen unfolded, and Banco Sudameris had us know that it was one and the same with the struggles of the Brazilian people. The local representative took the stage. He repeated it. Cohen was a sight for sore eyes. He brought to life the dramatic contrasts and manifold transitions of Chopin’s set of Ballades with uncompromising technique and variegated hues. Halfway though the Third Ballade, a fortissimo passage sent me away from the hall and deep into the music. I resurfaced. Refreshments were served. Soft drinks circulated freely. Italian white was the preserve of the fittest. Guests were invited to return to their seats. Procrastinators

were gently pushed in. The Vice Chancellor climbed the stage. Banco Sudameris was thanked and “a public and high-quality university” was cheered. With a Debussy-like performance of the Second Nocturne, Cohen rose to the rarefied heights of Dinu Lipatti’s historic Nocturne in D-Flat interpretation. Fantaisie-impromptu, the Third Étude Op. 10, the First and Twelfth Études Op. 25, and the First and Second Scherzi followed. Having made his way through terminal coughing, wristwatch beeps and mobilephone calls in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, Cohen was awarded a standing ovation. He retorted with a finely crafted, superbly phrased and unbelievably fresh Minute Waltz. At half past twelve, Scriabin’s Étude Pathétique drew the evening to a close. Jose Miguel Wisnik summarizes the program of the modernist cycle of musical nationalism in Brazil: To synthesize and to stabilize a musical expression of popular base, as a means to conquer a language that reconciles the country in the horizontality of its territory and the verticality of its classes (raising the rustic culture to the universalized scope of bourgeois culture, and giving the bourgeois musical production a social base that it lacks [1].

The middle classes like Chopin. The violence that, for centuries, the owner perpetrated against the slave was democratized by decades of military dictatorship and has been sanctioned by the democratic regime [2]. In Brazilian politics today, it is not the rustic landowner from Bahia that rises to the universalized scope of bourgeois culture, but the cosmopolitan intellectual from São Paulo that sinks to the scope of nationalized bourgeois brutality. Like the famous fur coat with which the Finance Minister Cardoso de Mello sought to impress the Prince and Princess of Wales at a Rio gala evening, the fabric of Brazilian society is moth-eaten beyond repair. Slaughtered or ostracized, the Indians alone remain unsullied. They enshrine the nationhood that might have been. Ena mokocê-cê-maká. References 1. Jose Miguel Wisnik, quoted by Gerard Béhague in Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil’s Musical Soul (1994).

Divine Doorways

MATERIALS RECEIVED

Andrea Goodman and Gerry Hemingway. Ruby Throated Music, Boothbay, ME, U.S.A., 1998.

Multimedia Products

The Fence

Borderland

Jon Rose. ReR/Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Produced by Plokker. Plokker, France. CDROM. 1999.

Hidden Reflections: Chamber Works

Conversations with Angels Produced by Andy Best and Merja Puustinen. VRML CD-ROM plus picture book. MEET Factory, Helsinki, Finland. 1999. 25 Euros.

DOC(K)S “La Trilogie des Medias”: Tome 2: Chantier “Son.” Journal (in French) plus 2 audio CDs, 1998. 300 FF.

Form Function in Architecture R. Thomas Hille. Univ. of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A., 1999. 2-volume CDROM.

ISEATERROR98

Lior Navok. NLP, Boston, MA, U.S.A., 1998.

Horde Mnemonists. ReR/Recommended, Surrey, U.K., 1999.

Hyperpiano Denman Maroney. Mon$ey Music, Monsey, NY, U.S.A., 1998.

Inside Barry Truax. Cambridge Street Records, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.,1996.

Live from California Dos Hermanos. Grateful Dead Records, CA, U.S.A., 1998.

Department of Fine Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, U.K., 1998. CD-ROM for Macintosh.

Live in Tokyo

Masterworks for Learning: A College Collection Catalogue

Out beyond Ideas

Allen Memorial Art Museum. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, U.S.A. 1998. CDROM.

Mediamatic Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1998. Journal plus CDROM.

Mediamatic Volume 9, No. 2/3, 1998. Context Issue. CD-ROM for Mac/Windows.

Musicworks

Cassiber. ReR/Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Mandir. Satsang Music, Missoula, MT, U.S.A., 1998.

Portals of Distortion: Music for Saxophones, Computers, and Stones Matthew Burtner. Innova, St. Paul, MN, U.S.A., 1999. $14.97.

Pragma Tim Hodgkinson. ReR/Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

Radiophagy

No. 72. Fall 1998. CD plus magazine.

Lou Mallozzi. Penumbra Music, Grafton, WI, U.S.A., 1997.

Shock in the Ear

Room Piece

Produced by Norie Neumark. Univ. of Technology, Sydney, Australia, 1998. CDROM for Macintosh.

Michael J. Schumacher. SFB Records, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1998.

Les Rumeurs de la Ville

Audio Compact Discs

Guigou Chenevier. ReR/Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998.

1970–1973 Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. Cuneiform Records, Silver Springs, MD, U.S.A., 1999.

Whole or by the Slice

The Alpha Wave Variations

The Wind Rises

Paisley Babylon. Zombie Records, San Antonio, TX, U.S.A., 1998.

Istvan Martha, Sandor Bernath/y/ [electroplenair sound diary]. ReR/ Recommended Records, Surrey, U.K., 1998

Hal Rammel and Lou Mallozzi. Penumbra Music, Grafton, WI, U.S.A., 1998.

2. Joseph A. Page, The Brazilians (Perseus Press, 1995).

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Books

Exotech Industries

Melodic Similarity: Concepts, Procedures, and Applications (Computing in Musicology II)

Web site for performance artist and writer Coco Fusco. See particularly documentation of performance at Johannesburg Biennale and Festival of Latin American Performance.

Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge Field, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 1999. 235 pp., illus. Paper, $28.00. ISBN: 0-262-58175-2.

Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics Perry R. Cook, ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 1999. 734 pp., illus. Trade, $60.00. ISBN: 0-262-03256-2.

The Experimental Studio on Internet of the CICV Centre Pierre Schaeffer Focus: “platform for research and experimentation.”

Fractal Music

Periodical Computer Music Journal Vol. 22, No. 4. Dancing the Music. Interviews: Oliveros, Spiegel, Thome, White. Magazine plus CD. $12.00. ISSN: 0148-9267.

World Wide Web Sites Art and Physics Edited by Leonard Shlain, author of the books Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image.

The ArtChivist A site dedicated to the digital publishing project “Archiving as Art,” presented by Karen O’Rourke as a part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique research program “Archives of the Creation.”

CAiiA-STAR Web site of the Interactive Arts program of the University of Wales and Plymouth University under the leadership of Roy Ascott.

Clifford A. Pickover Website Deals with computers and creativity— educational puzzles, computer art, fractals, etc.

The David Bermant Collection Includes the work of kinetic and light artists. Artists include Duchamp, George Roads and Nam June Paik. The David Bermant Foundation also awards grants to students working in the technological arts.

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Galileo: Diary of Science and Analyses of Global Issues In Italian and English, edited by Michele Emmer.

The Media Centre of the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal Offers French/English information about all areas of contemporary art and culture. Information on the Media Centre itself; directory of resources in contemporary art and culture available on the Internet.

Metamusique

Women on the Web—Electronic Media (WOW’EM) WWW site The WOW’EM WWW site was introduced in Fall 1996 as an information repository for young women interested in digital media. WOW’EM serves as a starting point for those interested in music and visual art by showing various career options and opportunities. WOW’EM also provides information of special interest to young women, with discussions on technology as well as links to and interviews with established visual artists, graphic designers, composers and multimedia artists working with technology, and young women’s web sites and on-line services. .

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS Leonardo publishes reviews of books, digital publications (CD-ROMs, on-line works, World Wide Web sites), audio CDs and tapes, events and exhibitions. Accepted reviews are published either in Leonardo Digital Reviews (a section of our electronic journal Leonardo Electronic Almanac), on our Leonardo World Wide Web site (http://mitpress. mit.edu/Leonardo/e-journals/ home.html) or in our print journals Leonardo or Leonardo Music Journal. We do not accept unsolicited reviews. Individuals interested in joining the Leonardo reviews panel should email a brief professional biography with an example of a review to [email protected]. Authors and artists interested in having their (physical) publications (books, CDs, CD-ROMs, etc.) considered by the reviews panel should arrange to have one copy shipped to Leonardo Digital Reviews, 425 Market Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, U.S.A. Organizers of events or exhibitions and authors of on-line publications and events should e-mail information to [email protected]. Readers with comments or reactions to published reviews may send them for publication consideration to [email protected].