Texts.nfo
[The Record Box]
TAPE RECORDER MUSIC
SOUND IN SPACE
INNOVATIONS GB 1
A GENE BRUCK ENTERPRISES PRODUCTION
Ronald Clyne
[The Record Labels]
[Side 1]
SOUND IN SPACE
TAPE RECORDER MUSIC
Otto Luening - Vladimir Ussachevsky
INNOVATIONS
GB-1
Made in U.S.A.
Side 1
F8-OL-5796
Band 1: Sonic Contours
(Ussachevsky)
Band 2: Fantasy in Space
Luening)
33 1/3 LONGPLAY MICROGROOVE
UNAUTHORIZED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE, BROADCASTING OR COPYING OF THIS RECORD PROHIBITED
COPYRIGHT 1955, GENE BRUCK ENTERPRISES INC., N. Y. C., U. S. A.
[Side 2]
SOUND IN SPACE
TAPE RECORDER MUSIC
Otto Luening - Vladimir Ussachevsky
INNOVATIONS
GB-1
Made in U.S.A.
Side 2
F8-OL-5795
Band 1: Incantation
(Luening & Ussachevsky)
Band 2: Invention
(Luening)
Band 3: Low Speed
(Luening)
33 1/3 LONGPLAY MICROGROOVE
UNAUTHORIZED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE, BROADCASTING OR COPYING OF THIS RECORD PROHIBITED
COPYRIGHT 1955, GENE BRUCK ENTERPRISES INC., N. Y. C., U. S. A.
[Enclosed Booklet: Note that on both front and back covers Ussachevsky's name is
misspelled "Ussachevksy"]
[Font Cover]
TAPE RECORDER MUSIC
composed and recorded by
Vladimir Ussachevksy [sic] and Otto Luening
INNOVATIONS GB 1 PHONOTAPES PHS 10020
Copyright 1955 by Gene Bruck Enterprises, Inc., N. Y. C., U.S.A.
[Page 1]
WHAT IS TAPE MUSIC?
I am often asked: What is tape music, and how is it made? Tape music is
music that is composed directly with sound instead of first being written on
paper and later made to sound. Just as the painter paints his picture directly
with colors, so the musician composes his music directly with tone. In
classical orchestral music many instruments play different groups of notes
which sound together. In tape music several or even many tapes are superimposed;
the tapes sound together the groups of tones that are recorded on them. So,
essentially, it is a new way of doing what has been done for centuries by old
methods.
-- LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI
[Page 2]
RADIO AND TELEVISION PERFORMANCES OF TAPE MUSIC
1952 WNYC. Tape music included in the broadcast of the Museum
October 28, 1952 November 9
WNYC. David Randolph's program November 23
NBC-TV. David Garroway's news program "Today".
Interview-demonstration. December 3
WGBH, Boston, Massachusetts. Leonard Burkat "Aspects of
Experimentalism" on "Music of Our Time" program. December
1953 WNYC. David Randolph's program. (Repeat broadcast of the
November 23 program, by popular request.) April 14
Radiodiffuaion Francaiae, Paris, France. Tape music
introduced to the Paris listeners by M. Bernard Blin. April
CBS. "Twentieth Century Concert Hall", Leopold Stokowski,
conductor. Premiere of "Incantation" written at the
request of Mr. Stokowski, and introduced by him. October 25
CBS-TV. Studio One. "Crime at Blossoms" with Patricia
Coiling. Background tape music. November 2
1954 WNYC. American Music Festival. American Composers Alliance
program. February 21
CBS Radio. Bill Leonard's program " This is New York".
Interview-Demonstration with Otto Luening. April 8
CONCERT PERFORMANCES OF TAPE MUSIC
1952 Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. American Composers
Alliance Concert, Leopold Stokowski, conductor. First
performance of first tape music compositions by Otto
Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky; introduced by Leopold
Stokowski. Broadcast Music, Inc., sponsor of the concert. October 28
Cooper Union, New York, N.Y. "Music in the Making" David
Broekman, conductor. December 7
1953 Arts Festival, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. April 22
Concert of the Premiere Decade Internationale de Musique
Arts Festival, Boston, Massachusetts. Public concert. July
Cooper Union, New York, N.Y. " Music in the Making",
David Broekman, conductor. October 18
1954 The Louisville Orchestra, Louisville, Kentucky, Robert
Whitney, conductor. World premiere of "Rhapsodic
Variations" by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky,
the first American composition for tape-recorder and
orchestra. March 20
[Page 3]
LECTURE DEMONSTRATIONS OF TAPE MUSIC
1952 First Demonstration of Experiments - expansion of piano
range and enrichment of tone color through medium of
tape-recorder. Concert of selected works by Vladimir
Ussachevsky, Composers Forum, McMillin Theatre,
Columbia University, New York, N.Y. May 9
Second Demonstration of Experiments. Bennington Composers'
Conference, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont.
(Beginning of collaboration between Otto Luening and
Vladimir Ussachevsky.) August
DEMONSTRATIONS INCLUDING EXPERIMENTS AND COMPOSITIONS
1953 Juilliard School of Music, New York, N.Y. (Luening and
Ussachevsky) February
Department of Music, Barnard College, New York, N.Y.
(Luening and Ussachevsky) March 16
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York (Luening) April
New York Academy of Science, New York, N.Y. Tape music
performed before society interested in musical therapy,
presented by Dr. Paul Oncley of Westminister Choir
School, Princeton, N.J. April 9
Department of Music, Duke University, Durham, N.C. Tape
music presented by Mr. Robert Ward of Juilliard School
of Music, New York, N.Y. May 5
New York City Department of Education Forum sponsored by
the New York Herald Tribune, New York, N.Y. (Luening) May 12
Premiere Decade Internationale de Musique Experimantale,
Paris, France. Tape music presented by Mr. Ussachevsky. June 12
Bennington Composers Conference, Bennington College,
Bennington, Vermont. (Ussachevsky) August
Edward MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire.
(Luening and Ussachevsky) September
Music Teachers' Association, Washington, D.C. (Luening) October 26
1954 Department of Music, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.
Tape music presented by Mr. Jacob Avshalomoff of
Columbia University. February 2
Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York.
(Ussachevsky) February 12
Reed College, Portland, Oregon. Tape music presented by
Mr. Jacob Avshalomoff of Columbia University to the
Reed College community. February 12
National Institute of Arts and Letters. Annual meeting.
(Luening) March 22
ARTICLES ON TAPE MUSIC BY THE COMPOSERS
Time, Encyclopedia Yearbook 1954.
Vladimir Ussachevsky. "Tape Recorder Becomes Accepted Creative Tool".
New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1953
"As Europe Takes to Tape". Bulletin, American
Composers Alliance, Vol. III, No. 3.
[Page 4]
SONIC CONTOURS
Sonic Contours exploits the resources of piano sounds by means of a tape recorder
and certain other electronic devices. The range of sounds used in the composition is
extended to include notes an octave above and two octaves below normal piano range.
Some of the low notes are heard only as overtones, the fundamentals being too low for
human perception. Original piano sounds are modified through controlled electronic
distortion. In the process of composition on the tape recorder, the components were
created first by combining various sound patterns and then superimposing them on each
other. The conception of how they were to be fused into the whole was always in mind
during each step. The final putting together of the composition required very precise
synchronization of individual patterns, and, as the parts were integrated, it was
possible to control once more the dynamic shadings. The entire composition falls roughly
into three connected sections. The only sounds other than those derived from the piano
are human voices used briefly before the final dance-like portion of the composition.
FANTASY IN SPACE
In Fantasy in Space the composer has created a "performance piece." The agility of the
flute is exploited. Although the acoustic resources of the magnetic tape recorder were
used, the composer's aim was to produce a piece which would communicate with an audience
conditioned to impressionistic virtuoso and tonal music.
[Page 5]
INCANTATION
Incantation uses sounds reminiscent of familiar bell sonorities, woodwind instruments
and the human voice. These are blended into a new timbre. It cannot be played by
conventional instruments.
INVENTION IN TWELVE NOTES
Invention is based on a twelve-tone row presented by the flute and then developed by
the conventional devices of canon, augmentation, diminution and retrograde into a
complex pattern made possible by the tape recorder.
LOW SPEED
In Low Speed the composer at times uses acoustic relationships and the tape recorder
to highlight certain overtones. This treatment brings out new characteristics from the
instrument played. As to the musical content of the piece, the attempt was to produce a
solemn, perhaps religious, feeling.
For use on wide-range phonographs, compensate for the RIAA curve.
[Page 6]
FIRST DEMONSTRATION OF TAPE EXPERIMENTS IN
EXTENSION OF PIANO RANGE ALTERATION OF TONE COLORS ON
MAY 9, 1952
COMPOSERS FORUM
-- A Report by
. HENRY COWELL
The Musical Quarterly
OCTOBER, 1952
VOL. XXXVIII, No. 4
People who work experimentally with new sounds seem to have trouble distinguishing
between the materials of musical composition and the compositions themselves. They are
apt to rush their new sounds prematurely into pieces that are hardly creative work in
the generally accepted sense, and that are easily identified as vehicles for the new
sounds rather than works in which these sounds form an integrated part. Men like Alois
experiments in the microtonal field, without making microtones an indispensable part of
their music. Proof of microtones' usefulness is still best supplied by certain Oriental
music.
It is therefore refreshing when a composer offers his experiments frankly by that name,
without confusion. Vladimir Ussachevsky did just this most disarmingly at a recent
Composers' Forum, presenting a series of electronic sounds that depend on tape recording
apparatus, with which he has recently been experimenting. These were not compositions,
and no attempt was made to call them so. But the sounds are certainly a possible resource
for composers. Ussachevsky describes his work as follows:
In magnetic tape we have, for the first time, I believe, the multiple means of
modifying musical sounds after they have been recorded, or while they are being recorded.
This is possible because of the flexibility with which tape can be cut up, spliced in any
order, reversed for playing backward, speeded up, or slowed down or erased at any point,
and so on.
Modification of sound during or after recording is now actively experimented with by
several groups of composers in collaboration with electronic engineers. In another related
but still distinct category may be placed the extensive experiments with entirely new types
of sound, purely electronic in origin, as well as the introduction of non-musical sounds
group in' France; John Cage's experiments as yet unheard here).
My own experiments up to this time have been restricted to the use of sounds well below
and well above the conventional piano range; to modification of the tone quality of the
sounds within conventional range; and to electronic repetition of any such sounds by means
of a specially designed gadget. The sounds produced by the latter create a peculiarly
dimensional impression, and permit many individual variations in dynamic level, in notes
sounding simultaneously. A conversation among several people, mixed with music, has also
been subjected to the gadget, with effects sometimes simply amusing, sometimes evoking a
more profound nostalgia or hypnotic feeling.
One might add that Ussachevsky's electronic repetitions are controlled, and vary from
three or four to an indefinite number in the space of a quarter note at about tempo allegro.
The repetitions overlap. One would not expect such a series of mechanical repetitions to
be related to human experience, yet to nearly everyone the effect seems to suggest some
half-forgotten, elusive experience. Several people have testified independently that the
sounds correspond to what is heard at one level of consciousness during the process of going
under an anesthetic; others recall having heard such automatic sounds in dreams.
Ussachevsky's process consisted, among other things, of recording tones above and below
the piano range (but within pipe-organ range), recorded with the piano, and then re-recorded
faster or slower. The percussive quality of the piano produced sharply defined, rapid
groups of tones quite unlike those of the organ in the same register. An A two octaves
below the lowest A on the piano was produced by playing a recording of the lowest A at
one-fourth the speed. The fundamental pitch was inaudible, but its powerful low overtones
produced an otherwise unheard-of timbre.
Ussachevsky is now in the process of incorporating some of these sounds into a
composition. The pitfalls are many: we wish him well!
HENRY COWELL
[Page 7]
FIRST PERFORMANCE OF FIRST TAPE COMPOSITIONS
AMERICAN COMPOSERS ALLIANCE
Two Concerts of Contemporary American Music
conducted by
LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI
in the auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art
Sunday, October 26th at 8:30 P.M.
and
October 28th at 8.30 P.M.
[Prese]nted under the auspices of Broadcast Music, Inc.
Second Concert
Tuesday evening, October 28th at 8:30 P.M.
Leopold Stokowskl, conductor
VLADIMIR USSACHEVSKY Sonic Contours
(first performance)
OTTO LUENING Low Speed
Invention
Fantasy in Space
(first performance)
For tape recorder
[Page 8]
DISCUSSIONS OF TAPE MUSIC
Counterpoint
By NAT HENTOFF
possibilities of the tape recorder.
The creative possibilities of the instrument, however, have--in the midst of this
outburst--been lost sight of. Recently, however, in Venice, New York, and Boston,
some of these potentialities have come. to startling life.
Meeting of Minds
The two men responsible are Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky. Luening, both
composer and flutist, had long been looking for someone to improvise with. Improvisers
being hard to come by in classical circles, it wasn't until he met Ussachevsky that he
discovered he could improvise with himself by use of a tape recorder.
The two men went further and began to compose works especially designed to be played
on tape. As Jay Harrison described the process in the New York Herald Tribune, "The
methods involved in this practice demanded that at different moments the performer
(recording into a microphone) speed up the tape, slow it down, play it backwards, run it
from beginning to end, recording new music on top of old."
After several close hearings of their works thus far, I'm inclined to agree with Howard
Taubman of the New York Times that the tapesichordists are still in a very experimental
stage and only at odd moments does anything thoroughly meaningful take place. Luening's
Fantasy in Space, for example, is most successful because of its firm structure involving a
basic melodic line to which Luening taped other lines and accompanying harmonic figures in
a pungently cohesive fusing.
But the important aspect of their beginnings has been summarized aptly by Leopold
Stokowski: "For centuries, composers have been obliged to write down their ideas for music
on paper, and it has always required living performers to bring these ideas to life. The
day may come when composers can work very much like painters, directly in the materials of
sound, with the assistance of devices like the tape recorder."
Can Apply to Jazz
It is here that the tapesichordist technique applies so clearly to jazz. Accustomed to
a degree of simultaneous composing and performing, the jazzman should find the experience
of working directly in the materials of sound somewhat easier than the classical musician.
Let's forget for the time the post-graduate methods of Luening and Ussachevsky--speeding
up and slowing down the tape, playing it backwards, etc. On the basic level of adding
layers of sound and then sculpting a coherent sonic whole by adroit splicing, think of the
possibilities in non-commercial jazz.
DOWN BEAT
Chicago, July 29, 1q53
Time magazine, with its usual gift for crisp over-generalization, began its story on
the tapesichordists by proclaiming, "Every age has had its characteristic instruments: in
the 17th century it was the voice; in the 18th the clavier and pipe organ; in the 19th the
piano and the symphony orchestra. The 20th century instrument is the record machine--a
phonograph or tape recorder."
In the body of the story Luening and Ussachevsky straightened out this journalese by
underlining the obvious--"the tapesichord will never displace the orchestra. After all,
Beethoven's Ninth is still Beethoven's Ninth, but it will give composers a brand new range
of effects."
New Dimensions
And in jazz, the tapesichord will not replace the unpredictable on-the-stand
incandescence of successful improvisation, but on records and as a theory workshop, it
can give the art of improvisation several new dimensions.
[Page 9]
VOGUE
JULY, 1953
TAPESICHORD:
BY PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS
While all this was going on in Paris, the movement began on this side of the Atlantic
as if by simultaneous combustion, and in two different places. Uptown at Columbia
University, two seemingly sedate professors in the Music Department, Otto Luening and
Vladimir Ussachevsky, began making musical experiments on magnetic tape, employing
frequency oscillators and amplification devices, while downtown, in his lair on the
Bowery, John Cage, fresh from his contact with Boulez in Paris, was clipping and splicing
his own electronic fantasies in his own manner.
Some differences of credo at once began to emerge. Ussachevsky and Luening, both tonal
composers, took as their sound material--or starting point--actual musical sounds. In
Luening's case, this was the flute, played by himself. Ussachevsky played the piano,
laughed, sang, clapped his hands, and banged things, and recorded the result. Then came
the fun. By electronic metamorphosis, these sounds were distorted in a way that rendered
them unrecognizable as their original material.
One note on the flute can, by repeating and amplifying processes, be made to spiral out
and out in continuous, pulsating circles of sound, like the ripples on still water at the
dropping of a pebble.
A single bass chord on the piano, or even a cough can be developed to resemble in its
effect a clap of thunder and its reverberation into stellar distances. A work entitled
"Sonic Contours," by Vladimir Ussachevsky, and three pieces. "Low Speed." "Invention." and
"Fantasy in Space." by Otto Luening, which used sounds of this nature, were introduced by
Leopold Stokowski in a concert of contemporary music at the Museum of Modern Art on October
28th of last year. The same works, together with pieces by some of the French group, were
presented downtown at Cooper Union before the most proletarian of musical audiences, and
were received with considerable ribaldry, but considerable interest too.
[Back Cover]
[Photograph of Ussachevsky and Luening with tape and flute]
|
|