Chapter 04, Electronic Music Composition by Process

Episode 142

Chapter 04, Electronic Music Composition by Process. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music 

Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes.

This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text.

The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings.

 

Playlist

 

Time	Track Time*	Start
Introduction –Thom Holmes	01:31	00:00
Yves Klein, “Monotone-Silence Symphony” (1947). I could not find any recorded versions of this piece, so I produced this realization of my own to capture the feel and nature of this process work. Klein conceived this as performance art in which an orchestra would only play a single note, continuously, for 20 minutes followed by another 20 minutes of silence. I’ve examined the score and can see that Klein also intended that the same note could be played in different octaves. The playing would have been staged so that one group of musicians could overlap another, both for reasons of fatigue but also to allow smooth transitions for the wind instruments because players would need to take a breath. My version includes electronic instruments for multiple parts, each part playing the same note, often in different octaves. The introduction of instrumental groups was planned in stages, each overlapping the previous grouping, gradually shortening in duration as the piece goes on.	40:03	01:34
Steve Reich, “It’s Gonna Rain” (1965). Process piece using tape loops and phasing.	08:03	41:38
La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, “31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM” (1969). Early work employing electronic drones. Eponymous untitled album popularly known as "The Black Record" or "The Black Album" Mine is an original copy. The cover is black gloss print on matt black and very hard to read. Numbered edition limited to 2800 copies of which numbers 1-98 are dated and signed by the artists. This work “was recorded at the date and time indicated in the title, at Galerie Heiner Friedrich, München. The work “31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM” is a section of the longer work: Map Of 49's Dream The Two Systems Of Eleven Sets Of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery. Play this side at 33 1/3 rpm only.” Early work employing electronic drones. By the mid-sixties, Young and his partner Marian Zazeela were creating music for electronic drones as an extension of their group, The Theatre of Eternal Music. Using a Heathkit sine wave oscillator and later Moog modules as sources, they created drone pieces that employed “extended duration time signatures” and “long sustained tones, intervals, triads and chords to create the musical texture.” A reissue has now occurred on the label Super Viaduct.	22:49	49:24
Terry Riley, “A Rainbow in Curved Air” (1969). Minimalist process work for electronic organ.	18:46	01:12:08
Steve Reich, “Four Organs” (1970). Process piece for four electronic organs.	24:11	01:31:04
Brian Eno, “Discreet Music” (1975). Process piece for synthesizers.	31:35	01:55:12
David Behrman, “Figure in a Clearing” (1977). Process piece using the KIM- 1 microcomputer	19:13	02:25:30
Laurie Spiegel, “A Harmonic Algorithm” (1980). Self-generating program running on an Apple II computer.	03:08	02:44:48
Alvin Lucier, “Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums” (1990). Process piece for amplified piano and snare drum.	09:20	02:47:48
Marina Rosenfeld, “Two (Joy of Fear)” (2005). Process piece for a timed improvisational live performance.	10:22	02:56:50

 

Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes.

My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022.

See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation.

For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.