MUSC 112-001: Creativity and Electronic/Acoustic Music
Salisbury University: SPRING 2010 | T & Th 2:00pm – 3:15pm
Dr. Robert A. Baker
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TRACKS for LISTENING TEST #2
in class of Tuesday 27 April 2010.
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For your second listening test, familiarise yourself with the following SEVEN sound files and be prepared
to name the composer, title, and year (within 3 years + or -) for each. Excerpts of thirty to forty seconds
each may be taken from the beginning, middle, or end of any track.Click on the titles below to listen.
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1.
year: 1948
composer: Pierre Schaeffer
title: Etude aux chemins de fer (or Train Station Study) (excerpt)
This piece is one of the earliest examples using magnetic tape technology to create a sonic work of art. Using sounds recorded at a train station, Schaeffer presents some sounds in their recognizable states, and others slightly or significantly manipulated to create sounds never before heard. This compositional approach is referred to as musique concrète.
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2.
year: 1953
composer: Karlheinz Stockhausen
title: Electronic Study #1 (excerpt)
This is one of the earliest examples of composition with magnetic tape. In this case Stockhausen recorded sine waves (sound with a single frequency or pitch, similar to a whistling sound) with individual tape recorders, and applied a multi-step process to create his work. The combination of re-recording sounds onto an additional tape recorder, splicing (literally cutting the tape with a razor blade), re-connecting the tape in different orderings, and using an echo chamber to create reverberation, enabled the composer to transform the basic sine waves into a highly dynamic and extremely new sonic composition.
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3.
year: 1958
composer: Iannis Xenakis
title: Concret Ph (complete)
Xenakis recorded the sound of burning charcoal and manipulated the source recording with tape recorders to produce this work. Notice the extreme consistency in sound, with a gradual and subtle increase in complexity about half way through as Xenakis begins to introduce more layers of his source recording with greater alteration.
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4.
year: 1969
composer: Jean-Claude Risset
title: Mutations (excerpt)
Consider the title of this work and how it relates to the fluctuations in sound. Think about how the different patterns might be related, and try to imagine the composer manipulating a consistent source to provide different versions in speed, pitch, and timbre.
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5.
year: 1985
composer: Kaija Saariaho
title: Jardin Secret I (excerpt)
The use of digital sounds and computer manipulation in the 1980s enabled Saariaho to produce greater and more complex sonic variation compared to the earlier analog works of previous decades. At approximately 1:00 in this excerpt, listen to how the pitch remains generally fixed but transforms in timbre over about a thirty second period of time; this is a far more advanced and subtle technique, which further distinguishes her piece from earlier electronic music.
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6.
year: 1987
composer: Iannis Xenakis
title: Taurhiphanie (excerpt)
Notice the panning, the pitches that glissando up/down, and the more sophisticated dynamic fluctuations.
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7.
year: 2002
composer: Jerry Tabor
title: lemon; birch (excerpt)
This piece was composed by SU music professor Dr. Jerry Tabor using a modernized version of Xenakis' computer composing program. Four visual images were drawn on a computer screen with a mouse, each of which provided data that were applied to sonic parameters, and each were altered and manipulated to produce a kind of unified variety of sound throughout the piece.
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