High-Tech Touches a Nod to the Future
By Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press
Jun. 18–Electronic music has come a long way since the prehistoric 1960s and ’70s, when composers struggled with mainframe computers as big as the Renaissance Center to manipulate a limited number of bleeps, blips and blats. Folks didn’t call it squeak-fart music for nothing.
More freedom and flexibility came with the revolutions of digital sampling, personal computers and sophisticated software in the ’80s and ’90s. The latest generation of electronic and computer-assisted composition was on display at Monday’s 8 Days in June concert-demonstration titled “The Technological Mind.”
It was an interesting evening, though anyone concerned about soulless machines replacing man had little to worry about. Technology is still merely a tool, and the expressive victories or banalities of the music heard Monday was the product of human ingenuity or failing.
Composer Tod Machover, a music technology pioneer and professor of music and media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and festival host Tom Allen conceived the program. Machover was on hand to introduce his works, and his mad scientist hair and gregarious personality were entertainments by themselves. Machover’s “Flora,” a music video, paired electronic manipulations of the human voice (soprano Karol Bennett) with biomorphic digital imagery by Yoichiro Kawaguchi. The vocal and synthesized filigree offered attractive and ethereal mysteries, though the closing rock beat flirted uncomfortably with new-age cheese.
Several short pieces were composed with Hyperscore, software developed by Machover that lets users create melodies and morph them into a composition even if they can’t read standard music notation. The excellent FLUX Quartet from New York was on hand to play transcriptions for a conventional string quartet. A pleasing ditty by a 9-year-old Irish student suggested the program’s ability to inspire musical creativity in children.
Most ambitious was Machover’s “Jeux Deux,” a piano concerto played by Michael Chertock on a Disklavier, a digital grand piano that played its own accompaniment thanks to special software allowed real-time interaction. Chertock also played on a tiny keyboard that triggered “improvised” reactions from the piano. The opening barrage had a wonderful and wacky density — the kinship with the “Player Piano Study” by the 20th-Century American maverick Conlon Nancarrow heard previously on the Disklavier was striking. Synthesized electronics and a big tune emerged later, tailored perhaps for ears bewildered by the craggy start of the piece.
Composer, author and electronic music expert David Cope also gave a demonstration of a computer program he invented that analyzes a composer’s music and imitates it. Chertock played a Bach “Prelude and Fugue” and faux Bach without saying which was which. The computer fooled many, but it was obvious to me (and many others) that the authentic Bach was touched by human expression (not to say genius) and the computer’s results, while impressive, were too regular and lacked an inner life.
The really interesting thing about Cope’s computer is that contemporary composers can create databases of their own music and then use the computer to generate new raw material in their own style. Cope writes all of his music this way, and the evening’s biggest omission was that we didn’t get to hear an example.
Contact MARK STRYKER at msstryker@freepress.com.
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