Music Matters

By JyKang in Electro-Acoustic 0 Comment






BBC – Radio 3 – Music Matters<br /> – 2 June 2007<br />



bbc.co.uk

2 June 2007

Saturday 2 June 2007 12:15-13:00 (Radio 3)

Tom Service travels to Paris to visit the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique, or IRCAM. Founded in 1977 by Pierre Boulez at the behest of President Georges Pompidou, IRCAM is a research centre for new music and associated technologies.

Thirty years on, Tom finds out what goes on at the IRCAM today and asks how relevant it is as an institution in the context of 21st century art music, and French culture generally. With contributions from Pierre Boulez, Georgina Born, Roger Nichols and Jonathan Harvey.

Duration:

45 minutes

In this programme

IRCAM - Special Edition
Ircam, courtesy of Olivier Panier des TouchesThe Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique has been a key institution on the new music scene for thirty years. It began as the utopian dream of Pierre Boulez in the early 1970s and became a reality with the support of president Georges Pompidou. Boulez's vision was to combine the skills of avant-garde composers with the best of music technology and the most advanced computer systems of the day - to create the music of the future.

Pierre Boulez
Tom went to Paris to take a tour of the IRCAM building, next door to the Centre Pompidou. Apart from the Renzo Piano-designed tower, there is little to suggest the existence of IRCAM from the outside. Most of the institution is underground - a warren of offices, studios and the unique performing and recording spaces essential to the collaborative work of composers and technicians there. Tom's guide was Andrew Gerzso, Boulez's key technical advisor, who explains the remarkable acoustic-changing possibilities of the Projection Space and the bizarre egg-box like Anechoic Chamber.

Anechoic Chamber, courtesy of Olivier Panier des TouchesTom talks with the current Director of IRCAM, Frank Madlener, and to Pierre Boulez himself about his ongoing work at IRCAM, despite having given up the Directorship in 1992.

Though a utopian vision, IRCAM has still had problems in the course of its three decades. In the early 80s, Boulez sacked the directors he had appointed only a few years before, including composers like Luciano Berio and Vinko Globokar, and there was further upheaval throughout the 1980s, along with much criticism of the slow rate of production for compositions created. There were successes though: IRCAM had a huge influence on composers like Magnus Lindberg, George Benjamin, Kaija Saariaho, Tristan Murail and Gerard Grisey, for example.

4X Machine, courtesy of Olivier Panier des TouchesTo discuss the impact of IRCAM and its place today, Tom is joined by the cultural anthropologist Georgina Born, the French music specialist Roger Nichols and the composer Jonathan Harvey, who is currently working on a piece at IRCAM for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
It's a journey into the heart of what was once a musical promised land of pure experimentation. But has IRCAM produced the musical results, the great pieces that stand the test of time, to justify its unique institutional standing? And what does the future hold for the IRCAM sound?

IRCAM's Agora Festival takes place June 6th - 24th and includes the French premiere of Jonathan Harvey's opera Wagner Dream.
Jonathan Harvey's work can also be heard on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now on July 7th: Featured pieces: Body Mandala; Tranquil Abiding; Timepieces for two conductors with Kaffe Matthews, Ilan Volkov and Stefan Solyom.



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The Barrons: Forgotten Pioneers of Electronic Music

By JyKang in Electro-Acoustic 0 Comment

by Susan Stone
Bebe and Louis Barron, pictured in their studio in 1956.         Courtesy Bebe Barron

Morning Edition, February 7, 2005 · The 1956 sci-fi thriller Forbidden Planet was the first major motion picture to feature an all-electronic film score — a soundtrack that predated synthesizers and samplers. It was like nothing the audience had seen — or heard. The composers were two little-known and little-appreciated pioneers in the field of electronic music, Louis and Bebe Barron.

Married in 1947, the Barrons received a tape recorder as a wedding gift. They used it to record friends and parties, and later opened one of the first private sound studios in America. The 1948 book Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, by MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, inspired Louis Barron to build electronic circuits, which he manipulated to generate sounds. Bebe’s job was to sort through hours and hours of tape. Together they manipulated the sounds to create an otherworldly auditory experience.

The Barrons’ music caught the ear of the avant-garde scene: In the early 1950s, they worked on a year-long project with composer John Cage. They also scored several short experimental films.

But avant-garde didn’t pay, and the Barrons decided to cash in by turning to Hollywood. Their score for Forbidden Planet drew critical praise, but a dispute with the American Federation of Musicians prevented them from receiving proper credit for the soundtrack. Their names were also left off the film’s Oscar nomination.

Union rules continued to be an obstacle, and technology eventually passed the Barrons by. Though they never scored another film, Louis and Bebe Barron, who divorced in 1970, continued to collaborate until his death in 1989.

Bebe Barron didn’t compose for a decade, but in 1999 she was invited to create a new work at the University of California-Santa Barbara, using the latest in sound-generating technology. The work, completed in 2000, is called Mixed Emotions.