Memory’s Tales, the works
by Jon Appleton |imed_9635-0002|
Looking back over the thirty years of electroacoustic music represented by
the music on this recording, it can be difficult to untangle the web of
personal, cultural and technological influences which shaped these pieces.
Unlike my instrumental music from the same years, in which one can observe a
certain stylistic consistency, my work in electroacoustic music consisted of
three, distinct approaches.
Two of these approaches appeared early in my music; the abstract
manipulation of timbre (Georganna’s
Fancy, 1966 and Spuyten Duyvil, 1967)
and the use of ‘found musics’ and recognizable objets
sonores (Chef d’œuvre,
1967 and Homage To Orpheus,
1969).
The third approach, not represented on this recording, are the ten years I
spent composing electroacoustic music for the Synclavier, a live performance
instrument I helped develop. These pieces combined the stylistics elements of
my instrumental and electroacoustic music.
I began composing electroacoustic music because it was the only aspect of
‘new music’ in the 1960s that I found compelling. The serial
music I was urged to compose while in graduate school, and that we were told
would be the ‘music of the future,’ seemed emotionally vapid to
me. In the final years of the 20th century, young composers look with
nostalgia to the 1960s and the liberation artists were supposed to have felt.
We did feel that there were no ‘rules’ and, as I told Nat Hentoff, in 1968:
“a revolution has not occurred in the arts so much as it has in our own
attitudes. In this period of change we should feel elation at the approach of
a new order of civilization.” Thirty years later I am embarrassed by my
naïveté but at the same time recognize the excitement which propelled my work
in electroacoustic music. Here was a truly new kind of music. Here was a new
way to awaken the emotions and consciousness of listeners. Here was a way I
could express myself without the burden of past traditions.
Perhaps the greatest frustration I experienced as a composer of
electroacoustic music was the constant need to develop a new technique for
the various equipment used to produce the music. I still use my piano
technique, but have long ago abandoned my ability to splice tape, control
tape loops, patch an analog synthesizer, use various computer-music
languages… Now I struggle with software like MAX and hardware like
ProTools III knowing that in another decade the tools will have changed
again. There are some composers who relish the challenge of new technology
and the artistic opportunities it provides. For some, new technology has
provided the sole motivation for being a composer. For me, studio technique
was a necessary evil which could have the advantage of forcing me to limit my
materials and to be less facile when composing.
I can still remember the excitement I felt beginning each new piece when I
first began composing electroacoustic music. I had no idea what I was doing,
where I was going or what would be the result of my hours in the studio.
Nevertheless, a recognizable style did emerge and today, when I start a new
piece, is a fear that I can do nothing truly new. Of course there is the
satisfaction the skills honed over the years will enable me to produce a
composition worth hearing, I do wish that I could recapture that youthful
quality of seeing the world in a new way. I am sure all experienced artists
feel the same way.
The music should stand for itself and thus my comments about the
individual works on this recording will be brief, ancillary and dedicated to
providing information that might be of interest to other practitioners and
critics of electroacoustic music. The listeners can take care of themselves
and stop reading here.
Having spent the year 1965-66 at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Center (New York City) — where we believed that our artistic work was
the center of the universe — I was forced to reconsider my work as a
composer when I moved to rural Vermont in 1967. Suddenly I was confronted by
the fact few of the people in my village knew what a composer did and none
knew about electroacoustic music. That same year, stranded by weather at the
Newark airport, I took the opportunity to ask my fellow passengers
“what do you think about the new electronic music?” Later I
assembled the choicest answers, placed them on a bed of sequenced, electronic
sound produced by a Moog synthesizer, and called the piece Newark Airport
Rock. Nearly thirty years later, Esmé Thompson
suggested that I do a companion piece to show how things had changed. Between
planes in San Francisco, I asked passengers the same question. Again I
assembled the most interesting answers, composed a MIDI based
accompaniment using E-MU and Roland synthesizers and Vision sequencing
software, and named the piece San Francisco
Airport Rock.
As mentioned above, the pieces Spuyten Duyvil,
Georganna’s
Fancy, and Homage To Orpheus
were all assembled in what was then called a ‘tape studio.’ These
studios, such as the one constructed at Dartmouth College in 1967, with the
assistance of James Seawright,
were modeled after the first studios for electroacoustic music in France.
Several tape recorders and sound modifying equipment were connected to a
central mixer. When I listen to these pieces I can remember how they were
made and why they sounded the way they did, but I can no longer recapture the
musical vision I had at the time. They almost sound like music composed by
someone else. Perhaps this is because many years have passed since I have
heard them.
The opposite is true of Chef d’œuvre.
It so happens that composers are often saddled by others with a
‘signature’ work. It is my Boléro. It is the work of
mine that has been most frequently played and recorded. Using the sounds of a
singing commercial for Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee pizzas by the Andrews Sisters,
there is a frenetic pace and sense of humor which can be heard in subsequent
works. The tape studio techniques used to produce this piece are the same
used in Times Square
Times Ten, a longer work in the same genre. Here we have a programmatic,
musico-archeological cross section of Manhattan. In 1969 I wrote that this
piece “moves from the street to lower and lower levels below 42nd
Street and Broadway. Sonic objects from the past lurk in the subway tunnels
and at times try to assert themselves again. In the end they are buried and
can only emerge from the tunnels as ghosts which ride the trains.” In
1986 I returned to this style of composition in works such as Homenaje a
Milanés (1987), Dima Dobralsa
Domoy (1994) and ’U
ha’amata ’atou ’i te himene (1996).
My relationship with Russia (and the Soviet Union) has been long and
complex. My father was born in Kishinev (Moldova) and my step father in Ufa
(Russia). My parents dedicated a large part of their lives to Communism. I
was raised listening to Russian folk and symphonic music and to believe that
the future could be found in the Soviet Union. Imbued with an interest in
politics, many of my pieces would have both artistic and political purposes
such as Apolliana (1970),
Dr Quisling in
Stockholm (1971), ’Otahiti (1973),
Homenaje a
Milanés (1987) and Ce que
signifie la déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen de 1789
pour les hommes et les citoyens des îles Marquises (1989). An epiphany
occurred in 1969 when I was forced to think about the role I might have had
as a composer of electroacoustic music had I lived in the Soviet Union. The
defection to the West by writer Anatoly Kuznetsov
affected me deeply. For the first time I came to understand the effect of
political oppression on artists. The composition CCCP (In
Memoriam: Anatoly Kuznetsov) was a direct result. It combines the voices
of Tolstoy, Stalin, Kuznetsov, Radio Moscow
and Russian folk music to create what I have referred to elsewhere as
‘musical storytelling.’ Some twenty years later I became a close
friend of the late Dmitri Pokrovsky,
an extraordinary singer and choral director who had grown up in Moscow at the
same time I grew up in Hollywood, California. Through him I learned much
about politics, music and the Russian side of my own musical personality. To
celebrate that friendship I composed Dima Dobralsa
Domoy which tells, through music, the search for one’s Russian
home. The title means “Dmitri finally returns home after a long
journey.”
In the process of developing the Synclavier, I used several digital
systems to compose pieces. Some of these pieces are Stereopticon (1972),
Zoetrope (1974), Georganna’s
Farewell (1975), The Sydsing
Camklang (1976), Mussems Sång (1976),
In Deserto (1977),
Syntrophia (1977), and
Oskuldens Dröm
(1985). Perhaps the strongest of these is In Medias Res
(known in Brazil as “Sudden Death”). It is abstract music and the
title only refers to the fact that the piece ends with startling abruptness.
Sequences of digitally generated sound were combined using multitrack, analog
tape recorders. At the end of the work there is the briefest reference to
Irish folk music inspired by some of the drones used in the work.
For many years I have wanted to acknowledge those musical colleagues whose
musics has helped shape my own. The list — see below — includes
family, friends, and some musicians I have never met.
Thanks to Kathryn
Alexander, Sydney Alonso,
Ted Apel, Jason Appleton,
Michael Appleton,
Moses Asch, François Bayle,
Gerry Beauregard,
Eve Beglarian,
Jamshed Bharucha,
Juan Blanco, Lars-Gunnar
Bodin, Georges Boeuf,
Josefina Bosch,
Leo Brouwer, William Brunson,
Michael Casey,
Don Cherry, Gabriel Chodos,
John Chowning,
Tim Claman, Bill Cole, Charles Dodge,
Martin Dupras,
Beatriz Ferreyra,
Collette Gaudin,
Emmanuel Ghent,
Jacob Gimpel,
Herbert
Gladstone, Ray Guillette,
Fred Haas, Chris Halaby,
Vaughn Halyard,
Charles Hamm,
Sten Hanson, Vladimir
Horowitz, Keith Jarrett,
Cameron Jones,
David Evan Jones,
Alain Joutard,
Sofele Kakala,
Homer Keller,
Thomas Kessler,
Sergei Kossenko,
Léo Küpper, Lauren Levey,
Ted Levin, Ingram Marshall,
Max Mathews, Martin McKinney,
John Mellquist,
Leonard B Meyer,
Pablo Milanes,
Nana Mouskouri,
Gordon Mumma,
Brad Naples, Melinda
O’Neal, Gaby Pahinui,
Ronald Perera,
Ileana Perez,
Oscar Peterson,
Sally Pinkas,
Russell Pinkston,
Dmitri Pokrovsky,
Larry Polansky,
Regina Porto,
Sergei Prokofiev,
John Puterbaugh,
Andrew Rangell,
Maurice Ravel,
Sergei
Rachmaninoff, Michel Redolfi,
Steve Reich, Jean-Claude
Risset, Frederic Rzewski,
Theodore
Saidenberg, Pete Seeger, Conrado Silva,
André Smirnov,
Igor Stravinsky,
Kirsten
Stromberg, Yoriko Takahashi,
Richard Taruskin,
Ivan Tcherepnin,
Carmen Tellez,
Joel Thome, Molly Thompson,
George Todd, Robert Trotter,
Julia &
Galina Turkina, Dmitri Uchov,
Kojiro Umezaki,
Vladimir
Ussachevsky, Alexander Walden,
Mark Weltner,
Christian Wolff,
Scott Wyatt, Shin Yasuda.
Jon Appleton, White
River Junction (VT, USA) [viii-96]
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