Mayuzumi's Electronic Studies

This essay analyzes Stockhausen Studie II: Elektronische Musik (1954), focusing on his study of additive synthesis in electronic music. While the first study, Studie I: Elektronische Musik (1953), employs pure sine waves utilizing overtones, the second study, Studie II: Elektronische Musik (1954), abandons the harmonic series altogether. Studie II utilizes a serial algorithm to generate its collection of frequencies, which Stockhausen serialistically synthesizes together. Only the second study’s score was published, hence, this analysis will focus on Studie II—written in a spectral graphic score that serialistically controls each sine wave’s organization. Furthermore, this analysis traces Stockhausen’s use of multiple-serialism within Studie II. It will therefore explore the following serial methods, and attempt to trace what Stockhausen employs and understand how he utilizes them. Such serial methods include elements that serialistically control each sine wave’s (1) generation, (2) selection, (3) additive synthesis, and the score’s overall (4) structure—both at the macro- and micro-level. This essay will also include a spectrograph- and a structural analysis. Subsequently, this essay poses some practical questions. How does this kind of electronic spectral serialism support Stockhausen’s premise of treating sine waves as “pure” sound elements, uninhibited by human intervention and imperfection? Are these “pure” sine waves completely controllable—to the extent that the score’s realization precisely produces the exact sound that the score prescribes? And if so, can this spectral graphic score be objectively realized electronically, without the subjectivity and influence of human emotion and interpretation?

Abstract:

Proceedings of the 1st International Roberto Gerhard Conference, 2010

Roberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic music. His experimentation in this medium was thanks to his friends Joaquim Homs and Ricard Gomis and to the technical support of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. He made substantial developments in his electronic music in the final stages of his life, producing a significant number of pieces in only ten years. He composed electronic music for several media, such as theatre, television and film, and sometimes he used the same music for different works. For instance DNA in Reflection, a piece originally for film appeared also as part of a collection of concert pieces on tape, it was then split into segments for an American record label and finally it was used in some episodes of the BBC series, Doctor Who. Thanks to the fragments of tape that still exist we can perceive the preparation of the electronic works and it is possible to understand the value of theses pieces and study the techniques used to create them. Interestingly Gerhard's acoustic and electronic music developed in a very similar way during the last ten years of his life. Analysing his last orchestral piece, the Symphony no. 4, and comparing it to his electronic music, we can find a number of similarities in structure, texture and rhythm.

Roberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic music in England creating over twenty substantial concert, theatre and radio works from as early as 1954. However, for various political, cultural and personal reasons Gerhard's electronic music has not been published or widely disseminated. Gerhard's electronic music is one of the richest repositories for understanding the development of the composer's late compositional technique as well as the early development of electronic music in the UK. As a result of an AHRC study of the tapes held in the Gerhard Archive at the Cambridge University Library it is possible to understand the composer's technique and thoughts on electronic music and how they evolved as his work with magnetic tape became more and more refined.

2001

Reviewed by Douglas Geers To the uninitiated, the field of computer music may seem a bit overwhelming, in that it combines new technologies with music composition and performance practices that often seem quite distant from the Western classical tradition.} In fact, the constantly evolving technology makes it difficult even for specialists in the field: imagine being a violin instructor in a situation in which every few months several new violins with different shapes, which require new playing techniques, come to the market, purporting to be vast improvements over previous designs (and which often are)! This analogy might make some musicians want to give up on computer music, but the fact is that our entire society is undergoing a technological revolution, and it only makes sense for musicians to utilize these innovations too. Just as Wagner employed the improved brass instruments of his day, a wide array of possibilities are newly available to today's composers, theorists, and musicologists-because of computers. For those who are intrigued but unsure where or how to get started, two recently published texts combine to serve as a thorough introduction to both the history and techniques of computer music. The Computer Music Tutorial Edited by Curtis Roads, this is a massive and exhaustive introduction to nearly every aspect of current computer music composition and research. Moreover, despite its encyclopedic breadth, the soft-cover edition of the book is listed for $50.00-cheap, by textbook standards. Very soon after its publication, The Computer Music Tutorial has already achieved "classic" status in computer music circles. The greatest value of this book lies in its wide array of topics and in their thorough presentation. Every major subject in the field of computer music is addressed, and many of them are dealt with in sets of multiple

Organised Sound, 2003

As the techniques used in creating audio art and electronic music become more diversified and increasingly use some sort of computer-oriented notation, the question of analysis of this wide repertoire is revisited. While there are still many obstacles in its study, this topic attracts more attention today than in the recent past. In this article, I emphasise the need to consider that, when analysing audio art and electronic music, technology, technique and musical style are to be taken in account. To this end, I introduce concepts put forth by the Russian Constructivists as a basis for reflection.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1988

The introduction of computers into the process of musical composition markedly disturbs the relationships which normally obtain between composer, work. performances, and sound complexes. This shift gives rise to a number of philosophical problems with far-reaching consequences, which this papt!r discusses. The conclusion is that the use of computers m composition exposes a crisis facing the notion of a work of music, whose outcome cannot yet be foreseen. In its subject matter, the paper takes up issues raised by Roman lngarden 's phenomenological ontology of art works. The use of example and counterexample to probe the boundaries of the notion of a work of music on the other hand owes more to Husserl's method of eidetic variation.

Roberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic music in England creating over twenty substantial concert, theatre and radio works from as early as 1954. However, for various political, cultural and personal reasons Gerhard's electronic music has not been published or widely disseminated. Gerhard's electronic music is one of the richest repositories for understanding the development of the composer's late compositional technique as well as the early development of electronic music in the UK. As a result of an AHRC study of the tapes held in the Gerhard Archive at the Cambridge University Library it is possible to understand the composer's technique and thoughts on electronic music and how they evolved as his work with magnetic tape became more and more refined.