I said a couple of days ago I'd finished the score of this piano/cello/electronics piece I've been working on, but I omitted to mention that the electronic component remains to be done. It doesn't really
need to be finished until the day rehearsals start seven weeks from now, given that it consists of a sequence of fifteen "movements" which alternate and overlap with the fifteen instrumental "movements", and as long as the person behind the mixer (ie. me) starts and stops them at the right time there isn't anything for the players to worry about, but I made a start on these materials yesterday because I had been getting worried about how I was going to do it.
This brought up an issue about composition which I think is often misunderstood, even among composers, though it's probably more a semantic issue than anything else. Some composers say they write "what they hear". Does this idea bear close scrutiny? I would prefer to put it in terms of writing what one has
never heard but
wants to hear. (I think Stravinsky may have expressed himself to that effect at some point, maybe someone knows chapter and verse on this.)
Anyway, in this case I had a clear idea of "
how the music should sound", almost like a visual image of the sounds, but had very little idea either of "what exactly it should sound like" or how to get to that point. The problem with electronic music is that it's so much more literal than notation - it isn't subject to interpretation, can't rely on life being breathed into it by the humanity of the performers, can't be refined through rehearsal ("make that slightly quieter/faster/more extreme" etc.) it's just
there, and composing it relies on the acuity of the "outer ear" as much as if not more than on that of the "inner" one. What I do at moments like that is to start with
something and see where it leads, either to what I originally had in mind or (preferably) to something more interesting. By 2am or so I had stumbled on it, without really realising I had until this morning (sitting up into the night with headphones on isn't necessarily helpful to the critical faculties but sometimes it's best to suspend those so as to keep an open mind for the directions one's searches might take), after which a couple of small adjustments resulted in one of the electronic "movements" now being ready. Which of course has implications for all the others, now that the "tone of voice" has been established.
Interested parties might like to know that the principal program used for generating this particular material was
Cecilia, which is available as a free download for all platforms, and which I'd had a cursory look at (an earlier version of) ages ago, but was reminded of recently by its having been mentioned in passing in an article by Robert Worby - thanks Robert if you're reading this.
25 years ago it would have taken days of processing time and the kind of hardware only available in well-funded educational, broadcasting or research institutions to do what I managed to do yesterday evening at home with a laptop, sound interface, external HD and largely free software (plus Pro Tools for editing and Ableton Live as an Audio Units host application). Compare this with the increasing dearth of opportunities for composers to write orchestral music these days.
