Various - Electronic Music Winners (1976)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8GCQ4EXH

http://www.discogs.com/release/121406

Liner notes from the front cover:

  In the autumn of 1974, the League of Composers-International Society for Contemporary Music, U.S. Section, organized an International Electronic Music Competition, the first undertaken by the organization. Tapes of electronic music compositions were solicited from composers and electronic music studios all over the world. A distinguished panel agreed to select the winners.

  The judges were: Bulent Arel, composer and Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. 
  Mario Davidovsky, Pulitzer prize-winning composer, Co-Director of the Electronic Music Center of Columbia and Princeton Universities, and Professor of Music at City College of New York.
  Jean eichelberger Ivey, composer and teacher of composition and electronic music at Peabody Conservatory of Music.
  J.K. Randall, composer and Professor of Music at Princeton University.


  129 tapes representing composers from 15 countries were entered in the competition. Each judge listened to each tape individually, and then the judges met as a group to make their final selections. During the entire judging process, the tapes were placed in unlabeled boxes and identified only by numbers.

  The winning compositions are presented in this album. It should be noted that no distinctions were made between the winning compositions, and that the order of works presented on the recording does not signify a ranking. Program notes and biographical material have been provided by the composers.

  As President of the League-ISCM and coordinator of the International Electronic Music Competition, I feel that these works, besides being excellent pieces of music, represent a wide spectrum of approaches, attitudes, styles, and technical procedures that will give the listener much enjoyment and, also, an understanding of the breadth and sophistication of current electronic music.
  --- Hubert S. Howe, Jr.

  --------------------------------------------------------

Liner notes from the back cover:

Side 1

Maurice Wright - Electronic Composition (1973)

  Electronic Composition was completed in the spring of 1973. The piece is centered on the pitch Middle C. The timbre space is created by assigning component musical lines to various synthetic "instruments" that are comprised of simple combinations of oscilators and amplifiersand then recording these lines with careful control of reverberation and phase. Certain elements of the piece, namely the sounds that some listeners have compared to "a distant chorus," or "a mutant brass band," as well as the time-pointed clip-clop of electronically pitched horses' hooves in the brief Coda, are developed further in Cantata, a composition for tenor, percussion, and synthesized voices and instruments.
  ---- Maurice Wright

  Maurice Wright was born in Front Royal, Virginia. He was a Mary Duke Biddle Scholar at Duke University and Presidents' Fellow at Columbia University. He has studied composition with Jack Besson, Chou Wen-Chung, Paul Ellis, Iain Hamilton, Jacques Monod, and Charles Wuorinen; computer music and synthetic speech with Charles Dodge. He received a master's degree in 1974 from Columbia University, where he teaches Music Theory. He received the Henry Schuman Prize for Music from Duke University in 1972 and the Joseph Beams Prize for Music from Columbia University in 1974.


Joel Gressel - Points in Time (1974)

  In Points in Time, the ratio relationships that characterize the equal-tempered pitch system (division of the octave into 12 equal semitones) are applied to rhythm. These result in a series of attack points that accelerate regularly (approximating the sound pattern made by a freely bouncing ping-pong ball) or, conversely, decelerate. While human performers can approximate such rhythms, the computer uniquely affords the opportunity to explore their combinations and interactions. Several series unfold simultaneously, converging at points of arrival (attack points common to two or more series), which, in turn, are members of longer-range rhythmic accelerations (or decelerations) progressing to higher-level points of arrival. The resulting directed motion is loosely analogous to the resolution of harmonic and melodic tendencies at cadence points in tonal music.
  Pitches are derived from a set (F F# C B A D# E G G# D C# A#), the properties of which eventuate in tritone-related structures and long-term associations of pitch-class tetrachords (e.g., F F# C B), trichords (D# E G), and dyads. Formal sections are defined by changing instrumental combinations.
  The title is derived from the lexicon of the United States Senate Watergate hearings, which were in progress during the time the piece was composed. The realization was completed in February 1974 at the Princeton University computer center.
  ---- Joel Gressel

  Joel Gressel was born in 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio, attended Brandeis and Princeton Universities, and presently lives and teaches in New York city.


Daria Semegen - Electronic Composition No. 1 (1971/1972)

  Electronic Composition No. 1 was composed specifically for the utilization of "classical" studio resources in development and modification of electronically derived source-sound sequences. These are first presented in a comparatively simple, linear manner and then are passed through series of increasingly more complex evolutions of themselves, resulting in highly ornamented contrapuntal textures. The structure outlines several main sections linked together by short transitions. Each section is characterized by its own particular manner of projecting timbre, duration, and pitch structures in widely varying proportions. The multi-layered, background-foreground distribution of sounds and their stereophonic presentation may be readily perceived by the listener in various sections of the composition. The work was realized in 1971-72 at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
  ---- Daria Semegen

  Daria Semegen (b. 1946) began writing music at age seven, concurrently with her piano studies. She studied composition at the Eastman School of Music, Yale and Columbia Universities, at Tanglewood, and in Warsaw, Poland, as a Fulbright scholar. Her composition teachers include Samuel H. Adler, Robert Gauldin, Burrill Phillips (Eastman), Witold Lutoslawski (Warsaw), Bulent Arel (Yale), and Vladimir Ussachevsky (Columbia). She has received numerous awards in composition, including two BMI Student Composer Awards, Chautauqua, MacDowell Colony, and Tanglewood fellowships, Fulbright Grant, National Endowment for the Arts commissions, and prizes from Mu Phi Epsilon and Yale University. Since 1972 she has been on the teaching staff of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where she also worked as technical assistant to both Otto Luening and vladimir Ussachevsky. In January 1974, she joined the Department of Music faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she teaches composition and electronic music at the Electronic Music studio.


Menachem Zur - Chants, for magnetic tape (1974)

  Chants, for magnetic tape was realized in the electronic studio of Columbia University in March 1974. The work is shaped by a series of phrases divided by small pauses, somewhat resembling a Gregorian chant. The pitches are organized around a nine-tone series: F B G, A D B, C# F# D#. The main melodic cell is the figure F ascending to B and descending to G.
  ---- Menachem Zur

  Menachem Zur was born in 1942 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He studied theory at the College for Teachers for Music in Tel Aviv and in the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1969 he came up to New York to complete his B.M. degree in Composition at the Mannes College of Music. Mr. zur received his M.F.A. degree in Composition at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. His master's thesis in Composition was a piece for choir, magnetic tape, brass quartet, and percussion that won first prize in a contest in Jerusalem in 1973. He is currently completing his D.M.A. degree at Columbia University in New York City, and teaches music at Queens College, City University of New York.


Side 2

Richard Cann - Bonnylee (1972)

  (This song was sung by an IBM 360 model 91)

  A
  content
  /symmetrical
  |C# D F | / array (within
  A 9: |E E B | is / inversion)
  |C G G | \ row
  \ i
  by
  column
  i (in normal form)
i.e. C# - D - F & C# - E - C (0,1,4)'s
  E - E - B & D - E - G (0,1,5)'s
  C - G - G & F - B - G (0,1,6)'s
& Then a remaining 3
  G# - A - B (0,1,2)
  -- There are (many) such arrays --
  - & the remaining 3 can be of different structure -
  | C B A |
  | D F# D| + E - F - G (0,1,3)
  | A B E |
Consider: 12-tone sets e e
  consisting of a a a carrying
  four trichords, c remaining c a
  h 3 h 9
In the beginning all & only 9's
In the middle fat-chords 3's
In the end single notes 3's
& The rhythm too!---------------------(comes from arrays).

smallpoints:
  (1) Am currently working for a PhD at Princeton University.
  (2) Paul Lansky (qv) was my advisor on Bonnylee. (good friend)
  (3) B.O.P.p is coming! ---- Richard Cann


Arthur Kreiger - Short Piece (1974)

  In Arthur Kreiger's composition, Short Piece, careful attention has been given to the construction and treatment of phrases. These phrases, often articulated in a highly pungent manner, serve as contrast to those sections of the work which are more sustained and static in character. Both types of gestures explore the richness of percussion-like timbres. Short Piece was realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, where it was completed in November of 1974. Kreiger's works include compositions for standard instrumental ensembles in addition to music for electronic tape.


Paul Lansky - mild und leise (1973/1974)

  mild und leise was written and synthesized during 1973-74 using the IBM 360/91 computer at Princeton University and the Music 360 synthesis program written by Barry Vercoe. I want to thank my former student Richard Cann, composer of Bonnylee, for his help in learning how to use this program, and the Princeton University Computer Center for its generous allocation of computer time. This work is dedicated to Godfrey Winham.

  I would like to advise the listener to:
  listen easily and slowly -- this
  work takes its time,
  listen to changing timbres,
  to changing chords,
  to changing timbres with-
  in chords,
  to changing chords within
  timbres,
  listen to repetition,
  to changes within
  repetition,
  to increasingly more com-
  plex forms of the same
  music under repetition,
  listen to different ways of doing
  things,
  to linear shapes,
  to repeated chords,
  -- spreading out, and
  contracting, registrally,
  to simple rhythms,
  -- becoming complex
  rhythms,
  listen to combinations of different
  ways of doing things,
  listen to starts and stops as
  breathing points and
  places where new twists
  begin an old material,
  listen to each part of the piece as
  an evolving, growing,
  and, more complicated
  form of earlier parts
  of the piece,
  -- as a new way of doing
  things which has only
  gradually become
  possible.
  listen carefully, and easily.

  ---- Paul Lansky