But will it play in drawing room?

Originally published 2 March 1987

We have a teenag­er in our house with equal enthu­si­asm for com­put­ers and for clas­si­cal music. He brings the two togeth­er with inex­pen­sive soft­ware that allows him to tran­scribe a musi­cal score into his com­put­er, manip­u­late voice, key and tem­po, and play it back through the stereo sys­tem. The result leaves some­thing to be desired. When you have heard a Mozart piano con­cer­to syn­the­sized by a four-voice home com­put­er, it is easy to con­clude that com­put­ers and music should nev­er be allowed to mix.

But it is best to be cau­tious. Remem­ber the dis­dain that greet­ed the first per­for­mance of Beethoven’s Eroica Sym­pho­ny (too new, too long) and the riot that attend­ed the debut of Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring (too rad­i­cal, too dan­ger­ous). The avant-garde in music has always had a way of assault­ing the ear. The music of Schoen­berg and Bab­bitt was once derid­ed as noise; now those com­posers are revered as 20th cen­tu­ry masters.

Like it or not, the mar­riage of com­put­ers and music is here to stay. Already the dig­i­ti­za­tion of sound has trans­formed the record­ing indus­try. Elec­tron­ic key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers have become the instru­ments of choice among pop musi­cians. Even the young music stu­dent at the con­ser­va­to­ry is as like­ly as the fledg­ling engi­neer to have a com­put­er in his quarters.

Con­sid­er this recent ad for a dig­i­tal elec­tron­ic piano: “To a Pianist, the Major Dif­fer­ence Between a Con­cert Grand Piano and the (brand X) Dig­i­tal Piano is about $40,000.” The engi­neers of this elec­tron­ic mar­vel dig­i­tal­ly record­ed notes from a con­cert grand and stored the data in mem­o­ry chips. The chips are acti­vat­ed by touch-sen­si­tive keys. By flick­ing a few switch­es, you can trans­form the piano into a harp­si­chord or oth­er key­board instru­ment. It stores music for play­back. It nev­er needs tun­ing. It looks good. And it’s com­put­er compatible.

An infinite repertoire

It’s the “com­put­er com­pat­i­ble” that makes this new class of instru­ments so poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Any note that can be stored and replayed dig­i­tal­ly can be manip­u­lat­ed by a com­put­er. The musi­cian or com­pos­er at the key­board of a computer/synthesizer has access to an infi­nite reper­toire of instru­ments and to a uni­verse of sound. “I dream of instru­ments obe­di­ent to my thought,” wrote the French-Amer­i­can com­pos­er Edgard Varese, who as ear­ly as the 1930s cham­pi­oned elec­tron­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion in music. The instru­ments Varese dreamed of appear to be not far in the future.

Per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in com­put­er music are com­ing out of the Insti­tut de Recherche et de Coor­di­na­tion Acoustic/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. The insti­tute was found­ed by the respect­ed French composer/conductor Pierre Boulez to explore new tech­nolo­gies in music. Last year Boulez brought his most rad­i­cal com­po­si­tion, called Répons (“Response”), to Boston for two per­for­mances at Sym­pho­ny Hall. The ensem­ble con­sist­ed of a cham­ber orches­tra of 24 play­ers and six soloists. The sounds of the soloists’ instru­ments — two pianos, harp, vibra­phone, glock­en­spiel, and cym­bal­lom — were fed into a com­put­er, where they were trans­formed and instant­ly replayed through loud­speak­ers. The result was a stun­ning amal­gam of nat­ur­al and com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed sounds. As far as I know, Boulez is the first com­pos­er to use a com­put­er in a live con­cert hall performance.

A Boston Globe music crit­ic called Répons a “great blind­ing sun of a piece.” Some oth­er lis­ten­ers were less enthu­si­as­tic. Boulez him­self was con­tent to remind us, in an inter­view, that “music is always going toward some­thing that is unknown.”

Two expe­ri­ences the oth­er day prompt­ed these thoughts on new musi­cal tech­nolo­gies. The first was a vis­it to the show­rooms of one of Boston’s biggest pur­vey­ors of elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ments. It was an eye (and ear) open­ing expe­ri­ence. I expect­ed to hear kids play­ing rock, but I heard Bach and Chopin, too. I was daz­zled by the tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry of the key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers. I saw com­put­ers mak­ing music of a sur­pris­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion, and the range of soft­ware avail­able for com­po­si­tion and musi­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion was for­mi­da­ble. Most impres­sive of all was the swarm of tal­ent­ed, artis­tic young peo­ple who seemed to have an easy mas­tery of these com­plex tech­nolo­gies. I came away con­vinced I had seen the future.

A different ambience

Lat­er that same day I was at a con­cert of 17th cen­tu­ry music for the vir­ginal, a key­board instru­ment that was a pre­cur­sor of the harp­si­chord and piano. The qui­et, draw­ing-room atmos­phere of the con­cert could hard­ly have been more dif­fer­ent from the crowd­ed, throb­bing precincts of the elec­tron­ic music empo­ri­um. The vir­ginal was a beau­ti­ful repro­duc­tion of a 17th cen­tu­ry instru­ment, and the music that came from it of an enchant­i­ng sweet­ness. On the opened lid of the instru­ment were these words: Musi­ca Lae­ti­ae Comes Med­i­c­i­na Dolo­rum (“music — com­pan­ion of joy, rem­e­dy of sorrows”).

I have no doubt that with­in a few years an elec­tron­ic key­board will pro­duce notes that are indis­tin­guish­able from those played on that vir­ginal. I am less con­fi­dent that such an instru­ment will be as ami­able a com­pan­ion in joy, or as sooth­ing a rem­e­dy for sorrows.

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A 2015 per­for­mance of Répons by Pierre Boulez (1925 – 2016) is avail­able for view­ing on YouTube. ‑Ed.