Electro-acoustic Music From The Netherlands 2000 (review)

The festival Terza Prattica, held in Amsterdam from 30 November to 3 December 2000, was organized by the Gaudeamus Foundation and The Dutch association Producers Electronic Music (PEM). It included six categories of compositions: works for tape, live-electronics/computer music, installations, film and video music, multimedia, and electronic music theatre. Electronic and electro-acoustic music was covered in eight concerts, and included the work of members of the New International Community of Electro-acoustic Music (NICE).

PEM unites some 52 composers and performers active in The Netherlands. Their CD compilation, Electro-acoustic Music from the Netherlands 2000, was presented as part of the festival. It includes 28 works each less than two minutes, most realized in 1999.

The aim of the disc is to illustrate the range of electronic and electro-acoustic music being produced in the country, and to introduce some of the PEM members' works. Including very short works allows many PEM composers to be represented on the disc, although a good percentage were also left out.

The brief booklet notes are in Dutch, and I thank Anke Spry for her English translation. Perhaps it would be helpful to provide listeners outside The Netherlands with a more uniform and extensive set of biographical details and program notes, preferably in English as well, so that the CD might gain a wider audience outside the country? Further, CD credit notes and production addresses would also be helpful.

Given the number of tracks on the disc, it is not possible in a review of this length to comment on each work, but only to trace general trends and make observations.

Contributions fall into four areas: computer-generated works, with or without spectral shaping; sample-based works that borrow techniques from acousmatic music; live/interactive works; and synthesizer-generated approaches. Most composers include techniques from more than one area.

Many of the contributors come from academic backgrounds or are associated with academic institutions. Notable is the number of composers who have a connection to the Department of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Despite the range of techniques used to generate the music, there is a remarkable similarity in sonic outcomes across the disc, leaving one wondering both whether a house style has begun to dominate a national outlook, and what else is happening outside the main academic electroacoustic music centers in The Netherlands.

Given the rapid development in digital tools now at the disposal of most composers in Western European countries, one looks for equivalent advances in artistic statement, human expression, and explorations of emotional range, as well as intellectual and sonic language. What is the outcome beyond the best of analog tape and synthesizer music from the last century, or even the best of 1970s–1980s synthesizer rock bands, for example?

The initial impression, reinforced with many subsequent hearings of these short works, is that electro acoustic music in The Netherlands is largely introverted, intellectually focused, at times dated sonically, and exploring a narrow dramatic range. This may be because of the homogeneity of the contributors' cultural base, or a reflection of its current conditions of production.

Not widely represented are the corporal aspects of performance characteristic of acoustic crossover work typical in North America, or the depth of textural control common in the Anglo–French acousmatic school. Many composers from these other backgrounds are comfortable writing in electronic and acoustic idioms, and the cross-fertilization of approaches helps to enrich both practices.

The first eight tracks on the CD largely take similar approaches, many of which focus on using electronically generated sound and spectral shaping. Typical is Richard Barrett's Involuntary, the opening track, and Huib Emmer's Agitato. There is depth and interesting moments here, but many of the techniques have been absorbed into mainstream international popular electronica, and...