An Interview with Gerard Pape

Gerard Pape (see Figure 1) was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1955. He studied composition with George Cacioppo and William Albright and electronic music with George Wilson. Pape has composed more than 60 works for acoustic instruments, voices, and/or computer-generated sound. He has directed Les Ateliers UPIC, now known as CCMIX (Center for the Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis), since 1991. In addition to working as a composer, he holds a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan and is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst. A catalogue of his works involving electronics is provided in Table 1. This interview was conducted on 4 February 2003 at CCMIX in Alfortville, France.

Makan: You have had a multifaceted career in computer music as a composer, teacher, and writer, as well as long-standing director of CCMIX. Beginning with the latter, you became director of CCMIX, formerly known as Les Ateliers UPIC, in 1991. Could you discuss your background in computer music and how it led to your work there?

Pape: My background in computer music began in the 1980s while I was studying at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I was following the electronic music concerts there and taking classes in electronic music. The composer George Wilson, who was teaching at the University, felt that it was important that composers spend an entire year in the analog studio before moving on to the digital studio. The analog studio there, developed by Don Buchla, was quite elaborate. It had all kinds of great equipment that was very interesting to use but that elicited some of the frustration so common with those old machines, since they are all based on connecting hundreds of little patch cords. You learn very quickly that if you make patching mistakes, the results can be less than favorable.

One of the things that really fascinated me about electronic music, especially the experimental electronic music from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s, was that many of the pieces seemed to have been made without a keyboard model in mind. I was a big fan of Xenakis's pieces, as well as those of Stockhausen. What I heard inspired me to develop my own studio. The first tool I bought was an old Fairlight CMI 2. What I liked about this instrument was that it had a screen where you could draw the envelopes for the oscillators. In addition to being one of the earliest samplers, it had a real-time additive synthesis feature with which you could draw pitch and intensity envelopes for each of the oscillators.

But one of the most formative experiences of my early years in computer music began with the articles in Computer Music Journal on Xenakis and his UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique du CEMAMu) system (Lohner 1986a, 1986b). When I read about the idea of drawing a graphical score, of being able to create events that had nothing to do with keyboard events, I was really excited. The UPIC system seemed to have more to do with the kind of electronic music that I was drawn to than most other machines available at the time. It was at that point that I got Xenakis's telephone number and called him up. I said that I had read the article about his UPIC system and that I would like to come to Paris to see it, if it was possible. I ended up taking a trip in 1987 to CEMAMu (Center of Education in Mathematics and Automation of Music), where I instantly fell in love with the UPIC system. So I decided to buy one for myself, which was really a crazy thing to do, because it cost US$ 50,000! I had to take out a loan. In 1989, the engineers from CEMAMu came to Ann Arbor to install the UPIC system in my studio. Also that year, I invited Xenakis to be the guest composer for the Twice Festival, of which I had been the co-director for a number of years. It was a particularly nice event, because George Crumb and he were there at the same time...