Recommended/Further Readings, and: Books Received, and: Cassettes/CDs Received

tion of four computercreated pieces. The compositions “Smalltalk”and “LateAugust”are based on recorded conversations.“Guy’sHarp”and “Not SoHeavy Metal’’are based on recorded solo improvisationson harmonica and electric guitar, respectively. of household chitchat between Paul Lansky and his wife, while “Late August”is based on twoChinese interlocutors . Lansky’ssoftwareextracts pitch, rhythm and contour information from the recorded conversations and uses this information to abstract a piece of music. As this is a theoreticallyinterestingproject ,I was surprised to hear such uninspired and lightweight music result. Sweetlytimbred pitchesdance and dart about from left to right in light flurries.Pedalpoint backgrounddrones lull the listener. Barely audible conversations slip in and out of consciousness. The pitch material used to build the pieces is chosen from familiar notes (”Smalltalk”begins in D major) leavingme to doubt whether pitch data from the original conversations were used at all, except, perhaps, as indices into a table of preselected “Smalltalk”is rooted in a recording pitch choices. Similarly,the durations used to carry the phrasing of the conversations seem quantized to produce a soundworld of sixteenth notes, thirty-secondnotes and quick arpeggios .These are hardly the durations of language. Since Lansky’s musical material is so far removed from the original source material,I doubt whether composer or listener has reallylearned anythingabout the nature of the conversationsor the languagesin which they were spoken.This is a case where a composer’sestheticdecisions completely overwhelmthe subtleties and potential of his source material. If not for Lansky’sown claimsthat he was at least a little bit interested in investigatinghow the pitch and contour of English differfrom Chinese,I would have no objection to his overpowering his subjects.As they stand, the pieces subsist in a pseudoscientifichaze. “Guy’sHarp”and “NotSo Heavy Metal”complete the compact disc. “Guy’sHarp” stays true to the gritty timbre of Guy DeRosa’s harmonica performance, with a few exhilarating moments of computer-generated harmonica swirlsand vortices. “Not So Heavy Metal”attempts to build a piece from a Steve Mackey electric guitar solo. In its most embarrassing moment, the computer tries to force the music to a climax by breaking into a rhythmic accompaniment devoid of intensity,guts or emotion, as Lansky’ssqueakyclean sonorities bounce around the guitar, obediently followingits I-W-V’s. The piece’spainful appellation (it has no more to do with being ‘heavy metal’, or with not being ‘heavy metal’, than it doeswith being or not being a giraffe) reveals a kind of insular academic myopia, where musical stylescan be appropriated and purported to be understood on some glib intellectualplane. Both “Guy’sHarp” and “NotSo Heavy Metal”suffer from lack of depth; here, a seriesof improvised clichksmistakenlybecome synonymouswith a musical style. The musicians should have been pushed much harder to create powerful individual solo performances.Insteadwe are presentedwith nebulous,overlyidiomatic music-as-data,lackingin vision and understanding. BdngtheSoundBa& G. Battcock. Dutton, New York, NY, U.S.A.. 1981. Recommended/Further Readings QLambers Alvin Lucier and D. Simon.Wesleyan Univ. Press, Middletown, CT,U.S.A., 1980. The computer and Music Harry B. Lincoln, ed. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca,NY,U.S.A., 1970. ComputerMusic: Charles Dodge and ThomasA. Jerse. SchirmerBooks, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1985. sy?&sis, compositimandPerformanoe TheDevelopment and Aadceof- ’ Music Jon Appleton and Ronald Perera, eds. Prentice-Hall,Englewood Cliffs, NJ, U.S.A., 1975. ExperimentalMusic Lejaren Hiller and L. Isaacson. McGraw-Hill,New York, NY,U.S.A., 1959. LhperimentalMusic: Cageand Beyond Michael Nyman. Schirmer Books, NewYork, NY,U.S.A., 1974. Formalized Music Iannis Xenakis.Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington,IN, U.S.A., 1971. Foundations o f GnnputerMusic C. Roads, ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 1985. Genesis.ofaMusic Harry Partch. Da Capo Press,New York,NY, U.S.A., 1974. Meta+Hodos &MITEA Metu+Hodos James Tenney. Frog Peak Music, Hanover,NH 03755,U.S.A., 1988. Mind Models: New Forms #Musical &@?rience Roger Reynolds.Praeger, New York, NY,U.S.A., 1975. Modern Mmc: TheAvant Garde S i m 1945 Paul Griffiths. Braziller, New York, NY,U.S.A., 1981. Music by Computers H. von Forester andJames Beauchamp , eds.John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY,U.S.A., 1969. New Musiaal bournes Henry Cowell. Jhopf, New...