What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music? Organised Sound too Rarely Heard by Leigh Landy (review)

nar (in the editions in Russian) as well as a list of the publications ofSoviet authors in Leonardo. REPRESENTATIONS OF MUSICAL SIGNALS by Giovanni de Poli, Aldo Piccialli and Curtis Roads, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.SA 488 pp., illus. ReoieuiedUy Marc Battier, [RCAM, 31, me Saint-Merri, F-75004 Paris, France. Italy seems to be a place of choice for speculation on the concepts of music representation. There, in 1982, in the context ofa symposium on Musical Grammars and Computer Analysis organized in Modena, Curtis Roads presented a substantial survey on this topic. Several years later, Roads, along with several Italian researchers, gathered many computer-music practitioners in Sorrento, a town on the cliffs of the Mediterranean Sea. Several papers from this gathering have been collected for this book, although they have been considerably revised and augmented; other papers were specifically commissioned. The book is a new addition to a series, dedicated to recent advances in the field of computer music, published by MIT Press. The topic of representations of musical signals is intensely observed and researched these days. In a way, computer music has always been preoccupied by it. After all, the seminal work of Max Mathews in sound synthesis and, more generally, in the design of acoustic compilers presented a particular view of the question, a view shared with the electronic instrumentbuilders of its time: Olson and Belar, creators of the RCA electronic synthesizer , and Hugh LeCaine, inventor of various sound synthesis devices [1]. Representations ofMusical Signals is composed of 14 previously unpublished texts, gathered into five sections: Time-frequency Representations of Musical Signals (four texts), Granular Representations of Musical Signals (two texts), Physical Model Representation of Musical Signals (three texts), Architecture and Object Representations of Musical Signals (three texts) and Parallel Distributed Processing Representations of Musical Signals (three texts). These sections are clear reflections on the nature of musical signals and the various waysto consider them. To help the reader grasp 120 Reviews these various approaches, each category is introduced by one of the editors . Some papers present an overview of a topic: in a very coherent manner, each of the five categories has a paper that to some extent can be considered a survey paper. Among the broadest is the one byJean-Claude Risset, a renowned composer and pioneer in computer music, on timbre analysis by synthesis. His paper has a substantial bibliography. Also ofwide scope, the article by Guy Garnett, a composer and researcher from the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at the University of California, Berkeley, deals in a methodical fashion with the question of time and temporal procedures in the various aspects of music and signal representations. Because it is a thorough and knowledgeable paper, one can only wonder why the work of recognized importance achieved by Stephen Pope in this domain, which has appeared in various publications, is not explicitly mentioned. The book has a comprehensive index section, composed of a name index and a wide subject index. Both indexes are quite impressive in both size and choice of entries. Note 1. For more on the life and inventions of Hugh Le Caine, see the review in this issue of Gayle Young's The Sackbut Blues. WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH TODAY'S ExPERIMENTAL MUSIC? ORGANISED SOUND Too RARELY HEARD by Leigh Landy. Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991. 308 pp. ISBN: 3-7186-5168-8. ISSN: 0891-5415 Reuietoed Uy Denis Smalley, School ofMusic , University ofEast Anglia, Norundi NR4 71], o.« This book is based on the assumption that over the last 15 years fewer composers , musicians and listeners have been interested in experimental music . The introduction defines 'experimental ' and uses the concept of the 'parameter' to help delineate experimentation . Part 2 is concerned with contextual determinants: the media, technology, community and acculturation , and the political dimensions of music. Part 3 reviews topics such as form and structure, notation and performing techniques and expands on timbre, space and the media. Part 4 is concerned with today's trends: eleotroacoustic music, stylistic fusions, 'neo-' tendencies (neo-tonality, neosimplicity , neo-romanticism, the revival of melody, etc.) and asks why composers like Stockhausen, Boulez and Berio have become milder. Part 5...