PREFACE - by Peter Van Zandt Lane

If there is one thread that connects the pieces in this anthology – beyond all being works for live performers and tape – it is that they all share a careful preoccupation with musical narrative. From Verses and Fragments (1979) to Shatter and Glide (2013) (both of which appear in the forthcoming volume II), these three-and-a-half decades of Eric Chasalow’s electroacoustic music cover vast territories of technique and style. Yet there is a keenly focused dialogue with the traditions of American electroacoustic music, and with Western art music in general. We can perceive some of Chasalow’s roots in the musical and intellectual community of composers he worked alongside at the Columbia – Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1970s, including stylistic connections to Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms – an inevitable influence for anyone composing music for tape and instrument. But the music in this anthology is hardly a mere continuation of Davidovsky’s tradition. And there is the deep influence of Brahms here too, and Coltrane, Bach, Cage, and (albeit more literally) Hendrix.

This music is not preoccupied with the surface aesthetics of Modernism, nor does it serve any particular dogmatic agenda. It’s serious music, but it is also at times playful, emotive, humorous, and mystical. The only insistent compositional doctrine implicit in these works is that we experience music moment-by-moment: that the composer should carry the listener through a compelling musical pathway; that a sound (acoustic or electronic) is meaningless without broader context, and that listeners (and performers) deserve a piece of music that delivers a meaningful, engaging experience. In short, music should be moving.

It is noteworthy that the composition of these works spans a period of time when music technology was evolving at an incredibly rapid pace. Composers who opt to bring electronic elements into their music invariably face the obstacle of an ever changing technological toolbox. It is as if every time we sit down at the piano, new keys have been added, the strings suddenly offer new resonances, the pedals change places, multiply, do different things. It can make composing very exciting, but it can distract us from more essential compositional considerations. Early works in this collection such as Verses and Fragments and Hanging in the Balance demonstrate that even the most fundamental tools
of the classic analog studio – tone generators; an envelope generator; a Buchla sequencer module – have the potential for tremendous sonic variety in the hands of an imaginative musician. In The Furies, a simple voltage-controlled filter proves to be a vastly expressive instrument for Chasalow’s dramatic setting of Anne Sexton’s poems. Through these works, the musical vocabulary of the studio became essential to Chasalow’s compositional style. Thus, when advancements in digital sound rendered most of these analog devices obsolete, he maintained a musical vocabulary that would transcend the more ephemeral trends of electronic sounds over the following three decades. In effect, we are reminded of the timeless notion that technology informs musical style. Certainly, the kinds of

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sounds that digital signal processing grew to offer sets the sonic qualities of Shatter and Glide apart from Verses and Fragments, but the way electronic sounds lock into the interchange between the live instrumentalists is profoundly connected. It was never about indulging in technological novelty, it was about compositional technique. Ultimately, music that becomes absorbed in neoteric technologies very often isolates itself from the musical memory, praxis, and traditions that help enrich a piece with a sense of meaning. This is perhaps one of the most valuable lessons I learned as one of Eric Chasalow’s composition students, and it’s certainly an encouraging bit of aesthetic wisdom implicit in these works, accessible to anyone exploring the music in this collection.

There is a peculiar performance dynamic associated with the idiom of ‘tape’ and instrument pieces. We have plenty of pieces in the Western tradition that feature a soloist alongside a subordinate accompaniment (piano, perhaps orchestral), but perhaps many more examples where these two entities compete for our attention. Creating a compelling dialogue between two opposing forces – something more profound than soloist and accompanist – is a challenge for a composer even in a purely acoustic medium. However compelling a competitive musical narrative may become, our Western musical roots ultimately lead us away from equality, and towards hierarchy. When a live musician performs on stage with a pair of speakers, this hierarchy is set in an even deeper relief. Quite simply, it is in our nature as we sit in a concert hall, to interpret the person in front of us as dominant over the person behind the pre-recorded tape. Davidovsky freely admits that the impetus for the first Synchronisms grew largely out of dissatisfaction with the audience’s reticence to emotionally connect with a stage full of loudspeakers and a reel-to-reel machine. In Chasalow’s pieces – especially the later works where the electronic vocabulary includes more sampling, and more varied processed and synthesized sounds – the ‘tape’ part aims to leap beyond the confines of the loudspeakers, at times even asserting itself as equal to the performer. There is no doubt that a major role of electronic sounds in this idiom is to cast illusions as to where acoustic sounds end and where electronic sounds begin. But it is ultimately up to us, as interpreters, as to how much agency we give the tape. Nonetheless, the musical arguments that arise out of the struggle between sound sources are a substantial part of what makes the music compelling.

This kind of duality is particularly apparent in only the first few measures of In A Manner Of Speaking. The piece begins as the electronics and bass clarinet multiphonic twist around each other, tensely opening the upper registers of their timbres, just before bursting into a series of frenzied mel- odic fragments. In just eight seconds, a wealth of information about the upcoming musical narrative begins to form. Although there is a certain illusion established in the initial blend between the clar- inet and the electronics, the attack and subsequent rhythmic nuance of the electronic sound decou- ples it from the live instrument. It expands the clarinet’s timbre, while at the same time asserts its own sonic identity. This distinction becomes all the more apparent as the consequent burst of activity introduces a number of sounds that have absolutely no sonic qualities in common with those of a clarinet. The disparity between the live and electronic sounds serves to intensify thecounterpoint. A cooperative relationship between the instrument and the electronics is established, and it relies upon

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the possibility that the electronic sounds in a piece are not necessarily derived from the acoustic. A crucial element of this music is how keen we are to interpret electronic sounds as ‘linked’ to the live sounds, no matter how fundamentally different they may actually be. To a degree, this level of control over timbre was something that was not as available to composers who pioneered the music of this genre. In many ways, the drama of Chasalow’s music relies on the gullibility of our ears. It is a unique characteristic of this music that, deeply interwoven into the musical narrative, is a variable sonic distance between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

This is not to say that conceptions of musical ‘otherness’ are relegated specifically to the world of electronic sounds. Quite the contrary, the simple fact that an instrument or voice is limited by its own physicality, while electronic sounds have seemingly limitless possibilities, leaves ample ground for explorative dialogues between the idiomatic and the exotic. So many composers who have ventured into the electronic music studio admit how profoundly working in the studio reshaped how they conceive instrumental music. While recounting his first immersion into electronic music, Davidovsky notes how he became enamored with the process of imitating electronic idioms through instrumental means, and “try[ing] to do with instruments – certain ways of articulating sounds that I learned in the studio – that I would have never imagined in my life.” (It should be noted that we have this material because of Eric Chasalow’s exhaustive video archive of interviews on electronic music development through his Oral History Project). This phenomenon, which Davidovsky describes as incorporating electronic idioms into his “general acoustical memory,” has become an axiomatic principle of musical thought for composers today. George Crumb, admittedly having not directly worked in electronic music at the time of his essay Music: Does it have a future?, noted that its influence made him and the composers of his generation “keenly aware that our sense for sound-characteristics, articulation, texture, and dynamics has been radically revised and very much affects the way in which we write for instruments.”

But how has the nature of this phenomenon of electronic-to-acoustic cross-fertilization progressed in the dawn of the 21st century? Have we moved beyond the mere circumstance of acoustic instruments mimicking electronic ones? On the surface of Scuffle and Snap, a musical common-ground between the violin and electronics is established through the instrumentalist’s ability to engage in electronically-conceived gestures (as well as a willingness for the electronics to be instrumentally-conceived). The musical argument isn’t really between man and machine in this piece. It’s simply between contrasting thematic material. The concern over whether these musical ideas appear to be idiomatic to solo violin music or idiomatic to electronic music is only secondary to the ways they develop and interact over the course of the piece. These compositional concerns are of course not unique to electroacoustic music, they are universal. Indeed, the way in which these musical arguments transpire is a characteristic of Chasalow’s compositional style, and is as prevalent in his purely acoustic works as his electroacoustic ones. Nonetheless, the ‘scuffle’ in Scuffle and Snap does indeed involve opposing motives with opposing stylistic associations. There is a sense of playfulness in the pizzicato melodic passage that opens the piece. The electronically-conceived gestures that

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interrupt it rely on more drastic timbral shifts and sharply defined envelopes: characteristics of electronic sound that have maintained their compositional utility since the days of cutting and splicing magnetic tape. We experience these two opposing ideas in very different ways. I believe it is in the full intention of the composer that we are inclined to embrace the more idiomatic (I daresay even ‘catchy’) violin melody as a stratified continuity, structurally connected over the course of the piece. We embrace this music as continuous because we have a generalized memory of an abundance of violin music that shares some elements of its contour and surface characteristics. The destabilizing force operating against this theme is fundamentally less familiar, and in this piece, taps into a different generalized memory (if perhaps a more esoteric one) of classic electroacoustic music. The duality here is, at its root, the same musical dialectic that has been a fundamental trait of Western art music since the dawn of tonality. There is something evocatively functional about the sonic unfamiliarity of electronically-conceived interruptions in this piece, and given the proper context, it evokes a more distant memory from our musical past.

At the same time, the use of a strikingly familiar recorded sound can have the complete opposite effect. Instead of evoking a recognizable instrumental idiom, it can be a sample of a recognizable sound, and may act as a springboard into the inner complexities of a piece. This strategy has been a creative goldmine for a number of composers of electronic music: as there is simply nothing more immediately recognizable to our ears than the sound of the human voice. There are a number of successful earlier electroacoustic pieces that deal with text on a predominantly phonetic basis – Milton Babbit’s Phonemena, Luciano Berio’s Ommagio a Joyce, or Alice Sheilds’ The Transformation of Ani, to name a few. Yet in all of these pieces, even the most fragmentary moment of vocalization – live, pre-recorded, or even processed – becomes the primary focal point for the listeners’ attention. In the world of electronic music, with its seemingly limitless sonic vocabulary, it seems obvious that the human voice would be treated so delicately, regardless of the associated words (or if there are words at all). Certainly in a piece like The Furies, we expect a rich tapestry of semantic meaning that either heightens our experience of the text, or provides some specific perspectives on textual meaning that the composer has chosen to draw our attention to. It’s what rationalizes the musical setting of a poetic text in the first place. But in Are You Radioactive, Pal? – its title borrowing a line from one of John Berryman’s Dream Songs – the use of the human voice is much more precarious. It only appears faintly early in the piece, but is fully externalized by the performer, actually conversing with the text in the tape part, in the piece’s coda. The reference to the text is a mere iota in the grand scheme of the piece’s richly developed structure. But there are a few brief moments in the piece that exhibit a uniquely sensitive approach to dealing with text in a piece where the text is not a primary focal point, and give us some valuable insight into Chasalow’s narrative philosophy. The opening gesture of the piece leads us to a cataclysmic B-flat minor triad, which is promptly interrupted by a brief sound of something immediately recognized for its vocal quality. The triad appears sparsely in the piece, articulating formal markers at the end of the second movement on B-minor, and finally at the end of the piece on G-minor. The sound of the human voice at the end emerges out of our memory of the

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very opening. It is still jarring, unexpected, even unusual, yet it is completely prepared by the unfolding of the piece up to that point. When the saxophonist speaks, it’s not simply a grand dramatic gesture, it’s structurally significant. At this moment, the performer resolves (or at least externalizes) a tension between conflicting sampling sources that have been set in opposition from the very first gesture of the piece. In a sense, it is the human voice itself in Are You Radioactive, Pal? that is the foreign musical element: the question of the musical narrative that needs answering. In this way, the piece challenges one of the core assumptions the genre has towards the phenomenology of the human voice in electroacoustic music.

The compositional approach of setting sounds deeply grounded in our musical memory against something foreign is perhaps most palpable in ’Scuse Me. The opening iconic electric guitar quotation from Hendrix’s Purple Haze places both live and prerecorded components of the piece firmly in our musical memory (if only at first). The phenomenon here is quite different than hearing a vocal sample in Are You Radioactive, Pal?; assuming the listener has some established rapport with the referenced music, the memory of a sound world, musical style, and perhaps an entire cultural movement is evoked. If we’re inclined to experience this music in terms of anacrusis and arrival (as I usually am), the act of referencing something so immediately familiar truly gives a sense of downbeat at the opening of the piece. In this way, the use of the vernacular musical quotation is quite distinct from the tried-and-true postmodern trope of mashing up various pre-existing musics, for the purely surface-level effect of juxtaposition. The fact remains that these samples are ultimately musical motives that may be deconstructed and developed and explored. In this sense, ’Scuse Me proceeds in a far more traditional way than the audacious opening measures might lead us to expect. In fact, if the opening reference has opened the door (and left it ajar) to extramusical interpretations, the piece flourishes in the process of deconstructing and reimagining the electric guitar as a distinctive performance idiom (a process that, in a different way, is widely connected to Hendrix’s legacy).

It should be noted that so many of the narrative strategies in these pieces are contingent on the very medium of ‘instrument and tape’ music, and that they engage aesthetic concerns in this music that cannot be addressed in any other way. Composers working in an electroacoustic medium today will invariably face the decision between interactive electronics or fixed electronics. Certainly there are very exciting possibilities with live processing, live synthesis, and the advent of machines having more and more robust capabilities for expression and improvisation. But these are merely new tools for composers, and they need not (and should not) replace the existing and valuable technique of carefully and determinately designing an electronic phrase meant to work in detailed counterpoint or cooperation with a live instrument. The self-consciousness we seem to have over even using the term “tape” is a testament to this notion; we seem to be uncomfortable with the anachronism, employing terms like ‘electronic sound’ or ‘fixed media’ in its place. I’m not sure why this is the case. Although the days of reel to reel machines are mostly past, the term is, at this point, associated with a particular musical idiom and has become more than an indicator of compositional process, than on what material sounds happen to be stored. After all, don’t we still go to see ‘films’ which have never been stored on an analog

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media? Don’t we still use the term ‘radio’ for all sorts of new modes of broadcast that have nothing to do with radiotelegraphy?

I believe there is an even deeper reason why tape and instrument pieces are far from expending their potential as a viable compositional idiom. Part of the compositional process with these pieces includes carefully nudging a particular sound the tiniest duration later or earlier, or fine-tuning the pitch inflection of a sample to where it is just right. So many composers who work in this medium will describe epiphany-like experiences every time a short section of electronic music is correctly realized. When all of the pieces fall into place, a series of uncoordinated, disconnected sounds becomes something musically expressive. Building sound structures with this level of specificity can only be accomplished in a fixed setting: it is just as much an act of musical performance as it is of musical composition. It is not something that can be specifically notated – one only needs to look at the myriad of minor rhythmic discrepancies between the electronics and their scored cues in notated electroacoustic music of the last sixty years – and yet the electronic sounds feel completely natural. I suspect that this creative process has more to do with speech, prosody, and poetics than it does with traditional conceptions of composing instrumental music. Yet because the fundamental role of the electronics in this genre is to expand the sonic and expressive possibilities of an instrument or voice, these fine-tuned, poetic approaches to rhythm and meter exist in the instrumental writing as much as they do in electronic sounds. How these nuances are manifested are a matter of personal compositional style, yet it is the presence of the composer’s unique creative voice from which we derive authenticity, even artistic quality. Certainly, I have found Eric Chasalow’s personality to be genuinely transmitted from the stage in a performance of his music. This is as true for his purely acoustic works as it is for his electroacoustic ones. But with these pieces, there is a peculiar and powerful event that occurs when the performer and tape lock into an energized and persuasive synchronicity. It is almost as if there is no technology at all, but rather a dialogue between live performers and the unrestrained imagination of the composer.

Peter Van Zandt Lane

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INTRODUCTION - by Eric Chasalow

Of all my music, the pieces for live performer and tape are by far the most frequently performed [I use the term, “tape” having started in the analog studio, and as long as we all understand what this means today, with some musicians even returning to analog tape, why change?] So, with that big decade birthday looming (60 years old – how did that happen?) I decided to count up these pieces and create an anthology that traces the distance I have traveled with this medium since I started composing for it more than half-a-lifetime ago. The reason for the popularity of these pieces is partly practical. A soloist can easily play back the electronic part from a CD or computer and voilà, an ensemble instantly appears. Yet, in another sense, these pieces are not at all “practical”. The instrumental parts by themselves are all challenging, requiring a high level of virtuosity. And it takes lots of listening and practice time to be able to synchronize with the recording. Having performed similar pieces myself as a flutist, I can guess why, in spite of these obstacles, instrument and tape pieces continue to be popular with performers, even at a time when more interactive technology has come into its own. If these pieces are well made, there is a magic in hearing all the details line up to heighten the effect of each musical phrase. In other words, for all of the hard work required, there is a satisfying “payoff” for the performer.

Each piece takes its particular instrument as the sonic point of departure. The long tradition of that instrument is part of the listener’s memory and this fact allows me to use reality as a starting point, but then to stretch that reality into a fantasy world where the instrument seems to change in unexpected ways. This means that to really experience these pieces, one must hear them in the concert hall. In fact, the thinking of those who first wrote pieces for this combination was to help electronic music better connect with the audience, given that pure “tape pieces” provide no point of human contact in concert.

My journey toward composing the pieces contained in this book began, as most life changing events do, before I realized it was happening, when as a teenager in the late 60’s I experimented with tape recorders and was lent an early synthesizer. In 1975, at New England Conservatory, I heard composer-flutist, John Heiss perform the Davidovsky Synchronisms No. 1 and was mesmerized. I was totally convinced that Davidovsky had discovered a way to bring traditional instruments together with electronic music to make something totally new and that I needed to go study with him.

Arriving at Columbia in 1977, I became part of a vibrant community at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (C-P EMC). In those days, even to make a short piece of music required countless hours in the studio cutting tape. Studio time was precious, yet everyone there, teacher and student alike, was incredibly generous – listening, critiquing and suggesting. We developed and learned techniques together and were inspired by one another’s music. I think it must have been our common recognition of just how difficult the circumstances were, together with our excitement as we created even a few seconds of carefully crafted sound, that led to such a positive environment. We

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were “all in it together” including the directors, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Milton Babbitt, and Mario Davidovsky, who were all very encouraging and supportive.

Three of the pieces in this volume date to my time at Columbia. All three were the result of a composer’s fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hanging in the Balance (1983) was composed for cellist Fred Sherry and premiered by him on a Group for Contemporary Music concert. The Furies (1984), for soprano and tape, was first sung by Christine Schadeberg in Merkin Hall on a Guild of Composers concert. Over The Edge (1986), for flute and tape, was written for my inspiring flute teacher, the composer, Harvey Sollberger (for whom Synchronisms No. 1 was composed). I premiered it myself in 1987 at Bates College. Over The Edge is published by McGinnis & Marx Music Publishers, and they have graciously allowed the inclusion of the first page of the score in this edition.

Within a few years of graduating from Columbia in 1985, the cello piece was making the rounds and receiving quite a few performances. Fast Forward (1988) was commissioned by Amy Knoles of the California EAR Unit after she heard band-mate Erika Duke Kirkpatrick play Hanging in the Balance.

Among the other works that post-date my years at Columbia, several came about directly through the efforts made on my behalf by composer James Dashow in Italy. Jim arranged for a commission by Nuova Consonanza in 1994 that led to Out of Joint (1994). He introduced me to bass clarinetist Guido Arbonelli for whom I composed In a Manner of Speaking (2000), harpist Lucia Bova leading to What is Danced... (and what is not) (2002), and violist David Bursack whose request resulted in The Fundamental Object (2004).

Of the remaining works, two were also commissions, for which I am grateful. Having conducted Suspicious Motives (1999) numerous times with the California EAR Unit, pianist Vicki Ray commissioned Due (Cinta)mani (2001) for her Piano Spheres recital in Los Angeles. Upon hearing Out of Joint in 1995, electric guitarist, Tim Brady requested that I write something similar for him. I initially protested, thinking that electric guitar would be redundant with the fixed sounds. I was wrong and I am grateful for the effort he spent to convince me. The result was ’Scuse Me (1998).

The two most recent pieces were written “on spec”. In my days playing jazz, I studied alto saxophone and knowing so many wonderful players in the Boston area, decided to create something for that community. The result, Are You Radioactive, Pal? (2010) takes its title from a John Berryman poem. I worked very closely with Philipp Stäudlin as I was writing and he has premiered and recorded the piece. Scuffle and Snap (2010) has now been performed by a number of wonderful violinist friends and was recorded by Mari Kimura and by Dan Stepner.

My original idea for this book was that it should include only pieces for soloist plus fixed media. In the end though, I have decided to add a second volume to include six pieces scored for small forces and fixed media. While Fast Forward (1988) was initially conceived as a work for one percussionist, it was reconfigured as a duo after the first draft in order to make it more practical. Several percussionists have expressed an interest in a solo version which may well come to be someday. Trois Espaces du Son (2003) is for piano and percussion, commissioned by husband and wife team Thierry Miroglio and Ancuza Aprodu. Suspicious Motives (1999) was written at the request of Richard Pittman for

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Boston Musica Viva’s concert season celebrating the new millennium. I’m Just Sayin’ (2012) was requested by my colleagues, the Lydian String Quartet in honor of the inauguration of Brandeis President Fred Lawrence. The most recent piece in this collection, Shatter and Glide (2013) was commissioned by the Network for New Music, Philadelphia for their Third Space Festival. The oldest piece ends the book, Verses and Fragments (1979) for horn, percussion and tape was one of my first pieces using electronics and was premiered on a concert of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, curated by Vladimir Ussachevsky and broadcast by Ilhan Mimaroglu on WBAI radio. The piece is dedicated to my sister, hornist Suzanne Chasalow and our dear friend, hornist Bruno Schneider. It was premiered by David Wakefield, horn and Thad Wheeler, percussion.

Most of the pieces in this book appear on CD and where this is the case, the information is noted on the program notes page of each score. Those not readily available on CD may be found in performances posted online.