The Cup. Flyer's fans now have their eyes fixed on this legendary sports trophy. We were teased by dreams of temporary ownership of this Hockey Holy Grail last June. We had those dreams surgically ripped from our guts by a soft, bad angle goal allowed by the now banished re-tread Michael Leighton in Game 6 OT last year in the Finals. After last evening's trouncing of the Sabres, Flyers faithful are feeling the visceral stir of renewed Cup coveting. While we await the outcome of tonight's games and the identity of our opponent for the next round, we look at the only trophy in North American Pro sports that is not newly produced each season: The Stanley Cup.
The Stanley Cup was originally donated in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada.Lord Stanley ahd been appointed by Queen Victoria and he became a big-time hockey fan. The Cup eventually became the Championship Trophy for the NHL in 1926. The Cup itself was made in Sheffield, England and cost about $48.67. This bit of bill of sale trivia was shown on the big screen at the Flyer's game this Friday when my son and I were in attendance. Unlike other trophies, the Stanley Cup has engaved names of the players,coaches and management of each winning team. As a resuly of this yearly addition of data, it has been necessary over the years to add "rings" to the cup. This piece of hardware has not resided in the Quaker City since 1975. We came close in 1987 and 1997,and again last year. The NHL playoffs are long, arduous and entertaining. For now, a team in pursuit can only focus on the next team and the next best-of-seven.
O ihr Zärtlichen, tretet zuweilen in den Atem, der euch nicht meint, laßt ihn an eueren Wangen sich teilen, hinter euch zittert er, wieder vereint.
O ihr Seligen, O ihr Heilen, die ihr der Anfang der Herzen scheint. Bogen der Pfeile und Ziele von Pfeilen, ewiger glänzt euer Lächeln verweint.
Fürchtet euch nicht zu leiden, die Schwere, gebt sie zurück an der Erde Gewicht; schwer sind die Berge, schwer sind die Meere.
Selbst die als Kinder ihr pflanztet, die Bäume, wurden zu schwer längst ; ihr trüget sie nicht. Aber die Lüfte ... aber die Räume ...
[O you Tender Ones, you will walk, persisting Through the cold breath that was not breathed for your sake, Your heedless cheeks oblivious to its trembling. Blowing as it does, the wind coalesces behind you after you've passed, without trace.
O Blessed Ones, healthy and whole though you be now, Who seem to be enveloped and self-sufficient, the epitome of life and the heart's beginning. Bows are there for each conceivable arrow and a target for all arrows: Logical correlates of the perpetual brilliance of your pulsatile smile.
Fear not the pain and sorrow and stillness that will inevitably come, Consign all of that back to the heavy Earth who knows good and well what to do with it: Heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
Even as a child, you planted these trees: Already they are awfully heavy, beyond belief really. Despite this persists the pervasive space ... the ubiquitous breezes ...]” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, VI.
P eter Lieberson died of sepsis, a complication of his lymphoma and treatment for lymphoma last Saturday, at age 64. Lieberson gratified our ears not only with composerly talent but with a humor and warm personality that do not require atmospheric ‘soft-focus’ photos like the one above to convey the inner gentleness.
P eter’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, died of breast cancer at age 52, in 2006. She was a mezzo-soprano, known for her dramatic power and raw virtuosity as well as her artistry performing Baroque era and new compositions. Her career path to becoming a singer was unconventional. Formerly a professional violist, Lieberson changed her full-time focus to singing when she was around 30 (1985 and beyond). As violist she played in the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music in Boston under conductor Craig Smith and later sang in the chorus. For a time, she was also principal viola in Berkeley Symphony.
I n re-listening to recordings I have of Peter’s later compositions, Lorraine’s influence on Peter’s soul and heart becomes evident… how she provided him with insights and renewal. This is an undeniable element in Peter’s writing after 1997. Lorraine’s influence is diaphoric, trans-illuminating—an emblem of spirit-in-matter. Must be why he fell in love with her… good reason why anyone would fall in love with anyone.
[50-sec clip, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson & Peter Serkin, Peter Lieberson, ‘Rilke Songs’, ‘O, ihr Zärtlichen’, 1.6MB MP3]
L ieberson was expert at syllabic setting and pitch repetition: the vocal part centers on particular notes for considerable proportions of passages. These songs are predominantly recitative. They have suspended accompaniment and rubato manifestations of the singing part.
W hen I was growing up, my mother, whose first language was German, would often quote lines from Rilke. I have been drawn to his poetry ever since. Rilke evokes feelings, states of being that are at the edge of awareness, mysterious but close to the heart. One can’t always understand exactly what he means. I believe this is a deliberate elusiveness in order to provoke our intuition. The Rilke Songs were written for my wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. I think of them as love songs even though the poems themselves are not overtly about love. They are about being childlike and open in ‘O ihr Zärtlichen’; in ‘Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht!,’ they are about the breath being a complete exchange between our own essence and the universe. They are about how the breath seems to go out into space like our wandering son; the mysterious way in which we might transform ourselves: ‘If drinking is bitter, turn yourself into wine’ (‘Stiller Freund’). To me these Rilkean insights are a gift of love..” — Peter Lieberson, program notes.
K atherine Kelton maintains that Peter Lieberson “learned about the complexity of the human voice and the multitude of intricacies of which it is capable” through Lorraine. “Much as Robert Schumann’s love for Clara Wieck inspired him to compose in a genre he had previously disregarded,” so too Lorraine propelled Peter in directions that were, up to then, unfamiliar.
M aybe this is so; maybe a ‘push’ theory is right.
B ut it is also possible (and, I think, more likely) that it was a matter of ‘pull’, of natural attraction. In fact, it is hardly plausible that the diverse nuances of the voice could have been novel for Peter in 1997. If anything, his many years leading Shambhala sessions led him to develop acute sensitivity to myriad manifestations of ego/self and selflessness. And there was Lorraine, an eager collaborator, able to animate a composition so as to lead to discoveries for both, on the part of both.
L orraine’s performances of Peter’s compositions evoke what Mircea Eliade once called ‘dialectique du sacre’ and ‘hierophanies’. Sacred portrayal is realized as an individual creative act—one that embodies both spiritual insight and sensual perception. The relationship ceases to be merely ‘of-the-world’. It achieves transcendence, a dimension of sacredness. That, I believe, is what we hear in these wonderful recordings. The feeling conveyed is one of consummate ‘hereness’, ‘thisness’—a kind of presence, of living entirely in the present.
I think of my Rilke Songs as love songs even though they are not overtly about love. They are, for example, about being child-like and open, as in “O ihr Zärtlichen;” about the breath being a complete exchange of our own essence with the universe in “Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht;” about the mysterious ways in which we might transform ourselves in “Stiller Freund” . . . To me, these Rilkean insights are gifts of love.” — Peter Lieberson, program notes to ‘Rilke Songs’.
T he act of singing... when my voice is feeling free and soaring... it is a wonderful, healing experience.” — Lorraine Hunt, interview with Terry Gross, NPR, 1996.
T he spelling sgra bla (‘la of sound’) found in the ancient texts as a matter of fact is based on a very deep principle characteristic of the most authentic Bön tradition. Sound, albeit not visible, can be perceived through the sense of hearing and used as a means of communication, and is in fact linked to the cha (the individual’s positive force, the base of prosperity), wang tang (ascendancy-capacity), and all the other aspects of a person’s energy, aspects that are directly related with the protective deities and entities that every person has from birth. Moreover, sound is considered the foremost connection between the individual himself and his la.” — Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Drung De’u and Bön, translated by Adriano Clemente, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1995, p. 61.
T o me, Peter Lieberson’s later compositions embody Shambhala texts that reveal and test our relationship to the “material world” and our sense perceptions. They teach the practice of enriching presence—the ability to instantly envision the inner wealth within oneself.
T o compose ‘Neruda Songs’, I responded to the words and to the emotional tone of the poem. I heard notes when I read the words. Generally I like the tactile feeling, the sensual feeling of being at the piano, so I compose there. I listen very, very carefully to the words, and the harmony is very intuitive. The great period of jazz, that’s how I learned harmony, Bill Evans and Miles Davis. That was my ear training. Orchestrations come easily to me, and I often hear which instrument should be playing. It’s constant responsiveness; it’s somewhere between improvising and strategizing.” — Peter Lieberson, interview with Pierre Ruhe, 10-JUN-2010.
T here is, to me, a cinematic quality to the songs—as though the composer were a cameraman.
C amera placement distinctly influences our perception of the world that’s portrayed and the characters in it. Shooting down at a seated character can diminish her presence and stature; it may make her seem submissive or even supplicative. Filming up at a character provides a sense of the figure’s power and command. By contrast, in Rilke Songs it is as if Peter Lieberson’s ‘camera’ is placed at eye-level, making the perspective like what we would see while sitting across from Lorraine having a conversation. The character isn’t ‘owned’ by the camera/cameraperson nor is she sensationalized by it.
C ombien qu'a nous soit cause le Soleil Que toute chose est tresclerement veue: Ce neantmoins pour trop arrester l'œil En sa splendeur lon pert soubdain la veue. Mon ame ainsi de son objiect pourueue De tous mes sens me rend abandonné, Comme si lors en moy tout estonné Semeles fust en presence rauie De son Amant de fouldre enuironné Qui luy ostast par ses esclaires la vie.
[Much as the Sun causes each thing To lie so clearly before our eyes: To linger too long in its splendor Is to be suddenly made blind. My soul and its object Now abandoned by all my senses, As if, within me, and to my great surprise Semele were ravished in my presence By her Lover [Zeus] who, with his thunderbolts, Snatched her life in a flash of light.]” — Maurice Scève, Délie, v.443.
T here is an interview that Lorraine did with NPR’s Terry Gross back in 1996, in which Lorraine confides her fascination with identity-bending, gender-bending roles—the journeys of self-discovery and transcendence that are made possible through these. Beyond angle, camera placement also affects the view that we have onto the action and the resultant meaning we can derive from a shot. On the surface, the Rilke Songs setting of several Rilke poems celebrate the then-undersung life and burgeoning talent of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. That her belated decampment from viola to singing was what vaulted her to international fame was an oddity: here was the soul and and the propensities of a string player inhabiting an operatic singer’s body.
P eter leveraged Lorraine’s enthusiasm for transcendent experiences to honor her. In Rilke Songs, it is as though composer Peter were a filmmaker choosing to shoot in a long profile ‘take’. The placement of the voice-leading/camera here and the accompaniment there; the choice to let the ‘shot’ play out as it does; these reveal the nuanced components, not only of composition but of microphone placement and physicality that Lorraine so deftly crafted in the use of her vocal instrument. No other ‘camera’ position and mic position could have permitted such insight into her craft, nor into the craft of the composer who created this vehicle for shared expression.
E very 24-hour day is a tremendous gift to us. So we all should learn to live in a way that makes joy and happiness possible. The first miracle of mindfulness is our true presence—being here, present, totally alive. If you are really here, the other will also be here. Loving? It is recognizing the presence of the other with your love... Dear One, I am here for you... A human tendency is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement—the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.” — Thich Nhat Hanh.
N o atmospherics or sentimentality in this long ‘take’. Her delivery is straightforward and expository, articulated calmly and directly to the listener. Knowing as we do that these performances were sung—the compositions were composed—when Lorraine was already afflicted by breast cancer, the récits produce a kind of uncanniness; produce narrative convergences between Peter and Lorraine; they embody a tantric, elliptical concentration; they are an Unheimlichkeit, a Verklärung, eine Vorahnung.
T hese wonderful specimens of humankind will be deeply missed.
Heraldry, and hoopla. There are many examples of Crests or Coats of Arms floating about in our daily lives: Teams we like, Family symbols and Organizations to which we belong or lend our allegiance. Coats of Arms date back to the late 11th and early 12th century and were used on the Mideaval battlefield to distinguish one's allies from one's enemies. Later, these symbols were used to show other organizations including Civic and Ecclesiastical groups and continue to this day in our own Great Seal of the U.S. and the Sports teams we follow and the Universities we attend. Some of the examples displayed here represent things from my orbit. For instance, the Coat of Arms with the chest in the main field is of my Mother's maiden name. The purple and yellow example is from a certain Greek organization of which I am quite fond. Then we have some Sporting elements such as the Jockey Colors crest representing the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup and the Symbol for the Indy 500 (which is coming up in just a few weeks and is very close in orbital range) and West Ham United, my favorite "football" team from the English Premier League. The lacrosse crest is the local team I coach for and for whom my son plays attack. Then we have examples of one fan expressing his affinity for his team by having it permanently etched in his epidermis in ink with a needle. Perhaps this is too far? On balance, we have the lovely Kate Perry merely wearing the crest of "the Mighty Hammers" in a less permanent but more aesthetically pleasing medium. Above that we have the crest I designed for my firm...which is a great conversation piece and gets uniformly positive feedback. Whether it is T-Shirts or tattoos,flags or signet rings, these 800 year old contrivances are still ubiquitous and interesting....but not tattooing anything thank you.
P.S. Do not get me started on the lame psuedo-crests that Ralph plasters all over anything that ain't moving...such poseur patches do not enter into this discourse.
We did not get to attend this race but some friends did. They reported fairly nasty weather but an exciting main event. Private Attack, Ridden by Blythe Miller Davies, won the $30,000.00 Grand National in 6 min. 39 seconds. Blythe had won this race back in 1991...so it was a long time between victories for her at this venue. I have seen Blythe race numerous times at Radnor and she is a damn fine steeplechase jockey. Congratulations to her and her team on a fine win. Parenthetically, what can we say about the choice of pants for the two "gents" pictured above? On a wet, windy and raw day are these really the pants you pull from the closet?....a bit too much "oooh look at me I'm a zany Prep-guy" for true Steeplechase afficiandos.
This weekend began with my son and I going to game 5 of the Flyers/Sabres hockey play-off game. The game got off to an ugly start with 2 soft goals allowed by Brian Boucher. Amazingly, the Flyers battled back to tie the score, only to get beaten in overtime. The look of elation on my son's face in the 3rd period when Danny Briere scored the tying goal was wonderful...the look of dejection when the Sabres scored in overtime was heartbraking. We had a great time regardless...and we were ready to camp out in front of the 42 inch HD Samsung for Easter Sunday's game. Today's game also looked bleak from the start. However, once again the Flyers showed some serious testes and fought back to tie the game at 4-4. The Easter ham in the oven and the scalloped potatoes and the asparagus....they all had to wait for another white knuckle round of Overtime hockey. When Lieno punched the puck past Miller, the sprawling Sabre net-minder, my son and I both jumped up and screamed in triumph. The Flyers won and we'll be ready for an exciting game 7. For this Sportsman and his son, there really is nothing more exciting in the realm of spectating than play-off hockey. The action is intense and the end to end play is a completely different thing than we see during the regular season. GO FLYERS!!
Busy day/week here in the trenches of Law Practice and Boxing Management in the Quaker City. It dawned on me that vacation is still 3 1/2 months away. I would certainly like to be on my boat on Upper Saranac Lake enjoying sunset cocktails right about now. Too bad this photo will have to suffice. My wife and 2 daughters are in Vero Beach Fla. visiting my Mother-in-Law for their Spring Break. My Son opted to stay home with me due to Lacrosse practice and the off chance that I would take him to a Flyer's Playoff game. His gamble cashed in as he and I are attending game 5 of the now ugly Flyers v. Sabres series tomorrow night. Earlier in the week we went to Germantown Cricket and played several games of Squash and had dinner. That was a great Father-Son evening! For now imagining the waters of Upper Saranac lapping against the hull,the sharp quinine and lime taste of Meyers's Rum and Tonic and the contrast of crisp white canvas shorts against my Wife's legs which have been tanned by the Adirondack Sun.
A really bad call by Officials in tonite's Flyer's game. Kaleta is a known goon and was running at Richards...you be the judge. Here is what fellow Flyers had to say: Versteeg:I think (Richards) was just protecting himself becse you never know what Patrick Kaleta is capable of," Kris Versteeg(notes) said. "He is a dangerous player out there when it comes down to it. You never know if he's going to run you from behind or if he's going to hit you without the puck. Richie was just protecting himself, it's unfortunate that he had to go to the box for that long."
"It look like he (Richards) was getting run," Peter Laviolette said. "He's got his arm up. I don't think that's the intention of the five-minute (call). It was difficult to see. I think he just got his arm up and there was a collision along the boards. But I didn't see any intent in there."
The crests, or logos, of my Alma Mater. Several years ago the Administration decided to change the crest to the stylized version with the heart and the book and no words...esentially "modernizing" the look of the symbol. This change was made despite considerable Alumni criticism and even a large amount of resistance from the students. I can only imagine the meetings where some marketing wanker sold a bill of goods to the President and others, using buzzwords like "branding" and "engagement" and "target prospects" and "motivation"...all tawaddle in my estimation as relates to an original University Seal designed and used since 1866. After all, is not a University of Lehigh's caliber and reputation trading on tradition and history? Perhaps the Administration was capitualting to a visceral reaction to childish criticism of the original seal since it contains the word "Homo." I felt the change was stupid and wrote a lengthy letter to the President in opposition. In my opinion, the new logo sucks. The University engaged in further wholesale change when in 1995 they changed the Sports Mascot from "Engineers" to the "Mountain Hawk." Alumni and students once again rebeled against this breach of tradition. We speculated this was a concession to the Business and Liberal Arts programs who felt unfairly pigeon-holed by the reference to Lehigh's long standing (and cherished) reputation as a top flight engineering school...one of the Nation's best. Forget that the Non-engineering discilpines have also enjoyed a fine reputation, the Administration went ahead with another change. There is no such thing as a "Mountain Hawk" per se, (Lehigh is on a Mountain and there are hawks around)....but that did not stop them. Would Yale lead out a new mascot...no more bulldog...but a penguin perhaps? What would the retired naval officers think if instead of a goat, a Llama was brought onto the field at the Army-Navy game? You get the point. As a loyal and contributing Alumni I never liked these changes and could only think: "If it ain't broke don't fix it." These changes crystalized somewhat as my daughter awaits word from the "wait-list" as to whether she will go there in the Fall. Actually, I believe her first choice lies elsewhere so it may become "academic" in any event.
I n my previous CMT post, I confided a genuine ‘worry’ about the perishability of computer and electroacoustic compositions. And people laugh at this.
N otwithstanding the half-jesting comment above that delights in the fact that computer/electroacoustic works may become unperformable due to technology change, and notwithstanding that some musical works are written deliberately to be topical/of-a-time/perishable. They do not aspire to 200-year or 500-year relevance. Further notwithstanding that some composers’ goal is such prolific runtime indirection and aleatorics that there is no possibility of ‘rehearsals’ in the conventional sense, only performance—and ad hoc ‘thrownness’. Notwithstanding the fact that ‘you-shoulda-been-there!’ installation art and ‘one-time happenings’ may be a legitimate aim for some.
N otwithstanding these things, it is sad that works’ performance life ends needlessly, prematurely. Sad when all that is left of them is a recording or two, and no one will ever again hear them performed ‘live’, interpreted by different performers and realized in different settings than the ones on the recordings. Sad unless the expressive intent is to make an object-lesson of senseless carnage, waste, loss.
S orry, but a major facet of the hideous perishability of present-day computer music has to do with the fact that most musicians and composers do not have—nor do they have much desire to acquire—adequate expertise in engineering and fluency in refactoring code. On the one hand they will spend decades mastering multiple instruments and acquiring skill in orchestration, but on the other hand they will not spend a moment acquiring or maintaining skills in engineering that are needed to support preserving their achievements as computer musicians and composers. Boggles my mind.
S o what kinds of software tools and environments, if any, might be adequate for composer/users who lack technical knowledge in programming and software engineering, to enable their works to be performable ‘live’ 20 or more years from now, on different hardware and software than they were composed on? Or, given that computer and electroacoustic compositions involve multiple, complex, heterogeneous embedded (pervasive, ubiquitous) and parallel computing systems, is it even realistic to think that a ready-made end-user integrated development environment (IDE) is even feasible to create—one that would effectively immunize such musicians and their compositions against the ravages of time and technology obsolescence?
M y answer, as one who has lived for 25+ years as a professional software developer in a U.S. health informatics firm whose current-generation of applications comprise more than 37 million lines of sourcecode, is “I do not think so.” I do not think that any tool can comprehensively automate the porting and refactoring, now or ever.
I nstead, I believe that composers who want their works to remain performed and performable will either (a) have to acquire some skills of a code-refactoring engineer and suck it up and spend a modest part of their creative hours doing actual refactoring work, or (b) outsource those refactoring tasks to service contractors who do have those skills.
I n the (b) case, the composer needs to be knowledgeable enough about refactoring to be able to perform quality-assurance checks, to see that the contractor has done the job right, and to be sure that the new version does accurately reproduce the aesthetic choices of the original. Regression testing!
T he “Oh, yes, it [obsolescence, no refactoring, perishing] is wonderful!” quip on the iIRCAM twitter feed (jpeg above) [backhandedly?] feeds a kind of ego-centrism and sensation-mongering. I would love to think it’s harmless snark, a carefree “Here today, gone tomorrow, fine by me!” answer. Probably, that’s all that it is.
B ut the reality is, there’s a lot of remarkable, beautiful music—the result of countless hours of effort and musicianly skill—that today is being allowed to go headlong toward oblivion, all because nobody cares enough to engineer it in such a way as to prevent that. The book links below provide some useful sources that can guide you—that can enable you to learn how to do refactoring of your own compositions to future performance platforms, or to hire somebody else to do this.
Y es, some composers, by their own choosing, will simply decline to preserve their work, or preserve it only temporarily. Sort of like Damian Hirst and his infamous shark in formaldehyde or rotting copulating cow and bull. “Posterity? Not my problem! I won’t be alive then!” That’s fine. Being a Damian Hirst is not a disgrace. Transience is even an enviable fate. I like the idea of cremation, for example. I understand the wish to become atoms, dust.
B ut if you don’t mean to be a Damian Hirst, though, then implementing your version-to-version ‘uplifts’ changes without having to manually rewrite each and every data structure and interface design requires support by another goal: Clean separation and ‘pluggable’ pattern-based interfacing. If one has a synthesis algorithm that plays a particular soundfile or patch in a certain way and with certain timing and through certain channels, then a refactoring should allow that soundfile or patch to be accurately and consistently rendered in the new configuration, through the same or equivalent channels and with the same or indistinguishably different timing and processing, without having to manually reverse-engineer and manually specify each and every detail on the new config.
A ll of this requires an ontology for mapping synonymy of synths and waveform samples and libraries and channels/layers (and modules fan-ins and fan-outs topology, and inter-platform clock timedivision-resultion, and inter-platform sampling-freq and bit-depth skew, and EQ and reverb and other processing idioms, frequencies and pitch-bends, vocoder and compander FX, attack/decay envelopes, and timing, etc.) on different configs…
M ight be done in OWL/RDF or other environments, but such ontology does not yet exist so far as I am aware. Current-generation mapping paradigms range from 2D graphical ‘wire-patching’ of Max/MSP and Pd, to primitive source-code ‘text-based patching’ as in SuperCollider or ChucK, to WorldofWarcraft (and others’) OpenGLES patching of urMus elements, to Marsyas’s Qt4-based patching.
A s things are right now, you do in-line modding of your sourcecode, encapsulating the syntactic result of your work, but not the behaviors of your work. By contrast, true refactorings capture the behaviors and port those behaviors correctly to the new platform(s), not just the syntactic synonymy.
M any refactors that I do in Java/Eclipse are manual, really tedious. There is a refactor to convert an anonymous datatype to nested, and then nested to top-level, but there is nothing to convert a top-level type to anonymous (or nested). Lots of cut-and-paste required. Ultimately, you write your own source-modifying refactors. Chaining other refactors together into a script is only a start.
T ake Max/MSP, for example. Max is a data-flow procedural programming language in which programs are called “patches” and constructed by connecting “objects” within a “patcher”, the 2D Max/MSP GUI IDE. These objects are dynamically-linked libraries, each of which may receive input (through one or more “inlets”), generate output (through “outlets”), or both. Objects pass messages from their outlets to the inlets of connected objects.
M ax/MSP supports six basic atomic data types that can be transmitted as messages from object to object: int, float, list, symbol, bang, and signal (for MSP audio connections). A number of more complex data structures exist within the program for handling numeric arrays (table data), hash tables (coll data), and XML information (pattr data). An MSP data structure (buffer~) can hold digital audio information within main memory. In addition, the Jitter package adds a scalable, multi-dimensional data structure for handling large sets of numbers for storing video and other datasets (matrix data). Max/MSP is object-oriented and involves libraries of objects that are linked and scheduled and dispatched by a patcher executive. Most objects are non-graphical, consisting only of an object’s name and a number of arguments/attributes (in essence class properties) typed into an object box. Other objects are graphical, including sliders, number boxes, dials, table editors, pull-down menus, buttons, and other objects for running the program interactively. Max/MSP/Jitter comes with hundreds of these objects in the standard package; extensions to the program are written by composers and third-party developers as Max patchers (e.g., by encapsulating some of the functionality of a patcher into a sub-program that is itself a Max patch) or as objects written in C, C++, Java, or JavaScript. And those, too, require refactoring from time to time, just like your compositions do.
R efactoring can change program behavior. For example, a ‘PullUpMembers’ refactoring changes this Max DSP method that previously was encapsulated in and extends a class ... pulls it up into the class that was previously its parent: that is the example that the A-to-B refactoring above illustrates.
B ut PullUpMembers refactoring causes concurrency bugs when it mishandles the ‘synchronized’ method. When that happens, methods in the parent and child can be time-interleaved in arbitrary ways by the operating system, different from what was the case in the original composition. It messes up the sound. You don’t want that. You need to take special engineerly steps to prevent it. You can’t just ‘plug-and-play’.
M oveMethod refactor methods can cause deadlock and starvation, with mutex and lock conflicts. Other refactoring can give rise to other sorts of bugs. The up-shots of this are that (a) creating an automated-unsupervised refactoring engine for any of the current-generation computer composition IDEs and the scripts/patches they emit would be incredibly difficult and nobody has yet done it [because there’s not enough money in it to make a viable business-case], and (b) doing it auto/semi-supervised or, worse, manually is a tough slog, mitigated only by some considerable skill and fluency in the tools and coding, hence, my remark above that it ain’t gonna happen unless you become a decent engineer as well as musician.
A ny program feature without an automated test simply doesn’t exist.” — Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained, p. 57.
T he video game Half-Life 2 (HL2) uses realtime sound event calls to Pd as its sound OS. Game events are sent from HL2 to the Open Sound Control (OSC) engine, which triggers the sound by Pd via the network. Pd has the sample data and the specified sound-behaviors in-memory and can be instructed to modify those in realtime (perhaps by other game events and other processing of those) without recompiling. WorldofWarcraft uses Lua and Max/MSP.
T hink about it: if composers who are writing and maintaining video game scores across multiple years’ releases and across various gaming platforms do refactorings of their compositions out of economic necessity, why not you? Is your music any less deserving of future live performances than video game music?
W ould IRCAM or conservatories with computer music curricula please add some courseware by engineers who are knowledgeable about refactoring? Save the Music!
T he secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources [and efficiently refactor them in perpetuum].” — Albert Einstein, amateur violinist.
