jwilzewske: frequency modulation

I s it possible to approach music in silent [wordless] comprehension, without falling prey to human psychological, intuitive, irrational, spontaneous influences—i.e., those forms of comprehension engendered by words, text, speaking?”
— Pierluigi Billone.

P ierluigi Billone’s aleatoric work reminds me a little of Peter Eötvös’s and Ensemble Modern’s performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s ‘Schwankungen am Rand’ [Fluctuations at the edge]. Pierluigi had in fact spent some time studying with Helmut some years ago...

A final angst-ridden attempt to strike water out of the stone of the dead monument known as [modernist] ‘music’.”
— Helmut Lachenmann, commenting on the aims of new music.

P lumbing the outer-limits of timbral space with each instrument. Sudden, explosive dynamics changes. Overblowing, harmonic-clipping and distortion of bass-clarinet reeds... wonderful, naturalistic colors. The harmonic palette is maybe a little like the songs of whales singing to each other, whales’ courting rituals...

T he title of the work, ‘1+1=1’, is a quotation from an Andrey Tarkovskij film which points to the special relation between the two instruments [achieving a transcendent union by their playing together]... One drop plus another drop makes one larger drop, not two.”
— Petra Stump & Heinz-Peter Linshalm.

I t is impossible to know whether it is a ‘proper’ language with subjects, predicates, etc. But it has harmonic and lyrical and rhythmic features that (a) invite interest, (b) reward whatever interest and patience are sent its way, and (c) propel the interested listener to various kinds of meditation.

T he variations that become part of instrumental technique through each individual discovery are traces—some clearer than others—of the human and cultural experiences that produced them and led to them. And they ‘vibrate’ in the act of listening—as particularity, identity, origin. They are sonic ‘layers’—living matter, with an intelligence of its own...”
— Pierluigi Billone.

L ooking at some of his scores, I wonder whether Billone is striving to be an archtypically ‘difficult’ composer. But electroacoustic digital material or specially-designed analog instruments or ‘found’ instruments, including rumbling and crumpling metal, play no role in this 70-minute composition. And the graphical/aleatoric score annotations are reasonably straight-forward, compared, say, to Stockhausen or Xenakis.

S onic materials and structure. Think like a whale and use what’s at hand. Reed, glottis, keys smacking against clarinet-body tone-holes, lungs. From time to time, things grind to a halt while Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm slowly and punctuatedly smash hell out of their two bass clarinets’ keys). Alternately, there are moments where subtle, whispered tones only hint at the note that would sound were more air flowing past the expectant reed. Intertwining of pitch-bent/quarter-tone and microtonal passages by Stump and Linshalm are beautiful and wonderfully discursive, on account of the excellent recording and engineering of this disc. The beat-frequencies from the microtonal interferences between the two parts add extra depth to the music—a feature that’s accentuated by the spatial specifications that Billone designed for the piece to be performed.

T he two performers are positioned as far apart as possible (about 15 meters) while still permitting mutual acoustic influence and line-of-sight gesture. Each soul is spatially isolated... The interior of the studio is then “like the interior of a big instrument,” says Billone. No synthesizers or exotic digital sound-processing software were used in the recording/engineering of this CD. So, except for the technically and aesthetically excellent miking and mixing by Alfred Reiter at Klangforum Wien, it is almost an anti-technological work. Marine mammal-esque.

T he flow of energy and merging of performer and instrument... One finds archaic [pre-historical, paleological] images taking form. It seems as if they were musical incantations intended to counteract the commodifiability of which the world of ‘administrated listening’ rests.”
— CD liner notes, ‘1+1=1’.

B esides Pierluigi Billone and the ‘1+1=1’ piece, other composers including Beat Furrer, Bernhard Gander, Bernhard Gal, Erin Gee, Christoph Herndler, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, and Judit Varga have dedicated pieces to Stump and Linshalm. The diversity of Petra’s and Heinz-Peter’s playing and repertoire is really remarkable.

Heinz-Peter & Petra, photo (c) Jean-François Charles

Duo Stump-Linshalm’s upcoming performances are listed here.

P etra and Heinz-Peter reside (as is poetically fitting considering the rocky etymology of their given names) in Berg 31, Götzis, Austria—in the beautiful Alps foothills south of the Bodensee, between Zurich and Innsbruck. The photo gallery on their website shows images from a number of mountainous places they have trekked. Pierluigi is currently Gastdozent für Komposition at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, having just completed a guest professorship in Graz. (Envious, I think I would like to adjust some life-priorities to be more like Pierluigi’s or like Petra’s and Heinz-Peter’s?)

[50-sec clip, Duo Stump-Linshalm, Pierluigi Billone, ‘1+1=1’, track2, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Duo Stump-Linshalm, Pierluigi Billone, ‘1+1=1’, track8, 1.6MB MP3]

T hey [Petra and Heinz-Peter] elicit the most unusual sounds from their instruments. These range from ethereal arabesques to enraged shrieking...”
— Ursula Strubinsky.

J esus said, ‘I have cast fire upon the world and, see, I am guarding it until it blazes.’ ”
— Gospel of Thomas, v. 10, quoted by Eve Beglarian, ‘Until It Blazes’.

I am (you are) the light that shines over all things. I am (you are) everywhere. From me (you) all came forth, and to me (you) all return. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there. Tend a sick sheep, and you will find me there.”
— Gospel of Thomas, v. 77.

E very atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
— Walt Whitman, ‘Leaves of Grass’.

L istening for the magic, as if our lives depended on it.”
— Eve Beglarian, quoted in Hinkle, p. 148.

T he music and writings of Eve Beglarian are terse, capable of having radical impact for those who are amenable to attending to them.

[50-sec clip, Eve Beglarian, ‘Until It Blazes’, Segment 1, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Eve Beglarian, ‘Until It Blazes’, Segment 2, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Eve Beglarian, Messiah Remix, ‘Be/Hold’, Segment 1, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Eve Beglarian, Messiah Remix, ‘Be/Hold’, Segment 2, 1.6MB MP3]

E ve’s iconoclastic tendencies are endearing. Only phonies/fogies would consider them seriously threatening. And her compositional methods are wonderfully diverse—pushing envelopes that we didn’t know were there. I listen to some of the synth ‘chirps’ and tone-pips in several of her pieces...

[50-sec clip, Ray Lynch, Deep Breakfast, ‘Tiny Geometries’, 1.6MB MP3]

E ve’s use of ambient chirps and tone-pips is not like, say, Ray Lynch’s use of them. Many communication sounds, including those of primates such as New World monkey twitter calls, contain frequency-modulated (FM) swept-spectrum signals or tone-pips. Others have rhythmic pulses that are FM swept click-trains. Complex natural sounds (e.g., vocalizations or speech) can be characterized by specific spectro-temporal patterns the components of which change in both frequency (FM) and amplitude (AM).

B ut the timing and properties of Eve’s tone-pips are measurably, statistically different from Lynch’s—Eve’s are more like natural primates and birds—and therein lies, I think, a source of the radical, profound effects that Eve’s compositions have. She is ‘wired’ into a part of our innate neurophysiology—a part that is engaged in our reflexively apprehending patterns in our surroundings, and disambiguating and prioritizing the profusion of patterns. Upon a first hearing Eve’s music confronts us with and makes us aware of details of our own inner workings that we may not have known existed; upon subsequent hearings, we revisit what we learned about those details, and reflect upon what it means and how it matters.

I t’s interesting to find what the probability density function and statistical kurtosis of a music signal are, as a means to figure out why the music works or has the effects on us that it does. In a mixture of a Gaussian signal with a sub-Gaussian signal, the Gaussian signal will be significantly attenuated or suppressed, in terms of the pulse-train intensity and auditory evoked potentials in the brain [see links below].

T he probability densities of Beglarian’s music that I’ve examined with my signal-processing set-up tend to be super-Gaussian (kurtosis > 3.0). This generally occurs because there is a substantial amount of low-amplitude time in her compositions (tracks). By concentrating the energy near zero during these times, the probability density function (PD) becomes more peaked, and therefore becomes more super-Gaussian.

Super-Gaussian passage, Eve Beglarian, ‘Until It Blazes’

I f the raw, super-Gaussian music signals are admixed with others, they will have less ‘gain’ (in human auditory processing) than, say, a competing sub-Gaussian signal. One might want, therefore, to alter the probability density function of the music signals from super-Gaussian to sub-Gaussian. A frequency-modulated (FM) signal is always sub-Gaussian.

A n FM signal, f_c(t), is mathematically defined by the function [see Dunlop & Smith]:

where A is the carrier-frequency amplitude, ω_c is the carrier frequency, f_m(t) is the modulating signal, and B is proportional to the modulation depth. This equation shows that the amplitude of the carrier never is changed, but the frequency varies according to the modulation signal. As a result, the probability density function is exactly the same as the probability density function of the carrier itself:

T his particular probability density function is the probability density function of a sinusoidal, and has a kurtosis of 1.5 (or an excess kurtosis of -1.5).

B ut there is no ‘law’ that says that the carrier has to be of a single pitch or frequency, that it has to be sinusoidal. Likewise, there is no ‘law’ that says that the carrier has to be many orders of magnitude different in frequency from the modulating signal. In FM radio it is true that the frequencies in the audio signal are many tens of thousands of times lower than the FM radio carrier frequency, but that is because of the radio broadcast use-case, which is not applicable in Eve’s musical-soundscape use-case.

S o all signals, whether super-Gaussian, Gaussian, or sub-Gaussian, are necessarily, obligatorily converted to a sub-Gaussian signal if they are frequency-modulated—and that is part of the physics that Eve’s compositions take advantage of, to achieve the effects and impact that they do. Gaussian and super-Gaussian signals do not give way to themes that are conveyed by sub-Gaussian signals; they are ‘taken over’ by the sub-Gaussians. Quasi-vivisectionist/neuroanatomist, Eve takes us apart: her pieces are fascinating lessons, revealing to us how we work, deep down inside. Different interpretation of chamber music as ‘intimacy’.

I n ‘Until It Blazes’, the latter part of the piece is overwhelmed by a high-frequency noise spectrum that, essentially, becomes an FM ‘carrier’ for the other musical signals with which it’s admixed and which it takes over. It’s not that the other signals are buried; no, the amplitudes stay the same. Rather, the admixture/modulation causes new processing by our hearing and auditory cortex—processing by which are able to detect and respond to FM acoustic signals. The musical result—and the gnostic text that inspired it—compel us to reprioritize what we believe, what we believe we know; re-think the evidence that is the basis for our knowing... This isn’t merely ‘edginess’ or gratuitous excitement. It’s politically interventional, potentially life-changing—features that are characteristic of Eve’s work. It’s an invitation to a self-styled, radically self-examining intimate community.

T he ‘gnostic’ gospels reference the Greek word ‘gnosis’, meaning ‘knowledge’. Arguably, Gnostic philosophy—finding answers to spiritual questions within oneself, without reliance on a church or priests; individuals learning to free themselves from the material world by way of meditation and enlightenment—did begin in pre-Christian times; either that, or it was a Jewish reaction to Judaism reacting to early Christianity. Some introductory comments about the apocrypha, gnostic Gospel of Thomas and the 114 ‘sayings’ it contains are here. A fine provocation for meditation, I think, on the occasion of Easter.

E ve started out as an Uptowner with a Princeton-Columbia education, but then jumped ship and began composing music her professors couldn’t countenance. Her approach to musical sources is omnivorous. She’s made collages of disco music, updated the 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut, made theater pieces out of Kurt Schwitters’ nonsensical ‘Ur-Sonata’, and quoted Gregorian chants along with the sounds of a couple having orgasms. One of her best pieces is ‘No Man’s Land’, a gritty poem to New York whose thoughtful text is accompanied by sampled sounds as grating as the city itself. Beglarian is an amazingly high-tech sampling artist, and much of her music—even orchestra pieces like ‘FlamingO’—uses brilliantly manipulated prerecorded noises.”
— Kyle Gann.

jwilzewske

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Pre-verbal Music: Duo Stump-Linshalm’s Recording of Pierluigi Billone's 1+1=1

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Beglarian’s Chamber Music: Magic through Risk-Sharing, Intimacy through Obligate FM