Martin Stadtfeld: Inspired Runtime Indirection

T   he Busoni transcription is] absorbed in itself, moving round itself, decidedly turned away from the world... brooding; Beethoven-ish.”
  — Hugo Riemann.

A   lthough Bach set verses from Luther’s ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’ nine times, many of the same Advent themes run through all the settings. Subtle nuances and theological allusions point to various verses of the chorale text, and the cantatas remain a starting point for the interpretation of the organ works.”
  — Anne Leahy, in Zager, p. 95.

M artin Stadtfeld’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Klavierkonzert Nr. 1 g-Moll op. 25 with Sir Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at the Rheingau Festival was exceptional—a young man’s composition, performed with a young person’s sensibilities and energy. It simply sang!

B ut Stadtfeld’s 4’30” encore (Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s BWV 659 ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’) revealed a maturity and grasp of life’s setbacks and aporias: it was teleological, driving purposefully toward its goal(s) with pragmatism and propensity toward acceptance, yet with an open-heartedness/open-mindedness that still has room for hope.

S tadtfeld’s left-hand is quiet... ‘reticent’, as recommended in the performance notes in the original Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Busoni... enabling his melodic right-hand to have the terse prominence it requires. The tenuto and agogic accenting in the right-hand, in turn, conveys motives that are… pregnant.

T he expectancy was such that Stadtfeld impressed us that he himself was discovering things as he went, even though he has performed this prelude many, many times in the past... ‘sehr ausdrucksvoll mit vollem Anschlag.’ Many notes—the touch he applied to them—were, to me, like variable values in a software module that were resolved and bound at Stadtfeld’s pre-concert preparation—at ‘compile-time,’ so to say. But there were equally many that are only resolved on a moment-by-moment basis during performance (runtime). The balance between these lent a tremendous liveliness and interest and vibrancy to the performance of this beautiful Busoni transcription.

I t is, for me, analogous to the difference in software between a layered design with subroutines and an object-oriented design with event-handler methods. The terseness of the left-hand is such that Stadtfeld expresses not a human resoluteness but instead a process in Nature, something that is immutable, like mortality; not at all deterministic, but inevitable in the sense that human wishes and intentions cannot change the outcome.

I n software engineering terms, the Busoni-Bach left-hand module is a ‘wrapper’ and encapsulates the right-hand module. The left-hand ‘service’ owns a set of ‘objects’ with ‘handlers’ that share the same state. State is possible to preserve across invocations as the figures recur over the 3 pages of this transcription. It lends nicely to cooperation through message passing communication. Stadtfeld’s multiple levels of runtime indirection... reveal the extent and fate of our wishing and desiring.

E ach object has three parts: a component implementation, an export interface, and an import interface. Export and import can be modeled with runtime constructs specifically designed for component wrapping and interface adaptation, such as interception techniques for runtime resolution. The trills, for example, amount to handshake interfaces between right-hand and left-hand parts.

L iabilities of interpretations that entail generous amounts of runtime indirection include (1) variation-point management [adding and binding variants at a late moment in time implies extra work for managing and implementing variation points] and (2) predictability [a large amount of variability makes it virtually impossible to test all combinations during rehearsal]. But the merits of ‘romantic,’ liberal runtime indirection include danger, surprise, and excitement of the sort we were thrilled by on hearing Stadtfeld’s inspired performance of this Busoni-Bach ‘Nun komm’ Zugabe. A tiny encore that emotionally surpassed the gifts of the excellent, larger concerto that preceded it. Bravo!

• Martin Stadtfeld website
• Rheingau Musik Festival
• Stadtfeld M. Bach: Piano Concertos: No. 2. (Sony, 2011.)
• Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) transcription of J.S. Bach Orgelchoralvorspiel "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" BWV 659 (Come, Savior of the Gentiles) at Klavier-Noten.com
• Rösel P. Ferruccio Busoni: Klavierbearbeitungen Bach'scher Werke. (Berliner Klassic, 1994.)
• Vladimir Horowitz YouTube video of Busoni transcription of Bach BWV 659.
• Viktors Berstis YouTube video of Busoni transcription of Bach BWV 659.
• Brendel A. Ferruccio Busoni: Klavierbearbeitungen Bach'scher Werke. (Philips, 2006.)
• Lipatti D. Ferruccio Busoni: Klavierbearbeitungen Bach'scher Werke. (Regis, 2006.)
• Busoni F. J.S. Bach: Orgel-Choralvorspiele für Klavier, Heft 1. (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1898)
• Busoni F. J.S. Bach: Orgel-Choralvorspiele für Klavier, Heft 1. (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1898) at SheetMusicPlus.com
• Busoni F. J.S. Bach: Orgel-Choralvorspiele für Klavier page at IMSLP.org
• One More Level of Indirection at c2.com
• Cooper K, Torczon L. Engineering a Compiler. 2e. Morgan-Kaufmann, 2011.
• Goedicke M, et al. Design and implementation constructs for the development of flexible, component-oriented software architectures. In Proc 2nd Intl Symposium on Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering (GCSE’00), Erfurt, Germany, OCT-2000.
• Lienhard A. Dynamic Object Flow Analysis. Lulu, 2009. (p. 34)
• Spring J, et al. Reflexes: Abstractions for integrating highly-responsive tasks into Java applications. ACM Trans Embedded Comput Sys 2010;10(4):1-29.
• Zager D, ed. Music and Theology: Essays in Honor of Robin A. Leaver. Scarecrow, 2006.

M   athematics is the heart and soul of music … Without question the bar, the rhythm, the proportion of the parts of a musical work and so on must all be measured … Notes and other signs are only tools in music, the heart and soul is the good proportion of melody and harmony. It is ridiculous to say that mathematics is not the heart and soul of music.”
  — Johann Mattheson, 1743, ‘Neu eröffnete musikalische Bibliothek’ 2:54.

Emergence: Lisa Bielawa, MMRPGs, and Massively-Multiplayer Chamber Music

T    he 23-year-old poet [Rainer Maria Rilke] encountered a phantom self in the Cornet—Rilke’s ancestor whose life was full of wide-eyed courage, action and discovery, but cut short. Rilke’s book was written feverishly, supposedly in just one night. Perhaps Rilke, suddenly aware of his own mortality, was also already aware that—although many of us continue living into more reflective, circumspect years—in a sense all of us die young, because the innocence of our young selves cannot survive the awarenesses that are the inevitable result of prolonged engagement with a troubled world.”
  —  Lisa Bielawa, program notes, The Lay of the Love and Death [of Cornet Christoph Rilke].

A    t daybreak a horseman is there, and then a second, then four, ten. Armored-up, most of them. Then a thousand more behind them: the Army. One must separate oneself.
‘Get home in one piece, Marquis...’
‘Mary protects you, Squire.’
But they cannot bring themselves to part yet. They are friends of a sudden, like brothers. They have more to confide in each other, for they already know so much each one of the other. They linger. Awkwardly. There’s haste and hoofbeat about them. Then the Marquis takes off his right glove. He fetches out the little rose, takes a petal from it ... takes it as one would take and break the host, the communion wafer.
‘That will safeguard you. Farewell.’
Von Langenau is taken aback. He gazes long after the Frenchman. Then he shoves the ad hoc petal into his shirtpocket. It rises and falls on the waves of his breath.
Bugle-call. He rides to join his regiment, Junker does.
He smiles sadly: a woman he does not know is protecting him.

[Einmal, am Morgen, ist ein Reiter da, und dann ein zweiter, vier, zehn. Ganz in Eisen, groß. Dann tausend dahinter: Das Heer.
Man muß sich trennen.
»Kehrt glücklich heim, Herr Marquis...«
»Die Maria schützt Euch, Herr Junker.«
Und sie können nicht voneinander. Sie sind Freunde auf einmal, Brüder. Haben einander mehr zu vertrauen; denn sie wissen schon so viel Einer vom Andern. Sie zögern. Und ist Hast und Hufschlag um sie. Da streift der Marquis den großen rechten Handschuh ab. Er holt die kleine Rose hervor, nimmt ihr ein Blatt. Als ob man eine Hostie bricht.
»Das wird Euch beschirmen. Lebt wohl.«
Der von Langenau staunt. Lange schaut er dem Franzosen nach. Dann schiebt er das fremde Blatt unter den Waffenrock. Und es treibt auf und ab auf den Wellen seines Herzens.
Hornruf. Er reitet zum Heer, der Junker.
Er lächelt traurig: ihn schützt eine fremde Frau.]”
  —  Rainer-Maria Rilke, De Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke

You really should try to avail yourself of the opportunity to hear composer Lisa Bielawa’s new works in upcoming performances in Boston and New York (see links below). Bielawa has written a number of acclaimed chamber music compositions. She regularly writes choral and symphonic works that are also highly regarded.

Bielawa’s conceptions of chamber music and musical intimacy are admittedly broader than most. Her scoring and novel orchestrations are wondrous. Bielawa’s nominally ‘symphonic’ works, such as ‘The Trojan Women’ (2002), entails a large orchestra performing virtuosically, but sans conductor. For the world premiere of her symphonic piece ‘The Right Weather’ (2004), orchestra members were spatially dispersed in and around Zankel Hall, at Carnegie, again performing without a conductor. As such, Bielawa’s symphonic compositions involve the emergent, multi-player intimacy that is characteristic of chamber music. The pieces just happen to involve conductorless ensembles that are the size of full orchestras, playing in halls whose ambient acoustics are larger and more reverberous than is usual for chamber music venues.

C    oncert-hall venues impose social conventions upon classical music. I love orchestras. But I have a problem with the fact that it costs $65 to hear them, and somebody is waving a stick and s/he’s in charge.”
  —  Lisa Bielawa.

Her conductorless pieces are fascinating to listen to and, I imagine, fascinating too to perform, as a member of such a peculiarly deployed ensemble. When done this way, the sense of acoustic depth can be cavernous—far larger than when the same number of performers are under the baton of a strong conductor. The communicative gestures that one uses to stay in-sync with others—or to encourage others nearby to sync-up with you—are complex and unfamiliar. And each performer’s maneuvers to recover or accommodate rhythmic and harmonic contingencies that arise are totally different from those that are routine in small ensembles. Creatively speaking, it’s like being placed in a wilderness survival situation. So much is uncertain. The inter-personal distances and vulnerability seem so great. So much, beyond what’s written on the page of music, can happen.

You become acutely aware of the extreme fragility, the tenuousness of the social fabric that defines the cooperation of the ensemble members. There are people here who, no matter how many years you’ve collaborated with them, you don’t really know very well, and who do not, when it comes down to it, know you. Nor do [some of them] care tremendously deeply about you as an individual. These things are hidden when there is a conductor…

In other words, you become acutely aware of the feral, borg-like ‘organism’ that the ensemble really is, and it is a very different kind of organism than, say, a string quartet. It is an alternate reality; there is no ‘spoon’, not really. (Not, anyhow, if you intend to bend the thing, pitting your will as a performer/ensemble-member against the psychokinetic wills of other fellow musicians.)

Lisa’s forthcoming CD, ‘The Lay of the Love and Death’, is also a meditation on the tensions between individual and collective action; between individual destiny and collective/societal destiny. It is due to be released next May by Premiere Commission Recordings, a new record label based in New York. The Lay was written for violinist Colin Jacobsen and baritone Jesse Blumberg and based on an epic poem by Rainer-Maria Rilke (‘Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke’), and was premièred at Alice Tully Hall in March 2006.

B    ielawa’s music explores the ritual and phenomenological nature of music-making and listening, employing [emergent] instrumental forces in ways that are both dramatic and intimate in their use of time and space.”
  —  Premier Commission Recordings jewel-case blurb.

Lisa Bielawa’s choice of this Rilke text leverages her degree in literature and literary criticism. Rainer-Maria Rilke’s confabulation based on the death of his ancestor in battle is a dark tale—a study in the limits of human trust; the foolishness (but inevitability) of anticipation; the spontaneity (but random happenstantiality) of genuine friendships; the innateness (but immutability) of our character and personality. It is at once an affirmation of our moral duty to live thoughtfully and responsibly among other people, and at the same time an acknowledgment that the human condition is trouble, no guarantees. Create good and beauty in the face of the void because it is the right thing to do; do not do it in expectation of any reward, in this world or in any hereafter. There is emergent quality to the text, plus the timeless ‘thrownness’ of war. There is an emergent quality to Lisa’s compositional methods that lends a distinctive openness to her writing.

Bielawa is currently composer-in-residence for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The present work, ‘The Trojan Women’, paints portraits of three grieving women—Hecuba, Cassandra and Andromache—who lost their husbands in the gruesome Trojan War. The three movements differ from each other in emotional content, tempi, harmonic textures, and modes of expression. But each conveys a distinc kind of mourning. Beautifully written.


    [50-sec clip, Lisa Bielawa, First Takes, ‘Trojan Women-Andromache’, 1.2MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Lisa Bielawa, First Takes, ‘Trojan Women-Cassandra’, 1.2MB MP3]



    [50-sec clip, Lisa Bielawa, Handful of World, KafkaSongs-II, 1.2MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Lisa Bielawa, Handful of World, KafkaSongs-VII, 1.2MB MP3]

W    itty, dramatic and poignant by turns, [Bielawa’s ‘Handful of World’] songs offer a probing take on Kafka’s texts, and the scoring—for one performer simultaneously singing and playing the violin—makes possible all kinds of tonal resonances and multipart counterpoint. The other music ... is no less arresting or literarily astute.”
  —  San Francisco Chronicle.

Bielawa’s compositions are diverse, but they each bring character development and story-telling to the fore. And, having as I do some acquaintance with both composing and with computer game engineering, I would say that Lisa’s conductorless compositions contain some voice-leading and phrasing ‘devices’ that would be considered by game developers to be classic ‘anti-cheat mechanisms’, designed to insure continuity, preserving fairness and rationality of gameplay.

There are few, if any, opportunities for rogue or errant ensemble members to ‘hack’ the score, or ‘cheat’, or ‘grief’ other players. Would-be ‘Hackers’ spend time discovering and testing exploits to commandeer the score and exert undue influence over the musical outcomes. Would-be ‘Cheaters’ spend time using the exploits devised by others, or riding on the coattails of Hackers’ exploits. Would-be ‘Griefers’ reinforce the side-effects of others’ exploits, to alter the sociology of the game-world and to subvert the score to suit their own purposes or to advance their own perceptions of its statements or value.

• Hack_type1: Client executable alteration (score annotations)
  
• Hack_type2: Rehearsal subversion (adjusting the ensemble's understanding of the inside lore of the game)
  
• Hack_type3: Part augmentation (injecting control through extra-textual embellishments)
  
• Hack_type4: Denial-of-service attack (preemptiveness or recalcitrance, forcing other ensemble members to accomodate the attacker)

In a large, heterogeneous ensemble, the ‘client’ apps cannot be trusted. They are running on the Cheaters’ hardware—their minds; their performance muscle-memories—and any would-be Cheaters among the group have all of the means to reverse-engineer your score and bypass all of the markings and controls you put in place.

Despite the large number of players (high cardinality) and despite the polyphonic complexity of her writing (high dimensionality), the architecture and phrasing constructs that Lisa uses are cohesive and self-repairing. The virtual sound-worlds she creates are stable. Their beauty can be edgy—there is nothing predestined or deterministic, for individual parts or for the ensemble/society. But the worlds do not readily fall apart nor do they make us worry that they might. Cohesive, stable ‘emergence’—for the individuals and for the group.

Emergence occurs when interactions between players and objects result in consequences that are not explicit in the text and performance rules, a sort of aleatoric runtime indirection that is spontaneous and not explicitly intended by the composer-developer. Emergence requires some stochastic or random elements, but it’s not predominantly random; satisfying types of emergence are reproducible from performance to performance, and they are memorable and rehearsible. That, I think, is a distinctive feature of Lisa’s compositions… Stockhausen and others, not so much.

What else? Well, systems—and compositions—that possess the quality we would call ‘emergence’ have, I think, the following minimal features:

• ‘Global’ phenomena emerge from ‘Local’ interactions among individual entities
  
• There is [usually] no evidence of the global phenomena at the local or individual level [like much of Elliott Carter’s writing, say];
  
• Global phenomena have a time-course that is different from the time-course of individual/local phenomena, and global phenomena are governed by different physics or collective forces than the ones that are exerted on individuals.

And we can recognize, I would say, at least 4 ‘levels’ of emergence. We can recognize them, and composers can bake them in.

• First-order: When local interactions have ‘knock-on’ or chain-reaction effects and spread by contagion;
  
• Second-order: When players use the score and performance environment to improvise their own expressive strategies and deliberately enable para-social interaction types that were not created or intended by the developer; the improvised strategies in turn change how various contingencies in the game play out;
  
• Third-order: When new gameplay involves players’ carving new paths or creating new ‘public commons’, that are accessible to most or all players or that directly affect the overall, global character of play.

The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet’ is an early Rilke work, written in Berlin in 1899. The event that precipitated its writing was the discovery of a fragment of a family heirloom document, something from a trunk or attic in the Rilke house. He had no expectation of finding any such thing, nor was he planning to write any poem having to do with his ancestral history. This item was serendipitously noticed when he was browsing among some family papers. The document concerned one young Christoph Rilke, who was killed in Hungary in 1663 in a military campaign against the Turks. This fragment of a document concerning the young man’s duties as a cornet in the army was the only historical fact that Rilke had to go on; not much else was known about this Christoph, other than the meager bits that the document fragment contained. The story, however, almost wrote itself. Rilke’s vivid imagination produced overnight this poignant, open-ended 63-page romantic invention.

In similar fashion, Bielawa’s works—including the latest Rilke one—have likewise an open-ended, improvisational feel to them, regardless how carefully orchestrated her scores are. They are natural; playable; listenable. They sound so intuitively true, so plausible that you might imagine them to have almost written themselves, like Rilke in an inspired fever. They evoke a politics of ethical engagedness, an acoustic pluralism, and an expressive ‘commons’—all precious things in an age gone amok with private property, mutual misapprehension, isolation.

Have a look at Lisa’s compositions. They are like fantastic interactive fictions or MMRPGs, each inviting you to discover a richly detailed, extensible story. Consider adding one or more of her pieces to your group’s repertoire, not just to experience the beauty that’s in them but also to extend and further develop the ways that you have at your disposal to achieve new dimensions of expressiveness amongst your ensemble’s members. Lastly but not least, do buy and enjoy her recordings, and try to catch upcoming performances. You’re sure to be emergently pleased.

G    ame developers [composers and conductors] and players [performers] speculate that it would be fantastic if we could achieve gameplay [performance] that is open and natural, where players can choose their own strategies independently, and the gameplay is limited only by each player's imagination and creativity. In recent years, games [compositions] have taken steps toward this with emergent interactions made possible by Valve Corp’s source engine and the availability of advanced game physics middleware... However, game developers [composers and conductors] realize the trade-off between emergence and design. Giving players control [means that the developers and conductors relinquish their own control].”
  —  Penny Sweetser, Emergence in Games, p. 3.

• Premier Commission Recordings
  
• Lisa Bielawa page at BMOP.org
  
• Lisa Bielawa page at Christina Jensen PR Inc
  
• Bielawa L, Narucki S. Chance Encounter. CreativeCapital.org, 2007.
  
• LisaBielawa.net
  
• OutsideTheBox: Election Night Free Improvisation at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square So., New York, NY. Tues, 04-NOV-2008, 18:00. Lisa Bielawa, host.
  
• BMOP Club Concert, Moonshine Room, ClubCafe.com, 209 Columbus Ave, Boston, MA. Tues, 09-DEC-2008, 19:00. Lisa Bielawa, host.
  
• Alexander T. Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2. Charles River, 2005.
  
• Bartle R. Designing Virtual Worlds. NewRiders, 2003.
  
• Bielawa L, Jortner I, Gatonska, M, Theofanidis C, Moravec P & String Orchestra of NYC. First Takes. (Albany, 2007.)
  
• Bielawa L, Kihlsted C, Leclair J. Handful of World. (Tzadik, 2007.)
  
• Bielawa L. Your Administrative Muse: Task-Management Strategies for Composers . NewMusicBox, 21-FEB-2007.
  
• Castronova E. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Univ Chicago, 2006.
  
• Crawford C. Interactive Storytelling. NewRiders, 2004.
  
• Rilke R. The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke. Norton, 1963.
  
• Rilke R. De Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke. Gutenberg.org, 1899.
  
• Sheldon L. Character Development and Storytelling for Games. CourseTechnology, 2004.
  
• Shirky C. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Penguin, 2007.
  
• Sweetser P. Emergence in Games. Charles River, 2007.
  
• DSM. Ying String Quartet: Zhou Long and Globalization of the Ineffable. CMT blog, 19-AUG-2008.
  
• DSM. Trio Con Brio: Individualism-Collectivism in Ensemble. CMT blog, 04-FEB-2008.

Freund: Yet Another Partita Compiler (YAPC), Refactorings Noch Nach Bach

    [50-sec clip, Don Freund, Sonapartita, Adagio, Daniel Rubenstein & Muhiddin Dürrüoglu-Demiriz, 1.3MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Don Freund, Sonapartita, Passepied, Daniel Rubenstein & Muhiddin Dürrüoglu-Demiriz, 1.3MB MP3]

    [46-sec clip, Don Freund, Sonapartita, Presto, Daniel Rubenstein & Muhiddin Dürrüoglu-Demiriz, 1.1MB MP3]

    [50-sec clip, Don Freund, Sonapartita, Siciliano, Daniel Rubenstein & Muhiddin Dürrüoglu-Demiriz, 1.3MB MP3]

This exciting and beautiful piece contains extensive musical references to Bach, and other modern composers like Lukas Foss and Stravinsky. The title alludes to ‘Nach Bach’, a harpsichord piece by Georges Rochberg. The ‘Noch Nach’ is ‘Yet Another, After Bach’. For example, the third movement (Presto) replicates the violin part of the final movement of J.S. Bach’s G minor Sonata but has Freund’s imaginative piano part interacting in curious ‘noch nach’ ways with the violin.


Besides Rubenstein’s and Demiriz’s superb and sympathetic performance of it, the Freund work is interesting on multiple levels as relates to compositional methods and musical analysis.


The structures of the Bach sonatas and partitas that this ‘sonapartita’ mimics can be cast in computational form—using humdrum, for example. And, although I do not know whether Freund used a computer software to help generate this composition algorithmically, it’s possible to see from his finished result how a series of Java constructors and ‘refactoring’ transformations could be written to do so. Freund’s german title for this piece ‘Noch Nach Bach’ reminds me, in fact, of the old Stephen Johnson AT&T Bell Labs compiler generator utility, YACC (Yet Another Compiler Compiler), part of the original UNIX operating system.


An early decision in writing a compiler is whether the language will be treated in terms of patterns of characters (individual notes) or as patterns of tokens (horizontal motifs and vertical clusters). How do you create a compiler to generate the result you want/expect? We use refactorings such as safe rename and move refactorings, plus advanced refactorings like ‘ExtractMethod’ or ‘ExtractSuperclass’—or in a music composition application, we would use more complicated refactorings to be performed across large spans of each movement such as ‘ApplyMotifSupertype’ or ‘InferTypeArguments’ or ‘GeneratePartitaCounterpoint’.


The refactoring performed on the method A#partita() above first searches for all method invocations to partita. The only occurrence can be found in the constructor of class B. The Freund refactoring inserts the new indirection method indirection(A), which delegates to the original bach partita method. The partita-generating method invocation to partita in constructor B() is redirected to call the new indirection method. This object-oriented refactoring program amounts to a transformational network compiler—in this case, one that automatically composes partitas mimicking the patterns represented in Bach.

David Lewin’s wonderful book covers ‘transformational network’ theory from the point of view of post-composition analysis, not from the point of view of algorithmic composition. Of course, Klumpenhouwer, Lambert, Stoecker, Headlam, Rahn, and Mazzola and many other musicologists have productively applied transformational nets in analyzing music and for music information retrieval (MIR).

To date, though, software composition tools and ‘compiler compilers’ to create composition tools that can generate music that faithfully emulates design and orchestration patterns in established idioms (like Bach’s) have lagged behind. But Eclipse and other platforms for creating compilers and ‘compiler compilers’ have gotten significantly better and easier to use over the past 5 years or so. It is now far more feasible to create decent software-based composition tools than it was just a few years ago.

That side-steps the question of whether using such a tool—even as an ‘assistant’—violates aesthetic principles you hold dear. For my part, I would use such tools, provided their musicality was acceptable. After all, I use ProEngineer™ CAD/CAE software for the engineering that I do in my day-job. I use AdobeIllustrator™ and other computer-assisted art software for graphic art that I create. Those are not ‘crutches’ that in any way replace or undermine the integrity of my role as a designer. Why wouldn’t I happily use a good software composition tool? But the ‘compose’ widget in Finale and the GenJam applet for jazz improvisation aren’t that helpful. And the computational challenges are so daunting that I won’t hold my breath. Twenty years ago, William Schottstaedt worked on software-based counterpoint voice-leading and, since then, most people have used Markov-chain or other stochastic algorithms. These all focus on ‘small-scale’ decisions—Markov is, after all, a nearest-neighbor algorithm for generating a set of choices from which to choose. Schottstaedt used a best-first search algorithm to select a preferred candidate at each step. More recently, genetic-algorithm and simulated-annealing techniques are being used. But none of them is yet, so far as I know, very satisfactory. And none of them has an effective ‘scope’ that extends beyond about a 10-note or 12-note phrase. If there are 10 notes and, say, just 16 ways of moving from one note to the next in a given part or voice, then a phrase of a mere 10 notes begets 16¹⁰ possibilities—a combinatoric explosion, even for just one part and just one 10-note phrase. So, if a partita compiler compiler is going to succeed within the memory constraints on currently-available systems (even with 64-bit machines and terabytes of main memory and pagefile store), it will clearly have to go back to Fux’s ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ or other rule-based processes to generate choices and to supervise polyphonic orchestration. Algorithms to predict the weather or earthquakes have better odds!

I  wonder whether Freund was thinking about YACC when he chose his title. I wonder whether he used any computational tools in creating this nice composition.

• Don Freund page at Univ Indiana
  
• Don Freund bio page
  
• Rubenstein D. Durruoglu-Demiriz M. Suites & Partitas of Modern Times. (Talent, 2006.)
  
• Daniel Rubenstein website
  
• Muhiddin Demiriz page at Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles
  
• Muhiddin Demiriz page at New Consonant Music
  
• CMMR Conference, 19-23 MAY 2008, Copenhagen (jointly with NTSMB)
  
• Computer Music Journal website
  
• SoundTrek Jammer(tm)
  
• YACC history at Wikipedia
  
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Remembrance: Retrieving the Right Requiem

DSM: My friend, RMC, died—testicular cancer, 20 kg metastatic mass in his abdomen; died in the operating room while the surgeons were trying to remove it. I’d visited him 2 days before the operation, at his home. He’d just come from a visit with his oncologist, and he had a very clear notion of the risk he was facing. In fact, the oncologist had tried to dissuade RMC from going forward with the surgery. But RMC was adamant. He didn’t want to acquiesce to that fate, simply letting the tumor eat him alive over a period of several months. He wanted to fight it. And now he’s gone, 33 years old, a dear friend of mine and a coworker for 6 years . . .

CMT: I’m sorry for your loss.

DSM: Know any good Requiems I could put in the CD player? What’s good for farewells? I’m craving very, very sad pieces of chamber music right now.

CMT: Fauré’s Requiem in D Minor? Shostakovich’s 15th; Duruflé’s Requiem; Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa? Mozart’s unfinished Requiem in D minor? Among Romantic Era composers who composed Requiems, you could do some Hector Berlioz, Anton Bruckner, Carl Czerny, Gaetano Donizetti, Antonín Dvořák, Charles Gounod, Max Reger, Camille Saint-Saëns, Robert Schumann, Franz von Suppé, and Richard Wetz. They all wrote requiems. And Edvard Grieg’s ‘Sorgemarsj over Rikad Nordraak’ is, I think, acoustically ‘sparse’ enough to be suitable for your remembrance of RMC.

And, among 20th Century composers, you have Vyacheslav Artyomov, Alfred Desenclos, Herbert Howells—his ‘Master Tallis’s Testament’ is atmospheric and well-matched to the spirit of a brave RMC who refused to give up. Or, what about Cyrillus Kreek, György Ligeti, or Meredith Monk? Their elegiac compositions might be a good fit. Or Knut Nystedt’s ‘Pia Memoria’? How about Krzysztof Penderecki, or Terry Riley’s ‘Requiem for Adam’? Or the Finns! Einojuhani Rautavaara—the Lacrimosa movement of his ‘Requiem in Our Time’? Or Erkki-Sven Tüür’s ‘Elegy for String Quartet’?

DSM: Those are all good choices. Schnittke’s Requiem is too angst-filled and thematically explicit. Stravinsky’s, too. The ones you named are good, though.

CMT: Some elegiac pieces are too large and grand. Not intimate enough—many choral pieces are like that. After all, we’re considering who the person was, and how wide or narrow was the scope of the lives that the person touched.

DSM: And some elegiac pieces are quite appropriate for a person of advanced age, but don’t fit at all with a young or middle-aged person or a child. Brahms’s Requiem is beautiful, but it doesn’t match the personality of my friend.

CMT: Schnittke’s Requiem is sufficiently abstract to be a match for your friend, but it’s too thematic and punitive. Same with the Stravinsky. Your friend was a software developer? What about Jesper Kyd—Denmark-born composer of soundtracks for computer games and films. He’s composed several Requiem pieces—in fact, some of them are embedded in the games. Techno-atmospheric requiems!


DSM: ‘Winter Night’ on his Hitman Contracts soundtrack; or ‘Meditation of the Oracle’ on his soundtrack for Spellborn; or even his ‘Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’. Kyd’s writing is not so much ‘thematic’ as it is ‘ambient’. There’s a minimalism that’s consistent with his nominal purpose of composing music for a computer game. But it’s a minimalism that’s open-ended—it can propel introspection and reflection, a focused expectancy. Yes, Kyd’s writing is in a vein that my friend RMC would’ve liked, particularly the railing against the absurdity and waste of a life cut short.

CMT: But I suppose Kyd’s music is far darker and moodier than would be healthy. Rich and very dark. You oughtn’t to stay immersed in it too long . . .

DSM: Well, healthy is in the eye of the beholder. Who’s to say what I need, or what music’s helpful or appropriate, or how long grieving should continue? If I were on a pure diet of Kyd six months from now, or even two weeks from now, that would be unhealthy. You know, the Mourners’ Kaddish is said as part of the Jewish mourning rituals, and, when people speak of ‘saying Kaddish’, it means performing the rituals of mourning, broadly construed. The opening words of the prayer are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23, a vision of God despairing of the nations, a cosmic despair—and God extemporizes a response. With regard to RMC, his loss may be a modest human one, but for those of us who were good friends of RMC, it feels pretty cosmic right now. And we must just extemporize a response that seems right, each one of us, day by day.

CMT: Jesper Kyd’s music creates the atmosphere within the games, and it dynamically changes to fit the players’ extemporaneous action—adding suspense and tension, punctuated with resolution and denouement as events unfold/conclude. Instead of live musicians, he primarily uses GIGAstudio™ Virtual Instruments—understandable, I suppose, because, in Kyd’s game soundtracks, the musical score is non-deterministic—its aleatory varies depending on how the gamer plays the level. The gamer can play the same level repeatedly without ever hearing the same music score twice. But it’s precisely that aleatoric quality that seems very appropriate to your friend RMC’s approach to life, even up to the very brave, defiant end. Kyd’s requiems could be fitting way to remember a software developer, filled with run-time indirection and stochastic flow-of-control branching. Ditch the game imagery, though; keep just Kyd’s music.

The connection is a kind of ‘valediction’: RMC’s life and his writing code, becoming clearer and clearer as a person in the wake of an anticipated, imminent departure. Maybe best if the music is accompanied by reading a poem in suitably gruff Gaelic accent, like RMC’s—say, from the traditional ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, in which sailors drown in a storm.

O , our Scots nobles wer richt laith -
To weet their cork-heild schoone;
Bot lang owre a’ the play wer play’d,
Their hats, they swam aboone.”

CMT: Right. Rather than speculating on what the sailors’ thoughts might have been as they died, the verse merely has their hats on the sea’s cruel surface. While the pathos is there, the image isn’t a sentimental or maudlin one. Sort of like RMC . . .

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