John Bischoff: Audio Combine, Modal/Bispectral Discoveries, Post-Human Futures

L   ocal color’ features synthetic bell-like tones, sustained tonal clusters, and computer-triggered acoustic bells struck in complementary patterns that are sometimes random, sometimes human-triggered, and combinations of both... It is enough to reference the idea of a tactus, but not enough to be [understood as] an organizing [meaning-generating/insuring] element.”
  — Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.

T he music comprising John Bischoff’s new CD ‘Audio Combine’, just released on New World Records, is beautiful, fascinating, thoroughly enjoyable. Philip Perkins’s engineering and production values are superb.

T he five tracks on the disc are diverse, representing Bischoff compositions from 2004 to mid-2011. The third track ‘Local Color’ evokes traditional chinese zhong bells, but also especially calls into question the ‘who’ of music performance [in asmuch as some of the bells are computer-triggered, randomly and deterministically, while others are played by Bischoff from his score] and other limits of performance identity [insofar as the bell modes and timbres evolve after the bell is struck—on the rim; on the bosses/nipples; on the wall; etc.—in aleatoric/random ways that the musician-computer can neither predict nor control]. Of course, all music emerges in less-than-predictable/controllable ways—just less obviously so than bells.


    [50-sec clip, John Bischoff, ‘Local Color’; (track 3), 2012, 1.4MB MP3]

T   he pieces were all recorded in live performance with minimal editing and no over-dubs. Philip Perkins recorded direct from Bischoff’s setup and also from three pairs of microphones placed at various points in the concert hall. The mix heard here switches between these four perspectives as the pieces are played. The distance and pace incorporated into the recordings from various mic positions give a clear sense of the space of the performance, and of the object-ness of the sounds. That space and our place within it become the final part of the ‘material’: when the listener has no fixed point of perspective, then the position from which the listening/understanding is done becomes one of the elements of counterpoint.”
  —  Audio Combine, liner notes, Ed Osborn, Brown Univ, 2011.

T here are a few excellent books that empirically measure the modal vibrations of bells... He & Fu, for example. And some books on bispectral analysis—mainly used today in aerospace engineering and vibration-management engineering of turbines and other structures. Useful to explore if you are a composer/performer wanting to know more about how to more reliably utilize distinctive bell harmonics in your work. Links to some of these at the bottom of this post.

[Modal Analysis, Fu & He, 2001, p. 276]

    [50-sec clip, Wang Yuanping & Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra, ‘竹枝词 (Zhu-zhi-ci) Bamboo-pole Love Poem’; (track 1), 1989, 1.5MB MP3]

T he substantial rhythmic independence of the parts in the ‘Local Color’ bell quartet is part of its distinctive Asian beauty. Because each bell projects its sound clearly, each individual bell can easily be heard over the rest of the bell ensemble, and yet the ensemble—the ‘community’ of bells—remains the primary subject. This is dissimilar from other voiced percussion like a timpani choir, performing a ‘programmatic’ role, where the effect of four or more timpani playing together is treated more as an ‘effect’ than as harmony. It is instead quartet ‘orchestration with Chinese characteristics’!

W ith computer-triggered sticking, the timing of the ring-down and the pitch-bend are the same, but the kinematic nuances of human left-hand/right-hand mallet or sticking patterns are gone. But the electromechanical linear actuators for the computer-controlled bells have their own kinematic constraints, in terms of speed of resetting for the next stroke, and so on. They have their own unique, finite kind of ‘embodiment’ just as we humans have ours, and we can hear this in these wonderful Bischoff compositions and this excellent recording of them being performed ‘live’.

A nd so the most amazing thing that we get from Bischoff’s mechatronic compositions like ‘Local Color’ is a vivid glimpse of robotic humanity and machine consciousness, revealed by the beater mechanics and linear actuators... something like an inversion of the ‘human-becoming-machine’ perspective of Ambrazevičius and Balsienė (link below): ‘machine-becoming-human’... a brilliant future of new expressive possibilities, including bionic accomodations for musicians with disabilities. Musical prosthetics? Sonnez les matines! / Din, dan, don!





J ohn Bischoff (b. 1949) is an early pioneer of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as his seminal work in computer network ensembles. Bischoff studied composition with Robert Moran, James Tenney, and Robert Ashley. He has been active in the experimental music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 year as a composer, performer, teacher, and grassroots activist. His performances around the US include NEW MUSIC AMERICA festivals in 1981 (SF) and 1989 (NYC), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Roulette Intermedium (NYC), and the Beyond Music Festival (LA). He has performed in Europe at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Akademie der Künst in Berlin, Fylkingen in Stockholm, and TUBE in Munich. He was a founding member of the League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world's first Computer Network Band, and he co-authored an article on the League's music that appears in "Foundations of Computer Music" (MIT Press 1985). He was also a founding member of the network band The Hub with whom he performed and recorded from 1985 to 1996.

• John Bischoff website
  
• Bischoff page at Mills College, Oakland, California.
  
• Bischoff J. Audio Combine. (New World Records, 2012.)
  
• Hubei Chime Bells Orchestra; Wang Yuanping, conductor. Unique Music of Great Antiquity. (CRC, 1989)
  
• Ambrazevičius R, Balsienė R. Imitations of bells: Correspondence between bell acoustics and onomatopoeic texts. J Interdisc Music Stud 2010;4:1-16.
  
• Anderson M, Anderson S. Machine Ethics. Cambridge Univ, 2011.
  
• Campany R, tr. Ge Hong: To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth. Univ California, 2002.
  
• Choudhury A, Shah S, Thornhill N. Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction. Springer, 2010. [bispectra]
  
• Clark A. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford Univ, 2003.
  
• Courtney C, et al. Global crack detection using bispectral analysis. ECNDT, 2006.
  
• Cremer L, et al. Structure-Borne Sound: Structural Vibrations and Sound Radiation at Audio Frequencies. 3e. Springer, 2005.
  
• Dixon J, Cassidy E, eds. Virtual Futures: Cyberotics, Technology and Posthuman Pragmatism. Routledge, 1998.
  
• Epstein R, et al., eds. Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer, 2008.
  
• Fackrell J, et al. Interpretation of bispectra of vibration signals-I. Mech Sys Signal Proc 1995;9:257-66.
  
• Fackrell J, et al. Interpretation of bispectra of vibration signals-II. Mech Sys Signal Proc 1995;9:267-74.
  
• Fahy F. Foundations of Engineering Acoustics. Academic, 2000.
  
• von Falkenhausen L. Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China. Univ California, 1994.
  
• Fu Zhi-Fang, He J. Modal Analysis. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001.
  
• Gray C. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. Routledge, 2001.
  
• Hammond J, White P. Analysis of non-stationary signals using time-frequency methods. J Sound & Vibr 1996;190:419-47.
  
• Haraway D. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, 1990.
  
• Hayles N. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Univ Chicago, 1999.
  
• Hendriks-Jansen H. Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought. Bradford, 1996.
  
• Holland O, ed. Machine Consciousness. Academic, 2003.
  
• Jing M. A theoretical study of the vibration and acoustics of ancient Chinese bells. J Acoust Soc Am 2003;114:1622-8.
  
• Lin P, et al., eds. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics. MIT, 2011.
  
• Norton M, Karczub D. Fundamentals of Noise and Vibration Analysis for Engineers. 2e. Cambridge Univ, 2003.
  
• Perkowitz S. Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids. Joseph Henry, 2005.
  
• Randall R. Vibration-based Condition Monitoring: Industrial, Aerospace and Automotive Applications. Wiley, 2011.
  
• Rossing T. Science of Percussion Instruments. World Scientific, 2000.
  
• Schick S. The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. Univ Rochester (Eastman), 2006.
  
• Shen S-Y. Acoustics of ancient Chinese bells. Scientific American 1987;256:94-102.
  
• Solomon S. How to Write for Percussion. Solomon, 2004.
  
• Tavner P, et al. Condition Monitoring of Rotating Electrical Machines. 2e. IET, 2008. [bispectra]
  
• Timoshenko S. Vibration Problems in Engineering. 5e reprint. Wolfenden, 2007.
  
• Vér I, Beranek L, eds. Noise and Vibration Control Engineering: Principles and Applications. 2e. Wiley, 2005.
  
• Thingamajigs.org

Perfect Halloween Music: The Aesthetic Realism of Josquin Desprez’s ‘Mille regretz’

S ingers in brown or black, in an austere chamber, cold beyond the capacity of their clothing to keep them warm.

F aded Renaissance landscape with fields now harvested and frost well on the pumpkin...


    [50-sec clip, Paul Hillier & Hilliard Ensemble, Josquin Desprez, ‘Mille regretz’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he singers’ gestures are Brueghel-like—some threading their way in the foreground and others in the distance. Denuded woods; hunting; dogs; countertenor; pensive magpies.

V alley of ponds, river meandering through it abjectly. Steeply-roofed houses and steepled churches—unremitting sharpness, pointiness.

H ills upon hills, ruthlessly sharp mountain crags, desolate gray sky. Down below, there’s the mill with its wheel iced-in...

M any people skating, so many as to render us inconsequential, anonymous. We could die! We could vanish and they surely would not notice or miss us. They would forget us.

T he aesthetic ‘continuity’ of Brueghel (and of Josquin?) is, I think, not “reassuring” in the way that poet-aestheticist Eli Siegel once claimed. The continuity is instead terrifyingly indifferent to our existence and passing. Ghosts cannot bear dwindling...

Mille regretz de vous abandonner	A thousand regrets at deserting you
Et d'eslonger votre fache amoureuse.	and leaving behind your loving face.
J'ai si grand dueil et peine douloureuse	I feel so much sadness and such painful distress
Qu'on me verra bref mes jours définer.	that it seems to me my days must soon dwindle away.

T he singers continue, plying their musical craft... classical singers evoke a monkish existence, lives governed by the demands of Art.

O r is it instead a ghostly one, this singing existence? Mille regretz, singing their own future epitaphs?

T o me, ‘aesthetic realism’ and ‘documentary genre’ are inherently scary. In painting or in music or in film, they are able to conjure a special kind of existential horror, perfect for Halloween. Horror of being skeletonized, forgotten.

D on’t miss the wonderful new book on Josquin, by David Fallows, just released this month...

• Paul Hillier website
  
• Hilliard Ensemble website
  
• Hillier P & Hilliard Ensemble. Josquin Desprez: Motets & Chansons. (EMI, 1995.)
  
• Edward Green (Prof Composition, Manhattan School of Music) on Aesthetic Realism
  
• David Fallows page at Univ Manchester
  
• Fallows D. Josquin. Brepols, 2009.
  
• Fallows D. Who composed Mille regretz?, in Barbara Haggh, ed., Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman. Paris, 2001, pp. 214-52.
  
• Duffin R, Hillier P, eds. A Josquin Anthology. Oxford Univ, 2000.
  
• Sherr R, ed. The Josquin Companion. Oxford Univ, 2001.
  
• Siegel E. Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism. Definition, 1981.
  
• Siegel E, Reiss E. The Modern Quarterly Beginnings of Aesthetic Realism, 1922-1923: The Equality of Man, the Scientific Criticism, and Other Essays. 2e. Definition, 1997.
  
• Countertenor page at Spiritus Temporis
  
• Aesthetic Realism Foundation website
  
• Josquin scores at Werner Icking Music Archive
  
• Josquin Desprez page at Wikipedia
  
• Eli Siegel page at Wikipedia

Anonymous 4: Aural Ambitions of Medieval Worship, Modal Fictionalism

T he performance by Anonymous 4 last Saturday evening in the Friends of Chamber Music’s Early Music series was beautiful, without doubt.

• Marsha Genensky
  
• Susan Hellauer
  
• Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek
  
• Ruth Cunningham

T he program ‘Secret Voices: Music from Las Huelgas, ca. 1300 CE’ of pieces from the Codex Las Huelgas embodies both traditional and emerging aspects of the musical and religious practice of its time. There are motets that manifest secular or para-liturgical aspirations, but the music is also inherently liturgical and devotional.

A s I listened, entranced by the singing, I began to imagine medieval religious thought—the pious thought and feeling that motivated the creation and preservation of the Codex—as a kind of improvisation and ‘modal fictionalism’ that aimed to make the tenets of belief that the text expresses come true or be true. More than an expression of belief or mere devotional act, the words and music seem intent on establishing the possible world in which what the words say really happens. In other words, the impression that struck me was that the Las Huelgas nuns’ practice was far more radical than any ordinary kind of piety.

S ome links to recent books on modal fictionalism are at the bottom of this blog post, for your interest.

Motet Claustrum pudicicie Virgo viget, Triplum
Claustrum pudicicie, virginis triclinium,	Cloister of modesty, seat of virginity,
spes tocius leticie...	hope of all happiness...
virgo filium fac nobis propicium...	Virgin, make your Son merciful to us...

Discant
Fa fa mi fa mi re mi,	Fa fa mi fa mi re mi,
Ut mi sol re mi ut fa fa,	Ut mi sol re mi ut fa fa,
Fa re fa fa re ut re mi ut re mi.	Fa re fa fa re ut re mi ut re mi.
Est fatuum spernere	It is foolish to despise these
quia musicalia...	because they are the elements of music...

Alleluya: Que est ista?
Alleluya!	Alleluia!
Que est ista tam formosa,	Who is she, so lovely,
pulcra ut luna,	beautiful as the moon,
electa ut sol,	noble as the sun,
terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?	awesome as an army arrayed for battle?

B oth the Codex las Huelgas and the Codex Calixtinus (the subject of previous Anonymous 4 recordings and concerts) are noted for their importance in understanding the development of 12th and 13th Century polyphony. They are important on account of their scope, fine condition, and readability. There are oddities of alignment between the voices (see the reproduction manuscripts, links below). In the note-against-note style, it was fairly clear which notes went together, since they pair off nicely with few exceptions. On the other hand, when the upper voice is allowed to have more than one note for every note in the lower voice, it’s hard to determine on which notes the two voices coincide. Karp’s book is a good place to begin understanding the intervalic alignments and dissonances, especially the note-against-note portions.

R hythmic and metrical ambiguities in the notation also reveal how much improvisational latitude there is (was). These ambiguities and the performance decisions and interactions between the ensemble members last Saturday night were the cause of my meditations on modal fictionalism. The ambiguities are obliterated in modern transcriptions (like these), so you really need to look at [facsimiles of] the original Codices. Is the meter duple or triple?


P ossible-worlds semantics for modality says that an expression is possibly true if it is true in some possible world. In classical propositional logic, one can show that every logically-consistent set of propositions can be embedded in a ‘maximal consistent set’. A ‘maximal consistent set’ is an abstraction of a ‘possible world’—for the nuns of the Codex, a possible world where Mary is really Queen and all members of the Order really are virtuous. But the abstraction depends on the fact that modal logics are ‘finitary’, and it seems false that an infinite collection of sets of sentences—each finite subset of which is intuitively ‘possible’ in natural language—has the property that the whole set is possible.

S o questions about necessity (or what ‘has to be’, or what ‘must be true’, or what cannot be otherwise) and possibility (or what can be, or what could be otherwise) are questions about modality—and such questions are what the works that comprised the Anonymous 4’s ‘Secrets of las Huelgas’ program so strongly evoked.

F ictionalism is a philosophical approach which treats the claims or assertions as analogous to fictional claims: claims that are not asserted literally, but which are put forward to serve a specific useful function of deliberation. There is even a modal fictionalism in theoretical mathematics (link below).

B ut, despite the name ‘modal fictionalism’, it’s not primarily fictionalism about claims of necessity and possibility, but rather a fictionalist approach to claims about possible worlds. (For instance, modal fictionalism is not normally fictionalist about the claim that “it is possible that there be a species of tail-less kangaroo”, but rather about the claim that “there is a possible world in which there is a species of tail-less kangaroo”.)

T heories employing possible-worlds constructs have been found to be very useful in philosophy—‘thought experiments’, basically, to discover the implications and meanings of constellations of propositions. The ‘modal fictionalism’ approach has been extensively applied over the past 30 years in ethics and in areas other than philosophy, like linguistics, logic, and probability theory.

I sn’t it extravagant to believe that just because a situation or constellation of facts is possible, it must in some sense exist? ‘Weak modal fictionalists’ say ‘yes’ to this; they take commitments to the existence of possible worlds that are constructed in the mind—merely hypothetical situations, non-actual but possible situations—to be strictly or possibly false, and so they avoid the problems of believing in possible worlds. Nevertheless, they claim, they derive the epistemological benefits of using these seemingly problematic theories.

I  think that the the nuns of Las Huelgas ca. 1300 may have been what we would today call ‘strong’ modal fictionalists—who say it is not extravagant at all.

A  wonderful performance, with much food for thought...

• Anonymous4 website
  
• Anonymous4. Four Centuries of Chant. (Harmonia Mundi, 2009.)
  
• Anonymous4. Miracles of Compostela. (Harmonia Mundi, 2008.)
  
• Codex las Huelgas, OMIfacsimiles edition
  
• Codex las Huelgas page at Wikipedia
  
• Codex las Huelgas page at Goldbergweb.com
  
• Begbie J. Theology, Music and Time. Cambridge Univ, 2000.
  
• Berman C. Medieval Religion: New Approaches. Routledge, 2005.
  
• Bratman M. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge Univ, 1999.
  
• Broad J, Green K, eds. Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800. Springer, 2007. [esp. Chapter 1, Earl Richards]
  
• Bueno O, Linnebo O, eds. New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. [esp. Chapter 3 on mathematical fictionalism]
  
• Danielson P. Artificial Morality: Virtuous Robots for Virtual Games. Routledge, 1992.
  
• Fuller S. Perspectives on Musical Notation. In The Codex Calixtinus, in El Códice Calixtino y la Música de su Tiempo, J. López-Calo and C. Villanueva, eds. Fundación Pedro Barrié da la Maza, 2001, pp. 183-234.
  
• Fuller S. Early Polyphony to circa 1200. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, M. Everist, ed. Cambridge Univ, 2010.
  
• Fuller S. Modal Discourse and Fourteenth-Century French Song: A ‘Medieval’ Perspective Recovered? Early Music History 1998; 17: 61-108.
  
• Sarah Fuller page at SUNY Stony Brook
  
• Hare C. On Myself and Other, Less Important Subjects. Princeton Univ, 2009.
  
• Hathorne G. 'Secret Voices' was a bonfire for the soul. KCmetropolis.org, 28-OCT-2009.
  
• Henriques L. Miracles of Sant'iago. Atrium Musicologicum blog, 04-APR-2009.
  
• Irwin J, ed. Sacred Sound: Music in Religious Thought and Practice. AARB, 1984.
  
• Johnston M. Saving God: Religion after Idolatry. Princeton Univ, 2009.
  
• Karp T. The Polyphony of Saint Martial and Santiago de Compostela. 2 vol. Univ California, 1993.
  
• Ledbetter M. Virtuous Intentions: The Religious Dimension of Narrative. AARB, 1989.
  
• Liggins D. Modal fictionalism and possible-worlds discourse. Phil Stud 2007; 138:151-60.
  
• Meyers D. Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds. Routledge, 2001.
  
• Miller F, VAndome A, McBrewster J, eds. Philosophy of Mathematics: Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Valuation, Logicism, Formalism, Constructivism, Fictionalism. Alphascript, 2009.
  
• Nichols S, ed. The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction. Oxford Univ, 2006.
  
• Nolan D. Modal Fictionalism. Stanford Univ, 2007.
  
• Parens J. An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi. SUNY, 2006.
  
• Petrie L. Anonymous4 reveals sacred secrets. San Francisco Classical Voice. OCT-2009.
  
• Raleigh S. Codex Calixtinus and the development of polyphony in the twelfth century. Vanderbilt Univ, 1998.
  
• Rosen G. Modal fictionalism. Mind 1990; 99: 327-54.
  
• Papers citing Gideon Rosen on Possible-Worlds
  
• Sainsbury R. Fiction and Fictionalism. Routledge, 2009.
  
• Saliers D. Music and Theology. Abingdon, 2007.
  
• Shaw M. The Paradox of Intention: Reaching the Goal by Giving Up the Attempt to Reach It. AARB, 1988.
  
• Westermeyer P. Te Deum: The Church and Music. Augsburg, 1998.
  
• Williams J, Stones A, eds. The Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St. James. Narr, 1992.
  
• The Way of St. James, page at spain.info
  
• Codex Calixtinus, OMIfacsimiles edition

S    ince the late 12th Century, the Cathedral of Santiago in Compostela has possessed a manuscript entitled ‘Jacobus’ (Codex Calixtinus). How it found its way to Compostela is unknown, but it is undoubtedly a French product, probably compiled or writtin in Cluny around 1150. Although they represent a mere 10% of the music in Jacobus, the polyphonic works have received attention from scholars because they are among the earliest such pieces to have been written down. But the notation in Jacobus is ambiguous as to rhythm and meter, as well as to alignment of the pitches between the voice parts in the polyphony...”
  —  Susan Hellauer, Anonymous4 CD liner notes.