Music 6: Electronic Music

Music 6: Electronic Music
Fall quarter 2006. University of California, San Diego
https://msp.ucsd.edu/syallabi/6.06f/

Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00-12:20, Mandeville B202
Instructor: Professor Miller Puckette, Atkinson 1601E, 858-534-4823, msp@ucsd.edu, https://msp.ucsd.edu/
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:30-2:30PM or by appointment
Teaching Assistants:
Cristyn Magnus (cmagnus at ucsd dot edu), office hour Mon. 12-1, Warren Lecture hall 2136.
Jaime Oliver La Rosa (joliverlarosa at ucsd dot edu), office hour Wed. 10-11AM, at the coffee cart outside Mandeville
The Monday, 11-12 discussion section is held in Warren Lecture Hall room 2136.

This course is an introduction to the rich tradition of electronic "art music" from the year 1948 to the present. Reading assignments are from the course reader available from UCSD Soft Reserves (in the student center). Listening materials are available through the Music Library's Digital Audio Reserve system. https://reserves.ucsd.edu/eres/ . If you are having trouble getting to the assignment, see this page and if it still doesn't work, go to the music library (basement of Geisel) and ask for help.

Lectures are in Mandeville room B202, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:20. This is in the basement, two floors down from the main floor; stairs and elevator are in a passageway through the center of the building. Additional discussion sessions are led by the teaching assistants.

There are two in-class tests, a final exam, and three one-page writing assignments; more details about assignments will be given in class. Assignments count 15% each toward you grade; the final counts 25%. You can check on your current grades through WebCT (UCSD's on-line course support page.)

ABOUT THE WRITING ASSIGNMENT: see this mock essay to get an idea what is wanted.

TOPICS:

Sept. 21, 26, 28. Music, sound, and modernism
Listening assignment:
Pierre Schaeffer, Etude aux chemins de Fer (1948; 2:50)
Iannis Xenakis, PH Concrète (1958; 2:42)
Walter Carlos, Brandenburg Concerto, no. 3, third movement (1968; 4:42)
Charles Dodge, Any Resemblance is Purely Coincidental (1979; 7:56)
Jonathan Harvey, Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1979; 9:00)
Trevor Wishart, Vox, no. 5 (1986; 6:02)
Heinrich Taube, Gloriette for John Cage (1994; 4:07)
Marc Ainger, Shatter (1998; 8:00)
Shahrokh Yadegari, The Tear (2000; 9:51)
Reading assignment (from the course reader):
1. Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises (1913)

Oct. 3, 5. Musique Concrète
Listening assignment:
Halim el-Dabh, Wire Recorder Piece (1944; 1:41)
Pierre Schaeffer, Etude Pathétique (1948; 4:02)
Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, Bidule en Ut (1950; 1:51)
John Cage, Williams Mix (1952; 4:13)
Vladimir Ussachevsky, Sonic Contours (1952; 7:20)
Iannis Xenakis, Diamorphoses (1957; 6:53)
Luciano Berio, Thema (Ommagio a Joyce) (1958; 6:12)
Francois Bayle, L'oiseau-chanteur (1963; 3:28)
James Tenney, Collage #1 (1963; 3:22)
Reading assignment:
2. Paul Griffiths, "Introductions", from A Guide to Electronic Music. Thames and Hudson, 1979, pp. 7-16.

Oct. 10, 12, 17. Early electronic music
Listening assignment:
Edgard Varèse, Poème Eléctronique (1958; 7:56)
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Study II (1954; 3:01)
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kontakte (1954; 34:37)
Luciano Berio, Momenti (1960; 7:10)
Reading assignment:
3. Barry Schraeder, Classical Studio Electronic Music. from Introduction to electro-acoustic music , Prentice-Hall, 1982, pp. 75-96.
4. Nouritza Matossian, "The Philips Pavilion", from Xenakis, Pro/Am Resources, Inc, 1986, pp. 109-118.
5. Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Four Criteria of Electronic Music", from Stockhausen on music, Kampmann, 1989, pp. 88-111.
Writing assignment #1 due Oct. 10.
First in-class test Oct. 17.

Oct. 19. Synthesizers
Listening assignment:
Milton Babbitt, Phonemena (4:12)
Morton Subotnick, Silver apples of the moon, Part 1 (edit) (1967; 4:20)
Pink Floyd, On the Run (1973; 3:20)
Laurie Spiegel, Appalachian Grove 1 (1974; 5:20)
Mario Davidovsky, Synchronism #9 for violin and tape (1988; 8:46)
Reading assignment:
6. Joel Chadabe, "Synthesizers". from Electric Sound, Prentice Hall, 1997, pp. 140-171.

Oct. 24, 26. Computer music
Listening assignment:
Charles Dodge, Speech Songs (1972; 7:01)
John Chowning, Phoné (1981; 12:33)
James Dashow, Whispers out of Time (1976; 11:17)
Iannis Xenakis, Mycenae-Alpha (1978; 9:37)
William Albright, Sphaera (1985; 12:44)
Bill Schottstaedt, Dinosaur Music (1986; 6:34)
Reading assignment:
7. F. Richard Moore, "Dreams of Computer Music---Then and Now," Computer Music Journal 20/1 (1996) pp. 25-41
8. Charles Dodge, "On Speech Songs ," from Max Mathews and John Pierce, eds., Current Directions in Computer Music Research, MIT press, 1989, pp. 9-17.

Oct. 31, Nov. 2. The IRCAM school
Listening assignment:
Jean-Claude Risset, Songes (1979; 9:05)
Jean-Baptiste Barriere, Chréode 1 (1983; 9:26)
Pierre Boulez, Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (1985; 17:42)
Philippe Manoury, Jupiter (extract) (1987; 28:04)
Kaija Saariaho. Noanoa (1991; 9:10)
Reading assignment:
9. Jean-Claude Risset, "Digital Techniques and Sound Structure in Music". from Curtis Roads, Ed., Composers and the Computer. William Kaufmann, 1985, pp. 112-138.
10. Trevor Wishart, "The making of Vox-5", Computer Music Journal 12/4 (1988), pp. 21-27.
11. Georgina Born, "Uncertainty, the Canon, and Dissident Musics", from Rationalizing Culture, University of California Press, 1995, pp. 164-179.

Nov. 7, 9. Digital Musique Concrète
Listening assignment:
Horacio Vaggione, 21 variations (2001; 10:06)
Pablo Cetta, ...que me hiciste mal... (1992; 7:57)
Paul Koonce, Pins (1996; 13:23)
Jean-Claude Risset, Sud (1985; 23:56)

The second WRITING ASSIGNMENT is due Nov. 7. As with the earlier one, take two peices from the listening assignments (at least one of them from Oct. 19 or newer) and write approximately 500 words comparing the two.

Here are the presentations from Trevor Henthorn's two guest lectures: Tuesday, Nov. 7 and Thursday, Nov. 9 .

Nov. 14, 16, 21. Modernism and Postmodernism
Listening assignment:
John Cage, Radio Music (1956; 6:14)
Steve Reich, Come Out (1966; 12:54)
Pauline Oliveros, Bye Bye Butterfly (1965; 8:10)
Jean-Claude Risset, 8 sketches for piano (1989; nos. 2 and 4: 1:25, 1:09)
Paul Lansky, Idle Chatter (1985; 9:26)
George Lewis, Voyager, no. 1 (1993; 3:00)
Yoshihiro Hanno, On/off edit (2001; 9:10)
Sonic Youth, Audience (1983; 6:00)
Laurie Anderson, O Superman (1979; 8:25)
Reading assignment:
12. George Lewis, "Interacting with Latter-Day Musical Automata," Contemporary Music Review 18/3 (1999), pp. 99-112.
13. Chris Cutler, "Plunderphonics." from Simon Emmerson, ed., Music, Electronic Media and Culture. Ashgate Press, pp. 87-114.
14. Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of Failure: `Post-Digital' tendencies in contemporary computer music". Computer Music Journal 24/4 (2000), pp. 12-18.
Second in-class test Nov. 16.

Nov. 28, 30. Pop music and art music
Listening assignment
Chuck Berry, Sweet Little 16 (1958; 2:59)
Jimi Hendrix, Are You Experienced? (1967; 4:16)
Kraftwerk, Pocket Calculator (1981; 4:58)
Fatboy Slim, Right Here Right Now / The Rockefeller Skank (1998; 13:20)
Caviar, Tangerine Speedo (2000; 3:39)
Radiohead, Kid A (2000; 4:44)
John Stevens, Barrage #1 (1996; 2:52)
More TBA...
Writing assignment #3 due Nov. 28.
Final exam is on Tuesday, December 5, at 11:30AM.

URLs of interest

https://www.crca.ucsd.edu/ (UCSD)
https://www.ircam.fr/ (IRCAM, Paris, France)
https://www.computermusic.org (International Computer Music Association)