Light/Soft Morning, City!

Tod Machover - Light/Soft Morning, City!

released on LP in 1984

Light (composed in 1979)

Performed by members of the Ensemble InterContemporain with two computer-generated tapes
Conducted by Peter Eotvos.
Computer parts realized at IRCAM, Paris.

Soft Morning, City! (composed in 1980)

Performed by Jane Manning - soprano and Barry Guy - double bass
Computer parts realized at IRCAM, Paris.
Text from Finnegans Wake.

Light and Soft Morning, City! form a natural pair among my compositions. Both were completed within the space of one year, deal with similar compositional pre-occupations, and employ related uses of technology in music; together they are the culminating points of my work to that date.
Among the similarities between them, the presence of computer-generated sound is perhaps the most obvious. My real introduction to computer music (other than some preparatory studies at Juilliard, MIT, and Stanford University) came when I arrived at IRCAM, Paris, in the Fall of 1978. It was an exciting time there; a new technology, that of real-time digital synthesis, was just being perfected, thanks to Giuseppe di Giugno, an Italian physicist who had been invited to the institute by Luciano Berio. His machines, at that time the 4A and 4C (now superseded by the 4X!), for the first time gave composers the possibility of hearing their music immediately and of including gestural control and performance nuance. By a series of lucky accidents I became intimately involved with these machines at an early stage and was able to appreciate the beauty and power that they represented. When IRCAM commissioned me to write a piece for the Ensemble InterContemporain later that year, I decided to employ both the 4A and 4C machines in combination with a large instrumental ensemble.
The piece that resulted was Light, which was premiered at the Metz Festival in November 1979, and given its Paris premiere later that month in IRCAM's Espace de Projection. The performers were those who appear on this recording. (Tod Machover)

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Light {29:10}

Side 2

1. Soft Morning, City! {23:15}

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