Earth's Magnetic Field

Charles Dodge - Earth's Magnetic Field

"Earth's Magnetic Field" is a computer-generated musical piece using the recorded observations of the Earth's magnetic field from 1961. It is made up entirely of electronic sounds. The observations were programmed into a computer by using a sound synthesis program. These observations are the notes of the piece.

Tracklisting:

Side One

1. Earth's Magnetic Field {13:50}

Side Two

1. Earth's Magnetic Field [continued] {15:00}

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Cascando

Charles Dodge - Cascando

Realization of Samuel Beckett's Radio Play by Charles Dodge

Realization made at the computer centers of Columbia University and the City University of New York and the Center for Computer Music at Brooklyn College.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Opener - John Nesci
Voice - Computer synthesis based on a reading by Steven Gilborn
Music - Computer synthesis based on Voice

Excerpted from the liner notes:

CASCANDO is Charles Dodge's realization of Samuel Beckett's radio play of 1963. Like Beckett's "Words and Music", CASCANDO has three characters: Opener ("Dry as dust"), Voice ("low, panting"), and Music. "Music" is not characterized by Beckett, but he indicates very precisely in the published play (with rows of dots) where it is to "speak" alone, sound together with Voice, or be overlaid with a comment from Opener. Thus, as Vivian Mercer has remarked in her "Beckett/Beckett", CASCANDO, but could be described as a kind of libretto, and it and "Words and Music" "inaugurate a new genre - invisible opera."

This "libretto" attracted Dodge when, finishing his "Speech Songs" in 1972, he began looking for other material for his "pitched speech" composition. At first the Beckett play seemed too long for the purpose, but Dodge ended up using it entirely, word for word, (plus, of course, music for Music). He worked at it, off and on, for more than five years. Beckett gave Dodge permission to "musicalize" CASCANDO, but initially withheld rights to public presentation. However, on receiving a copy of the finished tape in the spring of 1978, he wrote, "Dear Mr. Dodge: Thank you for your letter of April with the tape of your CASCANDO. Okay for public performance." (Dodge finds the "your" flattering, and we shall see presently how accurate it is.)

There are about as many interpretations of the meaning of Beckett's drama as there have been interpreters of it. Perhaps the narrative Voice is that of Opener himself, the former trying desperately to tell the very last story - to "finish it...then sleep... no more stories... no more words" - while the latter (austere, confident, presiding) opens and closes the bits of story and music, aware (as Hugh Kenner says in "A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett") that he is "incomprehensible to censorious folk called 'they'":

They say, That is not his life, he does not live on that. They
don't see me, they don't see what my life is, they don't
see what I live on, and they say, That is not his life, he
does not live on that.
Pause.
I have lived on it... pretty long.

The story that Voice tries to tell is about a man called Woburn, going out at night on a familiar search ("same old coat... same old stick"), who keeps falling (=cascando) "...on purpose or not...can't see...he's down...that's what counts," in mud, in sand, in stones, finally in the bilge of an oarless, tillerless boat "heading out...vast deep...no more land." Voice breathlessly follows Woburn, dying to end his story ("...to see him...say him"), hoping that "this time...it's the right one." Music is with Voice in this quest; Opener comments, perhaps with wonderment, "From one world to another, it's as though they drew together." But, at the close, although Woburn clings on (to the boat? to the narrating Voice which cries "come on...come on" together with Music?), there is only extinction. (The last word of the play, a direction, is "Silence.")

The well-known internet repository of knowledge, Wikipedia has more information about Cascando.

Tracklisting:

1. Cascando {32:03}

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Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961-1973

various artists compilation - Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center 1961-1973

CD released in 1998

This is an excellent and essential compilation of vintage first-generation electronic music from one of the most well-known electronic music studios.

The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was the first electronic music center of its kind to be established in the United States, and from 1959 to the late 1970s it was one of the premier sound facilities in the world. The history of the EMC falls into four sections: 1951-59, as the original experimental studio begun by Vladimir Ussachevsky; 1959-1983, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, directed by Ussachevsky, and the leading electronic music studio in the United States; 1983-1994, as the Columbia University Electronic Music Center, directed by Mario Davidovsky; and 1994 to the present, as the Columbia University Computer Music Center, directed by Fred Lerdahl and Bradford Garton. [now directed only by Bradford Garton] From 1951 to 1983, the function of the EMC was the teaching and production of electronic music, and the vast majority of pieces composed at the Center - approximately three hundred - were composed during this period. Some of these compositions have become classics of music history.
...
In 1959, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was founded, with Ussachevsky as director, and his colleagues Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt, and Roger Sessions on the committee of direction. A number of composers were invited to do the first work at the Center, including Bulent Arel (Turkey), Halim El-Dabh (Egypt), Mario Davidovsky (Argentina), and Charles Wuorinen, who was then a graduate student at Columbia. The Center presented its first concert in May 1961, the program consisting of Ussachevsky's Creation-Prologue, Arel's Stereo Electronic Music No. 1, Halim El-Dabh's Leila and the Poet, Milton Babbitt's Composition for Synthesizer, Mario Davidovsky's Electronic Study #1, Otto Luening's Gargoyles for Violin Solo and Synthesized Sound, and Charles Wuorinen's Symphonia Sacra. [all of these pieces with the exception of Wuorinen's piece are on the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center LP] This wide variation in musical style and aesthetic continued at the Center for the next twenty years, until Ussachevsky's retirement.  (Alice Shields)

Tracklisting:

1. Bulent Arel - Postlude from "Music for a Sacred Service" {4:01}

2. Charles Dodge - Earth's Magnetic Field {14:08}

3. Ilhan Mimaroglu - Prelude No. 8 (To the Memory of Edgard Varese) {3:59}

4. Bulent Arel and Daria Semegen - Out of Into {16:38}

5. Ingram Marshall - Cortez {8:35}

6. Daria Semegen - Electronic Composition No. 1 {5:52}

7. Alice Shields - Dance Piece No. 3 {5:53}

8. Alice Shields - Study for Voice and Tape {5:17}

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Synthesized Voices

Charles Dodge - Synthesized Voices

Originally posted on July 27, 2006

From the back cover:

The compositions recorded here are a product of work with computers in synthetic speech, song and vocal sounds and were created between 1972 and 1975. The music was realized on two different computer music systems and takes advantage of, and attempts to extend and explore their features. The system employed to realize SPEECH SONGS was created at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for research in synthetic speech and speech communication. Since the system was not designed for musical purposes, its limitations were severe and its musical use a great and (and often rewarding) challenge. The system used for IN CELEBRATION and THE STORY OF OUR LIVES was designed with the expressed purpose of creating synthetic musical voices, and was therefore much better suited to the task at hand. As with any high technology project, there was extensive collaboration in the production of the works. Thanks go to Joseph Olive, who designed the system at Bell Laboratories and taught me to use it, and to Kenneth Stieglitz of Princeton University and Howard Eskin, Richard Garland of Columbia University, who with the late Godfrey Winham and the composer contributed to the system now (1976) operating at the Columbia University Nevis Laboratories. (Charles Dodge)

Tracklisting:

1. In Celebration {8:08}

2. Speech Songs: When I Am With You {1:33}

3. Speech Songs: He Destroyed Her Image {1:57}

4. Speech Songs: A Man Sitting In the Cafeteria {1:21}

5. Speech Songs: The Days are Ahead {1:57}

6. The Story of Our Lives {17:48}

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