From Philips 6740 001:

GROUPE DE RECHERCHES MUSICALES DE L'O.R.T.F.

IVO MALEC SPOT
[LUC FERRARI VISAGE V]
GUY REIBEL 2 VARIATIONS EN +TOILE
BERNARD PARMEGIANI PONOMATOP+ES
BERNARD PARMEGIANI G+N+RIQUE
PIERRE SCHAEFFER/PIERRE HENRY BIDULE EN UT
IVO MALEC DAHOVI II
[PIERRE SCHAEFFER ETUDE AUX ALLURES]
FRANQOIS BAYLE SOLITIOUDE
STUDIO VOOR ELEKTRONISCHE MUZIEK UTRECHT
JAAP VINK SCREEN
MILAN STIBILJ RAINBOW
FRITS WEILAND TEXTUUR
JACOB CATS LUX
ALIREZA MASCHAYEKI SHUR
LUCTOR PONSE RADIOPHONIE
JOS KUNST EXPULSION
[GOTTFRIED MICHAEL KOENIG FUNKTION BLAU]
STUDIO OF RADIO NHK, TOKYO
TOSHIRO MAYUZUMI MANDARA, for electronic sounds and voices
MAKI ISHII KYOO, Music for multi-piano, orchestra, and electronic sounds
MINAO SHIBATA IMPROVISATION, for electronic sounds
MAKOTO MOROI SHOSANKE, for electronic sounds and Japanese traditional instrument
s
STUDIO EKSPERYMENTALNE POLSKIE RADIO
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI PSALMUS
ANDRZEJ DOBROWOLSKI MUSIC FOR MAGNETIC TAPE AND OBOE SOLO (Janusz Banaszek, Oboe
)

[ARNE NORDHEIM SOLITAIRE]

WLODZIMIERZ KOTONSKI MICROSTRUCTURES
BOGUSLAW SCHAFFER SYMPHONY (performed according to the graphic score by Bohdan M
azurek)
Orpheus with his lute tamed wild animals . . . the loudspeakers of electro-acous
tic music have brought into earshot all the sounds of creation - and even a few
more - in the biggest festival of sound that man has ever known. This festival i
s, however, only the apotheosis of a great country fair where traditional ideas
on art, music, history, culture, and even communications are knocked over like A
unt Sallies, and we are compelled, whether we will it or not, to reconsider our
relation to that which is said, sung, played, or heard, and thus to that which i
s thought and transmitted.
To be unaware of this is to deny the evidence; we live inseparably with the loud
speaker. In front and behind, high and low, to left and right, in the street and
at home, at the office, in the factory and drawing-room, in public and private,
on foot or in a car, in the air or on the sea - everywhere and always we are in
the company of the loudspeaker as it speaks hard and loud, low and close, insol
ent and insinuating, its mouth always open, inexhaustible, changing its shape, h
eaping together the shortcomings of our cars, and making up for the infirmity of
our imaginations. It is the earmouth of radio and record-player, cinema, and te
levision, tape-recorder and electric guitar... the list is endless.
Time and space shrink. Tokyo can hear what is happening at any instant in Paris.
Turn a knob and you can be at the ends of the earth, or even on the moon. A tri
be of Zulus, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, or a gang of screaming hippies m
ay invade your living-room. The walls dissolve, the ceiling vanishes, and we are
-released on the flying carpet of the sound-dream; all kinds of geographic, hist
orical, and acoustic perspectives are open to us. Fiction outstrips reality at t
he gallop. The eye listens, the ear sees: a new sense is given us.
It is as well that in broadcasting studios a few strange spirits keep watch betw
een the microphone and the transmitter. One day in 1948 an engineer-poet-musicia
n-philosopher called Pierre Schaeffer cut a record. Light!
The expression of sound so repeated was a whole that could be dissected, a "soun
d object" with its own body, but also with its own profile, density, skin, organ
s ... In short: the sound of music of a new type, in which the tape-recorder had
become instrumental in allowing us to retain it better or to manipulate it in a
ll kinds of ways.
If the tape on which the "sound object" in question has been caught is played at
a speed different to that at which it was recorded, height, length, and other c
haracteristics are all modified. By a simple snip of the scissors the head, body
, and tail of the object are cut off. Potentiometers are also capable of reducin
g it to an imperceptible murmur or amplifying it to the hubbub of the Last Trump
. Any of its components can be filtered out and echo chambers can place it in ne
w acoustic environments. Chains of tape-recorders can superimpose it to the nth
degree on itself or other objects . . .
And so the sound, for what it was, became pliable material, supple, subject to t
he thought and gesture of the master creator of machines. Suddenly the composer
threw his score to the winds. He was no longer limited by instruments or voices,
he could act and react directly in the universe of sound without the preliminar
y of writing things down and with total disregard for the hazards of interpretat
ion. The music was made and played almost without intermediary, just as the craf

tsman concentrates on revealing the spirit of the material he has chosen, so the
man of music worked on the live, the real, the concrete. Concrete Music was bor
n.
Soon Herbert Eimert and his disciple Karlheinz Stockhausen found a means of maki
ng the sounds for the loudspeaker by using electronic oscillation generators in
the hope, temporarily justified, of a better mastery of the mysteries of sound.
Electronic Music was born.
For some years the two rivals, the one in Paris and the other in Cologne, fought
unmercifully. Hope was strong, but love was stronger and they ended up by marry
ing each other in the general surge of lyricism of the "Song of Adolescents" by
Stockhausen and in the tremendous musical frescoes of Pierre Henry. Electro-acou
stic Music was born. It was just a question of terminology.
New art (music? some may still ask) quickly crossed the Seine and the Rhine to s
pread over the whole planet, from Milan to Stockholm, from New York to Tokyo, an
d even from Warsaw to Moscow. In the radio laboratories, in the university labor
atories, the studios now continue to multiply to the point that any attempt to c
ount them is in vain. A crowd of impassioned researchers, of more or less inspir
ed creators in what is now considered to count among the fine arts, work under e
very arch of heaven to satisfy the progressively insatiable musical appetite of
the loudspeaker. For more than twenty years we have followed, step by step, stag
e by stage, the quest for the unsayable by the visionary engineers, the methodic
al poets, who, having split the atom of sound, had the mad ambition of rebuildin
g music.
They wandered off into virgin continents, taken with an insatiable hunger for un
heard-of discoveries; they shut themselves in silent and unhealthy cellars to es
cape the epidemic and the general incomprehension; they fought each other and al
most always made it up; they flirted in turn with the most unbridled Surrealist
literature, with the most rigorous science, with the cinema, with theatre of all
types; they constructed enormous machines, wrote dissertations, assembled instr
uments that do not exist and wrote music that cannot be read.
Finally they took the Muse of Music on their laps, called her by her name Euterp
e, and, without waiting for an uncertain future, fathered a child: the music of
today. And now, due to them, the noise of the street is no longer the noise of t
he street; the breath of wind through trees no longer sounds the same. There is
no longer any sound that speaks with the same voice. The earth feels itself spea
k, feels itself listening. And we stand, astonished and amazed, becoming aware o
f this strange and yet familiar song which existed in and around us without our
being aware of it. Evolution in acceleration has become a revolution. And the re
volution has found a voice. Sound is not inanimate: it has a soul of which we kn
ew nothing.
But sound in all its meanings and manifestations is no longer the possession of
a favoured few: through records it has become readily available. It has already
provided us with the necessary luxury of poetic discomfort, the urgent impulse t
o escape the habits of the ear and accepted music and to throw open the window o
n pastures new.
To listen to the music of the loudspeakers is, primarily, to forget all the rest
, to be reborn to the essential, to enter through the object into the very quick
of the musical subject which transcends sound. It is to wander in the galaxy of
innumerable sounds and follow a train of free thought which is closer than ever
to the language that interprets it. It is to share one of the great adventures,
to partake in one of the principle conquests of our century in which man, assis
ted by the machines that are his brain-children, attempts to lose himself beyond
the reach of reason, at the limits of the sublime.

Electro-acoustic music is barely twenty years old. That is the age of self-searc
hing, the age of joyous maturity, and yet still the age of spring. Many a promis
ed flower has yet to bloom.
Maurice Fleuret
PANORAMA OF ELECTRO-ACOUSTICAL MUSIC
The paths opened by the musique concrFte of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (P
aris, 1948) and the electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Cologne, 1950) ha
ve led to a new technical-aesthetic domain which has expanded both geographicall
y and musically with exceptional rapidity. New York (1952), Milan (1955), then T
okyo, Warsaw, and Utrecht were the first bases of an activity which today is bei
ng pursued in more than a hundred studios scattered throughout the world, and wh
ich has already resulted in over 7,000 works.
Musically, one might say that the evolution of the electro- acoustic medium has
been dual, inclined both to the development of its own specific aspect and, at t
he same time, to a reconciliation with tradition. On the one hand, the apparatus
capable of producing sounds entirely new to the human ear is becoming more and
more varied: after the filters, modulators, and tape- recorders with variable sp
eed, have come the perfected devices for spatialisation (i.e. diffusion of four
independent sound-tracks) and, above all, the combinations of synthesizers and c
omputers which permit full automation in the process of composition.
However, the perfecting of the processes of composition on magnetic tape without
the intervention of an interpreter did lead to some regret at the absence of pe
rformers. Since 1958, combined works for tape and instruments have been appearin
g, and one may now be present at the development of new musical forms, where the
electro-acoustic transformation of the sounds is carried out on the spot and pe
rhaps even provides the subject of improvisation.
Musical activity within the studio has profoundly modified the practice and expe
rience of music, and one can say that the roles of the musician, the work, and t
he listener are no longer as distinct as they were in the past. The studio is a
new musicians' city, where individual creativity is accompanied by various forms
of collective musical activity. This does not rest only on the sharing of means
of production and diffusion, but also on the fact that most studios operate wit
hin larger institutions in radio-television or education and research. In such c
ircumstances, an "ivory-tower" attitude is no longer tenable for the creative ar
tist.
These new conditions have influenced the content of the music and the way in whi
ch it reaches the listener. Having its genesis in radio, electro-acoustic music
is destined to pass through a communication circuit other than the ritual of the
concert. Elaborated by the intermediary of apparatus which makes possible all m
odification, it has a less semantic aspect than traditional music, and might mor
e readily be compared with a picture than with a text. The position of the music
ian is less that of one who "expresses a thought through the means of a known la
nguage," than of one who mimes the music in communion with a listener who unders
tands directly without recourse to a coded language. Music becomes less an exper
ience interpreted than an experience directly shared.
David Rissit
Paris

The musical research group (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) of the O.R.T.F. is a

studio for the production of electronic music and at the same time a centre for
research and musical instruction. As a studio, it carries on the work of the ol
d musique concrFte group, founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948; as a research uni
t, it has since 1959 been integrated into a vast working body, the Service de la
Recherche of the O.R.T.F. whose explorations are not confined to music, but inc
lude all aspects of communication in general. In the musical research group, a t
eam of composers and researchers with a wide range of special interests ensures
a programme of studies and realisations related to both the educational and publ
ic spheres.
IVO MALEC was born in 1925 in Zagreb, where he studied music and won several com
position prizes. He continued his studies in Paris under Olivier Messiaen, and l
ater Pierre Schaeffer, and while maintaining close connections with musical life
in Yugoslavia, settled definitely in France in 1959, becoming a permanent membe
r of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His works, which have earned two Grands
Prix du Disque are sometimes for orchestra ("Sigma," "Miniatures pour Lewis Car
roll," "Oral"), sometimes for magnetic tape ("Reflets," "Dahovi I et II"), and s
ometimes for performer and tape ("Cantate pour elle," "Lumina").
SPOT signifies here a "blob of light projected on a screen," and the effect by a
nalogy of a "blob of sound projected on the ear drum" is obtained by a montage o
f sounds drawn from the electro-acoustic work "Reflets."
DAHOVI II dates from 1961. Sounds akin to "breaths" (which translates the SerboCroatian word dahovi) furnish the deliberately restricted basic material of this
composition. The purpose, in fact, is less to bring out individual sound effect
s than to emphasise the play of volumes and densities which they form among them
selves and which are barely underscored by a few designs of line and shading.
[LUC FERRARI was born in 1929. He attended the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris
and subsequently studied with Olivier Messiaen. Since 1958 he has worked alongs
ide Pierre Schaeffer helping to define the policies of the Groupe de Recherches
Musicales. As a result, he has realised a number of works ("Tautologos I et II,"
"HTtTrozygote," "Und so weiter," "Music promenade"). With GTrard Patris, he has
made a series of television programmes ("Les Grandes Repetitions") devoted to m
usic (Messiaen, Stockhausen, Varese, Scherchen, etc.).
VISAGE V (1959) is a composition in three sections, constructed round a continuo
us sound called "personnage principal." In the first section, this "personnage"
decreases in thickness and intensity as six "creatures" separate from it to form
rhythmic figures; the play of these "creatures" gives mobility to the second se
ction; in the third, the "creatures" transmit their configurations to the "perso
nnage principal," which appears in all its harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic shape
s.]
GUY REIBEL was born in 1936. With a scientific as well as a musical training, he
has worked since 1964 with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in various capaci
ties. His research and experimental work, which has included collaboration on Pi
erre Schaeffer's "SolfFge de l'objet sonore," alternates with the composition of
works which reveal a very individual curiosity regarding the transmutations of
sound material ("Antinote," "Vertiges") and particularly of vocal material ("Dur
both," "Carnaval").
The purpose of VARIATIONS EN ETOILE is to bring out the different relationships
which occur between the constructive will of the musician and the nature of the
material at his disposal. Sometimes a preliminary idea commands the sounds and "
instruments" of the studio, sometimes, conversely, the possibilities of the soun
ds and equipment condition the musical idea. Each of the two variations chosen h
ere from a total of six illustrates one aspect of this theme. In "Metamorphose"

the machines show all their power of transformation, creating the most varied ma
terial from a simple series of impulses. In "Rupture," on the other hand, the rh
ymes between sound subjects flow with poetic spontaneity.
BERNARD PARMEGIANI, born in 1927, was trained as a musician and sound technician
. He joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1960, his particular field of
inquiry being the techniques of studio composition. He is the author of many wor
ks for magnetic tape ("L'Instant mobile," "Capture TphTmFre") and For instrument
s and tape ("Violostries," "Jazzex"), and also of music for cinema and televisio
n ("Socrate," "Jeu des anges").
PONOMATOPEES II - inspired by the electro-acoustic treatment of the voice and al
so by some of the vocal ravings of pop singers, these chomatopoeic fantasies sho
uld be heard, according to the composer, as follows: 1. Sit in the manner of bad
European yogis. 2. Pretend to concentrate, thinking of nothing but what is said
. 3. Catch the meaning . . . repeat . . . turn around. 4. Then "ponomatopise" .
. . you will free yourself from the enjoyment of the verb!
GENERIOUE - There is a particular art employed in radio and television, which co
nsists of establishing in the sounds of a generique (a kind of sound trailer), t
he character of the ensuing programme. Bernard Parmegiani has composed many gene
riques, both for regular items (e.g. a current events programme) and as preludes
to plays (e.g. "La Ville en haut de la colline").
[PIERRE SCHAEFFER was born in 1910. His varied activities as engineer, musician,
and writer led him to become the pioneer of a multilateral form of research int
o communication, of which the principle stages have been the founding of the Stu
dio d'essai de la Radio Frantaise (1942), and subsequently of the Service de la
Recherche de L'O.R.T.F. He is the author of radiophonic works ("La Coquille a pl
anFtes"), of films and experimental records ("Dialogue du son et de l'image," "S
olfFge de l'objet sonore"), and various writings, particularly on music ("TraitT
des objets musicaux"). His compositions have marked the birth of electro- acous
tic music ("Concert de bruits") and its developments ("+tudes aux allures,""aux
sons animes,"and "aux objets").
+TUDE AUX ALLURES forms part of a series of exploration into musical characteris
tics of the world of sound which are outside the ideas of traditional music. The
allure of a sound is its way of sustaining itself, by a generalised vibration,
which acts on the pitch and intensity as well as on the colour. L 'Etude sets up
some kinds of rhymes between various sounds with more or less tight allures.]
PIERRE HENRY, born in 1927, studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and Olivier
Messiaen. He was the first composer to become associated with the experiments i
n musique concrFte of Pierre Schaeffer, with whom he has collaborated on several
works, notably the "Symphonic pour un homme seul." In 1960, Pierre Henry founde
d an independent studio, the studio Apsome, where he has realised many works, th
e best-known being "Le Voyage" (1962), "Variations pour une porte et un soupir"
(1963), and "Messe pour le temps present."
BIDULE EN UT (1950), which might be translated as "Thingamy in C," is the first
combined work of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer. A kind of complex improvised
scale on a prepared piano gives rise - by double transposition into low and hig
h pitch - to a "three-part fugue." As the transposition affects both duration an
d material, it is less a matter of recognising a "theme" at different tempi, tha
n of appreciating the manner in which the three streams blend together in a bril
liant and concise ensemble movement.
FRANCOIS BAYLE was born in 1932. He is self-taught, but with long experience in
experimental music; he is less devoted to the evolution of "pure" musical aesthe
tics than to the discovery of new musical methods engendered by contemporary tec

hniques. His career as a composer is therefore closely linked to the fundamental

and applied researches of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, in which he has b
een the animator since 1966. His works include compositions for magnetic tape ("
Pluriel," "Espaces inhabitables," "Nadir") and film-music ("Trois portraits de l
'oiseau qui n'existe pas," "Portrait-poFme de LTonor Fini").
SOLITIOUDE (1969) has been commented on thus by the composer: "Irreverent moveme
nt, in spite of a series of light genuflexions (to Duke Ellington . . . Boris Vi
an . . . the Soft Machine . . .). David Allen provided me with fine guitar sound
s. The tape-recorders contributed some incidents. But the events of May were the
most generous, offering me an abundance of teeming life, the charm-shock of the
ir sirens. The splashes of the crowd, the applause of the sea - this pop-nature
in auditory hallucination - forms one of the episodes of an 'Aventure du Cri,' i
n which I am engaged at the moment."
Utrecht
The history of electro-acoustic music in the Netherlands began in 1956, when Phi
lips set up the studio in Eindhoven in which Edgar VarFse was to compose his fam
ous "PoFme Electronique." Subsequently several studios were founded, notably in
Delft, Bilthoven, and at the University of Utrecht (1960). This last studio, rec
ently re-named the Institute of Sonology, carries out research work, apart from
compositional activities proper, and also does much teaching. The University of
Utrecht is therefore not only an international magnet for dedicated composers, b
ut also for students who come to be initiated into studio techniques and the mor
e recent techniques of composition by computer.
JAAP VINK was born in 1930. As a sound engineer he set up the Bilthoven electron
ic studio and directed it for six years. Since 1957 he has worked at the Utrecht
studio, as composer and teacher.
SCREEN dates from 1968. As its title suggests, this composition presents itself
as a surface, a vast harmonic surface, of which the spectrum evolves in continuo
us fashion through the action of numerous filters and superimpositions.
MILAN STIBILJ was born in 1929 in Yugoslavia, where he studied music and psychol
ogy. After courses in electronic music at the Utrecht studio, he was invited to
settle in Berlin. His compositions include the "Requiem SlovFne," a Symphony, an
d works for various chamber-music combinations.
RAINBOW (1968) develops sound material derived from a recording of drops of wate
r. The rhythmic figures formed by these drops are set in counterpoint with elect
ronic sounds, in a sound-space which grows increasingly more vast, as much in it
s tessitura and dynamics as in actual spatial distribution.
FRITS WEILAND, born in 1933, had both a musical and scientific training. After w
orking for radio and television in the Netherlands, he joined the Utrecht studio
permanently in 1961 as a researcher and instructor.
TEXTUUR (1968) brings into play several tonal contrasts, which evolve towards a
harmony of textures, through the reciprocal influence of opposing elements. In a
ddition to the contrasts of register and harmonic material, one notices above al
l the opposition then reconciliation of a series of rapid impulses within a long
, continuous enveloping tone.
JACOB CATS was born in 1922 and studied music with Ernest Mulder. Among the work
s which he has realised at the Utrecht studio since 1967, the most notable is pe
rhaps the triptych "Lux", "Prediction I," and "Prediction II." The last of the t
hree pieces also calls for a capella chorus and a soloist.

LUX (1968) is a symmetrical composition. The first section, recapitulated at the

end of the work, makes use of drawn-out sounds, to which filtering and reverber
ation give a soft, blurred colouring. The middle section, by contrast, is rhythm
ic and lively.
ALIREZA MASCHAYEKI was born in Teheran in 1940. After studying music in his own
country and in Vienna, he went on to study electronic music in Cologne, and then
at the Utrecht studio, where he composed, among other works, "Autonom III" (196
7).
SHUR (1968) combines electronic sounds with motives from Persian folk-music play
ed on the cello. In their relationship to these motives, the various electronic
sounds act sometimes as a contrasting element, sometimes as an extension. On the
one hand short impulses contrast with the continuous nature of Persian music; o
n the other, the melodic oscillations which characterise the music are underline
d and prolonged by a kind of electronic aureole.
LUCTOR PONSE was born in Geneva, and studied music there and in Valenciennes. He
has won awards at several international composition contests, notably the Queen
Elizabeth of Belgium contest, at which his Symphony (1953) and later his Violin
Concerto (1965) won distinction. Since 1964, Luctor Ponse has been a regular co
llaborator in the activities of the Utrecht studio, where he has realised among
other works, a Concerto for piano and electronic sounds and the series of "Radio
phonies."
RADIOPHONIE 1 a (1968) is a rhythmic work based on the play of regular and irreg
ular pulsations, which at times develop in continuous trajectories. The overall
direction of the work is determined at one and the same time by acceleration, br
oadening of the tessitura, and dynamic expansion.
JOS KUNST, born in 1936, studied composition with Joep Straesser and Ton de Leeu
w, and electronic music at the Utrecht studio. The Music Weeks of the Gaudeamus
Foundation have brought him several prizes and also the first public performance
of "Expulsion" (September, 1969).
EXPULSION is a series of seven variations, some of which join without transition
while others overlap. The work often explores the intermediary sound fringe bet
ween the discontinuous and the continuous. This fringe appears when the accelera
tion of a series of beats changes them from the punctuated state to that of a co
mpact mass.
[GOTTFRIED MICHAEL KOENIG was born in Magdeburg in 1926. He studied composition
in Brunswick and Cologne and information theory at the University of Bonn. From
1954 to 1964 he was a permanent member of the electronic studio in Cologne, wher
e he composed "Klangfiguren" (Tone figures). In 1964 Koenig took over the artist
ic direction of the Utrecht studio, where he does important work both as a compo
ser and as a professor.
FUNKTION BLAU is one of a series of colour studies called "Functions" each of wh
ich sets out a variant of one experimental principle. This principle brings in a
computer to determine variations of form and colour according to statistical la
ws. In this line of research, the "Functions" are methodical experiments rather
than compositions in the strictly aesthetic sense of the word.]
Tokyo
Since the foundation of the studio of Radio NHK, Tokyo, in 1954, the development
of electro-acoustic music in Japan has shown a constant exchange between nation
al tradition and techniques imported from the West.

The Japanese contribution is especially interesting in the field of combined ele

ctronic instrumental music. Japan has a rich variety of traditional instruments,
and there are many which blend particularly happily with electronically produce
d sound. However, the meeting of two sound-worlds has been most rewarding in mus
ical forms where both modern techniques and traditional elements are readily ado
ptable and sometimes singularly convergent. Elements borrowed by Mayuzumi and Mo
roi from the vocal punctuations of the N( theatre, or the sound patterns of the
shamisen are significant in this respect. Such borrowings might determine perhap
s a refined breaking-up of the beat, or again a stretching of tempo in accordanc
e with the flow of the musical material. From the standpoint of our own Western
conception of tempo, we still sense an alien quality in Japanese electro-acousti
c music.
TOSHIRO MAYUZUMI (born 1929) is one of the leading composers in Japan today. Aft
er completing his musical studies in Europe - notably under Tony Aubin at the Pa
ris Conservatoire - he set out to bring Japanese and Western traditions together
. Although a pioneer of electro-acoustic music in Japan, with his "Composition c
oncrete XYZ" (1953) and particularly "Aoi no Ue" (First N( song), he has made hi
mself equally well known in the West through his orchestral music ("Nirvana Symp
hony").
MANDARA for electronic sounds and voices dates from 1969. The title which is bor
rowed from the vocabulary of Buddhism, evokes the idea of the uncertainty of thi
ngs here on earth. The work is divided into two sections. The first is composed
basically of brief, shrill electronic impulses; toneless sounds gradually impose
the sensation of deep breathing, which effects a transition to the second secti
on of the work.
This is made up of complex vocal polyphony, in which murmurs, cries, and ordinar
y speaking are blended with typically Japanese melodic inflections.
MAKI ISHII was born in 1936 into an artistic family. In 1958 he settled in Germa
ny, studying at the National Musical Academy in Berlin. He has written orchestra
l music ("Transition"), chamber works ("Aphorisms"), and electro-acoustic music.
KYOO was composed in 1968 and won an award at the National Arts Festival. The ti
tle, which means "echoes," refers to the formal concept of the work: one sound g
iving rise to a family of sounds which in their turn engender other families, et
c. There are various sound sources: piano, brass, percussion, and electronic dev
ices. The instrumental sounds are heard sometimes in their original form and som
etimes transformed electronically. The piano in particular is treated in a varie
ty of ways: played normally, played according to the techniques of the "prepared
piano," and finally amplified and transformed instantaneously through microphon
es installed inside the frame.
MINAO SHIBATA was born in 1916. He studied composition with Sabro Moroi, in addi
tion to pursuing studies in aesthetics and botany. He is at present a professor
at the National College of Art and for some years has devoted himself to the dev
elopment of new music in Japan. His compositions include orchestral works (Symph
ony), and piano pieces ("Theme and 15 Variations").
IMPROVISATION for electronic sounds dates from 1968. The title may seem surprisi
ng, since the classic studio technique is to produce sounds independently and th
en put them together on magnetic tape. However, improvements in equipment have n
ow made a "live" compositional technique possible. Banks of electronic generator
s deliver a cascade of constantly changing sound-colours which the composer can
manipulate on the spot in the manner of an instrumentalist.
MAKOTO MOROI was born in 1930, and studied music with his father, himself a comp

oser of note. Moroi's orchestral and chamber works have earned him awards in a n
umber of international competitions, including the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium Co
ntest. His "Variations on the numerical principle of 7" composed in collaboratio
n with Mayuzumi marked the debut of electronic music in Japan.
SHOSANKE is a suite of six variations on a trumpet sound traditionally associate
d with the Buddhist "Ceremony of the Water." Heard at the opening of the work, t
his sound is subsequently multiplied by electro-acoustic processes, then enhance
d in turn by traditional instruments and synthetic sounds. Electronic sound is c
ombined in the second variation with an ensemble of shakuhashi (bamboo flutes),
and in the third with the shamisen (a primitive type of lute). Shamisen and shak
uhashi then play alone, before joining in final polyphony, which brings in the o
riginal trumpet sound.
Warsaw
The Studio of Experimental Music of the Polish Radio was founded in 1957 by the
composer and musicologist Josef Patkowsky, who has been its director ever since.
His foundation was one of the signs of the dramatic revival in the arts that ma
nifested itself at that time in Polish life. Apart from "pure" musical works, of
which a very representative collection is to be found here, the studio's produc
tion has always aimed at "applied" music, intended for such media as radio and t
elevision.
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI was born in 1933 and studied at the Cracow School of Music.
His "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima," won the UNESCO prize of the Tribun
e Internationale des Compositeurs in 1961 and attracted the attention of the mus
ical world. A wide variety of compositions, among which his great choral-orchest
ral work, the "St. Luke Passion" stands out from the rest, have since assured Pe
nderecki of an important place among the great musical creators of our time.
PSALMUS (1961) which was realised in collaboration with the sound engineer Eugen
iusz Rudnick, is to date the only electro- acoustic work by Penderecki. His basi
c material stems solely from a recording of two voices (soprano and baritone) so
treated that they provide long holding-notes developing in pitch, dynamics, and
colour, alternating with short impulses which display to advantage the great va
riety of inflection proper to the Polish language.
ANDRZEJ DOBROWOLSKI, born in 1922, studied composition as well as singing and se
veral instruments at the Warsaw and Cracow Academies of Music. He was closely as
sociated with the work of the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio from its b
eginning and his works include "Passacaglia" (1960) and "Music for Tape no. 1" (
1962).
MUSIC FOR MAGNETIC TAPE AND OBOE SOLO dates from 1965. The tape was made using s
olely transformed oboe sounds wit the addition of a solo part for oboe. The acce
nt is more often placed on the contrast than on the similarities between natural
and manipulated sounds from the same instrument. To this end the manipulations
of the tape aim at making the original sounds unrecognisable, particularly by ha
rmonic multiplication. There is also frequent use of percussive sounds obtained
on the keys of the instrument.
[ARNE NORDHEIM, born in
ic. He is the author of
harsis"), and is one of
erimental Studio of the

Norway in 1931, studied music at the Oslo Academy of Mus

many works, both instrumental and electro-acoustic ("Cat
a number of foreign composers invited to work at the Exp
Polish Radio.

SOLITAIRE is Nordheim's second composition. It was realised in 1969 for the open
ing of a Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo and was originally intended to be ac

companied by light projection. The sound material - very varied at the outset forms a general atmosphere that is at once mysterious and brilliant and in which
the impression of spatial depth plays an important role. The open construction
makes use of alternations and returns of elements that are contrasted dynamicall
y, in tessitura and, above all, in quality.]
WLODZIMIERZ KOTONSKI, born in 1925, studied composition an the piano at the Wars
aw Academy of Music. Associated with the work of the Experimental Studio of the
Polish Radio since its foundation, he has realised, among many works for cinema
and theatre, some pure musical works, one of which is "Study for a clash of the
cymbals" (1960).
MICROSTRUCTURES dates from 1963. The title refers to the process of micro-montag
e used in the composition. The sound elements, which include some brief percussi
on on wood and glass, have been built up from short segments according to relate
d characteristics of the types of material, particularly granular qualities.
BOGUSLAW SCHAFFER was born in 1929 and studied composition and musicology in Cra
cow. He is the author of various instrumental and electro-acoustic works ("Assem
blage") an has also made a name for himself with musicological works on contempo
rary music,
SYMPHONIE (1966) is the first work of any considerable length realised by the Ex
perimental Studio of the Polish Radio; its composition was spread out over more
than a year. The basic idea was to transpose into purely electronic music the no
tion of the assembly of sounds of different origin that the word "symphony" sugg
ests. The realisation of the work demanded close co-operation between the compos
er and the engineer, Bohdan Mazurek, who contributed a great dea1 in the suggest
ion and provision of suitable apparatus.
David Rissin