Musical Expression in Electronic Music

I attended a new music concert tonight at NYU. The performers were Elizabeth McNutt, flute, Dr. Esther Lamneck, clarinet, and... computer?? I've improvised on flute to a fixed electronic score before, but I have never seen a live performance of instrumentalists playing composed music to the improvisations of a computer! I don't quite understand the computer programming, so I'm sure I'm oversimplifying it. But I think the composers designed their computer programs to react to live sounds. And I was most impressed with the last piece, when that composer was on stage "playing" the computer.

It was a fascinating experience. The instrumentalists tonight were of course top-notch. It would have been just as enjoyable to listen to them play together. They varied their tone in extreme ways, yet still blended beautifully. Sometimes I couldn't tell if it was a flute or clarinet tone that I was hearing.

In addition to the live players, the computer contributed so much beyond what I thought was possible. I don't know to what extent the composers controlled the computer sounds, but the computerhad many roles. It filled in the gaps between the instruments' parts. It repeated the instruments' sounds, mixed them together, transposed them, varied them, or made new melodies from them. It was like a sentient participant in the piece.

What really moved me, though, was to see the last composer "play" the computer. My mental image of an electronic composer was not what I saw. I thought he would seem disconnected from the performance; he would merely be there to ensure the computer program does what it's supposed to. But instead, he played the computer as if he were playing another instrument. In his face was the concentration of a musician. His body movements gave away his musical intention: he anticipated entrances and showed phrase endings. He moved quickly and sharply for loud or sudden entrances, and more slowly or deliberately for subtler sounds. There weren't any traditional cadences or harmonic rhythm to clue me in to the form, so watching his body movements helped me understand where the music was going.

This may be a controversial post; is the concert I just saw really a Music concert? A few things I observed tonight pushed me closer to accepting new music as Music. Firstly, it is not all random sounds. Though there are fewer notes as people might recognize from Western classical music, there is a vocabulary of sounds written and used in a distinct way. Secondly, the composers wrote for particular instruments following an expanding tradition of music. It is not neo-Classical, and it is not meant to imitate a more "tonal" tradition. It is meant to expand on what we know as music, which in turn creates a new genre. Lastly, the physical motions that I mentioned above betray musical intention. The musicians on stage were trained in more conventional settings and acquired these movements from that education. They then apply that musicality to this new genre of music.

I have been struggling with the label of "Music" for electronic music, and seeing this concert gets me closer to accepting the label. My interaction with the live performers proved most important in determining a definition of Music.