CD image via Wikipedia
While listening to the Tone Generation podcast on the Buchla synthesizer, it occurs to me to proclaim that the music of our time is generated by and amplified through electronics. Like it or not, acoustic (classical) music is retrograde and archaic, if not obsolete. Or at least this is my rationale for not bothering to attend San Francisco Symphony concerts any more...
So I see that Alex Shapiro had a premiere last week of a new work for symphonic band last week:
Immersion is Shapiro’s third composition for wind band, and second for the combination of electronic composition with wind band.
In particular, it was written to be performed by symphonic wind band with CD. As one who used to play in a college symphonic wind band and who is still enamored with CDs, I find the hybrid combination interesting.
Of course, John Adams gets grief for his operas' amplification of voices:
I get an enormous amount of criticism from opera purists about the fact that I require light amplification. And even some of my singers have been insulted about that because I've made comments in the press that I don't like large operatic voices because I think they're a strange mutation in the species that started with Wagner. But, what I like is a singer that can be natural and not forced, and while there are a couple of opera singers who have strangely huge voices that don't sound forced – Thomas Hampson and Bryn Terfel are two examples of this – most singers really have to go in overdrive to fill a three thousand seat hall. And I don't like overdrive.
The Variety review of the latest Nixon in China opera:
But let's start with the sound. Adams commits the mortal sin of opera and amplifies his singers. He has said in interviews that he uses mikes so the singers can be heard. Maybe Adams should check out "Simon Boccanegra," which is playing in repertory at the Met with his "Nixon." The singers there can be heard over an even greater orchestra....The amplification gives Adams' opera a shrill overlay of sound, and in ensembles it is often difficult to locate who is singing on stage because the sound is so generalized.
I suppose it's the hybrid of acoustic and electronic that causes the problem. If something is all electric, the classical purists won't ever hear it and for something all acoustic, the general audience is too small to care.
Here's hoping Shapiro's new work satisfies these constraints and achieves the desired effect. The next opportunities to hear it:
Second premiere, February 23, 2011 by The Ohio State University Symphonic Wind Band, Milt Allen, conductor, Columbus, OH.
The Minneapolis premiere of Immersion will be recorded by Minnesota Public Radio, and broadcast shortly thereafter.
random text via Wikipedia
