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SATURDAY REVIEW

JANUARY 25, 1969
THE "SWITCHED-ON BACH" STORY
By IVAN BERGER

CAN Bach be synthesized Without becoming ersatz? He Can- as shown by Switched-On Bach (Columbia stereo, MS 7194, $5.98), ten works of Bach performed on a Moog Electronic Synthesizer by composer and synthesist Walter Carlos, assisted by musicologist Benjamin Folkman. But the disc's importance lies less in what it tells us about Bach than in what it portends for elec- tronic music: a viable future as a performing art.

It is, of course, a most unusual Bach one hears in this recording. The crackling sonorities of the Baroque are realized in unfamiliar electronic tones chosen at times to suggest the character of the harpsichord and other Baroque instruments as well as imitating their sounds. For this, or other unidentifiable reasons, Columbia MS 7194 has become not only the fastest selling Bach record of all time, but one of the fastest moving classical records in history. Within the first six weeks of its availability 50,000 copies were on the market and most of them had been sold.

Even more remarkable than the technical means employed is the expression that Carlos and Folkman have imparted to their performance. Until now, the state of the art did not allow such nuances of phrasing to be expressed with the techniques of electronic music.
"Two years ago," writes Folkman, "with the equipment then available, to obtain the qualities that make up a good performance was a thankless, time-consuming, and ultimately futile enterprise. Even rudimentary phrasing, articulation, or modulation of timbre could involve many grueling hours for the production of mere seconds of music. Crescendo and diminuendo, the two most natural... means of musical expression, required the most calculated and laborious manipulation. . . . Only the least sophisticated means of expression, i.e., timbral and dynamic contrasts, could be controlled satisfactorily."

True, the range of control exhibited on this album is surpassed by many (though by no means all) conventional Bach interpretations. And the techniques used seem hardly up to the challenges of the Romantic era, in fact, the more congenial challenge of the Baroque was one of the factors in the choice of Bach to prove this record's point: Both Baroque and electronic music share "characteristics such as crisp, bright sonorities, terraced dynamics, and high relief of Voices . . . among [their] most idiomatic features . . ." according to Folkman's liner notes.

But once beyond the culture shock of hearing patently electronic sounds mixed with apparently instrumental ones, one must grant that Carlos and Folkman have produced an album of Bach interpretations which, in some opinion, are as valid as orchestral transcriptions, and probably as valid as many instrumental ones. Argue the musical values and you concede the record's point: that there are musical values on the disc that can be argued from purely musical stand-points.

Electronic music has too long been shaped by its restrictions of nuance, says Carlos. Such restrictions were inherent in the "classical" studio technique from which today's electronic music emerged. That technique involved the laborious building up of tones from endless dial-settings on separate generators, filters, and other instruments, followed by the transcription of these tones. to bits of tape that had to be edited or spliced together.

The concept of the "synthesizer, introduced by RCA in 1955, was a con- siderable advance. Like the classical studio equipment, it built up tones from their component elements. But the manipulations that had been so tedious be- fore may now be programmed onto punched paper tapes which in turn control a bank of generators, filters, and other tone-shaping components in a more or less continuous performance.
The possibilities this opened up were first revealed on "The Sound and Music of the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer" (RCA mono, LM 1922); it included tunes played "in the style of" a harpsichord, an organ, a hillbilly band, a dance band, and several imaginary instruments, including one "resembling a piano, but with deeper tone and faster action than can be achieved with a conventional piano." Recordings by Babbitt, Luening, and Ussachevsky (among others) have since shown the further development of the instrument (now in its second version) and of the techniques developed on it.
The punched-tape pre-programming of the RCA suggests computer control, and computers have since been programmed to generate music (though not on the RCA). But the RCA synthesizer's responses moved in quantum jumps rather than continuously, and "programmed or computerized attempts to automate spontaneity were entirely a matter of guesswork [with] the musician . . unable . . . to modify a sound as it was being produced," according to Folkman. The difference becomes immediately apparent when the early Mark I synthesizer's rendering of the Bach Fugue No. 2 in C minor from "The Well-tempered clavier" (on LM 1922) is compared with the performance of the same work on the Switched-On Bach album: the Mark I performance seems stiff and wooden by comparison, with leaping level changes and stumbling ritards.

Only tone shapes are pre-programmed on the Moog (by interconnecting its component wave-generating and shaping modules with external patch cords). As with traditional instruments, the sequence and timing of these pre-programmed notes are controlled manually, mostly using keyboards. This element of human control allows new timing and phrasing flexibility.

And because the modules of the Moog are controlled continuously, not just in separate steps, rapid smooth transitions between effects are possible. And since these modules can be controlled by external voltages, and produce varying voltages as signals, their outputs can become either the notes we hear or control voltages for other modules or both.

The oscillators, for example, can produce periodic control voltages as well as periodic (pitched) tones; and these oscillations can, in turn, create a periodic variation in a tone's pitch (vibrato), volume (tremolo), or even timbre. Transient generators can control non-recurring variances or be triggered to produce desired attacks at the beginning of any note. Even random control voltages can be obtained by using part of the output from the white-noise generator.

Other modules in the Moog system perform such functions as "envelope generation" (shaping of a note's attack, duration, and decay time); "envelope following" (synchronizing changes in one note's parameters with parameters- not necessarily the same ones-in another note); and the programming of rhythmical sequences.

The keyboard that controls them all was chosen purely as a convenient, general-purpose switching device, embodying no specific musical significance. The control voltages it switches can vary pitch (the "conventional" use, though the scale need not be a conventional one), amplitude, timbre, or any other parameter: "You use the whole instrument to get as much control and musicality with a line as possible," says Carlos. "While one hand is playing notes on the keyboard, the other can be playing loudnesses."

Other control devices could be used as easily: Moog also offers a "linear controller," the output voltage of which is proportional to the position of the player's hand along a metal band; while the Buchla Synthesizer uses touch sensitive metal plates, that do not move, as keys.

The keyboard of the Moog Synthesizer used by Carlos has additional sensors (not found on stock Moog instruments) that register the velocity and depth of each key's depression, "things that no organ is normally sensitive to- more like a piano.., it gives you the opportunity, at last, . . . to start shaping phrases as you play," says Carlos.
His is a custom Moog in other way as well. It features polyphonic oscillators, which allow one of his two keyboards to produce chords or overlapping notes; and it contains more than the normal complement of "envelopers, amplifiers, and filters," the components that give each wave its final touch and timbre.

"Switched-On Bach" exploits all of these possibilities for musical expression, so natural to conventional performance yet all too new to the electronic field. But beyond these effects are those that only electronics can supply- an infinity of tonal variations-and Carlos uses them to equally good effect. For the most part, these resources are deployed conservatively. But in the second movement of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in C major, Carlos and Folkman have improvised a cadenza employing the most frankly electronic- and to my mind most interesting techniques on the record. Among the sounds are a wild, swooping electronic cry like a glissando on bare, jangly piano strings; some quasi-subliminal liquid gurglings; chirps; exuberant popping sounds; and urgent, telegraphic beeps-all carefully contrasted with some blatant harpsichord imitations. "It's the same thing, realized in two different kinds of instrumentation," Carlos says, done both ways at the same time; you can hear it being executed in the more traditional sense, and you can also hear the electronic equivalent, like doubling, on top of it." Adds Folkman: "And the chromaticisms in it are all lifted out of the Fantasy and Fugue, or the C-minor Organ Fugue, except for one. . . . This is the most educational section of the album. Our attempt here was to show some correspondence between modes of expression, Baroque and electronic." It is their contention that no combination of live instruments could achieve the clarity of texture of this recording. "At last, every note and line can be heard, which was among our chief purposes." The result is a Brandenburg that makes me want to stand up and "conduct" and one which has inspired me to seek a replacement for the Brandenburg recording (Prohaska) I had previously favored. That it isn't this electronic version probably will not disappoint its creators- their point still comes across.

 

For the moment, the synthesizer remains a "performing" instrument for re- cording only- not for use before live audiences. That is because it is basically a linear instrument: each musical line has to be recorded separately on its own track of a multi-track tape recorder. Tape does, of course, add certain new dimensions of control, including echo and accelerated tempi. But it still stands in the way of Carlos's intention "to make electronic music as much a performing art as possible."

 

Considered as a live-performance medium, this means elimination of the tape recorder, first by increasing the instrument's polyphonic capabilities, then by adding a small computer to control the synthesizer. This will not be the kind of computer now used to "compose" music, but a smaller unit storing instructions for the connections that must be made and broken instantly for every note.

Playing such an instrument will require a new kind of virtuosity, an in- tellectual command of what each of the synthesizer's keys will "mean" from one part of the computer program to another-and perhaps some knowledge of mathematics, and the physics of why clarinets don't sound like trumpets. Even with these new controls, the synthesizer will for quite some time be far more of a composing than a performing instrument; its virtuosi will be, like Carlos, its composers, and vice versa. But that was also true of the piano in its earliest days.