Archives - 1969

Archives Main | 1969

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

February 16, 1969
A Merry Time With the Moog? - By HAROLD C. SCHONBERG

BACH has been arranged by many musicians (just as lie himself arranged music by other composers) for some 200 years. There have been Bach-Mozart, Bach-Liszt, Bach-Busoni, Bach-Schoenberg and Bach-Stokowski. Now, on a Columbia record (MS 7194), we have Bach-Carlos and the by now famous "Switched-on Bach." I played it a few weeks ago and promptly went into deep culture shock. After transfusions, cold compresses, hysteria and intravenous feeding, I played it again. The reaction was less severe, though there was a mild attack of the shakes and giggles.

It is a remarkable piece of work. This is the record that has the "Brandenburg" Concerto No. 3, a couple of Inventions, some Preludes and Fugues from the "Well-Tempered Clavier" and a few other odds and ends. Every sound on this disk was created by Walter Carlos, with the assistance of Benjamin Folkman, on the Moog Electronic Music Synthesizer. On the record are heard sounds that appear to come from reeds, bass violins, flutes, bells, percussion and horns. In reality all of those sounds reposed within the electronic innards of the Moog. Oscillators, amplifiers, envelopers, filters and saw-tooth generators were put into action, little electrons rushed this way and that, ending up properly aligned on a multi-track tape, and out came Bach, of a sort.

Robert Moog, who designed this equipment, calls the record "the most stunning breakthrough in electronic music to date," and he probably is right. He has invented an instrument of unparalleled virtuosity and flexibility, and at a relatively low price. The only comparable predecessor was the RCA Synthesizer, a massive and very expensive brute that sat in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Laboratory. But the RCA Synthesizer was nowhere near as versatile, and very few people knew how to operate it. The Moog (and also some rival equipment, such as the Syn-Ket) comes in a small package, and the basic module costs around $3,000. With extras, as they say in the automobile business, it can run up to $10,000. Music departments all over the United States are ordering Moogs, and eager young people are itching to get their hands on them. In three or four years, we are going to be inundated with this new kind of music. The betting is that, with refinements in the instruments, even the human voice will be capable of being synthesized. This could literally mean a new era in music.
From the beginning I have been fascinated with electronic music, but in the last few years have been unhappy with the turn it took. The vocabulary of most electronic music had been reduced to a few types of sounds-clicks, whooshes, pings, static-that soon became terribly hackneyed. Part of the trouble was in the limitations of the RCA Synthesizer and other equipment for electronic music. And part was in the orientation of many of the composers working in the medium.

They attempted a serial approach to electronic music, and the results were as dull as they were in most other serial music. One prevalent theory about electronic music was that it should be a thing in itself. Composers would not think of trying to reproduce the sounds of orthodox instruments. Their esthetic forbade it.

But a looser age seems to be upon us, and "Switched-on Bach" is an indication of a new turn in the approach. It is a welcome trend. This type of music can take the medium out of pure abstractionism. It can he used on Its own or as an adjunct to the conventional orchestra. Its resources are limited only by the composer's imagination and sense of tonal combination.

I do hope, however, that the success of "Switched-on Bach" is not going to lead to a deluge of arranged material. As of new, "Switched-on Bach" is frankly an
experiment-a brilliant one and even a pioneer one. But without sounding stuffy about it (for I did find the linear clarity and the combinations fascinating). Bach-Carlos is as esthetically invalid as Bach-Stokowski. I fail to see why there should be "a new approach" to Bach, who is complete in himself. "If Bach were alive today.." But he is not alive today, and if he were he would be writing a different kind of music. What composers of electronic music should be doing is creating their own kind of music. That does not prohibit electronic fugues or symphonies. There is no reason why a composer cannot write his own kind of latter-2Oth-Century fugue, or anything he wants to write.

Thus as an indication of what can be done with the Moog Synthesizer, "Switched-on Bach" is breathtaking. As an example of Bach style it is pretty bad. Tempos frequently are insane, ornaments do not work, and all of the music comes out in a scrambled way. It is Bach-yet it is not Bach. All of the melodies and linear components are there, but the basic sound and approach are wrong. As a result, the "Brandenburg," for one, ends up funny rather than noble. You sit there open-mouthed as the Moog goes through its paces, but when it is all over it is a testament to the machine rather than to Bach. I am a little nervous about the esthetic involved. "Switched-On Bach" has been rapturously greeted as a modern approach to Bach, as bringing Bach to our times. But I do not want a modern approach to Bach. I want Bach's approach to Bach, as much as possible. It is when we come to music of our time that I want modern and not a classic, baroque or romantic approach.

We probably shall be living through the growing pains of the new electronic music, and the chances are that we shall have much more along the lines of "Switched-on-Bach." As composers learn to handle the instrument, they will probably proceed along two paths. One will be the use of the Moog (and similar instruments) as an entity in itself: music to be conceived and executed within the confines of a laboratory, then transferred to records and the concert hall, Records can give only an approximation of the potential, for stereo as currently practiced uses only two channels. In a concert hall speakers can be placed all over the auditorium for eight-channel reproduction and multiples thereof.
The other path will involve electronic music as an adjunct to conventional music. There already have been experiments along those lines, such as a piano concerto in which the pianist plays on a concert grand accompanied by taped electronic sounds. For some time, also, there have been experiments with the human voice against synthesized sounds-the voice heard in its natural state, and in addition electronically manipulated. The Moog is going to accelerate this kind of experimentation. An imaginative composer could do all kinds of things with synthesized sound in relation to opera (Pierre Henry hinted at such techniques far back in the early days of "musique concrete"), for such Instruments as the Moog lend themselves to descriptive effects. Voices can be
taken down an octave, or speech sounds can be fragmented (as Luciano Berio and others have been doing for several years now), or the orchestra can be supplemented with sounds limited only by the composer's resource and taste.

So we are going to be in for a merry time within a few years. This is where the future of music probably lies, much more so than in any of the various schools that have come up since the end of World War II. Serialism, and its derivatives, will be playing a part in the new music. And we can expect much more of the mixed media phenomenon. The Moog Synthesizer lends itself perfectly to that. But the important thing is that the new electronic music will take the avant-garde out of its incestuous and inbred way of life into the public domain, creating music that will have a public following, and offering up a music that will really have a new sound. I thrill to the prospect and eagerly await
the Berlioz of the new movement. If it were not a conflict of interest, I would run around grabbing up all the Moog stock I could get my hands on.