CCRMA OVERVIEW - CCRMA - Stanford University

In realizing the works anew, it was possible to recover some of the variations and alternatives possible
in Lucier and Stockhausen s music.
Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting In A Room is largely known through fixed media: tape or compact disc.
However, the score explicitly licenses experiment with the basic process, concluding with the suggestion
to make versions that can be performed in real time. With this thought in mind, I undertook to make
a live realization of Lucier's work, using Miller Puckette's Pd software. The new realization offered a
communal listening experience, created a palpable activation of the room and the environment, and
produced surprises in the form of inevitable unintended noises, which knitted themselves into the fabric
of the music.
While the Lucier realization was underway I also organized the rehearsals for a much more multifaceted
and challenging realization: three performances of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I. The new
implementation of the electronics uses the Max/MSP environment to realize bandpass filtering (with
discrete frequency steps as in the original analog equipment), and v lume and panning controls with a
number of ergonomic optimizations. There were many aspects of this realization besides the electronics:
the ensemble had to select the necessary percussion implements and order the unfixed sections of the
score. In many ways, our realization proved to be the chamber version of the work: we used a relatively
small tam-tam, and rehearsed and performed in smaller spaces (including an art gallery and a storefront).
With these practical constraints in mind, we traded drama for detail, preferring subtle textures to bold
theatrical gestures.
Despite the considerable distance between the new realizations of these two works and the performing
traditions established by their composers, there is little possibility of confusing realization with composition.
This is precisely the interest of making realizations - the process is an opportunity to engage
with another composer s thought. However, performing traditions are an informative context, and not
a final arbiter.
In this regard, there are parallels with the recent trend towards the historically informed performance of
early music, and particularly recent scholarship regarding the limits of "authenticity." In the realizations
under study, the eventual relationship of the new versions to the existing traditions of performance arose
as a series of small decisions and practical solutions - as is the case with most musical performances.
6.10 Computer Assisted Music and Acoustics Research
6.10.1 The Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH)
The Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH), located in the Braun Music
Center, Stanford University, is concerned with the development of data resources and software applications
for music research and allied areas of humanities study.
Its address is:
Teaching
Braun #129
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-3076
tel. (650) 725-9240
fax (650) 725-9290
Web: http://www.ccarh.org/
CCARH staffs a two-quarter graduate sequence, cross-listed with Computer Science:
Music 253 Introduction to Musical Information http://www.stanford.edu/class/music253/
Music 254 Seminar in Music Representation http://www.stanford.edu/class/music254/
This course sequence is team-taught by Eleanor Selfridge-Field and Walter B. Hewlett. The current
teaching assistant is Craig Sapp.
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