New look for clarinet and computer duos

Enthusiasts of new music were treated to an unusual performance on Sunday in Warner Concert Hall with John Bruce Yeh on clarinet and Howard Sandroff on computer. Most of the computer generated music heard at Oberlin, even in TIMARA concerts, is prerecorded and played back on a tape, but this concert featured works using live interaction between a computer and the acoustic clarinet.

The first piece, "Ancient Devices" by Rhode Island composer Matthew Malsky(b.1961), started with a simple melody on the clarinet. Yeh showed off his strong tone and effortless fluidity on the theme, while Sandroff sat quietly at ground level with his back to the audience much like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. About twenty seconds into the piece, a computer processed version of what Yeh had just played leapt from the right speaker. The Composer of "Ancient Devices" cites architecture and literary criticism as influences and his interest in form came through in this piece.

In the second of the piece's five sections, the audience started to realize the implications of a computer and clarinet duo. Yeh would play a note and the computer would pick it up and extend it into impossibly long variations, making the clarinet sound like an angel and then a steel drum.

The fourth part of the piece was a computer solo and the audience got its first taste of Sandroff's expert control of not only the timbre of his pitches but also their spatial location as accompaniments sprang up all over the hall to a stationary melody.

The Second piece, "Gra", by Elliot Carter, for clarinet alone, was composed in 1993 for Polish composer Witold Lutoslowski's eightieth birthday. Lutoslowski died in 1994. Gra means "to play" in Polish and the piece was whimsical and lively, reminding the audience of the excited and adventurous spirits of pioneer composers such as Lutoslowski.

The piece contrasted long tones with ones so short that the pitches could barely be discerned. This lively style made up melodies some of which covered more than two octaves. Yeh played masterfully, producing a fine tone in even the clarinet's tricky high register. The piece ended after about four minutes as whimsically as it began.

The Third Piece, entitled "Tephillah", is an original work by Sandroff. In the program notes, Sandroff says, "The construction and material of Tephillah is consistent with my aesthetic goal of using sound objects that, rather than develop, are varied by their continually changing association with other sound objects. The audio processing systems consist of a digital delay, reverberation and mixing systems under the control of the Macintosh computer. These systems are manipulated in real time by a second performer who essentially "plays" the sound of the live clarinet." The piece is based loosely on Hebrew liturgical chant and the ritual mood was executed wonderfully by Yeh and Sandroff with flutter-tongue and computer reverb.

In the second movement, one moment stood out when the computer was silent and Yeh honked a few notes of a melody into his microphone and was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of honking clarinets like a New York City traffic jam in perfect meter. The computer was definitely felt as a soloist in this piece as it mutated the clarinet sound into something that sounded like the child of a woodwind instrument and a buzzsaw. The first half of the concert ended with the third movement of "Tephillah" which was more sparse and used "cleaner" synth sounds. The computer at one point was recording a loop sequence on which Yeh recorded several layers that meshed together rhythmically into an accompaniment which Yeh proceeded to solo over.

The second half of the concert featured the music of better known composers Steve Reich and Pierre Boulez. Reich is a master of what he calls "phasing music", which means music that has layers that are played with the notes of each starting a fraction of a second after each other. "New York Counterpoint," Reich's piece, is made of ten computer generated layers with the eleventh played by the live clarinet. The effect is a pulsing sound with no definite start or end that reminds one of a huge machine. The first part of the piece had long chords overlapping. The second was made of small polyrhythms ticking away against each other with small changes in a single rhythm changing the composition of the whole. The culmination of this part sounded like 200 alarm clocks going off in the same room. It was weird, but undeniably beautiful.

After a return of the first theme, the third section came in with the clarinet playing a cheery and triadic melody and the computer bringing parts one and two back in and creating a lovely, but definitely New Yorkish counterpoint. The closing theme was made of syncopated melodies, reminiscent of the bar scene in Star Wars, to which Yeh bounced up and down enthusiastically.

The final piece of the concert was a devastatingly dramatic composition by French composer Pierre Boulez called Dialogue de l'Ombreau Double. The piece consisted of stanzas alternating between clarinet and prerecorded computer music. The auditorium was completely darkened at the beginning of the piece, the only light coming from the dimmed screen of the Mac.

The opening melody consisted of a dotted rhythm that floated to different locations over the audience's heads via acoustic imaging. The lights came up and there was Yeh, carrying on the piece's rapid motives and bouncing and leaping from note to note. A motive would be picked up from one performer by the other and then twisted into impossible contortions, revealing the flexibility and ability of non-diatonic music to express musical ideas eloquently.

Yeh exploited sounds that would make other clarinetists cringe. A squawk expands into a seven second thing of beauty. During the clarinet stanzas, the computer stayed in the background, supplying minimal reverb and effects, but each computer stanza became more animated than the last and by its fourth stanza, the sound of the computer was scurrying in jubilant circles around the auditorium. After the piece reached its climax, it calmed and the lights went off as Yeh and Sandroff exited leaving the audience with the winking lights of a stack of synthesizers and effects processors as they put out the subdued ending of the piece.

The audience, though small, demanded four bows of Yeh and Sandroff and left the auditorium muttering words like "Amazing" and "unexpected!" Sandroff and Yeh have worked with all of the composers whose works they played. Yeh said of his relationship with modern music and its composers, "It is important for artists to be there at the genesis of a work, for artists and composers to work together." When asked what he thinks the direction of computer generated music, Sandroff nodded at his stack of equipment and smiled, saying, "Hopefully, it'll keep getting lighter. I've been doing this for twenty-five years and it's gotten a lot lighter and as I get older, the need for that becomes more apparent!"