The Lone Composer and Technology as Collaborator
For this blog, I set out to write a little profile on Osmo Lindeman, the Finnish electronic composer who was at the forefront of digital electronic music in the late sixties through the eighties. But while reading about him, I was compelled to take a detour to a speculative topic for this week. Lindeman abandoned composing for orchestra after he found himself discontent with how the graphic score for his piece, Variabile (1967) was realized with orchestral instrumentation. As Mat Smith wrote for Further. earlier this year, with electronics “he no longer needed to rely on any other musician to respond to his musical vision than himself.” The concept of the lone composer working in solitude is complex, with interesting implications as we move deeper into a society in which technology enables working alone in many fields. Taken a step further, do we consider the technology we use as equal collaborators in our artistic processes?
After his frustrations with graphic scores for orchestra, Lindeman took to early digital electronics with Erkki Kurenniemi’s DICO sequencer-oscillator created specifically for Lindeman. Graphic scores can leave a lot to interpretation, which could be the goal depending on the composer, such as in Fluxus. From Lindeman’s perspective, composing electronically allowed him a level of autonomy in how his ideas were expressed that he couldn’t achieve by working with more traditional musical ensembles. Also, his early electronic pieces such as Kinetic Forms (1969) show how he played with timbre, its gradual, subtle shifts in tone somewhat unimaginable on acoustic instruments.
Lindeman’s dissatisfaction with composing for orchestra can’t help but bring to mind Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises from 1916, in which he writes, “Musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres. The most complicated orchestras can be reduced to four or five classes of instruments different in timbres of sound: bowed instruments, metal winds, wood winds, and percussion. Thus, modern music flounders within this tiny circle, vainly striving to create new varieties of timbre. We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.” Many composers in the mid-twentieth century found themselves at a standstill with orchestral timbres, unable to manifest their desired creation with only that palette set before them. Some turned to instrument modification, such as John Cage’s prepared piano, others embraced musique concrète and noise, and many immersed themselves in the possibilities of electronic sound.
While Lindeman’s experiences with using electronics may have afforded him a new level of creative autonomy, enabling him to manifest his artistic goals without the need for the interpretations of performers and conductors, he probably wasn’t completely removed from elements of collaboration. Reading about his decision to move from orchestral to electronic composition in order to work more independently got me thinking about the composer who works in solitude, and whether an artist can really consider themself as working alone.
Some authors challenge the concept that composing electronic music, or any music at all, is as solitary a practice as one may assume. Music theorist Jennifer Iverson discusses the dynamics of the early electronic music studio in her 2017 article, “Invisible Collaboration: The Dawn and Evolution of Elektronische Musik,” focusing specifically on the WDR studio based in Cologne, Germany in the early fifties. She writes, “…The studio operated in a collaborative, laboratory-like working mode, especially because early work in electronic music was experimental and tenuous, if also exciting. This research leads us to problematize the nineteenth- and twentieth-century idea of the autonomous genius composer who develops and realizes his ideas in solitude.”
The electronic music studio is somewhat of an extreme example of how compositional collaboration looks. It also represents a time period in which technicians and engineers were necessary to run complicated electronic instruments. Of course, electronic instruments have evolved to the point that complex, electronic music studios are not necessarily required. It is completely possible to curate your own collection of synthesizers and drum machines that can be used in the privacy of your own home. To some degree, the instruments can run themselves now.
If an electronic composer is able to tap into the infinite possibilities of sound afforded through technology, can realize their artistic vision from their own private studio, and can operate their electronic instruments without aid from technicians, then it would seem like the lone composer is a completely feasible prospect. If that is the case, would anything else step in as collaborator?
I think back to a post I wrote last year about computer music composer Joel Chadabe, whose work with interactive composing in the seventies developed a collaborative relationship between himself and the computer. In writing pieces such as Ideas of Movement at Bolton Landing (1971), he used joysticks to respond to the computer in real-time and improvise aspects of pitch, speed, density, and spatialization. He said, “The performer, in turn, influenced the instrument by performing. A performer and an interactive instrument have a relationship that is conversational.” In his piece, Solo (1978), a musician could engage with two antennae that controlled a programmed computer, improvising with the decisions the computer made. These works relied on the musical input from a computer, placing the composer and the technology on more equal footing than ever before. In this case, was Joel Chadabe the sole composer of these works?
I have been wary of using generative artificial intelligence in my work since the introduction of ChatGPT to the public, although I am aware AI is embedded into many of the programs and tools that I do use. Despite this trepidation, I am intrigued by the implications that generative AI has on the concept of collaborator in the creative process. If one consults generative AI at some point throughout their process, should the AI be considered a collaborator or simply a tool? Will it depend on how the AI is used? Chadabe maybe would have thought of AI as a collaborator, as he was lightyears ahead of his time when he interacted in real-time with a computer to compose. Others may view it as a compositional tool, maybe along the lines of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards. AI may not be at a place yet where these questions are pressing, but the technology is developing at a rapid rate and is already influencing how we approach generating creative work ourselves. As Iverson concludes in her article, “Composing electronic music, whether in the analog or digital era, remains an inescapably collaborative process.” Who, or what, then, will be considered our collaborators ten, twenty years down the line?
– Hannah Blanchette
March 4, 2024 | Blog