Paul Lansky
Encyclopedia
Paul Lansky is an American electronic-music
or computer-music
composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day (see discography, below).
, he is currently a professor of music composition at Princeton University
, and in addition to his music is known as a pioneer in the development of computer music languages
for algorithmic composition
(see Real-Time Cmix
). He is also a former student of Milton Babbitt
and Edward Cone.
Lansky's first album, Smalltalk, was not released until 1990. It features four tracks, two covering aspects of the human voice, and two looking at two styles of music (metal and harmonica
).
His second album, Homebrew (1992), contains five tracks, including the percussive and aural 18-minute piece "Table's Clear," which features samples of his children playing kitchen utensils. Following that came More Than Idle Chatter, the six compositions of which focus on processings of the human voice using linear predictive coding
, granular synthesis, and plucked string synthesis; its three highlights are granular synth
pieces called "Idle Chatter," "Just_more_idle_chatter," and "Notjustmoreidlechatter," which look at the same thing from multiple perspectives. In 1994, he released Fantasies and Tableaux, a collection of two earlier works, "Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion
" and "Still Time." 1995 brought Folk Images, Lansky's personal interpretation and reworking of a "good few folk songs."
At around this point there was a slight change in the style of Lansky's music that made it sound slightly more modern, and 1997 heralded a one-hour computer opera titled Things She Carried, a musical portrait about an unnamed woman in a series of eight movements. During the following year, Conversation Pieces was released.
In early 2001 the CD Ride was released, featuring a new addition to the Idle Chatter family: "Idle Chatter Junior" and the 19-minute title piece, which tries to simulate a ride through various towns and country. In the spring of 2006, Lansky took an old folk song and various ingredients of hip hop music
and created "Chatter of Pins." In 2008 "Chatter of Pins" was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music
(Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike
.
Recently, Lansky has shifted his focus away from electronic and computer music to invest more time in composing for acoustic instruments. He has written new acoustic works for David Starobin
, So Percussion
, Nancy Zeltsman
, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra
.
The Radiohead
song "Idioteque
", from its 2000 album Kid A
, features a prominent sample from Lansky's computer tape piece
"Mild und Leise" (1973). The sample, four looping chords taken from a few seconds of Lansky's piece, provides the entire harmony
for the song. The name "Mild und Leise" comes from the opening lines of Liebestod
, the climatic ending of Richard Wagner
's opera "Tristan und Isolde
"s. Lansky has written an essay about Radiohead that appears in The Music and Art of Radiohead
, as well as online.
Lansky's 1979 computer music piece "Her Song", from the Six Fantasies On A Poem By Thomas Campion (re-released on the album Fantasies and Tableaux, 1994), has also been sampled by Caural for his song "I Won't Race You", from his 2006 album Mirrors For Eyes, with the main synthesized vocal line of Lansky's piece being used (and being the basis for the title of the latter).
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
or computer-music
Computer music
Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...
composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day (see discography, below).
Biography
A former student of George PerleGeorge Perle
George Perle was a composer and music theorist. He was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. Perle was an alumnus of DePaul University...
, he is currently a professor of music composition at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, and in addition to his music is known as a pioneer in the development of computer music languages
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
for algorithmic composition
Algorithmic composition
Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.Algorithms have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpoint, for example, can often be reduced to algorithmic determinacy...
(see Real-Time Cmix
Real-time Cmix
Real-Time Cmix is one of the MUSIC-N family of computer music programming languages. RTcmix is descended from the MIX program developed by Paul Lansky at Princeton University in 1978 to perform algorithmic composition using digital audio soundfiles on a VMS mainframe computer. After synthesis...
). He is also a former student of Milton Babbitt
Milton Babbitt
Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
and Edward Cone.
Lansky's first album, Smalltalk, was not released until 1990. It features four tracks, two covering aspects of the human voice, and two looking at two styles of music (metal and harmonica
Harmonica
The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
).
His second album, Homebrew (1992), contains five tracks, including the percussive and aural 18-minute piece "Table's Clear," which features samples of his children playing kitchen utensils. Following that came More Than Idle Chatter, the six compositions of which focus on processings of the human voice using linear predictive coding
Linear predictive coding
Linear predictive coding is a tool used mostly in audio signal processing and speech processing for representing the spectral envelope of a digital signal of speech in compressed form, using the information of a linear predictive model...
, granular synthesis, and plucked string synthesis; its three highlights are granular synth
Granular synthesis
Granular synthesis is a basic sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale.It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are not played back conventionally, but are instead split into small pieces of around 1 to 50ms. These small pieces are called grains...
pieces called "Idle Chatter," "Just_more_idle_chatter," and "Notjustmoreidlechatter," which look at the same thing from multiple perspectives. In 1994, he released Fantasies and Tableaux, a collection of two earlier works, "Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...
" and "Still Time." 1995 brought Folk Images, Lansky's personal interpretation and reworking of a "good few folk songs."
At around this point there was a slight change in the style of Lansky's music that made it sound slightly more modern, and 1997 heralded a one-hour computer opera titled Things She Carried, a musical portrait about an unnamed woman in a series of eight movements. During the following year, Conversation Pieces was released.
In early 2001 the CD Ride was released, featuring a new addition to the Idle Chatter family: "Idle Chatter Junior" and the 19-minute title piece, which tries to simulate a ride through various towns and country. In the spring of 2006, Lansky took an old folk song and various ingredients of hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and created "Chatter of Pins." In 2008 "Chatter of Pins" was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music
Crosstalk: American Speech Music
Crosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various composers, poets, visual artists and DJs.- Track listing :# "Declaratives in First Person" – 5:04# "Electroprayer 5.0" Crosstalk: American Speech Music is a compilation album of speech-based music by various...
(Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike
Mendi & Keith Obadike
Mendi Obadike and Keith Obadike are a married Igbo Nigerian American couple who create music and art. They were both born in 1973. Their music, live art, and conceptual Internet artworks have been exhibited internationally. Mendi is a poet and Keith is a composer and sound designer...
.
Recently, Lansky has shifted his focus away from electronic and computer music to invest more time in composing for acoustic instruments. He has written new acoustic works for David Starobin
David Starobin
David Starobin is an American classical guitarist, record producer, and film director. He is married to Rebecca Askew Starobin , and is the father of Robert Joseph Starobin III , and Allegra Rose Starobin David Starobin (born September 27, 1951 in New York City) is an American classical...
, So Percussion
So Percussion
So Percussion is an American percussion quartet based in New York City.Composed of Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Beach, the group is well known for recording and touring internationally and for its work with composers such as Steve Reich, David Lang, Paul Lansky, Martin...
, Nancy Zeltsman
Nancy Zeltsman
International Marimba Soloist, Nancy Zeltsman has taught at the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music since 1993.-Biography:Zeltsman was born in 1958 in Morristown, New Jersey...
, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra
Alabama Symphony Orchestra
- 1921-1955: Beginnings :The Alabama Symphony Orchestra can trace its beginnings to 1921, when on Friday, April 29, fifty-two volunteer musicians joined to perform at the Birmingham Music Festival at the Old Jefferson Theater...
.
The Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
song "Idioteque
Idioteque
"Idioteque" is the eighth track from the British rock band Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A. It was seen as a departure for the rock band, as the song is driven by electronic beats. The song has been played at nearly every concert since 2000...
", from its 2000 album Kid A
Kid A
Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000 by the Parlophone label. A commercial success worldwide, Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A...
, features a prominent sample from Lansky's computer tape piece
Tape Music
Tape Music is an experimental 10" vinyl release by Jack Dangers. The vinyl release was coupled with the album Sounds Of The 20th Century No2 when released as a flexi disc vinyl....
"Mild und Leise" (1973). The sample, four looping chords taken from a few seconds of Lansky's piece, provides the entire harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
for the song. The name "Mild und Leise" comes from the opening lines of Liebestod
Liebestod
Liebestod is the title of the final, dramatic aria from the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner. When used as a literary term, liebestod refers to the theme of erotic death or "love death" meaning the two lovers' consummation of their love in death or after death...
, the climatic ending of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's opera "Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
"s. Lansky has written an essay about Radiohead that appears in The Music and Art of Radiohead
The Music and Art of Radiohead
The Music and Art of Radiohead is a collection of academic essays on the band Radiohead. It was published in May 2005 by Ashgate Publishing .-Table of contents:*Preface by Kevin J. H...
, as well as online.
Lansky's 1979 computer music piece "Her Song", from the Six Fantasies On A Poem By Thomas Campion (re-released on the album Fantasies and Tableaux, 1994), has also been sampled by Caural for his song "I Won't Race You", from his 2006 album Mirrors For Eyes, with the main synthesized vocal line of Lansky's piece being used (and being the basis for the title of the latter).
Discography
- Smalltalk, 1990
- Homebrew, 1992
- More Than Idle Chatter, 1994
- Fantasies And Tableaux, 1994
- Folk Images, 1995
- Things She Carried, 1997
- Conversation Pieces, 1998
- Ride, 2001
- Alphabet Book, 2002
- Music Box, 2006
- Etudes and Parodies, 2007
Sources
- Antokoletz, Elliott. 2001. "Lansky, Paul". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley SadieStanley SadieStanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
and John TyrrellJohn Tyrrell (professor of music)John Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1942. He studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. In 2000 he was appointed Research Professor at Cardiff University....
. London: Macmillan Publishers. - Code, David L. 1990. "Observations in the Art of Speech: Paul Lansky’s Six Fantasies". Perspective of New Music 28, no. 1 (Fall): 144–69.
- Roads, Curtis. 1983. "Interview with Paul Lansky". Computer Music Journal 7, no. 3:16–24.
External links
- Paul Lansky's Homepage on Princeton.edu
- MP3 of Mild und Leise
- NewMusicBox.org: In the 1st Person : Three Generations of Teaching Music Composition with George Perle and Virgil MoorefieldVirgil MoorefieldVirgil Moorefield is a composer and intermedia artist. Moorefield's work focuses primarily on live acoustic performance, electronic processing of acoustic signals, and live visual music . CDs of his composer-led ensembles have been released on several labels, including Tzadik, Cuneiform, and Innova...
- Short biography and a photo
- Archived article and interview with Lansky from a defunct music website, "soundout"
- Listen to Lansky's "Notjustmoreidlechatter" at Acousmata music blog