Special Panel: Clarence Barlow

Panelists

Fabian Czolbe

Bernd Härpfer

John Chowning

Anne Wellmer

Moderation: Georg Hajdu

About the panelists & their perspectives

Fabian Czolbe, Julian Rohrhuber and Bernd Härpfer : “Amplifying Participation. The digital Barlow Archive (dBA) as an Approach to the Recording of a Digital Computer Music Legacy”

The archiving of computer music presents specific challenges that arise from the process-oriented, software-based, and technologically contingent nature of digital compositional practices. Digital artifacts such as source code, algorithmically generated data, and custom compositional tools encode not only musical outcomes but also procedural knowledge that is often implicit and difficult to formalize. This paper presents the Digital Barlow Archive (dBA), which may be taken as a case study for addressing these challenges through a translational and participatory approach to archiving computer music.
The born-digital legacy of Clarence Barlow (1945–2023) is open-ended and comprises heterogeneous materials. For doing justice to this openness and diversity, the dBA adheres to existing archival standards while extending them to account for computer-music-specific objects and workflows. Thereby, an object/event framework is employed to translate non-linear and iterative compositional processes into structured metadata representations that remain interoperable with institutional and international archival infrastructures. At the same time, the framework acknowledges the limits of formalization and preserves interpretative openness.
Extending the old idea of computing as an amplification of the intellect, this paper argues that such archival methods do not only passively conserve material, but need to translate and amplify the possibility of participation: they actively shape access, interpretation, and creative reuse of digital musical materials. Archiving should be conducted as an epistemic practice that mediates between technological history, compositional knowledge, and the contemporary computer music community. 

Bernd Härpfer: “From pioneer to role model – a tribute to Clarence Barlow’s legacy to computer music and the ICMC” (invited)

For over five decades, Clarence Barlow (1945-2023) has made significant contributions to contemporary music and, in particular, to computer music. He is recognised worldwide as a composer, interdisciplinary researcher, author, software developer and professor. Another defining characteristic was his talent for bringing people together, networking the scene and demonstrating great organisational stamina. A key milestone in this regard was the organisation and hosting of the 14th ICMC – the first time the event was held in Germany – in Cologne in 1988. 

Anne Wellmer: “On the Poetry of Indigestibility ξ”

Clarence Barlow was teaching at Sonology in the mid-nineties. A microtonal organ almost completely filled the room (BEA7) where he was teaching his course On Musiquantics. Clarence was a story teller. He would come up with hilarious and inspiring solutions for problems that seemingly could not be overcome…

About the panelist

anne wellmer | nonlinear is a composer performer based in The Hague. During her vocal studies at the Conservatory in Amsterdam in the early 1990s she discovered electronic music through workshops by Trevor Wishart and Joel Ryan and was introduced to the analog studio where noone except two composition students and her were working at the time. She decided to leave Schubert behind and moved on to study Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. This is where she met Clarence Barlow. For a while STEIM became her second home. Shortly before September 11 she moved to Connecticut to study composition with Alvin Lucier. Back in the Netherlands, she worked on the disclore of Dick Raaijmakers’ archive, and updated the Sonology database so it could be included in the EMDoku (the International Documentation of Electroacoustic Music). Her work includes music theater pieces, sound walks, radio art, fixed media and live performance. Since 2017 she has been teaching courses on experimental music within Art and Media at the Berlin University of the Arts.
anne wellmer is a member of the society for nontrivial pursuits in Berlin and founding member of the nomadic collective new emergences. Recent collaborations include “the annes” with anne la berge, “the octopussies” with Kristin Norderval and “triple A” with Alberto de Campo and Ariane Jeßulat.
More about anne welmer | nonlinear here: www.nonlinear.demon.nl

Raphael Radna: “Tombeau de Barleau: An Interactive Ludic–Algorithmic Composition in Honor of Clarence Barlow”

Tombeau de Barleau is an interactive, generative, and audiovisual composition dedicated to the pioneering computer-music composer Clarence Barlow (1945–2023), a teacher of the author. In this work, two performers play a Pong-style video game in which collisions between the ball and a portrait of Barlow play a MIDI-controlled piano. The performers affect this process only indirectly, as the gameplay itself governs musical parameters including harmony, density, rhythm, dynamics, and tempo. As a result, the work balances novelty and determinism: while its musical surface varies across performances, its underlying algorithmic structure provides a stable form.

Tombeau de Barleau adopts several elements of Barlow’s compositional style, including rigorously formalized algorithmic processes, unconventional uses of piano automata, translations between visual and musical domains, and playful or outlandish premises. It also applies some of his theoretical contributions, namely his methods for quantifying the consonance of harmonic intervals (harmonicity) and priority of metrical pulses (indispensability). This paper describes the design and implementation of Tombeau de Barleau and reflects on its function as an homage to one of algorithmic music’s most inventive and influential figures. 

John Chowning: “Algorithmic compositions at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1960s” (invited)

In the domain of computer music, the first algorithmic compositions were at Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in the 1960s.  Max Mathews and colleagues, encouraged and joined by John R. Pierce, Director of Research, experimented with Mathews and Joan Miller’s Music III and IV programs, with notable results. While Mathews and Pierce did not claim to be composers, they had musical instincts, and the ideas in their algorithmic compositions were brilliant, though often cartoonish sounding.

In my presentation, I will present and explain a selection of works by composers including Mathews, Pierce, James Tenney, and Jean-Claude Risset.

About the panelist

John Chowning was born in Salem, New Jersey in 1934, spending his school years in Wilmington, Delaware. Following military service and four years at Wittenberg University in Ohio, he studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He received the doctorate in composition (DMA) from Stanford University in 1966, where he studied with Leland Smith.

In 1964, with the help of Max Mathews of Bell Telephone Laboratories and David Poole of Stanford University, he set up a computer music program using the computer system of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Beginning the same year he began the research that led to the first generalized surround sound localization algorithm. In trying to comprehend the distance cue, Chowning discovered the frequency modulation synthesis (FM) algorithm in 1967. This breakthrough in the synthesis of timbres allowed a very simple yet elegant way of creating and controlling time-varying spectra. Inspired by the perceptual research of Jean-Claude Risset, he worked toward turning this discovery into a system of musical importance, using it extensively in his compositions. In 1973 Stanford University licensed the FM synthesis patent to Yamaha in Japan, leading to the most successful synthesis engine in the history of electronic musical instruments. Interview about FM synthesis Jun 17, 2015, Barcelona, https://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia/sonia-212-john-chowning

He taught computer-sound synthesis and composition at Stanford University’s Department of Music. In 1974, with John Grey, James (Andy) Moorer, Loren Rush and Leland Smith, he founded the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), which remains one of the leading centers for computer music and related research. Although he retired in 1996, he has remained in contact with CCRMA activities. In 2019, he initiated with an international team, a long-term project to recreate, by computer modeling, the acoustics of the Chauvet Cave in France as they were when the exqusite 36,000-32,000-year-old wall paintings were created.

Chowning was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988 and awarded the Honorary Doctor of Music by Wittenberg University in 1990. The French Ministre de la Culture awarded him the Diplôme d’Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1995. He was given the Doctorat Honoris Causa in 2002 by the Université de la Méditerranée, by Queen’s University in 2010, Hamburg University of Music and Drama in 2016 and Laureate of the Giga-Hertz-Award in 2013.